Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

Before Edie could get up from the table, Harriet hopped up and scooted to the back door—past Tat, to Libby on the porch.

“Where’s Adelaide?” said Edie to Tat, who was smiling over her shoulder at Harriet.

Tat rolled her eyes. “She wanted to stop off at the grocery store for a jar of Sanka.”

“Oh, my,” Libby was saying, out on the back porch, in a slightly muffled voice. “Harriet, my goodness! What a joyous welcome….”

“Harriet,” called Edie sharply, “ don’t hang all over Libby.”

She waited, and listened. From the porch, she heard Libby say: “Are you sure you’re all right, my angel?”

“Heavens,” said Tatty, “is the child crying?”

“Libby, how much do you pay Odean a week?”

“Goodness! What makes you ask a question like that?”

Edie got up and marched to the screen door. “That’s none of your business, Harriet,” she snapped. “Get inside.”

“Oh, Harriet’s not bothering me,” said Libby, disengaging her arm, adjusting her spectacles and peering at Harriet with innocent and unsuspicious perplexity.

“Your grandmother means—” Tat said, following Edie onto the porch—since childhood, it had been her task to re-phrase, diplomatically, Edie’s sharp dictums and decrees—”what she means is, Harriet, it’s not polite to ask people about money.”

“ I don’t care,” said Libby, loyally. “Harriet, I pay Odean thirty-five dollars a week.”

“Mother only pays Ida twenty. That’s not right, is it?”

“Well,” said Libby, blinking, after what was obviously a stunned pause, “I don’t know. I mean, your mother’s not wrong , but—”

Edie—who was determined not to waste the morning discussing a fired housekeeper—interrupted: “Your hair looks pretty, Lib. Doesn’t her hair look beautiful? Who did it?”

“Mrs. Ryan,” said Libby, bringing a flustered hand up to hover at her temple.

“We’ve all got so gray-headed now,” Tatty said pleasantly, “you can’t tell one from the other.”

“Don’t you like Libby’s hair?” said Edie, sternly. “Harriet?”

Harriet, on the verge of tears, looked angrily away.

“I know a little girl who could stand to get her own hair cut,” said Tat, waggishly. “Does your mother still send you down to the barber, Harriet, or do you get to go to the beauty shop?”

“I reckon Mr. Liberti can do it just as well and not charge half as much,” said Edie. “Tat, you ought to have told Adelaide not to stop at the grocery store. I told her I had a bunch of hot chocolate in those little individual envelopes that I’d already packed for her.”

“Edith, I did tell her, but she says she can’t have sugar.”

Edie drew back mischievously, in mock astonishment. “Why not? Does sugar make her wild , too?” Adelaide had recently begun to refuse coffee, citing this as the cause.

“If she wants Sanka, I don’t see any reason why she shouldn’t have it.”

Edie snorted. “Nor do I. I certainly don’t want Adelaide to be wild . ”

“What? What’s all this about wild? ” said Libby, startled.

“Oh, didn’t you know? Adelaide can’t have coffee. Because coffee makes her wild . ”Adelaide had only started saying this recently, since her silly choir friend Mrs. Pitcock had started to go around saying the same thing.

“Well, I like a cup of Sanka myself, every now and then,” Tat said. “But it’s not as if I must have it. I can get along without it just fine.”

“Well, it’s not as if we’re going to the Belgian Congo! They sell Sanka in the city of Charleston, there’s no reason for her to haul a great big jar of it in her suitcase!”

“I don’t see why not. When you’re taking the hot chocolate. For yourself . ”

“You know how early Addie does get up, Edith,” interjected Libby, anxiously, “and she’s afraid that the room service won’t open until seven or eight—”

“That’s why I packed this good hot chocolate! A cup of hot chocolate won’t hurt Adelaide one bit . ”

“I don’t mind what I have, hot chocolate sounds awfully good! Just think,” said Libby, clapping her hands and turning to Harriet. “This time next week we’ll be in South Carolina! I’m so excited!”

“Yes,” Tat said brightly. “And your grandmother’s mighty smart to drive us all there.”

“I don’t know about smart, but I expect I can get all of us there and back in one piece.”

“Libby, Ida Rhew quit,” said Harriet in a miserable rush, “she’s leaving town—”

“Quit?” asked Libby, who was hard of hearing; she glanced imploringly at Edith, who tended to speak more loudly and distinctly than most people. “I’m afraid you’ll have to slow down a little, Harriet.”

“She’s talking about Ida Rhew that works for them,” said Edie, folding her arms over her chest. “She’s leaving, and Harriet is upset about it. I’ve told her that things change, and that people move on, and that’s just the way the world is.”

Libby’s face fell. With candid sympathy, she gazed at Harriet.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Tat. “You’ll miss Ida, I know you will, sweetheart, she’s been with you a long time.”

“Ah,” said Libby, “but this child loves Ida! You love Ida, don’t you darling,” she said to Harriet, “the way that I love Odean.”

Tat and Edie rolled their eyes at each other, and Edie said: “You love Odean a little too much, Lib.” Odean’s laziness was an old, old joke among Libby’s sisters; she sat around the house, supposedly in ill-health, while Libby brought her cold drinks and did the washing-up.

“But Odean’s been with me for fifty years,” said Libby. “She’s my family. She was with me out at Tribulation, for Heaven’s sake, and she’s not in good health.”

Tat said: “She takes advantage of you, Libby.”

“Darling,” said Libby, who had grown quite pink in the face, “I mean to tell you that Odean carried me out of the house when I was so sick with pneumonia that time out in the country. Carried me! On her back! All the way from Tribulation over to Chippokes!”

Edie said, thinly: “Well, she certainly doesn’t do much now.”

Quietly, Libby turned to Harriet for a long moment, and her watery old eyes were steady and compassionate.

“It’s awful being a child,” she said, simply, “at the mercy of other people.”

“Just wait until you’re grown up,” Tatty said encouragingly, putting an arm around Harriet’s shoulder. “Then you’ll have your own house, and Ida Rhew can come live with you. How about that?”

“Nonsense,” said Edie. “She’ll get over it soon enough. Maids come, and maids go—”

“I’ll never get over it!” shrieked Harriet, startling them all.

Before any of them could say anything, she threw off Tatty’s arm and turned and ran off. Edie lifted her eyebrows, resignedly, as if to say: this is what I have put up with all morning .

“My goodness!” said Tat, at last, passing a hand over her forehead.

“To tell you the truth,” Edie said, “I think Charlotte’s making a mistake, but I’m tired of putting my foot in over there.”

“You’ve always done everything for Charlotte, Edith.”

“So I have. And it’s why she doesn’t know how to do anything for herself. I think it’s high time she started taking more responsibility.”

“But what about the girls?” said Libby. “Do you think they’ll be all right?”

“Libby, you had Tribulation to run and Daddy and the rest of us to look after when you were hardly older than she is,” said Edie, nodding in the direction in which Harriet had disappeared.