Donna Tartt - The Little Friend

“That’s so. But these children aren’t like we were, Edith. They’re more sensitive.”

“Well, it didn’t matter if we were sensitive. We didn’t have any choice.”

“What’s wrong with that child?” said Adelaide—powdered and lipsticked, her hair freshly curled—as she started up the porch. “I met her running down the street like a thunderbolt, dirty as anything. And she wouldn’t even speak to me.”

“Let’s all go inside,” said Edie; for the morning was getting hot. “I have a pot of coffee on. For those who can drink it, that is.”

“My,” said Adelaide, stopping to admire a bank of rosy pink lilies, “these are certainly going great guns!”

“Those zephyr lilies? I brought those from out on the place. Dug them up in the dead of winter and put them in pots, and only one came up the next summer.”

“Look at them now!” Adelaide leaned down.

“Mother used to call them,” said Libby, peering over the porch railing, “Mother used to call those her pink rain lilies.”

“Zephyr is their real name.”

“Pink rain is what Mother called them. We had these at her funeral, and tuberose. It was so hot when she died—”

“I’m going to have to go on in,” said Edie, “I’m about to have the heat stroke, I’ll be inside having a cup of coffee whenever y'all are ready.”

“Will it be too much trouble to heat up a kettle of water for me?” said Adelaide. “I can’t have coffee, it makes me—”

“Wild?” Edie raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, we certainly don’t want you to be wild , do we, Adelaide.”

Though Hely had ridden his bicycle all over the neighborhood, Harriet was nowhere to be found. At her house, the strange atmosphere (strange even for Harriet’s) was worrying. No one had come to the door. He’d just walked in and found Allison crying at the kitchen table, and Ida bustling around and mopping the floor as if she didn’t hear or see it. Neither of them had said a word. It gave him the chills.

He decided to try the library. A drift of artificially cooled air hit him as soon as he pushed open the glass door—the library was always chilly, winter and summer. Mrs. Fawcett swivelled in her chair at the check-out desk and waved to him, with a jingle of her bangle bracelets.

Hely waved back—and, before she could collar him and try to sign him up for the Summer Reading Program—he walked as fast as he politely could to the Reference Room. Harriet, with her elbows on the table, was sitting underneath a portrait of Thomas Jefferson. Open in front of her was the largest book that he had ever seen.

“Hey,” he said, slipping into the chair beside her. He was so excited that he could barely keep his voice down. “Guess what. Danny Ratliff ‘s car is parked out in front of the courthouse.”

His eyes fell on the huge book—which, he now saw, was a book of bound newspapers—and he was startled to see on the yellowed newsprint a ghastly, grainy photograph of Harriet’s mother, with her mouth open and her hair all messed up, out in front of Harriet’s house. MOTHER’S DAY TRAGEDY, said the headline. In the front, a blurred male figure was sliding a stretcher into what looked like the back of an ambulance, but you couldn’t quite see what was on it.

“Hey,” he said—aloud, pleased with himself—”that’s your house . ”

Harriet shut the book; she pointed to the sign that said No Talking.

“Come on,” whispered Hely, and gestured for her to follow him. Without a word, Harriet pushed back her chair and followed him out.

Hely and Harriet stepped out onto the sidewalk, into heat and blinding glare. “Listen, it’s Danny Ratliff ‘s car, I know it,” said Hely, shading his eyes with his hand. “There’s only one Trans Am like that in town. If it wasn’t parked right in front of the courthouse, what I’d do is put a piece of glass under the tire.”

Harriet thought of Ida Rhew and Allison: at home now, curtains drawn, watching their stupid soap opera with the ghosts and vampires.

“Let’s go get that snake and put it in his car,” she said.

“No way,” said Hely, sobered abruptly. “We can’t bring it all the way back down here on the wagon. Everybody’ll see.”

“What’s the point of taking it?” said Harriet bitterly. “Unless we make it bite him.”

They stood on the library steps, without talking, for some time. At length, Harriet sighed and said: “I’m going back inside.”

“Wait!”

She turned.

“Here’s what I was thinking.” He hadn’t been thinking anything, but he felt compelled to say something in order to save face. “I was thinking … That Trans Am has a T-top. A roof that opens,” he added, seeing Harriet’s blank expression. “And I bet you a million dollars he has to go down County Line Road to get home. All those hicks live out that way, over the river.”

“He does live out there,” said Harriet. “I looked it up in the phone book.”

“Well, great. Because the snake’s up at the overpass already.”

Harriet made a scornful face.

“Come on,” said Hely. “Didn’t you see that on the news the other day, about those kids in Memphis chunking rocks on cars from the overpass?”

Harriet knit her eyebrows. Nobody watched the news at her house.

“There was a whole big story. Two people died. Some man from the police came on and told you to change lanes if you saw kids looking down at you. Come on , ” he said, nudging her foot hopefully with the toe of his sneaker. “You’re not doing anything. At least let’s go check on the snake. I want to see him again, don’t you? Where’s your bike?”

“I walked over.”

“That’s okay. Hop on the handlebars. I’ll ride you out there if you ride me back.”

Life without Ida. If Ida didn’t exist, thought Harriet—sitting cross-legged on the dusty, sun-bleached overpass—then I wouldn’t feel so bad now. All I have to do is pretend I never knew her. Simple.

For the house itself wouldn’t be different when Ida left. Traces of her presence had always been faint. There was the bottle of dark Karo syrup she kept in the pantry, to pour on her biscuits; there was the red plastic drinking glass that she filled with ice on summer mornings and carried around to drink from during the day. (Harriet’s parents didn’t like Ida to drink from the regular kitchen glasses; it made Harriet ashamed even to think about it.) There was the apron Ida kept out on the back porch; there were the snuff cans filled with tomato seedlings, and the vegetable patch by the house.

And that was all. Ida had worked in Harriet’s house for all of Harriet’s life. But when those few possessions of Ida’s were gone—the plastic glass, the snuff cans, the bottle of syrup—there would be no sign that she had ever been there at all. Realizing this made Harriet feel immeasurably worse. She imagined the vegetable patch abandoned, in weeds.

I’ll take care of it , she told herself. I’ll order some seeds from the back of a magazine . She pictured herself in straw hat and garden smock, like the brown smock that Edie wore, stepping down hard on the edge of a shovel. Edie grew flowers: how different could vegetables be? Edie could tell her how to do it, Edie would probably be glad she was taking an interest in something useful….

The red gloves popped into her mind and, at the thought of them, fright and confusion and emptiness rose up in a strong wave and swept over her in the heat. The only present that Ida had ever given her, and she had lost them…. No, she told herself, you’ll find the gloves, don’t think about it now, think about something else ….