Jonathan Evison - This is Your Life, Harriet Chance!

If the hustle and bustle of Fourth and Union still seems a long ways off, so does the thankless malaise of last year.

It’s the good life, Harriet Chance, drink it up!

I’m so sorry to keep you waiting, dear,” says Harriet, answering her doorbell the morning of the cruise. “Please come in. I’ll just be a minute.”

She’s sorely misjudged Dwight Honeycutt, and the guilt of this miscalculation has been needling at her conscience for two days. All these years, Harriet’s been looking at Dwight with a jaundiced eye. Yes, he was the chief proponent of Mildred’s move to Sunny Acres, the liquidation of her automobile, the downsizing of her existence. Yes, he dresses like a fallen oil baron, in bolo ties and ten-gallon hats, cowboy boots with khaki dress suits. And then there’s the matter of the silver Jaguar, out there in the driveway, crouched in the pink dawn, quietly belching a plume of exhaust into her dahlias. It’s true he landed a tidy sum listing the bluff house. But why shouldn’t he? It was going to be his someday, anyway. The truth is, all of it was probably in Mildred’s best interest. Harriet can see that now.

Dwight has been a doll the past two days. He feels terrible that his mother has canceled. Yesterday he called to confirm the ride for the second time. He even offered to come over and take a look around the house, make sure everything was in working order. Not only that, he offered to house-sit, and pick up the mail in her absence. She feels terrible for underestimating him.

“Take your time, take your time,” Dwight says, from the open kitchen, admiring the stainless-steel appliances, running a hand cleanly across the marble countertop. “You sure you don’t need a hand?”

“No, no, dear. I’m almost ready.”

It’s no small kindness, Dwight’s offering to drive Harriet as far as Kingston — and at 6:00 a.m., no less. That he was considerate enough to arrive twenty minutes ahead of schedule just puts a fine point on it.

No, there’s nothing shifty about Dwight Honeycutt as he sashays from room to room, flipping light switches, turning water spigots on and off, knocking on walls, inquiring about square footage, admiring views, peering keenly out at the patio.

“Hot tub work?”

“As far as I know, dear. Bernard maintained it scrupulously.”

“Nice amenity.”

“I really ought to use it more, you’re right.”

The relative dryness of the banana belt, sheltered as it was by the rain shadow, had been the decisive selling point, when shortly after his retirement from Blum Bearing in ’88, Bernard made the mutual decision that they were leaving the city for the peninsula. Oh, not that there hadn’t been some discussion on the subject. Harriet’s objections had been heard, among them not wanting to leave the kids (though Skip was nearly thirty), not wanting to sell the family home (though truth be told, it was a drafty old Edwardian with all the frigid corners of a haunted house), and not wanting to say good-bye to their friends (though, let’s face it, how exciting did twenty more years of playing pinochle with Gene and Margaret Blum sound?). In the end, it was a game of inches. Only eighteen inches of precipitation annually in Sequim, according to the real estate agent. Nearly thirty inches less than Seattle. More than pollution, more than crime, traffic, high property taxes, or any symptom of urban decay, Bernard could not abide rust. A corrosive menace. An insidious predator.

“Gotta love this rain shadow,” says Dwight, as though he can hear her thoughts. “No wonder everybody wants to retire here.”

Harriet never wanted to leave the north end, it’s true. She and Bernard had both been born and come of age in Seattle. They’d raised their children in the Ravenna house. But twenty-seven years later, hunched in the passenger’s seat next to Dwight, Harriet thinks of Sequim as the place she’s spent the best years of her life.

It all started with the house — the one decision over which Bernard had been willing to grant Harriet the final word. Because she saw to its upkeep, organization, and operation, the home and hearth would ever remain Harriet’s domain. Long after Bernard had lost patience (having viewed a dozen listings and attended half as many open houses), Harriet was finally swept off her feet by a cedar-sided one-of-a-kind in the Carlsborg flats. It was everything the family house in Ravenna was not, with its river-rock chimney, spacious sunroom, and jetted tub in the master suite. The kitchen was a dream, airy and uncluttered, with counter space galore. She loved the cedar-scented charm of her new home. The luxurious sparsity of the open floor plan. There were even two darling guest rooms for the kids when they visited, and a rec room in the basement for the grandchildren (if Skip would hurry up and produce some). Out back, through the sliding glass double doors, lay a wide flagstone patio facing the Olympics, flanked on all sides by raised garden beds. And all of it for barely two-thirds of what they’d managed to get for the Ravenna house.

“Oh yeah,” says Dwight, reaching for the glove box, from which he proffers a white envelope. “Mom said to wait until the cruise until you read it. And no, it’s not money — I already checked.”

The unmarked envelope is stuffed tight and sealed neatly.

“What’s this? An explanation?”

“I can’t honestly say. All I know is that she wanted you to wait.”

In spite of an unhealthy curiosity, Harriet tucks the envelope neatly in the side pouch of her oversized purse. She turns her attention back to the scenery, which like virtually everything else in the modern world, seems to be changing too fast. Goodness, but how they’ve built up Sequim in the past ten years. The box stores, the hotels, the thoughtless housing developments spreading like gray rashes into the hills. Harriet can remember when there was practically nothing along this strip of Highway 101, she could remember Sequim before the bypass, when the banana belt was a rural outpost, an oddball menagerie of gutsy merchants, not the shopping hub of the peninsula. Fifteen years on, and she still thinks of it as the new highway.

“How is she?” Harriet says at last.

“Incorrigible, if you wanna know the truth.”

“Her health, I mean. Is there something wrong she’s not telling me about?”

“She’s fine,” he says. “Slowing down a bit. Getting a little finicky in her old age, no offense. Frankly, I have no idea why she flaked out on you like this. For years, she tried to get dad to take her to Alaska. But he was always too busy.”

Dwight reaches for the console and cracks the sunroof with an electric whir. “There’s a bottle of water in back if you want it.”

“Thank you, dear, I’m fine.”

“Anyway, I’m sorry about my mom,” he says, notching his bolo tighter. “She could’ve given you a little warning. You’ve gotta understand, she’s very needy these days, whether she wants to admit it or not. She can’t drive, she can’t hardly boil water without forgetting to turn the burner off. And she’s getting loopier by the day. I’m afraid she’s gonna get herself in trouble trying to do too much, you know? Probably a good thing she’s not going.”

“I do hope she’s okay,” says Harriet, feeling a pang of guilt.

“If you wanna worry about somebody, worry about me. I’m sixty years old, and I’m maxed. Beyond maxed. Upside down. I’ve re-fied twice in the past eighteen months. I don’t even know how I’ll make my mortgage next month without Mom’s help. And this car — ha! I’m two payments behind already.”

Dwight reaches for the glove box again, this time producing a small tin. Harriet’s certain he’s about to offer her a breath mint, when he opens the tin to reveal a number of hand-rolled marijuana cigarettes. Fishing a chrome lighter out of his coat pocket, he lights one of the joints and takes a long pull.