The Little Friend полностью

Harriet’s mother did not often talk of Libby—she could hardly pronounce Libby’s name without breaking down in tears—but her thoughts ran towards Libby most of the time, and their current was as plain as if she spoke them aloud. Libby was everywhere. Conversations turned about her, even though her name went unmentioned. Oranges? Everyone remembered the orange slices Libby liked to float in Christmas punch, the orange cake (a sad dessert, from a World War II ration cookbook) that Libby sometimes baked. Pears? Pears too were rich in associations: Libby’s gingered pear preserves; the song that Libby sang about the little pear tree; the still life, featuring pears, that Libby had painted at the state college for women at the turn of the century. And somehow—in talking wholly about objects—it was possible to talk about Libby for hours without mentioning her name. Unspoken reference to Libby haunted every conversation; every country or color, every vegetable or tree, every spoon and doorknob and candy dish was steeped and distempered with her memory—and though Harriet did not question the correctness of this devotion, still sometimes it felt uncomfortably as if Libby had been transformed from a person into a sort of sickly omnipresent gas, seeping through keyholes and under the door cracks.

This was all a very strange design of talk, and it was even stranger because their mother had made it plain in a hundred wordless ways that the girls were not to mention Ida. Even when they referred to Ida indirectly, her displeasure was evident. And she had frozen with her drink halfway to her lips when Harriet (without thinking) had mentioned Libby and Ida in the same, sad breath.

“How dare you!” she cried, as if Harriet had said something disloyal to Libby—base, unforgivable—and then, to Harriet: “Don’t look at me like that.” She seized the hand of startled Allison; she dropped it and fled from the room.

But though Harriet was forbidden to confide her own sorrow, her mother’s sorrow was a constant reproach, and Harriet felt vaguely responsible for it. Sometimes—at night, especially—it waxed palpable, like a mist, permeating the entire house; a thick haze of it hung about her mother’s bowed head, her slumped shoulders, as heavy as the whiskey smell that hung over Harriet’s father when he had been drinking. Harriet crept up to the doorway and watched silently, as her mother sat at the kitchen table in the yellowy light of the lamp with her head in her hands and a cigarette burning between her fingertips.

And yet, when her mother turned and tried to smile, or make small talk, Harriet fled. She hated the shy, girlish way her mother had begun to tiptoe around the house, peeping around corners and looking in cabinets, as if Ida were some tyrant she was glad to be rid of. Whenever she edged close—smiling timidly, in that particular, tremulous way that meant she wanted to “talk,” Harriet felt herself harden to ice. Still as a stone she held herself when her mother sat down beside her on the sofa, when her mother reached out, awkwardly, and patted her hand.

“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.” Her voice was too loud; she sounded like an actress.

Harriet was silent, staring down sullenly at the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was open in her lap, at an article about the Cavy. It was a family of South American rodents which included the guinea pig.

“The thing is—” her mother laughed, a choked, dramatic little laugh—“I hope you never have to live through the kind of pain I’ve suffered.”

Harriet scrutinized a black-and-white photograph of the Capybara, the largest member of the Cavy family. It was the largest rodent alive.

“You’re young, honey. I’ve done my best to protect you. I just don’t want you to make some of the mistakes I’ve made.”

She waited. She was sitting far too close. Though Harriet felt uncomfortable, she held herself still and refused to look up. She was determined not to give her mother the slightest opening. All her mother wanted was a display of interest (not genuine interest, just a show) and Harriet knew well enough what would please her: to set the encyclopedia pointedly aside, to fold her hands in her lap and put on a sympathetic frowny face as her mother talked. Poor mother. That was enough; that would do.

And it wasn’t much. But the unfairness of it made Harriet tremble. Did her mother listen when she wanted to talk? And in the silence, looking fixedly at the encyclopedia (how hard it was to hold firm, not to answer!) she recalled stumbling into her mother’s bedroom, tear-blinded over Ida, the limp, queenly way her mother had raised a fingertip, one fingertip, just like that.…

Suddenly Harriet became aware that her mother had stood up, and was looking down at her. Her smile was thin and barbed like a fish-hook. “Please don’t let me bother you while you’re reading,” she said.

Immediately Harriet was struck by regret. “Mother, what?” She pushed the encyclopedia aside.