This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! (17 page)

F
or nineteen years you’ve been looking at your daughter’s horsey features and wiry hair, and biting your tongue, thinking of Charlie Fitzsimmons and wondering if Bernard has ever intuited the fact that he’s raising somebody else’s daughter. But when you pick her up at the bus station upon her return from New Mexico, having wired her the money for the ticket three days prior (unbeknownst to Bernard), it’s not Charlie Fitzsimmons you see in your daughter’s bewildered young face, but yourself, Harriet.

Immediately you notice a change about her. Her eyes reflect experiences you do not recognize, and some that you do. You will not judge her, not this time. How could you? You don’t say a word about the tattoo on the ride to the clinic. You don’t
ask about the job she held for six months in Albuquerque, or the winds that blew her there in the first place. You’re hardly listening, as she tells you about her stints in Santa Maria or Tucson. You don’t so much as inquire about the father of her unborn child or whether this is the first time such a thing has happened. There are many things you do not want to know.

What’s important, here, is that this thing go no further. This thing stops right here, and Caroline goes on with her life. Because there
is
a choice, a simple choice, one you never had. The fact is, you’re trying to save your daughter. You won’t even allow her to discuss or consider the other options, not if she wants to live under your roof. And really, where else can she go, Harriet, that she hasn’t already been in the past year? A shelter? Back on the street?

Make no mistake: your intentions are good. So don’t judge yourself too harshly.

Everything will turn out right, you tell your daughter. Just be grateful there’s a solution, dear. Consider yourself lucky you have a choice. You can put this behind you. You can still live the life you want to live. And don’t worry, your father doesn’t have to know a thing, dear. This is just between us.

This pact between you is the last secret you and Caroline will share for twenty-nine years, during which time both of you will withhold some doozies.

The Caroline who greets you in the waiting room a few hours after the procedure looks five years younger than the one that went in. Yes, much too young to be a mother, you
think. Look what she’s saved herself from. Look at the opportunities still available to her without a child weighing her down. You made the right decision, Harriet, whether or not it was yours to make.

On the drive home from the clinic, Caroline cries softly in the passenger’s seat, face turned to the side window. You do your best to comfort her. You reassure her. You resist the temptation to lecture her on the subject of birth control, an option you never exercised yourself. You do not, however, solicit discussion or invite second-guessing where the matter of choice is concerned. Pulling the sleeve of Caroline’s blouse down over her tattoo, you pat her encouragingly on the knee.

There, there, you say, don’t cry. A fresh start, dear. You’ll see.

But that fresh start will look more like a spiral, won’t it, Harriet? Things will only get worse for Caroline. In six months, she’ll be out on the street again, looking for a family.

You see, Harriet, something else died along with that unborn child: an opportunity. What your daughter never told you, Harriet, what you wouldn’t have heard, anyway, is that she wanted to keep it.

C
aroline stops just short of the bar and, donning a curdled grin, reaches into her pocket.

“Good,” she says. “I’m glad you’re back, Mom.”

She pulls out the check and rips it in half, then tears it in half again, and watches the pieces flutter to the floor, before resuming her stool next to Kurt.

“And just so you know, Mom, just so there’s no misunderstanding, it’s Skip, okay? He wants your money, not me. I’m just his stooge.”

Stunned, Harriet reaches out and grasps the bar for support.

“That’s right, Mom. Golden boy Skipper, your
little man,
he’s losing his house. And you’re the solution to all his problems. Me, I just get a free vacation and some new duds.”

“Well, how did he afford to send you money?”

“He forged a check. Yep, one of yours. Turns out I’m not the only criminal you raised.”

“Where did he get my checkbook?”

“From me, of course.”

Harriet stands there, dumb as a side of beef. But before the repercussions can settle in, before she can react to this news, she reminds herself why she’s here and shakes off the blow.

“Caroline, honey, you don’t want to do this. C’mon, dear, come with me. Let’s get some air and straighten all this out.”

Just as she says it, the barkeep delivers Caroline a fresh drink, which she clutches immediately.

Harriet shoots Kurt a withering look.

Kurt shrugs helplessly.

“Oh, give him a break, Mom. You’re the one trying to set me up with him.” Caroline slugs down half the drink in a single toss.

“Maybe she’s right,” says Kurt. “Maybe y’all ought to have that talk, Caroline.”

Caroline slams the highball glass down with gusto. “Fine,” she says, pushing off of the bar, her stool tipping backward, as she stands. “Let’s have a little talk.”

Behind her, Kurt pantomimes an elaborate apology. How could he know?

Harriet leads Caroline out by the elbow, though halfway down the corridor Caroline wrests her elbow free and steps up her pace, arriving at the elevator well in advance
of Harriet, where she pushes the call button and shifts her weight impatiently from one foot to the other. Harriet knows better than to breach the silence at this point. Having been there herself so many times, she knows that any appeal to Caroline whatsoever at this moment, anything besides a strict observance of silence over the next minute or two, will only result in escalation.

But something happens to Caroline in the close quarters of the elevator: all the defiance seems to drain out of her, right before Harriet’s eyes. Every muscle of her body seems to slacken at once.

“Thanks for getting me out of there,” she says.

Harriet reaches out and clutches her daughter’s hand, but Caroline pulls away as the elevator eases to a stop.

In the blustery air of the observation deck, Caroline, her kinky hair blowing sideways, crosses her arms over her chest.

“Dear, maybe we should go fetch your coat,” says Harriet.

“No.”

“But darling, you’ll freeze.”

“I want to freeze.”

The deck is deserted, as they drift wordlessly toward the stern, with the wind at their backs.

“Well, I don’t know how you can stand it,” says Harriet.

At midship, a steady blast from the heating vents envelops them suddenly in the illusion of a tropical night.

“Now that’s more like it,” says Harriet, lowering herself onto a wide bench. “Sit down, dear.”

But Caroline moves to the rail, where she stares into the darkness. Harriet wonders whether she should go to the rail or stay put and give Caroline her space. Watching her daughter’s back, the slow rhythmic convulsing of her shoulders, her dark mess of hair blowing crazily, Harriet contemplates the distance between them and wishes with an ache that the gap was only the mere ten or twelve feet now separating them. If only she could will her daughter back through the years.

Harriet is about to go to her when Caroline turns. “Five years thirty-one days,” she says, plopping down next to Harriet. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

“It’s my fault, dear.”

“I’ve been looking for an excuse. You and Skip just made it convenient for me.”

“Oh, Caroline. I’m so sorry. I’m a wicked person.”

“What are we even talking about, here, Mom? Who am I? Who should I be begrudging?”

Harriet balls her fists in her lap. She doesn’t know where to begin. She supposes, with the vague personal dissatisfaction and the ancient self-loathing, for which Charlie Fitzsimmons was only an antidote, or perhaps a symptom of or, at most, only part of the cause. But where did that begin? And what was it? And how, at nearly eighty years old, could she not know this about herself?

“You know what?” says Caroline. “Maybe I don’t wanna know. To tell you the truth, that might be too much right now.”

She bows her head, her ragged breath giving way to a sob. “Goddamnit, I fucked up again. Why do I always fuck up? I swear to God, it’s like I wanna fail. Skip’s right.”

“Forget Skip,” says Harriet. “Don’t talk like that. Part of it is genetic, you know. At least you’ve had the courage to face it. My God, Caroline, what did I ever do? And that may be the least of my problems. Lately, I’m discovering all kinds of deficits in myself. I don’t even know who I am anymore, Caroline.”

“Pfff. You’re telling me. I never have, Mom, not my whole life.”

“You’d think the growing pains would end at some point, or at least slow down,” says Harriet. “But oh no.”

“If anything, they accelerate,” Caroline says.

Harriet scoots closer and tentatively takes her daughter’s hand. This time, she accepts it.

“I’m sorry, dear. I’ve been a terrible mother. You did nothing to deserve me.”

“Who is he?” she asks.

“His name is—was—Charlie Fitzsimmons.”

“He’s dead?”

“He must be.”

“You loved him?”

“Never.”

“Does he know about me?”

“No.”

“Did Dad know?”

“No.”

“So, I was . . . what, then? A mistake?”

“Don’t ever say that.”

“Well? Then what?”

And so, Harriet breathes deeply of the warm air, bows her head, falters once, falters twice, gives pause, and finally begins her explanation. It begins in the waning minutes of 1936, with a little girl, confetti in her hair, hanging upside down in a bassinet.

D
ing-dong-ding, thwack-thwack-thwack, how on earth did we arrive way back here, Harriet? It’s 1946, and Vaughn Monroe is on the radio. If you listen closely, you can still hear them celebrating victory in Times Square.

Welcome to postwar America, where spirits are high. It’s been another prosperous year in the Nathan household, and nobody throws a company barbecue like the boys at Nathan, Montgomery, Ferris, and Fitzsimmons. We’re talking Indian smoked salmon. Waldorf salad. Frankfurters the size of Chiquita bananas. All the Coca-Cola a nine-year-old girl can drink.

And lucky you, Harriet, of all the youngsters, you get a ride on Charlie Fitzsimmons’ speedboat, and boy, she’s a beaut. Good old Charlie Fitzsimmons. The whiz kid is now
a wizened veteran of the law. One of the best in the city. A silver-tongued fox, a real asset to the firm. Your father venerates the man, talks about him like the son he never had, though Charlie’s only ten years younger.

But you don’t like Charlie, do you, Harriet? Or maybe that’s not entirely accurate. You are acutely ambiguous about Charlie.

On the drive home, in the backseat of your father’s Hudson Commodore, top down, you finally muster the courage to say so.

“What do you mean you don’t like the way he talks to you?” says your father, slightly tipsy—slightly, that is, by Nathan, Montgomery, Ferris, and Fitzsimmons standards.

“Like I’m already grown up,” you say.

“Well, that’s because you’re a smart little girl,” he says, his eyes smiling in the rear view mirror. “He respects you.”

“Goodness,” says your mother. “I hope you weren’t rude. If you said anything impolite, young lady, we’re driving right back to Charlie’s this instant, and you’re going to apologize.”

“No,” you say. “I promise I wasn’t rude.”

The thought of seeing Uncle Charlie (as he insists you call him) again, his coarse hands, his hairy knuckles, his gap-toothed smile, fills you with dread and anxiety. And the worst part is, you’re ashamed for feeling thus, because Charlie thinks you’re smart. Charlie respects you. Apparently, he’s among the first. Charlie doesn’t think you’re fat. He forever goes out of his way to tell you how special you are.

“Well, then,” says your mother, as though she can hear
your thoughts. “Maybe you ought to work on being a little more grateful.”

“Yes, ma’am,” you say.

Obviously, there’s no use telling your parents why else you don’t like Charlie Fitzsimmons, and his thin lips pressed against your forehead, and his hairy fingers groping beneath your bathing suit to pet you there. No use in telling them about the gentle way he spoke to you as he fondled you where your breasts had yet to begin their miraculous budding, nor the adoring things he said with his face buried in your lap. They wouldn’t believe you anyway. There’s no use telling anybody. Even Ginger, your golden retriever, doesn’t seem to want to hear it. That will be your little secret for the next seventy years, Harriet. Just you and Uncle Charlie.

Charlie will continue to treat you with respect. He’ll always make a point of telling you how smart and capable you are. How he could see right from the beginning how special you were, how he knew he could always trust you. Like your parents, he will regale you with the story of the upside-down baby girl. He’ll tell you these things your whole life, right up to that after-hours dalliance on your office desk, twenty years hence, by which time, his speedboat will be a distant memory, buried deeply.

This is your life, Harriet, the one you didn’t choose.

N
ow, now, not so fast, Harriet. We’ve still got business on Charlie’s boat. Isn’t it about time we revisit the scene of the . . . what shall we call it? The crime? That’s what the proper authorities would call it—the proper authorities not being your parents, of course. How about “the event”? “Event” makes it sound singular. Though it was not singular, was it, Harriet? It was multiple. Serial might be a better word choice. But let’s not quibble.

Let’s just call it “the First Time.”

It’s summer, but out here on the open water, the wind cuts right through your chubby limbs. You’ve got goose flesh. The chill is thrilling. Charlie guns the engine, skittering over the chop, the boat leaping dolphinlike out of the water, the hull thrashing against the surface upon its rejoinder.

Look at you, Harriet, wide-eyed and grinning as your rump bounces up and down, half a foot off the padded berth, the horizon jumping right along with it. And Charlie is grinning, too, nay, Charlie is smiling like a madman. You can practically hear the wind whistling though his teeth.

It’s not until Uncle Charlie stops the boat and leaves it to bob on the water like a cork that the chill is discomforting. The fact that he stopped the boat at all is discomforting in its own right. The craft is, after all, built for speed.

When Charlie sees you start to shiver, he comes to you, surefooted across the slippery deck of the bobbing boat and helps you out of your wet life preserver. Deftly, he begins to unclasp the—

Okay, fine, objection withheld. No need to dwell on the odious details, not for our purpose. This isn’t hypnotherapy, Harriet, this is your life, an unsentimental accounting of it. You get to be judge, jury, and arbiter. You get to decide what’s admissible. So strike the stuff about the offending fingers, the coarse stubble against your face, the whispered assurances. For the record, let’s just say that once Charlie unfastens the straps, your life preserver, like your parents, ceases to protect you. And you, Harriet, you cease protecting yourself.

Yes, you were only nine years old, and no, it wasn’t consensual, not by the letter of the law, anyway. Well, not by any letter, actually. But still, let’s talk about your complicity in the affair. You could have resisted. Sure, you were in open water with no one around for a half mile. Still, you might have put
up some kind of fuss. Sound travels a long ways across water. Surely, you must have learned that somewhere along the line by third grade. Think about it: Charlie was never about brute force, not in the courtroom or anywhere else. Charlie was about finesse, remember? Persuasion. He never threatened you. Quite the contrary. You had an unspoken understanding all those years.

Not to let Charlie off of the hook, but in hindsight, a little kicking and screaming might have saved you some trouble. Any kind of resistance at all might’ve done the trick. Even a simple no would have bought you some time. Rest assured, the other you would have put up a fight.

But you always were a quiet child, Harriet. Too quiet. And let’s face it, Charlie wasn’t used to taking no for an answer.

Now that we’re getting right down to the nitty-gritty, let’s give voice, at long last, to that unspoken understanding you shared with Uncle Charlie, from the First Time, to hallway gropings, to the office desk.

If you can name it, Harriet, maybe you can tame it.

You owed Charlie Fitzsimmons, didn’t you? You owed him your life. And he took it from you, didn’t he? It all began on that motorboat, that’s when you started paying, that’s where your path diverged from the other you. Bit by bit, he stole your confidence, little by little, he widened the gap between you and the you you might have become. He took your newly developed voice and stripped you of the power to tell your own story. He exacted his debt in self-esteem. You paid
silently in shame, Harriet, in unfulfilled potential, in unexplored possibility. And you’re still paying, all these years later.

And somehow, in spite of it all, Charlie Fitzsimmons never lost your respect, exercising that same finesse and expert persuasion that made him such a formidable opponent in the courtroom and such a hero at the dinner table. You can’t fault yourself for being bested by the best, Harriet. You weren’t even in fourth grade.

It ought to seem obvious. Lordy, it ought to go without saying, but somehow, some way, inconceivably, through the warped lens of your wounded self-image, the verdict has been lost on you all these years:

You are not guilty, Harriet. At least of this offense.