Harriet the Spy, Double Agent (10 page)

There were only four days left until winter break, and the halls of the Gregory School were ringing with talk about Christmas vacations. Everyone seemed to be going someplace where she could get tan: the Caribbean, a ski resort, Greece. Beth Ellen Hansen was taking a cruise.

“Where are
you
going, Cassandra?” said Marion Hawthorne, who’d just told the group near her locker that her parents had rented a bungalow on Guadeloupe.

“The family villa in Sicily,” Annie replied. “If my uncles are done with their squabble, that is. Otherwise I’ll just be stuck in Las Vegas.” Marion and Rachel exchanged wary glances and nodded. “Have fun,” Rachel said, scuttling down the hall so fast she looked like an insect.

“Are you really going away during break?” Harriet asked as she walked Annie home.

“Where would I go?” Annie’s voice was forlorn. “I’m not supposed to go back to Boston till everything’s settled, and my aunt and uncle are working straight through the vacation. My uncle says his patients all get depressed at the holidays, and my aunt’s patients just keep on having babies. Anyway, they don’t celebrate Christmas. Not even a tree.” She cast a yearning look over at Balsam and Douglas’s tree stand. Harriet had the urge to reach out and take her friend’s arm, but she stopped herself, remembering how Annie had bristled the last time she’d tried that. She doesn’t want anyone pitying her, thought Harriet.

“That’s a nice scarf,” she said. “Is it new?”

“Thanks.” Annie smiled, but her voice sounded scratchy. “My mom sent it to me for Hanukkah.” She wrapped the scarf tighter around her throat.

When Harriet got home, she was delighted to find a square envelope with her name on it next to the usual stack of bills in the foyer. The stamp was Canadian. She took the stairs two at a time on the way to the third floor and brought the card into Ole Golly’s old bedroom to read it. The front showed a woman in white in her garden with two little girls. Her expression was tender. Harriet opened the card.

Harriet M
., it read. Harriet smiled, remembering how Ole Golly had called her that when she was little.

I’ve been pondering the question you posed in your last letter. You asked about
love, and I answered, as most people probably would, with regard to romantic love. But
as I feel my baby beginning to stir and kick, I am newly aware of the many ways in which
human beings can love. Parents love. Friends love. Sometimes even spies love. The world
is a rich and remarkable place. But it is not, repeat, not sentimental
.

As ever,

Catherine Golly Waldenstein

P.S. Isn’t this painting miraculous? You can practically smell the wisteria
.

Cook had made lamb chops, juicy and red in the small curve of bone. Harriet was glad when her father picked up a rib, gnawing the last of the meat with his teeth. Her mother was conscious of good table manners, and Harriet, who had eaten her dinners downstairs in the kitchen with Ole Golly for years, was still wary of what might be deemed impolite. She picked up a rib with her fingers and followed her father’s example.

“You look like Neanderthals,” her mother said.

“Oh, for God’s sake, woman, let us be carnivores,” Harriet’s father said, winking at Harriet. “We’re not at a White House banquet.”

“Nor at a clambake on Long Island Sound.”

Harriet set down her bone, dabbing her fingers discreetly with a napkin before she picked up the right fork. “Mom?” she ventured.

“Yes, dear?”

“Are we going to go to Long Island for Christmas?”

“Of course we are, Harriet. I wouldn’t miss it,” her father said.

“Your father insists that the Upper East Side isn’t windy and cold enough,” Harriet’s mother said, smiling. “It’s not a real Christmas unless you get chilled to the bone every time you go out.”

“Beaches are best at off-season,” her father said, chomping a lamb chop.

“I agree,” said her mother. “Bermuda is lovely in August.”

“Could I invite Annie?” asked Harriet. Both parents looked at her. “She’s going to be all by herself over Christmas. Her uncle and aunt are just going to work.”

“I think that would be lovely,” said Harriet’s mother. “It’d be nice for you to have someone your age there, and that poor girl has had such a difficult autumn. Let me speak to the Feigenbaums. Harry?”

“If it makes Harriet happy, it’s all right by me,” said her father, helping himself to some more mashed potatoes and sloshing the pile with a huge wave of gravy.

“Pour with the spout, not the side,” said her mother, smiling indulgently.

“Honestly, Harry, you’re hopeless.”

Barbara Feigenbaum said that a couple of days near the ocean would “do the girl good,” and Annie seemed vastly relieved to get out of the city. I wonder how P. feels about her leaving town, Harriet thought as she glanced across the backseat at her friend, but there was no way she could ask.

There wasn’t much snow on Montauk Highway. Here and there on the roadside the sea winds had carved off big snowdrifts like dunes. Harriet gazed out the window, remembering how she and Beth Ellen Hansen had raced down this road on their bicycles just a few months before, the sun at their backs and the wind in their hair.

Mrs. Welsch turned around in the passenger seat. “Have you ever been out to Long Island before, Annie?”

“No,” Annie said. “But it looks like Cape Cod.”

“We spent our honeymoon on the Cape, didn’t we, Harry? The darling old windmill in Truro. Those
dunes
. And the breakers! I’ll never forget it.” Annie listened politely as Harriet’s mother rattled on about chowder and Portuguese fisherman’s soup with chorizo and kale.

My mother means well, thought Harriet, watching her friend, but she doesn’t know when a person prefers to be left alone.

The beach house was drafty, so Mrs. Welsch drove the girls to the supermarket while Mr. Welsch lit a fire in the grate. They had already unpacked a big cooler of groceries that they had brought from New York, because one couldn’t count on finding fresh produce outside the city at this time of year. Cook had baked a buffet’s worth of pies and packed several dinners in lidded casseroles, but Mrs. Welsch had insisted on roasting the holiday turkey herself. “I’m not helpless,” she said with a sniff. Cook’s nod was, at best, noncommital.

Still, there were staples to buy. “Let’s get a ton of food,” Harriet said. “Let’s buy
everything
!”

Her mother smiled. “That salt air goes right to your appetite. What do you eat for breakfast?” she asked, turning to Annie, who shrugged.

“My aunt mostly serves Cream of Wheat,” she said. “Or yogurt.”

“But what do you
like
?”.

Annie looked first at Harriet, then at her mother. “French toast and bacon,” she said. “With hash brown potatoes.”

“Then that’s what we’ll have,” said Mrs. Welsch. Good for you, Mom, thought Harriet.

The girls spent the afternoon decorating the beach house for Christmas. They folded white paper into tight squares and cut on the folds to make snowflakes. They dug out an old set of tempera paints that weren’t too dried up and decorated a bucket of seashells and pine cones with glitter and paint, and used bent paper clips to make ornament hangers. They popped popcorn and strung it with cranberries, muttering whenever the needle and thread broke the kernels in half. All they needed now was the tree. “We should have bought one at Balsam’s,” said Harriet.

“Where’s that?” said her mother.

“The stand on the corner of East Eighty-eighth,” said Annie. “Next to the Koreans’.”

“No need to pay clip-joint markups,” said Harriet’s father. “We’re out in the country.” He went to his tool bench and picked out an orange-handled crosscut saw.

“Who wants to go on an expedition?” he said. Annie and Harriet raised their hands, as if they were at school. “You’re hired,” he said, grinning.

“Wrap up,” urged Mrs. Welsch. “The wind off the bay’s like a knife.” Annie and Mrs. Welsch washed and dried the dinner dishes while Harriet held the tree upright and Mr. Welsch got on his knees to tighten the screws of the heavy green tree stand. “Is it straight?” he asked. “Tell me it’s straight.” Harriet took a few steps back, and the tree lurched in the other direction. “Not anymore.”

Mr. Welsch banged the tree back into place. “We can put men on the moon,” he mumbled, retightening screws, “but try to design a Christmas tree stand that works …”

“You say that every year, Daddy.”

“I’d be the richest man in America.”

“You say that, too.”

Mrs. Welsch came back into the room, casting a critical eye at the tree. “It’s leaning a little.”

Her husband growled. “Which direction?”

Annie appeared in the doorway behind Mrs. Welsch. They said, “That way,” in unison, leaning their hands in two different directions.

“Well, that’s good enough for me.” Mr. Welsch got to his feet, dusting off his knees. “Better get out that vacuum before all these needles get ground into the carpet.

And test out those twinkle lights. They’ve been in the attic all year.” 

“Oh, Harry,” said Mrs. Welsch, sliding her arms around his waist. “It’s a beautiful tree. The best ever.”

“It is pretty nice,” he admitted, leaning his cheek on the top of her head as he surveyed the Christmas tree, framed by the wide plate-glass window that looked out on the ice-frosted beach.

“You know what we didn’t buy? Mistletoe.”

“Mistletoe,” said Mr. Welsch, kissing her, “would be redundant.” Harriet looked over at Annie, whose arms had been folded across her chest ever since Mr. and Mrs. Welsch had embraced. She turned and walked quickly out of the room.

Mrs. Welsch swiveled her head. “Oh dear,” she said softly. “Maybe I’d better—”

“Mom.” Harriet’s voice was clipped. “Leave her alone, okay?” Harriet set her toothbrush back in the glass and looked in the mirror at Annie. “It feels strange to get ready for bed without doing semaphore,” she offered.

“I guess,” Annie said. They walked into the bedroom, and Harriet got in her bed.

The sheets were so cold that she shivered and drew the quilt up to her chin. They’ll warm up soon, she thought. Annie climbed into the trundle bed.

“The last person to sleep in that bed was Beth Ellen.”

“Beth Ellen
Hansen
? Beth Ellen the mouse?”

“She’s not such a mouse as you think,” said Harriet, and told Annie how, during the summer, she and Beth Ellen had been spies together, trying to figure out who had been leaving hand-lettered quotations, usually from the Bible and usually very unflattering, for people in every corner of Water Mill.

“And guess who was doing it?” Harriet said.

“How would
I
know?” said Annie sharply. “I don’t know anyone here.”

“You know this one,” said Harriet. “Beth Ellen was doing it.”

“Really?”

Harriet nodded. “She tried to throw me off the track by pretending to join in the search, but I bagged her.” She examined Annie’s face in the moonlight.

Annie looked thoughtful. “Was Beth Ellen mad when you caught her?” Harriet shook her head. “I think she was actually kind of relieved,” she said, watching closely for Annie’s reaction. “Sometimes it’s hard to keep secrets.”

“Sometimes,” said Annie, “you don’t have a choice.” She rolled over and stared at the wall.

Another dead end, thought Harriet. Oh well. I tried. She looked up at the ceiling, where she could still see the ghosts of the glow-in-the-dark stars she’d stuck up there when she was in second grade. The sound of the breakers was rhythmic, soothing. It was always so easy to fall asleep next to the ocean.

“Sweet dreams,” she said. Annie didn’t respond. Harriet looked at the trundle and saw that her shoulders were shaking beneath the quilt. “Annie?”

“You’re so lucky, H’spy.” Annie sniffed. “You still have parents.” Christmas morning was blustery. The water was gun-metal gray with white combers, and wind swirled the traces of snow on the deck. There were intricate patterns of frost on the sliding glass doors.

Mr. Welsch made the girls bacon, hash browns, and French toast with whipped cream and red and green sprinkles. They all ate in bathrobes and slippers. It seemed to take Mrs. Welsch hours to wash all the dishes so they could sit down at the foot of the tree and start opening presents. Harriet watched Annie closely, wondering if she was still feeling left out and sad. If she was, she was hiding it well.

Finally Harriet’s mother sat down on the couch. “Who’s going to be the elf?” asked her father.

“Let’s be our own elves,” said Harriet, sounding a bit irritated. “We’re not six years old. We can find our own presents.”

“An elven rebellion,” said Mr. Welsch, raising his eyebrows. “All right. Every elf for himself.” They plunged into the pile.

There were too many presents, as usual, some that made people happy and some that produced frozen smiles. Mr. Welsch was especially irked by a shirt his wife had picked out. “How long have you known me? I don’t wear striped shirts. I wear white shirts and blue shirts; on weekends I sometimes wear plaid shirts. I’ve never liked stripes.”

“Well, I just thought a change would be nice.”

“If I craved a change, I would not start with stripes.”

“There’s no need to snipe at me, Harry. I’ll take it back.” Harriet noticed that Annie had turned her head. She seemed to be staring at something outside on the deck, but Harriet had the impression that her thoughts were elsewhere, perhaps with her own parents. Harriet picked up a gift wrapped in three different colors of tissue. “For you,” she said.

Annie opened it, snaking the long ribbon down to the floor and unfurling the layers of tissue. She stared at the red marble sketchbook in silence.

“What’s the matter?” asked Harriet.

Annie picked up a package wrapped in paper with blue and gold six-pointed stars.

“For you,” she said. “Open it up, H’spy.”

Harriet peeled off the paper. Inside was a blue marbled sketchbook, exactly like Annie’s. She looked up at Annie. “Did you get this from—”