Harriet the Spy (4 page)

She crept into the alley. Nothing was doing at the first window. She kept her body low and scooted to the second window. Suddenly she saw the whole family. She had to duck her head quickly in order not to be seen. Luckily the window was open a fraction, so she could hear what was being said.

Mama Dei Santi was speaking, “
Accidente!!
He take the truck, get killed!”

Harriet knew she must be talking about Fabio. Fabio was always wanting to take the truck somewhere. She peeked over the sill.

Fabio leaned against a packing case. A cigarette dangled from his mouth. He was tall, very thin, and had a gloomy look. He shifted slightly in irritation at his mother’s remark.

His mother caught his mood and raised both hands high above her head. “What did I do to God to deserve to come to a country like this that should come down on my head to raise a son like you?”

“Oh, Mama.” That was Maria Elena. She looked in the mirror all day and said dumb things. She was seventeen and very beautiful.

“Don’t you Mama me. Look at Bruno, all day, all night, work in the store.
That’s
a son.” Mama Dei Santi spewed forth these words in a hiss.

Harriet peeked over the sill. Franca, who was fourteen and a complete blank of a person, leaned against the wall as though she had been propped there. Dino, who was six, traveled a toy car with his hand along one of the shelves. Papa Dei Santi turned slowly to Fabio. “
Mio figlio
,” he began in a tired patient voice, “I work my life away for you. I come here with nothing. I get a pushcart. I sell vegetables. You know what makes a man that sells vegetables?”

Fabio frowned. The cigarette hardly moved in his mouth as he spoke. “You now
got
the store, Papa. You now got the truck. Can I borrow the truck?”

“No
good
. No
good
,” Papa Dei Santi screamed with all his might.

There was a moment of strange silence as Fabio and his father stood staring at each other. Bruno walked heavily into the room. He was a thick, strong man with thick, strong thoughts in his head. He spoke slowly as though the thoughts had to come from a long way back in his head. “Let him take the car, Papa. Let him have a little fun. He’s eighteen. He just wants a little fun.”

“Fun, fun. Eighteen too old for fun. What fun you have, Bruno?”

“We’re different, Papa. Let him go. You make him bad if you stop him.”

“Bad?
Bad?
He’s already bad. Flunk out the school. Hang around, lazy bum, all day. How I
make
him bad?”

“Oh, Papa,” Maria Elena breathed softly as she leaned toward the mirror.

“Buzz, buzz, buzz,” Dino whispered, having turned the car into an airplane.

The bell on the door of the shop rang, breaking into their anguish. Papa Dei Santi started toward the front. “Customer,” he said under his breath, “no more talk. Everybody to work.”

“Papa.” It was only one word, but it took Fabio an enormous effort to get it out.

“No truck.” Papa Dei Santi didn’t even turn around. The words came out like bullets.

Fabio slumped, took a long drag on the cigarette without putting his hand to it. Maria Elena tried her hair a new way in the mirror. Mama Dei Santi walked heavily toward the front, following Bruno. No one looked at Fabio. Harriet squatted under the window and wrote out everything she had seen. Then she wrote:

THAT FABIO MAY BE BAD BUT I DON’T BLAME HIM. I WOULDN’T WANT TO BE LIKE BRUNO EITHER. BRUNO LOOKS LIKE A BIG DUMB BEAR.

ONCE I THOUGHT I WANTED TO BE FRANCA AND LIVE IN THAT FAMILY. BUT SHE’S SO DULL IF I WAS HER I COULDN’T STAND MYSELF. I GUESS IT’S NOT MONEY THAT MAKES PEOPLE DULL. THERE IS A LOT I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS THING OF BEING DULL. I BETTER FIND OUT BECAUSE I MIGHT BE IT.

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO HAVE BROTHERS AND SISTERS? ONE THING, WHENEVER THEY YELLED IT WOULDN’T ALWAYS BE AT YOU. SOMETIMES IT WOULD BE AT YOUR BROTHER THEN YOU COULD LAUGH.

WHAT IS TOO OLD TO HAVE FUN? YOU CAN’T BE TOO OLD TO SPY EXCEPT IF YOU WERE FIFTY YOU MIGHT FALL OFF A FIRE ESCAPE, BUT YOU COULD SPY AROUND ON THE GROUND A LOT.

Harriet closed her book and crept around the back to see what Little Joe Curry was doing. Little Joe Curry was the delivery boy for the Dei Santis and he was always up to one thing. He was always eating. It was strange the Dei Santis made any money at all the way Little Joe ate.

Harriet peeked in. He was sitting there now, when he should have been working, eating a pound of cheese. Next to him, waiting to be consumed, sat two cucumbers, three tomatoes, a loaf of bread, a custard pie, three quarts of milk, a meatball sandwich about two feet long, two jars—one of pickles, one of mayonnaise—four apples, and a large salami. Harriet’s eyes widened and she wrote:

WHEN I LOOK AT HIM I COULD EAT A THOUSAND TOMATO SANDWICHES.

Harriet heard a little whispering noise in the alley She knew who it was without even looking, because she was almost caught every day by the same people. Four skinny little kids appeared around the side of the house. They tiptoed up to the door and knocked discreetly. They were very poor children with torn dirty clothes and smudges all over their faces as though they were never washed. The oldest was around seven and the others were around four and five.

Little Joe opened the door. There wasn’t a word exchanged as he handed them a tomato, a quart of milk, half of the cheese, the loaf of bread, half the salami, half the custard pie, and two apples. They distributed these things among themselves to make for easy carrying and scooted away down the alley as silently as they had come.

Little Joe went back to his eating. Harriet felt funny watching the scene. She sighed a little, then creeping along under the windows, went on to her next stop.

That night as Harriet lay in her bathtub taking her bath before dinner she felt very happy. She had done a good day’s work. She listened to Ole Golly, who was going through Harriet’s closet taking out things that needed cleaning. Ole Golly was whistling. It was a cheery though tuneless sort of whistling which Harriet rather liked. The yellow paint on the tiny bathroom walls looked clean and happy. Harriet felt warm and sleepy in the hot water.

Suddenly the front door banged downstairs and Harriet could hear her father’s voice.

“Finks, finks, double-barreled rat, rat, rat, finks, finks, finks.” He sounded very angry. Harriet could tell from his voice that he had stormed up the steps to the library. “You won’t
believe
the iniquity… you will
not believe
when I tell you the unmitigated
finkiness
of those guys.”

Then Mrs. Welsch’s voice, calm and comforting, obviously leading him to a chair. “What, darling? My heavens, what is it?”

“Well, mumble mumble, they’re just the worst mumble mumble. I just
could not believe
…”

“Darling, here, have your drink.”

Harriet was standing up in the bathtub, she was trying so hard to hear.

“What did you do today, Harriet?”

How annoying. Ole Golly had chosen
this
time to start a conversation. Harriet pretended not to hear as she kept listening.

“That mumble, he’s an absolutely
inspired
fink, that’s what he is, a real mumble I tell you, I never saw a mumble like him.”

“Did you take a lot of notes?” Harriet tried to crane her ears past Ole Golly’s question. Would she
just
shut up a minute?

“Darling, that’s terrible, simply mumble.”

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. They’re really going to mumble it up. If anything it’ll be the worst show of the season. They’re real mumbles, they are.”

“What are you doing, Harriet M. Welsch, standing up in that bathtub?” Ole Golly looked exceedingly fierce. “Sit down there this minute and I’ll wash your back. Look at those ears. Do you perhaps
pour
ink into them?”

“No, they itch a lot.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing, all that noise downstairs.”

“Well, I’d like to hear it all the same.”

“Your father has a very high-pressure job, that’s all.”

“What’s a high-pressure job?”

“It means he’s not allowed to do exactly what he wants with the job, and what he is allowed to do he isn’t given enough time to do it in.”

“Oh,” said Harriet, thinking, What does
that
mean? “Do spies have high pressure?”

“Oh, yes, if they get caught.”

“I’m never caught.”

“Not yet.”

“Ole Golly, are you ever going away?”

“When you get so big you don’t need me, yes, but not right this minute. You’re getting pretty old though,” Ole Golly said, surveying Harriet critically.

There was a pause, then Harriet said, “Ole Golly, do you have a boy friend?”

“Yes,” said Ole Golly and looked away.

“
YES!
” Harriet almost fainted into her bath water.

“Yes,” said Ole Golly with dignity. “Now time for bed.”

There was a pause and then Harriet asked, “It’s unsanitary to have a lot of cats in the house, isn’t it?”

Ole Golly looked rather startled. “I always think of cats as rather clean, but then, a
lot
of cats… How many cats?”

“I think twenty-five, but I’m not sure. They move around a lot.”

“
Twenty-five?
Here’s your towel. Who do you know with twenty-five cats?”

“Oh, somebody.” Harriet adored being mysterious.

“Who?”

“Oh, just somebody.” And Harriet smiled to herself.

Ole Golly knew better than to pursue it. She always said that privacy was very important, especially to spies.

When Harriet was all through with her dinner and bundled off to bed, she began to think of Harrison Withers and all his cats. Harrison Withers lived on Eighty-second at the top of a dilapidated rooming house. He had two rooms, one for him and one for the cats. In his room he had a bed, a chair, a work table at which he made birdcages, and a whole wall of birdcage-making tools. In the other room there was nothing but the cats. In the kitchen there was one glass, one cup, and twenty-six plates all stacked up.

It suddenly occurred to Harriet to wonder if he ate exactly the same food as the cats, or different food. She must find out tomorrow. She could find out by following him around the supermarket. She fell asleep contentedly. Right before she fell asleep she wondered who in the world Ole Golly’s boy friend was.

T
he next afternoon, after her cake and milk, Harriet went straight to Mrs. Plumber’s house. She knew it was dangerous, but once her curiosity was aroused she had never been able to give up a spot on her route. As she got to the house she saw Little Joe Curry in conversation with the maid. She sidled around the front, took a ball from her pocket that she always carried for such moments, and began to engage in an innocent-looking game of ball right in front of them.

Little Joe was leaning against the door. He always looked tired when he wasn’t eating. The maid sounded very aggravated. “Haven’t got the change. She went off left me without a cent.”

“Well, when will she be back? I could come back.”

“Lord knows. When she go to Elizabeth Arden she sometimes gone all day. Lot of work to do on her, you know.” The maid giggled nastily.

“Man, she got all that jack and don’t pay. They all alike—more they got, less they pay.” And with that pronouncement Little Joe shuffled off back for his afternoon snack.

Harriet looked unconcerned as he went past. The maid went inside. Harriet leaned against the hydrant and wrote:

I WONDER WHAT THEY DO TO HER ALL DAY. I ONCE SAW MY MOTHER IN A MUD PACK. THEY’LL NEVER GET
ME
IN A MUD PACK.

She slammed her book and went to the Dei Santis’. The store was terribly busy. Everyone was running to and fro, even Franca who usually had to be propped up somewhere. Little Joe wasn’t even back yet. Well, thought Harriet, this looks like a rotten spy day. She checked Mrs. Plumber and the Dei Santis off her list and went on to the Robinsons, the next people on the route.

The Robinsons were a couple who lived in a duplex on Eighty-eighth Street. When they were alone they never said a word to each other. Harriet liked to watch them when they had company, because it made her laugh to see them showing off their house. Because the Robinsons had only one problem. They thought they were perfect.

Luckily their living room was on the ground floor of their duplex. Harriet scurried through the back passageway to the garden and there, by leaning around a box kept for garden tools, she could see in without being seen.

The Robinsons were sitting, as they always were, staring into space. They never worked, and what was worse, they never even read anything. They bought things and brought them home and then they had people in to look at them. Otherwise they didn’t seem to do a blessed thing.

The doorbell rang.

“Ah,” said Mrs. Robinson. “There they are now.”

She got up sedately and walked slowly, even though she had obviously been sitting there waiting for the ring. She looked critically as Mr. Robinson adjusted his smoking jacket, then went to the door.

“Come in, Jack, Martha, how lovely to see you. It’s been so long. How long will you be in town?”

“Well, we—”

“Look, before you go a step further, look, Martha, at these lovely vinyl squares I just got put in. Aren’t they just perfect?”

“Yes, they are—”

“And that chest in the corner, isn’t that a find?”

“Well, it’s just…”

Mr. Robinson stood up. “Hello there, Jack.”

“Hi there, fella. Long time no—”

“Hey, Jack, I wanta show you my gun collection. You haven’t been here since I got two new ones. Just come in here and…” They disappeared from Harriet’s view.

“Martha, come here. You must see the… oh, here, put your coat and purse down in this perfect place, this eighteenth-century luggage rack. Isn’t it divine?”

“Why, yes, it’s—”

“Look, come here, right over here, now
isn’t
that the most beautiful garden you’ve ever seen?”

“Yes, oooh, aaah, it’s just—”

“You know, Martha, we have the most perfect life…”

“You don’t have any children, do you, Grace?”

“Why, no, but frankly we think that’s just perfect.…”

Harriet, having ducked when they looked at the garden, fell over laughing. When she recovered herself she grabbed her notebook.

BOY, OLE GOLLY TOLD ME ONCE THAT SOME PEOPLE THINK THEY’RE PERFECT BUT SHE OUGHTA SEE THESE TWO. IF THEY HAD A BABY IT WOULD LAUGH IN ITS HEAD ALL THE TIME AT THEM SO IT’S A GOOD THING THEY DON’T. ALSO IT MIGHT NOT BE PERFECT. THEN THEY MIGHT KILL IT. I’M GLAD I’M NOT PERFECT—I’D BE BORED TO DEATH. BESIDES IF THEY’RE SO GREAT WHY DO THEY JUST SIT THERE ALL DAY STARING AT NOTHING? THEY COULD BE CRAZY AND NOT EVEN KNOW IT.

She headed over to Harrison Withers’ house. She liked to look at the birdcages he made but, more than that, she intended to be there when he got caught. The Health Department was forever trying to get in to catch him because he had too many cats, but Harrison Withers was very crafty. Whenever his doorbell rang he looked out the window, and if the man ringing the bell wore a hat, he never let him in. All the men in the Health Department wore hats and Harrison Withers didn’t know anybody who wore a hat.

Harriet climbed the steps to the top floor of his rooming house and the last flight that led up to the roof. She could look through one skylight at a place where the paint had been worn away, and she was sure she couldn’t be seen from inside.

She peered down. As she did, she remembered that she had planned to watch him in the supermarket to see if he lived on kidneys like the cats.

The cats were all milling around. She went to the other skylight. Sunlight flooded the other room but here caught glints from tools, from the tiny shining minarets which topped the cages. Harriet liked to look at this room. The cages were beautiful soaring things, and when he was in this room, Harrison Withers was a happy man.

Harriet liked to watch him work, admired the patience which allowed him to sit bent over for hours twisting minuscule wires around ridiculously small connections.

Oh, what luck! Harrison Withers was just coming through the door with a big shopping bag. Now she could see what he ate. The cats all followed him into the kitchen as he started taking things out of the bag. They started mewing and rubbing against his legs as he took kidney after kidney out of the bag.

“There now, children,” he spoke to them gently. He always spoke very softly. “There now. We’re all going to eat now. Hello, everybody—yes, yes, hello. Hello, David, hello, Rasputin, yes, Goethe, Alex, Sandra, Thomas Wolfe, Pat, Puck, Faulkner, Cassandra, Gloria, Circe, Koufax, Marijane, Willy Mays, Francis, Kokoschka, Donna, Fred, Swann, Mickey Mantle, Sebastian, Yvonne, Jerusalem, Dostoievsky, and Barnaby. Hello, hello, hello.”

Harriet had counted this time. There were twenty-six. Then that meant that the twenty-six plates were for the cats. What did he eat from? She watched as he pulled from the very bottom of the bag one small container of yogurt. Cats don’t eat yogurt, thought Harriet; that must be what he eats.

She watched while he fed the cats then spooned a bit of yogurt into his mouth. He went into his workroom, carrying the container, and closed the door behind him because the cats were not allowed in that room. He sat at his work table before a particularly beautiful cage, a replica of a Victorian summer house.

Quiet descended upon the room as he sat studying the cage. His hand moved as in a dream to put the yogurt to one side. He looked lovingly, his eyes slightly glazed, at the one small unfinished portion of the structure. Very slowly he moved one piece a quarter of an inch to the left. He sat back and looked at it a long time. Then he moved it back.

Harriet wrote in her notebook:

HE LOVES TO DO THAT. IS THIS WHAT OLE GOLLY MEANS? SHE SAYS PEOPLE WHO LOVE THEIR WORK LOVE LIFE. DO SOME PEOPLE HATE LIFE? ANYWAY I WOULDN’T MIND LIVING LIKE HARRISON WITHERS BECAUSE HE LOOKS HAPPY EXCEPT I WOULDN’T LIKE
ALL
THOSE CATS. I MIGHT EVEN LIKE A DOG.

She took one last look at Harrison Withers, who was gently winding a piece of wire around two little curling pieces of wood. She got up then and went down to the street. In front of the house she stopped to write:

THERE IS ALSO THAT YOGURT. THINK OF EATING THAT ALL THE TIME. THERE IS NOTHING LIKE A GOOD TOMATO SANDWICH NOW AND THEN.

She decided to go see Janie awhile before going on to the rest of her route. Janie lived in the garden duplex of a renovated brownstone off East End Avenue on Eighty-fourth Street. Harriet rang the outside bell and pushed the door when it buzzed back. Janie was standing inside at her doorway and she was in a foul mood. Harriet could tell just by looking at her. Janie always looked terribly cheerful when she was in her most angry mood. Harriet figured it had to be that way because Janie’s normal face was one of sheer rage. Today she smiled happily and sang out winningly, “Hello, there, Harriet Welsch.” Things couldn’t be worse.

Harriet walked toward her tentatively, as one would toward a mad dog, trying to see Janie’s eyes more clearly, but Janie whipped inside the door. Harriet followed her in.

“What’s the matter?” Harriet whispered. They were standing in the little foyer off the living room.

“They’re after me,” whispered Janie, still smiling wildly.

“Who?”

“The Rat Pack.” This was what Janie called her mother, her father, her brother, and her grandmother who lived with them.

“Why?”

“My mother says I’m going to blow us all up and that I have to go to dancing school. Come past here, then they won’t see us.” Janie was hissing through her outrageous smile as she led them up the back steps to what she called her lab but which was really her room.

One corner of her room had been stripped bare. The rug had been pulled back, exposing one corner where Janie had started to cut off the excess to get it out of the way, but which she had been stopped from doing by her mother in an hysterical fit. At that time there had been a large fight through which Janie grinned broadly, and her mother let her know that it didn’t make a whit of difference if they didn’t ordinarily have rugs in labs (“They catch fire,” Janie had said, which had set her mother off again), that Janie had a rug in her room that was going to stay there, and that the very best she could hope for was to have it rolled back. So it lay there in a roll at the end of the room.

The lab itself was very complex and frightened Harriet whenever she looked at it, although she never would have admitted this to Janie. It consisted of rows and rows of shelves filled with bottles, all filled with suspicious fluids and looking as though you would turn into Mr. Hyde if you drank them. Only Janie understood anything whatever about them, and she wouldn’t explain but instead called everyone a cretin who asked her. The maids wouldn’t go near Janie’s room, so years ago she had had to learn to clean it herself.

Harriet stood staring at all the equipment while Janie rushed over to something boiling furiously on a Bunsen burner. She fiddled with it and turned it lower, then turned back to Harriet. “This time I may really get it,” she said thoughtfully and went over and flopped on her bed.

“You mean…”

“Yes. They may take it all away.”

“Oh, they couldn’t.”

“There have been people before me who have been misunderstood. They could.” And the way Janie said this, with her smile dropped and her eyes boring into Harriet’s, made shivers run up Harriet’s back.