It was a few weeks before Harriet’s
parents let her come over to my house again.
Every day I would ask Father if I could call her, and every day he would
say something like: “It’s too soon, Vickie.”
Or: “Let’s wait just a little while longer.”
“But, Father—”
“Just a little longer. Then I’ll call and talk to her parents
again.” He looked at me closely. “And I’ll assure them that you’ve learned
your lesson … about scaring your friends,” he added.
But he didn’t have to call
them. One day during the Christmas
holidays Mrs. Eastbrook called us and
invited me over to play.
When Mrs. Eastbrook came to the
front door and opened it, I noticed right away that she had been crying. She looked tired … tired and sad. “Hi, Vickie,” she said in a tight voice. “Harriet has wanted to see you so much.”
“Mrs. Eastbrook, I’m so sorry about—” And I was starting to cry myself.
“You don’t need to apologize again,” she
said. “I know that you love my daughter
and that you would never hurt her, not on purpose.”
Now I was really crying—and hard.
“Anyway, come on in. We’re letting all the cold air in the house!”
Harriet was up in her room. And the first thing I noticed when I saw her
was the she had been crying,
too. That made three of us.
“Harriet?”
“Oh, Vickie!” she sobbed when she saw me. “Daddy’s gone! My daddy’s gone!”
And so he was.
A few days after Thanksgiving, I
learned, when Mrs. Eastbrook came home after spending an afternoon out with
Harriet, she found a letter from her husband on the dining room table. He was leaving the family. Going somewhere … but he would not say where.
He had taken lots of their money, one of their cars, other valuable
things. And off he had gone.
Harriet didn’t know—or wouldn’t
tell me—why he had left them. But I
guess that doesn’t really matter. He was
gone. And now Harriet and her mother
were alone. I was kind of glad. He didn’t seem like a nice man—he made people
who loved him feel bad.
I thought I knew why Mrs. Eastbrook
wanted me to come over: She needed help with Harriet, who was suffering a great
sadness.
But I never minded, never minded at
all. Soon, Harriet and I were spending
much of our time together. I would go to
her house; she would come to mine. She
would show me her goldfish; I would admire them—even though I couldn’t really
tell them apart. She gave them names
(Charles, Jane, Edward[i]),
made up little stories about them. And soon
Harriet and I became very close friends, like sisters—like twins, remember? We seemed
to agree about so many things. She would
start a sentence; I would finish it for her.
It was as if there were one of us, saying one thing; we just took turns
saying it.
We also dressed alike. We had sayings that no one else understood
but would make us laugh whenever one of us said them.
Blue
skies. Blue jays. Blue whales.
They
all have tales—but two have tails.
That sort of thing.
In other ways, though, we were very
different. The goldfish, of course. But Harriet also went to dancing
lessons. And piano lessons. And voice lessons. She started playing sports—soccer and
basketball and softball. More and more,
she was not home when I called or stopped over.
But it didn’t really bother
me. Because while she was away, learning
to dance and play and kick and shoot and throw, I was reading—or down in the
basement, building things, learning things, surprising myself with discoveries almost
every single day.
By the time I was in school in
Franconia—Chester Elementary[ii]—I
had learned not to let anyone know
about my talent for making things. It
made people uncomfortable—or unhappy.
The pre-school teachers thought I was cheating on the little projects we
were supposed to do at home. One teacher
wrote a letter to my father about the Thanksgiving turkey I’d made out of
chicken feathers, a soccer ball, and other ingredients. Not only did my turkey look just like a real—though miniature—bird: It made gobbling
sounds and felt warm when you held
it. There was even a little heartbeat in
its chest.
The letter from the teacher accused my father
of buying the turkey and—here’s the
teacher’s words—“destroying the spirit of the assignment” and “making the other
little children feel bad.”
Well, the other little children
didn’t feel bad at all—they hated
me. They hated me for “cheating.” And those few who didn’t think I cheated
hated me for being too good at something.
Only Harriet stuck up for me—but I could tell that she had some doubts,
too. Not that she would ever accuse me
of anything, but I’m sure she was wondering why I was able to do things so
well.
Anyway, the last time I ever did my
best on any school project was in kindergarten.
Here’s what happened …
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