March 17, 2014 (HARRIET AT SEVENTY-SEVEN)
All of which, in retrospect, Harriet, begs the question (and apologies for bringing up a sore subject), but where the hell is Mildred Honeycutt now that her lover of forty years is sitting before the television in a loaded diaper, with tapioca running down his chin, convinced that weatherman Steve Pool is hatching a plot to kill him?
As it turns out, Bernard would also like to know the whereabouts of Mildred. “Darling, you’re confused,” you say. “It’s me, Harriet, your wife.”
“You’re not Mildred.”
“No, I’m Harriet.”
“Where the hell’s Mildred?”
“I have no idea. Probably at home.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m your wife. I’m Harriet.”
And using one of the few tools in your belt (not that it ever works), you reach for the wedding picture (must be the twentieth time in two days) and hold it out to him, pointing out Bernard in his two-button tuxedo and you in your mother’s wedding dress.
“Who the hell is this?”
“That’s us, on our wedding day.”
“Whose wedding?”
“Ours — yours and mine. See.”
He blinks at the picture, uncomprehendingly. Blinks again, still nothing.
“Where the hell’s Mildred?”
April 14, 1973 (HARRIET AT THIRTY-SIX)
And speaking of Mildred, now that we’re starting to put it all together, do you happen to remember where your husband was on April 14, 1973? I’ll give you a hint: he’ll still be there in two days, when you celebrate your fourteenth anniversary alone.
Yup, Bernard is in Philadelphia instead of at home for the occasion of his daughter’s birthday.
No, you didn’t have any help with the arrangements, it’s true. But c’mon, Harriet, it was a kid’s birthday party, not the inaugural ball. Since we’re being honest with ourselves, just admit it, you practically phoned in your daughter’s birthday party. Not to say, you weren’t harried throughout the debacle.
Half drunk on white wine, you burned the cake, then frosted the damn thing with your hands as though you were slathering grease on a ball joint. You forgot to invite half the class. You even forgot to tell Skip, who was at a baseball game. The paper napkins didn’t suit the occasion. You accidentally bought diet soda.
And that’s before the party even started.
Look at you, Harriet: your tank is two-thirds full by the time guests start arriving, and that’s when you begin calling them all by the wrong names.
You forgot to put out the snacks.
The living room is a mess.
There are no beanbags for the Toss-Across, no pins for the donkey.
And your replacement donkey tail is—ahem—rather obscene-looking.
Not your best work, Harriet.
But it gets worse. After the cake has been eaten, at least those portions that are edible, after the oversized, distinctly elliptical tail with its bell-like tip has been pinned on the donkey (thankfully, not between its hind legs), you come up three candles short in the end.
You knew you forgot something at Food Giant!
Epic fail, Harriet. But before you go too hard on yourself again, just remember who Bernard was with that moment when Caroline finally blew out those three candles. That’s right, he was with your future best friend, Mildred Honeycutt, eating pie, and for all you knew, stroking her hairy leg under the table.
Now that we’re starting to put it all together, now that we’re really starting to see things as they were, how about a big “Fuck you, Mildred Honeycutt”?
November 4, 1942 (HARRIET AT SIX)
And since we’re on the subject of sixth birthday parties, let’s talk about your own, Harriet, what the heck? Not to compare, but your mother doesn’t drop any balls in making the arrangements, oh no. This party actually looks like an inaugural ball. Tropical fruit punch in the crystal bowl (and no, that’s not canned pineapple), a two-tiered German chocolate cake from Borracchini’s, gift bags with tin whistles, rubber elephants, and homemade brittle wrapped in cellophane, and nothing that looks even remotely like a donkey dick.
Twenty-one children and forty adults attend, including your best friend, Miriam Addleman. Unlike Bernard, your father is not in Philadelphia. He’s right there, lighting the candles, snapping the pictures, smiling at his pride and joy, if not checking his watch occasionally.
But for all the pomp and circumstance, for all the little frilly details upon which your father spared no expense, your sixth birthday party, for lack of a better word, sucks, Harriet.
Though you’ve come out of your shell considerably and are developing something resembling a confident voice, you are not a social animal. If given the choice, you still lean toward invisibility.
Not gonna happen, not today. After the games and the gifts and the singing, after you’ve blown out exactly six candles, and your father has cut the cake, and you hunch greedily over your towering wedge of layered chocolate and coconut, your mother renders you all too visible.
“For heaven’s sake, Harriet, don’t take such big bites,” she says in front of practically everyone. “You think you might’ve learned your lesson by now, Little Piggy.” Then, turning to Miriam’s mother, she explains: “The child has a weakness for food. She nearly choked to death when she was a toddler, you know.”
You still feel the familiar heat of shame coloring your cheeks as you swallow your last big bite of birthday cake, which tastes less like German chocolate and more like an act of defiance.
A little later in the party, as the kids are ramping up for sugar-induced chaos, and the parents, just beginning to show their liquor, stop caring, the whiz kid, Charlie Fitzsimmons, takes you aside.
“That wasn’t very nice of your mom,” he observes.
“Daddy calls you the whiz kid,” you say.
He smiles. Twirls a few locks of your hair between his fingers. “That’s right,” he says. “The whiz kid. He’s always got your back.”
And then he tells you the story about how he was big and awkward as a kid, in someplace called Quincy, and his friends called him Charlie Fatzsimmons, and his father called him Fatz, and the lady from the Chinese grocery called him Ju, which meant “pig” in Chinese.
“You know Chinese?”
“Only a little.”
“Could you teach me?”
“What I know, I suppose.”
After talking to Charlie, you feel better — a lot better, actually. He even smuggles you an extra piece of German chocolate cake and sits with you while you eat it by the water heater.
August 20, 2015 (HARRIET AT SEVENTY-EIGHT)
By the time Harriet is shipboard again in Juneau, the worst of her hangover has passed. She’s exhausted, but pleasantly so, as she surrenders her boarding card at the checkpoint without a hitch.
“Welcome back, Ms. Chance. Did you enjoy Juneau?”
“I did, dear.”
“Excellent. Watch your step.”
Such is her state of fatigue that even the thought of Mildred cannot arouse Harriet’s ire as she progresses turtlelike down the carpeted corridor, clutching her Tlingit mask and her tiny totems. She can’t wait to get to her cabin. That footbath never sounded better. A cup of herbal tea from room service. Maybe the other half of that Vicodin. For the first time, this cruise is beginning to sound restful.