Read Online This is Your Life, Harriet Chance! by Jonathan Evison - Free Book Online
Authors: Jonathan Evison
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be fine.”
December 19, 1953
(HARRIET AT SEVENTEEN)
A flipper here, a bumper there, a kicker, a spinner, a rollover, and ding-dong-ding, we’re in the waning days of 1953.
Who is that striking young lady just left of the mistletoe, poised in the sapphire blue evening dress with the portrait collar, looking ladylike in her long white gloves—the one who looks like a slightly chubby Susan Hayward? Well, in the right light, anyway, at the right angle, after enough buttered rum. Why, it’s you, Harriet Nathan, at your father’s Christmas party. Teddy Ballgame is six months back from Korea (along with your future husband). They’ve got a chimp on television now. They say this H-bomb makes Little Boy look like a party favor. And it’s not just bombs—everything is getting bigger and louder.
Look at you, Harriet, hair expertly coiffed, hobnobbing with the partners like you were born to it. So composed, so effortlessly buoyant, as you play the part of a woman. At forty, you’ll wonder what became of all that finesse, all that poise. But for now, your father is grooming you. If he has his way, you’ll be a credit to your sex. Weekdays, you’ll trade evening dresses for a woman’s business attire. You’ll make a name for yourself. Or better yet, you’ll stick with the name you were given. The click of your heels down courthouse corridors will one day strike fear in the hearts of opposing counsel.
Your father’s ambition is contagious, and maybe not beyond your reach. Next year, you’ll graduate high school and pursue that law degree he’s picked out for you. From there, with enough elbow grease, a formidable network, and a little luck, it’s up up up, Ms. Nathan. The world is your oyster.
But let us not forget, you’re only a girl, Harriet. Only seven weeks removed from your seventeenth birthday. You still dream of horses, still slurp malted milks and play pinball down at Sully’s. You’ve only been past first base a few times, and God knows, they didn’t really count (how could they!). You’re still not sure what you want for yourself or to which pressures you might succumb. Yes, Harriet, behind that feminine mystique is a girl who just got her drivers’ license last summer.
Maybe Charlie Fitzsimmons didn’t get the memo. Maybe he ignored it. Wouldn’t be the first time. Charlie has a way of getting around rules. The man can smell a loophole ten milesaway. Yes, the whiz kid is fast becoming Old Charlie. After twenty years at the firm, he’s practically family. Like a trusted uncle, or an uncle, anyway. It’s complicated. Charlie confides in you, always has, ever since you were a kid.
Tonight is no exception. In the half-darkened hallway, where you’ve just emerged from straightening your hair in the washroom, and you’ve barely replaced your white gloves, Charlie all but corners you. Desperate for somebody’s confidence, he tells you—you, of all people, Harriet Nathan—of his plans to leave the firm and start his own shop. They keep adding names to the marble slab, but Nathan will always be first. Charlie wants his own shingle. Yes, Charlie’s ambitious, too. He gets what he wants. And he never forgets a friend. He’ll have a job waiting for you, he promises, but you mustn’t tell your father of his plans. Deal?
Smell his cologne, smell the rum on his breath, as he crowds in so close you can’t tell where one smell ends and the other begins. All but pinning you to the wall, he whispers. What surprises you about his groping hands is their boyish clumsiness.
In six months, Charlie Fitzsimmons will make good on his plans and leave the firm, opening his own shop less than two blocks away. Though there’s a few hard feelings with the Nathans, Charlie will remain a presence in your life, dropping you a line now and then as you pursue your degree, and each time he’ll remind you of that job that’s waiting for you.
You’ll never breathe a word of it to your father.
August 19, 2015
(HARRIET
December 19, 1953
(HARRIET AT SEVENTEEN)
A flipper here, a bumper there, a kicker, a spinner, a rollover, and ding-dong-ding, we’re in the waning days of 1953.
Who is that striking young lady just left of the mistletoe, poised in the sapphire blue evening dress with the portrait collar, looking ladylike in her long white gloves—the one who looks like a slightly chubby Susan Hayward? Well, in the right light, anyway, at the right angle, after enough buttered rum. Why, it’s you, Harriet Nathan, at your father’s Christmas party. Teddy Ballgame is six months back from Korea (along with your future husband). They’ve got a chimp on television now. They say this H-bomb makes Little Boy look like a party favor. And it’s not just bombs—everything is getting bigger and louder.
Look at you, Harriet, hair expertly coiffed, hobnobbing with the partners like you were born to it. So composed, so effortlessly buoyant, as you play the part of a woman. At forty, you’ll wonder what became of all that finesse, all that poise. But for now, your father is grooming you. If he has his way, you’ll be a credit to your sex. Weekdays, you’ll trade evening dresses for a woman’s business attire. You’ll make a name for yourself. Or better yet, you’ll stick with the name you were given. The click of your heels down courthouse corridors will one day strike fear in the hearts of opposing counsel.
Your father’s ambition is contagious, and maybe not beyond your reach. Next year, you’ll graduate high school and pursue that law degree he’s picked out for you. From there, with enough elbow grease, a formidable network, and a little luck, it’s up up up, Ms. Nathan. The world is your oyster.
But let us not forget, you’re only a girl, Harriet. Only seven weeks removed from your seventeenth birthday. You still dream of horses, still slurp malted milks and play pinball down at Sully’s. You’ve only been past first base a few times, and God knows, they didn’t really count (how could they!). You’re still not sure what you want for yourself or to which pressures you might succumb. Yes, Harriet, behind that feminine mystique is a girl who just got her drivers’ license last summer.
Maybe Charlie Fitzsimmons didn’t get the memo. Maybe he ignored it. Wouldn’t be the first time. Charlie has a way of getting around rules. The man can smell a loophole ten milesaway. Yes, the whiz kid is fast becoming Old Charlie. After twenty years at the firm, he’s practically family. Like a trusted uncle, or an uncle, anyway. It’s complicated. Charlie confides in you, always has, ever since you were a kid.
Tonight is no exception. In the half-darkened hallway, where you’ve just emerged from straightening your hair in the washroom, and you’ve barely replaced your white gloves, Charlie all but corners you. Desperate for somebody’s confidence, he tells you—you, of all people, Harriet Nathan—of his plans to leave the firm and start his own shop. They keep adding names to the marble slab, but Nathan will always be first. Charlie wants his own shingle. Yes, Charlie’s ambitious, too. He gets what he wants. And he never forgets a friend. He’ll have a job waiting for you, he promises, but you mustn’t tell your father of his plans. Deal?
Smell his cologne, smell the rum on his breath, as he crowds in so close you can’t tell where one smell ends and the other begins. All but pinning you to the wall, he whispers. What surprises you about his groping hands is their boyish clumsiness.
In six months, Charlie Fitzsimmons will make good on his plans and leave the firm, opening his own shop less than two blocks away. Though there’s a few hard feelings with the Nathans, Charlie will remain a presence in your life, dropping you a line now and then as you pursue your degree, and each time he’ll remind you of that job that’s waiting for you.
You’ll never breathe a word of it to your father.
August 19, 2015
(HARRIET
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