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Harold and Maude

A Novel

Chicago Review Press Incorporated

Harold Chasen stepped up on the chair and placed the noose about his neck. He pulled it tight and tugged on the knot. It would hold. He looked about the den. The Chopin was playing softly. The envelope was propped up on the desk. Everything was ready. He waited. Outside, a car pulled into the driveway. It stopped, and he heard his mother get out. With barely a smile he knocked over the chair and fell jerkily into space. In a few moments his feet had stopped kicking, and his body swayed with the rope.

Mrs. Chasen put her keys down on the entrance table and called to the maid to take the packages out of the car. It had been a boring luncheon and she was tired. She looked at herself in the mirror and absently pushed at her hair. The frosted wig would be fine for dinner this evening, she decided. She'd cancel her appointment with René and take a nap for the rest of the afternoon. After all, she deserved to indulge herself once in a while. She went into the den and sat at the desk. As she flipped through her book for the hairdresser's number, she listened to the Chopin playing softly. How soothing, she thought, and began to dial. René would be furious but it couldn't be helped. The phone buzzed, and she settled back, drumming her fingers on the arm of the chair. She noticed on the desk the envelope addressed to her. She looked up and saw, suspended from the ceiling, the hanging body of her son.

She paused.

The body swayed slightly from side to side, making the rope around the large oak beam squeak rhythmically to the sound of the piano.

Mrs. Chasen stared at the bulging eyes, at the protruding tongue, at the knot stretched tight about the grotesquely twisted neck.

"I'm sorry," said a tiny voice. "You have reached a disconnected number. Please be sure you are dialing the right number and are dialing correctly. This is ..."

Mrs. Chasen put down the phone. "Really, Harold," she said as she dialed again. "I suppose you think this is all very funny. Apparently it means nothing to you that the Crawfords are coming to dinner."

"Oh, Harold was always a well-mannered boy," said Mrs. Chasen to the elderly Mrs. Crawford at dinner that evening. "Yes, indeed. I had him using a little knife and fork at three. He was never any trouble as a baby, although he was perhaps more susceptible to illness than the average child. He probably got that from his father, because I've never been sick a day in my life. And, of course, he did inherit his father's strange sense of values — that penchant for the absurd. I remember once we were in Paris, Charlie stepped out for some cigarettes and the next thing I heard, he was arrested for floating nude down the Seine — experimenting in river currents with a pair of yellow rubber water wings. Well, that cost quite a bit of enfluence and d'argent to hush up, I can tell you."

The younger Mrs. Crawford laughed appreciatively, as did Mr. Crawford, Mr. Fisher, and Mr. and Mrs. Truscott-Jones. The elderly Mrs. Crawford sipped her champagne and smiled.

"Are you ready for dessert?" Mrs. Chasen asked her. "Is everyone ready for a delightful Peach Melba? Harold, dear, you haven't finished your beets."

Harold looked up from the end of the table.

"Did you hear me, dear? Eat up your beets. They're very nutritious. Very good for the system."

Harold looked at his mother and then quietly put down his fork.

"What ever is the matter?" asked Mrs. Chasen. "Aren't you feeling well?"

"I have a sore throat," he said softly.

"Oh, dear. Then perhaps you'd best go up to bed immediately. Excuse yourself and say good night to everyone."

"Excuse me," said Harold, "and good night everyone." He got up from the table and left the room.

"Good night," everyone echoed.

"Take some aspirin," Mrs. Chasen called after him. "And lots of water." She turned back to her guests. "Dear me," she said, "I don't know what I'm going to do with that boy. Lately he's become quite trying. I'm sending him to Dr. Harley, my psychiatrist, and, of course, my brother Victor — the brigadier general — keeps telling me the Army is the answer. But I don't want him off in some jungle battling natives. That's how I lost Charlie. Of course, Charlie wasn't battling. He was photographing parrots in Polynesia when that —"

"More champagne!" cried the elderly Mrs. Crawford, and burped.

"Mother!" said young Mrs. Crawford.

"Mother, please!" said Mr. Crawford.

"I'm sorry," said the elderly Mrs. Crawford. "I thought I saw a bat."

A momentary silence overtook the table until Mr. Truscott-Jones said that he had never tasted such a wonderful Peach Melba, and Mrs. Chasen told the story of how she had got the original recipe from a tenor in Tokyo who claimed to be Dame Nellie's bastard son.

Why they bring that old woman to parties, thought Mrs. Chasen as she sat down at her vanity table and took off her wig, is beyond anyone's comprehension. After all, she is practically senile. It's always so embarrassing, particularly for the family, and, of course, so trying for the hostess.

Why don't they put her in a home? she asked herself, picking up her dressing gown from the bed. She could be well taken care of and be able to live there with her own kind until her time comes.

She stopped by her bathroom door and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. Throwing back her shoulders, she patted her stomach. Not bad, she thought. Staying young is purely a question of staying slim.

She opened the door and turned on the bathroom light. Harold lay wide-eyed in the bathtub, his throat slashed, and blood dripping from his neck and wrists.

"My God! My God!" shrieked Mrs. Chasen. "Ohhh! Ohhh! This is too much. Too much!" She turned and fled crying down the hall.

Harold turned his head and listened. In the distance he could hear his mother's hysterical wailing. He looked at himself in the blood-streaked mirror and broke into a faint, satisfied smile.

"We have had several sessions now, Harold," Dr. Harley said, "but I don't think we can truthfully say there has been much progress. Would you agree?"

Harold, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling, nodded in agreement.

"And why is that?"

Harold thought for a moment. "I don't know," he said.

Dr. Harley walked over to the window. "I think it is perhaps your reluctance to articulate or elaborate. We must communicate, Harold. Otherwise, I'll never understand. Now, let's go over these pretended suicides of yours once again. Since our last session your mother has reported three more. As I calculate, that makes a total of fifteen. Is that correct?"

Harold looked intently at the ceiling. "Yes," hesaid, thoughtfully, "if you don't count the first one, and the time the bomb in the greenhouse exploded overnight."

Dr. Harley ran his hand over his thinning hair. "Fifteen," he said. "And they were all done for your mother's benefit?"

Harold considered that for a moment. "I wouldn't say 'benefit,'" he concluded.

"No," said Dr. Harley, "I suppose not." He sat at his desk. "But they were all designed to elicit a particular response from your mother, isn't that so? For example, the squashed-skull incident we talked about last time. You placed the dummy with the cantaloupe behind the rear wheel of your mother's car so that when she backed over it she thought she had run over your head. Now, the hysterics she displayed then would be the kind of thing you have been aiming for in these last three attempts. Am I right?"

"Well," said Harold. "That was one of the first. It was easier then."

"Uh, yes," said Dr. Harley. He leaned back in his chair. "Tell me about the bathroom incident last night."

"What do you want to know?"

"Would you rate it a success?"

Harold mulled that over. "It was the best response I've had in the last few weeks," he said.

"Did you leave a suicide note?"

"No. But I did write 'Farewell' on the mirror in blood. I don't think she saw it."

"Did you leave a suicide note for the hanging in the den?"

"Yes. I left it right on the desk. She didn't even pick it up."

"The hanging then was a failure?"

"Maybe it was the rigging," Harold mused. "Maybe I should have used a different harness."

"You seem to use very elaborate paraphernalia for these, uh, performances. The pool, for example. That must have taken a lot of work."

Harold took a deep breath. "Yes," he said with a slight smile of satisfaction. "It did. I had to build floats for the shoes and the suit. I even had to design a little oxygen device that lets you breathe underwater. It was a nice job."

"But not a success. At least, judging from what your mother told me."

Harold looked over at the doctor. "What did she say?" he asked.

"She said that she saw you floating in the swimming pool face down and fully clothed with a note saying 'Good-by World' pinned to your back. She told the maid to give you hot cocoa for lunch because she didn't want you to catch cold."

Harold looked back at the ceiling. It was a long time before he spoke. "It took me three days to set that up," he said finally.

Dr. Harley leaned forward in his chair. "Tell me, Harold," he said, changing the subject, "what do you do with your time?"

"You mean, when I'm not planning ..."

"Yes. What is your daily activity? You don't go to school."

"No."

"And you don't go to work."

"No."

"So, how do you spend your day?"

Harold paused. "I go to junk yards."

"And what is your purpose in going there?"

Harold thought for a moment. "The junk," he said. "I like to look at junk."

"I see. What else do you do?"

"I like to watch the automobile crusher at the scrap-metal yard."

"And what else?"

"I like demolitions."

"You mean tearing down old buildings and things like that?"

"Yes, particularly with that great iron ball."

"That's very illuminating, Harold, and I think opens up several avenues for exploration in our next session. Right now your time is up. Give my best to your mother. I think I shall be seeing her early next week."

Harold got up off the couch and said good-by.

"Are you off to the junk yard?" Dr. Harley asked pleasantly.

"No," said Harold, "the cemetery."

The doctor was taken aback. "Oh — I'm sorry. Is it someone in the family?"

"No," said Harold as he opened the door, "I just like to go to funerals."

Harold stood on the edge of the crowd and listened to the minister say the final prayers. He preferred smaller funerals, he decided. With only a few people around the grave, the emotion seemed more intense. And, of course, with smaller funerals it was possible to get closer to the coffin and actually see it being lowered into the ground.

The minister droned on. The deceased must have been somebody important, he thought. This is quite a turnout. He looked around him and saw a little old lady not far off, seated under a tree. She looked like one of the mourners and Harold would have paid no attention to her, except that she was eating a slice of watermelon and spitting the seeds into a paper bag. He stared at her, more than a little puzzled. She seemed to be completely at ease, observing and enjoying everything around her, as if she were having a picnic in a neighborhood park.

The minister's prayer drew to a close and Harold decided to leave. He took a final look at the old lady and concluded that she was definitely an odd one. Very weird, he said to himself, and climbed into his hearse and drove away.

"Why you purchased that monstrous black thing," said Mrs. Chasen at lunch, "is totally beyond me. You could have any car you want — a Porsche, a Jaguar, a nice little MG roadster. But no. We must have that eyesore parked in the driveway, an embarrassment to me and a shock to everyone else. I can't imagine what the ladies' auxiliary thought when they saw you — the son of their chairwoman — driving home in a hearse. Really, Harold, I don't know what to do. Drink up your milk, dear."

Harold drank his milk.

"It is not as if you were a stupid boy," continued Mrs. Chasen. "On the contrary, you have a very high IQ. So I simply do not understand this mortuary preoccupation. Where does it come from? Certainly not from me. I haven't the time for that kind of thinking. From the minute I wake in the morning to the minute I go to bed at night, I am constantly on the move, doing things — committees, luncheons, the ballet — never an empty moment. But you, Harold, you never socialize, you never discuss, you never think about tomorrow. You merely fritter away your talents on those sanguine theatrical stunts — your little divertissements. There is no future in that, Harold. No matter how psychologically purging they may be. Your Uncle Victor suggests the Army. Well, perhaps you should go see him. I am certainly not fond of the Army, but maybe he can fathom you. After all, he was General MacArthur's right-hand man."

Brigadier General Victor E. Ball had in fact been General MacArthur's aide-de-camp for a short time in 1945. But in all fairness to MacArthur, he could hardly be said to have been the General's right-hand man, partly because he played no role in any command decision, but mainly because he had no right hand. Indeed, he had no right arm, as it had been shot off during training maneuvers at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Normally an officer would be expected to retire after such a distinction, but General Ball was not the type of man who gave up without a fight. As he saw it, the biggest handicap in the Army brought about by the lack of a right arm was the inability to salute in the required military fashion. After some experimentation he devised a mechanical device that lay folded in his empty sleeve. When he pulled the cord of his fourragère with his left hand, the sleeve sprang up to his forehead, delivering a snappy West Point salute. With this device, and the influence of several friends in the Pentagon, General Ball was able to make the Army his career. As he said to his nephew:

"The Army is not only my home, Harold, it is my life. And it could be your life too. I know how your mother feels. She insists I hold on to your draft records, but if it were up to me I'd process your file and have you shipped off to basic tomorrow. Believe me — you'd have a grand time."

The general stood up from his desk and gestured at the military posters hung on his office walls. "Take a look about you, Harold," he said. "There's the Army drubbing the Spicks at San Juan, clobbering the Chinks, whipping the redskins, and battling its way across the Remagen bridge. Ah, it's a great life. It offers history and education. Action. Adventure. Advising! You'll see war — firsthand! And plenty of slant-eyed girls. Why, it will make a man out of you, Harold. You put on the uniform and you walk tall — a glint in your eye, a spring in your step, and the knowledge in your heart that you are fighting for peace. And serving your country."

He stopped before a portrait of Nathan Hale with a noose about his neck.

"Just like Nathan Hale," he said. He pulled his lanyard and his sleeve snapped up a salute. "That's what this country needs — more Nathan Hales." He paused at attention in front of the portrait before he let his sleeve fall neatly back in place.

"And do you know what?" said the general, turning to Harold, seated by the window.

"What?" said Harold.

The general stood in front of him and confidentially bent down. "I think," he whispered slowly, "I think I see a little Nathan Hale in you."

Harold stared blankly back at his uncle.

The general smiled and punched him on the shoulder. "Think about it," he said and walked back to his desk.

Harold's decapitated head stood upright on the silver serving platter while Harold placed sprigs of parsley in the blood around the neck. When he heard his mother coming down the stairs, he quickly placed the large silver cover over the serving dish and put it under the table. He left the dining room to meet her in the hall.

"Harold, dear, I have only a few minutes but I want to inform you of my decision. Please sit down."

Harold sat down and Mrs. Chasen started to put on her long white gloves.

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Excerpted from Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins. Copyright © 1971 Colin Higgins Trust. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
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