Henry himself, p.16
Henry, Himself, page 16
“He’s gotten weirder,” she said in bed. “I think smoking all that pot did something to him.”
“At least he came.”
“He watches cartoons.”
“What kind of cartoons?”
“Weird ones. I heard him laughing at them.”
What he thought of her, Henry couldn’t imagine.
She set her alarm a half hour early so she could walk down Grafton and make breakfast for them, taking her knitting, and returned after dinner with an update and a new list. She was glad she was able to help, she said. The visiting nurse was there for fifteen minutes tops. All she did was check the dressing and make sure the stitches weren’t infected. “It’s a rip-off. Imagine what the insurance companies are paying them.”
“Any cartoons today?”
“Today he was on his phone. Supposedly he’s closing some big deal.”
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“It’s hard to take him seriously when he’s wearing a tie-dyed shirt. I don’t know, maybe Hawaii’s different.”
“The whole world’s different.”
“I suppose,” she said, as if there was nothing to be done about it.
Thick, humid days, haze hanging like fog over Morningside. The city had opened cooling centers for the poor, and the news was full of warnings for pet owners. The zoo was closed. This was why they escaped to Chautauqua, the swampy, near-southern Pittsburgh summer recalling Camp Claiborne, washing down his salt pills with musty canteen water. He kept the house buttoned up, the compressor of their central air droning in the yard. It was too hot to work in the garden, too hot to wash the car. When Rufus came in from peeing, his coat held the heat of the sun. With Emily gone, he followed Henry from room to room.
“I know,” Henry said. “It’s no fun without Mama.”
He didn’t mind making his own sandwich, setting a place for one at the breakfast table and watching the noon news, but microwaving the Saran-wrapped plate she’d left for him and eating dinner alone seemed a punishment. As he was doing the dishes, the phone rang in his office. He picked it up with wet hands and then was angry when it was a recording trying to sell him life insurance. Was this how she felt when he had to work late? At least she could call. He went upstairs and watched their shows, answering the questions on Jeopardy!, noting the answers she would have gotten, listening for the front door like Rufus and following him down when she finally returned.
Rufus clamored around their knees while Henry kissed her.
“I think someone missed me.”
“Two someones. How’s Louise?”
“Fine. Bored. Their second floor is hot as blazes. I’m ready for a glass of wine.”
According to the visiting nurse, everything was healing nicely, right on schedule. Dan was leaving tomorrow, meaning for the next few days Emily would be staying overnight.
As if to register his displeasure, Henry said nothing.
“I told you this,” she said. “Someone needs to be there in case there’s an emergency. It’s only for three nights.”
“I can’t help it. I’m used to having you all to myself.”
“Don’t be jealous.”
He shrugged it off like the joke she intended, but he was. Though they’d spent months apart when he was at Jackass Flats, that was different. The last time he’d slept alone in their bed was when she’d flown out to watch Sarah and Justin while Margaret was in rehab, another mission she’d volunteered for with no hesitation. She was needed, he wasn’t, and now, like then, he felt snubbed.
The first night, as if to apologize for abandoning him, she cooked dinner, but after kissing her goodbye he was glum and annoyed with himself, leaving the lights off as dusk fell, pacing the gray rooms with a refill of scotch as if he’d been jilted, and turned in early. She’d taken her pillow, which made their king seem even emptier. As if to be closer to her, he slept on her side, setting his water on her nightstand, and when he woke at three to use the bathroom, for a moment he was confused. He had to step over Rufus, but when he came back, he’d moved. Spread-eagled in the middle of the now-strange bed, adrift, still muddled from the scotch, Henry fell prey to his imagination. The single dinner plate, the silent house, the tumbler in the sink—this was how it would be if he lost her. His mother had gone quickly, from liver cancer, the mass discovered too late. He thought of his father alone in his condo, crossing off days on the calendar like a prisoner. He’d survived her by thirteen years, yet every time Henry saw him, he quoted her as if they’d just spoken. Henry could picture himself doing the same to the children. He already lived too much in his memory.
Overnight it rained, and in the morning his vision of the future evaporated like the haze. He expected Emily to come back after breakfast, then lunch. By the time the phone rang, a little before three, he’d given up, and was surprised to hear her voice. He tried to sound blasé.
Could he pick up some DVDs Louise had ordered at the library?
“Anything else you need while I’m out?”
She had to check with Louise. “No, we’re pretty well stocked. How’s bachelor life?”
“Very exciting. Rufus chased a bunny.”
“That is exciting.”
“He misses you.”
“It’s just one more day.”
And two nights, technically, but he knew better than to press her. He was just glad for the excuse to visit.
Waiting for him at the library were Jane Eyre and Emma, sentimental favorites from Emily’s bookish girlhood. Like so many women her age, she and Louise were rabid Anglophiles, lovers of the repressed, well-bred universe of gala balls and shooting parties as if it were their inheritance. For years they’d dedicated Monday nights to Masterpiece Theatre, making an occasion of it with claret and chocolates, leaving Henry to watch football by himself, which he honestly didn’t mind. Being married, he could stand only so much romance.
When he walked down to drop them off, Emily took him upstairs to see Louise, propped in bed with a fan blowing on her, her knee wrapped in an Ace bandage. Her toenails were painted the same pearly pink as Emily’s, and he recalled the sleepovers Arlene and her friends used to have in the attic, chattering away till all hours. The TV was paused in the middle of something that might have been Titanic. On her nightstand, along with a bottle of Advil, was an open Hershey bar broken into pips.
“Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for letting me borrow Emily.”
It hadn’t been his decision, but she knew that, and he asked how she was feeling.
“Fat and lazy. I haven’t moved in the last week except to go to the bathroom. Your lovely wife’s been making me gourmet meals.”
“Yes,” Emily said, “gourmet meatloaf.”
“Chicken cordon bleu.” One of his favorites.
“That’s easy,” Emily protested, giving him a look that said she’d make it up to him.
Downstairs, seeing him out, she said, “One more day.”
“I know.”
“Hey,” she said at the door, the word pregnant, as if she had something important to say.
“What?”
“Would you mind doing the garbage? No one did it last week.”
“Of course.” It was Thursday.
After an overcooked burger on the grill, he did their own, emptying Rufus’s poop bucket and rolling the cans to the curb. At least the night was nice. He sat on the back porch, drinking a beer and listening to the Pirate game as fireflies rose from the garden and dusk filled the trees. At Chautauqua it would be a good ten degrees cooler. They’d linger on the screen porch in jeans and sweatshirts, watching the last stragglers tooling for the launch, running lights bright as jewels gliding across the water. When it was dark they’d stroll to the end of the dock for a look at the stars, then go inside and have a fire. They’d be there next week, just the two of them, if everything went well with Louise.
He was patient. He could wait. They’d been married almost fifty years. There was no point moping about like a lovesick teenager.
Then why, not an hour later, rather than finishing the game, was he standing on the sidewalk in front of the Pickerings’ with Rufus, gazing up at the flickering blue glow like a spurned suitor, hoping to catch a glimpse of her? The conversation coming from the open window sounded urgent, a man and a woman in trouble, but though he strained, he couldn’t make out the words. A piano played a ponderous largo, Beethoven, maybe Schubert, and he remembered when they were first courting, as he crossed the lawn of her sorority with a bouquet of daisies, overhearing her practicing and feeling a vaulting joy, knowing it was for him. The glow wavered. A train whistled. The voices returned, insistent yet meaningless, beyond reach. If he were young and ardent, a hero in a movie, he might have thrown a pebble to get her attention, or burst into song, but knew she’d disapprove. He stood there an extra minute, giving Rufus time to mark the garbage can, then headed home.
Funny
He thought he’d sleep better after she came home, yet their first night he was wide awake. His hips hurt, and his shoulder. He’d grown used to having the whole bed to himself and felt crowded. He was shifting to find the right position when she murmured with pleasure and said clearly, gaily, as if responding to a remark at a party, “That’s funny.”
He waited, alert, hoping for a clue to the context. She mumbled something and rolled over, and soon she was under again.
That’s funny. That’s remarkable, or odd, ironic. With only the one line to go on, he had no idea what it might mean. She’d seemed amused and interested, and the throaty, almost carnal murmur, as if she were flirting, fawning. It was probably nothing, part of a harmless dream, except, knowing her voice so well, he had the distinct impression that she wasn’t speaking to him.
Wish List
The Sunday before Father’s Day, in his presence, Emily reminded Margaret to call him next week, as if she might forget. School was out, Sarah was headed off to cheerleader camp that Saturday, and from what he could deduce, Margaret was dreading being home with only Justin as a buffer. Emily commiserated with her at length, shaking her head at Henry to relay how bad things were there, and then she and Margaret were trying to recall which cookbook had Aunt June’s corn chowder. “Would you like to talk to your father?” Emily asked, and, after a final digression concerning the proper brand of chowder crackers (Westminster), handed him the phone.
“So, what do you want for Father’s Day?” Margaret was on her cell, and he had to decode what she was saying through the static, the delay making their conversation even more awkward.
“Nothing. I just got through telling your brother I have everything I need.”
“It’s not about what you need, it’s about what you want.”
“There’s nothing I really want. Corn chowder.”
“If you don’t ask for anything, you can’t complain about what you get.” It was an old saw of Emily’s, probably from her mother.
“Have I ever complained?” He couldn’t remember what they’d gotten him last year (Margaret a solar-powered emergency radio/flashlight for Chautauqua, Kenny a work light with flexible legs Henry had used when he squeegeed the basement, actually very handy).
“You’re not making this easy.”
“If I think of something, I’ll let you know.”
He’d asked for nothing partly because he didn’t want her spending money on him, but also because it was true. He wasn’t being selfless, just honest, but as the week passed, the question nagged at him. At his age, materially, what was left to desire? He could buy himself anything he wanted within reason, yet even at the Home Depot there was nothing he coveted. The sweets he liked were bad for him, and he had more scotch than he could possibly drink. Something for the house, something for the car. His mind emptied, seized.
“Your happiness,” he might say, but that could set her off.
When the children were little, they made him presents—popsicle stick and glitter picture frames with magnets for the fridge, plastic bead necklaces he still kept in a cigar box in his dresser. Drawings and paintings and clever origami. On his desk sat a bumpy banana-yellow pencil holder Margaret had turned at day camp crammed with pens and markers and scissors, its glaze crazed like a vase from the Ming dynasty, her initials gouged into the chalky bottom. He’d made something similar for his mother, an innocent token of his love, and remembered the pride he felt seeing its place of honor on her vanity, but also, years later, the shame, because it was clumsy, unworthy of her.
He was wary when it came to gifts—giving and receiving—as if the idea embarrassed him. It was like trying to read someone’s mind, a skill he lacked (unlike Arlene, who tied her own bows and always chose the perfect card). As the children grew, from year to year he never knew what to get them, which made him feel old and out of touch. Emily did their Christmas shopping, leaving him to choose the hardest gift of all, hers. She dropped hints, and when that failed left dog-eared catalogs on the coffee table, circling the sizes and colors for him, and then Christmas morning, opening her presents, joked, “How did you know?”
Receiving was just as problematic. A gift was what another person thought of you, and over the years he’d come to understand, by consensus, that his children saw him as someone who wore a tie to work, used power tools, played golf and drank scotch, which, while all true, seemed a superficial view of him. And yet when asked directly, he couldn’t say what he wanted. Nothing.
Friday a box arrived via UPS and was promptly confiscated by Emily, who whisked it upstairs for safekeeping. Saturday he expected a second package, but there was just a flyer from the Giant Eagle, and he assumed that Margaret’s would show up next week.
Normally they would be at Chautauqua by now, with its own Sunday-morning rituals, and were forced to improvise. Getting ready for church, Emily asked if he wanted to do anything special afterward, like go to the club. No, he said, he’d rather relax and read the paper. When they came back, he couldn’t stop her from making him eggs Benedict, and knew better than to argue.
When she called him to the table, a present was waiting at his place—a book, from the look of it, wrapped in navy blue paper with a squashed gold bow. Accompanying it was a miniature envelope. In the past Kenny had given him fat biographies of presidents and Revolutionary War histories, the same stolid bestsellers he’d bought his own father. This was thinner. Maybe a mystery, the latest spy thriller.
“Wait,” Emily said, and brought him a mimosa. They clinked glasses. “Happy Father’s Day.”
“Thank you. I take it these two go together.”
“Open the card and find out.”
HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, it read, in a charmless font, LOVE MARGARET AND KENNY.
“Interesting.” He looked to her as if she were in on it. Of course she was.
The book was light because it wasn’t a book at all but a transistor radio, a slim, digital Grundig that fit in the palm of his hand, the design a triumph of German engineering. The rubberized case was waterproof. Supposedly it floated.
“In case you drop it overboard,” Emily said. “Or throw it, knowing the Pirates.”
“It must have been expensive. Grundig’s top of the line.”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. Thank you.”
“I had nothing to do with it.” She held up one hand as if taking an oath. “They came up with it all by themselves.”
Astonishing as it was, he believed her. Kenny was a big Red Sox fan, always complaining about the Yankees. Henry just wished they hadn’t spent so much money on him.
He was in the backyard, listening to the game, when Margaret called.
“I thought you’d like it,” she said.
“It was your idea?” He tried not to sound surprised.
“Sarah has her earphones on all the time, and I thought, what do you listen to?”
“Thank you,” he said. “It’s perfect.”
And it was. Besides AM and FM, it picked up shortwave and world band signals, reminding him of his parents’ old Philco, pulling cryptic voices out of the air. The reception was crisp, and there was a hold button so he could lock in stations. He took his new toy, as Emily called it, everywhere, slipping it in his pocket, listening in the backyard and the garage, or walking Rufus around the block. At night he left it on his dresser with his wallet, in the basement made a place for it on his workbench. Even when it wasn’t on, each time it caught his eye, the sheer style and ingenuity of it exhilarated him, and he was grateful, marveling at how quickly it had become one of his favorite things, this extravagant gift he hadn’t known he’d needed.
GetGo
Finally, the very last week of June, Louise was agile enough on her crutches so that Emily felt comfortable leaving her by herself. Henry said it was fine, there was no rush. He didn’t have to say they’d already missed his favorite part of vacation, because it was hers too. She appreciated how patient he’d been, and she was ready. Raised in a backwoods mountain town, she hated summer in the city. The Edgewood Club’s pool was a zoo and it was too hot to sleep at night. They needed to be at Chautauqua.
They chose Wednesday, to beat the weekend traffic. He turned off the mail and the paper and called Arlene, asked Jim Cole to look after their garbage cans.
The day before they left, he drove over to the GetGo on the edge of Wilkinsburg to fill up the Olds so they wouldn’t have to stop on their way out of town. He had a plastic loyalty card on his key ring, along with one for AutoZone and CVS and Staples. For every ten dollars they spent at the Giant Eagle, they received three cents off per gallon, making the trip well worth it. If the neighborhood was iffy, it was no worse than East Liberty, and the next closest GetGo was all the way across the bridge in Fox Chapel. He’d been to this station dozens of times. In the middle of a weekday, right on the main drag of Penn Avenue, he didn’t anticipate any problems, but out of habit, as he pulled up, choosing a front pump so he couldn’t be blocked in, he noted the other cars, and was reassured to see his two fellow customers were both women.
