Henry himself, p.3
Henry, Himself, page 3
She wasn’t, but their mother presented them both with roses anyway.
Afterward, in the gym, there was a reception with punch and cookies. It was here, in his daydreams, that Miss Friedhoffer rewarded him with a kiss. Instead, she gave him a certificate and a new book he was supposed to work on over the summer. On the cover, in her perfect cursive, she’d written his name. At home, weeks later, when September seemed impossibly far away, he traced the loops with a finger and remembered her hands guiding his.
Again, he vowed to practice, but once school let out, he was at the park all day. August they spent at Chautauqua, where there was no piano, and even Arlene fell behind. He was resigned to disappointing Miss Friedhoffer when, a week before school started, his mother told him he would have a new teacher.
Miss Friedhoffer had returned to Germany. They didn’t know anything more than that.
He would have Miss Segeti, from Hungary, with whom, in his grief, against his will, he would also fall in love.
In high school he would have crushes he worshipped and despaired of, and real girlfriends who introduced him to guilty ecstasies, yet he never forgot Miss Friedhoffer. During the war, as his division ground through a bombed-out town in Alsace, they rolled over an old upright smashed to kindling in the middle of a street, the keys strewn like teeth across the cobblestones, and he wondered what had become of her. She would have been in her late thirties by then. She might be dead, buried under the rubble of a church like the one in Metz, the stench making them cover their noses as they passed. At night, wherever the column stopped, women infiltrated their bivouac, going from tent to tent, often with hollow-eyed children in tow. He imagined her pulling back his flap and recognizing him, and while they all knew the Army had regulations against it, he resolved to somehow find a way to save her.
After the war, when he and Emily were first dating, she played for him in her sorority’s high-ceilinged front parlor, her posture and slender fingers recalling the stuffy practice room and the smell of chalk dust. He knew the tune from a dozen recitals.
“Mendelssohn,” he said, taking a seat on the bench beside her.
“Do you play?”
“Not really. I used to take lessons when I was a kid.”
“It’s your turn.”
“No, it’s been years.”
“Please? For me?”
He arranged his hands above the keys and tried to bring back “Spring Song.” It unraveled after a few bars. He was surprised he remembered it at all.
“Don’t stop,” she said, and picked up where he’d left off, slowly, so he could join in. He’d never told her, so how could she know, when he kissed her neck, what she’d completed?
One morning shortly after running the stop sign, he was on his hands and knees in the kitchen, his head ducked under the sink, trying to remove the grease trap, when he recognized from the stereo in the living room the piece’s familiar opening notes. He set down his wrench and used the counter to haul himself to his feet and went to tell Emily, but her chair was empty. Rufus, curled in a ball by the fireplace, raised his head for a second, then subsided.
Their piano sat in the corner, topped with his mother’s old metronome from Mellon Street. Neither Margaret nor Kenny had appreciated their lessons, and eventually Emily tired of fighting them. While the grandchildren banged away on it at Christmas, the rest of the year it sat unmolested save for Betty’s biweekly dusting.
How long had it been since they played together? They used to sing duets. Button up your overcoat, when the wind is free. Take good care of yourself, you belong to me. At their parties everyone would gather round and belt out old favorites. That was ages ago, when the children were little. The neighborhood had changed. Gene Alford was gone, and Don Miller, Doug Pickering. Of the old gang, he was the last man standing.
He lifted the hinged cover and folded it back with a clack, exposing the keyboard, pulled out the bench and drew himself upright. Rufus came over to investigate.
“Let’s see what the old guy’s got left.”
He flexed his knitted fingers, settled and played the first phrase. Still there, after all these years. There was more, and he followed along, amazed at the reach of memory. Miss Friedhoffer would be proud.
On her way downstairs with the laundry basket, Emily stopped as if shocked, making both of them turn to her. “What in the world are you doing?”
“Practicing,” he said.
Isn’t It Romantic?
For Valentine’s Day he chose an old favorite, the Tin Angel. Perched atop Mount Washington, cantilevered out over the precipice, it offered a postcard view of the Point and a prix fixe menu featuring filet mignon and chocolate mousse. “Well, well,” Emily said. “Elegant swellegant.” They rarely went anywhere but the club anymore, and she seized on the occasion to have her hair done and air her fur. She’d need it. The wind chill was supposed to be below zero. They were running late, and she had him put Rufus out and give him his treat. Henry took the opportunity to warm up the Olds. Floodlit, the frozen snow sparkled. Sensibly, Emily wore her boots and carried her heels. A fresh dusting made the flagstones treacherous, and he gave her his arm.
Highland was lined with tire tracks, stoplights swaying in the wind. Bridges would be tricky. He’d go slow and stay off the brakes. If they were late, they were late.
As they coasted down Bigelow Boulevard, Emily said, “I wonder how Margaret’s doing.”
Her name was an alarm. He focused on the road.
“I need to call her. I guess Christmas didn’t go so well.”
His first thought—unfair—was that she was drinking again. “When did you talk to her?”
“Last Wednesday, when you were at the dentist. She and Jeff aren’t getting along.”
“Is this something new?”
“It’s the same thing. He wants her to do a program.”
“And she doesn’t.”
“She says she just did one in the fall.”
This was news to him. “And he wants her to do another.”
In the dark he couldn’t see her face. It was easier to talk this way, disembodied, coolly neutral, as if logic might solve Margaret’s problems.
“I don’t know,” Emily said. “I have a feeling I’m not getting the whole story.”
“Maybe we could email Jeff.”
“I don’t think that would be helpful. She’d think we were taking sides. I just need to call her. I’ve been putting it off because I really don’t want to. Isn’t that awful?”
No, he wanted to say, what’s awful is how she treats you, but they’d had that fight too many times. He would always lose. He was supposed to be ashamed that he couldn’t forgive Margaret, as if they had wronged her all these years and not the opposite.
“I think you’re very patient with her.”
“I don’t think so,” Emily said. “But thank you. I didn’t mean to ruin the mood, she’s just been on my mind. I worry about her.”
“I know you do.”
He waited for her to go on. While he would never admit it, he loved to talk with her like this, to hear her take on family members and friends—even Margaret—as if she were divulging secrets. She knew everything about their neighbors, and everyone at the club, keeping up with their lives as if they were characters on her favorite soap opera. She knew more about what was happening at church than he did, and he was a member of the vestry. Just today he’d overheard her on the phone with Louise Pickering, speculating on whether Kay Miller was selling the house. He was a private person, yet her gossip thrilled him. It was also reassuring to know that in most cases they agreed. Over the course of their marriage he’d come to realize he was oblivious, perhaps willfully, of the struggles of others, even those closest to him, and while he sometimes accused her of not understanding the larger ways of the world, without her he knew nothing.
“She won’t do it,” Emily said. “She’ll say no and they’ll break up. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“You think he’s looking for an excuse?”
“I think he’s got more than enough excuses, if he needs one. A lot of men wouldn’t put up with what he’s put up with.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“You’ve got it easy. Your wife’s perfect.”
“Don’t tell her. She’ll get a big head.”
“Too late. Honestly, I think he’s only there for the children. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad.”
“For her or for them?”
“Maybe he needs to leave. Maybe that’s the only way things will change.”
The prospect of it dumbfounded him. She would lose the children and the house and come live with them. He could see her holed up in her old room with the door closed, coming down for meals in her bathrobe.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No,” he said. “I’m glad you did.”
“I promise not to mention it again.” She raised her hand as if taking an oath.
“Until tomorrow.”
“Until tomorrow.”
With the heater whirring, they swooped through downtown and up the ramp of the Fort Pitt Bridge. The roadway was glazed.
“There’s ice in the river,” she said, but he was changing lanes and couldn’t look.
They parked in a snowy lot at the bottom of the Incline—another surprise for her. It was an old favorite. A transplant from the boonies, she’d fallen for it the same way she’d fallen for the city, and him.
“You are a silly man,” she said.
“I figured since we’re over here anyway.”
He tried to find a spot near the stairs.
“I don’t know if I can make it that far in these shoes,” she said.
“Just keep your boots on.”
“I am not walking into the Tin Angel in my crummy old boots, thank you. You’ll just have to carry me.”
He did the next best thing, shuffling across the packed snow while she hung on his arm.
To his dismay, there was another couple in the waiting room—young, and dressed for the weather. He’d hoped he and Emily would be alone, as if, like a titan of industry, he’d arranged for a private car. He thought of waiting for the next one, but she was shivering. Finally it came—empty—and they rode up, taking one corner, gazing out over the steaming city, the bridge traffic and the lights of the skyscrapers mirrored in the dark water. Patches of ice drifted downstream, headed for Cincinnati, Cairo, St. Louis. Halfway, they passed the other car coming down. He leaned in to steal a kiss and she gave him her cheek, patting his arm like a promise.
On Grandview, restaurant row was mobbed with cars, valet parkers jogging back across the street from the lot. He’d thought of Le Pont, where they’d had their twenty-fifth anniversary, but the last time they’d been there they’d both been disappointed with the food. He was surprised to find it closed, butcher paper taped to the windows.
“When did that happen?” he asked.
“Months ago. I told you. It was on the news.”
“You’d think someone would want that space.”
“I’m sure they’re asking a fortune.”
It was warm in the Tin Angel, and boisterous. In the bar, a pianist with a snifter full of tips was romping through “Anything Goes.” Their window table was waiting. Beside a guttering votive, a crystal bud vase held a single red rose. The greeter led Emily to the seat facing the city, while Henry looked down the Ohio. Snow swirled and floated in the darkness, hung suspended like sediment. He could make out the concrete doughnut of Three Rivers Stadium on the North Shore, and beside it, fainter, the skeleton of the Steelers’ new home.
To start, the server brought them each a glass of champagne.
He raised his to Emily. “To us.”
“To us. Mmm, that’s nice. You know you didn’t have to do all this.”
“There’s no way I was going to let you cook on Valentine’s Day.”
“We could have just gone to the club.”
“We always go to the club.”
“Well I appreciate it. I know I’m lucky.”
“That makes two of us.”
They touched glasses and drank, but after their talk in the car, the idea lingered. Had Margaret and Jeff just been unlucky, a bad match? It had to be more than that. Marriage was about balance, about complementing each other. He wondered what they’d be doing tonight, and, unbidden, like a visitation, pictured Arlene watching TV in her apartment. Had she been unlucky too? Was she unhappy, as he sometimes feared, or was she happier alone, and was it wrong of him to feel sorry for her?
With the prix fixe there was no need to order. Their shrimp cocktail came, arranged like spokes around the rim of a martini glass. The horseradish in the cocktail sauce would upset his stomach later, despite his Prilosec, but for now he enjoyed each sinus-clearing bite.
Halfway through his second glass of champagne, nodding along with “Night and Day,” he was aware of his reflection in the window, a ghostly twin hovering above the abyss.
“It’s a blizzard out there,” Emily said. “Feel how cold it is.”
“The wind’s picked up.”
“We should just sleep here.”
“I wonder if they serve brunch.”
Her fillet was perfect—black and blue—and again he congratulated himself on choosing the right place. All around them, other lucky couples were celebrating, toasting their good fortune. He drained his glass. The last swallow was tart, almost sour, and he thought of Margaret, how she couldn’t allow herself a taste, even today.
Christmas hadn’t gone well. What did that mean? He’d heard her and Jeff bicker but never fight outright. As a teenager she’d been given to messy scenes at the dinner table, starting arguments that escalated into screaming matches, then shoving back her chair and dashing upstairs, leaving Emily in tears and him and Kenny bewildered. Now, supposedly sober, she was touchy and curt over the phone, liable to go silent when questioned. From everything Emily had read, she suspected Margaret was bipolar, a diagnosis that, true or not, was little comfort. It seemed clear to Henry they’d failed. He felt sorry for Jeff, as if they should have warned him.
“I really want to finish this,” Emily said, “but if I do, I won’t have room for dessert.”
“Lunch tomorrow,” he said.
He would have liked a cognac with his chocolate mousse, but responsibly ordered coffee.
“I don’t think this is on the diet,” she said.
“I don’t think any of it is.”
“I won’t tell Dr. Runco if you won’t.”
“Deal.”
Along with the check, the server brought Emily’s leftovers, wrapped, as was the custom there, in tinfoil fashioned into a swan.
“This reminds me of England,” she said, because once, in London, they’d given her the same thing and in the taxi it had leaked all over her good coat. Now she inspected it, checking the tablecloth for a stain. “You can never be too careful.”
“Better safe,” he said.
“Thank you, it was wonderful.”
“It was nice, wasn’t it?”
“Are you all right to drive?”
“I are.”
The girl at the coat check helped Emily on with her fur and held the door for them. “Be careful, it’s slippy out.”
The parked cars were coated but the sidewalk was salted—all but one neglected stretch in front of Le Pont. He carried the swan while Emily clung to his arm, the wind making them duck.
“I’m sorry,” she said, tottering along. “I should have brought my boots.”
“It’s not that far.”
Inside the station it was quiet and warm. Save the clerk at the ticket window and the engineer in his raised control room, the place was deserted, but the car had just left, its roof dropping away beyond the spotlights. While Emily perused the confusion of historic photos on the walls, he watched the geared wheel paying out cable and remembered doing pulley problems in college, the opposed arrows on the diagrams. T1 = T2 + T3. A simple machine, the Incline had been operating since before his father was born and would be hauling tourists up Mount Washington long after he and Emily were gone. Looking out at the snow, he tried to imagine the city back then, the mills and railroad bridges, the busy switchyards at the Point. His father’s firm had wired the Gulf Building, for decades the tallest in town until the U.S. Steel Building went up, well after his father retired. During his own lifetime, the skyline had grown so crowded he no longer knew what everything was, and as he waited for the other car to emerge from the darkness, once again he had to fend off the sense that he belonged to the past.
“Are we there yet?” Emily asked.
“It’s coming.” He pointed to the wheel as proof.
“I hope so, because I have to pee.”
“There’s a restroom.”
“I’m not going to go here.”
When the car finally arrived, it was empty. They took their corner, huddled together against the sudden chill. He was sure some other couple would come barging in at the last second, but the warning bell rang and the door slid shut. The bell rang twice, and with a lurch, as if cut free, they descended.
He closed his eyes while they kissed and felt himself falling.
She laughed. “That’s why you wanted to take the Incline.”
“Remember the first time I took you?”
“I remember you were a perfect gentleman.”
“Maybe not perfect.”
“You’re going to have lipstick all over you.”
“I hope so.”
At the bottom he had her wait by the stairs while he went to fetch the car. The lot hadn’t been plowed, and as he hurried across the packed snow, he slipped. He flung out his arms for balance, and the swan went flying. He landed hard on his rear, his glasses knocked cockeyed.
“Are you all right?” Emily called.
