The Irresistible Henry House Part 10

The color of Betty's face changed from Pale Apricot to Wild Rose. "Yes," she said, in a husky voice. "I was one of your mothers."

"You've seen Mrs. Lodge's-that is, Miss Gardner's-photographs in your baby journal, Hanky," Martha said.

"Henry," he said.

There was a moment of awkward silence. Then Betty asked: "Could I see some of your drawings?"

"Sure," Henry said. "They're upstairs. I'll show you."

As Betty stood, Henry reached out a hand for her, far less like a little boy than like an urbane gentleman, asking an unsure woman to dance.

"YOU DON'T NEED TO TAKE HER UPSTAIRS," Martha said quickly. "Why don't you go up and get your sketchbooks, Hanky?"

Together, then, she and Dr. Gardner and Betty listened to his footsteps as he went, obediently, up the stairs.

"I can't get over how big he's gotten," Betty said.

"Yes. Well," Martha said.

"I mean, he's a big, big boy now," Betty said, amazed. Her eyes filled with tears, and, impulsively, she threw her arms around Martha, who stiffened against the embrace.

"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Gaines," Betty said. "Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking such good care of him. Truly. I can't-" And she started to weep again. "I can't believe he's so big."

"What did you expect, exactly?" Martha said, before she could edit herself.

"My guess is that Bettina didn't know what to expect," Dr. Gardner said drily.

"And what were you planning on telling the boy?" Martha asked.

"Nothing for the moment," Dr. Gardner said. "Bettina is, as far as anyone knows, just my daughter, home for a visit."

"Father, I've told you," Betty said, sounding exhausted. "I've left Fred, and I'm never going back."

"Bettina," he said in a warning voice that conveyed every ounce of his parental, inst.i.tutional, and financial control.

"Here they are!" Henry said as he came into the room, carrying a sketchbook that nearly hid his torso, just as Betty added: "And I've come to get my son."

6.

That Seems Perfectly Obvious Martha stayed awake all night long, wondering what, if anything, Henry had heard and what, if anything, she had the power to do about it. At first, stretched out in her bed, she tried her hardest to sleep. But all the usual, comforting guideposts of her own surroundings seemed suspect, as if the entire tangible world was getting ready to turn against her. At one in the morning, resigned to sleeplessness, she switched on the lamp beside her bed, wrapped her chenille bathrobe around her, and walked over to the bookshelves. She took down Henry's baby book and turned the pages slowly, reading the captions, though she knew them by heart: Who said I'd like applesauce?

Grace Winslow thinks I have a flair for music.

Lucky boy! Seven Mamas, seven Christmas presents!

Martha studied the few photographs in which Betty appeared, trying to discern if there really was a telltale pain or longing in her face-some sign of the biological parenthood that had then still been her special secret. In one picture, Betty was holding Henry on her lap in his first snowsuit; in another, she was lifting his chubby wrist to wave at the camera; in a third, she was laughing as he clutched the sides of his bath towel. She seemed no more possessive or pa.s.sionate than the other women in the photos did, though that left plenty of room for both. But then there was the farewell sentence that Betty had written: Goodbye, baby boy. I will never, ever, forget you.

Martha returned the journal to the shelf. She and two dozen practice mothers had filled four other books-for four different practice house babies-during the years that had pa.s.sed since Henry had come upstairs to live with her. There had been Herbert, then Hazel, then Heidi, then Hollis-and they had all been loved and patted and guided through their large and little milestones. But Martha knew she would find no comfort in looking at their photographs. She knew she would only be looking for glimpses of Henry.

Martha walked into his bedroom, not exactly on tiptoe, because if Henry had awakened, she wouldn't have minded in the least reaching over to him and hugging him. She knew that he didn't like her to do that so often in public anymore, but he would still allow it sometimes when he was sleepy, or sick, or otherwise unfettered by the thoughts of those boys and girls at school.

In truth, Martha longed to hold him now, but Henry, it seemed, was fast asleep, his face turned away from the door.

AT FOUR IN THE MORNING, Martha tiptoed downstairs and, careful not to wake the practice mother and baby, brought the iron and ironing board back up to her room. Her weekly ironing was still two days away, but the task seemed to promise her some relief.

Not surprisingly, given her years of experience, Martha had always been skilled with an iron-now, with the new Sunbeam she had bought at Hamilton's, she was practically a virtuoso. She was not so much aware of as offended by wrinkles, and she leaned her considerable weight into every crease, trying to tame the unstructured world into something tidy and recognizable.

As she ironed, Martha thought about the night eight years before when she had stacked her clothes, ready to take Henry away with her if Dr. Gardner insisted he be sent back to the orphanage. She had felt then, emphatically, that no one who wasn't Henry's flesh and blood would ever have a better claim to him than she did. Now, unimaginably, his flesh and blood had come to take him, but to Martha it seemed entirely clear that Betty had become the stranger. Plus, the girl had given him up. No matter the pressure placed on her and how difficult that had made things for her. She'd chosen to give him up. The small towns of this country were filled with other girls who'd gotten into trouble and made that decision, and then gone on with their lives. Of course, as Martha knew well from her dealings with the orphanage, all those girls had signed papers in which they'd made their choices official. Maybe that was the reason that Martha had never heard of one changing her mind.

"DR. GARDNER," she said out loud, trying to rehea.r.s.e what her best argument would be. "Dr. Gardner," she repeated, but when she imagined what it would be like, standing before this man and trying to plead for his understanding-let alone for his grandson-she found herself choking and crying on the words. "Dr. Gardner," she began again. "Dr. Gardner."

Beyond the sweeping windows, she could just see a promise of morning.

"Dr. Gardner," she said out loud one more time, and through her tears she misjudged the geometry of the collar she was folding back, and she burned the part of her hand between her thumb and forefinger. It was a bad burn, she knew that immediately, but she was not entirely sorry it had happened. It snapped her back from her reverie into actual, present pain.

IN THE MORNING, when Martha asked him what he wanted for breakfast, Henry did not respond.

"Pancakes? Waffles? Frosted Flakes?" Martha asked. "You were so cute, the way you used to say that! 'Emem, they're g-r-r-reat!'"

And Martha chugged on and on-like a train conductor who doesn't know that the city he is steaming by has recently been fire-bombed.

"Don't you feel well?" she finally asked Henry when she'd realized he hadn't said anything.

He merely stared at her, speechless, his eyes momentarily more gray than green. Then the practice mother shouted for Martha to come, and so, while Martha had her back turned, Henry slipped out the door and disappeared, like a morning shadow.

MARTHA KNEW THAT she had to confront Dr. Gardner. In the end, she reasoned, it would not be Betty but her father who would make the decision about Henry's future. Betty was still, after all, an unwed mother. If Henry were younger, no doubt Betty could have moved with him to another town and told people that he had grown up in Australia, the child of a failed marriage. Divorce, while hardly smiled upon, didn't come with the stigma a b.a.s.t.a.r.d did. But Henry, thank G.o.d, was old enough to tell the tale of his upbringing all by himself. And even in 1955, unmarried middle-cla.s.s women who had never worked a day in their lives did not live as single mothers unless their parents, for some reason, wanted them to. And good parents never wanted them to.

Martha sat at the kitchen table and took a sip of tea. Her sleepless night had left a foul taste in her mouth, but despite a few extra teaspoons of honey, the tea didn't help. It was bitter. She was sour. Her hand hurt. She was exhausted. She knew that she needed to compose herself, to arrange herself, but what she knew best had nothing to do with asking, let alone pleading, let alone threatening, to get what she wanted. What Martha knew best had to do with the tricks and illusions of self-sufficiency: with organization, planning, tidy corners, and well-followed rules.

Upstairs, she straightened her seams and swept up her hair and tied on her best silk scarf. But she looked like a woman unhinged, and she knew it, and finally she decided to give up trying to look composed.

"I need to see him," she told Dr. Gardner's secretary on the phone. "He'll know why."

"Will he?"

"He will," Martha said, and realized her voice was quavering.

She was fifty-seven years old, and there was no future for her without Henry. There was only her tiny world, bordered by practice walls and practice floors, and filled with practice people. If Henry left, Martha knew, he would eventually become only the practice son who'd come to give her a practice sense of purpose.

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, she was sitting in the anteroom in the president's office, using the forefinger of her unhurt hand to trace the inner embellishments of the gold Wilton College seal that adorned her black wooden chair. She knew that every form of security she had was tied to that seal, and yet she also knew-perhaps, she thought grandly, the way that heroes know before their last acts-that she would sacrifice it all in a moment in order to keep Henry by her side.

Inside Dr. Gardner's office, two other identical chairs stood across from his desk, and he motioned Martha into one of them.

"Mrs. Gaines," he said evenly, as if it was the beginning of an annual salary review.

"Did you know this was going to happen?" she asked him. She was aware that her tone was harsh and accusing, but she was unable to correct it.

"I beg your pardon?" Dr. Gardner asked.

"Forgive my informality, but I have to know. Is this why you've let me keep the boy all these years? Just in case your daughter came back?"

Dr. Gardner said nothing, but he seemed surprised by the question. Martha went on. "A real adoptive family would never let him go if his natural mother came back. Is that why you had me me keep him instead?" keep him instead?"

"Of course," Dr. Gardner said, which was both the least expected and the most honest answer Martha could have imagined.

He stood up and turned slightly away from her, appearing to examine the photographs on his credenza: pictures of him with national leaders, visiting scholars, former students. Pictures of Betty and his late wife, whom Martha had met only two or three times, all of them at Betty's birthday parties.

If Betty's mother had lived, Martha thought, maybe Betty would have had the sense not to marry the first boy who came along, and then get pregnant with someone else, and then give the baby up, and then want the baby back.

But then, of course, Henry wouldn't exist, and at the thought, Martha felt herself growing faded and immaterial.

"If you take him away from me," she said, "I will leave this inst.i.tution."

"Well. Yes, that seems perfectly obvious," Dr. Gardner said coldly.

Martha stood on faltering legs. She could feel a flush spreading across her face, down her neck, her chest, and tingling in her legs. She hoped it didn't show. In the next minute, she realized she was feeling for the arm of the chair, ever so slightly toppling. It was not exactly faintness, but something more like vertigo, the sensation that the center had just lost its place: like the cylinder of a washing machine when it tries to spin too many heavy clothes.

The arm of the chair, however, steadied her, and she didn't lose a step.

"Well, Dr. Gardner, I suppose if you know that, then you know everything. Including where I'll be if you have any news to tell me."

She inhaled deeply and found that it helped to steady her more. Then she turned, as grandly as she could, to leave.

"Just a moment, Mrs. Gaines," Dr. Gardner said, and he waited until she had turned back to him. "I want to ask for your continued professionalism and patience while I resolve this situation. I am planning on discussing everything with Bettina, just as soon as she wakes up."

"Wakes up?" Martha said. "She's sleeping?" She looked at her watch, unnecessarily. Whatever time it was, it was too late in the morning for a grown woman to be sleeping.

Dr. Gardner nodded gravely, pushed his chair back, and sat up. "Mrs. Gaines," he said, "in addition to losing her husband in Australia, my daughter gained certain bad habits. Or rather, to be precise about it, failed to break them."

"I see," Martha said, though she didn't yet, entirely.

"Bad habits," Dr. Gardner continued, "unfortunately related to the consumption of alcohol. I tell you this because your history of discretion is well proven by now."

"I should think," Martha said drily.

"In any case, the combination of the circ.u.mstances, the long trip from Australia, and far too much wine with dinner have all contrived to keep her in bed this morning. Which has only confirmed my inclination," he added pointedly. "Because despite what you may think, I believe my daughter has handled her life thus far abominably, and I have absolutely no reason to think that if she took the young fellow with her, she would do anything but ruin his life as well."

7.

You Must Want to Know In fact, Betty had been awake for most of the night, and the young fellow was already with her. She had been standing by the bus stop when Henry got there, squinting into the morning sun, waiting for the next part of her life to begin.

Henry could tell that she was nervous, because she fiddled with the gold ring on her left hand.

"Can I talk to you a minute?" she asked him.

He shrugged.

"Did you hear what I said to Mrs. Gaines yesterday?"

"Uh-huh."

"That you're my son?"

"Uh-huh."

"I thought you had."

Henry tugged on his ear, the one with the extra teddy-bear flap. Betty reached out fondly to touch it, then drew her hand back when Henry recoiled.

"You are my son, you know," she said.

Henry didn't say anything-just strained to look over her shoulder to see if the school bus was in view.

"Do you understand that?" she asked him.

"You're my mother," he said, and though he tried to keep his face impa.s.sive, he felt something revving or roiling inside.

"Well, I thought you'd probably want to know why I left," Betty said.

No. What he wanted-what he had wanted all night, awake in his bed, feigning sleep when Martha looked in because he had known he could not feign sweetness-was merely for this Betty not to have come yesterday at all.

"You must want to know why I left," Betty said.

Henry pulled on his ear again, and at the exact same time, Betty pulled on her gold ring.

"Did my father give you that ring and then make you go away with him and did Emem hide me so I couldn't come too and now are you back to get me?" he asked.

Despite her worried look, Betty smiled. "Oh, Son," she said. "That's too many questions to answer at once."

The word Son, Son, uttered with such apparent ease, floated up in the air, sweet and cozy, like a comic-strip thought, but then snaked its way into sibilance and evil. uttered with such apparent ease, floated up in the air, sweet and cozy, like a comic-strip thought, but then snaked its way into sibilance and evil. Son, Son, a snake's hiss. Not even Martha had ever used the word a snake's hiss. Not even Martha had ever used the word Son Son as if it were his name. as if it were his name.

"Did my father really die in a train wreck?" Henry asked.

Betty looked startled. "Who told you that?" she asked.

"Emem."

"Come on, let me take you to school," Betty said.

"I ride the bus."

"I know you ride the bus."