The Irresistible Henry House Part 25

She looked almost sorry for him. "You want to try to cook?" she said gently.

He grinned.

Upstairs, he gave her a gla.s.s of white wine, and while she sat sipping it at the small table, he made her a grilled cheese sandwich on perfectly toasted oatmeal bread, with thinly sliced tomatoes and, on the side, a salad with his best vinaigrette.

"Where did you learn to do this?" she asked him.

"Do what?" he asked her.

"Most men don't know how to do this."

He was so grateful not to have been called a boy. He was so grateful to be looking not across a room at her but across a table. He was so grateful to have been hired. To have escaped.

"This is absolutely delicious," Annie said. She was so sweet. He didn't make a move to touch her. He asked her about her past, how long she had worked at Disney, when she had started modeling, and what other kinds of modeling she had done. He asked her if she liked the cla.s.s.

"Sometimes it's weird," she said. "You know, having all my clothes off and having these men staring at every corner of me."

"You know if we're doing it right, you kind of disappear," Henry said.

"I what?"

"You disappear. We're supposed to draw you in a way so that you don't have to be human. So you can be an animal."

"An animal?"

"You've heard him. Like Mickey Mouse. Or Donald Duck," Henry said.

"You could just draw animals," she said.

"I'm guessing it's harder to get them to pose."

She laughed. She told Henry about her cat. "His name is Greyhound," she said. "Maybe you'll meet him sometime. I found him in the bus station on the day I left Cedar Rapids, and I just decided to take him with me."

"They let you take him on the bus?"

"I put him in my hatbox, and I smushed a hole in it with my high heel. The whole way here, I could stroke him with one finger, and once he poked his little pink nose up through the hole."

Henry couldn't tell what he liked more: the fact that she'd had a hatbox or the fact that she'd ruined it for a cat.

SHE WAS LIVING ABOUT twenty minutes away-another twenty minutes south of the studio, almost as far as the Ventura Freeway-and the hills were fairly steep. Henry and Annie pedaled side by side but didn't talk. There were almost no cars on the road. The houses were quiet. The sky was clear. Henry could smell the p.r.i.c.kly scent of the junipers, and his own sweat. He felt entirely liberated. The palm trees lined the road up ahead like kindly elders, bowing only slightly in their exotic coolness. They didn't intertwine and splay their branches out needily like the trees back east. They stood, single and strong.

At Annie's door, she looked up at him. "Do you want to come in and meet Greyhound?" she asked.

"Next week," he said, and he kissed her. "Is it a date?"

She looked into his eyes. "I think you're the only guy I've ever modeled for who hasn't a.s.sumed I'd go to bed with him."

He kissed her again, more deeply this time, and hopped back on his bike. "See you," he said, feeling gallant, and he pedaled away, into the comfortable solitude of his trip back home.

WHEN MARTHA CALLED HIM at the office the following week, it actually took him a few minutes before he could identify the exact nature of the unpleasantness he felt. He had been expecting a call from Phil Morrow, and for a moment, hearing Martha's voice, Henry didn't place her, only the feeling she engendered, like the rediscovery of a disagreeable taste, or a particular kind of weather.

"h.e.l.lo," she said curtly, as if it was he who had called and interrupted her.

He adjusted his expectations but couldn't hide his dismay.

"How did you find me?" he asked her.

"That's not much of a greeting."

"Did you call Betty? Or Charlie? Did one of them call you?"

"What difference does it make? Why were you trying to hide?" she asked him.

"I wasn't trying to hide," he said. "I moved. I was getting a job."

He looked into his artist's mirror and saw too many emotions: anger, worry, pride, dismay, fatigue, defeat, and shame. If he had been forced to choose one, that last would have been the one.

"It's not a good time for me to talk," he said. "I'm working right now."

There was silence, a punishing silence, and in it, Henry remembered the depths of her need, and her guilt, which made the need so impossible to a.s.suage.

"So I'll call you a little later," he said.

Still silence.

"So goodbye," he said, and hung up, detachment overtaking all the emotions in the mirror.

THERE WAS AN EASY BANTER and warmth among the people on the soundstages where Mary Poppins Mary Poppins was being filmed. At first glance, it seemed to Henry as though every person who wasn't an actor was attached to a piece of equipment, not only physically but emotionally: gently rolling their lights and cameras and ladders along like beloved pets. was being filmed. At first glance, it seemed to Henry as though every person who wasn't an actor was attached to a piece of equipment, not only physically but emotionally: gently rolling their lights and cameras and ladders along like beloved pets.

Henry, along with an in-betweener named Christopher Cott, stood well behind the camera, in the dark pocket of Stage 2. Together, for most of their lunch break, Chris and Henry had been watching the filming. d.i.c.k Van d.y.k.e, wearing a candy-stripe suit and a.s.sisted by wires, was doing take after take of a long slide on one heel. Other than the gaily painted raised platform on which he was sliding, the only three-dimensional things on the set were a table, a chair, and, occupying it, Julie Andrews. The background was a yellow screen, and the cartoon penguins would come later.

In between setups, Chris sketched-unnecessarily, Henry thought, unable to tell if Chris was being pretentious or merely shy.

"What was wrong with that take?" Henry whispered as the director yelled "Cut" again.

"I don't know," Chris whispered. "It looked fine to me."

"Are they going to set it up again?"

"I don't know."

"You know, fellas," a voice from behind them said, "you don't have to whisper."

Henry turned to see Walt Disney standing just a foot behind them, wearing a cardigan sweater exactly like the ones he wore on his TV show. His face looked somewhat more haggard; his hair seemed somewhat more gray, and a little greasy; the collar of his shirt looked strangely too large. But the Mickey Mouse hairline, with its widow's peak forming two arches, was the same as it always had been, and so was the twinkle in his eyes.

Henry felt something unfamiliar that he recognized immediately as awe. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Disney," he said.

"What's your name?"

"Henry Gaines."

"Henry," Disney said. "There is only one Mister in this studio, and he does our taxes. I'm Walt."

WALT DISNEY HAD NO SONS. He had two daughters, one of them adopted, and in some ancient, addled part of Henry's brain, he had always imagined this meeting would be the pinnacle of his life. He was far too old now to fantasize about Walt being-or even becoming-his actual father, but that didn't stop him from experiencing Walt's smile as a benediction.

"And you, pal?" Walt said to Chris.

"Yes, sir. Christopher Cott."

Chris reached to shake Walt's hand and nearly stabbed him with his drawing pencil. Walt chuckled.

"You know this scene is all being done to the song playback anyway," Walt said, with the same tone of voice Henry had heard him use on TV to explain, say, how 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea had been filmed. "The only reason to be quiet is so you don't disturb the actors. But you really don't have to whisper." had been filmed. "The only reason to be quiet is so you don't disturb the actors. But you really don't have to whisper."

As Walt talked, the playback started again, and Van d.y.k.e, seemingly as game for this take as he had been ten takes before, let the wires carry him forward.

Chris went back to his sketching, and a minute later, when Henry next turned around, Walt was gone.

The scene was continuing now, with Julie Andrews looking demure, then surprised, pretending to react to the place where the penguins were going to appear.

Beneath the music of the playback, Henry was startled for a moment to hear what sounded like a baby crying.

"Did you hear that?" he whispered to Chris.

"You don't have to whisper," Chris reminded him, with a rather satisfied smile.

Henry listened for another moment or two, until he became convinced of the sound-a sound, after all, that he'd heard throughout his childhood-and then he tried to follow it, leaving his post at the back of the soundstage.

It was only a few bars later-at best a minute or so-when Henry found that the source of the crying baby sound was in truth a crying baby. She was being held by a woman who was walking her around and trying to bounce her into silence, much the same way he had often seen the practice mothers do with the practice babies. The walk this woman was doing was having absolutely no effect, though. Henry came up behind her and made a silly face at the baby over her shoulder. Just as the crying stopped, Julie Andrews appeared, removing her costume hat and, in one graceful motion, trading it for the baby, who grabbed for her nose.

"That was so kind of you," Andrews said to Henry in her lovely, perfect British voice.

"He was-she was-" Henry corrected himself as he focused on the baby's pink shirt.

"She," Julie Andrews said. "This is my daughter, Emma."

"Emem?" Henry said.

"Emma," Andrews corrected in a Mary Poppins voice. Andrews corrected in a Mary Poppins voice.

"Emma, of course. Sorry," Henry said. "The woman who raised me was named Emem."

"Your nanny?" Andrews asked with a sweet but ironic smile.

"No. I was adopted."

Andrews nodded warmly. She mentioned Walt Disney's adopted daughter, and she told him that the son of Pamela Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, was adopted as well. Years later, Henry would learn that, while this was true, it was also true that the author of the beloved cla.s.sic children's book had apparently never told her son either that he was adopted was adopted as well. Years later, Henry would learn that, while this was true, it was also true that the author of the beloved cla.s.sic children's book had apparently never told her son either that he was adopted or or that he was a twin, and Henry would find it fitting that the woman who had invented the Martha-like Mary would also have been capable of apparently Martha-like betrayal. For now, he merely nodded politely to Julie Andrews and marveled at the coincidence of these many adoptions. It was one of the slightly mysterious things that made him continue to feel that he had magically, and at long last, arrived in the right place. that he was a twin, and Henry would find it fitting that the woman who had invented the Martha-like Mary would also have been capable of apparently Martha-like betrayal. For now, he merely nodded politely to Julie Andrews and marveled at the coincidence of these many adoptions. It was one of the slightly mysterious things that made him continue to feel that he had magically, and at long last, arrived in the right place.

WHEN HENRY GOT BACK TO his drawing board after lunch, he found a message scrawled by Phil Morrow.

See Me.

Martha, it seemed, had called while Henry was watching the filming. Joe Gatz, an unsuspecting in-betweener, had picked up the phone at first, but then she had talked him into finding Phil.

"She seemed concerned about you," Phil said. He had a pencil in one hand and an annoyed dorm-father expression on his face.

"I'm so sorry," Henry said.

"So you're a runaway or something?"

"Something like that," Henry said.

"Well, don't let me tell you your business, Henry," Phil said. "But this approach of hers is not likely to endear you to the members of the team here. Especially the ones who have to talk to her. You know what I mean? Do I have to draw you a picture?"

"Good one," Henry said.

"Seriously. You're a big boy now."

THERE WAS A DRAWING CLa.s.s that night, and on their way back to the Animation Building, Chris asked Henry if he was planning to go again.

"You bet," Henry said. "And you really should, too."

"Who wants to sit around after work drawing a bunch of fruit?"

"Fruit?" Henry asked.

"You know. Still-life drawing?" Chris asked.

Henry had to explain to Chris the difference between a still life and a life drawing.

"You mean there are actual women?" Chris asked.

"Well, one woman."

"And what does she do?"

"She takes off all her clothes and poses."

"Nude?"

"That would be the word for it."

"No clothes at all?" Chris asked.

"Not a st.i.tch."