The Irresistible Henry House Part 27

WHEN THE PHONE RANG THAT NIGHT, Henry knew that it would be Martha, but for some reason it didn't bother him.

"Oh, Hanky," he heard her say.

"Hi, Emem."

It had to have been years since he had called her that.

"Isn't it awful?" she said.

"How's everyone taking it there?"

"Oh, well, you know. These girls. Who knows what they think about?"

"They weren't upset?"

"Well, only one of them was around when it happened, and she hightailed it out of here pretty fast."

"So it's just been you and the baby?"

"The baby. Yes," Martha said.

To Henry, she sounded almost unbearably old. An old woman, sitting almost alone in an old, almost empty house.

"Is there something else, Emem?" he asked her.

There was a brief silence, which Henry knew could mean either surprise or calculation.

"I'm losing my job," she said.

"You're what?"

"I'm losing my job."

"My grandfather fired fired you?" Henry asked, incredulous. you?" Henry asked, incredulous.

"No."

"What then?"

"He's retiring. Well, no," she said bitterly. "He's being made to retire."

"What does that have to do with you?"

"The new president," Martha said. "She doesn't believe believe in home economics. She's one of in home economics. She's one of those those women." women."

"Have you talked to her?"

"She says I'm old-fashioned, and out of touch. As if it will ever be old-fashioned to know how to care for a baby!"

Henry had a mental image of the line of practice house baby journals, their pages of photographs fading.

Mildred Fairfax made me this hat!

He sank into one of the two chairs by the table, took a pad and paper, and started to sketch. As he listened to Martha, he drew simple shapes. Circles and squares, triangles and rectangles. A round hat. A rectangular crib.

"If only you could come home for Thanksgiving," Martha said.

He drew the Bird Woman from Mary Poppins, Mary Poppins, sitting on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral, feeding the birds. The Bird Woman was Martha. sitting on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral, feeding the birds. The Bird Woman was Martha.

Listen, listen, she's calling to you.

CLOUDS CAME AND WENT, and on Sat.u.r.day the wind blew up. Henry walked to the food market. Plants and shrubs bent and twisted and tried to dance, but the palm trees remained stoic. Behind every open door and window was a working radio or television. Several bags filled with old newspapers had tumbled over on one of the side streets, and beside them were a discarded, seatless chair and an old electric fan, whose blades rotated with furious fake life.

Like almost everyone else in the country, Henry spent the rest of the day, and the next day, watching television. The world had altered. Reporters kept speaking about Mrs. Kennedy's pink suit; the green, gra.s.sy knoll; the red roses; the blue sky; the blood. But the world once again was in black and white. There was the black of the two-inch-high newspaper headlines: KENNEDY SLAIN, KENNEDY DEAD, and, bizarrely, in the Los Angeles Times: Los Angeles Times: a.s.sa.s.sINATE KENNEDY. There was the black and white and gray of television, broadcasting continuously, with all entertainment programs canceled. Cameras showed crowds standing across the street from the Dallas County Jail, shades of gray under a gray sign for a restaurant speciously called Victoria's Purple Orchid. a.s.sa.s.sINATE KENNEDY. There was the black and white and gray of television, broadcasting continuously, with all entertainment programs canceled. Cameras showed crowds standing across the street from the Dallas County Jail, shades of gray under a gray sign for a restaurant speciously called Victoria's Purple Orchid. Life Life magazine published an issue with its famous red logo printed in black. magazine published an issue with its famous red logo printed in black.

The a.s.sa.s.sin's name was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald, like Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which was Walt Disney's first cartoon character, a forerunner of Mickey Mouse himself. Henry wondered where Walt was now, what he was thinking about his wonderful world. No one had seen him the day of the shooting; he was supposedly in Florida, checking out land for some new project.

On Sunday, Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald on television. Kennedy was laid in state, saluted, prayed for, and walked to his grave with a skittish, riderless horse. On Monday, stores were closed, and businesses only limped back to life as the week went on. On Wednesday, Henry used approximately half of everything he'd ever saved to buy a plane ticket home.

THE MOMENT THAT HENRY SAW MARTHA, he knew that he shouldn't have come. He understood-from the force of her hug, the moistness in her eyes, the slight tremor in her hands as she brushed nothing from his shoulder-that there was no way to quiet her need. He had flown across the country-a grueling trip-and would have to return after only two days. But this was not a gift; instead it was an excuse, a platform from which she would ask him for more. On the phone, Martha had said If only you could come home for Thanksgiving, If only you could come home for Thanksgiving, and the implied end of the sentence had been: and the implied end of the sentence had been: then I would be happy; then I would feel better; then I might have the strength to make things turn out all right. then I would be happy; then I would feel better; then I might have the strength to make things turn out all right.

Instead, the real statement should have been: If only you could come home for Thanksgiving, then I could show you in person how much I need you. If only you could come home for Thanksgiving, then I could show you in person how much I need you.

She went through the motions of trying to treat him like a man. She didn't flinch when he lit a cigarette. She offered him wine with dinner.

"What's it like out there?" she asked him, but even that simple question seemed to Henry an imposition, an unexpected and unwanted insinuation of herself into his world. He thought of his palm trees, strong and solitary. He thought of his apartment.

"It's nice," he said.

"Do you have a lot of friends?" she asked.

"At work," he said. "Great bunch of guys."

"Any special girl?" she asked him, somewhat coquettishly. He thought of Cindy's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and Fiona's legs, and Annie's sweetness.

"No," he said. "No special girl."

"Maybe you'll want to see Mary Jane," Martha said.

"Maybe," he said, but he didn't realize how much he wanted to until she appeared the next morning at the back door.

SHE HAD GOTTEN SKINNY in the months since she'd called his proposal ridiculous. A pair of bell-bottom jeans sat low on her hips, held up by a wide leather belt. She had her hair in a kerchief.

"Happy Thanksgiving," she said ironically.

"Yah."

"Why'd you come?"

"Martha," he said.

"Are they canning her?"

"It looks that way."

"Good boy for coming, then. Are you going to talk to your grandfather?"

"He got canned too," Henry said. "It won't make any difference."

"You should do it anyway," Mary Jane said.

They stood awkwardly by the old tree swing.

"Where were you when you heard?" she asked him.

He could sense in her the pain that he knew he should have felt more deeply.

"At work," Henry said. "What about you?"

"I was on my way home."

"Home? From where?"

"From college."

"I thought you were going to college here."

"Why would I go to college here?"

"Well, where are you going to college?"

Mary Jane paused a moment, then quietly said: "Berkeley."

Henry tried to let this register. He stared into her one eye.

"Berkeley," he said. "You've been in California the whole time I've been in California?"

"Well, it's only been a few months for both of us," she said.

So it was not just that she hadn't wanted to marry him, he thought. She hadn't even wanted to see him, though she had been just a few hours away. Henry's face must have registered, equally, his hurt and his determination to conquer it.

"I didn't know how to reach you," Mary Jane said.

"You could have tried the studio."

"I didn't know if you'd gotten a job there."

That hadn't stopped Martha, Henry thought, but immediately was embarra.s.sed by thinking it.

He left Mary Jane standing in the yard where they had met in their childhoods: ice blond hair, red Keds, blood, Miss Fancy and Mickey Mouse, when there could be only one Miss Fancy.

"Henry," she called after him. "Let's talk about it," she said, but he pretended not to hear her.

MARTHA HAD A PLAN. That fact did not surprise him, but the extent of its impracticality did.

Over turkey dinner that night-brilliantly cooked, he would always give her that-she told Henry that the new president was considering two possible uses for the practice house: a residence for visiting alumnae, and a new fund-raising office. But Martha had a third idea: to turn the place into an art studio.

"We could have a darkroom in the bathroom upstairs," she told Henry. "The kitchen would be perfect for all the paints and supplies. The light in the living room would be ideal for sketching and painting, and we could turn the baby's room into a studio for you."

"For me?" Henry asked.

"Yes. You see, if you ran the whole thing, then maybe we could go on living upstairs."

HENRY HAD NO MEMORY of his grandfather's residence. In the few times they had met outside the practice house, the location had always been Dr. Gardner's office, where the presence of his secretary had perhaps justified the formality of his tone.

Now Henry stood in the living room, unaware that it was the place where he had long ago served up make-believe cookies and drawn patterns in the beige carpet. Dr. Gardner was in the midst of packing his things to move out, however, so the carpet had been rolled up; and the floor, newly uncovered, looked fresher than anything else in the place. The walls were bare and pockmarked; the bookshelves were nearly empty.

He looked old and slightly translucent, but his appearance stirred no emotion in Henry, who had long since lost any hope or interest in following the connection that their bloodlines might have suggested. For his part, Dr. Gardner eyed Henry as he always had: with a strange, awkward mixture of curiosity and fear.

"You've come to talk with me about Mrs. Gaines, I a.s.sume," Dr. Gardner said.

"Yes."

"Have a seat. I'd offer you a cup of coffee, but I'm fairly sure the china has already been packed."

There were still two upholstered armchairs, one on either side of the fireplace, but neither man sat.

"What's going to happen to her?" Henry asked.

"You're concerned?"

"Of course I'm concerned," Henry said.

"I don't think you've ever expressed your concern before," Dr. Gardner said.

"She's never been about to lose her job before," Henry said.

Dr. Gardner walked over to one of the windows and thoughtfully, almost lovingly, ran a hand down one of the drapes. "I want to ask you a question before I answer yours," he said.

"What?"

"Are you concerned about Mrs. Gaines because you care about her, or because you don't want to have to care for her?"

"I want to know what's going to happen to her."

"I honestly don't know," the president said. "It's not up to me anymore."

"You're telling me you have absolutely no influence on the new administration? You can't help protect anyone?"