The Irresistible Henry House Part 39

"So you were in London," she finally said.

"Yes."

"Are they totally Beatles mad?"

"Yes."

"And the Rolling Stones?"

"Yes."

"And the s.e.xtuplets?"

"Yes," he said, frustrated.

"What?"

"Betty."

"What?" she said.

"Mom."

It was only the second time he had ever used the word out loud. The first had been the night he had run away from Humphrey and gone to New York.

"Huh. 'Mom,'" she repeated, as if it was funny, and she took another sip of wine.

Henry lost, for a moment, any desire to forgive her; clearly she had forgiven herself, or at least forgotten how to blame herself.

"Mom," he said, as reprisal. "I've been living in London for almost two years."

He could as easily have told her that he'd been living in India, or Athens.

"That's great!" she said, clearly not comprehending that the point was how close he had been to her, how punishingly close he had been without her having known.

The waitress came by and asked something in French.

"Oui," Betty said, a bit fl.u.s.tered. Betty said, a bit fl.u.s.tered.

"What was that?" Henry asked.

"She wanted to know if my sandwich was okay."

Henry looked at Betty's sandwich. She hadn't had a bite. "Why don't you have some?" he asked her.

"I will," she said, and took another sip of her wine. "How's yours?"

"Delicious," Henry said. "Do you come here a lot?" he asked her.

"A lot of lunches," Betty said.

"Do you like Paris?" he asked her.

"I love Paris."

"Where do you live?"

"In the Third," she said. "But you don't know Paris."

"No," Henry said. "I don't know Paris."

"That's okay," Betty said, perhaps a bit giddily. "I don't know London."

"I'm not going to be living in London anymore," Henry said. But she didn't ask him why not. She didn't ask him where he was going to live, or how, or with whom.

IT WAS, INCONGRUOUSLY, spring in Paris, a pale silver and green flowering. Back out on the street, Henry could feel the sun on the top of his head.

"Where do I get a taxi from here?" he asked.

"I'll take you to the stand," she said. "It's just a few blocks."

They walked toward the Arc de Triomphe, ma.s.sive and unreal in the sun.

Betty checked her watch. "There's a lot of talk about de Gaulle stepping down," she told him.

"And you're doing a story?" he asked her.

"Yes."

The taxis were lined up, rounded and gleaming, like large boulders in the sun.

"Mom," Henry said. "I want you to know I wish you the best."

"Oh, I don't need that," she said, as if he'd offered her a handkerchief.

"I want you to know it," he said.

"Let's face it, Henry," she said. "I ditched you."

"Yeah, but you also kept me."

"What do you mean?"

"In the first place," he said.

"You need a cab," she told him.

She hugged him now, this time tightly, forcing herself to settle for a moment into the structure of his arms. He could feel her exhaustion, her tipsiness, her tininess. He could feel her shame, and her need to flee. He looked back once from the taxi, just in time to see her brush her hair from her forehead and tug on her ear.

11.

Draw!

On the flight to New York, Henry sat beside a thirtyish Frenchwoman who was wearing orange silk pants, a peace-sign necklace, and a surprisingly demure expression. He had her hooked by the time the pilot announced the alt.i.tude and the speed. Had her hooked despite the fact that she barely spoke English and his one reliable French word was merci. merci. He used it strategically. He used it strategically.

They clinked gla.s.ses over the horrible meal and laughed at their identical reactions to what pa.s.sed for a chocolate parfait. Henry admired the way she tucked her feet almost shyly to one side. He liked the angles of her cheekbones, and the way she powdered her face as if she was wiping something away from its surface, not adding something to it. Henry let her ankle lean against his, and let her arm share the armrest. She smiled at him, and then fell asleep.

He felt like an athlete playing his last game as a professional, one who has made the choice, a bit n.o.bly, to quit at the top of his game.

IT WAS RAINING IN THE AFTERNOON when Henry's plane touched down at Kennedy Airport. A gray sky framed gray buildings and sepia fields, black tarmac and dingy white airport trucks. Henry found his bags and stood in line waiting for a taxi, and though by now the rain had started to let up, he could feel the dampness in and around him, as if it was being painted on.

He had, of course, seen pictures of the World's Fair, the gleaming beginnings of Walt's greatest dreams, but Henry had several times declined the invitation that the studio offered employees. Now he asked his driver to slow down as the taxi pa.s.sed the already lonely site. The tall towers loomed with their strange disk-shaped rooms, and the silver globe looked smaller and duller than Henry had hoped it would.

IT WAS FIVE O'CLOCK BY THE TIME he found a taxi, and just past six when he was handed the key to a small single room at the Roosevelt Hotel. Icy February air seemed to linger around him all night long. He woke every few hours, cold, confused, and jet-lagged, mentally juggling what he hoped for and what he regretted.

At six in the morning, he gave up on sleep. He showered, luxuriating in the force of the American plumbing and the fact that there seemed to be no end to the hot water supply.

Outside, on the frigid street, he walked for several blocks toward Times Square and found an open coffee shop. He sat at the counter on a green fake-leather stool, warming his hands on his coffee mug and trying not to stare at an old man two seats down who was eating soup and steak despite the early hour. Henry looked instead at the ambitious fortress someone had built of small cereal boxes, the kind that could be opened with a surgical cut.

A waitress stepped up to take Henry's order, tapping her pencil against her pad just the way Cindy used to do. The waitress had hair like Karen's, skin like Annie's, a voice like Betty's. She had nothing of Mary Jane's, though, and that was, Henry thought, exactly the way it was supposed to be.

SINCE SOPh.o.m.oRE YEAR AT HUMPHREY, with the unveiling of Stu Stewart's Playboy-inspired little black book, Henry had carried around a small address book of his own. By now, seven years and three locations later, most of the phone numbers were either defunct or irrelevant. There were, however, three people with New York numbers: a former student from Haaren, a fellow in-betweener from Disney, and a woman who had worked briefly on Submarine. Submarine.

Henry tried the three numbers in alphabetical order. No one answered. He wasn't particularly surprised or disappointed. This was, after all, a Tuesday morning in a normal workweek, and there was no reason to think that anyone would be home.

He sat sleepily on a faded chintz chair next to the telephone. He turned on the TV. A soap opera. A game show. Another soap opera. He turned off the TV.

There was a fourth New York number, but it belonged to Mary Jane, and Henry knew he wasn't ready to dial it yet.

He sat, listening to the kiss, or hiss, of the bathroom's dripping faucet.

On the gla.s.s-covered desk was a stack of well-thumbed magazines: Time, Life, The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. Time, Life, The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post. On the cover of On the cover of Life, Life, a photograph of the moon seemed to float under the words "The Incredible Year." Henry flipped through the pages and found the table of contents. There were five chapters: Discovery, Shock, Dissent, War, and Comeback. a photograph of the moon seemed to float under the words "The Incredible Year." Henry flipped through the pages and found the table of contents. There were five chapters: Discovery, Shock, Dissent, War, and Comeback.

He felt he had been through all of them.

Then he turned another page, this time to the Life Life masthead, and saw Ethel Neuholzer's name. masthead, and saw Ethel Neuholzer's name.

HE CALLED HER AT THE MAGAZINE. She was still living in the old apartment and asked him to come by on Sat.u.r.day.

"Kid!" she shouted expansively when she opened the door for him. She hugged him hard, a lengthy embrace that seemed unexpectedly meant for her as well as for him. "Come on in," she said.

She had redecorated the place, sixties style. The low couch had been re-covered in bright royal blue, with overstuffed striped and polka-dot pillows. The wooden coffee table had been replaced by a round gla.s.s one that was planted heavily in a round white fur rug. Even the orange chairs at the dining table were high-backed and futuristic. But the apartment's shabby moldings, painted-over phone wires, and worn parquet floors were unconcealed by the general makeover.

Ethel was heavier than when Henry had seen her last, and her skin drooped a bit. Like the apartment, she was decked out in mod, and, like the apartment, she didn't wear it all that convincingly.

"So you're a big guy now," she said to him.

"And you're a big shot," Henry said. "I saw it in the magazine."

Ethel laughed. "Yeah. They made me an editor. Imagine that. A woman editor."

"So what do you do?"

"It's really what I don't do. I don't get to use a f.u.c.king camera anymore."

Henry hesitated, then asked the next question looking down. "Are you still with-who was that guy you were with?"

"Who, Tripp?"

"Tripp, right. Are you still together?"

Ethel snorted. "Were we ever together?" She lit a cigarette and exhaled emphatically. "He left his wife," she said. "But then he left me."

"Sorry."

"What the h.e.l.l," she said, adjusting a bra strap. "He was a s.h.i.t."

SHE DIDN'T ASK HIM ABOUT BETTY, whose bedroom she had converted into an office. But Henry asked Ethel if she had heard about Martha.

"Yeah, kid," she said. "Good old Nurse Peabody wrote me about it. She told me Betty didn't come to the funeral."

"That's right."

"That must have been rough."

Henry thought back to the funeral, a moment he guiltily remembered for the pleasure of finding Peace rather than the pain of losing Martha.

He was silent.

"Let's get out of here," Ethel said. "Come on. I'll buy you lunch."

SHE TOOK HIM TO A RESTAURANT he'd only heard and read about: the "21" Club, just a few blocks from the apartment, on West Fifty-second Street. It was quiet at lunchtime, and they were shown to a small table where Henry was surprised, and a little uncomfortable, to be seated on a banquette next to, not across from, Ethel.

"How are we supposed to talk to each other this way?" Henry asked.

Ethel shrugged. "I don't know. It's just how it's done."

Henry was conscious immediately of his casual clothes-the beige corduroy bell-bottoms and well-worn black turtleneck. It was an unaccustomed and unwelcome awareness of his own lack of means.

"They're going to kick me out of here, aren't they?" he asked Ethel, masking his discomfort with an attempt at nonchalance.

"Yes, Henry," she said. "That's why I brought you here."

A waiter came to take their order. Ethel ordered them two beers. Henry looked up at the ceiling, where hundreds of toys and signs and knickknacks were hung, like a three-dimensional collage. He saw an Esso oil sign. A teddy bear. A fire truck.