The Irresistible Henry House (6 page)

  8  
He Wants a Cookie

Irena called from the orphanage on a mild day in early November, her soft, cool, annoying voice coming over the phone like the air from a fan.

“Are you having a good autumn?” she asked.

“Very nice, thank you,” Martha said.

That was it for the small talk. Irena got straight to the point: She had a family, she said, for Henry.

“A family,” Martha repeated. It was the moment she had been dreading, and it had come too soon.

“They live in Wilkes-Barre, and she has simply been unable, poor thing, and they very much want a little boy, and your June baby would be just perfect for them.”

“June baby,” Martha repeated, dully.

“I’m sorry. What is it you call this one?”

“Henry,” Martha said, and she found that just saying the baby’s name at that moment was like playing a rich chord, a chord with nearly infinite aspects: images, phrases, feelings, all of which echoed and altered and then resolved.

“Well, Henry, then,” Irena said, a bit impatiently.

“It’s too soon,” Martha said. “He’s only seventeen months. I keep the babies until they’re at least two. You know that.”

“Yes, but you have had this one a bit longer than usual, because we gave him to you at three months,” Irena said.

Martha instantly saw—as if the image had been projected like one of the slides at the Matson lecture—the photo of Henry in his crib that Ethel had taken of him on that first day.

“Why does it need to be so soon?” Martha asked. “You know, the students are just about to take their midterm exams. Then it’ll be the holidays—”

“But that’s just the point,” Irena said, and Martha could hear her exhaling her cigarette smoke and could imagine her sitting at her desk, shuffling her file cards and papers, arranging lives. “This couple, more than anything, wants to have their baby in time for Christmas.”

Irena said she had not one but two other babies who would be five and six months old, respectively, come January. Either, she said, would make a suitable replacement for Henry.

“I know how hard it always is for you to juggle the girls’ schedules at Christmastime,” she said, as if what she was saying would be making things easier for Martha. “And this would allow you to have a few days to yourself, for once.”

Martha imagined the practice house at Christmas, with no baby beneath the tree, no girls circled around it. What would be the point, then, of having a tree?

“Just think what a lovely Christmas the baby will have, being with his new parents,” Irena said.

THAT NIGHT, MARTHA STOOD at the bookshelf, where two decades of practice babies’ journals were lined up chronologically, starting with little Helen House in 1928. The books, despite their generations of different bindings, evoked the orderliness and rationality of an encyclopedic world, but instead of alphabet letters, they were labeled by the babies’ names: Helen, Harold, Hannah, Hope, Heloise, Harvey, Holly …

Martha took down the first book. The photographs, slightly brown and blurry with time, were framed by now-old-fashioned white scalloped borders and had been given captions by an exuberant if haphazard first group of practice mothers.

What am I doing here?

Are all these presents really for me?

Don’t I look nice and clean?

Mildred Fairfax made me this hat!

I’m a big girl today!

Time unfolded behind her, and Martha remembered the excitement with which those first early months had progressed: the frequent talks with Dean Swift, the introduction to President Gardner, the decision to make child rearing a permanent part of the curriculum. She remembered the first trips she had made to the orphanage—run then by a different woman, whose name now escaped her. She remembered offering Helen House, just after her second birthday, back to the orphanage, in exchange for a younger baby—and the thrill of knowing that Helen would be raised by a married couple who would prize an infant launched with all the latest and best methods. Tom Gaines had been courting her then, wooing her, attending her, and the whole world had seemed bright with certainty and safety: a home, a job, a mission, a man.

Martha realized that Helen House was now twenty years old. That tiny, woebegone infant, around whom an entire academic institution had been started, and a career launched, was now old enough to be a student here herself. Which made Martha—what?—ancient, irrelevant, done.

IT TOOK A FULL TWO WEEKS to get an appointment set up with Dr. Gardner, but the meeting was finally scheduled for the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, and until then, Martha avoided Irena’s calls as assiduously as the president had seemed to be avoiding hers.

For the holiday weekend itself, as she almost always had, Martha sent all the practice mothers home and cared for the baby herself.

The night before Thanksgiving, Martha put Henry to bed and then sat downstairs, listening to Burns and Allen, then to Jack Benny, then the news. A Communist rally in Connecticut had been broken up when a group of veterans started stamping their feet and singing “God Bless America.” And Harry Truman, apparently, had come up with the idea of pardoning a turkey that would otherwise have been served the next day at the White House.

Martha darned a pair of socks as she listened. The house was quiet in the absence of a practice mother, but this was nothing like the silence that overcame the place when days or weeks went by between House babies. That was a silence of barrenness, of loss, a silence so deep that it made Martha want to move around to fill up empty spaces. This silence—with Henry sleeping just yards away—felt something more like peace.

Martha sat in the chair till nearly midnight, rehearsing in her mind the conversation she would have with President Gardner after the weekend was over. What she would ask him for. What he would say. How she could keep from ever having to face that other silence.

WHEN THE PHONE RANG on Thanksgiving afternoon, Martha at first thought she would ignore it. She reasoned that it could only be a wrong number, or someone trying to urge her to participate in some local food drive, or—worst case of all—Irena, with her menacing holiday spirit. On the sixth ring, however, Henry said, “T-t-t-t. T-t-t-t. Tel-lie. Pickee up.” And Martha, following his instruction, was nearly astonished to hear President Gardner saying hello.

“I was thinking,” he said, “that we might have our chat today.”

“Today?” Martha repeated. “On Thanksgiving?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you have other plans?”

“No, it’s just that—well, I’m alone with the baby today. The girls are all home for the holiday.”

“Why don’t you bring the little fellow along?”

IT DIDN’T OCCUR TO MARTHA until she was seated on the couch in the president’s house an hour later that, like her, he would be alone today. There were no warm oven and gravy smells wafting from his kitchen, which, in fact, was completely dark. The dining room table—also visible from the living room—had clearly not been the scene of any festive celebrations. But unlike Martha, President Gardner no doubt had been served a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of some faculty member who was trying to curry favor with him.

“Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?” Martha asked him.

“Very nice, yes, thank you. The Haywoods had me over this year. Very kind of them.”

“Yes,” Martha said. “Well, Henry and I had a lovely time, too.” Together their eyes fell on the little boy, who was sitting on the floor, zooming his red fire truck over the clean beige carpet, then using his hand to sweep away the parallel tracks left by the wheels. Martha sensed that President Gardner would try as hard as he could to ignore him, but also that Henry was present to be looked over somehow.

“So,” the president said. “I gather you wanted to see me.”

“Yes,” Martha began. “I wanted to ask you—I
want
to ask you—”

“Yes?”

“Well, first, have you heard anything from Betty?”

He paused a moment, as if trying to place the name. “Anything like what?” he asked finally.

“Anything like if she’s coming back.”

“Coming back,” Dr. Gardner repeated coldly. “Why would she be coming back?”

Martha looked over at Henry. He had left his truck by the fireplace now and was using his hands to sweep new patterns into the plush of the carpet.

“Look!” Henry said to Martha, and then he dove forward onto his hands, as if he was plunging into a snowdrift, and giggled with the sheer joy of falling forward.

“What is he doing?” Dr. Gardner asked Martha drily.

“You can ask him,” Martha said, but it was immediately evident that Dr. Gardner had no interest in asking him.

“Tell Dr. Gardner what you’re doing, Henry,” Martha said.

“Tell a joke!” Henry said proudly.

“What does he mean?” Dr. Gardner asked, and Martha felt a momentary pang for Betty, having grown up with such a father.

“He means he thinks it’s funny to do what he’s doing,” Martha explained.

“Ah,” Dr. Gardner said.

“Have you been in touch with her?” Martha asked. “Do you have an address for her? May I write to her?”

“Have her address? Why?” he asked, and Martha regretted that she had asked him three questions at once.

“Because I’d like to get in touch with her,” Martha said. “There’s something I need to ask her.”

“She’s not coming back,” President Gardner said. “She’s not coming back, and I know you’ve heard from Irena Stahl that there is a family waiting for this boy.”

“This boy” is your grandson, Martha thought but didn’t quite have the nerve to say.

Henry, having temporarily tired of his carpet games, toddled over to the desk and picked up an empty ashtray. Carrying it in both hands, as if it held frankincense or myrrh, he zigzagged toward Martha, more than a little off balance, and handed it to her.

“And what’s this?” she asked him, suddenly conscious of wanting to show off how adorable he was.

“Sa plate,” he said.

“And what’s on the plate?”

“Sa cookie!”

“A cookie? Mmm,” Martha said, pretending to take something from the plate. “Chocolate chip! My favorite! Why don’t you see if Dr. Gardner would care for one?”

Henry turned toward the president and took three shipboard steps forward. “He wants a cookie?” he asked a bit uncertainly.

“No, it’s ‘Do
you
want a cookie?’” Martha said, correcting him.

“Do
you
want a cookie?” Henry asked in a perfect imitation.

The president laughed, no doubt despite himself, and squinted down at Henry, not unkindly.

“Why, thank you, young man,” he said, and, with a touching kind of purposefulness, he pretended to take a cookie and to pantomime eating it.

“Cookies!” Henry squealed with delight and went back over to the president’s desk to load up his imaginary plate with more imaginary food.

“There’s something Betty left with me,” Martha said pointedly. “She told me to take care of it. And I need to know what to do with it now.”

Dr. Gardner followed both her glance and her meaning.

“There shouldn’t be any confusion about that,” Dr. Gardner said.

Martha looked toward the desk, where Henry had readied another plate of pretend cookies and was beginning his next gleeful transverse of the carpet.

“Sir,” Martha finally said. “Did it occur to you that Henry might—that I might—”

Never had Martha felt so betrayed by her emotions. Voice quavering, nose reddening, and, she knew, face flushing. Exactly the opposite of the stable, nonerratic, trustworthy person she needed, right now, to be.

She began again.

“If I kept Henry,” she said, “you’d still be able to see him, and no one would ever have to know he was your grandson.”

Dr. Gardner, truly taken aback, sat upright and moved away startled, as if from a sudden shock or flame.

“You?” he said.

“No one,” Martha said, her voice gruff with too much emotion. “No one could be a better mother to this little boy. I know it.”

Dr. Gardner lit a cigar, keeping his silver lighter at the tip and puffing emphatically. Then he snapped the lighter shut and waved away the little bit of smoke he had made. He pulled an ashtray near and then tapped the cigar against it needlessly.

Powerless, Martha waited, the balance of her life encompassed somewhere in this man’s mind, the child both hers and a Wilkes-Barre family’s, his future both known to her and forever lost.

“I don’t see how that’s possible,” Dr. Gardner finally said.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, because I think it’s patently unfair to the young lad. How could you want him raised in a practice house—however expertly by you—when he could have his very own family, and two parents, two young, healthy, well-educated parents?”

“And for another?” Martha asked, her heart in a kind of cramp.

“Well, for another, Mrs. Gaines,
Qui procul ab oculis, procul a limite cordis.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Gardner. I don’t know Latin.”

“Out of sight, out of mind,” he said.

Henry, a yard or so away from Dr. Gardner, stumbled a bit and fell against his knees, where he scrunched down, whether in glee or embarrassment, it was hard to tell. Then he looked up, nearly triumphant, into the president’s face.

“Tell a joke,” he said and then collapsed into peals of laughter.

TWO DAYS LATER, Martha walked down the aisles of the orphanage nursery, looking through the prison-bar slats of the cribs, which, at this time of the afternoon, were throwing harsh striped shadows onto the backs and sides of the sleeping babies.

Staring at a multicolored glass mobile that hung in the window, Martha mused that, if the colors of her life before Henry had been all pastels and beiges, they were now bright blues, greens, and reds. Reds especially, Martha thought. She saw Henry’s cheeks, his fire truck, his fire hat, his rubber ball, his favorite crayon, his lips, his Christmas sweater. The ketchup he called
chup
and the strawberries he called
stawba,
and the toy stop sign that he somehow preferred to the toy cars.