The Irresistible Henry House (8 page)

When Mary Jane ran outside to escape Leo, her balloon left her hand and flew upward, into a sky nearly the color of her eyes.

The maple tree in the backyard, the one with the swing, provided a moment of shelter, arching like a parent over the lost balloon. Henry, holding his own balloon, stood beside Mary Jane, the two of them looking up helplessly.

It took only a few moments. It seemed much longer. Eventually, the pink mouse bounced free from the black branches and shot upward. Mary Jane took her loss stoically. She wept but did not cry out loud.

“Wait,” Henry said, but he didn’t give his balloon to her. Instead, he opened his hand, like a magician revealing a missing coin, and let his balloon fly up, too. They rose, nearly side by side, the blue chasing the pink against a cloudless sky, and for years to come, from that moment on, Mary Jane would try and fail to love other people the way she loved Henry.

THEY DID THINGS TOGETHER every day. Sometimes they sorted the autumn leaves into colored piles. Sometimes they made faces. In the make-believe game that they frequently played, she was called Miss Fancy, which she said with an elegant, drawn-out
a.
He was called Mickey Mouse. From time to time, they married.

In Henry’s imagination, they were also sometimes Dick and Jane. Though he could not make out the words in the New Basic Readers yet, he could see that Dick, pushing Jane in her wagon, wore a red and white striped shirt and a pair of khaki shorts just like his own. Dick’s hair was also the exact same color as Henry’s, Jane’s hair was the exact same color as Mary Jane’s, and their wagon was the exact same kind as the one that stood in the backyard of the nursery school. The characters in the book also had a little sister named Sally, a dog named Spot, a cat named Puff, and a normal mother and father, but these were details that Henry forced into irrelevance. As he knelt in the small space behind the couch in the nursery school, turning the pages of
We Come and Go,
he allowed himself to imagine that he belonged in a place like Dick and Jane’s, where when people left they came back, and they pretty much stayed the same.

Dick pulled wagons. Dick looked out for Jane. Dick played ball. His mother gave him jobs to do, cooked him dinner, never asked for a kiss, never held him too tight, never wept in her room at night. Dick never needed comforting, and he never needed to comfort. His mother never looked into his eyes, long and pleading, the way Martha did, as if there was something that he alone knew and was supposed to tell her.

————

DAILY, MARTHA SAID she loved Henry. She called him Henrykins, Henny-Penny, Hanky-Panky, and, most often, My Boy. As in “How is My Boy feeling today?” “What does My Boy want for lunch?” From this it was clear to Henry that Martha thought he belonged to her. But she remained vague about his origins.

Once, after Dr. Gardner had come over and sat for a long time in the living room with Martha, smoking his cigar and talking low and secret, Henry asked her if that man was his father. Other than Mr. Hamilton at the hardware store, Henry had never actually seen a man talking to Martha at any length. So it seemed not so silly a question. Henry wasn’t sure he understood about either mothers or fathers, but he knew, from the other kids and of course from reading
Dick and Jane,
that there was usually one of each kind of person somewhere in a boy’s life.

“Is Dr. Gardner my father?” Henry asked Martha, and he watched the tops of her cheeks turn the color of tulips.

“Your father?” she asked. He had noticed that Martha sometimes repeated what he said, though he wasn’t sure if she did it when she was angry or only when she hadn’t heard him in the first place.

“My daddy?” Henry said, just in case Martha hadn’t understood the question.

“Don’t be foolish,” Martha said. “Dr. Gardner is the president of the college.”

Henry wasn’t sure he understood what one thing had to do with the other.

“They can’t be a daddy?” he asked.

“Of course they can be a daddy,” Martha said. “Where’s your fire truck? Shall we play firehouse?”

“Is he a daddy?” Henry asked, ignoring, for the moment, the lure of the pretend flames.

“Yes,” Martha said. “He’s a daddy. Go get your truck. We might have to put out a fire tonight. But he’s not
your
daddy.”

“Are you my mommy?”

“Do you want me to be?”

“Are you?”

“You’re my boy.”

It would take another five years before Henry would feel that Martha’s answer, while not exactly a lie, was an unforgivable evasion.

  3  
Alone at Last

Though most people feared polio more in spring and summer than in fall or winter, Martha had read that there had been a deadly outbreak of the disease in the Canadian Arctic just two years before, as well as some local cases even in the colder, supposedly less contagious months. So when, in December, Henry came down with what seemed an unusually bad cold, Martha kept him home from nursery school, barely concealing her panic. All she told him was that she didn’t want the other children at the school to catch his cold, but he sensed, from the way she whispered to Mrs. Donovan and to the practice mothers, that there was something more serious going on.

Upstairs, he inhabited the pillowy landscape of Martha’s bed, and she brought him chicken noodle soup on a pale green plastic tray with a doily and one of the white dinner napkins. She brought him juice with a straw that folded down on a little hinge. There were two pillows, not one, and the bed was almost as wide as it was long. Several times a day, Martha would sit on the side of the bed and cross her thick, stockinged legs at the ankles and play cards with him. Game after game of War, Rummy, Go Fish, and Old Maid. After each game, she would refill his juice glass and fill one for herself. Then she would make them clink glasses, just like grown-ups. “Here’s to your health,” she would say.

When his fever rose, she gave him orange-flavored chewable aspirin, which made his whole mouth pucker and his teeth feel like chalk.

Frequently she said things like “Alone at last,” and “It’s just the two of us, isn’t this nice?” Henry wasn’t sure if it was nice or not.

Sometimes he would fall asleep and wake to see her shadow on the wall and then turn to see her at her desk, writing out checks with her face scrunched up, or pasting trading stamps into books. Several times a day, she would reach for a small blue jar with a turquoise top and label. She would open the jar and dip two fingers in and then slather Vicks VapoRub onto his chest, rubbing and rubbing beneath his pajama shirt, looking into his eyes while the smell of the menthol mingled with her intensity. Henry, not for the first or last time, experienced the sensation that to breathe, he might first have to be engulfed.

CHRISTMAS CAME ON a Monday, but it snowed the whole weekend before, and all but one of the practice mothers were stranded at school for the holidays. Though Martha had been looking forward to having a break from the girls, she found herself relieved that there were extra hands to care for Hazel while she ministered to Henry. And then there was Christmas Day itself—for once not a practice Christmas for the students but the real thing. Henry heard the bustle of the mothers downstairs, but Martha told him he wasn’t well enough to leave the bedroom.

“You don’t want to get the baby sick, do you?” Martha asked.

“I wouldn’t.”

“I know you wouldn’t on purpose,” she said. “But sometimes you can get people sick without meaning to.”

Henry ran his fingertips along the loose crisscross stitches on the shiny border of the blanket.

“Anyway,” Martha added mysteriously, “I have a surprise for you later, and I think you’re going to like it.”

All morning long, Henry slept and woke, hearing the sounds of the mothers downstairs as they fussed over the baby and opened their presents for her, then giggled and said their goodbyes. Finally, he heard whispering on the stairs and wanted to go and look, but he knew that Martha would be angry with him for getting out of bed. He dozed again. When he woke, Martha was standing at the foot of his bed, shielding a large object with her body.

“What is it?” he asked her groggily. “Is it my Christmas present?”

“Ta-da!” she said, and stepped aside to reveal a brand-new TV set.

IT WAS THEIR BEST TIME TOGETHER, and years later—even after he couldn’t forgive her for so much else—Henry would be grateful to Martha for this. All afternoon, they sat side by side on her bed, and every few minutes, she would pop up to change the channels, as magically as if she were changing the view outside the window. They saw a cooking show called
Stop, Look and Cook,
and part of an opera called
Hansel and Gretel,
and at three they saw something called
Uncle Miltie’s Christmas Party,
with a strange, exuberant man named Milton Berle, who at one point wore a dress. Then, at four o’clock, they stopped changing channels, because they found a show called
One Hour in Wonderland.

Henry didn’t understand the significance of it then, but the Wonderland show was actually Walt Disney’s first television program, a prototype of the series that would captivate American audiences throughout the decade—and that Henry would watch, almost without fail, every week for his whole early life.

This afternoon—Christmas afternoon, 1950—was the afternoon he met Walt Disney, a man with the twinkliest eyes Henry had ever seen, a kind voice, a trim mustache, and hair that formed a peak above his eyes, making his forehead look just like Mickey Mouse’s. During this show, Mr. Disney was hosting a party for the stars of his movies, and one of the guests was the puppet Charlie McCarthy, who was even funnier on TV than he was on the radio. At one point, Mr. Disney said the words “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo,” and magic happened inside a special mirror, and a man with a slightly scary face appeared and granted Mr. Disney’s wish to see special things.

Henry had heard about cartoons from Leo, and of course he had seen drawings and pictures of some of the characters. At the nursery school, Mrs. Donovan even served Donald Duck orange juice. But to see these characters do what they could do was amazing: how when they ran, their legs sometimes spun around like wheels; how when they reached for things, their arms sometimes grew longer. For an hour, Henry giggled and Martha fingered the gold pin at her neck and said, “Oh, my, that’s funny, isn’t it?” But as much as he loved the creations—Mickey and Pluto and Donald and Alice and the Seven Dwarfs with their silly song—it was Mr. Disney, the creator, with his sparkly eyes and the kind way he seemed to listen to everyone, who stayed with Henry longest. Forever, in fact.

THREE DAYS LATER, when Henry had not had a fever for a whole day and was barely coughing anymore, he woke from a nap in the early afternoon and called for Martha but got no response. Henry hesitated, then pulled back the covers and climbed from the cozy confines of her bed.

“Emem?” he called, first from the top of the stairs, then from midway down, then again at the base of the stairs. There was no answer. “Vera?” he called next, because Martha had told him to call for Vera if he needed anything.

There was silence from downstairs, except for what sounded like the baby, babbling.

The wood floor on the stairs was cold under Henry’s bare feet, and he knew Martha would want him to wear his slippers, but he didn’t like the silence.

When he walked into the nursery, he saw Vera leaning over the crib, wrapping a blanket around Hazy, who kept kicking it off.

“Come, now, Hazel,” Henry heard Vera saying. “Why won’t you take your nap?”

“Why isn’t Hazy sleeping?” Henry asked from the doorway.

Startled, Vera turned and looked scared. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Want to play Go Fish with me?” Henry said.

“You can’t be here,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because you might get the baby sick. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

“I woke up,” Henry said. “Will you take me back upstairs?”

“I have to put the baby to bed.”

“She’s in bed,” Henry said, then watched Vera smile at his logic. He looked at the floor, then back at her. “Vera,” he said sweetly. “I’m scared to go upstairs by myself.”

She turned completely around from the crib then, letting the blanket drop onto the baby’s hands.

“You know, sometimes,” Henry said, “a kid needs a little help.”

HENRY WAS SETTLING BACK INTO BED, and Vera had just dealt them each seven cards for Go Fish, when she noticed the flush on his cheeks. First there was just a little pinkness, across the tops, where his freckles were. Then, after what seemed like only seconds, the color moved down his face, like the deepening of a sunset, and he shivered, noticeably.

The cards they were playing with were shaped like fish and had colors, instead of numbers, on them.

“Any reds?” Henry asked, and Vera realized that it was the second time he had said it.

“Do you feel all right?” she asked him.

He said: “I feel okay. Do you have any reds?”

Vera shook her head. “Go fish,” she said.

Henry reached down to the pile of fish fanned out on his bedspread, but when he did so, Vera could see that his hand was shaking.

She put her hand on his forehead, which was smooth and hot as a rock in the sun.

Vera put her cards down and stood up, and at the exact same moment, Hazel started to cry downstairs.

“Damn,” Vera said.

“Damn,” Henry said.

“You didn’t hear me say that,” she told Henry.

“Say ‘Damn’?”

“Right.”

“Damn.”

“I don’t suppose you know where your thermometer is?”

Henry shrugged. “Do you have any reds?” he asked.

He coughed then—one deep, long, alarming bronchial bray. When he was finished, his eyes had filled with tears. Meanwhile, Hazel’s protests from downstairs had turned into a full-throated yell.

“I have to go see to her,” Vera said. “Are you going to be okay?” she asked.

He nodded and was about to speak, but then he started to cough again.

“No. You’d better come back downstairs with me,” Vera said.

“I can make Hazy laugh,” Henry said, on the stairs, when he’d stopped coughing.

“No, you can’t be with Hazy,” Vera said, and she was startled to find Henry’s warm, dry hand reaching out for hers. “But I bet you can make most people laugh,” she said.

“Yes,” Henry said. “It’s not so hard.”

THE AFTERNOON LENGTHENED, along with its shadows. Winter blew in under the doors and windows, cold as the bare trees that bowed outside.

Just beyond the door of the nursery, Henry sat in the rocking chair, uncomfortable with the spindles of the chair back behind his head. In one hand, he still held the Go Fish cards he had been dealt upstairs, and his fingers closed tightly around the narrow parts of the fish tails while he watched Vera bouncing Hazel around the room.

“Where in heaven and earth is Mrs. Gaines?” Vera asked.

“Probably earth,” Henry said, curling his feet up beneath him and scrunching over so that the side of his face lay against the cool arm of the chair.

Vera laughed. “Let’s hope so,” she said. But now her face wasn’t smiling. “What time is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know how to tell time,” Henry said.

“I know you don’t know how to tell time,” Vera said.

She carried Hazy past him to the kitchen, and Henry could hear her open the back door, and he could feel a blast of even colder air. Then Vera closed the door and said “Damn” again.

“Do you have any idea where she went?” Vera asked Henry.

“She went to get me Silly Putty,” he said.

“Silly what?”

“Silly Putty,” Henry said. “You can bend it and bounce it and you can use it to copy pictures.”

“This is a toy or something?” Vera said.

Henry nodded, a little confused by Vera’s confusion. Everyone he knew understood what Silly Putty was. Leo had some. The older brother of one of the babies at the nursery school had some.

“Do you really think she went to get you Silly Putty?” Vera asked.

Henry coughed again and nodded. “Do you want to play with it when I get it?” he asked.

Polio, Vera knew from her health class, could sometimes start with what seemed to be a simple cold or grippe. She’d learned, but now for the life of her couldn’t remember, how to tell what the differences were.

Vera dialed the doctor’s number, but his nurse said that he was out on house calls. He would certainly call in at some point, but she didn’t know when. With rising panic, Vera put Hazel in the crib and, breaking one of Mrs. Gaines’s cardinal rules, did not correct the baby when she put her thumb in her mouth.

This time Henry followed Vera into the kitchen, where she looked out the back door again, then picked up the telephone and dialed the zero and then asked for another number.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m wondering if you can help me. Do you know Martha Gaines from the Wilton campus? Yes, the practice house, that’s right. I’m wondering if you can tell me whether you’ve seen her today. Yes, has she been in the store? In the last hour or two? No? Would you have seen her? Yes, all right. Thanks very much. No, it’s just that I haven’t seen her for some time, and it’s getting late.”

Vera hung up, looking frantic.

Henry followed her back to the nursery.

“Maybe the grocery store?” Henry heard Vera ask, but by now he knew that she wasn’t talking to him. He settled again into the rocking chair, his head back on its arm.

“Vera, I’m cold,” he said, and she covered him with an extra blanket from the baby’s drawer.

“I’m just going to check one more time, to see if Mrs. Gaines is coming,” Vera told Henry.

He was watching Hazy in her crib when Vera left the room, and he was still in that position when he heard the wind slam the back door shut behind her.

MARTHA, MEANWHILE, was at neither the toy store nor the grocery store, but on her way back from the hardware store, where Arthur Hamilton had been recommending she buy an inhaler for Henry. She was halfway down Main Street, two blocks from the practice house, when she saw Vera running up the street in her direction. Vera was running, cold and coatless, with her arms crossed over her chest, the way shy girls did in gym class. Tiny white puffs of icy air formed in front of her open mouth.

“Vera!” Martha called.

“The key!” Vera called back.

“What? What are you doing here? Where’s Henry? Where’s the baby?” Martha shouted. A Pontiac sped by on the street in between them. Martha began to move faster than she had in years.

“They’re in the house! I got locked out! I think Henry’s got a fever! Do you have the key?”