Part 11 (1/2)

”Grown-ups don't ride the bus,” Henry said, looking urgently toward the small yellow-orange rectangle, now in view but still blocks away.

”What if I told you that I rode this very same bus to your very same school when I was your age?”

So what, what, Henry thought. So what. Henry thought. So what.

”I know every stop on the way,” Betty said.

ON GUNSMOKE GUNSMOKE JUST THE WEEK BEFORE, Henry had heard Marshal Matt Dillon say straight out to some troublemaker: ”All that is your business. I don't see as how that concerns me.” That was what Henry wanted to say, but his throat felt hot and closed, as if the words would have to fight their way out. JUST THE WEEK BEFORE, Henry had heard Marshal Matt Dillon say straight out to some troublemaker: ”All that is your business. I don't see as how that concerns me.” That was what Henry wanted to say, but his throat felt hot and closed, as if the words would have to fight their way out.

Eventually, Henry would come to see Betty as the logical, nearly inevitable, means for escaping from Martha. For the moment, though, as he listened, his confusion gave way not to hope but to anger.

She talked her way onto the bus, this woman, and sat with him in the last row, where all the chewed-up gum spotted the floor. Henry studied the patterns of the pale beige splotches while Betty talked. He found two kitten faces and a Christmas tree; a fish, a snake, and a bottle. He tried to concentrate on arranging their shapes, figuring out how to fit them into one scene. A Christmas morning, maybe, with different presents under a tree.

IT WAS ONLY TEN MINUTES TO SCHOOL, but Henry's face burned hotter every time the bus made a stop and he had to see in surprise, then hear in giggles, the reactions of his cla.s.smates as they came aboard. He was most embarra.s.sed when Mary Jane Harmon climbed onto the bus. She sat next to Henry every day, but her usual look of expectancy was dashed today in an instant of silvery surprise. Though their friends.h.i.+p had been rekindled in the relative protection that school gave them from their still-bitter mothers, they had few opportunities to talk. The currents of nine-year-old boys and girls had swept them into separate pools, and the morning bus was one of the only places where-perhaps just because their cla.s.smates were too preoccupied or too sleepy to care-they were free to defy the usual laws of fourth-grade conduct.

As Mary Jane found a different seat, Betty talked on about how cute Henry had been as a baby and how much she had hated to leave him. Betty was good enough to whisper all this-and in fact the bus noise was so loud that even Henry missed a few of her words. But what he experienced was a rage so deep that it seemed made up of colors, as if, in his mind, someone was riffling through sheaves of construction paper: red, orange, purple, black.

”So my father didn't die in a train wreck?” he finally whispered to her.

”No,” Betty said.

”So where is he?”

”I don't know.”

”Is he in Austria?”

”Australia.”

”Is he in Australia?”

”No. The man in Australia was my husband. But he's not your father.”

They were the last ones to get off the bus at the school. Henry thought about Father and Mother in the d.i.c.k and Jane books. Sure, there were times when Mother was in the kitchen without Father, and times when Father was in his bas.e.m.e.nt workshop without Mother. But Father and Mother went together, just the way d.i.c.k and Jane did.

”When you learn about the birds and the bees,” Betty said, ”you'll learn that it's possible to make a baby without actually being married, and that's how your father and I made you, and then he disappeared, even before I knew I was expecting you.”

”You could have told him,” Henry said.

”No,” Betty said. ”I couldn't. Because I didn't know where he was.”

”Why not?” Henry asked. It was almost a shout.

Betty sighed a little. She said: ”He was just a nice guy who I went to the movies with, and I didn't know who he was, Henry.”

”What was the movie?” Henry asked.

”What?”

”What was the movie?”

Betty smiled. ”It was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,” she said. she said.

”Where's Brooklyn?” he asked.

SHE DIDN'T CALL HIM HANKY. That was the only good thing about her, he thought, and, for this moment, the only thing that brought him even close to liking her.

Before he went into the school, she made him stop on the steps. She took out a camera, and she said, ”Smile, Son.” The hissing again. And then she took what seemed to be an entire roll of pictures. On purpose, he did not smile in a single one of them. The cl.u.s.ter of cla.s.smates who lined up behind Betty, making goofy faces and trying to get him to laugh, didn't alter the parade of crazy, furious colors in his mind. Only when Mary Jane stayed after the rest of them were inside-waiting for him, needing to know who this woman was, offering her one blue eye, and the smile he'd always known he could trust-only then did the mad parade come coolly to a stop.

AT NINE, MARY JANE WAS skinny and quick, both taller and more athletic than Henry. Her black eye patch was like a permanent bruise, a constant reminder of their long-lost days of nursery school, but she spent every single recess out in the play yard, jumping rope. She could do a can-can kick, a leg over, and a flying cross. As long as she led with her good eye, she could jump into a row of three jumpers, and-even more impressive-she could jump backward to get out again.

Henry, by social necessity, usually watched these feats from a distance, just as he watched her walk the hallways with her girlfriends, stopping to hitch up her sagging tights or giggling over mysterious things. This morning, however, Mary Jane broke the usual protocol and pulled Henry into the coatroom.

”Who was that?” she asked him. ”Why was she on the bus? Why was she taking pictures of you? Do you know her?”

”Sort of,” Henry said.

”Who is she?”

”She's President Gardner's daughter,” Henry said.

Her eyes widened. ”From the college?”

Henry nodded.

”Well, what's she doing here?”

Henry looked at the floor and tugged on his ear.

”Henry? Why was she here with you?”

Rupert Biggs ducked into the coatroom. ”You're going to be late for homeroom,” he said. He tore off his plaid jacket, jammed it onto an already full coat hook, and darted out again. The coat fell immediately to the floor, and Henry, moved by some primordial home economics instinct, bent to retrieve it and hang it up again.

”Henry,” Mary Jane said again. This time the word was not a plea for an answer but rather a statement about Henry's ability to trust her with whatever that answer would be.

”You can't-you can't tell anyone,” he said.

”I never would,” she said, and he believed her utterly, but still hesitated, trying to find the right words.

She merely looked at him, waiting. He had noticed lately that she could convey with one eye a great deal more than most people could convey with two.

He glanced behind her toward the coatroom door, then turned back to her. ”She says she's my real mother,” he said.

”Your real mother.”

”Yes.”

”President Gardner's daughter is your real mother?”