Part 20 (1/2)
By the middle of August, Henry had finished painting the upstairs rooms, and one evening, after he had moved everything back into place in the parlor, he walked up behind Martha in the kitchen, where she was stirring a stew. He put his arm around her shoulders, gently, the way that used to make her lean back against him and sigh.
”Come with me, Emem,” he said.
She looked up wearily, warily, and turned down the flame. Heavily, sighing at least once, she followed him up the stairs.
With a flourish, he swung open the door to reveal the finished parlor.
”Do you like it?” he asked her.
She shrugged and gave him a half smile: a hurt, slight twitch of a half smile.
”Oh, come on, Emem, I know you like it,” he said.
”It's very nice,” she said tautly, as if she didn't think it was.
JUST A FEW DAYS LATER, he had grown tired of trying to appease her, and he persuaded Mary Jane-despite her own continuing iciness-to talk to the head of the Wilton Press. The result was a job painting all the trim on the building: grueling work that involved not only stripping but sanding the woodwork before he could even prime it.
In the sun, Henry worked in khaki shorts and white T-s.h.i.+rts and sometimes in no s.h.i.+rt at all. His shoulders became brown as mushrooms, warm to the touch the one time Mary Jane accidentally brushed a hand across them.
Lila subsided into the traffic of the practice house. The anger Henry felt at her having given away his secret averaged out with the grat.i.tude he felt for her having slept with him. The result was that he ended up neither favoring nor ignoring her. She became, as August pa.s.sed, just another practice house mother, another soft-smelling creature who would leave and probably never look back.
Throughout August, Henry painted the Wilton Press building, lavished attention on a slowly thawing Mary Jane, and waited uneasily for the other shoe to drop: either an encounter with Dr. Gardner or a lecture, with tears, from Martha. The closest she came to that was one evening when he came in after dinner to find her sitting in the kitchen, inexplicably holding a sleeping Huck.
”So,” she said, ”it was all so you could get away from me?”
Henry merely looked back at her, not trusting himself to answer without his long-ago-lit anger engulfing him.
But she was the one who shouted. ”And everything was a lie!”
He stared at her for a long moment. ”I learned from the best,” he said acidly.
He walked out before she could answer him. The baby started to cry.
HENRY NOW a.s.sUMED that she would forbid him from going back to Humphrey, and he began to imagine running away to join Betty in New York. Surrept.i.tiously one night, he filched a stack of Martha's Green Stamps booklets and the Ideabook catalogue with Dinah Sh.o.r.e on the cover. After Martha had gone to sleep, Henry browsed through the book, trying to imagine what necessities for a trip to New York City could be cobbled together from its pages. He saw place settings in silver, silver plate, and stainless steel; china, crystal, everyday gla.s.ses; living rooms with fireplaces, televisions, and radios, where d.i.c.k-and-Jane children stretched out on cozy carpets; lamps and clocks and sports equipment; one happy family after another. And other than the suitcases on pages nine and ten, there was really nothing that would help Henry get to New York-unless he could go by sailboat, wheelbarrow, or lawn mower.
It turned out, however, that he would get to go back to Humphrey after all. Three weeks into August, Martha eyed him wearily one afternoon and said more words than she had said to him in weeks. ”We'd better check through your clothes, don't you think? In case you need anything new for school?”
SHE SHOWED A SURPRISING STOICISM-or perhaps it was merely exhaustion-when it came time for the actual departure, and aside from her usual searching look-that familiar attempt to find something essential, rea.s.suring, grateful, and loving in Henry's eyes-she let him go without too much fuss or bother. In a stern lecture, Dr. Gardner explained that, while he realized Henry's newly recovered voice could qualify him for a place back home, Dr. Gardner himself had no interest in watching what he called Henry's ”stabs at maturity” take place on his campus and with his students.
Henry's interest in their reasoning was casual at best. The important thing was the liberation and, after all the weeks of worrying, the knowledge that he could be safely ensconced with Charlie and Karen for another year.
On the morning of his departure, he walked over to the Wilton Press, the early sun showing the flaws in his recent paint job and then, by contrast, the near perfection of Mary Jane's face.
”So?” she said to him, a hand on her hip. He looked into her one blue eye, cold and serene and implausibly bright.
”Raise your hand if you're really going to be glad to see me go,” he said.
Mary Jane smirked, then started to lift her arm, but Henry caught it in midair. He wanted to kiss her but stopped himself. She had closed her eye now, whether flinching from him or hoping for him Henry couldn't tell, but he didn't want to risk being wrong. Like her eye patch, her eyelid was a window shade, and Henry knew it would be a while before he would be allowed to see, let alone to share, the world behind it.
8.
Not Henry's Anything
The bus trip back to Humphrey was for Henry as joyous and filled with giddy expectation as the trip to Wilton, two and a half months before, had been sleepy and filled with dread. There was no air-conditioning this time, but there was no need of it. The windows were all half open, and the crispness of the air and the sense of expectancy kept Henry wide awake. The bus smelled surprisingly of fresh oranges and spearmint gum. Henry looked up from his reading to see the lawns and houses flying past.
He had imagined that Charlie and Karen might be waiting for him at the bus station. It wasn't that he had told them when he was coming, or even how. It was just part of his fantasy of absolute belonging. In reality, he saw no one even vaguely familiar when his bus pulled in. The empty road vibrated with silence, car doors slammed, and a bird shrieked. Sheepishly, Henry dragged his suitcase to one of the taxis that sat, indolent and burning, in the late afternoon sun.
Despite his obvious wishes, his first stop on the campus was not Reynolds West but rather the main floor of Canfield, the junior dorm. His intention was merely to drop his bags before going on to Charlie and Karen's, but the double takes from his cla.s.smates proved to be both grand and gratifying. A simple ”hi” from Henry, and the reactions ranged from ”Say that again” to ”Hey, guys, Gaines is talking!” He unpacked, listening while one boy would ask a question and then the others, by force of habit, would try to answer it in Henry's place.
”Are they going to let you stay?”
”Of course. Why wouldn't they let him stay?”
”Because he's got his voice back, a.s.shole.”
”Yeah, but they probably don't know that yet.”
”You know, you can ask me,” Henry said.
”Do they know, Gaines?”
”Yes,” he said.
”So why are they letting you stay?”
”Aw, he's probably screwed up in other ways.”
IT WAS NEARLY DINNERTIME when Henry finally managed to arrive at the Falks' doorstep, where they were welcoming a new set of soph.o.m.ore girls: fluttery in the cool evening, wearing pale pink lipstick and sleeveless s.h.i.+rts, their hairstyles wide, short, and obviously new.
”Henry!” Karen shouted when she saw him, and in a moment she was hugging him while at the same time slapping Charlie's arm to get his attention.
”Hey!” Charlie said, transferring the slap to Henry's back. ”You look like you've grown another foot.”
”You're nearly as tall as Charlie now,” Karen said, but Henry could tell that she was distracted.
Charlie picked up one end of a girl's steamer trunk; her father picked up the other.
”You all settled in Canfield?” Charlie asked before disappearing into the house, not awaiting an answer.
Karen must have seen Henry's face fall.
”We'll have a good catch-up later,” she whispered. ”I gather you've got a lot to tell.”
”How do you gather that?” he asked her softly.
”Word travels fast 'round these here parts.”