“You heard your mother,” Henry’s father says. “You’d better put that away.”
“Dad,” Henry says. “Let me just paint it over.”
“Put it away, Henry,” his father says before stalking off.
For a moment Henry considers defying them both. One stroke up and it would all be erased. That would be all it would take. One longer stroke and all the height marks with their corresponding names and dates would be gone. A fresh door frame.
The brush is dripping semi-gloss Linen onto the newspaper. It hangs in his hand.
Henry kneels to close the can, using the handle of the screwdriver he had opened it with to hammer it back closed. He rinses the brush in the sink, watching the milky paint circle the drain. He is surprised the brush has retained that much paint since he’d only dipped it into the can once, imagining he could take his time and inch slowly up from the bottom. Why hadn’t he moved quicker? How had he thought he’d have so much time? Stupid, stupid, he thinks.
He shuts himself into his room and his parallel headphone universe. With “Bridge Over Troubled Water” piped into his ears, Henry the recording artist is called upon to lend his celebrity to worthy causes. Jackson Browne calls to see if he could play the No Nukes rally. Graciously Henry accepts and the guys in the booth shake their heads at his generosity. Nuclear power’s a scary thing, man, he says in between laying down tracks. We’ve got to do something, he tells them. His agent mutters that he worries Henry is spreading himself too thin. I don’t want him tired out, he says. Henry laughs and says, “Don’t worry, man. I’m fine.” What? I can’t worry about you? his agent says.
On this particular day he comes into the session all set to record “Horse With No Name,” greeting everyone by name as he always does (that Henry Powell is so down-to-earth. You’d think fame would go to his head but he knows everyone’s name, they say in his wake), but he notices something is not quite right. By the time “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” is playing, Dan the engineer is looking away and Hal is mumbling “sorry, man.”
“What’s going on?” he asks them, noticing the sympathy, concern, alarm, echoed from face to face. “What’s up?”
His agent would be the one to break it to him.
“You better sit down,” he says.
The booth is just big enough to accommodate an old couch and three swivel office chairs always askew because the producers slide from board to board. Henry sits on the arm of the couch.
“Someone better tell me what’s up,” Henry says.
“You haven’t seen any news yet?” Hal asks. “You don’t know?”
“It’s your family,” his agent says, shushing Hal.
“They’re on their way to Egypt,” Henry says. This part changes depending on Henry’s mood. Sometimes his family is traveling to Egypt, sometimes it’s to Colombia or Chile. All trips in all scenarios are funded by Henry, insisting his parents and brother need a break—“see the world” he’d tell them—and he’d surprise them with first-class tickets.
“They called from a pay phone at the airport before they boarded,” Henry says. “I talked to them before I went to bed last night.”
“They stormed the plane,” his agent says. “Guys with masks or something, they’re not even sure yet what group they’re with. They stormed the plane and took hostages.”
“What?” Henry says. “What the heck are you talking about? If this is some kind of joke…”
But he knows from the looks around the room it is no joke.
“How many hostages?” he asks, looking from face to face. “How many hostages?” he yells, not getting an answer.
“Just your family, man,” his agent says. “I’m so sorry. It looks like they were gunning for your family. They figure maybe you’d have the most money to offer for their release, I guess.”
This part calls for harder rock. The Stones. “Gimme Shelter” with its building guitar tension. Kansas. “Point of No Return.” Zeppelin. “What Is and What Should Never Be”(the real drama saved for the angry chorus).
In all cases Henry—still in the recording studio—works with the FBI to secure his family’s freedom. “Any amount of money,” he tells the special agent in charge. “I’ll charter a plane. Any amount they say.”
“The government’s position,” they tell him, “is that we do not negotiate with terrorists.”
“I don’t care about the government’s position,” Henry yells. He is pacing, running his hand through his hair. “I’ll fly over there myself and hand them the money. I just want my family back. Get me my family back.”
The FBI scurries in and out while The Who is playing. Sign this, sign that, they say, shoving documents under his pen. “You understand we can’t be liable,” they say.
“Are you sure you should be doing this, Powell?” his agent says, taking him aside. “It’s dangerous.”
“I’ll be fine,” he says. And all applaud him on his way out the door on his way to secure his family’s release.
Which, to the tune of “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” he does.
“Henry!” His father’s shouts reach beneath the round, cushioned rim of the earphones. “I’ve been calling you for five minutes!”
“What?” Henry says, throwing the headphones down. “Sorry. What do you need?”
“Let’s get dinner started, shall we?” his father says.
Chapter eight
1985
Henry can vacuum his entire apartment from one electrical outlet. In the living room he makes sure to move the armchair facing the television so the vacuum can inhale crumbs that have tumbled to that no-man’s land between the chair legs and the coffee table. The chair is then pushed back into the divots in the carpet that show exactly where it has sat in the years since it was deposited there, a hand-me-down from his parents. The machine combs the carpet, the little zaps of debris making its way up the metal tube into the bag, affording Henry a sense of accomplishment. He makes sure to go east-west in his pushing and pulling, like ballpark groundskeepers mowing the outfield, cutting patterns into the grass.
The hallway is short and just wide enough to fit two vacuum columns. He will erase his advancing footprints on his way back to the utility cabinet once the job is done. He finishes the bedroom easily, remembering to get under the bed as best he can. He had heard of a guy who shoved his porn magazines under the bed when a date came over only to be discovered when she reached for the shoe that had somersaulted beside a copy of Oui during the haste and sexual fervor the night before. Unfortunately, the girl had only just been convinced that her small to the point of being nonexistent breasts were in fact preferable to the overblown variety featured prominently on the cover of the well-thumbed contraband, a headline screaming Going for the JUGular. So Henry cleaned underneath his bed in the off chance Cathy Nicholas was repulsed by dirt.
He backs out of the room and removes all foot imprints (vowing to tiptoe along the wall on his way to bed that night to safeguard his work) on his way to the kitchen.
The vacuum packs up nicely, cord wound neatly and looped over the neck of the upright. The kitchen floor is small enough to be wiped not mopped so that is what Henry does. Finally he is confident the apartment is clean enough to make a good first impression.
The bathroom will be tackled the following day at the last minute. He calls his friend Tom after surveying his efforts.
“Hey,” he says into the phone.
“What’s up,” Tom Geigan answers.
“Not much. Want to grab a beer?”
“Yeah, I guess. You want to meet there or, actually, can you swing by and give me a lift?”
“Yeah,” Henry says. “Your car’s in the shop?”
“Kind of,” his friend says. “I’m good to go whenever so…”
“I’ll be over. Seriously, you better be ready this time.”
“I will, I will, Jesus,” Tom says.
“I’m not parking this time.”
“Okay. See ya.”
Tw
enty minutes later Henry is muttering “goddammit” while parallel parking along the curb in front of Tom Geigan’s apartment building.
He bangs on the door, the sound unexpectedly and angrily loud against the flimsy pressed-wood door.
“What did I tell you?” Henry says once the door is answered by his friend. “What, are we going on a date or what? You’re showering for me?”
“I’ll be right there, Jesus,” Tom says. He is already back in his bedroom. “What’d you do, fly here?”
“You should really think about throwing some of this out, man,” Henry says. “It’s disgusting in here. It’s like a science experiment.”
“Feel free,” Tom says. “Go to town, man.”
Henry is careful not to touch anything. He stands, motionless, in the middle of the room eyeing the calling cards of sloppy bachelorhood: old pizza boxes and empty soda and beer cans.
“Seriously, let’s go,” he says.
“I’m waiting for you, man,” Tom says, walking into the room holding up his hands in a shrug. “Let’s adios this joint.”
“What’s wrong with your car, by the way?” Henry asks as he climbs into the Jeep.
“Huh?”
“Your car’s in the shop, I thought, right? That’s why I’m picking you up?”
“Oh. That. Yeah. Um, it’s not in the shop, really. It’s just…”
“You cheap son of a bitch,” Henry says. He turns onto the main street that will lead them to Blackie’s. “You’re too cheap to pay for gas.”
“I’m doing my part for the environment, man,” Tom says. “Trying to conserve energy.”
The conversation at the bar skitters from baseball to the new prevalence of salad bars (“I just don’t see who would want to make themselves a salad. Don’t you go out to a restaurant so they can make the food for you?”) to music (“I’m telling you her name’s pronounced Shar-day, not Say-dee”). Henry is happy to be thinking of anything other than his date the following evening.
But the fact that he is even thinking that he is thinking of things other than his date proves he is, in fact, not thinking of anything else but Cathy Nicholas.
Finally, with enough beer, his anxiety is numbed and they settle up and leave.
“See ya,” Tom calls out on his way up the walkway that leads to his building.
Henry turns up the radio on his way home, the theme from Miami Vice reminding him of Neal Peterson’s pushed-up blazer sleeves.
The following day—Date Day—Henry walks up the street to Larry’s Diner for lunch.
“The usual?” Michelle, the waitress, asks, already writing Philly cheese steak on her order pad.
“Actually, hold the onions,” he says. He tries to look preoccupied with the newspaper to give the impression it is a whim this no-onions thing, an afterthought.
“You got it,” she says. She pins his order to the round metal tree perched on the kitchen ledge.
On reflection it occurs to Henry that the cheese steak itself might leave his breath smelling foul even minus the offending onions.
“Michelle? Could I change my order? Sorry,” he says.
“Hold up on the cheese steak,” she calls out to the short-order cook. “No problem, Henry. What do you want?”
“Sorry. Thanks. Um, could I get just a turkey on rye?”
But the rye seeds might become embedded in his teeth and he might run into her before he can pry them loose in the Baxter’s restroom.
“Do you have seedless rye, actually?” he asks.
Michelle, pen poised above the pad, eyes him before answering. “Do we have seedless rye? What’s going on, Henry? You’re never this picky. In fact, I think this is the first time in the three years I’ve worked here that you’ve ordered something other than the Philly cheese steak. And now you’re changing orders, you’re wanting special bread…”
“Seedless rye is special?” Henry tries to steer her off course. “Well, ex-cuuuuse me,” he says, trying but failing to mimic the Steve Martin routine he’d seen on Saturday Night Live.
“All right, all right, don’t tell me then,” she says. “We don’t have seedless rye, though, I can tell you that right now. How about white?”
“Turkey on white is great, thanks,” Henry says.
He is exhausted from the effort to maintain freshness. Giving up onions is one thing, he thinks. But he made a mistake in cleaning his apartment too early in the week. He knows that now. After two days of hugging the wall on his way to and from his bedroom in order that the carpet stay neatly vacuumed he finally gave up and performed an early-morning sweep before heading out the door to work. The kitchen floor, too, had to be rewiped after a sloppy transfer of coffee from his mug to his commuter cup only moments after stowing the vacuum. His face hurt from the aftershave he slapped on following an especially fastidious bout with his razor in the hopes of avoiding the emergence of a five o’clock shadow, about the time he is meant to pick her up. Freshness takes work, he thinks.
After reading the same sentence five times and still not taking in its meaning, Henry folds his newspaper in half and stares out the window. He eats the turkey sandwich with the very energy its blandness requires, chewing in monotony. The sandwich has no condiments—too threatening to his cleanliness—but he safeguards his lap nevertheless with two large napkins unfolded lengthwise.
He returns from lunch to find Baxter’s uncharacteristically busy for a Friday. Mr. Beardsley waves him over to take the phone, a customer wondering if a certain golf shirt could be secured before the weekend.
“I’ll check,” Henry says. “Just a minute.”
“I know what you’re going to ask and the answer is I don’t know. I called the shipping department and they can’t give me an ETA,” Mr. Beardsley says to him. He turns back to his customer. “I’m sorry, Mr. Warren. The jacket I have in mind is over here.”
The golf-shirt phone call ends just as a woman approaches him.
“Excuse me, are you Henry Powell?” she asks, glancing back at a boy who is most certainly her son but appears to wish it weren’t so, his pimple-ridden angst exacerbating into redness the moment she poses the question.
“Yes,” he says. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Cheryl Eddy,” she says, “and this is my son, Craig.”
Henry shakes both their hands, which given the ever-widening gap between Craig and his mother, took a moment to complete. “Hi.”
“Constance Garvey—from Fox Run?—told me I should come and talk to you,” she says, “about the football program. I don’t want to bother you while you’re at work but I didn’t have your phone number. Everyone knows you work here so I hope you don’t mind us coming in like this….”
“No, no, it’s no problem,” he says. He glances around and sees Mr. Beardsley is helping a customer but otherwise there is a lull.
“Oh, great, thanks,” she says. “My son’s getting ready to start there this fall and, well, I know you were the big hero there….”
Henry colors and shifts his weight. “Oh, God, no…the team…”
“No, you were,” she interrupts, “everyone knows that. But what I’m wondering is if you ever do any private tutoring….”
“Mom, God,” Craig says from as many feet away as he can remain. His embarrassment now borders on the kind of humiliation only teenage sons feel around their mothers.
“Tutoring?” Henry asks.
“Private coaching,” she says. “Once or twice a week? Just to get Craig ready for the season? We’d pay you, obviously.”
It is at this point that Craig gives up and skulks down the aisles out of earshot.
Cheryl Eddy lowers her voice. “He really wants to get better and his father works with him when he can but he’s out of town a lot for work so it’s not really a regular thing. And you…well, to be coached by you would definitely give him the edge.”
“Mrs. Eddy, I just—” Henry starts to speak.
“Are you kidding? Call me Cheryl,” she says, smiling and
pushing her hair behind her ears. “Mrs. Eddy is my mother-in-law.”
“What? Oh,” Henry says, clearing his throat and offering a wan smile. “Um, Cheryl—” more throat clearing “—I don’t know. I’ve never really done that kind of thing. I’m sure your son’ll be fine. The coach is really good.”
“He needs help, Henry,” she says. She looks across the store at her son. “I know it doesn’t seem like it right now but he really wants help. He’s just…shy.”
“Oh, totally,” Henry says. “But…won’t he feel kind of weird since I’m, like, about his age?”
Cheryl cocks her head and smiles. “You graduated in 1978, right?” she asks. Then she pats his arm knowingly. “Welcome to my world.”
“Ah, well, can I think about it?” he asks, not quite understanding her comment.
“Of course, of course, sure,” she says. “Let me give you our phone number and you can just give us a jingle whenever. But maybe it’ll be soon? I don’t mean to rush you or anything, it’s just I was hoping things could get started on the soon side. Here, oh, you have a pen? Great.” She scribbles out the seven digits and hands them to Henry.
“No problem. I’ll call you early next week if that’s okay,” he says.
“That’d be great,” she says. “In the meantime we need to find a sport shirt for travel days. Craig?” She motions him to come over, a signal that the uncomfortable part of the exchange is over.
“What sport jacket will he be wearing?” Henry asks, recalling the day he left the house for his first away game. He had felt so grown-up, like a man leaving for work. He had copied the bored but hurried expression he had seen so many of the fathers wear every morning on their way out the door. The air left the balloon when he climbed out of his mother’s station wagon and saw they were to board a bright yellow school bus.
“Oh, I wish,” Cheryl says. “Craig? Did you hear that? Why don’t you wear a sport jacket like Mr. Powell here says?”
“Yeah, right,” Craig says.
“The coach’ll bench you if you don’t wear one,” Henry says.