“Mom? Jesus, Mom,” he says, closing the passenger door just as she presses down on the accelerator. “What’re you doing?”
“Can’t a mother pick her son up from school?” she says, turning to smile at him. The trouble is she doesn’t look back at the road.
“Mom! Look out!” Henry says, grabbing for the steering wheel. “Here, pull over. Mom. Pull over and let me drive.”
“I most certainly will not, you silly,” she says in a sodden voice. “Since when do first-graders know how to drive?” She laughs and tousles his hair.
She does not let up on the gas and an oncoming car honks and swerves to avoid her.
“Mom!” Henry slides across the front seat and bullies her right leg aside with his left to reach over to the brakes. He has the steering wheel and, though it is not smooth, he manages to pull the car over to the side of the road and put it into Park. His mother, in her summer nightgown, is crumpled up against the driver’s side door. The tears start before he takes the keys out of the ignition, a safety move in case she decides to jump out while he walks around to her side of the car.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he says. He pats her arm. “I’m going to come around and get you out, okay?”
All her weight is against the door so that when he opens it from the outside she tumbles out to the ground. Fortunately they have pulled over far enough so she does not fall onto pavement, but unfortunately it is dirt they are on and it mixes in with the tears she is crying so she is a mess before he can help her up.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he says, crouching down beside her. “I’m going to lift you up now. One. Two. Grab hold of my neck. There, that’s good. Three.” He scoops her up and immediately wishes he had thought ahead and had the back door open in advance. Now it’s too late. The handle will be impossible to grab hold of; it is all he can do to keep her nightgown pulled down far enough over his mother’s legs.
The back gate of the wagon, with its easy push-button release, is his only option. We’ll be home in no time, he thinks. She won’t even notice.
“Here we go,” he says, “I’m just going to slide you in here.” He folds forward so he can deposit her far away from the back hatch. “There. Good. Okay? You okay, Mom?”
“Everything okay, Powell?” The coach is pulled up alongside the station wagon.
Henry has just closed up the back of the wagon. He cannot be sure how long Coach has been there. Did he see Mom? He panics. Click click click his mind shuttles through excuses like those slide viewers that look like binoculars until you look through and you see different parts—all clear and crisp—of the Grand Canyon.
The backseat’s torn up. Click. My mother’s leg is hurt and she needs to stretch out. Click. She’s sick. Click. She’s just fine. Click.
He sees his starting position evaporate as the coach will no doubt think he is a liability—too much craziness going on with that Powell guy, the coach will think.
“You okay, son?” the coach asks him again. He puts his own car in Park and Henry is horrified to think he might be climbing out and then would certainly see inside the station wagon.
“Yes,” he says. He scales his reaction back from a guilty-sounding voice. “I mean, yeah, sure, everything’s fine, Coach. I just…ah…my baseball cap flew out the window.” He looks down at his empty hands.
They look at each other and Henry sees the words as they float across the air from his mind into Coach Cahill’s. Please let it be please just forget what I know you saw please just drive away Coach please.
One moment more for the message to be fully received and the coach says, “Okay, son. You drive safe, you hear me? I’ll see you tomorrow, Powell.”
“Thanks, Coach.” He watches as the car pulls away.
Henry exhales and climbs behind the wheel. He adjusts the rearview mirror so he can see his mother.
“Mom? We’re going home now, Mom. We’ll be home in no time.”
She cannot wipe her nose—her hands are wrapped around her knees, a sloppy fetal position—so the sniffling continues the whole ride home.
“Almost there,” he says a moment or two later. “Almost there.”
On the field Henry hears nothing beyond the coach’s calls, the numbers shooting back and forth between players, the occasional cheers from parents gathered in the bleachers and along the sidelines. Even these he barely hears. On a good day. Which is to say that to Henry, football is beauty. It makes sense. Leaving the field is like stepping off a moving airport sidewalk: regular steps feel heavy, clumsy, mincing compared to the smooth ride of the long treadmill that reaches lengthwise down the center of a terminal.
It is Henry’s first starting game and the crispness of a fresh start is echoed in the cloudless sky. Its shade of blue particular to fall in a Northeastern town: Canada geese gliding southbound overhead, leaf piles burning, butternut squash, pumpkin patches.
Because Henry is tall and comparatively skinny he can outjump other players. And that is precisely what he does on this breezy day. On the first pass spiraling through the air.
Steve Wilson gives a sidelong nod and makes the calls they’ve agreed on in the huddle.
The running back inches forward but it is Henry, all limbs, who makes the catch and runs the ball into the end zone. Shouts. Backslapping. Henry Powell. Who’d have thought it? a teammate’s father will mutter on the side.
Henry does not feel elated so much as he feels he has come home.
Second quarter. Another play called, signaling Henry is to save the day again. Which he does…to more clapping, raised expectations, shoulder pads shuddering under teammates’ pats.
And soon, after three more games, his coach calls a meeting.
“We need to work out a system, Welly,” Coach says after another victory. This is a nickname that spontaneously appeared the day of his first start. Henry can’t decide whether he likes it or not but is happy for the feeling of inclusion it evokes. The two of them are straddling the bench facing each other in the steamy, smelly locker room after everyone else has showered and gone home.
“A system?” Henry doesn’t understand. He was sure this meeting was to be complimentary and now the coach is going to lecture him. He searches his mind for what went wrong. As fast as this starting position came, it could disappear with equal rapidity. It seems to Henry that if he can land on what he did wrong, if he can identify it before Coach does, he can retain his position and regain Coach’s respect. Show that he is aware. Looking out for his own errors just as closely as his coach. But what had he done wrong? For a moment he cannot bear to have his tranquil game, this game he loves more than anything else in the entire world, torn apart by the coach. It will ruin it. He feels he would do anything to keep this from happening. If the coach starts to rip on me, he thinks, I’ll just run out. I’ll run out of here so fast his head’ll spin.
“We’ve got to figure out what to do about this job of yours,” Coach says.
“Baxter’s?” Henry resists the urge to cry with happiness. This—this?—is the system they need to work out? Henry is seized with the desire to reach across to hug this man facing him. This straight-backed, Brycreemed, wrinkle-faced coach.
“Yeah,” the coach says. “Look. You’ve got to be here. I’ve got to have you here not just for practice and games but for films, too.”
Saturday mornings the team reviews the films of Friday night games. The coach, pointer in hand, stops and starts the whirring movie projector to make sure his players see what went wrong and what went right. They also review films of other teams. To prepare for the upcoming game.
“But I work all day Saturday,” Henry says. What? Why’d I just say that? It sounds like I won’t do whatever he says, Henry thinks. I will. He’ll see. I’ll do whatever he says. Just let me stay in the game, he thinks.
“Not anymore you don’t,” Coach says. “We need you here for that. Before it was okay for you to miss Saturdays and the occasional practice here and there, but now you’re my blue-chip. Everythin
g’s different now. You’re a player now.”
“You want me to call your boss for you?” the coach is asking. “I can talk to him. Explain the situation.”
Coach talking to Mr. Beardsley is a mental image Henry simply cannot abide. As distasteful as imagining one’s parents having sex. Mr. Beardsley is the type of person who actually pronounces the t-h in the word clothes, which, to Henry, has always implied a lisp. He looked it up in the dictionary one bored night at home and saw that the t and h are meant to be pronounced. But Coach, along with the rest of the general population, pronounces it close. No, they would not see eye to eye. Henry is sure of it.
“No,” he says, “I’ll talk to him. I can cut back on my hours. I don’t think he’ll mind.”
“Good. That’s what I want to hear. ’Cause you need to be here, Welly. You’re looking good out there.”
“Thanks, Coach.”
“Now, get out of here,” Coach says. “Go home. You need a ride?”
Henry would in fact like a ride home but instead hears himself say “no thanks” because he doesn’t want to make the coach go out of his way. He knows the coach lives where a lot of the other teachers do, not far from campus. Faculty housing. On a street that has less space between houses. Small squares of yards in front, bricked patios in back just big enough for barbecues and small picnic tables. Henry’s home is out of the way.
“See you tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Coach.”
He waits long enough to be sure the coach is gone and slings his backpack across one shoulder (blue-chip players certainly wouldn’t put both straps on, he smiles to himself) and pushes out of the locker room. Swaggers out. The Extraordinary Life of Henry Powell. Now this…this will be a good read.
For secretly Henry has always thought something wonderful—something special—would happen to him. He has always suspected he is destined for greatness. He kicks up the leaves in front of each step. The two miles home are barely enough for him to sort out the trajectory he is now on.
His eye is on setting a school record, one with a big-enough gap to hold for years and years to come. Stenciled up under the other names on the plaques on the gymnasium wall. Immortality. This is my immortality. This is all I want. If I can have this, God, if you can just let me do this, I will never ask for anything else ever again. Most yards gained in a season. Just let my name be on it.
“Go long, go long!” he calls out. The field empty but for the two who are after-hours fixtures there. Henry practicing his own passing. Receiving is one thing but Henry has decided to work on his throws. Well-rounded players have more of a chance of setting records. But this pass spirals and drops short.
“Okay,” he calls over to his new receiver, who picks it up and jogs it into the end zone, anyway. “It’s okay,” he says. He knows it will take time. They’ve traded roles and it will take time to get used to the switch.
“Wilson!” he calls out. “Go wide this time.”
The pass is completed and he knows they are both feeling better. Getting into a groove. Before daylight is gone. A couple more of these and we can end on a good note.
“Wilson! Long. Go long!”
Long, wide, far, they share three more completions and finally jog toward each other to call it a day.
“That was good, huh?” Henry says.
“Yeah. But why do you keep calling me Wilson?”
Henry looks at the boy and turns toward where the old locker room used to stand. He looks back down at the brown patches on the field. Where no grass ever has a chance to grow for the feet stomping it down.
He pats Craig on the back. “Good work today, pal.”
“Thanks, Mr. Powell,” the boy says. “See you Thursday?”
“Yeah, I’ll see you Thursday.”
Chapter ten
1986
If he could just know why she didn’t want him things would be all right. He could move on, he tells himself. He could stop driving by her apartment building, slowing to see if her lights are on and dreaming about what she might be doing inside. Sometimes the blue glow of television would illuminate her windows and he would watch the images flicker and wonder what she was watching. Perhaps it was a cop show. No, she wouldn’t watch a cop show.
If he just knew why things would “never work out between them” as she had said, then he could maybe even throw out the perfume. The sales clerk had thought he was a queer when he asked about it, he could tell.
“Um, do you have a perfume called, um,” Henry had said. He was trying to look like the name had slipped his mind. Like he hadn’t already committed it to memory. “Let’s see. It’s Baby Soft…something…. Oh, yeah, Love’s Baby Soft.”
He had colored at the name, which hadn’t sounded so feminine when he’d turned it over in his head. Cathy had blushed when he asked her what perfume she wore. She always smelled so good.
“Yeah, we have it,” the clerk said. “We might even have a tester of it.” She slid the glass door open to fish a bottle out.
His plan had been to pretend to be thinking about the purchase just to get a quick whiff of it. To tide me over, he thought at the time. I just need something to tide me over.
He hadn’t planned on buying a bottle. But when he sniffed it, Cathy was inhaled up into his nose, down his throat, directly into his lungs. It was too intoxicating to pass up, the idea that this feeling could be constantly replicated in private. At home. He pulled his wallet out quickly, hoping his erection would subside.
“I’ll take it,” he said. The fact that the clerk used only her thumb and forefinger to take the twenty dollar bill from him registered but did not matter. He was consumed by Cathy’s scent.
Her favorite things became his favorite things. On their fourth date she mentioned she liked fried chicken and now ten Swanson’s fried chicken dinners were stacked in his freezer. He’d overheard her telling a friend to “have a happy,” and now this is what he says to every departing customer. That or “take it easy,” which she had said to him directly at the end of that same fourth date. Which hadn’t really been a date, come to think of it. She had needed a ride to pick up her car in the shop. He offered and stretched it out to include an ice cream run. There she ordered mint chocolate chip and presto Henry had a new favorite flavor. In the car she turned the radio up when Steely Dan came on so Henry went to the record store the next day and bought Pretzel Logic. And then pored over the liner notes, memorizing first the band members’ names then the song lyrics.
How could she not want to be with me the way I want to be with her? he wondered. How can she live without me? Henry found this mind-boggling. Because he had a hard time breathing without her. He sometimes thought he was suffocating he missed her so much.
If he had to pinpoint the moment it took a turn for the worse he would pick the day following the first time he took her to his parents’ house. That was when things started to head south, he told himself. That was when she started looking at me differently.
His apartment was off limits due to an unfortunate plumbing problem in the unit above his. The super was waiting for a replacement part to arrive from the toilet manufacturer in Ohio and in the meantime the smell was too foul to ignore. So Henry was staying with his parents for the week.
“Nice house,” she said. They were standing in the front hall. Henry hung her jeans jacket on the coatrack.
“Thanks. Let’s go upstairs.”
He hadn’t wanted to take her to his old bedroom as much as he wanted to keep her from seeing any family members. Wait, he tells the invisible screenwriter, that’s not entirely true. I did want to take her to my bedroom. Did not: Screenwriter. Did so: Henry. Dramatic license, the screenwriter says.
They were halfway up the stairs when the voice reached them, hooking them, reeling them into the boat. Don’t bite, don’t bite, he thought at the time.
“You don’t want to introduce me to your family?” Cathy had smiled at him from two stairs below.
Catch-22, Catch-22, he
thought. Don’t bite.
“Henry? Is that you?” his mother’s feeble question fooled him into thinking it might be averted, this potential powder keg. The Powell Powder Keg. That’s perfect, he thinks. The Powell Powder Keg. The screenwriter takes note of it.
“Henry?”
“Come on, we’ll make it quick,” he says.
“What’s your problem?” Cathy says. She takes his hand and lets herself be led into the den.
At least she’s dressed, he remembers thinking when he sees his mother. But the drink in her hand should have been a red flag.
“Mom, this is Cathy. Cathy, Mom.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Powell.”
Henry’s mother extends her hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“Okay, so, we’re going to go upstairs,” Henry says.
“What’s your hurry?” his mother asks.
And Cathy chimes in with, “Seriously,” in agreement with Mrs. Powell, an alliance she assumes will garner faux annoyance in Henry. That would be the normal course of events. But she doesn’t know this is not a normal family, he thinks. He looks at her innocently trying to win over his mother.
This looks pretty normal right now, Henry thinks.
And so he leaves for a moment—“I’ll be right back”—to go to the bathroom so he can be sure there’s nothing stuck in his teeth. He also wants to swig mouthwash because the pizza left a bad taste in his mouth and he doesn’t want Cathy to be grossed out.
“Sure, take your time,” his mother says. “How was your dinner?” Henry hears her asking Cathy. Perhaps this is why he doesn’t hurry. He goes to his parents’ bathroom to use his father’s Listerine.
He hears his mother’s laughter from the third stair on his way back down. It sounds more like funny-ha-ha than funny-insane.