“Yeah,” Henry says. “So. This is great. Isn’t this great?” He looks around so she does, too. “I mean this, us going out.”
“It’s good,” she says, looking back up at him, checking to see if he is being sarcastic.
After several conversational dead ends they leave the awkward first-date phase and enter the we-have-so-many-shared-interests-how-is-it-possible-we-have-not-yet-met phase.
“Sometimes?” Cathy lowers her voice and leans in over her third glass of wine. “Sometimes I pretend I’m this really rich heiress—like a billionaire’s daughter or something—but I’m disgusted with the materialistic, capitalistic life and I’m trying to make my parents mad by working at a coffee shop. And all these guys—the rude ones who yell if I’m taking too long—all those guys find out about me. About how I come from all this money. And then they’re sorry they treated me that way but it’s too late. I’ve already seen how they really are. What they really act like.”
Henry is nodding. “Yeah, yeah,” he says, “I know exactly what you mean.”
They trade customer stories and shake their heads and smile. “Wow,” he says. “So funny.” He eases back into his chair.
“Yeah,” she says. “Yeah.” And she smiles.
“I should probably get going,” she says, checking her watch. “Wow. Guess what time it is? Don’t look at your watch. Just guess.”
“Seven?”
“It’s eight,” she says, thrilled to be able to surprise him with the amount of time that has elapsed.
“Time flies,” he says. “You sure you don’t want another glass?”
“Yeah. Actually, no,” she says, and he feels a surge of happiness to see that she says this with a degree of reluctance matching his exactly.
He reaches around and lifts her jacket off the back of her chair, holding it open for her.
“Thanks.” She smiles over her shoulder at him and he cannot believe a smile like this one is directed at him and for some reason it reminds him of the time his mother brought home a Boston cream pie. It’s your favorite, she had said, looking him straight in the eye. The miraculous thing about it was, it was not his birthday. She had just done it out of the blue. On an ordinary day.
He walks her out to her car.
“Have you seen Back to the Future yet?”
“What?” she says, turning to face him, car key already facing her door lock.
“I was wondering if you wanted to go to see Back to the Future this weekend,” he says. “It’s supposed to be really good. But I don’t know. We could see something else if you want.”
“I’d love to,” she says, fitting the key into the lock.
“Great,” he says. He shoves his hands into his pockets, hoping slouching body language will help balance out his enthusiasm. The moment is approaching where he will be called on to give her a good-night kiss. This body language is also meant to show he is not in the least bit nervous, no sirree.
“Okay, so,” she says, pausing before lowering herself into the driver’s seat.
Henry is horrified to find his legs have gone leaden. He is unable to move. Making matters worse is his apparent inability to pull his hands out of his pockets—something he would like to do in order to make his intentions clear.
“Okay, well,” she says, now settling in behind the wheel. “Bye. Thanks for the drink.”
“I had fun tonight,” he says, moving closer to her car as she shuts the door.
But her window is up and she does not hear, offering a feeble wave once she has reversed out of her spot and is pointing forward.
On his way back to his parents’ house for a quick check in, Henry erases the last few clunky minutes of the date from his mind and instead imagines his car tires suspended over the road, floating. Like the Jetsons, he thinks…like how their bubble vehicles glide through the air to and from work.
He carries his mother, who has tilted sideways and fallen asleep on the couch, up to bed, and it very nearly ruins his mood to find his father sleeping soundly there. Henry makes no effort to be quiet. If he wakes up, Henry thinks, he wakes up.
Why the hell can’t he do this? Henry works hard to be gentle with his mother, lightly pulling the covers up over her. He tries not to take it out on her. His father has not stirred.
Seriously. He’s got arms. And if he can’t lift her he could at least shake her awake long enough to make her walk up. He’s teaching me a lesson he’s trying to make me feel bad once just once I miss my five-fifteen and here he is teaching me a lesson well it’s not working…I always do this, this is nothing new so that’s how much you know.
Like laser beams he shoots these thoughts off to his sleeping father, hoping they sink in by osmosis the way as a middle-schooler he used to put his notebook under his pillow, hoping its contents would seep into his head on nights before tests.
Minutes later he lets himself into his apartment, spare but for a hand-me-down couch and a few other pieces of furniture his brother left behind when he moved out to start his new life.
In the kitchen the drying rack alongside the sink the one plate and one glass appear to mock his bachelorhood and so he quickly puts them away—ha, I just might have company over, so there. He takes a beer out of the refrigerator and snaps the top off with his bottle opener. Back in the living room he settles into the nubby chair that faces the television, remote control already on the arm. He sits in silence, replaying the date, wishing his visit to his parents’ had not poisoned the evening as it did. As it always does, Henry thinks. He finishes the beer quickly and fishes another out of the refrigerator.
Stop thinking. Stop it. What’s on TV tonight? he asks himself. She blushed a lot. A lot. Maybe more than most, he imagines the biographer scribbling, looking up to gauge Henry’s reaction to this fact. Is he cocky? the writer is wondering. Is he humble? Self-deprecating? He certainly is a good-looking man—probably has no idea his effect on women, the writer scratches onto his legal pad full of the tiniest of Henry Powell observations. No idea whatsoever.
Henry smiles and flicks on the television.
The following morning he is up and out of bed long before six fifty-nine. Showered, he stands in his underwear in front of his closet, sifting through the clothes, mindful of what he has worn lately. He selects a black Pierre Cardin blazer that he has not worn in a while, a white tab collar, plaid pants, the tie a solid color so as not to compete with the pants.
He purposely does not prepare a lunch to bring in to work. Keys jingle on his way out the door. The weather is unseasonably warm.
There are three cars outside the coffee shop, one is idling with a passenger inside leaning forward fiddling with the radio dial. Henry hops up on the curb and ceremoniously opens the door for the woman on her way out holding two cups of coffee.
He sees Cathy and feels like an ice cube that’s been dropped into boiling water.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi, Henry,” she says. He soars hearing her speak his name.
“Can I get a large one? For here,” he says.
“Black?”
His smile stretches that much wider that she has remembered how he likes his coffee. “Yeah.”
“You look nice today,” he says when she hands it over to him.
Her hand flutters up to her hair. She smiles and presses keys on the register, ringing him up.
“One-fifty,” she says.
He hands her the money. There are two small tables in the place, one already taken up by a large man reading the paper through spectacles that are too small for his face. Henry sits at the unoccupied table, not the bar-height ledge along the window that would have meant his back to her.
He blows on his drink, cupping both hands around the mug, waiting for it to cool.
When the last customer in the cluster of commuters that has descended leaves he gets up and goes over to her.
“So, what about the movie this weekend?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Sounds great.”
&nbs
p; “Cool,” he says. “Which—” But before he can ask her which night, Friday or Saturday, a customer interrupts.
“Which what?” she asks once the order is filled.
“Um,” he says, “Friday or Saturday? Either one’s fine with me.” He wishes he had not added that last part as he knows this makes him sound like he never ever goes out ever and hopes this won’t have registered with her.
She shakes her head and shrugs. “You pick.”
“How about Friday?” This will mean one less day for them to be apart.
“Great. Cool.”
“Great,” he says. “I’ll see you before then and we can work out which showing and stuff. Okay, well, I’ll see you later.”
She itches her head and turns red. She tries not to notice the customers in between them, smiling at her shyness and at Henry’s boyish courting.
He lets himself in to Baxter’s. One-two-three-four all the light switches are flipped up and to Henry the light bathes the racks in golden hues. The carpet, thanks to george, lends a fresh smell to the entire store. He goes to his locker and is pleased he remembers to transfer the Tupperware to the top shelf. Instead of slamming the flimsy metal door closed he lifts the handle and lets it settle quietly, neatly, into its docking.
Back out in the store he moves self-consciously through the aisles, touching this pair of gabardine slacks, marveling at the whisper of lining in that linen jacket, straightening the trouser socks hanging from individual black plastic half hangers, making sure the ties are fanned out just so. He imagines his biographer jotting down potential chapter headings: Henry Powell Meets the Woman of His Dreams or, better yet, Mutual Infatuation. The book would be a fascinating read, his love life especially salacious—an inspiration to the lonely-hearted everywhere. The Extraordinary Life of Henry Powell. A New York Times bestseller. His mother’s voice rings in his ears. Happy happy happy, she used to say—sing, really—when he was little and they would pour themselves into the car on the way home from the Hot Dogger, stomachs bloated. The three words one by one climbing the musical register. And it would perfectly capture the moment. He had thought it so wonderful that his mother felt the exact same way he did at the exact same time. Later on when Henry was older she would say it under her breath before taking a sip of the highball that was always within reach. Happy happy happy, lips in motion up until the rim of the glass, the sip turning into more of a gulp as his father stalked out of the kitchen, the end of a mysterious conversation always trailing off before Henry entered.
The voice ping-ponging through his head now, though, was that earlier, younger voice—the one that smelled of ketchup and mustard, of summer nights, paper-thin pajamas worn while it’s still light out, Evel Knievel stunts and cowboy vests with brown plastic fringe hoping to be taken for leather. That is the happy happy happy Henry is feeling.
It occurs to him that he might enjoy a new shirt. You can never really have too many shirts, he tells himself as he sets out across the store. The new rugby shirts look appealing to him at first but he reconsiders when he imagines Cathy dressed in a skirt. Better to go with a buttondown, he thinks. The new polo shirts are the obvious choice but he scans the rest of the rack just in case something has slipped his mind. No. He returns to the sherbet-date colors and chooses a blue, thinking the rest too effeminate.
Eventually the shirt, tried on and paid for using his thirty-percent employee discount, is stowed in his locker and the sign is turned from Closed to Open a few minutes before Mr. Beardsley arrives. The biographer’s pencil furiously taking it all down. Words like diligent, trustworthy and dependable are scattered throughout.
The first customer of the day is the unfortunately named Mrs. Waddleton, who has met Henry numerous times over the years—Henry tutored her son at Fox Run—but has managed to remain ignorant of his name.
“He’s about that size,” the woman says to Mr. Beardsley, pointing at Henry. “What size would he wear?”
“Henry? Could you come over here for a moment, please?” Mr. Beardsley’s voice had a lilting quality to it in the way that all voices-for-show do.
Henry puts down a box of undershirts in between the pant racks and the formal-wear display.
“Hi, Mrs. Waddleton,” Henry says.
But she looks genuinely confused that this stranger should know her name.
“What size shirt do you wear?” the lady asks him. But she doesn’t wait for an answer. Her words are directed at Mr. Beardsley. “See that gap between his neck and the shirt? That’s what I’m trying to avoid. Should I just go with a size smaller than what I would normally buy him and he can come back and exchange it if it still isn’t right, or should I just get the same size as this one wears?”
“Thank you, Henry, we can take it from here,” Mr. Beardsley says.
“Do we know what size he wears, though?” the lady asks, reluctant to dismiss him.
“Now that I know your Patrick is roughly the same measurements as our Henry I can find him something,” Mr. Beardsley says.
“Good,” she says.
Henry retrieves the box he’d been carrying to the back room. He imagines Cathy Nicholas sleeping in an XL, so large on her it nearly reaches her knees. The image lingers and becomes slightly pornographic as the undershirt size gets smaller.
A few minutes pass, or maybe more, when he is interrupted by Mr. Beardsley, “Henry, your friend is asking for you.”
Henry hurries out to the floor to greet his friend Joey Young, the manager of the movie theater, wanting to find something warmer to wear at work as it is air-conditioning season. Joey lives two units down from Henry and spends much of his free time washing his black Camaro in the apartment complex parking lot, weather permitting.
“Hey, by the way,” Henry says. “I’ll be seeing you this weekend I think.”
“Oh, yeah?” Joey’s tan is the rough and leathery kind acquired after years of summers spent in a lawn chair ogling young girls at the town beach.
“Think so,” Henry says, trying to appear casual. “You think it’ll be busy? Should we get there early?”
Henry knew he would try out the “we” but was unprepared for the rush of internal excitement it would generate.
“You might want to allow a little time,” Joey says. “It just opened and all. Did gangbusters last weekend. Is this a hundred-percent cotton? You think it’s going to shrink?” he asks hope fully. In addition to his reverence for the sun, the theater manager has a penchant for wearing his shirts tight, the better to show off his pecs.
Henry remembers this and hands him the medium. “I think it’s preshrunk, so try this one just to see.”
“Preshrunk? They’re washing things before you even buy them now?”
“Wave of the future, man,” Henry says. “Ned says they’re doing it with jeans now.”
Henry would never call Mr. Beardsley “Ned” to his face but does so behind his back with customers close to Henry’s own age so as not to look like a brown noser.
“Huh,” Joey says. He emerges from the changing room dressed in the clothes he came in, handing the medium to Henry. “I’ll take it. You want me to hold a couple of tickets aside for you this weekend? What night are you guys coming?”
“Friday.”
“I can hold a couple for you. We’re not supposed to do it but since I know you…”
“Yeah, thanks. Thanks. You paying cash or do you want to put it on your store credit?”
The biographer takes note of Henry’s attention to detail. A chapter certainly.
Chapter six
“Mr. Murray? How are you, sir?” Henry is startled by the fragility of the old man’s bony hand. “It’s Henry. Henry Powell.”
Like a windshield defrosting—fog dissipating from the glass—the eyes become clear with recognition.
“Oh, my goodness,” he says, squeezing Henry’s hand. “Oh, my. Henry Powell, of course.”
Is it a wince that crosses ever so slightly across Mr. Murray’s eyes? Henry cannot be s
ure. Gently he withdraws his hand and allows himself to be studied.
John Murray looks away at first, visibly bracing himself for the grief to flood in intravenously as it does without fail every time he sees an old friend of Jimmy’s. A friend who does not scurry across the street, head bowed not in deference to the stricken father, but more in the hopes that old Murray won’t recognize them. They tell themselves he wouldn’t want to be reminded—maybe he’d managed to push aside the memory of his son, forever fourteen. Besides, how does one begin mindless conversation with someone who has been shattered to bits? Easier to duck and run, they think. But here, here is Henry Powell. Tall, good posture. Polite. This is what Jimmy would look like today, Henry can tell Mr. Murray is doing the math. Figuring out how old his Jimmy would be. Now of course he would go by Jim, anxious to be taken seriously. Murray’s old eyes study Henry. Would Jimmy have the same hint of crow’s feet, the same gravitational shifting of weight and mass to the middle of his body?
Henry thinks: this is mature of me. This is right of me. He regrets that he has, in the past, been one to duck and run.
At first it was easy for Henry to position himself in the middle of the pack of bedraggled tenth-graders, steaming, stumbling off the field to the showers. Mr. and Mrs. Murray were good to keep going to the games. They stood off to the side, away from the huddle of regular parents who weren’t sure what to say, weren’t sure what they would call out or if they even should call out to the couple. Every parent’s worst nightmare, someone mumbled. Such a horrible tragedy, someone else said, by way of agreement. Still, no one called them over.
Tragedy had attached itself to the Murrays like barnacles to a forgotten boat. First it was Laura, the eldest child, who spent an inordinate amount of time in the intensive care unit of Good Shepherd Hospital. They said she almost died. They said she did die, she saw a white light and everything. Henry heard his mother whisper into the phone that she had always said not all feminine products were to be used by young people. Her tone accusatory, Henry thought, and mean. The illness a syndrome. Toxic shock, they whispered, for it was the sort of disease one never spoke about out loud. Not in good company. The casseroles were still rotating in and out of the Murray house when they got the word from the doctors: brain damage. Too long with too little oxygen. Laura Murray would never be the same.