The Irresistible Henry House Part 13

"Who does 784 think she is?"

"I hear 420's got a new beau."

They were, for the most part, women in waiting: waiting for better jobs or better men or better clothes or better figures or better options. Most of the women Betty met there in her first few months in New York were working as salesgirls in department stores, or waitresses, or models. Most of them were younger than she: in their early twenties, just starting out. But Betty's age did not confer status in the Barbizon Hotel. On the contrary, some of the most vicious gossip was reserved for the older women-women in their thirties and forties-who glided through the lobby and restaurants like a ghostly Greek chorus: a future menacing any woman who didn't find a man.

In the evenings, some of the women who were dateless would gather in the lounge in front of the communal television set and watch the variety shows-Bob Hope, Ed Sullivan, Martha Raye-with their array of visiting stars: Janis Paige, Ezio Pinza, Marlon Brando, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. From time to time, cl.u.s.ters of girls would start conversations, then be shushed by the others. The proper postures, trim clothing, and tidy language of daytime all went by the boards, and the women lounged and slouched and cursed and chewed gum.

Betty saw all this peripherally. Three months into her trial period at Time, Time, she was no more sure than she'd been at the start that she'd end up being hired. So she was the first one at the clip desk in the morning and the last one there at night. She worked harder than she had ever worked-either as a homemaker in Australia or as a student in college or high school. she was no more sure than she'd been at the start that she'd end up being hired. So she was the first one at the clip desk in the morning and the last one there at night. She worked harder than she had ever worked-either as a homemaker in Australia or as a student in college or high school.

In the first few weeks, Betty had lived for the two gin and tonics that she had at the end of every day. By the fourth week, her loneliness honing her needs and dreams, she permitted herself only one. By the fifth week, before she let herself have even one sip, Betty would write down on a c.o.c.ktail napkin the fifty states and their capitals, or the names of the NATO countries, or the members of Eisenhower's cabinet. Only after that-and only if she had remembered them all correctly-would she permit herself to have the drink, and mentally toast the little boy she was planning to rescue and reclaim.

Sometimes, coming home late from the office, she would pa.s.s the television room and see the silhouetted forms of girls who had fallen asleep in their chairs by the irrelevant light and noise of whatever late movie was playing, and she would shudder. Back in her room, she would bathe or shower, then wrap her flannel robe around her, set her alarm clock, turn off her lamp, and say good night to the photo of Henry. A lovely new frame for it, bought on Bendel's main floor, had been her only indulgence. Made of real red mahogany, it sat on her pale dresser in her pale Barbizon room like a tiny, personal hearth.

10.

How Could I Not Like You Anymore?

By the spring of 1956, to his fourth-grade teachers, Henry Gaines had started to seem increasingly dull. Whereas once his hand had shot up in response to any question-whether or not he knew the answer, in fact-now he merely stared back, impa.s.sive. By midyear, to most of his cla.s.smates, Henry had become, to use their various terms, a goof, a nerd, a spaz, a freak.

Only in math cla.s.s-when the students were routinely asked to come up to the blackboard in order to show, rather than recite, their work-did Henry reveal any willingness to partic.i.p.ate. In front of the cla.s.s, he would wield the white chalk like a conductor's baton, and he would usually write out the solution to the problem in numbers that were every bit as grand and confident as his personality now seemed small and hidden. Sometimes-especially when Mr. Gilder wasn't looking-Henry would step aside when he was done and wave his arm with a surprising flourish. And once, when Mr. Gilder left the room, Henry drew a comic-book lightning bolt, like the kind hurled by the Flash, and the lightning bolt, pointed at Mr. Gilder's desk, was trailed by whoos.h.i.+ng lines of speed.

The buzz in the cla.s.sroom blended awe with nervous worry. But just as Mr. Gilder's shadow appeared behind the mottled gla.s.s in the door's window panel, Henry used his entire right arm to erase what he had drawn, and then, returning to his seat, he used his left hand to wipe his sleeve.

It was a dazzling performance, by far the most appreciated by Mary Jane, sitting in the third row from the back. She was as careful-and clandestine-in watching Henry's artistry as he usually was in watching her.

Though they rarely talked now, she seemed to know-without his having to tell her, without, perhaps, his knowing himself-that what had changed was inside him and had nothing to do with her.

DURING RECESS, HENRY READ borrowed comic books: The Flash, Superman, The Phantom. The Flash, Superman, The Phantom. Martha told him that studies showed they would poison his mind. In April, he traded his lunch so that he could own one of the books himself, and he brought it home concealed in his loose-leaf binder. Then he carried his illicit prize upstairs and shut his bedroom door. Martha told him that studies showed they would poison his mind. In April, he traded his lunch so that he could own one of the books himself, and he brought it home concealed in his loose-leaf binder. Then he carried his illicit prize upstairs and shut his bedroom door.

Martha's appearance was entirely predictable. She could locate his private moments the way the Flash could find a criminal.

"Hanky?" she called. "Henry? Are you all right?"

Not waiting for an answer, she simply opened the door. There were no locks or latches on any of the doors in the practice house anymore. Years before, Martha had told Henry, he and some baby named Hazel had been locked inside by accident, and Martha had made certain that nothing like that could ever happen again.

Henry did not answer, even with Martha now standing behind him. She was a liar; it was a thought that was a reflex by now. He didn't have to answer her.

"Henry? Hanky! Why did you close this door?"

Henry did not look up from his desk until Martha had said his name two or three more times.

"Why can't I close my door?" he asked her.

"Why do you want to close your door?"

He stared at her hard. "Because I want to," he said.

He saw the redness begin in the tip of her nose, then spread to her cheeks. She pawed nervously at her silk scarf, and in the next moment he was overcome not by sympathy but by an inchoate instinct to forestall the confrontation he sensed he was not yet ready to have.

"Homework" was all he said.

She smiled, at first doubtfully, then with evident relief.

"Oh, Hanky," she said. "I was starting to think you didn't like me anymore."

"Oh, Emem," he said, though of course he knew the answer. "How could I not like you anymore?"

Tears fell down her flushed cheeks and into a pool of entirely unwarranted relief.

THOUGH MARTHA NOW usually knocked before she opened Henry's bedroom door, he took to reading his comic books in the closet anyway. It gave him a sense of added protection. But he did not simply read there. Rather, using a step stool as an easel and an overturned shoe rack as a desk, he would snap open the bra.s.s clasps on the art set that Betty had given him, and he would bask in the different rainbows, then carefully withdraw pencils, paints, or pastels. He would spend whatever time he could practicing his drawing by copying the pages of the comic books. Day by day, he drew with increasing confidence, mimicking perfectly the lines, shapes, and shadings, the tricks of crosshatched crescents for muscles, white swaths and ribbons for speed and light.

One spring day, by accident, Henry lost his balance somehow and toppled forward slightly, green Cray-Pas in hand, leaving a two-inch mark on the closet's baseboard that he decided not to clean.

The next day, quite intentionally, he retrieved the green Cray-Pas and drew another mark beside the first one, then another, and then another.

By the end of the evening, Henry had laid aside his copy of The Flash The Flash and had filled most of the bottom of one closet wall with a lovely, bucolic field of gra.s.s. In this field, there were blades of gra.s.s made with Cray-Pas, others with colored pencils, and others with paint. There was not a green in the entire art box that Henry didn't use, and the field that grew in his closet was, as a result, one of almost infinite depth and surprising realism. It was, Henry imagined, a place of deep colors, vast distances, and great possibilities. One day you might be swinging for the fences or digging for worms there, and the next you might be lying under an open sky, having a picnic with a mother who had always been your mother, and a father who wore a cardigan sweater and whose eyes were always twinkling with magic and mirth. and had filled most of the bottom of one closet wall with a lovely, bucolic field of gra.s.s. In this field, there were blades of gra.s.s made with Cray-Pas, others with colored pencils, and others with paint. There was not a green in the entire art box that Henry didn't use, and the field that grew in his closet was, as a result, one of almost infinite depth and surprising realism. It was, Henry imagined, a place of deep colors, vast distances, and great possibilities. One day you might be swinging for the fences or digging for worms there, and the next you might be lying under an open sky, having a picnic with a mother who had always been your mother, and a father who wore a cardigan sweater and whose eyes were always twinkling with magic and mirth.

11.

Silence

Whenever the doctors asked, it was difficult for Martha to pinpoint the exact month, let alone the exact day, when Henry had stopped speaking completely. Martha knew, because the school told her, that at the beginning of fifth grade he had still been talking occasionally to his cla.s.smates. But gradually a gray curtain seemed to descend on every side of him. In his increasing silence, he appeared to be frozen, like a character on a lunch box: something that was meant to be animated but no longer was.

Dr. Gardner still made seasonal visits to the practice house, always on academic pretexts and always with overtures to Henry that were simply too formal and stiff to be returned. Henry's silence appeared therefore to be part of a long-standing reticence. But Dr. Gardner did seem to notice that it was more intense than usual, and while he viewed Henry with increasing frustration, he looked on Martha with increasing doubt.

Martha, on her swift trip from embarra.s.sment to fury, never seemed to pa.s.s through concern for Henry's well-being. She seemed to think his muteness was entirely within his control, merely a bit of pre-teenage rebellion he had cooked up in order to upset her or to make her look bad.

"Do you want want them to take you away from me?" she asked Henry repeatedly. Ironically, it was the only question that tempted him to speak. them to take you away from me?" she asked Henry repeatedly. Ironically, it was the only question that tempted him to speak.

IN THE EVENINGS, especially when Martha was busy downstairs with the practice mothers and the newest baby, Henry would sit on the floor of his closet, painting or drawing on the walls. He blended copies of different superheroes into one of his own, whom he called the Ray. The Ray had no earthly ties. Like Henry, he had been born in 1946, but on a distant, dying star. He had come to earth in the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p that had crashed at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

Like Superman, the Ray could fly and had enormous strength, but whereas Superman could only see through objects, the Ray could see through minds. He knew exactly what people were thinking and exactly what people had done. With this power to detect truth and falsehood, the Ray could isolate crimes of all kinds: even those that had not yet been committed.

Temporarily sweeping aside the long pairs of pants that formed a curtain over his canvas, Henry would use the colored pencils in his art box to draw picture after picture of the Ray on the side closet wall. Softening somewhat the angles and curves of the Flash's muscles and the shape of his face, Henry drew a superhero who had eyes like tunnels-deep and dark-with wavy lines of power emanating from their depths.

Henry drew the Ray flying like Superman, the beams of his special vision creating a swath of red light that illuminated the sinister city beneath him. Within that swath, he drew people engaged in terrible activities of all kinds: robbers holding up stores and gangsters shooting off guns and someone stuffing someone into a refrigerator.

Sometimes, Henry drew pictures of the Ray handing criminals over to the police, and sometimes he drew pictures of men and women looking afraid of the Ray, as if their crimes and lies would cost them a terrible price.

ONE DAY IN RECESS there was a cl.u.s.ter of fourth-and fifth-graders around Willard Estes, who was showing off a yellow-brown piece of paper with ornate writing on it that said DEED OF LAND. The deed, under the name of the Klondike Big Inch Land Company, had been offered on Sergeant Preston Sergeant Preston and was an official doc.u.ment stating that Willard was now the duly registered owner of a one-inch tract of land in the Yukon. and was an official doc.u.ment stating that Willard was now the duly registered owner of a one-inch tract of land in the Yukon.

In Henry's mind, dreams of escape now mingled, and one form of exit did not contradict another. On one wall of the closet were his fantasies of power and effortless flight: the Ray, soaring over the dark city, seeking out evil intentions and lies. On the second wall was his original verdant field-now with a patch of Yukon land in the distance, glimmering like the image of a well in the desert. Another six months later, there was a third form of exit, namely the automobile. With intense precision, Henry had copied the latest model Lincoln from the pages of Life: Life: its flamboyant green gleaming hubcaps like armored knees; its headlights nearly as wise and searching as the eyes of the Ray. its flamboyant green gleaming hubcaps like armored knees; its headlights nearly as wise and searching as the eyes of the Ray.

The ad said: Why be tied down to yesterday? The one fine car designed for modern living. Powered to leave the past far behind.

AT SCHOOL, MARY JANE WAS the only one who talked to him now. All the others were tired of his not talking back.

"I know you can't help it, Henry," she said. "This is just who you have to be right now."

He nodded.

"But they don't understand you," she said.

He nodded.

"They don't understand anything."

He nodded.

"They could have turned out worse."

She had meant it as a compliment, and he understood that. Mary Jane at ten still wore her confidence the way she always had: frankly, beautifully. Her confidence was the first thing-after her eye patch-that everyone noticed about her. It was as if the fact that she'd lost an eye ent.i.tled her to be more outspoken about what she could still see.

For his part, Henry knew that if he had absolutely had to talk-if, for example, his father suddenly appeared and asked him if he wanted to go have a catch-he could have talked. But there was nothing in his current life-not even Mary Jane's niceness or the other children's indifference-that made him feel he had to speak. And, quite to the contrary, his muteness gave him protection from Martha, a zone around him-like Superman's Fortress of Solitude. Little by little, Martha's questions decreased in number and intensity, as if she were some tentacled beast who'd been forced to retract and retreat. Henry's silence gave him a refuge, an excuse not to partic.i.p.ate, but it was also a weapon for keeping Martha at bay. Occasionally, he would remember that his silence was a lie, and he might even start to feel guilty. But then Martha would speak with fondness about some aspect of his infancy, some wonderful moment they'd supposedly had, and he would remember all over again the lies she had told him.

From time to time, she would take him to see a new doctor, and after they left she would start to weep and to lecture Henry about how, if he didn't start speaking, the school would kick him out. Seeing Martha finger the edges of her scarf or twist a handkerchief in her hand, Henry was starting to think of that expulsion as a sublime promise.

Part 3 - Great Escapes

1.

Mentally Defective.

The Humphrey School had been established in the western part of Connecticut in 1858 for the purpose of housing-and, if possible, educating-boys and girls with problems ranging from mild tics and chronic inattentiveness to blindness and cerebral palsy.

The school's original name-as the current crop of students chose to remind each other whenever humanly possible-had been the Custodial Asylum for Unteachable Idiots. In the early part of the twentieth century, that had been changed to the Humphrey Asylum for the Feeble-Minded, and then, in the enlightened 1930s, to the Humphrey School for Mental Defectives.

By September of 1960, it was usually just called Humphrey. That was when Henry House-registered as Henry Gaines, fourteen years old, functionally mute-arrived for his freshman year, despite the panicked objections of Martha but on the insistence of Dr. Gardner and the advice of the public school. As far as anyone knew, Henry hadn't spoken a word since some time during the fifth grade. He was by now nearly six feet tall, skinny, stretched out, and, despite the season, already winter pale. His hair had grown somewhat darker, and its sharp contrast to his very light skin made it look as if he'd been sketched in ink but not yet colored in. He still wore khaki pants and still kept his hands tucked away in his pockets. He still had the kind of eyes that, even in silence-perhaps especially in silence-invited attention and evoked confidences.

THE SCHOOL HAD HIM EXAMINED by the campus doctor, who, like all the doctors back home, probed his throat, neck, and ears, and then said: "So you don't talk, eh?" as if that simple question-or perhaps the tone with which it was asked-would magically unlock the strongbox that had been holding his voice.

The headshrinkers had him do puzzles, matching words to pictures, matching blocks to shapes, matching definitions to words. They had him do computations, solve equations, and fill in missing numbers in murky, capricious sequences. All of the testers concluded that Henry was highly intelligent and that his muteness was in no way a physical symptom. Like the vast majority of students at Humphrey, Henry was, in the words of the final examiner, "either socially maladjusted or emotionally disturbed."

But he was free-if not from Martha's expectations, then at least from her ever-oppressive, ever-invasive presence. While most of the two hundred students at Humphrey arrived scared, lonely, or outright hostile, Henry coasted in on a giddy tide of liberation. While most of the others would ask, repeatedly, how long it would be before they could return home, Henry, in his silence, began immediately to calculate the number of days, weeks, months, and years that he might be able to stay. From his earliest days on the campus, he understood two things. The first was that if he ever started to speak again, he would automatically risk being deemed healthy and sent back to Martha. The second was that, until he found someplace better, he was not going to say a word.

THE HUMPHREY CAMPUS, spread over two hundred acres, had once been a working farm. The barn buildings remained, flanking the entrance on the top of a quad and housing a small gym, an art studio, an auditorium, and a dining hall. On the opposite side of the rectangle were the administration and cla.s.sroom buildings, infirmary and rehabilitation center. The residential dorms ran along the connecting sides: boys' dorms on one end, girls' on the other.

Henry was a.s.signed to Matthews, the freshman boys' dorm, which held three rooms of eight thirteen-and fourteen-year-olds, as well as a downstairs suite for the dorm parents. Henry's seven roommates were a varied lot. Three had flunked out of their schools; one was a juvenile delinquent who had been arrested three times; one was a spastic who needed help dressing and doing most things; one had had polio and was still partially paralyzed; and the last one seemed fairly normal but wispily thin in a frightening, sickish way.

It would take weeks before Henry could learn and keep straight the names and disabilities of the students in the other rooms-let alone in the other cla.s.ses and dorms. But it was only a few days before Dave Epifano apparently stole the spastic boy's Parker pen; before Marc Forman and Bryan Enquist were sent to the dean's office for systematically cutting the tips off all their cla.s.smates' shoelaces; before it was apparent that Stu Stewart, the skinny one, never seemed to eat at all; and before Ben Terry, the polio victim, made it abundantly clear by night that neither his left hand nor its favorite instrument had been in the least bit affected by his illness.

At all this, Henry experienced a sort of bubbling elation. After eight years of public school, he was certainly used to being surrounded by boys with competing egos and quirks-even used to encountering, as he did in his cla.s.ses, girls with differing expectations and levels of tolerance. What was new-and somewhat thrilling-was the sense that his own problems barely made an impression on anyone else. In a world where theft, indolence, shaking, paralysis, and chronic masturbation were the norm, how was a little muteness going to get in anyone's way?

"Hey, Gaines," Ben Terry said late one night that first week, when he sensed that Henry was still awake and listening in the darkness.

Henry flicked on his flashlight and looked at Ben expectantly.

Ben grinned at him nastily, pitching a wad of used tissue into the wastebasket nearby. "Hey, Gaines. Sometimes I do it five times a day. Even if you could talk, you wouldn't tell anyone, would you?"

THE PLACE WAS BEAUTIFUL. The trees on the hills in the distance were just beginning to change color, their fluffy shapes outlined vaguely in brown, as if they had somehow been dipped in tea. Fallen leaves paved the campus paths, a different-colored carpet to discover every morning, every afternoon. Martha's protectiveness had always made the Wilton campus a forbidden country for Henry. But Humphrey was immediately his to master: his in a way that no other place-except perhaps the green field in his bedroom closet-had yet been. Just having breakfast in the dining hall, then walking to a cla.s.s, knowing that there was no one to avoid or to dread, was wonderful.

Henry was making exactly that trip when he first saw Charles Falk. At least six feet three, he stood in a noticeable slump, as if his body had permanently accommodated itself to the task of bending down to hear what his students were saying. His hair-wiry and black, like a Scottish terrier's-was long enough to seem like a matter of choice and not of neglect. His face-sallow but kind-reminded Henry of the scarecrow's in The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz.

When Henry first saw him, Mr. Falk had stopped on one of the paths to the dining hall, and a woman with an orange jacket and a long brown braid was balancing against him, emptying gravel from her shoe while she stood on one foot, laughing. It was September, but the light was still summer light, and Henry paused where he was walking, without really knowing he had, just staring at the way the couple's bodies leaned into each other, like trees that have grown side by side. All Henry could feel at that moment was longing, though whether it was for the woman, or simply for the chance to be part of something that intimate, was not clear even to him.

Conscious of Henry's glance, Mr. Falk looked back over the woman's brown head, slumping and smiling in such a friendly way that Henry had to turn around to see if there was someone behind him, and then he looked back, embarra.s.sed.

A WEEK LATER, when the school's elective courses began, Henry discovered that Mr. Falk was going to be his art teacher.

"I'm not going to ask you to tell me why you don't talk," he said to Henry the first day. "I'm guessing everyone always asks you questions, and it must bug you like crazy."

Henry smiled, his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with surprise and grat.i.tude.

"I will will ask you to tell me," Mr. Falk added. "But I'm going to ask you to draw the answer for me." ask you to tell me," Mr. Falk added. "But I'm going to ask you to draw the answer for me."

Henry hesitated. Mr. Falk handed him a set of charcoals and a thick, novel-size sketch pad.

"But not today," Mr. Falk added. "Today, we do lines and shading."

Mr. Falk turned toward the full cla.s.s. "All right, everyone," he said gleefully. "Gather 'round and listen. Let me explain to you the laws of my cla.s.sroom. They are few but they are essential, and woe to anyone who ignores them."

IT TURNED OUT THAT THE WOMAN with the long braid was Mr. Falk's wife, Karen. They had been married just the year before, and they did things in public-or at least on the paths of the campus-that were considered rather shocking in 1960. They held hands, sometimes kissed, referred to each other by first name, and insisted that the students do so, too-at least when no other teachers were around.