The Irresistible Henry House Part 7

All morning long, Henry slept and woke, hearing the sounds of the mothers downstairs as they fussed over the baby and opened their presents for her, then giggled and said their goodbyes. Finally, he heard whispering on the stairs and wanted to go and look, but he knew that Martha would be angry with him for getting out of bed. He dozed again. When he woke, Martha was standing at the foot of his bed, s.h.i.+elding a large object with her body.

"What is it?" he asked her groggily. "Is it my Christmas present?"

"Ta-da!" she said, and stepped aside to reveal a brand-new TV set.

IT WAS THEIR BEST TIME TOGETHER, and years later-even after he couldn't forgive her for so much else-Henry would be grateful to Martha for this. All afternoon, they sat side by side on her bed, and every few minutes, she would pop up to change the channels, as magically as if she were changing the view outside the window. They saw a cooking show called Stop, Look and Cook, Stop, Look and Cook, and part of an opera called and part of an opera called Hansel and Gretel, Hansel and Gretel, and at three they saw something called and at three they saw something called Uncle Miltie's Christmas Party, Uncle Miltie's Christmas Party, with a strange, exuberant man named Milton Berle, who at one point wore a dress. Then, at four o'clock, they stopped changing channels, because they found a show called with a strange, exuberant man named Milton Berle, who at one point wore a dress. Then, at four o'clock, they stopped changing channels, because they found a show called One Hour in Wonderland. One Hour in Wonderland.

Henry didn't understand the significance of it then, but the Wonderland show was actually Walt Disney's first television program, a prototype of the series that would captivate American audiences throughout the decade-and that Henry would watch, almost without fail, every week for his whole early life.

This afternoon-Christmas afternoon, 1950-was the afternoon he met Walt Disney, a man with the twinkliest eyes Henry had ever seen, a kind voice, a trim mustache, and hair that formed a peak above his eyes, making his forehead look just like Mickey Mouse's. During this show, Mr. Disney was hosting a party for the stars of his movies, and one of the guests was the puppet Charlie McCarthy, who was even funnier on TV than he was on the radio. At one point, Mr. Disney said the words "Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo," and magic happened inside a special mirror, and a man with a slightly scary face appeared and granted Mr. Disney's wish to see special things.

Henry had heard about cartoons from Leo, and of course he had seen drawings and pictures of some of the characters. At the nursery school, Mrs. Donovan even served Donald Duck orange juice. But to see these characters do what they could do was amazing: how when they ran, their legs sometimes spun around like wheels; how when they reached for things, their arms sometimes grew longer. For an hour, Henry giggled and Martha fingered the gold pin at her neck and said, "Oh, my, that's funny, isn't it?" But as much as he loved the creations-Mickey and Pluto and Donald and Alice and the Seven Dwarfs with their silly song-it was Mr. Disney, the creator, with his sparkly eyes and the kind way he seemed to listen to everyone, who stayed with Henry longest. Forever, in fact.

THREE DAYS LATER, when Henry had not had a fever for a whole day and was barely coughing anymore, he woke from a nap in the early afternoon and called for Martha but got no response. Henry hesitated, then pulled back the covers and climbed from the cozy confines of her bed.

"Emem?" he called, first from the top of the stairs, then from midway down, then again at the base of the stairs. There was no answer. "Vera?" he called next, because Martha had told him to call for Vera if he needed anything.

There was silence from downstairs, except for what sounded like the baby, babbling.

The wood floor on the stairs was cold under Henry's bare feet, and he knew Martha would want him to wear his slippers, but he didn't like the silence.

When he walked into the nursery, he saw Vera leaning over the crib, wrapping a blanket around Hazy, who kept kicking it off.

"Come, now, Hazel," Henry heard Vera saying. "Why won't you take your nap?"

"Why isn't Hazy sleeping?" Henry asked from the doorway.

Startled, Vera turned and looked scared. "What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Want to play Go Fish with me?" Henry said.

"You can't be here," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because you might get the baby sick. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

"I woke up," Henry said. "Will you take me back upstairs?"

"I have to put the baby to bed."

"She's in bed," Henry said, then watched Vera smile at his logic. He looked at the floor, then back at her. "Vera," he said sweetly. "I'm scared to go upstairs by myself."

She turned completely around from the crib then, letting the blanket drop onto the baby's hands.

"You know, sometimes," Henry said, "a kid needs a little help."

HENRY WAS SETTLING BACK INTO BED, and Vera had just dealt them each seven cards for Go Fish, when she noticed the flush on his cheeks. First there was just a little pinkness, across the tops, where his freckles were. Then, after what seemed like only seconds, the color moved down his face, like the deepening of a sunset, and he s.h.i.+vered, noticeably.

The cards they were playing with were shaped like fish and had colors, instead of numbers, on them.

"Any reds?" Henry asked, and Vera realized that it was the second time he had said it.

"Do you feel all right?" she asked him.

He said: "I feel okay. Do you have any reds?"

Vera shook her head. "Go fish," she said.

Henry reached down to the pile of fish fanned out on his bedspread, but when he did so, Vera could see that his hand was shaking.

She put her hand on his forehead, which was smooth and hot as a rock in the sun.

Vera put her cards down and stood up, and at the exact same moment, Hazel started to cry downstairs.

"d.a.m.n," Vera said.

"d.a.m.n," Henry said.

"You didn't hear me say that," she told Henry.

"Say 'd.a.m.n'?"

"Right."

"d.a.m.n."

"I don't suppose you know where your thermometer is?"

Henry shrugged. "Do you have any reds?" he asked.

He coughed then-one deep, long, alarming bronchial bray. When he was finished, his eyes had filled with tears. Meanwhile, Hazel's protests from downstairs had turned into a full-throated yell.

"I have to go see to her," Vera said. "Are you going to be okay?" she asked.

He nodded and was about to speak, but then he started to cough again.

"No. You'd better come back downstairs with me," Vera said.

"I can make Hazy laugh," Henry said, on the stairs, when he'd stopped coughing.

"No, you can't be with Hazy," Vera said, and she was startled to find Henry's warm, dry hand reaching out for hers. "But I bet you can make most people laugh," she said.

"Yes," Henry said. "It's not so hard."

THE AFTERNOON LENGTHENED, along with its shadows. Winter blew in under the doors and windows, cold as the bare trees that bowed outside.

Just beyond the door of the nursery, Henry sat in the rocking chair, uncomfortable with the spindles of the chair back behind his head. In one hand, he still held the Go Fish cards he had been dealt upstairs, and his fingers closed tightly around the narrow parts of the fish tails while he watched Vera bouncing Hazel around the room.

"Where in heaven and earth is Mrs. Gaines?" Vera asked.

"Probably earth," Henry said, curling his feet up beneath him and scrunching over so that the side of his face lay against the cool arm of the chair.

Vera laughed. "Let's hope so," she said. But now her face wasn't smiling. "What time is it?" she asked.

"I don't know how to tell time," Henry said.

"I know you don't know how to tell time," Vera said.

She carried Hazy past him to the kitchen, and Henry could hear her open the back door, and he could feel a blast of even colder air. Then Vera closed the door and said "d.a.m.n" again.

"Do you have any idea where she went?" Vera asked Henry.

"She went to get me Silly Putty," he said.

"Silly what?"

"Silly Putty," Henry said. "You can bend it and bounce it and you can use it to copy pictures."

"This is a toy or something?" Vera said.

Henry nodded, a little confused by Vera's confusion. Everyone he knew understood what Silly Putty was. Leo had some. The older brother of one of the babies at the nursery school had some.

"Do you really think she went to get you Silly Putty?" Vera asked.

Henry coughed again and nodded. "Do you want to play with it when I get it?" he asked.

Polio, Vera knew from her health cla.s.s, could sometimes start with what seemed to be a simple cold or grippe. She'd learned, but now for the life of her couldn't remember, how to tell what the differences were.

Vera dialed the doctor's number, but his nurse said that he was out on house calls. He would certainly call in at some point, but she didn't know when. With rising panic, Vera put Hazel in the crib and, breaking one of Mrs. Gaines's cardinal rules, did not correct the baby when she put her thumb in her mouth.

This time Henry followed Vera into the kitchen, where she looked out the back door again, then picked up the telephone and dialed the zero and then asked for another number.

"h.e.l.lo," she said. "I'm wondering if you can help me. Do you know Martha Gaines from the Wilton campus? Yes, the practice house, that's right. I'm wondering if you can tell me whether you've seen her today. Yes, has she been in the store? In the last hour or two? No? Would you have seen her? Yes, all right. Thanks very much. No, it's just that I haven't seen her for some time, and it's getting late."

Vera hung up, looking frantic.

Henry followed her back to the nursery.

"Maybe the grocery store?" Henry heard Vera ask, but by now he knew that she wasn't talking to him. He settled again into the rocking chair, his head back on its arm.

"Vera, I'm cold," he said, and she covered him with an extra blanket from the baby's drawer.

"I'm just going to check one more time, to see if Mrs. Gaines is coming," Vera told Henry.

He was watching Hazy in her crib when Vera left the room, and he was still in that position when he heard the wind slam the back door shut behind her.

MARTHA, MEANWHILE, was at neither the toy store nor the grocery store, but on her way back from the hardware store, where Arthur Hamilton had been recommending she buy an inhaler for Henry. She was halfway down Main Street, two blocks from the practice house, when she saw Vera running up the street in her direction. Vera was running, cold and coatless, with her arms crossed over her chest, the way shy girls did in gym cla.s.s. Tiny white puffs of icy air formed in front of her open mouth.

"Vera!" Martha called.

"The key!" Vera called back.

"What? What are you doing here? Where's Henry? Where's the baby?" Martha shouted. A Pontiac sped by on the street in between them. Martha began to move faster than she had in years.

"They're in the house! I got locked out! I think Henry's got a fever! Do you have the key?"

By now, Martha was charging past Vera, her purse swinging back and forth on her wrist like a huge bell clapper.

A sense of panic-and a flurry of dead brown leaves-flew down the street behind them.

HENRY AND HAZEL HAD BEEN ALONE for only fifteen minutes, but word spread quickly that the practice house had been the scene of some sort of accident. In fact, there had been no damage.

With Vera first knocking, then pounding, on the back door, Henry had gone to the kitchen and found her face pressed against the gla.s.s. She had directed him to open the door, but he had simply not been able to do so; his hands, slick from the Vicks that he had somehow picked up from his own chest, had been too slippery to grasp the k.n.o.b. Then he heard Hazy start to bawl, and despite Vera's protests, he turned to walk back to the nursery.

Hazy's face was bright red, her hair all matted and flouncy.

"Hazy," Henry said, but Hazy kept on crying. "Hazy," Henry said. "Be quiet, baby."

Finally, Vera stopped pounding on the door, and there was quiet. Through the slats of Hazy's crib, Henry eyed the baby, and she quieted down slightly. He was aware suddenly of the darkness in the hallway beyond the nursery.

Then he dragged over the rocking chair-a laborious process, especially because the gliders kept catching on the Oriental rug. In a moment, he had climbed up on its arm and, with surprisingly little hesitation, vaulted over the rail and into Hazy's crib.

THE PHONE RANG a good deal that evening. What Martha said varied little. Henry was fine. The baby was fine. Nothing had happened. Vera had been locked out for a few moments, that was all. No, of course Henry hadn't harmed the baby. In fact, Martha kept saying proudly, Henry had tried to calm her down. How many four-year-olds, Martha kept asking, would have had the sense and the sweetness to do for little Hazel what Henry had?

It was true that, when Martha and Vera had gotten back inside the practice house, they had found Henry sitting in the crib, with Hazel lying peacefully on his lap. An hour later, his fever-which turned out to be just the last vestige of a normal grippe-had pa.s.sed, and he seemed and would prove to be entirely healthy. But that evening, between phone calls, Martha took Henry's temperature again and again, fussed and cried, and hugged him until he squirmed and pulled away.

Every time his temperature came up normal, she looked skeptical. She straightened his pillows. She gave him soup. She kissed him on his forehead, his hands.

"If anything happened to you-" she kept saying, but then she never finished the sentence, leaving Henry the not-unfamiliar impression that his well-being was somehow crucial to the progress of the world.

4.

Miss Fancy and Mickey Mouse

There was a new girl in the nursery school the following fall. Her name was Annabel. Like Henry and Mary Jane, she was five. She wore her hair in braids and a headband. She wasn't as blond as Mary Jane. Her father didn't work for the college, but they lived somewhere in town.

For most of the first week, Annabel watched quietly as Mrs. Donovan, Mary Jane, Leo, and Henry went about their normal routines. Leo and Henry talked about some of the things they had seen on TV. Miss Fancy and Mickey Mouse got married again. Henry drew lots of pictures.

It wasn't until the second week that Annabel first spoke to Henry directly.

"Push me?" she asked while she hung motionless and timid on the swing in the backyard.

Boldly, Leo stepped in, palms up at his shoulders, ready to shove.