One afternoon, Henry finds his mother in the kitchen.
“Your father wants to talk to you,” she says. Henry’s mother does not watch her hands when she is cutting. Cooking-school cutting. She is gazing out the window at the house across the street.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, talk to your father about it,” she says. Henry pictures a huge invisible watch dangling in front of his mother’s eyes, hypnotizing her. Tick-tick-tick. Henry looks to see what has her so entranced and is not surprised to find it is the geranium-filled wooden-duck planter at the edge of the driveway.
“Mom,” he says.
Tick-tick-tick. His mother’s stare never wavers. She has finished cutting, but still she holds the knife in place on the cutting board.
“Mom.”
The head turns, eyes tearing away from the driveway duck at the very last minute. It is a smooth turn that suggests the hypnosis is still in effect.
“Yes?”
“Why … does Dad … want … to talk … to … me?”
But slowed speech is not enough to hold her. Tick-tick-tick. The knife resumes its tempo on the cutting board. Over and over again, an even rhythm so familiar it has become the white noise of every dialogue.
Henry makes a show of leaving the kitchen but knows his mother probably will not notice he is no longer there. Though her knife is moving, nothing is under it to slice.
As he leaves the kitchen he glances up the stairs and, in Henry’s mind, the soap opera Vaseline-on-the-lens effect kicks in.
The carpet runner, like a Slinky attached to each stair, is no longer beaten down and Henry’s mother is bounding down the stairs, toward her boys, her tennis skirt flouncing with each step. Tretorns. Socks with little pink pom-poms at each heel. Her white Lacoste shirt tucked in. A pink headband to match the socks.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” she says, whisking past them to the front hall closet and her tennis racket with its needlepoint cover. “Betsy’s here. If I hear you boys got into any trouble I’ll be telling your father. Betsy? I’ll be at the club if you need me. You can call the main number and remember to page Helen Wellington.”
Helen Wellington invited Henry’s mother to play doubles once a week as her guest at the country club twenty minutes away. But Henry’s mother never thinks of herself as a guest. She has made a point of knowing the server’s names at the grill where the foursome has iced tea and crust-less chicken salad sandwiches following their game. She pulls in to the same parking spot in front of lower court number eight each week. But the inescapable fact is that if there were ever an emergency that required her presence she would have to be brought to the club phone by Helen Wellington, her own name unrecognizable to the club operator.
“Be good,” she calls out while climbing into the family station wagon.
Though he did not know what name to put on it at the time, a feeling of euphoria would overtake Henry every Wednesday when his mother left for her tennis game. It was not the fact that Betsy the babysitter was cute and let them do whatever they liked as long as they left her alone to read Tiger Beat. She even let them eat two Devil Dogs if they wanted (Henry always took two of whatever was offered but stowed the spare in his tiny desk drawer, to be savored later in little bites).
No. It was the sight of his mother so carefree that meant the rest of the day and night would be okay. She might even talk his father into taking them all to the drive-through for hot dogs for dinner. Anything seemed possible on Wednesdays.
But then a Wednesday came and went without the tennis game. Henry checked the calendar to make sure he had not gotten the day of the week wrong but he knew it was Wednesday because Wednesday was sloppy joe day at school and on that same day he had a stain on his school shirt to prove it. When he got home from school his mother was out in the backyard, on her knees pulling up weeds. No tennis whites. No pom-poms.
The following week was the same except this time his mother was in the kitchen sitting at the table, angrily flipping the pages of a magazine. Henry could not have known the subtle gaff that banished his mother from the country club (Helen Wellington had grown tired of Henry’s mother, who had developed a nasty habit of arriving early at the court and greeting the others as a hostess would), but he felt its sting as acutely as she did. Wednesdays became like any other day of the week for Henry’s mother. Except on bridge nights, but by then there was an unmistakable hollowness to her that dulled even the joy of playing cards with friends.
Two weeks after her last tennis game, Henry’s mother burned the roast but only Brad brought it up with a mean “this tastes like my shoe” that felled whatever tree of hope was left standing in the center of the family that night. Moments later she got up from the table, carried the platter of meat into the kitchen and threw the whole thing out. The flick and hiss of her cigarette lighter could be heard through the swinging dining room door that slowly swung itself back to center.
Henry watched Brad look down at his plate, his mouth open in shock at the effect his words had had on their mother. His brother’s face moved from shame to sadness and then, on looking back up, to surliness. “What are you looking at?” They both knew that Brad had been about to cry.
“Boys, go to your rooms,” their father said.
Henry stopped in the kitchen before going upstairs. “I thought it tasted fine, Mom,” he said. In a whisper so Brad would not hear in case he was still nearby.
On his way to his father’s study he stops at his mother’s purse and fishes past lipsticks, a compact and her wallet to find the pill bottle. He pours the little blue pills into the palm of his hand one-two-three … it is clear she has taken three today instead of the one that is prescribed by the family doctor he has never liked because he still offers Henry a lollipop after every annual visit. Usually she only doubles the dose.
“Dad?” he stands at the doorway to Edgar Powell’s study. “Mom said you wanted to see me.” With the toe of his shoe he traces the strip of metal that is meant to smooth the transition between carpeted and hardwood floors.
Henry’s father looks up from his work and takes off his glasses, a signal that this will be a difficult talk.
“Have a seat,” he says to his son. “How was school today?”
“All right, I guess.” Henry shrugs and shifts in the chair that faces the desk.
“Good, good,” Edgar Powell says. He clears his throat and Henry shifts again, aware that his armpits are tingling in sweat preparation. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. School.”
Henry sits up straighter. “What about it?”
“I’ve noticed the light in your room stays on later and later into the night,” he says. “I am concerned your schoolwork might be suffering under the pressure of all your … ahem … commitments.”
“My grades will be fine,” Henry says. He concentrates on keeping his voice from climbing into the fear register. “Classes are going to be easy this semester, I can already tell. It’s senior year.”
“Nevertheless,” his father continues, “I want to raise the possibility of streamlining your schedule. Your allegiance must be to the academic curriculum, after all.”
“I’m not going to cut football,” Henry says. “I know that’s what you’re getting at and I’m just saying I’m not quitting the team.”
Henry’s father tilts his head and even though his