The Heart of Henry Quantum (11 page)

Henry suddenly appeared in her mind and said to her (in the way only Henry could):
Gosh, do you really think that's fair?
Meaning, why be nice to Arthur and not to him? This was something worth pondering because Margaret did sense there was something weird about it.

The truth was, if anyone in the triumvirate of Henry, Arthur, and her were a bit—let's say,
off
—it had to be Arthur. Yes, he was brilliant, no question about it—but he was also a college dropout who made his living mostly as a bartender. She firmly believed he'd dropped out because he was too smart for any ordinary undergraduate school. Why he didn't get into an Ivy she'd never understood, but that stupid George Dimwit University? She asked him a million times why he even applied there. Henry always rebuked her, saying you can get a good education anywhere. All you need is a library, and the teachers are just as good, too, and it's not Dimwit, it's Dinwoodie. But, honestly, all that was so besides the point. Arthur was advanced. Period. And because of one stupid miscalculation he never got to explore his deeper side. Their mother was partially to blame for that. She should have been much firmer with him. Should have taken him by the hand and made him do his damned applications.

Between Arthur and Henry it was like having two babies, and she could barely take care of one. At least Arthur was in Florida.

But God, he'd been a good-looking kid. The ladies even now swarmed all over him. He knew a million jokes. He could crack you up even if you'd heard them before. He'd recite entire scenes word for word from his favorite “golden age” movies (
The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Young Frankenstein
), and although sometimes it seemed to her he was hopelessly stuck in the '70s, it really was very entertaining. But the thing about Arthur that was most attractive—and most frustrating—was that he was a hopeless romantic. The quintessential optimist. Which one might think was a good thing. But it also meant he fell for a new bimbo every other week. She was always the
one.
The perfect love. Happy, happy, happy, forever and ever and ever!

And yet, Arthur could always make Margaret feel wonderfully good, incredibly special, as if she were the only person in the world. He did it with everyone, she knew that. But so had their father. It was a special gift. And no matter how bad things got, there was always some new horizon, some new opportunity just around the corner. “One door closes, another opens,” Arthur always chirped when it seemed things could get no worse. Hadn't he encouraged her to become a real estate professional in those days when she felt horrible about herself? Hadn't he encouraged her to take those courses in Spanish? And sushi making? And pottery? Lately she'd been thinking of horseback riding, English, of course. He e-mailed her all kinds of links about it. Henry couldn't care less. And when she confessed rather sheepishly that she'd been shopping at Wilkes Bashford and Valentino, didn't he remind her how much she deserved it? Even if it was a lot of money, it was, after all,
Valentino
. “It's not like there won't be any more paychecks coming in!” he chided her. She never told Henry, but not because he'd put up a fuss. She was pretty sure he wouldn't. It was something else that stopped her, and she truly didn't know what. Henry went on and on about being a writer back when they first started, but nothing came of it. Arthur, on the other hand, wrote really good poetry, mostly about his girlfriends, and mostly lamentations, but he did write one for her once, on the occasion of her thirty-fifth birthday. He entitled it “Sister,” and she cried when he read it to her. It was rhymed and everything.

Henry, on the other hand, used to bring up the guitar and croon out some carols on those Christmas weekends in Tahoe. Back then she hadn't the heart to tell him how bad his voice was. It was even possible she liked his singing—thinking it kind of sweet and romantic. Rose-colored glasses, she supposed. He used to make up stories, too. Or tried to. Delusions of creativity. Although when she thought about it, a measure of tenderness and even longing came over her. He would try to retell
A Christmas Carol
by replacing the characters with people they knew. His boss, for instance, was Jacob Marley and her brother was Tiny Tim and that woman they both hated who lived downstairs when they were on Mason Street, the old Italian lady—she became the Ghost of Christmas Past. The more he went on, the more absurd and convoluted and stupid it became. Then he'd switch to fairy tales. The one that always came to mind and even now brought a shudder to Margaret, was the one about the little orphan girl who was really a princess (named Margarita, of course) and all the wonderful and magical things that happened to her and how the frog or the stable boy would be freed from his curse by her kiss and how then he would be the knight (it was always Sir Henry) who restored her to her throne, only something about it made her feel queasy every time he got to this part.

“Why do
you
have to save
me
?” she would ask.

“But first you save me with your kiss. You see, it's, like, equal. I can't save you unless you save me.”

“You don't have to save me,” she said. “Nobody has to save me.”

“It's just a story. But even if it weren't, why can't I help you? Don't you think love can transform a girl into a princess?”

“Oh, for Christ's sake!” she screamed, and fled into one of the empty bedrooms.

“Jeez,” she heard him complain through the closed door. “What did I say?”

He never did get it. And when she'd brought home that ersatz Christmas tree a couple of years ago and he said, “What the hell is that?” she blurted, “Stop being such a pussy.”

“But it's Christmas . . .”

She slammed the miserable little whatever-it-was-made-of bush on the table. “It's a fucking tree. Deal with it.”

Naturally, he went off to sulk. It took but fifteen minutes for him to emerge with that vapid smile of his and concede, “Well, actually it's not so bad.”

The thing is, even though she'd known when she was buying the damned thing in the five-and-dime exactly how events at home would transpire, Henry's response turned into a revelatory moment for her. Because it was not her intention, and it was certainly not her desire, to be cruel. What she did desire, quite simply, was for Bones, her husband, the man with whom she had elected to spend her entire life, to—
just once
—stand his ground.

Henry seemed so perfect when she'd first met him. It was as if she'd wandered into a rose garden of a thousand varieties she'd never seen before and Henry was the most beautiful of them all. There was a fragrance in this garden, something ineluctable, something just beyond her field of experience but she nevertheless could feel with senses she'd never explored, as if her skin could hear, her eyes could feel, her ears could see, as if all the senses of her body were one, and the whole of her was vibrating with sensation. Whatever it was, it was overwhelming, and she was swallowed up in a happiness so unfamiliar it made her dizzy. All those petals opening before her, all those colors, all those scents inviting her to fall into his garden. The garden of Lethe, she ultimately realized, for indeed a kind of forgetfulness had come over her—she forgot her fears, her ambition, forgot the faults of her body and the very laws of reality by which she had tried to live her whole young life. In this strange state she felt she could fly, could melt, could flow outside the river of necessity. It was frightening, and yet she did not want it to stop.

It must have been that stupid, openhearted laugh of his that got her, that wide, innocent smile that she now saw as merely insipid. How could she have fallen for that? But really, what defense did she, a mere girl, have against those soul-searching eyes? Back then, they were the eyes of Adonis, the most beautiful of the gods, and his laugh was the laugh of Dionysus, god of wine and passion, about whom she vaguely remembered reading in a class she'd once taken on mythology. If she had had the slightest of brains, she would have put the brakes on right then and there. But why berate herself now? She was just a dumb kid, a little honeybee buzzing around the nectar of love.

And he was so tall and strange and awkward. The distressed jeans, the Doc Martens lace-up boots. He even had an AC/DC T-shirt! She couldn't imagine Peter ever wearing anything like it, thank God. But the memory was kind of sweet, anyway.

She never could quite shake that first conversation they had, God, so long ago. Sixteen years this past summer. It stuck to her like chewing gum on the bottom of her shoe.

They'd gone back to that Chinese restaurant after the party because they never did have dinner. It must have been an all-night joint because it was late. In her mind's eye, she could see him sitting across from her, his hands wrapped around one of those Chinese teacups with no handle.

“So, Henry,” she ventured, trying as always in those days to deflect the conversation away from herself.

“Bones,” he corrected her.

“You majored in English lit? What good did that do you?”

“Even worse. Creative writing.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“No, that's cool,” she said. “Creative writing.”

“Double major with philosophy. But I love to write,” he explained. “I love the way the words go down on paper. There's something magical about it. Or musical. Or both. I don't know. Mystical. All the ‘M' words.” He laughed.

“I can't write to save my life,” she said.

“Sure you can.”

“No, I can't. It's like pulling teeth. I start with these great ideas, like, for a term paper or a journal entry or whatever, but then, like, I don't know. Thank God I'm done with term papers.”

“Hmm,” he mused.

“Hmm, what?”

“No, no, I'm not being judgmental. I just want to know more,” he said. “I'm interested.”

“There is nothing more.”

“Sure there is.”

“I just said there wasn't.”

“I know you said that. I'm actually listening to what you're saying. But there is more.”

“I don't know where you're going with this,” she said, shrinking at the sharpness of her tone. She looked up to see what damage she'd done, but he was just sipping his tea.

“Do you mind if I ask you a question or two?” he said.

She hesitated.

“That's okay,” he said. “Never mind.”

“No, no, go ahead.”

“So when you sit down to write, what happens?”

“I don't know. I just go blank.”

“But, Margaret, that's what you should do. In fact, that's perfect. Blankness is the perfect state of mind.”

“No, it's not.”

“It is. Just don't let it scare you.”

“It doesn't scare me.”

“That's what's stopping you.”

“What is?” she asked.

“You don't admit you're afraid.”

“That's not true,” she said, averting her eyes. She could feel her stomach start to cramp. And then, weirdly, her right leg began to tremble.

She waited for him to say something. Tell her what's what. Fix it. But when she looked up he was still just sitting there waiting, enjoying his tea.

She had the terrible urge to say something funny, or at least try to explain herself—but something stopped her and that something was, simply, Henry. Because he just sat there waiting. Hands on the cup of tea. Chopsticks resting on the folded napkin. Teapot white and bulbous. Water glasses beading from the ice. Little jars of soy sauce and vinegar. It was all like a Vermeer, uncannily still, shimmering with color, every detail held to the light just for her.

“I really don't know what I mean,” she finally said. “I don't know what's true and what's not true.”

“See, I think that's great,” he replied, with a voice as gentle as the rain that had begun falling beyond the big plate glass windows of the restaurant. “You've just opened yourself up to whatever is actually happening inside you. If you took a pencil now and started to write, you'd write.”

“Yeah,” she said, “and I'd hate it.”

“So what? So what if you hate it?”

“What do you mean?”

“It doesn't matter if you like it or not. It just matters that it's coming from you, from inside
you.
At least that's what matters to me.”

And then, in spite of the fact that they had not yet ordered anything to eat, she said, “You want to get out of here?”

Where had this gone? Where had
he
gone? How could it all have changed so much? She fiddled with the radio. She used to have an old Volvo. The radio was so simple. The MINI required an advanced degree just to find a decent station. She was on Sirius and wanted to switch to AM to check the traffic but somehow ended up with blues. Henry could not resist the blues. Put on the blues and Henry got all African American on you, lowering his voice and everything. But actually it was Arthur who had become quite blue lately. It was long in coming. So many things hadn't worked out for him, and how long can a person stay hopeful? She could feel his sadness—and it wasn't about the girls he went through. It was something else, something corrosive, like he had fallen into a vat of self-doubt. He was putting himself down a lot these days. That never happened before. And on top of everything, Arthur had gotten fat. Extremely fat. Like almost three-hundred-pounds fat.

No wonder it had become harder and harder for Arthur to feel the exuberance for which he was so admired. He admitted once that it was too hard to climb the stairs to his bedroom, so he fell asleep most nights on the recliner in the TV room.

Henry reminded her that there were no stairs in his apartment and no TV room, either. It was a junior one-bedroom. “It's because he drinks the better part of a bottle every night,” Henry insisted.