If I Forget You(37)

“Dad,” Henry says, and goes to him for a handshake that becomes the awkward half hug they have figured out over time.

As Henry eats his eggs and the dark bread his mother makes every morning with the same dedication that she gives to her three daily prayers, he reluctantly warms to his story. Both his parents sit, his father to his left, his mother right in front of him at the small table. His mother’s dark eyes are on him as he tells what happened, and he cannot look at her, for he does not want to see her disappointment, her fear of a life upended, so he looks from his father to the kitchen beyond him, as if seeing it anew, the way the linoleum peels up in the corners under the metal cupboards.

His mother has a million questions, and he tries to answer them. What does it all mean? Is he going to jail? What about college? How did you get mixed up with this terrible girl?

His father breaks his own silence and says, “You come to work with me tomorrow.”

“Yes,” says Henry.

And so early the next morning, Henry finds himself alongside his father in empty office buildings, running machines over hard floors, washing and polishing them in great circles. The work is a palliative, for between the whirl of the machines and the simplicity of it all—see, move, and then circle—Henry finds he has no room in his mind except for what is in front of him. Looking over at his father, his earmuffs on, too, and alone in his own world, he finds a sudden and great comfort in why he has always enjoyed this work. The practical labor of it, and the idea that you can always see the finish line, unlike a poem, which famously is never finished and can only be abandoned.

And maybe, Henry thinks, this is where he was meant to be all along, the rest of it all some crazy lark, as if he accidentally fell down the rabbit hole and ended up in a place he had no business being in the first place.

But then at night, alone on the porch after both his parents have gone to bed, it comes on him fast as a fever and he wonders if his life has shrunk back to the dimensions he was always meant to inhabit.

But in defiance, he thinks, No, this is not possible. Margot is more real, not less, than anything that has ever happened to him. How can he deny the heaviness in his heart that takes his breath away?

And on that ragged porch, he sometimes looks into the kitchen, where the phone hangs from the wall, the same phone his mother used to answer when he made his calls from Bannister. And Henry considers going to pick it up and dialing that number on the Vineyard again, hoping Margot answers and that he can plead with her, but then he remembers her mother’s voice on the other end of the line.

It occurs to him one night that Margot has no idea where he is and probably assumes he is still at the winery. Perhaps she has tried to reach him there, and so he calls Ted and Laura’s number, even though he knows it is late. It is Laura who answers on the third ring, and he can tell from her sleepy voice that he has intruded on their lives once again.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Laura,” he says. “Has Margot called there?”

“No, Henry. No one has called.”

In the mornings, his mother makes lunches for both Henry and his father, and before dawn they are at it, cleaning and cleaning and cleaning. The day ends at noon, and one afternoon Henry tells his father he will see him at home, and then he walks out through these office buildings they have been working on, through these low-slung industrial buildings that sit on the edge of where the Providence River runs to the sea. Around him, men on forklifts move giant pallets of something, and he passes them until he reaches the seawall.

The day is warm, with bright sun, and a breeze rolls off the bay and pushes Henry’s hair back as he sits down on the seawall and dangles his legs over the dark, brackish water. Looking off in the distance, he can see where the open ocean is, and somewhere out there is Martha’s Vineyard, so close, yet entirely distant from him. He tries to imagine Margot on the island, and he wonders if she sits as he does, perhaps on the beach, looking toward the mainland and thinking about him.

After a while, Henry stands up and wanders home. He walks through the old neighborhood, and a few of the typical characters shout to him and he greets them with a wave. Down a small side street, he passes a stickball game in progress, and since he is not in a rush to go back to the small apartment, he stops and watches it for a while, boys hitting a tennis ball with a broomstick as he once did, and for a moment the sight truly pleases him, the exaggerated windups of the pitchers, the ball whipping toward the brick wall that has home plate drawn on it as a white square in chalk. He watches a skinny brown-skinned kid with a mop of curly hair square one up and pull it, the tennis ball flying high into the air and landing on a rooftop, a home run. The hoots and hollers that follow it bring a smile to Henry’s face.

When Henry finally returns home, it is late afternoon. He is halfway up the rickety outdoor staircase when he hears voices coming through the screen door of the family apartment. One is his mother’s and the other is not his father’s. Henry goes quickly up the stairs, and when he reaches the door, he hears his mother say, “Here is Henry.”

Henry opens the metal screen door and steps into the warm kitchen. The door slaps closed behind him. Both his mother and father are on one side of the table and on the other is a tall, squared-jawed man who looks to be in his thirties. He wears a pale blue suit and shiny light brown shoes.

The man stands up, but he doesn’t smile. He extends his hand, though, and he says with an accent that sounds vaguely British, “I’m Kiernan Meyer.”