If I Forget You(5)

In front of the boys were the neighborhood girls—in particular, Lani Moretti, Henry’s first crush. She was two years older, olive-skinned, with long black hair, and any opportunity Henry got to stare at her unfettered, he took.

The girls were less afraid of water. In fact, they were wading out, in a line of four, into the surf, passing each progressive wave, leaping as they did, so the ocean broke as low on their bodies as they could handle, and it was because Henry was staring at Lani’s back that he was the first one to see a stronger than anticipated wave crash across her chest and tear her bikini top clean off her body.

Lani shrieked, and shortly after Henry saw it, the other boys did, too: how she cupped her hands around her adolescent breasts and scanned the water around her for the stray top, which at that very moment was floating directly toward Henry and the boys.

“Grab it,” one of the boys yelled, and Henry, quick as light then with those shortstop hands, was the first one to it. He scooped it out of the water, and the boys were cheering, since they had Lani now, could keep her top and force her to come out of the water to get it.

“Henry Gold,” Lani said. “Help me.”

Until then, Henry had not been sure she even knew his name. Henry took the top and began to move toward Lani. He went quickly, since he heard the boys behind him in disbelief about what he was going to do. He waded out to her with it above his head, and when he reached her, he demurely looked away and handed it to her, seeing out of the corner of his eyes how quickly and deftly she tied it on herself. She leaned down then and gave him a kiss.

“Thank you, Henry.”

It was a feeling he would chase his whole life like a drug, her lips on his, the feeling of having made a pretty girl happy, and it didn’t matter to him that when he reached the shore, Vince, the biggest of the kids, pushed him into the sand and held his face there with the bottom of his oversize teenage foot.

Now, in his living room and worlds away from that childhood, Henry picks up the phone. He stares at it for a moment and then presses his ex-wife Ruth’s name. A moment later, she answers.

“Henry,” Ruth says. “Everything okay?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Okay.”

“How are things there?” Henry asks.

“You sure everything is okay?” Ruth says.

“Positive. Look: I’m sorry to bother you. I’m going to Vermont tomorrow.”

“Well, good for you, Henry.”

“I’m hoping Jess can come with me.”

“She has school tomorrow.”

“Oh, right. I just thought it would be nice for her to be there when I open. She always liked that, remember?”

On the other end of the line, Henry hears Ruth sigh. “It’s a school day,” she says.

“Okay, right,” Henry says. “Can I say hello to her?”

“She’s asleep.”

“Wow, what time is it?”

“It’s almost ten. You sure you are okay?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. Today just got away from me, that’s all.”

Henry hangs up the phone and he can picture his nine-year-old daughter, in the house in Tarrytown that was once his. Jess is up in her room, in her single bed, sleeping, as always, on her back, her eyelids softly closed, the place he used to stare at when he would put her to bed, watching them flutter and flutter until they finally closed soft as pillows.

*

That night, Henry has a dream about Margot. In his dream, he returns to his apartment and goes into the bathroom, where the shower is on. Henry opens the door, and behind the glass is her form, and he smiles, as if it is what he expected, her here, in his place, or perhaps it is their place? For the bathroom is similar but different. The shower has a curtain, not the opaque glass that confronts him in the dream. He moves to the door and opens it, and there she is, no longer frozen in time as in so many of his thoughts and dreams about her she has been, but the age she is now, as he saw her today, her hair cut short, tiny crow’s-feet emanating from the corners of her clear blue eyes.

Water is running off her shortish hair, down the width of her shoulders, across her breasts, and down the smooth table of her stomach. She smiles at him.

“Come in,” she mouths to him, but she makes no sound.

“I love you,” he says.

Margot just shakes her head, like she can’t hear him.

“I love you,” he says again.

Again, she shakes her head, and this time he yells it. “I love you.”

That is all Henry remembers. In the morning, he wakes and walks across the street for a coffee and a bagel. The weather has held: a bright, beautiful, cloudless day.

An hour later, he is driving to Vermont, against the traffic, and this is a trip he has down pat, and by midafternoon, he is turning onto the narrow unmarked road that leads to his camp.

The road is what he fell in love with the first time. It rises quickly up, single-laned, through a pine forest that opens up into a broad meadow, wildflowers and tall grasses blowing slightly in the breeze. Then the road swoops down again into a deciduous forest, the sunlight dappling through the green leaves. And then, farther on, it opens once again and ends at a small clearing above a cliff, the lake in the distance. Parking here, he sees the roof of his cabin is slightly below the height of the cliff, and a staircase leads down to a second-floor entrance.