Henry
Henry
H enry drives away from the Freemans’ house feeling better, if not about himself then about the fact that he had, finally, gone to see them. After Soh Freeman slapped his face and said, How dare you, Henry Pepper, Ed Freeman came downstairs, the expression on his face tight. For a moment, Henry thought Ed was going to hit him, too. Instead, he stood there, looking at Henry in a way that made Henry wish Ed had hit him after all. Ed and Soh glared at Henry until he realized they were waiting for him to explain himself.
So Henry talked. He told them everything. About what he thought he’d overheard the week he’d been scheduled to marry Ebby. About being afraid of Ebby’s reaction and potentially defaming a close friend of his father’s. He admitted, even, his doubts about being up to the challenges of living with someone who still exhibited signs of trauma, as Ebby had. He could tell from their expressions that they hadn’t realized that Ebby still suffered so often from nightmares. How she was always tired. He saw how Ebby’s mother looked when he said that. He felt awful.
“I want you to know I’m really sorry,” Henry said. “I was a shit, there’s no way around it.”
To their credit, the Freemans continued to listen. And then it was Henry’s turn to listen to them. To understand that sometimes you can save yourself a lot of trouble by daring to have a difficult conversation. How would their lives have been different, Henry wondered, if he’d only spoken up before? He watched Soh, one of those women who was so lovely to look at that it was easy to believe that nothing truly bad could ever happen to her. That straight back.
Henry looked at Ebby’s parents, now, and marveled at how they had gone on after what had happened to their son. This was the true miracle of life, he thought. Not so much to be born as to bear up under what came your way. To find a way forward. To embrace what was good.
“So your mom is a top corporate lawyer,” Henry had said the first time he’d gone to Ebby’s apartment. He was nosing around, peering at photos of her family on the mantelpiece.
“Was,” Ebby said. “Mom left her full-time work with the firm to take care of me after my brother was killed. But she still has clients.”
“And your dad is a famous engineer.”
Ebby nodded, but said, “Not so much famous as, well, valuable. People in his field know him, but if he weren’t my father, I certainly wouldn’t know anything about his work.”
“But he’s on the cover of that magazine,” Henry said, pointing to a picture frame. “And that one, over there.”
“Well, they profile him because his work is important. Or, more precisely, because his work has made him all that money.”
“I’ll admit I don’t quite get what he does.”
“Various things, but, mostly, he’s known for joints.”
“Joints?”
“Yeah. Look, for instance, at our bodies. They’re held together by joints, right?” Ebby held out her arms and bent them back and forth at the elbows. “We are able to move, in part, because of joints. So those joints are used, and over time, they may wear out or suffer damage from an accident or illness. Well, my dad does a lot of thinking about how to make joints that function well and stay strong, even when they suffer trauma.”
“For example?”
“For example, a bridge. You may think of a bridge as something that helps us to go from one place to another, right? Well, my dad can’t look at a bridge without talking about how it’s made up of a series of connections. And how those joints reduce trauma by moving back and forth under daily, monthly, and yearly pressure.”
“So in a way, your dad specializes in trauma prevention.”
“More like resilience under trauma. You can’t prevent it, but you can find ways to hold up under the pressure, to continue to function well.”
“So your dad’s technology is what’s famous.”
“That, and the fact that he’s a successful black engineer and people don’t expect that. We are surrounded by black scientists and doctors and lawyers and other highly skilled professionals, but still, people are surprised. They continue to be surprised at African American achievement, even though it’s all around us. Even though it’s always been there, holding up society at every level.”
Henry nodded.
“And then,” Ebby continued, “when my brother was killed, you know, everyone started paying attention to my family. So my dad became more famous, only for the wrong reason.”
“That’s a real shame,” Henry said. “I mean, I’m really sorry you lost your brother that way.”
Ebby shook her head. “We didn’t really lose him,” she said.
“Sorry?”
“We didn’t lose my brother. They took him from us. They took him.”
Henry noted the bitter tone in Ebby’s voice. He should have thought, then, about what it would mean to be with a woman who had gone through all that. But in that moment, he was only thinking that he needed to be with her, period. Plus, Ebby was right. She was absolutely right. Something had been stolen from the Freemans that they would never be able to get back. The family they should have had. Henry wondered, then, about the mechanics of the heart. The heart was a muscle, right? Did the heart, Henry wondered, have something like joints?