Season of Gifts (Neighborly Affection #8)

17. Henry

Chapter seventeen

Henry

T o fulfill Mother’s request for an amusement both lighthearted and meaningful, Henry brought a small selection of fiction from the home library. For most of the day, he read aloud, slipping out briefly during one of her naps for much-needed throat lozenges to calm the scratchy burr developing from overuse.

The private room was pleasant enough, and her oxygen mask had been replaced by nasal tubing that simplified conversation, though he kept their discourse short. Chatting was one of the many mild activities that unreasonably robbed her of breath; extended exchanges necessitated she rest her eyes—during which time he read aloud until her body relaxed into healing sleep.

Her half-eaten dinner waited on the rolling bedside tray for removal. An improvement over yesterday, and yet. Mother dearly needed the nutritional building blocks represented in those calories. Tucking his finger between the pages, he paused the antics of Iris Murdoch’s debut novel. “You’re certain you couldn’t manage another bite or two? A healthy appetite is one of the signs your care team is assessing.”

“Even all of my yearning for my own bed”—she breathed twice, slowly—“cannot inspire hunger for more of these underseasoned soft foods.” She rolled her hand toward him, palm up in offering. He clasped gently, her delicate dusky blue veins stark against pale, papery skin. Settling her cheek against the pillow, she cast a clear spring-green gaze at him. “You’re fussing.”

“A mere inquiry is hardly fussing.” Leaning forward, he allowed a smile to creep across his face. “I haven’t even lifted a finger to fluff your pillow. Falling down on the job, I am.”

She patted his hand, but her eyes retained their sharpness. “You’re fussing on the inside. A mother knows.”

Contradicting her would be a lie. He was admittedly unsettled, if not actively fussing. She’d seemed slighter and less energetic when they’d visited for the annual fall cleanup, but quite spry dancing at their wedding. In a typical year, he would have had another opportunity to notice any medical concerns at Thanksgiving. This year he had prioritized starting new traditions with Alice and Jay. He ought to have been paying better attention.

“I am sorry, Henry.” Her breath fluttered; her lips trembled. “That must have been a frightening call to receive. I’ve been…” Slow breaths, and he breathed with her, the rhythm therapeutic. “Tiring more easily, and I simply accepted it as part of aging gracefully. There was no chest pain, no sudden attack. I was…” More breaths, and irritation lined her face. “Dizzy. I fell; I called Lina.”

Miraculously, she’d broken nothing in the fall. Not her wrists in an attempt to arrest her fall; not her hip, so often a debilitating injury; not her skull on the hundreds of hard surfaces that could have cut short her life Sunday.

He swallowed past the knot in his throat. Lozenges could do nothing for fear. “You needn’t apologize, Mother. Let us focus on getting you well.”

She stroked the watchband at his wrist; her father’s watch. “And you. The nurse will be by soon to put you out in the cold and tell me to sleep. When I tell her I’ve napped the day away, she’ll insist I try regardless.” Infinitesimal pressure emanated from the tips of her chilly fingers, leaving phantom marks on his forearm. “I insist you try. I’d feel better if…” In through her nose, out through her mouth, the breaths that kept her with him. “If Alice and Jay were here to help you. It’s not good to be alone.”

She’d been alone for years now. Seven since Father passed in his sleep. At least three since Lina had moved in with her daughter to mind the grandchildren. He should have been visiting more often.

“Perhaps,” he murmured, laying the book aside before smoothing her blankets. So thin; he would stop at the nurses’ station and ask for an extra tonight and whether it would be permissible to bring a quilt from home in the morning. “If your doctor believes you are fit enough, Alice and Jay may join us for the weekend.” He tapped the tray with its leftovers. “But you’ll need to eat more of your breakfast tomorrow than you have of this dinner.”

“Hmph. You were always an excellent eater. We never had to sweeten your vegetables. You approached every new dish with such curiosity.” She curled the corner of her lip, a graceful but triumphant smirk. “And even you would struggle to finish this meal.”

“I suppose I would.” Bending, he kissed her cheek and laid a hand on her head, gestures embedded in memory from all the years she had done the same for him. “I love you, Mother. Sleep well.”

“I love you, darling boy.” Her lips grazed his cheek. “I’m all right, truly. You needn’t worry so much.”

He held his silence as he left. A degree in art therapy and a lengthy stint of weekly visits to a therapist of his own hadn’t dislodged the fear he’d carried for thirty-odd years. He’d grown to know himself, to manage and direct his emotional responses, but one couldn’t simply shut them away.

The house was dark as he parked in the drive. The car display faded into darkness as well, the ghostly afterimage of 7:21 floating in his vision. Alice and Jay would be seated at the table, hopefully eating something containing the chicken he’d put in the refrigerator to thaw Sunday if they hadn’t finished it already. He should have thought to direct Alice to a few simple recipes. Or Jay; he did arrive home first, and meal-making would be no more foreign to him than it was to Alice.

The car door crackled in the cold. He wouldn’t interrupt their meal, whatever it was. He had soup to warm for his own dinner; that would serve as a mental transition between his role as caretaking son and his role as caretaking dominant. Dry flurries left an imperfect record of his passage from car to front door. Caught by the wind, the powdery snow chased his steps into the tiled hall, drifting to rest as he closed the door behind him.

Thirty-three years ago, the snow had followed Father’s shiny black shoes and Mother’s warm winter boots.

He’d been stocking-footed, standing beside Robert. Nearly eleven days since Mother had left to have the baby. She’d missed Christmas. Father hadn’t read the story of the old man and his ghosts the night before Christmas, either. Tonight would be New Year’s Eve, and Lina hadn’t even mentioned it when she’d put lunch before them.

“Mother!” Henry got half a step before Robert squeezed his arm and held him still. He wrestled just long enough to know his six-year-old strength couldn’t match his brother’s. Robert had started playing lacrosse at school. He didn’t live at home now; he’d leave again in a few days.

“Decorum,” Father said, but that didn’t matter, because Mother smiled and called him her darling boy and apologized that she couldn’t hug him just yet, but soon.

“Tomorrow we’ll be decadent and have Lina bring tea to my bed, and I’ll read to you, how would that be?”

“With the new baby?”

“Henry,” Father snapped.

Mother leaned into Father, patting his chest. “No, just you and me, Henry, and Robert, if he’d like to join us?”

His brother tightened his grip on Henry’s arm. “No, thank you, Mother. I’m meeting some of the boys for skating tomorrow.”

“Of course. Be safe on the ice, please.” She whispered something in Father’s ear, and suddenly Mother was in his arms.

“Wait here, both of you,” Father growled as he strode past them. He carried Mother up the stairs like she weighed nothing.

She did look skinnier. When she’d gone to the hospital, she’d been round with the baby. Henry strained on tiptoes and whispered toward Robert’s shoulder. “But where’s the baby?”

“There is no baby, dummy.” Robert let go of his arm and shoved him away; his socks slid on the tile. “She lost it, like the other ones.”

“What other ones?”

Rolling his eyes, Robert shook his head. “Just be quiet. You’ve already gotten us in trouble.”

He couldn’t be in that much trouble. Father sounded like he always sounded, and Mother wanted them to have a special teatime with stories. “But where did she lose them?”

Maybe he could ask Lina to help look. She knew where everything was, no matter where he’d misplaced it.

Father appeared at the top of the stairs, and Robert hissed at Henry to be quiet.

Being the youngest wasn’t fair. The new baby was supposed to change that. He would be a big brother then, and Robert would be away at school, which really made Henry the oldest.

“Boys.” Father stopped in front of them. A few water droplets clung to his shiny black shoes. “Henry, pay attention. Eyes up here.” Here meant Father’s face, his storm-cloud-gray stare and pointed frown. “Your mother needs to rest. You aren’t to be loud or bother her, am I clear?”

“Yes, Father.” Robert always agreed with Father.

“Is she sad because she lost the baby?”

Father grabbed his shoulders and shook him twice. “ Do not mention the baby to your mother, do you understand me? There is no baby.”

That was a lie. “But Mother said she would come home with the baby. She said she was carrying—”

Crack. His cheek burned; tears stung his eyes.

“Henry.” Father bent on one knee, the storm clouds level with his own eyes. “There is no baby, do you hear me? Don’t speak of this again.” He squeezed Henry’s shoulder as he stood, fingers pinching against his bones. “Robert, take your brother outside, please. Your mother needs to rest.”

“Of course, Father.” Robert swung his head sideways, his eyebrows saying see, I told you to be quiet. “I won't let him be a nuisance.”

Father gripped Robert’s shoulder, too, but his squeeze-and-shake came with a nod. “Good man. I can always count on you.”

“Not always.” Shrugging off his outer coat, Henry blinked away the memories. He’d had no word from Robert yet, though he’d been keeping his sister-in-law updated regarding Mother’s condition.

Dinner was a quiet affair for one, a reheated lentil soup with a crusty slab of bakery bread toasted and buttered. He glanced at his phone while he ate, a transgression he wouldn’t have allowed at home. Meals were meant to be about connection and communion.

An unanswered text from Jay sat waiting for him. Attached, a photograph of Jay’s sartorial choices for the day and one of Alice, clearly unaware of the observation, as she sat at the breakfast table contemplating a spoon. Things are fine here. We miss you. Give our love to your mom, okay? I can be there whenever you need, just a few hours and bam, I’m there.

What had he said to Alice last year? That Jay at the holidays might be too much for his mother to handle? His boisterous energy, his inquisitive curiosity…

I won’t let him be a nuisance . Robert’s voice hadn’t dropped yet then; he’d vowed to manage Henry in his perky eleven-year-old tenor.

Henry’s phone slipped an inch to the table and clattered beside his bowl. Stifling Jay the way he’d been silenced would only lead to paths he’d seen before—Robert and Father’s overly rigid, unemotional way of moving through life.

Barely forty-eight hours since he’d left Alice and Jay, and already he’d upset their domestic rhythms. Leaving them wondering all day, not checking in with them—he’d been so narrowly focused on not missing the slightest hint of trouble from Mother that he had abrogated his responsibilities to them as both dominant and spouse.

Guilt would be a self-indulgence not in the least bit helpful in either situation. He ran through a sensory exercise, appreciating the crunch of the bread crust, the velvet smoothness of the pureed lentils, the hint of spice on his tongue.

Alice and Jay had strolled amid the holiday lights last night; his careful planning hadn’t gone to waste even though he wasn’t present to enjoy their reactions. There would be other years ahead. Though this would have been the first. The raw patch in his throat ached. He didn’t dare voice the nagging concern that he would miss all of their activities.

With Alice’s experiences, she would have guessed by now. Jay would be devastated—to have stepped away from one family and created another only to be robbed of both in the darkest days of the year.

“Intolerable.”

But Mother could not be left alone. She would need ongoing medical care for weeks. Assistance with daily tasks. Monitoring for signs of depression and anxiety, which her doctor had said were common after a heart attack. Even if the hospital released her this week, his duties to her would only grow more expansive.

“I am tired. It’s late.” Eight twenty-five, an hour perhaps late by a six-year-old’s standards, but not usually by a thirty-nine-year-old’s. “Seemingly intractable problems have solutions. They simply don’t arise in the midst of exhaustion.”

But he had one more responsibility to fulfill this evening before taking care of himself. Alice and Jay, if they had followed instructions, would just be settling in for their movie night. He might at least hear which favorites they’d chosen to share.

Alice answered on the first ring, her voice warm and welcoming, a more comforting sensory experience by far than dinner could ever be.

“On speaker, yes, please, sweet girl.” He’d opted for audio-only; strengthening his voice was much simpler than maintaining his composure for as long as his lovers wished to talk. Elbows on the table, phone placed between, he rested his forehead in his hands and closed his eyes. “I’ve just come from the hospital, and all is well there. Will you tell me about your day, both of you? I’ve quite missed you.”