Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Henrietta limped back into the kitchen to make dinner as though nothing had happened.
As Henrietta chopped vegetables, she kept tabs on Larry through the window.
He chopped wood for the upcoming winter, his brow glinting with sweat.
She thought back to when she’d first met him.
She’d been an eighteen-year-old high school dropout living in Boulder, Colorado, with her mother and father, both of whom had thought Larry was an incredible match.
Henrietta’s father had never really liked Henrietta.
He’d thought she was lazy and daydreamy and weak.
He’d seen Larry as her best possible option, someone to take care of her and set up her life.
She’d married Larry because getting married was what you did.
Larry’s angry outbursts were so much like Henrietta’s father’s, although Henrietta had never seen her father smack her mother across the face. Maybe he’d hit her behind closed doors. Perhaps that was what a marriage was.
That evening, Larry went to town to meet a friend for a beer.
Henrietta was grateful to have the house to herself, so much so that she sat on the living room floor for a good ten minutes and listened to her heart pound.
After that, she hurried to the little closet under the staircase to haul out her supplies: a canvas, little containers of paint, and several paintbrushes, all of which she’d found in a used container outside the hardware store a few months back.
There had been a sign taped to them: FREE.
Henrietta had always been interested in art.
As a kid, she’d loved to sketch and draw in a little notebook she’d gotten for her birthday.
She’d sketched her mother, ironing her father’s shirts.
She’d sketched her sister, putting on makeup before a date.
She’d found joy in noticing little things and bringing them through the cracks of her mind and into the real world.
Now, she felt that painting gave her the only thing to cling to in this life.
She painted the mountains. She painted people she saw walking through the forest. She found that she had an incredible photographic memory and could bring anything she’d seen to light.
She could only paint if Larry was out of the house, and she always knew to have everything cleaned up and out of the way by the time he was back.
Stealing a few hours here and there a week, she’d finished three paintings so far—paintings she knew would never see the light of day.
Oh, but they pleased her endlessly to see.
She felt as though they were the only things she cared about in the world.
Sometimes, when she was deeply immersed in her work, she caught herself hoping that she would never get pregnant with Larry’s baby.
Maybe then, Larry would want to divorce her and find someone new.
Maybe she could run off and study art and become someone famous, someone great.
Maybe her father would finally look at her and say “You were meant for more than I ever dreamed of. I’m sorry for doubting you. ”
She laughed when she thought that. She knew the chances were zero.
Toward the end of the summer, Henrietta was still not pregnant, and Larry was more impatient than ever.
He demanded that she get a job somewhere so that she could bring in money for their lives and their futures.
Henrietta was excited by the prospect of working outside the home and immediately nabbed a job at a quaint ten-room inn in downtown Nederland.
The inn's owner, an ancient man of ninety, told her that her bright smile would be enough to charm the guests into staying longer.
Nobody had given Henrietta a compliment like that before.
As summer faded into autumn, fewer and fewer guests came into Nederland to stay at the inn, but the owner continued to insist that Henrietta come in and work.
With nothing to do, Henrietta asked if she could set up her paints and her easel and work on her art.
The owner told her that she could, provided that everything else at the inn was tended to beforehand.
When he saw her paintings for the first time, he stood stock-still, watching her work. Tears filled his eyes.
“Does your husband know that you’re this talented?” he asked.
Henrietta laughed at him, thinking he was joking. “He’d kill me if he knew I was wasting my time with all this,” she said.
The owner was quiet for a long time before he went on. “You could be someone great, Henrietta. You could get out of Nederland and have a whole life to yourself.”
But Henrietta knew not to believe him. He was just an older man who’d taken a liking to her. He was kinder and gentler than her father and husband—but he was still a man in the world. She couldn’t trust him too much.
Around Christmas of 1973, Henrietta was still not pregnant, and Larry was at the end of his rope.
When he found a few breadcrumbs on the counter (all from him, of course), he grew irate and demanded that Henrietta quit her job at the inn and return home to cook and clean for him.
Henrietta caught herself begging to stay at the inn, as it was the only place in the world where she felt safe and at home. But Larry had made up his mind.
Henrietta packed up her paint supplies and hugged the innkeeper goodbye. He reminded her of what he’d told her about her artistic talent, and she promised she’d consider it.
By the time February 1974 began, the innkeeper was dead from a terrible flu, and his three children were selling the inn to a man from Boulder who destroyed it and built a gaudy hotel.
Larry used this to say it was good that he’d told Henrietta to quit.
“You don’t want to get involved with that mess,” he said.
All the while, Henrietta stole as much time as she could to paint and paint and paint. It had become a kind of mania. A part of her worried about what Larry would do when he found the paintings, but another, larger part of her knew that she could never stop.
During the summer of 1974, Henrietta enjoyed a moment of joy. She was sure that Larry was about to leave her.
There was a woman he’d met—the daughter of an older gentleman who’d come to town to oversee the development of a new ski resort.
The woman was slightly younger than Henrietta, with buttery hair and long, milky arms and legs.
During a town-wide barbecue, Henrietta watched from a faraway picnic table as her husband flirted with the other woman and threw his head back in laughter at whatever she said.
A few women from Nederland came to sit down and talk to Henrietta, to assure her that Larry was “only flirting” and that that was what men did.
“I can’t imagine she’ll go for him,” one of them, a woman named Marge, muttered to Henrietta. “I mean, she’s so young and wealthy and beautiful.”
Henrietta pulsated with sorrow. “You don’t think?”
Marge looked taken aback. “Don’t tell me you want your husband to leave you?”
Henrietta cupped her knees and continued to watch Larry. “Do you ever wonder what you would have done if you hadn’t gotten married?”
Marge considered this, ducking her head to see if others around them were eavesdropping. But even the women who’d been in their conversation as recently as two minutes ago were talking about other things like shopping in the city and recipes for quiche with ham.
“Henrietta,” Marge murmured, “I don’t mean to pry. But people don’t always speak kindly about your husband. I would never ask you outright. But you’d tell us if you needed help. Wouldn’t you?”
Henrietta blinked at Marge. She wondered if Marge was in the sort of marriage where you were allowed to be honest, where you were allowed to laugh at the dinner table and tell stories from your childhood, and where you were allowed to dream together about the future.
“You know, if it’s really about the children,” Marge said, “I know of a doctor in Boulder who could help. Do you know if it’s you or Larry who’s the problem?”
Henrietta let her shoulders crumple. It was clear that Marge and everyone else thought that her and Larry’s problems began and ended with the children they couldn’t have.
“Let’s have dinner together, the four of us,” Marge went on, as though that settled everything.
“Matthew and I can tell you all about our experiences with the Boulder doctor. We can bring Larry into the very real dream of a medically minded future. I know he’s old-fashioned.
So was Matthew. And now, we have Beatrice and Lon, and we couldn’t be happier. ”
Beatrice and Lon were Marge and Matthew’s four-year-old twins, one of whom had shoved a pretzel stick up their nose earlier during the barbecue.
But Henrietta couldn’t imagine saying anything to Marge but, “Of course, thank you for offering your help.”
“That’s what friends are for!” Marge said.
Two weeks later, Matthew, Marge, Beatrice, and Lon came to Henrietta and Larry’s cabin for dinner.
Henrietta worked tirelessly on a roasted chicken feast with garlic potatoes, brussels sprouts and homemade bread.
It was rare that Henrietta and Larry hosted anyone at their place, and Henrietta was surprised by how joyful she felt as she showed the kids the little nooks and crannies of the house, as well as the trails through the forest that offered the best views of the staggering mountains.
When they sat down to dinner, Lon and Beatrice peppered Henrietta for details about “the magic in the mountains” and “fairies in the woods,” and Henrietta regaled them with a beautiful fairy tale that she made up on the spot.