49. Henry
Chapter forty-nine
Henry
T he line of boxes stretched three high and four deep as Henry emptied the seasonal storage and created an ad hoc decorating station at the far end of the music room, leaving a clear path for the tree. He would owe Jay an apology; once the tree arrived and was locked in its stand, they would begin bedecking it immediately rather than waiting twenty-four hours for it to adjust.
“Nearly finished,” he answered Mother’s inquiry. “How are you faring?”
He drew closer, surreptitiously checking the level of water in Mother’s glass. She thankfully wasn’t at a stage that required limiting her liquids, but the care team had emphasized the importance of balancing hydration with not overworking her circulatory system. “Is there anything you need?”
“You’ve done plenty, darling. Come sit with me.” Mother rested on the settee with a blanket across her lap. The wide windows spilled sunlight across the floor. “Alice has sent a lovely picture of Jay chatting with a young woman over a counter, and she says, ‘Tell Henry we’ve made a business contact for Becky.’ Do I know Becky? I’m afraid I don’t recall that name.”
Despite the discomfort at breakfast, the day was shaping up nicely. He’d successfully channeled his submissives into a pleasant diversion that was simultaneously a useful task, which allowed him to focus on Mother’s health. “Nor should you, unless Natalie has been telling you tales. Becky is Jay and Natalie’s niece. Thanks to his intervention, she is preparing to run the family business for the next generation.”
Truly, his mental faculties had slipped. Had he been thinking rationally, he would have encouraged regular chats for Mother and Jay over the last two weeks. The companionship would have benefitted them both, though he would have monitored to ensure Mother didn’t overtax herself.
“Intervention? Is that a topic I ought to avoid or lean into?” Shaking her head, Mother sighed softly. “Your husband has so many pain points, darling. It’s good for him to talk about them. His sister as well—she’s rather preoccupied with another drama just now, though I believe the favor Alice asked of her will be a help there.”
“The favor Alice asked?” A tussle began in his chest, the opening feints of a classical wrestling match. He very much wanted Alice to step into her dominance and deepen her bond with Jay.
When and where he could witness and praise.
Mother was concealing her phone use from him; Alice was concealing an unknown request of Jay’s sister—and after she’d arranged for Jay’s luncheon with his brother as well. The emerging pattern pushed him toward irrelevance. For a moment she’d seemed on the precipice of a coup at breakfast. Today would be a day to restore order and harmony.
“Have you not…” Pressing her lips together, Mother tilted her head. She’d drawn her hair back this morning; he ought to wash it for her again today. Keeping her arms raised to do so herself in the shower would exhaust her. “Well, it’s not my place to say, then. Natalie’s business is her own, and I’m certain Alice will speak to you when you give her the opportunity.” The tender green shoots of spring unfurled in Mother’s eyes, her gaze velvety soft. “You slept at my bedside again last night. I am not so frail and helpless, Henry. I’m putting my foot down tonight. You need time with your spouses.”
“What I need is to be kept informed of all of the variables so that I might properly account for them in my planning.” Had Alice said—yes, she’d asked last night if they would have time to speak. He had misunderstood the import of her words. If she’d asked Natalie to join them for the holidays, he would need to prepare another guest room, obtain gifts to make her feel welcome on Christmas morning— “I wish you would have apprised me of your ongoing phone conversations and this favor, Mother.”
Hands folded in her lap, chin high, she unleashed a serene motherly gaze that nonetheless chastised him. “And I wish you would have apprised me of the loss of Jay’s client. Mere days before my own heart troubles? It’s no wonder you can’t sleep. Providing Jay with comfort and support awakened old memories. And now to be right back here where it happened—”
“I really ought to fetch the last of the boxes.” The contest inside him grew, holds and pins and narrow escapes. Will had been far better at wrestling than he; Will could manage with raw strength what Henry must approach with evasion and cunning. “Alice and Jay will be bringing a tree home soon enough.”
Mother glanced at her phone, tipping it up from her folded hands. “They’ve only just reached the trees. Jay is looking adorably thoughtful while gazing at some sort of evergreen, and he’s sent a companion picture of Alice taking pictures of him.” The hard line of her lips softened as she pecked a response and lowered the phone. “We have eons of time to talk.”
“The opposite, I would think. They’ll be expecting your input. It’s not the best time, Mother.” The devastated child within couldn’t be allowed to gain the upper hand now that his spouses had arrived for the week. He must regain mastery over himself before he could properly tend to his responsibilities as a son, a husband, and a dominant.
Her sigh ushered in a hint of frost. “I think you would prefer we never discuss it again.”
“Need we?” Her insistence would upset the balance he sought. The match was hardly fair if she added her weight to the boy crying out for her to stay with him. “I assure you, I have thoroughly expunged that pain in assorted rounds of therapy.”
A vast overstatement, given the near fugue state he’d been in while drawing the other night. The fear had been a fogbank drifting closer and closer in the past two weeks, encircling him and clouding his view of anything beyond it. Alice and Jay’s arrival had brought not cleansing winds but another wave of fog.
He reached for a reliable light by which to steer the conversation elsewhere. “Father would undoubtedly have called such sessions unnecessary foolishness had I still been living under his roof.”
“And I would have called them a wise decision by my son with the old soul who feels life so intensely.” Thankfully, Mother never could resist the bait when it came to his relationship with his father. “If there is foolishness involved, it is only now, as you work so hard to deny the turmoil you are clearly experiencing.”
In thirty-nine years, he’d never received such dogged pushback from her as he had this week. Navigating her health transition could make a casualty of the easy understanding he and Mother shared. The boy within scrambled back from the wrestling mat and crouched unmoving at the edge of the circle. Losing that relationship would wreck him as surely as the loss of her life would.
He took slow breaths, hunting for a calm lost in the fog.
“Turmoil is hardly conducive to a happy holiday. I am merely attempting to give everyone the comfort and joy they deserve. The pall that hangs over the house at Christmas is…” Dangerous, creeping under doors and slipping into beds, poisoning minds with memories that refused to be quieted. Tomorrow would mark the anniversary of his would-be baby sister’s birth and death. “Unfortunate. I had hoped the addition of Alice and Jay to this year’s gathering would lift the weight of so many years.”
If not for Mother’s diagnosis, he might finally have constructed a vibrant celebration without the melancholy that so often shadowed her as the days grew short. Taking the seat beside her, he offered his hand, palm upturned, fingers spread. “But circumstances have shifted, and so must we.”
“I will not deny that the season is a difficult one.” She laid her hand atop his, the wrinkled skin a map of years, and laced their fingers tightly. “Do you think I don’t recall the exact hour that your father and I left for the hospital thirty-three years ago? I assure you I do. My body remembers the feel of the contractions even now. My grief is near the surface.”
Her head dipped, revealing the delicate pink of her scalp beneath thinning silver hair, like crocus petals beneath the snow. Inhaling deeply, she leaned against him and lifted her chin toward his shoulder. “But so too is my joy—in you, in your delightful husband and wife, in the extended families you three have brought me.”
Two hands now, gripping his own, shaking his knuckles gently against his knee. “Do not let fear consume you, Henry. I want to live. I want to live and be merry. Do you remember how you would show me the shells and the stones and the sea glass? Show me your heart, Henry. Show me—at the very least, show Alice and Jay—what your heart needs this winter to heal once more. Your wounds are bleeding. You need help to close them.”
Would that he could. His fear would suffocate both of them. It filled the empty space in every room, compressing him into hypervigilance, into hair-trigger responses that he must work to suppress and a stress headache that thudded through him day after day. His fears conflicted with Mother’s need for freedom. His erratic weakness conflicted with Jay’s need for strength and stability. He’d pushed Alice away somehow, though the conflict there hadn’t even presented itself to him. Demanding too much of her? Awakening uncomfortable memories of her own? She’d been distant and challenging since her call yesterday to inform him of her plans. Not ask—inform.
What he needed was to be the man—the husband, the dominant—he had been three weeks ago. The man unveiling his gifts and unraveling the knotted threads holding his beloveds back from experiencing the full heights of their glorious selves. “I can’t bear to hurt them.”
“Alice and Jay?” Creases gathered at the corners of Mother’s eyes, of her lips. “I suspect your silence hurts them more.”
“As Father’s did you,” he murmured, pinned beneath the weight of mistakes come round again. He’d spent his life determined not to become a man like his father. Yet here he was.
“Henry, your father—”
The cheerful chimes of an incoming call burst from Mother’s phone.
“I have the sound off; I don’t know how—” She released his hand and turned the screen upright. Alice’s face appeared above her name; two missed call notifications appeared below. “Oh dear, I fear we’re needed. But, Henry, please do—”
Reaching past her, he touched the Accept button and pushed welcome into his voice. “Alice! Is there good news from the forest?”
“Henry!” Pink-cheeked beneath her red knit hat, her hair tumbling past her coat collar, Alice grinned at him. “Jay has a handful of selections if you’re ready to review them, Mother.”
The image flipped, revealing Jay beside a healthy-looking evergreen of some sort, game-show hostess flair in the fluid sweep of his arms.
“I would be absolutely delighted.” Mother pitched her voice louder with the poise of a seasoned socialite calling a room to order. “Tell me what I’ve won, darlings.”
Henry left her to it, pointing toward the boxes at her quizzical glance and miming carrying another. He would, in fact, gather the last of the decorations from storage. After he took a moment in the hallway to mend the fraying edges of his composure.
Alice and Jay’s voices carried, overlapping, joyful and laughing—everything he wanted for them. Mother chimed in with girlish enthusiasm, and he detected no hint of falsity. But the nagging fear lingered that he would miss a crucial moment. He wasn’t privy to her talk therapy sessions in the cardiac program, and she didn’t recount them afterward as Jay eagerly did. She’d been concealing her phone; what else might she be concealing? Need he riffle through her nightstand drawers?
This wasn’t thirty-odd years ago. Circumstances were different now; his mother chatting on a video call with his spouses was clear evidence of that. But knowing and accepting were two separate battles with a gulf between them, and he could force neither mind nor body to cross it.
He toted the final cartons into the music room, waving when Mother swung the phone toward him, projecting merriment he felt only vaguely through the fog. Once the selection was made, he would begin preparations for a robust afternoon tea. Alice and Jay would presumably lunch at the tree farm, and Mother might be coaxed to nibble on something, but tea and cider could be served with a variety of small bites throughout the afternoon and evening as they adorned the tree.
No sooner had Mother ended the call than the doorbell rang. A package, perhaps? Or, good lord, Jay’s sister arriving. Surely Alice would have given him more advance warning than that.
“Henry, will you walk with me?” Mother folded the lap blanket neatly and set it on the seat beside her. “That will be Lina at the door.”
He rushed to her side and offered his arms for balance as she rose. “I’m terribly sorry; I thought I conveyed to her that we had things well in hand.”
“You did, darling. I asked her to visit.”
She’d outflanked him again. He’d intended to suggest she nap after lunch while he opened boxes and assembled tea trays. “More phone shenanigans?”
They walked slowly toward the entryway, though with more steadiness than she’d had yesterday.
“If by shenanigans you mean I asked my dearest friend to assist me with showering and washing my hair and other things for our decorating party this evening, then yes.”
Tart as a lemon, and well he deserved it. Mother detested appearing under the weather even when she was. He ought to have arranged for time between errands and bed last night to help her feel herself before Alice and Jay arrived. Though if they’d been able to hire a full-time aide the day before, such basic comforts would have been easily accommodated. “I apologize. It’s lovely that Lina is available to help today.”
“I also told her that she ought to stay for tea and meet your spouses.”
She’d been part of his life since before he’d been born, a second mother to him. At any other time, presenting Alice and Jay to her would be cause for pride and delight. But the fog deepened, warning of the stories she might tell and the questions they would raise in his perceptive, empathetic spouses.
“Of course she should.” The words came automatically as he positioned Mother beside the door and opened it, letting in the chill. “Lina, how good of you to come.”