Henry
November, Somehow
Why is it that the holidays always seem to arrive out of nowhere? One day you notice a leaf turning orange—then, ten minutes later, guys in commercials are buying their wives Lexuses with big red bows on them, and you think, Wait, what?
It’s like that every year, I guess. This year, though, the passage of time has been particularly confusing, because there were a few months early on that I barely remember. I have no recollection of the Super Bowl, for example, or who hosted the Oscars, or what springing forward was like.
When I cross the finish line, Mario lets out his little victory hoot, and I enjoy a small surge of dopamine. “Good news, Mom,” I say. “I won the Mushroom Cup again.”
She’s just appeared between the kitchen and TV room to fetch me for dinner prep. After an impressive sigh, she says, “That’s great, Henry. Your father and I are very proud.”
She’s dialed up the sarcasm recently, which I could do without.
I hold out the controller. “Wanna race? I’ll give you a head start.”
Back in January, during the blurry-in-my-head times, I started coming over here for dinner on Sundays.
Mom and Dad were happy to have me, and it felt like old times at first, like when I was just out of college and would breeze in to do my laundry and eat vegetables.
Soon, though, Sundays became Sundays and Saturdays, then Fridays, too, because I’ve found that weekends are the worst time to be alone.
They set a place for me at the table, and we watched TV together, and they told me how great it was to spend so much time with me.
I sensed their patience running thin over the summer, though, especially when I started showing up for Taco Tuesdays.
“You know, with your dad’s blood pressure, he really shouldn’t even be eating tacos,” my mom finally told me in September.
Was she just trying to get rid of me? Maybe.
I doubled down, though, by suggesting Grilled Chicken Tuesdays.
Not as good alliteratively speaking, but it beats eating dinner by myself.
I’m at the kitchen island now chopping vegetables with my mom for a salad. My dad is in the basement doing some cleaning. The Ravens are on the little flat-screen by the toaster.
“Your brother’s deep-frying another turkey this year,” my mom says.
I’m holding a cucumber stick in my mouth like a cigarette. “My god. How is it almost Thanksgiving again?”
“You need to stop asking that,” she says. “It’s just how time works.”
She’s right. I eye the Norman Rockwell calendar hanging nearby, the page flipped to the painting of the huge family at Thanksgiving dinner. It’s not that I don’t like the holidays. Sweaters are great, red-and-green candy, too. I just wish I could skip these holidays.
Through the window above the sink, I catch a glimpse of an airplane passing.
As I track its progress from one end of the glass to the other, I’m acutely aware that my mom is watching me watch it.
I spent decades barely noticing airplanes.
Now I notice them all because there are real people up there hurtling through time and space.
My dad ambles up the stairs and enters the kitchen carrying a dusty plastic crate.
“Hey, look what I found, bub. Some of your old art stuff.” He sets the crate on the kitchen table, and the three of us gather around.
The contents—sketches, drawings, and random paintings—are arranged chronologically, starting with hand turkeys from kindergarten and going all the way to work from my time at the Maryland Institute College of Art, or, as locals call it, MICA.
We flip for a while, removing things at random.
“Oh wow,” my mom says. “I remember those. Your final project.”
My dad lays four framed, ten-by-twelve-inch pieces carefully on the table.
They make up a collection of graphic renderings inspired by Baltimore.
There’s Camden Yards where the Orioles play, the iconic Domino Sugars sign, the downtown skyline at night, and a graffiti-covered park bench.
I called it the City Series. Along with the artwork, I wrote a business plan detailing how the project could expand nationally.
The formula was simple: four locales for each city, created in my style.
“I kept telling you,” my dad says, “you could’ve made copies and sold these all over town. Who wouldn’t want them hanging in their house?”
“It was just a school project, Dad,” I say.
“Well, I like them,” he says.
Art schools are made up of two types of students: ones whose parents support them and ones whose parents think art school is bullshit.
Mine showed up to my class’s graduation show wearing T-shirts with my City Series screen-printed across their chests.
My classmates thought they were making a statement about art and commerce. But no, they were just proud of me.
“You know, you should hang these up over at your apartment,” my mom says.
“That’s a good idea,” says my dad. He picks up his favorite piece, Camden Yards.
“Might make it feel a little homier in there,” my mom says. “Like a place you’d want to spend more time.”
“Right,” I say, because I’m onto them now. I love my parents, but they’re terrible actors, and they’ve obviously planned this. I imagine them whispering in the basement, conspiring as I played Mario Kart. “You know, if you guys want me hanging out here less, you can just say so.”
“What?” my dad says. “No. It’s not that. It’s just…”
My dad has never been good at bad cop. He shuffles now, waiting for my mom to step in. I head back to the island for another cucumber cigarette.
“It’s not that we want you here less, Henry,” my mom says. “It’s that we think you should be here less. It’s about your well-being.”
I’ll admit, this hurts. “Am I still invited to Thanksgiving,” I say, “or should I maybe see if Applebee’s is open?”
“Very funny,” my mom says.
“Cal’s doing another deep-fried turkey, you know,” my dad says.
“Oh, that reminds me.” My mom is back at the island now, too, chopping again. Her glasses have slid to the edge of her nose, which always makes her look drunk. “You know Maryellen Denison, right? From my book club? Over on Dewhurst Lane?”
“Um,” I say. The turn here is jarring because my feelings are still hurt. Also, I have no idea who in the hell she’s talking about.
“Well, she’s having some trouble with her Wi-Fi. It’s all glitchy. I said maybe you’d swing over today before dinner and give it a look for her.”
“You want me to go check out a complete stranger’s Wi-Fi?”
“She’s not a stranger. She’s in my book club. Sharp lady. Big Anne Tyler fan.”
“Has she tried, like, turning it off and back on again? You know I’m not an IT guy, right?”
She pushes her glasses back up. “Well, I guarantee you know more about the internet than Maryellen does. She still has an AOL email account.”
I look up at the ceiling fan and consider my options.
I could refuse. I’m a grown-up after all.
Most of the appeal of adulthood is being able to tell your parents no.
But then my dad, who’s hugging my Camden Yards picture to his chest now, lowers his voice—his scolding tone, like when I was ten. “Come on, bub. Maybe just do it, okay?”
Shit.
“And how about running a comb through your hair first,” my mom says. “Kinda looks like you just woke up.”
And so, with my jacket on and my hair quickly tended to, I go outside. It’s chilly, but not cold, which is nice, but honestly, the leaves are too much with all their color. They peaked a couple of weeks ago, but most of Baltimore still looks like it’s bursting into flames.
Aside from some new paint colors, updated lawn furniture, and an electric car charger here and there, the neighborhood hasn’t changed much in the last thirty years.
A plastic skeleton watches me from a nearby tree, because the Dodds haven’t taken down their Halloween decorations yet, which is typical.
Also typical, the Wileys are putting their Christmas lights up already.
Mrs. Wiley is wearing a Ravens hoodie and detangling a knot of extension cords.
In a matter of hours their house will be visible from the International Space Station, and I think of the lights in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.
And then I think of my favorite line from that movie, when Todd, the Griswolds’ next-door neighbor, asks Chevy Chase where he’s going to put a tree that big and he replies, “Bend over and I’ll show you. ”
Mrs. Wiley spots me and waves. “Hello there, Henry!”
“Hey, Mrs. Wiley. Lights’re going up, huh?”
“Yep. We’re gonna tone it down a little this year, though,” she says, cheerfully lying. Then she asks how I am, her head tilted slightly to the right.
I’m careful to keep moving so I don’t get sucked into her friendly vortex. “I’m on vacation,” I say. “So, you know, living the life.”
“That’s great.” She tucks the mess of wires under her arm, and I know what she’s going to say—I could lip-sync to it if I had to. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do, okay?”
I understand that this comes from a nice place, but I’ve heard it so many times in the last ten months that I sometimes invent alternate replies, like, How about a hundred bucks?
or Maybe you give me that Ravens hoodie.
I don’t say either of those things, though, because Mrs. Wiley is a sweet lady. “Will do,” I say. “Have a good one.”
I wrote Mrs. Denison’s address down because the last thing I wanted to do was ask the wrong stranger about her Wi-Fi.
I check my notes app now and look up at what should be her house.
It’s old and charmingly well-maintained, like most of the houses in my parents’ neighborhood.
I head up a stone path, step over a fallen Orioles garden gnome, and triple-check the house number.
When I knock, a dog barks wildly inside, and a kid shouts, “Mom! Mommy!”