Henry
This may be my first time babysitting, but I had the wherewithal to lay down a bunch of paper on the coffee table. There’s a whole box of clean canvases in the Chaos Cabinet—high-quality, twelve-by-fifteen-inchers. I grabbed one for myself, and Ian and I got to work.
“Wow, this is really good,” said Meredith about the popcorn fish.
She’s still here because the Uber app kept glitching out, then a driver canceled on her, then the next car was eleven minutes away.
She’s on the couch now with Harry Styles, who climbed onto her lap when Miss Nadine left.
I feel bad that the night—our date—got derailed, but painting with Ian right now is a blast.
“You’re really talented, Ian,” Meredith says.
“Thanks. Oh, and I like your glasses, too. I didn’t say that before. They’re really cool.”
She thanks him, then tracks her driver on her phone as she scratches the dog’s left ear.
“Is it okay if I pause the movie?” Bella asks.
“Sure,” I say. “You good?”
Bella taps the remote and heads for the stairs. “Yeah, I just gotta go to the bathroom.”
Ian is working on the top of the image now, and he’s nailing the subtle differences between the “real” decorations and their distorted reflections below. I match his brushstrokes on my canvas, basically just copying him. He’s better at this than I imagined he’d be.
Meredith stands, shoos Harry Styles to the floor. “Three minutes out,” she says.
“Oh, okay, cool,” I say.
I prepare to apologize again, but then Bella shouts from the bathroom. “Henry! Hennnnnryyyyy!”
I go to the bottom of the stairs. “What’s up, Bella?”
“Can you come up here?”
“Um.”
Ian looks up from his canvas. “She needs you to help her wipe.”
“She what?”
“Mom or Miss Nadine always does it, but…”
I look at Meredith, who’s putting on her coat.
I hijacked our evening and made her watch half of Home Alone at a virtual stranger’s house while I painted with a kid.
I think asking her to go upstairs now and help a little girl in the bathroom is perhaps a bridge too far.
I don’t have to ask, though, because Meredith is a kind person.
“I’ll be right back,” she says.
As Meredith climbs the stairs, Ian says, “Do you think Bella would be mad if I started the movie again?”
“Yeah, maybe hold off on that for a sec, buddy.”
Upstairs, I hear Meredith talking to Bella through the bathroom door. I can’t make out exactly what she’s saying, but her voice is gentle, and the bathroom door opens and closes. A moment later, it opens again, and she and Bella return. Bella sits back in her spot and hits Play.
Meredith zips her coat and puts her hat on, checks her phone again. “It was nice meeting you guys,” she tells the kids.
“You, too,” they say.
She wishes Ian good luck with his painting, then I follow her out the door, catching her on the stone walk. It’s not flurrying anymore, but it’s colder now than before. “Meredith, I’m really sorry.”
She stops at the door of a Ford Explorer. “I know you are, Henry,” she says.
The driver rolls the window down, asks if Meredith is Meredith.
“I’ll make it up to you, okay?” I say. “The Bluebird. Maybe tomorrow? They do this drink called a Reindeer Sled every hol—”
“Listen,” she says, stopping me. Her glasses have gone foggy again, so she takes them off and puts them in her coat pocket.
“You’re a sweet guy, Henry. The fact that we’re here in the first place demonstrates that, I guess.
But you clearly don’t fully grasp what’s going on.
Either that or maybe you’re just stupid. ”
She looks back at Grace’s house, so I do, too. Harry Styles watches us from the front window. “What do you mean?” I ask.
“I don’t know what’s going on with you and this Grace woman, exactly, or who she is to you. But, seeing you tonight in that house, with those kids…and that little dog. Whether you like it or not, Henry, you’re part of that family.”
I start to say something but I’m not even sure what.
“And in the interest of not throwing more of my life away on someone whose interests clearly lie elsewhere,” Meredith says, “I’m gonna say goodbye now.”
I try and fail to speak again. I don’t know if she’s right, but I do know that I chose being here with them over being with her, and I’d do it again in a second.
She kisses me again, but this time on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, Henry.”
Back inside, Harry Styles tries to trip me.
I sit down again and touch where Meredith’s lips just were.
Knowing that you’ll never see someone again is a sad feeling, even if you’re fully aware that it’s for the best. I look at our canvases, though, Ian’s and mine, and I smile, because I like being part of this family.
“Knock knock,” says Bella from her chair.
“What?” I ask.
“Knock knock,” she says again.
“Oh, right. Sorry. Um, who’s there?”
“Justin,” she says.
“Justin who?”
Bella smiles. “Your friend Meredith was justin time to wipe my butt.”
Call it a tension breaker, or maybe chalk it up to surprisingly good comedic timing for a kid, but that’s the funniest thing I’ve heard in years, and my burst of laughter fills the room.
A second wave hits, and it’s like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me.
Bella laughs, too. I’ve never heard her laugh before, and it’s a sound so perfect and happy.
“Bella, where did you hear that?” I ask, and then I very much wish that I hadn’t because her smile fades and her eyes fill with tears. I look at Ian who’s frowning down at his canvas.
Her lip quivers. “My daddy told it to me,” she says. “It was his favorite joke.”
I stand and go to her, not sure what to do as she tries not to cry. “Oh, Bella,” I say. “I’m so sorry.”
“I’m starting to forget what he looks like,” she says.
“What?”
“I forget his face sometimes.”
The dizziness comes again, like the room is shifting under my feet. “Me, too.”
“You forget my daddy’s face?”
“No, not…” My eyes are starting fill now, too.
“When I see his picture, I remember him,” she says. “But when I’m just thinking about him, I forget what he looks like. And it makes me really sad.”
I open my arms. “Come here.”
She falls into me, burying her head into my shoulder.
“I’m forgetting, too,” says Ian.
“You are?” says Bella.
He nods, starting to cry now, too, so I wave him over to our hug. Harry Styles barks at us.
“This is just part of it, guys,” I tell them.
“But I don’t like it,” says Bella.
“Me neither,” says Ian.
“I know,” I say. “But we’ll get through it, okay? I promise.”
We’re like this until the kids stop crying—until I stop crying. Then Bella asks, “Do you think maybe I can paint, too?”
“You want to paint with us?”
She rubs her eyes. “Yeah, I wanna try. It looks like fun.”