Chapter 6
A deviation in the routine: On Friday they leave in the husband’s sensible black sedan. It’s dinnertime, so perhaps they’re heading out to a restaurant. Perhaps there’s something to celebrate.
Henry has something to celebrate, too. He has the house to himself. His parents have driven up to the suburbs of Philadelphia where his perfect, milestone-meeting sister lives with her perfect husband and perfect baby.
“We’re going to sell this place, eventually,” his mom likes to say, a warning in her tone. “It’s too big for just us. When your dad retires, we’re going to move closer to Laurel.”
There’s so much to unpack there, and Henry has done it.
Too big for just us, by which she means just her and Henry’s father. As though Henry’s not there. Like he doesn’t live there, too.
And of course they’re going to move closer to Laurel, to her baby who looks like every other bald, white baby who’s ever existed.
I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you so, Henry sometimes wants to tell her. Maybe if he apologizes, she’ll feel bad for her own failings.
And she doesn’t even know the real—bullshit, but real—reason he was laid off from his job. The things he’s done, she has no idea. If she did, if she knew about his interest in their new neighbors, the unhappy couple, she’d lose her shit.
Henry can see the flash of their faces now, the husband and wife, as the car rolls past his house. It’s still light out, the days only getting longer. They look grim, like they’re heading to a funeral, but Henry doesn’t think that’s likely. On a Friday night?
For a long time, Henry sits in the living room and reads, their return giving him something to look for, something to look forward to.
But he must have missed it. Suddenly, it’s nearly midnight and he’s fighting sleep, having finished four of his dad’s craft IPAs. But he never saw the couple return home.
At some point, a gentle rain commenced, a whisper-soft patter that fills Henry with an inexplicable calm.
He decides to stop fighting, and he lets himself drift away, there on the sofa, empty can tipped sideways on the floor beside him, if only because his mother isn’t there to see it or voice her disapproval.
The next morning, Henry’s head and back are aching.
He drinks water and coffee and Gatorade and tries to ignore the tenderness in his temples.
He spends most of the day searching for jobs and finds a few new ones, to which he applies.
But a sense of futility sinks in his gut, heavy like a shipwreck.
He might be invited to interview. He might get through to the second round.
But it will go no farther than that. They’ll press him as to why he’s been out of work for so long.
They’ll want to speak to his references, and when he supplies them—only two, and none from his most recent employment—he will receive a terse but tactful email letting him know the company has decided to move in a different direction.
And it’s not fair, because Henry isn’t going to make the same mistakes again.
He has no need for a pretty colleague with slate-gray nails, hair that smells like lemons, or mauve lips she is always checking in the compact mirror she keeps in her top desk drawer, beside the tin of cinnamon breath mints and three half-empty bottles of eye drops.
Henry never should have found out the brand of the mauve lipstick. He never should have purchased his own tube to touch and smell, smear across the pads of his fingers to rub together until there was heat. He shouldn’t have known about the cinnamon mints, the eye drops. But he did know.
He doesn’t completely lack self-awareness. He understands that he crossed lines, that he’s come dangerously close to being caught. But he’s learned from his mistakes. None of that will happen again. Not with a colleague.
Now he has her—the wife.
She’s lonely and she’s sad, and Henry feels a connection to her because he feels these same things. He feels a thread pulling between them, and he wishes he could see more of her. He wishes he could get closer. He wishes they could speak.
On Sunday evening, his parents return.
“Do you want to see the pictures of Mason?” Henry’s mother asks, approaching him in the kitchen, phone screen already alight.
“Okay,” Henry says, although he knows her question was rhetorical.
She settles next to him on the family room sofa, while his dad sits on the worn leather recliner and turns on the Orioles game, indifferent to Henry’s presence, his open novel.
His mother swipes through photo after photo of the chubby-cheeked baby, now with wisps of blond hair.
It could be any baby, and Henry feels nothing as he looks at the pictures, while his mother grins at the screen and tells Henry that the baby giggles now and will start eating solid food soon, and she is planning on steaming, mashing, and freezing sweet potatoes and pears and bringing them up to Laurel’s house every few weeks.
“Sounds good,” says Henry, because it does.
He wishes his parents would visit their grandson every weekend, although Laurel probably doesn’t.
But maybe she doesn’t mind their parents’ presence.
Perhaps she likes the help, and she and her nondescript husband go to the movies or out to restaurants or take naps.
It’s his understanding that Laurel hasn’t returned to work yet, so she must spend an awful lot of time with the child, which must be boring.
It must be lonely, though admittedly, not as lonely as Henry’s existence.
Then his mother adds, “Of course, it would be much easier if we could move closer. Dad is getting tired of working, you know.”
Henry’s father grunts noncommittally—a sound that could mean anything.
“I think we’ll start looking at condos soon,” his mom continues. She locks her phone screen, and the baby’s face disappears. She stands and smiles faintly, then meets Henry’s eyes. “Something small and manageable,” she suggests tentatively.
Henry wants to laugh. As if he might be offended? Someone would have to pay him to live in a condo with his parents. It’s bad enough living with them here, and here he has the basement to himself, with a full bathroom and kitchenette.
But no one would ever pay him to live with his parents. It seems no one will pay him for anything, so if his dad does retire, and they do sell the house, where will that leave him?
Henry no longer feels like laughing. He shuts his book and stands up.
“Oh, that’s low,” says his dad, and Henry’s head snaps toward him. But his dad is staring at the television, talking about a pitch, not his wife’s words. He probably didn’t even hear what she said. Henry wishes he was so skilled at tuning her out.