us to see how they deal with Henry, and he with them.
I'm proud of the fact that I kept Henry a secret for so long. Fourteen years. When
you're a kid fourteen years is forever.
We pass a Wal-Mart, a Dairy Queen, a McDonald's. More cornfields. An
orchard. U-Pick-M Strawberries, Blueberries. In the summer this road is a long
corridor of fruit, grain, and capitalism. But now the fields are dead and dry and
the cars speed along the sunny cold highway ignoring the beckoning parking
lots.
I never thought much about South Haven until I moved to Chicago. Our house
always seemed like an island, sitting in the unincorporated area to the south,
surrounded by the Meadow, orchards, woods, farms, and South Haven was just
Town, as in Let's go to Town and get an ice cream. Town was groceries and hardware
and Mackenzie's Bakery and the sheet music and records at the Music
Emporium, Alicia's favorite store. We used to stand in front of Appleyard's
Photography Studio making up stories about the brides and toddlers and
families smiling their hideous smiles in the window. We didn't think the library
was funny-looking in its faux Greek splendor, nor did we find the cuisine limited
and bland, or the movies at the Michigan Theater relentlessly American and
mindless. These were opinions I came to later, after I became a denizen of a City,
an expatriate anxious to distance herself from the bumpkin ways of her youth. I
am suddenly consumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved
the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school
reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.
I glance over at Henry and see that he has fallen asleep.
South Haven, fifty miles.
Twenty-six, twelve, three, one.
Phoenix Road.
Blue Star Highway.
And then: Meagram Lane. I reach over to wake Henry but he's already awake.
He smiles nervously and looks out the window at the endless tunnel of bare
winter trees as we hurtle along, and as the gate comes into view I fumble in the
glove compartment for the opener and the gates swing apart and we pass
through.
The house appears like a pop-up in a book. Henry gasps, and starts to laugh.
"What?" I say defensively.
"I didn't realize it was so huge. How many rooms does this monster have?"
"Twenty-four," I tell him. Etta is waving at us from the hall window as I pull
around the drive and stop near the front door. Her hair is grayer than last time I
was here, but her face is pink with pleasure. As we climb out of the car she's
gingerly picking her way down the icy front steps in no coat and her good navy
blue dress with the lace collar, carefully balancing her stout figure over her
sensible shoes, and I run over to her to take her arm but she bats me away until
she's at the bottom and then she gives me a hug and a kiss (I breathe in Etta's
smell of Noxzema and powder so gladly) as Henry stands by, waiting. "And
what have we here?" she says as though Henry is a small child I have brought
along unannounced. "Etta Milbauer, Henry DeTamble," I introduce. I see a little
'Oh' on Henry's face and I wonder who he thought she was. Etta beams at Henry
as we climb the steps. She opens the front door. Henry lowers his voice and asks
me, "What about our stuff?" and I tell him that Peter will deal with it. "Where is
everyone?" I ask, and Etta says that lunch is in fifteen minutes and we can take
off our coats and wash and go right in. She leaves us standing in the hall and
retreats to the kitchen. I turn, take off my coat and hang it in the hall closet. When
I turn back to Henry he is waving at someone. I peer around him and see Nell
sticking her broad, snub-nosed face out of the dining room door, grinning, and I
run down the hall and give her a big sloppy kiss and she chuckles at me and
says, "Pretty man, monkey girl," and ducks back into the other room before
Henry can reach us.
"Nell?" he guesses and I nod. "She's not shy, just busy," I explain. I lead him
up the back stairs to the second floor. "You're in here," I tell him, opening the
door to the blue bedroom. He glances in and follows me down the hall. "This is
my room," I say apprehensively and Henry slips around me and stands in the
middle of the rug just looking and when he turns to me I see that he doesn't
recognize anything; nothing in the room means a thing to him, and the knife of
realization sinks in deeper: all the little tokens and souvenirs in this museum of
our past are as love letters to an illiterate. Henry picks up a wren's nest (it
happens to be the first of all the many bird's nests he gave me over the years) and
says, "Nice." I nod, and open my mouth to tell him and he puts it back on the
shelf and says, "Does that door lock?" and I flip the lock and we're late for lunch.
Henry: I'm almost calm as I follow Clare down the stairs, through the dark cold
hall and into the dining room. Everyone is already eating. The room is low
ceilinged and comfortable in a William Morrisy sort of way; the air is warm from
the fire crackling in the small fireplace and the windows are so frosted over that I
can't see out. Clare goes over to a thin woman with pale red hair who must be her
mother, who tilts her head to receive Clare's kiss, who half rises to shake my
hand. Clare introduces her to me as "my mother" and I call her "Mrs. Abshire"
and she immediately says "Oh, but you must call me Lucille, everyone does,"
and smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun
in some other galaxy. We take our seats across the table from each other. Clare is
sitting between Mark and an elderly woman who turns out to be her Great Aunt
Dulcie; I am sitting between Alicia and a plump pretty blond girl who is
introduced as Sharon and who seems to be with Mark. Clare's father sits at the
head of the table and my first impression is that he is deeply disturbed by me.
Handsome, truculent Mark seems equally unnerved. They've seen me before. I
wonder what I was doing that caused them to notice me, remember me, recoil
ever so slightly in aversion when Clare introduces me. But Philip Abshire is a
lawyer, and master of his features, and within a minute he is affable and smiling,
the host, my girlfriend's dad, a balding middle-aged man with aviator glasses
and an athletic body gone soft and paunchy but strong hands, tennis-playing
hands, gray eyes that continue to regard me warily despite the confidential grin.
Mark has a harder time concealing his distress, and every time I catch his eye he
looks at his plate. Alicia is not what I expected; she is matter-of-fact and kind, but
a little odd, absent. She has Philip's dark hair, like Mark, and Lucille's features,
sort of; Alicia looks as though someone had tried to combine Clare and Mark but
had given up and thrown in some Eleanor Roosevelt to fill in the gaps. Philip
says something and Alicia laughs, and suddenly she is lovely and I turn to her in
surprise as she rises from the table.
"I've got to go to St. Basil's," she informs me. "I've got a rehearsal. Are you
coming to church?" I dart a look at Clare, who nods slightly, and I tell Alicia "Of
course," and as everyone sighs with-what? relief? I remember that Christmas is,
after all, a Christian holiday in addition to being my own personal day of
atonement. Alicia leaves. I imagine my mother laughing at me, her well-plucked
eyebrows raised high at the sight of her half-Jewish son marooned in the midst of
Christmas in Goyland, and I mentally shake my finger at her. You should talk, I tell
her. You married an Episcopalian. I look at my plate and it's ham, with peas and an
effete little salad. I don't eat pork and I hate peas.
"Clare tells us you're a librarian," Philip assays, and I admit that this is so. We
have a chipper little discussion about the Newberry and people who are
Newberry trustees and also clients of Philip's firm, which apparently is based in
Chicago, in which case I am not clear about why Clare's family lives way up here
in Michigan.
"Summer homes," he tells me, and I remember Clare explaining that her father
specializes in wills and trusts. I picture elderly rich people reclining on their
private beaches, slathering on sunblock and deciding to cut Junior out of the will,
reaching for their cell phones to call Philip. I recollect that Avi, who is first chair
to my father's second at the CSO, has a house around here somewhere. I mention
this and everyone's ears perk.
"Do you know him?" Lucille asks.
"Sure. He and my dad sit right next to each other."
"Sit next to each other?"
"Well, you know. First and second violin."
"Your father is a violinist?"
"Yeah." I look at Clare, who is staring at her mother with a don't embarrass me
expression on her face.
"And he plays for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra?"
"Yes."
Lucille s face is suffused with pink; now I know where Clare gets her blushes.
"Do you think he would listen to Alicia play? If we gave him a tape?"
I grimly hope that Alicia is very, very good. People are constantly bestowing
tapes on Dad. Then I have a better idea.
"Alicia is a cellist, isn't she?"
"Yes."
"Is she looking for a teacher?"
Philip interjects: "She studies with Frank Wainwright in Kalamazoo."
"Because I could give the tape to Yoshi Akawa. One of his students just left to
take a job in Paris." Yoshi is a great guy and first chair cello. I know he'll at least
listen to the tape; my dad, who doesn't teach, will simply pitch it out. Lucille is
effusive; even Philip seems pleased. Clare looks relieved. Mark eats. Great Aunt
Dulcie, pink-haired and tiny, is oblivious to this whole exchange. Perhaps she's
deaf? I glance at Sharon, who is sitting on my left and who hasn't said a word. She
looks miserable. Philip and Lucille are discussing which tape they should give
me, or perhaps Alicia should make a new one? I ask Sharon if this is her first time
up 