The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald Page B

started to crawl toward Martha.
    “Why isn’t he dressed?” Martha asked Ethel, putting her suitcase down so that she could stop Henry from crawling past her.
    “He was,” Ethel began. “That is, I was just getting ready to dress him, and then, son of a gun, Mrs. Gaines, he took a step.”
    “He’s taken steps before,” Martha said drily, picking Henry up.
    “Without holding on to a darned thing,” Ethel added.
    In Martha’s arms now, Henry put his hands on either side of her face and bent his head forward so that his forehead was touching hers.
    “Mah!” he said, which was as close as he could get to Martha. In the tiny tent of intimacy created by their touching foreheads, Henry looked into Martha’s eyes and Martha looked into Henry’s. His eyes were completely enthralling to her—green, with flecks of orange, now—promising love and magic. For a moment, she felt the moist sting of tears coming, and she had to force herself to walk forward, into the living room, and to hand Henry to Ethel.
    “Put some clothes on him,” she said huskily. “I’m going to go unpack.”
    UPSTAIRS, HOWEVER, Martha did not unpack. She did not even bring her suitcase into the bedroom but left it, unopened, on the landing and sank into her parlor chair, beset by the ache and helplessness of being in love.
    Had he really taken his first step without her?
    It was an hour before Martha walked back out onto the landing to retrieve her suitcase. In the mirror at the top of the stairs, the mirror in which she had greeted and calmed herself so often, she now saw the folds of her neck, as copious as the creases in the proscenium curtain she had seen last summer on Broadway.
They say that falling in love is wonderful.
    She thought of Betty, crooning that song to Henry in the first weeks of his stay. To hell with her, Martha thought. If Henry were Martha’s, she thought, she would never have left him—she could never have left him—no matter what her husband needed, no matter what her father said. If Henry were Martha’s, she thought, his needs would be the only ones that mattered. Perhaps they already were.
    WEEKS PASSED, and the late summer bloomed and smoldered. Henry, for his part, betoddled the world. He understood himself to be an extraordinary being, unlike anyone else. He was the only one of his size, the only one people bent down to greet. He was the only one who seemed to be the center of the world.
    By autumn, after more than a year of coming and going, he knew how to get the most from each mother. With Beatrice, he did his crawling, his walking, his dancing, his jumping; everything giddily physical and bold made her squeal with excitement. Ruby seemed to inspire the longest contemplative times, times spent reading or doing puzzles, side by side, with Henry standing and Ruby kneeling at the coffee table. Sometimes she would loop her arm around his waist, and he would make himself lean against her in a kind of swoon, and when he got a particularly difficult piece in place, he would let her give him a little squeeze and he would say “Wooby!” which reliably made her giggle. Or he would say “Deed it!” with a huge, proud grin.
    With Ethel, at mealtimes, he would look up with his orange-green eyes, full of glee and eager anticipation, and she would swoop a spoonful of applesauce by him, like a tiny plastic B-25, and he would sit up in his high chair and swat a hand at the spoon, like King Kong. Then Ethel would laugh and laugh and give him as much more as he wanted.
    His baby journal was nearly three-quarters full now, and on weekends, the women smoked their cigarettes, sipped Dole pineapple drinks, turned the pages, and argued about who had taken which photograph when, who had been with Henry to crystallize this moment of his milestone-rich life, or that one. The journal was a pointillist painting. A stained-glass window. A fly’s eye. But in any case, an undeniably, terribly fractured thing.
    Goodbye, baby boy. I will