The Irresistible Henry House Part 23

Weeks went by, and there was no reply. Henry's drawings took on a larger life. If he was still sketching when he heard Betty's or Ethel's key turn in the lock, he would stuff his drawings under the couch, then dive beneath his blanket. Some instinct kept him from wanting to share his hopes. It was easier, and somehow less intimate, to share the laundry, the closet, the soap.

Sometimes Betty stood over him while he pretended to sleep. Martha had done that too, long ago-waiting for him to wake up and talk. Under Betty's gaze, he would keep his eyes closed, and eventually she would leave, and he would hear her wash off her makeup and jangle her jewelry into her jewelry box, or sometimes make a late, whispered phone call. In the mornings, while she was still sleeping, he swiped cash and loose change from her pockets and purse. Adding it to the leftover grocery money he'd been saving, he would have just enough for the art school entry fee. Taking a deep breath one May morning, he sent his drawings and the money out into the new spring world.

TWO WEEKS LATER, Henry received a letter of congratulations and, a week after that, the first book in the series. It was seventy-two pages long and had a black and green cover with silver lettering that said MODERN ILl.u.s.tRATING INCLUDING CARTOONING and, underneath the t.i.tle, a promising "Division 1." Henry opened the book gently, as if he was trying not to disturb its contents.

HOW TO START, it said on the first page, and gave instructions for the kinds of drawings Henry was supposed to create and submit. On one sheet, he had to draw a barrel and a side table; on another, he had to draw a chair and wheels in perspective; others required a horse, a teakettle, a man carrying a basket. There were instructions on what paper to use, what pencil to use, how to fold the drawings, and where to leave s.p.a.ce for criticism. The tone of the instructions was steady and slightly scolding. "Remember, you are not to draw the clothed figure of the man in overalls yet." But Henry found the clarity rea.s.suring, and he raced through his homework that night in order to get to his drawing. He liked the portraits, and he liked perspective. But he liked animation best by far, the license it gave him to copy. He learned that Mickey Mouse was drawn from a series of basic shapes: circles for the ears, the head, the belly, the b.u.t.tons on his pants; ovals for his eyes, nose, and shoes; triangles for his eyes when they were focused on something; and a heart for the shape of his tongue when he was smiling.

ON HENRY'S SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY, Betty brought home a bottle of champagne and drank half a gla.s.s for every sip that Henry took. He knew she was unusually upset. He suspected she had something to tell him. It was not until she had finished the bottle, however, and said, "We should probably have eaten something with this, I guess," that Henry asked her, straight out, what was on her mind.

"Let's wait for Ethel to get here," she said.

They waited. They watched Walter Cronkite. Medgar Evers, a black leader, had been a.s.sa.s.sinated in Mississippi, a day after JFK's civil rights speech. There had been some sort of attack in British Guiana. And the American Academy of Pediatrics was demanding that children be taught to view smoking cigarettes as immature and silly.

"Toss me a cig, won't you?" Betty asked.

Sometimes he liked her, despite her childishness. This was one of those times.

The news ended. There was a new show on called Drawing from Scratch, Drawing from Scratch, and Henry watched it while trying to pretend he didn't see how nervous Betty was. and Henry watched it while trying to pretend he didn't see how nervous Betty was.

Ethel came in just before nine-chaotic as always, her handbag unintentionally open, one of her stockings snagged, and a large package in her hands.

"Hey, kid!" she said. "Happy birthday."

She reached into her open purse and fished out two packages of slightly smushed Hostess cupcakes and a small box of candles. "Never say I don't know how to celebrate. And I've got a present for you, too. A real one," she added.

"I've got one, too," Betty said, obviously fl.u.s.tered. "Only I didn't wrap it."

She disappeared into her bedroom while Ethel put the four cupcakes on three plates.

"The plate with the two better be for me," Henry said.

She laughed.

"What's with Betty?" he asked her.

Ethel shrugged, unconvincingly. "Where are are you?" she shouted to Betty. you?" she shouted to Betty.

"I'm here," Betty said, and started singing "Happy Birthday." In her hands was the practice house journal, and when they were finished with the song, Henry blew out the candle that Ethel had put in one of his cupcakes, and Betty said, "This is for you, Henry. I think it's time you have it."

"Thank you," he said, confused. "What is it, you've run out of shelf s.p.a.ce? And you want this in my room now?"

"I'm going to Paris," she blurted out.

"You're-"

"They've offered me a job in the Paris bureau. I can't turn it down. I think you should go back home to Martha and finish school there. You just have one more year. And then you can go to college. Maybe even back here, at NYU. And Ethel can maybe look out for you-" Betty sank into the dining room chair and gently removed the candle from Henry's Hostess cupcake.

He stared at her, mute. But this was it. This was all she had left. It was clear that she, too, couldn't speak another word. Years later, he would remember this as the moment his childhood ended.

HIS BIRTHDAY PRESENT FROM ETHEL had been six ten-dollar bills and a real leather artist's portfolio. Henry spent long stretches of the hot summer nights filling its plastic sleeves with his drawings. Some of them dated back to Humphrey, others had been done during his recent summer at Wilton; most were products of the Art Instruction Schools lessons. Restlessly, he arranged and rearranged the pages, trying to distract from the imperfection in this landscape with the boldness of that portrait; to group these still lifes, those cartoons.

"Dear Silent One," he wrote to Mary Jane.

Clearly your lack of communication is intended and has succeeded as 1. a punishment for me pretending I couldn't speak all that time, and 1. a punishment for me pretending I couldn't speak all that time, and 2. a taste of my own medicine. 2. a taste of my own medicine. So it's worked. I am now totally serious about trying to make it up to you. I will grovel. So it's worked. I am now totally serious about trying to make it up to you. I will grovel.

He drew a sketch of himself on his knees, a supplicant at Mary Jane's feet.

Seriously. New York is now over for me. Betty (I don't think I'll be calling her my mother again any time soon) is going to Paris for good and she wants me back with Martha for senior year. There's no way I'm doing that. I want to be an artist, and I mean for real, and I'm going to spend the summer earning some money so I can get the h.e.l.l out of here, and in case this means anything to you at all, I want you to know that you're the only one I'm telling this to. Partly it's to PROVE I trust you, and partly it's because I want you to be part of my plan. I want to be an artist, and I mean for real, and I'm going to spend the summer earning some money so I can get the h.e.l.l out of here, and in case this means anything to you at all, I want you to know that you're the only one I'm telling this to. Partly it's to PROVE I trust you, and partly it's because I want you to be part of my plan. Is that intriguing enough? Write to me! Is that intriguing enough? Write to me!

During the days, he worked-thanks to Ethel-as a messenger for Life, Life, bicycling down Sixth Avenue or across Central Park in the moist, hot afternoons, sweating off his teenage weight through streets of softening tar. In August, both Ethel and Betty went to cover the March on Was.h.i.+ngton, and Henry sat in the apartment, watching the television coverage. He saw the ma.s.sive statue of Lincoln, just one of the many American landmarks he had never seen in person; this huge white statue staring serenely down on the black-and-white world, with Martin Luther King, Jr., flanked by black men wearing white hats, and people in the crowd seemingly frozen in place, seemingly knowing that it was their job to form a black-and-white blanket over the world. He watched commercials for Crest and Barbie and the new Avanti automobile, aware as if for the first time of the hugeness of the world. He drank a screwdriver, then another. After the third one, he vomited and then fell asleep with his clothes on. The last thing he remembered was that the ceiling looked as if it was porcelain clay, spinning on a potter's wheel. He left in the morning. bicycling down Sixth Avenue or across Central Park in the moist, hot afternoons, sweating off his teenage weight through streets of softening tar. In August, both Ethel and Betty went to cover the March on Was.h.i.+ngton, and Henry sat in the apartment, watching the television coverage. He saw the ma.s.sive statue of Lincoln, just one of the many American landmarks he had never seen in person; this huge white statue staring serenely down on the black-and-white world, with Martin Luther King, Jr., flanked by black men wearing white hats, and people in the crowd seemingly frozen in place, seemingly knowing that it was their job to form a black-and-white blanket over the world. He watched commercials for Crest and Barbie and the new Avanti automobile, aware as if for the first time of the hugeness of the world. He drank a screwdriver, then another. After the third one, he vomited and then fell asleep with his clothes on. The last thing he remembered was that the ceiling looked as if it was porcelain clay, spinning on a potter's wheel. He left in the morning.

LIKE VIRTUALLY EVERY OTHER PERSON of his age or close to it, Henry had read The Catcher in the Rye The Catcher in the Rye not once but several times. Unlike Ben Terry back at Humphrey, who had started calling everything "phony," or Bryan Enquist, who had started saying, "If you really want to hear about it" at the beginning of every sentence, or even Stu Stewart, who, while exhibiting a healthy immunity to Holden Caulfield's language, nonetheless embraced his academic, romantic, anarchic stance, Henry looked down on Holden. He thought he could easily have romanced Sally Hayes, not only off the Rockefeller Center ice-skating rink but also right out of her famous "b.u.t.t-twitcher" of a skating dress. Holden had wrecked it with the girl-simply by being too uncertain. Henry would not make the same mistake. He would find Mary Jane at Wilton, and he would take her with him. not once but several times. Unlike Ben Terry back at Humphrey, who had started calling everything "phony," or Bryan Enquist, who had started saying, "If you really want to hear about it" at the beginning of every sentence, or even Stu Stewart, who, while exhibiting a healthy immunity to Holden Caulfield's language, nonetheless embraced his academic, romantic, anarchic stance, Henry looked down on Holden. He thought he could easily have romanced Sally Hayes, not only off the Rockefeller Center ice-skating rink but also right out of her famous "b.u.t.t-twitcher" of a skating dress. Holden had wrecked it with the girl-simply by being too uncertain. Henry would not make the same mistake. He would find Mary Jane at Wilton, and he would take her with him.

HE CALLED HER HOUSE from a pay phone at the station.

"Can I come see you?" he asked her.

"Well, sure," she said. "Or I'll swing by your place later."

"No," he said.

"No?"

"I'm not going home," he said.

"What?"

"I'm not here to go home."

THE TREES OUTSIDE MARY JANE'S HOUSE were dark and heavy with the lateness of summer leaves. No s.p.a.ce opened up between them, and the small front lawn before her house was cool and shadowed.

Henry rang the doorbell, and Mary Jane opened the door and then stepped back inside, letting the screen door hiss back against his hands. She stood at the front hall mirror, putting on lipstick that was a light crayon color: something like Carnation Pink.

Her lips formed a smile, but there was a challenge apparent too.

THIS IS WHAT SHE DIDN'T TELL HIM, and what he wouldn't understand until much later: She still loved him. She loved his hair, the glint of the light in its layered strands, the darkness of his eyebrows next to the mild green of his eyes. She loved the quickness of his insights and humor, and the way that everyone who met him wanted at once to be the one who pleased him, the one he liked best. She loved how people loved him. But she believed, as perhaps no one else could, that he was incapable of rewarding any one person with the gift they sought from him. True, he might someday choose one of them for marriage. But that wouldn't change what he held back. What they wanted from him-what Mary Jane herself wanted-was the knowledge that they were different to him, providers of treats and provokers of feelings that no one else could provide or provoke. But Henry never asked for anything: never, apparently, needed any help or any one person.

Mary Jane knew that she held the place as his oldest friend. She suspected that, to others, he might even describe her sometimes as his best friend. The labyrinth of their past unwound behind her-not nearly as complicated as the average person meeting them would have a.s.sumed. "Oldest friend" and "best friend" were merely phrases that implied intimacy. They did not reveal how Henry's voice-easy, now that the muteness was over, affable and confident-remained the same no matter what the subject of the conversation, or to whom he was speaking.

Henry's world, in Mary Jane's view, was a democracy of charm, interest, humor, and appreciation. Occasionally, she wondered if it was possible that he actually loved everyone-or no one-equally.

"I'm going to California," he said. "Marry me and come with me."

The tiniest dots of perspiration had appeared above her upper lip-tiny and sweet as champagne bubbles.

"Don't be ridiculous," she said.

2.

California On a steamy September morning in 1963, at the Walt Disney Studio in Burbank, California, a seventeen-year-old Henry Gaines sat across a cluttered desk from a cheerful man named Phil Morrow and waited, trying not to let the depth of his nervousness betray him. Morrow flipped the pages of Henry's portfolio as if he were leafing through a magazine in a dentist's office. The s.h.i.+ny plastic pages caught reflections of the desk light, whipping past, image after image.

There were three clear steps to being hired as a Disney animator. The first was to have your work viewed, reviewed, and approved by Morrow. The second was to draw solutions to animation problems in a tryout book. And the third was a four-week audition, during which you were given modest a.s.signments and schooled in the Disney methods. After that, you would either be dismissed or offered a job.

Morrow's office was air-conditioned, and Henry was dressed in a light s.h.i.+rt and khakis, but he could still feel the dampness on his back, as if somebody's hand was there.

"Nice lines," Morrow said.

"Thank you."

Henry straightened up in his chair and twisted slightly, hoping to unstick the s.h.i.+rt from his back. He pulled at the short, spa.r.s.e hairs of the beard he had spent the last month coaxing into being. Everything of value to him was in this man's hands. Henry studied the wall behind Morrow's desk: cels and sketches from past Disney films; some drawings of non-cartoon animals; a set of Mickey Mouse ears suspended from a nail, with small models of other cartoon figures filling each ear, like tiny pa.s.sengers in tiny twin boats.

"Any formal training?" Morrow said. He didn't look up as he asked the question, so Henry couldn't tell what answer he was expecting.

"Yes," Henry said.

"Any formal training not by mail?"

Henry looked down. "No," he said.

Morrow left the portfolio open on his desk, lit a cigarette, leaned back in his streamlined blue plastic chair, flapped his tie onto the center of his short-sleeved, b.u.t.toned s.h.i.+rt, and proceeded to tell Henry that he would never be getting this chance if it weren't for Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins. For the last decade or so, Morrow explained, Disney's films had been mostly live-action, and most of the studio's animators had been working for the Mouseketeers show, for Disneyland, or for the coming World's Fair. For the last decade or so, Morrow explained, Disney's films had been mostly live-action, and most of the studio's animators had been working for the Mouseketeers show, for Disneyland, or for the coming World's Fair.

Morrow took a long puff of his cigarette, then flicked his ash vaguely toward the garbage can beside his desk.

"But Walt's been trying to land Mary Poppins Mary Poppins-as it were-for nearly two decades," he said. "And now he's finally got it, he wants to do it with live action and and animation." animation."

Without a hint of warning, Morrow dropped his cigarette into a frog-shaped ashtray and reached into his top desk drawer for a hard pink rubber ball. Grinning hugely, he bounced it with force and precision on the floor beside Henry, up onto the office's rear wall, ceiling, and back into his hand.

Henry laughed in wonder. "How did you do that?"

"Years of practice."

There was a single, loud thud from the other side of the wall.

"And the deep desire to annoy the h.e.l.l out of my neighbors."

"Clearly, that's working," Henry said.

Morrow repeated the trick gleefully, this time tipping his chair slightly as he reached to catch the ball.

"Right, then," he said, putting the ball back into his desk drawer. "We're arranging a tryout cla.s.s to start in a few weeks. There would be about ten of you. That's if you get past the tryout book. Are you game?"

Morrow asked the question casually-asked it as if its asking hadn't just conferred meaning on Henry's whole past and, equally, hope for his future.

"I made it?" Henry asked.

"You made it so far," Morrow said.

With a bit of a flourish, and a definite smile, he now reached onto the wall beside him for an old hand puppet of Pluto. From inside the hand puppet, Morrow withdrew a small key and, with it, unlocked a drawer of his oak file cabinet, from which he extracted a small booklet. He closed the drawer, locked it, and returned the key to the puppet with the same seriousness. Then he handed the booklet to Henry.

"The test is in here," he said. "I'll need this back before the end of the week."

"That's it?" Henry said.

"That's it."

"So I leave now?" Henry said.

Morrow shut Henry's portfolio with a snap and handed it back across the desk.

"You leave now."

FOR NEARLY TWO HOURS, Henry walked the paths of the studio, nervous but elated. The sky was a flat, almost heavy, blue, as if it had been painted. The sun was strong. He strolled down Mickey Avenue, turned back to Pluto's Corner, went the full length of Dopey Drive, then looked up at the Mickey Mouse ears on the top of the water tower, and felt that his real life had started.

"You look like the Goof," an older man said as he walked past Henry, notebook in hand.

Henry kept grinning. He had absolutely no idea what the man had meant, but he sensed it wasn't an insult, and that to ask would make him feel he was still an outsider. He never wanted to feel like an outsider here again.

"THE GOOF," HENRY WOULD eventually discover, was what the old-timers called Goofy. There would be hundreds of things like that to learn. The language, the pranks, the customs, the routine. Walt's cough. The goldfish in the watercooler. For now, it was merely enough to try to get a sense of the place. The studio was spread out over fifty acres: part factory, part film set, part playground. Walking through its clean, paved streets, Henry Gaines, with his Wilton upbringing, recognized it instinctively as a college campus. There was the same self-containment, the comfortable scale, the sense of leafy safety, and, quite apart from all the buildings where the movies and art were made, there was a commissary, a theater, a gas station, an infirmary, a softball field, and several restaurants.

Two guys he guessed were about his age hurried past him carrying three or four musical instruments apiece.

"You lost?" one of them shouted genially to Henry.

Henry took a deep breath and exhaled. "Nope," he said.

HE SLID INTO A BOOTH in the studio cafe. A waitress with cartoon b.r.e.a.s.t.s came to take his order. He had a hard time not staring at her.

"New mouse in town?" she asked him.

"Hope so. I'm doing a tryout."

"They give you the book?"

He showed it to her.

"You're not going to do it in here, are you?"

"Why not?"

"Well, don't order anything that squirts or drips," she said.

He grinned.

"How old are you?" she asked him.

"Almost twenty," he said.