The Irresistible Henry House Part 35

Her focus s.h.i.+fted around the table. "So you cooked," she said again, and Henry lit the candles.

He glanced back to her, nervously.

"You may be taking this a little too hard," she told him.

He snapped his lighter shut, unnerved by encountering an indifference even greater than his own.

"Henry," she said. "For G.o.d's sake. There'll always be other parts."

4.

So Much Harder Than It Looks It was not the London of Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins. There were parks and rain and the occasional tea, but the similarities ended there. By autumn, the weather was raw, the sun set too early, and the one time Henry tried to impress Peace by drawing a chalk pavement picture of her in the park, a bobby came by-a fat, puffing man-and said: "Don't think you're going to be doing that here," as if the "that" was having public s.e.x. There were parks and rain and the occasional tea, but the similarities ended there. By autumn, the weather was raw, the sun set too early, and the one time Henry tried to impress Peace by drawing a chalk pavement picture of her in the park, a bobby came by-a fat, puffing man-and said: "Don't think you're going to be doing that here," as if the "that" was having public s.e.x.

"My daughters loved Mary Poppins," Mary Poppins," Victoria admitted to him one late afternoon, when the sun-so rarely out-had somehow managed to flood their work table and force them to take a break. "What parts did you draw?" she asked him. Victoria admitted to him one late afternoon, when the sun-so rarely out-had somehow managed to flood their work table and force them to take a break. "What parts did you draw?" she asked him.

"Mostly the penguins," Henry said. "But I was just in-betweening then, too."

"Just," Victoria repeated. "And you were, what, twelve at the time?" Victoria repeated. "And you were, what, twelve at the time?"

Henry grinned.

"Anyway, my girls loved loved the penguins!" Victoria said. She put down her pencil and held up her c.o.ke bottle. "Sip?" she asked him. the penguins!" Victoria said. She put down her pencil and held up her c.o.ke bottle. "Sip?" she asked him.

It was oddly intimate. He took the bottle and drank about a third of it.

"Oh, thanks a b.l.o.o.d.y bunch," Victoria said, grabbing it back.

"Tell me something," he said.

"Anything, pet."

"Is there a real street called Cherry Tree Lane?" he asked her.

She laughed. "Oh, Harry, you're hopeless," she said.

"Why?"

"Because you're still such a tourist."

"No I'm not."

"What you need," she said, "is a proper London education."

He guessed that she meant more than just seeing the sights.

HE CAME HOME FROM WORK that evening with a bunch of purple irises for Peace. But when he walked in, he found her standing in front of the bathroom door, her forehead pressed against the mirror as if she had just tipped over there.

"Peace?" he said. "Are you okay?"

"I'm groovy," she said.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm groovy," she said again.

"No," he said. "What are you doing?"

Her forehead was still against the mirror. "Waiting for my eyes to dry," she said.

He put the flowers in the old teapot they often used as a vase. He remembered, vividly and with dread, what it had been like to walk into Mary Jane's room the night she first dropped acid.

"Okay," he said. "How wasted are you?"

She giggled and turned to face him. The hair that had been behind her ears fell softly into two long Art Nouveau curves.

"No," she said. "I'm not high."

"But you're waiting for your eyes eyes to dry?" to dry?"

She giggled again and embraced him. As usual, her outfit was a brilliant blend of unmatched, unexpected parts. She was wearing her yellow miniskirt, a belt with mirrored b.u.t.tons on it, and a new pair of tall white boots.

"I put on new eyelashes," she said, and she fluttered her lids for emphasis. She had rimmed her eyes, Egyptian-style, with dark eyeliner and had applied two pairs of false eyelashes-one on top of the other-as bushy and black as a new paintbrush.

"Can you see anything?" he asked her, laughing.

"How do they look?" she said.

"They look mod."

"Do I look like a dollybird?"

"Absolutely," he said.

She grinned. She lifted both her arms, not to embrace him this time but to celebrate herself.

"Guess where we're going," she said to Henry.

He took a step forward and kissed her. "Where'd you get the boots and the lashes?"

"Guess where we're going," she said again.

"Where?"

"We're going to the Scotch."

"The what?"

"The Scotch of St. James. The Great Martini gave me his card."

IT WAS ONE OF THE TWO OR THREE hottest discotheques in town. Henry had heard about it endlessly at the studio, because both Paul and George often showed up there, and various ink-and-paint girls were forever trying to get in. The Scotch was near Piccadilly Circus, down a narrow side street, right next door to the gallery where John had met Yoko. Peace led the way from the bar upstairs down a circular staircase to a long room dark with drama and jammed with people. Lights flashed, miraculously, in time to the music. Women in paisley miniskirts and men in velvet pants danced dangerously on the crowded floor. In the near corner, the band was dressed in what looked like Civil War uniforms, the drummer flailing away like a demonic Disney animatron. Along the walls were banquettes and small round tables, and at one of them, Henry could see two redheaded girls making out with each other.

He had learned from his days with Mary Jane at Berkeley that LSD was usually laced into sugar cubes or soaked into blotter paper. So when Peace, just moments after they'd gone downstairs, proudly produced two blue capsules, Henry wasn't sure what she was offering him.

"What is that?" he shouted at her, above the music.

"It's smas.h.i.+ng!" she said.

"No! What is it?"

"What do you think it is?" she said.

THE MUSIC THRUMMED and beat against the walls. Every few minutes, Henry became convinced that he could see the sounds-pulsating outward in concentric shapes, like the rippled bands he drew for gongs or drums in animation. On the shelves and ledges that were cut into the cavelike walls, the rings of sound hit vases of flowers, stacks of books, bottles of whiskey, busts of poets and statesmen that were decked out in mod hats and sungla.s.ses. In Henry's mind, the sounds splashed down and over all of these things, then pooled into puddles on the ground, where the hundreds of dancing feet splashed them and spattered them around.

So this was tripping, he thought.

He remembered the night he had followed Mary Jane around Berkeley, determined to take care of her and keep her safe. A wave of regret, like a shudder, or nausea, gripped him as he saw Peace looking back at him, beaming, tripping, not remotely Mary Jane. But then he was taken up by the music, and the two girls he'd seen kissing before were now with him on the dance floor, and it turned out that Peace knew one of them, and that led Henry to a different sense-of a vast, comforting embrace, the interconnectedness of them all, with the music and lights pulsing on and on, past the fear and regret and the nagging sense that something or someone was missing from his life.

AT TWO IN THE MORNING, Henry and Peace stood at their front door, Peace trying and failing to put her key in the lock. She would succeed in holding the doork.n.o.b, and even manage to locate the right key, but then she would collapse in a paroxysm of giggles.

"This is so so much harder than it looks," she said. much harder than it looks," she said.

"Peace," Henry said.

"No, don't tell me. I'll get it," she said, as if he had asked her a riddle.

She flipped a long strand of hair away from her mouth, then bent down again, the hair falling back over her face. He waited, trying to be patient, and then when her shoulder started to shake with laughter again, he said: "Peace. Let me. I'll do it."

"No!" she shouted, like a baby not wanting to give up a toy. And then she added, quite seriously, as if she was talking about a pair of crutches or having her arm in a sling: "I have to learn to do these things high."

When they stepped inside, Henry noticed that the purple irises he had brought home that night had already opened and drooped dramatically, stalks spraying out from the teapot like the lines of an explosion.

PEACE, AS IT TURNED OUT, did learn to do things high-and to a rather remarkable extent. Throughout the long, damp, but domestic fall, Henry got to the point where he thought he could tell exactly how much pot she had smoked, how recently she had been tripping.

Straight or stoned, she was without doubt the most effortlessly creative person he had ever known. She painted cabinets in different colors, cut out lips or eyes from magazines and collaged them onto doorframes, turned every surface she found in life into a plausible working canvas. She tie-dyed old sheets to make napkins, sewed a hilarious, belted miniskirt to replace the tattered, dowdy one around the kitchen sink, pasted wine labels onto the kitchen floor, and added new words to the walls around them-KITCHEN, CLOSET, SHOES, DOOR-in letters that dripped and floated and beat with psychedelic life. And with a style that Henry jealously recognized as entirely her own.

5.

Mail Call It was a Friday afternoon in late October, and Henry had been instructed by Jack Dixon, one of the animating supervisors, to leave the Blue Meanies and switch to the Apple Bonkers. The Apple Bonkers were tall, top-hatted gentlemen who used bright green apples to freeze the inhabitants of Pepperland. It bothered Henry that, based on the available storyboards, the apples didn't seem to need to be picked from from anywhere and just appeared in the Bonkers' hands. The Disney man in Henry fought the lack of logic. anywhere and just appeared in the Bonkers' hands. The Disney man in Henry fought the lack of logic.

"They have to come from somewhere," he said.

"Why?" Jack asked.

"Because they do. Because you can't just get an apple from the air."

"Maybe you can in Pepperland," Jack said enigmatically, and walked off just as Victoria came back in from the front desk.

"Mail call, Disney Boy," she said.

"Mail?" he said. "I never get mail."

"Who's Mary Jane Harmon?" Victoria asked.

His face must have done something twisted or telling, because it seemed to startle her.

"She's just an old friend," Henry said.

Victoria held the envelope up to his desk lamp, grinning. There was a touch of Ethel's bra.s.siness in her, Henry thought. Why did women always have to be either too hard or too soft?

"Wonder what it says," Victoria teased.

Despite Henry's wish to seem unmoved-despite his wish to be be unmoved-he grabbed instinctively at the envelope. unmoved-he grabbed instinctively at the envelope.

"A stateside gal?" Victoria asked. "The gal you left behind?"

Then she saw the look on his face, and she softened immediately. "Oh. I'm sorry, Disney Boy," she said.

"She's just an old friend," Henry repeated.

He looked down at the envelope. The handwriting itself made him feel strange: tugged uncomfortably too far west. He didn't want to read the letter. He suspected that it would just make him feel low-and guilty for having left the States without having said a better goodbye. He put the envelope in his back pocket, picked up his pencil, and peered down at his drawing. He could sense Victoria looking at him, but he didn't look back at her.

He didn't open the envelope until nearly seven that evening, sipping a cup of cold coffee on one of the leather couches in the sitting room.

October 15,1967 Dear Henry: Dear Henry: Ha! I found you! It took me four months, but leave it to old Eagle Eye and the bookkeeping department at Disney. Ha! I found you! It took me four months, but leave it to old Eagle Eye and the bookkeeping department at Disney. Well, I'm finally a college graduate, which of course is more than I can say for you, you stoner. Graduation was in June (of course) and everyone at Berkeley was very "Freedom now." I was just happy it was over. Well, I'm finally a college graduate, which of course is more than I can say for you, you stoner. Graduation was in June (of course) and everyone at Berkeley was very "Freedom now." I was just happy it was over. Alexa kept asking me about you. "When's he coming back?" "I thought he really liked me." "Did he say anything to Alexa kept asking me about you. "When's he coming back?" "I thought he really liked me." "Did he say anything to you you about why he left?" So I said: about why he left?" So I said: 1. Beats me 1. Beats me 2. You were wrong, and 2. You were wrong, and 3. Nope, nope, nope 3. Nope, nope, nope Funny how she thought that-having been your best friend for 18 Funny how she thought that-having been your best friend for 18 years and having flown across the country and back for your mother's funeral-I would have some coordinates for you more specific than London, England. years and having flown across the country and back for your mother's funeral-I would have some coordinates for you more specific than London, England. It doesn't matter. I figure you're heavily tattooed, with hair down to your waist, and are now living comfortably in an opium den with the latest three or four smitten kittens. You left America just in time for race riots to break out all over the place. It's so grim. I wonder if you think about it there. It doesn't matter. I figure you're heavily tattooed, with hair down to your waist, and are now living comfortably in an opium den with the latest three or four smitten kittens. You left America just in time for race riots to break out all over the place. It's so grim. I wonder if you think about it there. For my part, I've settled in Greenwich Village with George (remember George? Of course you don't) and a number of projects, one of which has just come to fruition. To find out more, you'll have to write to me. That's right, write to me, doofus. For my part, I've settled in Greenwich Village with George (remember George? Of course you don't) and a number of projects, one of which has just come to fruition. To find out more, you'll have to write to me. That's right, write to me, doofus. Love always, Love always, MJ.

Henry looked up. Victoria was standing in the doorway of the sitting room.

"I have had a profound insight," she said.

She walked to the other end of the sofa and straddled its arm, like a child playing horse.

"And what is that?" Henry asked her, wis.h.i.+ng she'd go away.

"Do you realize that, other than a few screams, there are going to be absolutely no female voices in Yellow Submarine?" Yellow Submarine?"

"Huh," Henry said.

"Why do you think that is?" she asked him.

"I don't know," Henry said. "Maybe because there are only male characters in Yellow Submarine?" Yellow Submarine?"

"Aha! And why do you think that that is?" is?"

She blew a line of smoke rings into the air, her mouth a tough, inviting O, contracting as it pinched out its nearly opaque white circles.