Read Online The Irresistible Henry House by Lisa Grunwald - Free Book Online
Authors: Lisa Grunwald
Tags: Fiction, General, Fiction - General, Psychological, Family Life, Orphans, Women Teachers, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, Home economics, Attachment behavior
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never, ever, forget you.
Betty had scrawled that across the bottom of her last page.
Henry would forget her, though, Martha thought, and a plan began to form in the least reliable corner of her divided mind.
8
He Wants a Cookie
Irena called from the orphanage on a mild day in early November, her soft, cool, annoying voice coming over the phone like the air from a fan.
“Are you having a good autumn?” she asked.
“Very nice, thank you,” Martha said.
That was it for the small talk. Irena got straight to the point: She had a family, she said, for Henry.
“A family,” Martha repeated. It was the moment she had been dreading, and it had come too soon.
“They live in Wilkes-Barre, and she has simply been unable, poor thing, and they very much want a little boy, and your June baby would be just perfect for them.”
“June baby,” Martha repeated, dully.
“I’m sorry. What is it you call this one?”
“Henry,” Martha said, and she found that just saying the baby’s name at that moment was like playing a rich chord, a chord with nearly infinite aspects: images, phrases, feelings, all of which echoed and altered and then resolved.
“Well, Henry, then,” Irena said, a bit impatiently.
“It’s too soon,” Martha said. “He’s only seventeen months. I keep the babies until they’re at least two. You know that.”
“Yes, but you have had this one a bit longer than usual, because we gave him to you at three months,” Irena said.
Martha instantly saw—as if the image had been projected like one of the slides at the Matson lecture—the photo of Henry in his crib that Ethel had taken of him on that first day.
“Why does it need to be so soon?” Martha asked. “You know, the students are just about to take their midterm exams. Then it’ll be the holidays—”
“But that’s just the point,” Irena said, and Martha could hear her exhaling her cigarette smoke and could imagine her sitting at her desk, shuffling her file cards and papers, arranging lives. “This couple, more than anything, wants to have their baby in time for Christmas.”
Irena said she had not one but two other babies who would be five and six months old, respectively, come January. Either, she said, would make a suitable replacement for Henry.
“I know how hard it always is for you to juggle the girls’ schedules at Christmastime,” she said, as if what she was saying would be making things easier for Martha. “And this would allow you to have a few days to yourself, for once.”
Martha imagined the practice house at Christmas, with no baby beneath the tree, no girls circled around it. What would be the point, then, of having a tree?
“Just think what a lovely Christmas the baby will have, being with his new parents,” Irena said.
THAT NIGHT, MARTHA STOOD at the bookshelf, where two decades of practice babies’ journals were lined up chronologically, starting with little Helen House in 1928. The books, despite their generations of different bindings, evoked the orderliness and rationality of an encyclopedic world, but instead of alphabet letters, they were labeled by the babies’ names: Helen, Harold, Hannah, Hope, Heloise, Harvey, Holly …
Martha took down the first book. The photographs, slightly brown and blurry with time, were framed by now-old-fashioned white scalloped borders and had been given captions by an exuberant if haphazard first group of practice mothers.
What am I doing here?
Are all these presents really for me?
Don’t I look nice and clean?
Mildred Fairfax made me this hat!
I’m a big girl today!
Time unfolded behind her, and Martha remembered the excitement with which those first early months had progressed: the frequent talks with Dean Swift, the introduction to President Gardner, the decision to make child rearing a permanent part of the curriculum. She remembered the first trips she had made to the orphanage—run then by a different woman, whose name now escaped her. She
Betty had scrawled that across the bottom of her last page.
Henry would forget her, though, Martha thought, and a plan began to form in the least reliable corner of her divided mind.
8
He Wants a Cookie
Irena called from the orphanage on a mild day in early November, her soft, cool, annoying voice coming over the phone like the air from a fan.
“Are you having a good autumn?” she asked.
“Very nice, thank you,” Martha said.
That was it for the small talk. Irena got straight to the point: She had a family, she said, for Henry.
“A family,” Martha repeated. It was the moment she had been dreading, and it had come too soon.
“They live in Wilkes-Barre, and she has simply been unable, poor thing, and they very much want a little boy, and your June baby would be just perfect for them.”
“June baby,” Martha repeated, dully.
“I’m sorry. What is it you call this one?”
“Henry,” Martha said, and she found that just saying the baby’s name at that moment was like playing a rich chord, a chord with nearly infinite aspects: images, phrases, feelings, all of which echoed and altered and then resolved.
“Well, Henry, then,” Irena said, a bit impatiently.
“It’s too soon,” Martha said. “He’s only seventeen months. I keep the babies until they’re at least two. You know that.”
“Yes, but you have had this one a bit longer than usual, because we gave him to you at three months,” Irena said.
Martha instantly saw—as if the image had been projected like one of the slides at the Matson lecture—the photo of Henry in his crib that Ethel had taken of him on that first day.
“Why does it need to be so soon?” Martha asked. “You know, the students are just about to take their midterm exams. Then it’ll be the holidays—”
“But that’s just the point,” Irena said, and Martha could hear her exhaling her cigarette smoke and could imagine her sitting at her desk, shuffling her file cards and papers, arranging lives. “This couple, more than anything, wants to have their baby in time for Christmas.”
Irena said she had not one but two other babies who would be five and six months old, respectively, come January. Either, she said, would make a suitable replacement for Henry.
“I know how hard it always is for you to juggle the girls’ schedules at Christmastime,” she said, as if what she was saying would be making things easier for Martha. “And this would allow you to have a few days to yourself, for once.”
Martha imagined the practice house at Christmas, with no baby beneath the tree, no girls circled around it. What would be the point, then, of having a tree?
“Just think what a lovely Christmas the baby will have, being with his new parents,” Irena said.
THAT NIGHT, MARTHA STOOD at the bookshelf, where two decades of practice babies’ journals were lined up chronologically, starting with little Helen House in 1928. The books, despite their generations of different bindings, evoked the orderliness and rationality of an encyclopedic world, but instead of alphabet letters, they were labeled by the babies’ names: Helen, Harold, Hannah, Hope, Heloise, Harvey, Holly …
Martha took down the first book. The photographs, slightly brown and blurry with time, were framed by now-old-fashioned white scalloped borders and had been given captions by an exuberant if haphazard first group of practice mothers.
What am I doing here?
Are all these presents really for me?
Don’t I look nice and clean?
Mildred Fairfax made me this hat!
I’m a big girl today!
Time unfolded behind her, and Martha remembered the excitement with which those first early months had progressed: the frequent talks with Dean Swift, the introduction to President Gardner, the decision to make child rearing a permanent part of the curriculum. She remembered the first trips she had made to the orphanage—run then by a different woman, whose name now escaped her. She
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