A. Homes - Things You Should Know

“Yeah.”

“My father killed a kid,” he said and then stopped. “I guess you know that,” he said.

I nodded.

“That’s why dinner got wrecked.”

I nodded again and thought I’d never be able to eat hamburger again, macaroni and cheese, either. I’d end up becoming a vegetarian like my father and Cindy, eating rabbit-food dinners at midnight, then locking myself in my room.

“He’s coming home this afternoon,” Henry said. “Why? Why are they letting him out?”

He looked up at me; I looked away.

I shrugged and shrugged and shrugged, and Henry shrugged, and then finally we went downstairs, ate all the decent things we could find, and sat looking out the front window, waiting for Mr. Henry to be brought back.

I can’t say Mr. Henry came home from the police station a different man. He was exactly the same the day after as he was the day before. There were no signs of him having snapped out of himself for the instant it took to kill, no indication that all the badness, the frustration, the lifetime buildup of a man’s anger, had risen up through his gut, through his blood like a whirling dervish, like the man out of the Mr. Clean bottle, and that all the swirling whirlingness had forced his foot to the floor and hurled the car forward over Thomas Stanton III. I looked for that but saw nothing except dull gray around the eyes from too little sleep, too much fear, and stubble from a day’s missed shaving.

“I’m being used,” Henry said two days later as he was putting on the clothes his mother had laid out for him: gray pants, striped shirt, tie, blue jacket, hard shoes. The Henrys were going to court. A skinny lawyer with teeth so rotten they smelled bad had shown up the night before and explained to all the Henrys that they had to “dress up and put on a show, featuring Mr. Heffilfinger as father, provider, and protector.”

In the hall all the Henrys went by, ducking in and out of the bedrooms, the bathroom. There was the hiss of aerosol spray, the dull whir of the hair dryer. All the running around and good clothes would have been festive if it wasn’t ten A.M. on a weekday, liable to be the hottest day of the year so far, and if the destination weren’t the county courthouse.

As soon as the lawyer pulled into the driveway, Mr. Henry went out, got into the back seat of his car, and closed the door. The rest of the Henrys were all downstairs, ready to go, except for Henry himself.

Mrs. Henry came upstairs. “We’re ready to leave,” she said.

Henry was lying down on the bed. He didn’t move.

“Henry, we can’t be late. Come on now.”

Still nothing. His mother took his arm and began to pull. Henry pulled in the opposite direction.

“I don’t want to fight with you,” she said, leaning back, using her weight and position to good advantage. “It’s for your father. Do this for your father.”

Henry stopped resisting and was pulled off the bed and onto the floor.

“Stand up or you’ll get dusty.”

The lawyer came into his room. “Get up. We have to go.”

Henry lay flat on the floor in his coat and tie. The back of the blue blazer picking up lint balls like it was designed to do that.

“I’m not going,” Henry finally said.

“Oh yes you are,” the lawyer said.

Together, the lawyer and Henry’s mother lifted him to standing. I was sitting in the corner, in the old green corduroy chair that used to be in the living room. For the first time ever I felt like I didn’t belong there, I felt like I was seeing something I shouldn’t, something too private.

“Unless you plan on dragging me the whole way, leave me alone,” Henry said to the lawyer.

The lawyer pushed him back onto the bed. “Do you want me to tell you something?”

Henry shook his head.

“If you don’t sit in that courtroom and act right and if your daddy gets sent to jail, I don’t want you to ever forget that it might be your fault. Just because you felt like being a bogey little brat. Think on that,” the lawyer said, checking his watch.

Henry looked at me, then stood and dusted himself off. Mrs. turned and went out of the room. Henry tipped his head toward the lawyer and said, “You’re the biggest fucking asshole in the world.”

The lawyer didn’t respond except to look down at Henry like he wanted to kill him.

“And your fly is open, fuckwad,” Henry said and then marched out of the room on his mother’s heels, not staying to see the lawyer’s face flush red, his hands grab at his crotch.

From Henry’s bedroom window I watched the rest of them get into the lawyer’s Lincoln. You could tell it was going to be the kind of day where the heat would raise people’s tempers past the point of reconciliation. After they left, I left, pulling the door closed behind me and crossing the grass to wait in the air-conditioned silence of the house next door.

Later that afternoon, when I was back at the Henrys’, their phone began to ring. It started slowly and then rang more and more, faster and faster, until it seemed to be ringing nonstop. Strangers, reporters, maniacs, guys Mr. had gone to junior high school with, lawyers offering to consider the case for a fee, someone from a TV show in New York City.

“You really should call the TV people back,” Henry said to his parents.

“Stay away from it,” Mrs. Henry said when the ringing started again. She held her arms down and out like airplane wings. “Don’t touch.”

“Are you going to work tomorrow?” Mrs. asked Mr.

“I don’t know.”

“Have you spoken to your office?”

“No,” he said.

“You don’t have to be afraid. Accidents happen,” Mrs. said.

“You shouldn’t say that,” Mr. said.

Mrs. pointed her finger at Mr. “You have to stop acting like a guilty man,” she said. “Did you wake up that morning and say to yourself, ‘I’m going to kill a little boy today’?”

“I have blood on my shoes,” Mr. shouted, “I feel like my feet are dripping in blood.”

“It’s your imagination,” Mrs. said.

“I killed someone,” he said, pushing his face close into Mrs.’s.

She pushed him away. “Stop acting insane.”

Henry sat on baby June’s swing set in the backyard, waiting for time to pass, for everything to return to normal, but Thomas Stanton III was ahead of Henry, six months ahead. He was already across the border of thirteen when he died, and he stayed there like a roadblock, a ton-o’-bricks, like all the weight in the world. Without seeming to know what he was doing, Henry started combing his hair that same certain way that Stanton’s was in the newspaper photo. He started wearing clothes a gifted and talented type would wear: button-down shirts with a plastic pen protector in the pocket, pants a size too small. He started trying to look like a genius and ended up looking like a clown, like someone permanently dressed up for Halloween.

“Henry,” I said, sitting facing him on the double horse swing. “It has to stop. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

He brushed his hair back with a whole new gesture, just the way the dead kid would do it.

“Henry, you’re making me hate you.”

“Go home. Get your own life. Leave me alone,” he said.

And so, with nothing else to do, with no other options, I did exactly that. I went to the pool alone.

Without Henry I was too intimidated to step over the pool of muck by the door. I dipped my feet in, and in a split second the milky white wash cauterized the summer’s worth of cuts and scratches and I was sanitized for sure.

I unrolled my towel down on a lounger just at the edge of the tetherball court and next to a group of kids my own age. I watched a boy smack the ball so hard I could feel the stinging in my palms. The ball spun fast, its rope winding quick and high over the head of the other boy. I saw the smacker jump up and hit it again. The ball spun harder, faster, in tighter circles, until all the rope was wound and the stem of the ball itself smacked the pole, froze a second, and then slowly started to unwind.