The Irresistible Henry House (16 page)

For the moment, his only thought was whether Charlie was going to turn him in and send him back to Martha.

WHEN THE SUN ROSE, it seemed there was no color left anywhere in the world, as if the fire had consumed not only the watercolors, oil paints, and acrylics in the studio but also all that they could have created. The gray of the smoke and the gray of the ash and the gray of the late autumn skyline all seemed to settle around the ground where the studio had been. The smell—throat-stinging, bitter—was of chemicals and ash.

At about seven in the morning, the dean climbed up onto one of the stone benches and announced that all classes would be canceled for the coming day, and that students should spend their time in their rooms, relaxing as they wished to, and making up for lost sleep. The dean suggested it wouldn’t hurt if some students used the time to tidy their rooms, study for upcoming tests, and ponder whether they had any clues as to what or who might have started the fire. Then the dorm parents began to usher the students back to their rooms. The firemen stood ready for any last bursts of flame. But there was really nothing left to burn. All that remained of the studio was the soggy gray and brown earth, a few pieces of glass, and the metal file cabinets. Eventually, as students looked on from their windows, the firemen climbed into their truck and carefully—perhaps even somewhat abashedly—backed out of the quad.

Returning to their apartment after making sure that all their girls were accounted for in Reynolds West, the Falks settled into the kitchen, where Karen put up a kettle for tea and Charlie took out and filled a pipe.

After a long silence, she said: “It had to have been him.”

Charlie barely nodded.

“Charlie. It had to.”

“I know.”

They sipped their tea.

“Want to eat something?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“Do you think he did it on purpose?”

“Of course not.”

“He was the one who yelled ‘Fire,’ though.”

“I know.”

“Do you think he could talk all along?”

“No. I don’t know. No,” Charlie said.

“What’s upsetting you most? The Matisse? The studio? Or him?”

“What to do,” Charlie said, and stood up, absentmindedly reaching for the cups and putting them in the kitchen sink, not quite realizing that his wife was still drinking her tea.

“Thanks,” she said sarcastically.

“You’re welcome,” he said, missing her point completely.

It was not until they walked into the living room that they saw the Matisse hanging over the mantel, safely back where it belonged.

  4  
When It Comes to That

The photograph of Henry in the square frame—the personal hearth beside which Betty had warmed herself on so many lonely nights—remained, six years after she’d moved to New York, in its special place on her Barbizon Hotel dresser. Bare-bottomed and shiny-eyed, Henry still held his pose—just scarcely up on a chubby arm, turning back toward the women, the attention, the light. By now, however, in the fall of 1961, the photo had been joined by several others, in simpler frames. One was from the roll Betty had taken in Franklin that long-ago autumn, when Henry had squirmed on the school-yard steps, unwilling to offer a smile. Another—this one an eight-by-ten glossy—showed six laughing women, Betty among them, pretending to christen a copy machine in the new
Time
research library.

But the photograph that now sat in front of all the others was actually just the cover of a two-inch-square book of matches, one of those pricey, enforced souvenirs from a nightclub called the Latin Quarter. The photo, in black and white, showed Betty under the possessive arm of a man named Gregory J. Peterson. Peterson was editor of
Time’s
arts section, where Betty had been working since being hired as a full-time researcher. He was a tall man in his late forties with prematurely white hair that he swept away from his eyes at regular intervals with a grand, patrician hand. And he had become—despite his position, his wife, his three children, and his unpredictable, often unpleasant moods—the undisputed focus of Betty’s life. So far, the only times she had sensed any interest from him had been on a few of the magazine’s closing nights, when a bunch of writers and researchers would follow him to some loud, bright restaurant and compete to see who could make him laugh. The night at the Latin Quarter—the night of the matchbook—had been one of those nights when it seemed as if everything Betty said and did was delightful and full of meaning to Greg. He had looked at her with such intensity. A kind of appreciation, she thought.

And so on more and more evenings, rather than going to bed with dreams of reclaiming Henry in her head, she fell asleep replaying conversations she’d had with Greg, wondering at the things that had caught his attention, trying to find the pattern, the key. Sometimes she would wake from a dream and then lie very still in the dark, small room, allowing herself to imagine what it would be like to be with Greg always, nestled under his arm, having it understood that he’d chosen her—and not just for this meal or for that story.

Other times, turning on her bedside lamp, she would pick up the book of matches. The image of the two of them—spanning the shiny cover—was printed across the thick, wide cardboard matches inside as well, so that if one were to use any of the matches, it would be like ripping planks from a muraled fence. Betty knew that she would never light a single one.

SO IT WAS NOT FOCUSING on Henry that brought her any closer to her hope of reclaiming him. Nor was it continued discipline with her drinking, her study of current events, or even her habits at work. What pushed her closer to her dream of reclaiming Henry was the still formidable—and now more fashionable—presence of Ethel Neuholzer, the lively, snack-toting girl who had taken that first picture of Henry so long ago.

Ethel, it turned out, was working for
Life
magazine,
Time’s
popular sister publication, and it was after both magazines’ move to their new building on Sixth Avenue that Betty first encountered—or re-encountered—her. A forty-foot-long bronze and glass geometric mural was being installed in the lobby, amid much confusion. When Betty first saw her, Ethel was standing at one of the steel-lined elevator banks. She was wearing black capri pants and a black turtleneck—like Audrey Hepburn in
Funny Face,
except about twice the width. Hanging across her chest was a pair of professional cameras, one with an enormous lens. At her feet was a large black equipment bag and what looked like a leopard-skin coat.

She was talking to a young man whom Betty took to be her assistant. “I want to find a way to get the sense of the scale,” she was telling him.

Impulsively—perhaps a bit overdramatically—Ethel sprinted across the lobby and then squatted at the other end, making a frame with her hands, through which she looked intently. “Let’s try this,” she said, and then, through the pretend viewfinder she had created, she saw Betty looking on.

Ethel glanced away for a moment, then back, and then smiled and started walking quickly along the gleaming elevator bank toward Betty.

“I saw your name on the
Time
masthead,” Ethel said wonderingly. “But I really couldn’t imagine that it was the same Betty Gardner.”

Betty shrugged, but before her shoulders had even lowered, Ethel had locked them in an exuberant embrace.

“I’m photographing this thing for the magazine,” Ethel said, unnecessarily. “Do you like it? I don’t think I get it.”

“You work for
Time
?” Betty asked, confused.

“No.
Life,”
Ethel said. “But don’t be too impressed. This is just for the newsletter.”

“Oh.”

“They did actually make me a full photographer about five years ago,” Ethel said. “But they still send me out to do the piddly stuff.”

“Miss Neuholzer?” the assistant asked.

“I’m in your way,” Betty said, and started to leave.

“No, listen, I’m sorry,” Ethel said, and linked her arm through Betty’s. For a moment, she looked exactly the way Betty had remembered her: soft, kind, and lively. Then, as if reading Betty’s thoughts, Ethel reached down and rummaged in her big black purse to pull out a snack. But instead of a Clark Bar, she extracted a can of Metrecal.

“Metrecal?” Betty asked.

“Don’t get me started,” Ethel said. “But listen. Want to lunch sometime and eat real food?”

“That’d be nice.”

“No, I really mean it. Better than that. Where are you living?”

“The Barbizon,” Betty said. “Why?”

“The
Barbizon?”
Ethel said. “Might as well be the morgue.”

“It’s not that bad,” Betty said.

“It’s not? I heard that men can’t take the elevators.”

Betty nodded. “They can’t,” she said.

“We’ve got to get you out of there. Look. I’m semi-serious about this. Move in with me.”

Betty laughed. “What?” she said.

“I’m living on Forty-eighth Street, and I can’t afford the rent, and I’m never there anyway.”

She said all this while walking away, toward her assistant, so it was nearly impossible for Betty to judge if there was any meaning behind her words. “Wait,” Ethel added. “I have something for you.”

She dashed over to her bag, reached in, and pulled out a pair of blue sparkle sunglasses.

“Someone gave me these. They look terrible on me. But they’ll look great on you,” she said.

With terrific deftness, she placed the glasses over Betty’s startled eyes and waltzed around one more time, waving a hand behind her back.

Out on the street, in one of the huge plate-glass windows of the new building, Betty caught her reflection with the sunglasses on. Almost glamorous, she thought.

BETTY MOVED IN WITH ETHEL a few weeks later, exulting in the promise of freedom from the Barbizon women, of proximity to Ethel’s exuberance, and, finally, of a place where a teenage boy would be, if not easily accommodated, at least not forbidden to enter. But in the meantime, the focus under Ethel’s tutelage was strictly confined to fully grown men: to Greg Peterson, in Betty’s case, and to a
Life
sales manager named Tripp Whitehouse in Ethel’s. Ethel had been sleeping with Tripp Whitehouse for three years now. In private, she referred to him as “my lover,” which almost made Betty long for the Barbizon. Tripp was, inch for inch, one of the least impressive men Betty had ever met. Red-nosed, prematurely balding, slow in both motion and apparent comprehension, Tripp was nonetheless to Ethel the epitome of glamour and, like Greg for Betty, the main player in the ongoing narrative of her life. Ethel spent a good deal of her time with him in one of the hotel suites that Time-Life kept for visiting staff and guests. Betty was never sure how they arranged that, but two or three nights out of every seven, Ethel did not come home.

There was so much about Ethel that seemed to promise glamour. Ethel owned her own china set. She had a pink Lady Sunbeam that dried her hair in a vinyl cap. The furniture in her apartment was all low and lean and modern, made of walnut with canvas webbing, as if at any moment someone might have to lie down, or neck. True, she had never married, and she was childless and living alone at the end of a decade during which most people in their twenties had paired up as if they were Ark-bound. True, Ethel was, like Betty, working absurdly long hours and earning absurdly little pay. But she made these things seem like choices: the preferences of a career woman hitting her stride in mid-century.

It would take Betty months—months of actually living with Ethel and watching her journalistically—before she realized just how much of her time Ethel spent yearning to be someone else. This was the reason for the leopard-skin coat and the sparkle sunglasses and the stack of magazines constantly rising on and beside her night table:
House & Garden, Architectural Digest, Esquire, Vogue, Bazaar.
It was not until later that Betty realized that Ethel actually used Lustre-Creme shampoo because Elizabeth Taylor advertised it, and Lux soap because Kim Novak did. But Ethel’s relative naiveté in such matters underscored her optimism, and Betty found herself hoping that some of that would rub off on her.

THERE WERE DAYS at the office when Greg left long before Betty did, and it would strike her—in the vacuum created by his absence—that work meant virtually nothing to her without him to see her do it. She was fighting off just this lost sense on an early December evening when most of the offices were already empty and dark. The bullpen, where Betty worked, had taken on a sort of fragmented appearance, with selected desks lit up like panels of a dark comic strip. Betty was working on a story about a voice instructor who believed he had discovered a way to teach people to sing in all ranges. Apart from checking the usual spellings and dates, she was supposed to find out the notes of Maria Callas’s singing range, the year in which the practice of castrating tenors had been ruled illegal, the names of Mozart’s sisters-in-law, and the name of Giuseppe Colla’s fiancee. And since Betty had begun the day not having heard any of the names in the story except Mozart’s, it had definitely been an uphill slog.

She heard Greg’s voice before she saw him. She was used to listening for that voice, and then, in the sixty to ninety seconds it took for him to get from the hallway to the bullpen, she would always wet her lips, smooth her hair, and pinch her cheeks. Tonight she was so tired that she thought for a moment she’d imagined his presence, and before she realized that she wasn’t imagining him, it was too late, and he was standing in front of her desk. He was drunk. The hum of the cleaning woman’s vacuum came nearer and nearer as she made her way up the hall. Greg insisted Betty leave the story, and he took her downstairs to La Fonda del Sol, the restaurant on the main floor of the Time-Life Building. It had been designed by someone famous—not just the room but the plates and napkins, the menus, match-books, and cigarette holders. Whenever Betty went there, she felt the tingly sensation that she was immersed in a metropolitan life that almost anyone would have envied. The ice in the glasses was rounded and clear, the conversation was newsy, and everything felt sophisticated, classy, and urbane.

For months, the papers had been filled with reports on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and although Betty still had at best only a vague understanding of the legal intricacies and issues involved, she had learned in her years at
Time
how to nod intelligently and listen intently, and she had learned how to ask questions that seemed to demand intelligent answers. Tonight, as she heard Greg go on about the likelihood of a verdict this week, she tightened her lips into a concerned pout. In truth, she could not have felt less about the prospect of a verdict this week. But she was enjoying the idea of being someone who could lean forward into the light of a candle and look as if she cared.

“Will it come to that?” she asked Greg. She opened her eyes wide, knowing her eyes could pull him in. She took a sip of her white wine. Just her first glass of the evening. Just a glass of white wine. Elegant and ladylike and smooth. She played with a book of matches that had the cheerful face of the sun on it, giving her a benediction. She already knew she would put this matchbook next to the one on her dresser.

“WILL IT COME TO THAT?” Betty asked Greg again an hour later. They were on their desserts, and it was Betty’s fourth glass of wine. She had forgotten that this was the question she’d asked him about Eichmann. Now she was asking it about the cover story, which Greg was saying probably wouldn’t be finished until Thursday or Friday, and he might have to edit it, and Betty might have to help check it, depending on the schedule of the medical editor and his team.

“Will it come to that?”

“You’re repeating yourself, honey,” Greg said.

“What’d I say?”

“You said, ‘Will it come to that?’” Greg said.

“I did?”

“Several times,” Greg said. “But that’s all right.” He patted her hand with his own. “I have a question for you, too.”

“What is that?”

He leaned in close, so close that she could see the yellow stains on the edges of his canine teeth. “Tell me,” he whispered with unmistakable innuendo. “What would you like it to come to?”

THEIR FIRST KISS was in the elevator—silver and cold—on the way back up to the magazine. Their second was half an hour later, after Greg had taken her to the Waldorf, which was twelve short blocks and a large decision away from her apartment.

Not counting her years at the Barbizon, the only other time that Betty had been in a hotel room had been on her way home from Australia. Then she had been on a mission to reclaim her son. Now she had no mission, or in any case chose to pretend she had none. She pretended instead to be Greg’s mission, because that was the best way to arrange things in her mind.