“I guess you found out why dinner got wrecked,” he said.
“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.