HENRY WAS FREED from our mother’s protective rule on the hill just a few months after we turned thirteen. Thirteen years. I often wondered if my mother truly had our best interests or hers at heart when she imposed this way of life on us. Nonetheless, it was Gabe, our gentle giant, who convinced her to finally let Henry off the hill.
Gabe and Henry were quite the pair, driving around town in the old Chevy truck — Gabe with his long limbs folded uncomfortably inside the cab and Henry in the passenger seat, often patting his ears rhythmically with his hands.
On the way back from one particular outing, Gabe glanced over at Henry, who sat on the ripped upholstery drawing on a thick pad of paper with waxy crayons. Henry’s drawings were hardly the scribbled circles and oblong squares typical of the creations he’d made just the day before. Gabe pulled into the driveway and leaned toward Henry. Being careful not to touch him, he asked, “What do you got there, Henry?”
Henry lifted his head and tossed the drawing pad and crayons to the side. Without a word, he jumped out of the truck and trotted up the stairs to the house.
Henry had drawn a detailed map of the neighborhood, complete with road signs and house numbers.
Later, after everyone was asleep, Gabe walked into Viviane’s room and laid the drawing on her bed.
My mother pulled the cord to the lamp near her head, blinking in the light, and stared unseeing at the drawing on her bed. “What is this?”
Gabe was pacing the room. “It’s Henry’s.”
Viviane picked up the drawing and looked at it: the house on the hill at the top of Pinnacle Lane, the bakery, the school, the accurate house numbers and road names, all ending at the newly constructed police station up on Phinney Ridge. Viviane shook her head.
“He drew it,” Gabe explained.
“What? No. That’s impossible.” Viviane dropped the paper to the floor.
Gabe picked it up and looked at her until she exhaled, looking strange and defeated. “This is a good thing, Vivi. Now we know there’s something going on in there; we just need to find a way to reach it.”
Viviane leaned toward the lamp again and pulled the cord, leaving Gabe in the dark but for the silvery light from the moon shining on Viviane’s pillow. “Amazing handwriting, don’t you agree?” she finally said.
“Yes. Amazing.”
“Did you see that L? Impressive. I certainly don’t make my L’s anything like that.”
“No, me neither.”
Afterward, Gabe retreated downstairs to his room. He climbed into his own bed, and both he and Viviane imagined the other was asleep while they worried the night away on their own separate floors.
Gabe woke before dawn the next morning to the sound of the coffee machine percolating on the kitchen counter. Viviane was an awful insomniac. Gabe wondered if anyone else knew this about her, that while the rest of the house slept, she often spent her nights staring at the dark sky through the kitchen window. He often considered joining her. Maybe he’d finally say the right thing. Maybe he’d make her laugh. And then maybe they’d share a real conversation, something so much more than the kind of exchanges necessary between two people sharing the same living space: Could you get more milk? Or No, go ahead — you can use the bathroom first. Maybe, but Gabe was willing to admit this wouldn’t be that day. Instead, he took a quick shower and made his way into the yard to watch the sun rise by himself.
At first Gabe thought he was looking at nothing more than one of the low white blooms of the peony bush. That is, until he saw a pink nose attached to it. Gabe walked across the yard, scooped the little thing up, and brought it inside. He washed the dirt from its paws in the kitchen sink and was petting it in puzzlement when Viviane walked up from the basement, carrying a basket of freshly laundered clothes.
“What is that?” Viviane asked, pausing at the kitchen sink.
“I believe it’s a dog.”
“Oh.”
No more than seven inches long, the dog was nothing more than a pup with oversize paws and a growling belly. Viviane filled a bowl with the cream from the top of the milk bottle and placed it on the floor. They stood and watched as the dog lapped it up.
Viviane stayed in the kitchen with the dog long after Gabe left to attend to a broken gate in Marigold Pie’s yard. The dog finished the cream and slid across the linoleum as it sniffed along the bottom edge of the refrigerator.
Years earlier Jack Griffith’s final kiss had burned a strawberry-colored butterfly into the back of Viviane’s neck. Only after applying multitudes of rose oil to the spot did it slowly fade to a dark beige mark that itched when she was nervous. She was scratching that spot when she heard the sound of shuffling feet coming from outside the kitchen.
Viviane set a piece of toast with orange marmalade on the table for Henry. It was his usual breakfast, the only thing he would eat for his morning meal. She resisted the urge to muss his hair when he sat down.
While he ate, Henry watched the puppy climb awkwardly into the laundry basket, rub its head against Viviane’s clean white towels, sigh contentedly, and fall into a deep puppy sleep. Cautiously Henry got up from the table. Then, awkwardly folding his oversize teenage limbs beneath him, Henry sat down beside the puppy in the laundry basket. Henry reached over and ran a finger down the puppy’s back and circled the goldenrod spot on its side. The puppy opened an eye. Henry closed one of his own. The puppy scratched its ear. Henry scratched his. Henry yawned. The puppy yawned, making a squeaky noise. That prompted Henry to fall over onto the floor, where he laughed silently. After he recovered, Henry took a deep breath and declared, “Trouver!”
At that, Viviane dropped the bowl she’d been holding to the floor. Amid the shattering porcelain, she said, “Well, yes.” And whether it was a declaration meant for Henry, the dog, or perhaps a little of both, from then on the dog was known as Trouver, the French word meaning “to find.”
Emilienne wasn’t entirely correct in asserting that Henry solely understood one language over another; it was that he favored certain words from each. For example, Henry preferred when someone offered to help him with his moufles, not his mittens; made him petit pois, not peas, for dinner; and served pamplemousse rather than grapefruit for lunch. He liked when Emilienne used the word impeccable instead of clean and was partial to a cup and spoon over a fork, knife, or plate. He liked driftwood, trifle, and cavernous and later would hate the word pubic, and prefer mamelon to nipple.
Henry went on to communicate in other unique ways. Good was caramel, and bad was fumigate. He called Gabe cedar, which we attributed to the way Gabe’s hands smelled after a day in his woodshop. I was pinna, the Latin word for feather. Our mother, étoile de mer, which was French for starfish. No one could explain that one.