“Somebody else lives there. I’m not welcome anymore.”
Henry nodded not sure how he was supposed to respond to her. For a second he feared a jealous man with a shotgun running out of the house with a gun trained on his face.
“Nobody’s coming, honey,” the woman said. “Don’t worry. Nobody but you gives a damn about me. But you don’t know anything about that. Lost love.” The woman smiled at him as she moved to his side of the car. She pulled her flowing skirt up to her waist and straddled him in the passenger seat. “You like me, don’t you?” Her body was light, like her bones were hollow, her face pretty and delicate in front of him, her skin an intricate map of tiny little lines. “Is this okay, Hank?”
Henry was in the passenger seat of a piece-of-shit car with a woman old enough to be his mother. He did not know her name. “Light as a feather, baby,” Henry said.
6
Henry remembered to take his shoes off at the door, but he would never change and shower first thing like Ava wanted. She didn’t want the shavings and sawdust he shed from his clothes and hair through the house. Once upon a time she liked the taste of sawdust on his skin. They’d meet at lunchtime in whatever darkness they could find. Back then she couldn’t get enough of the smell of him and she kept some part of her body touching some part of his. He thought many times she kept him grounded with her damp palm and short little fingers. Now if Ava touched him it was by accident or during their joyless baby-making days.
“Ava, I’m here. Where you at?”
Henry passed through a maze of thrift store finds to the back of the house. Ava watched too many home improvement television shows and took too many of the ideas to heart. He’d made the mistake of calling her a hoarder one day and she’d cried like he’d hit her, though anybody who knew him would tell you he would never hit a woman. After that he let it go, stopped mentioning any new thing she brought in the house.
Sylvia’s car was outside for what seemed like the thousandth day in a row. He warned Ava of the hazards of buying from family—nothing good can come from it—but whether that was actual wisdom or reality judge show wisdom Henry couldn’t be entirely sure. He should have insisted that they find their own place, even if it had to be a rented house or an apartment or a basement somewhere. He had been opposed to that house on Development Drive from the get-go. Not that what he felt mattered. Both Ava and Sylvia had their minds set.
“Hey Henry,” Sylvia said as she caught his eye. The sight of her pretty-faced son-in-law often startled her. She never remembered him that pretty. He was lean without looking drug-addicted or starved. He was brown and smooth, like leather, not milk chocolate or caramel. Food descriptions for black people made her crazy. Black people were not delicious. Henry had a vacant look like he was seeing everything for the first time. He was dumb, that’s all there was to it. Pretty didn’t keep him from being a dumb ass.
Henry took off his hat and scratched his head. Like Don he probably had a handful of sawdust in the kinky coils of his close fro. He better not let Ava see him scratching.
“You doing all right, Sylvia?” Henry had never had any inclination to call his mother-in-law, Mother. His wife was not his sister. When he and Ava told Sylvia they were getting married, she’d told him to call her by her name. She’d had enough children.
“Tired. I’m okay. You?” Henry thought Sylvia looked disappointed. Her mouth in a sad turn or worse she looked at him sideways like she couldn’t stand to see his whole face.
“Are you cooking, Ava?” Henry asked the question, but he knew what the answer had to be. When Ava was trying to get pregnant she ate very little and cooked even less. What was worse than the sex by the clock or Ava’s pretend seductions was the lack of hot food. “I’m going to get fish, if you’re not cooking.”
“Go ahead. Just get me hush puppies.”
Henry nodded but he knew he’d see those greasy hush puppies later in the trash. “I’m going on then.” Henry turned to go back into the house but swiveled back around to Ava. “I saw your boyfriend in town,” Henry said.
Ava looked up at Henry to see the expression on his face. “Funny,” Ava said, though he saw a spark on her face. “Where’d you see him?”
“Standing at the car wash beside Food Lion. He looked like hell. I almost stopped to say something to him.”
“Why didn’t you?” Ava asked.
What would Henry look like, slapping JJ’s back, like they were friends, like they had ever been friends?
“You been up there yet?” Henry directed his question to Sylvia but he hoped Ava would answer.
“No, but I expect to.” Sylvia glanced in Henry’s direction in time to see the softness of his expression, the vulnerability that she usually interpreted as weakness. She felt sorry for him for a fleeting moment.
“I’m outta here. You want something, Sylvia?”
“No, I won’t be here when you get back. I’ve got to get ready for work. Tomorrow’s my last day this week.”
“I’ve only got thirty years to retirement. How many days is that?” Ava laughed.
Sylvia brought her fingers to her lips. For years she’d kept a coat of clear polish on the tiny little nails, the slick feel of the polish gross on her tongue probably slowly poisoning her to death. When she was a child, she had sucked her thumb unless her mother was anywhere around. Her mother tried everything from hot pepper to castor oil to get her to stop. And she did stop in public, but at night she’d pop her thumb in her mouth. After all those years the urge had changed but had not left.
“Don’t rush it. It’ll come soon enough,” Sylvia said.
Henry hesitated between the two women and as usual he was not sure what else there was to say. “Be right back.”
7
Henry knew Pinewood like the back of his hand. Most of it anyway. He had spent too many teenage nights drinking in cars, riding with other boys until the cars moved on gas fumes or didn’t run at all because they’d flipped them into ditches. Many of them lived to stand around the overturned cars, trying not to look like drowned rats. Ava had been in Raleigh at school, a day trip easy, but that distance had given her other scenes in her head, other stories that Henry had listened to with eagerness, with jealousy like she was talking about walking on the moon.