by Leon Rooke
Henrietta Armani, far from being offended, drank from the bowl with relish, wishing she could bother herself to seek out bread or crackers, but finding herself altogether too famished.
With Chicken Godiva soup the chicken was supposed to ride about naked, but in this soup the chicken had its clothes on.
Whatever, it was a very tasty soup.
There was a phone on the wall, with a stickum tab saying, Trudy, call Travis, but she was not either of these people, only wishing she might be so that she might hear what one said to the other, and advise them on the more effective alternatives.
The father – was this in a film? – had said, “Go ye and do likewise.” This to her mind did not sound like the sort of thing her father would say to her, or say to another father, although he possibly could more than once have said it to her mother.
Why were they not inquiring about her, by the way? They had not inquired about her in a long time, months, although they knew her number, although it was the wrong number.
The wrong number would be the number of the old house, the family house, her house, though it had always been the wrong number. The new house did not have a number any more than it had electricity or a door to her room other than stacked boxes.
Who had packed those boxes? She certainly had not dirtied her hands packing boxes. Packing them with what Mr. Degenerate said was to be her things, not his things, not their daughter’s things, nor those things which were so ambiguous they seemed to her to be the things belonging to no one on this planet.
Which she had told him – words to that effect – their daughter crying, but he had said, “You are not making sense.”
He had said, “Go and take something.”
Which she thought had meant, “Put something in a box,” which she had done, a picture from the wall along the staircase, to which he had said, “Why do you want that? Why in God’s name do you think I am going to let you have a picture of my grandmother?”
To which she had said, “God in heaven, that is your grandmother? I thought that picture was my grandmother!”
To which he had said, picking up and holding their crying daughter, “You are out of it, you know. By God, you are out of it today, you know!”
To which she had said – in a place called Willow Run she had said this – “Well, they were both ministers, you know!” Which made no sense to her now, although it had then, and it was certainly true that on both sides they had all been ministers of one kind or another, as proved by the little crosses each held up in the one hand, in whatever old sepia photograph existed of them.
“I’d advise you to go to bed.”
Him saying that, and their daughter struggling to release herself from his arms, saying, “May I go too?” And then saying, or someone saying, “Daddy, why are you hurting me?”
H. More of the Henrietta Armani ‘Saddest’ Story.
In the bar, the lights off, Henrietta Armani looked for other light switches, and could not find them, although of course there had to be switches.
Her new room had switches but these were not switches that turned anything on. The first evening, that person in the other dark room watching her through the doorless door, breathing on her, a machine beside him (or her) that breathed for him (or her), she had clicked the switch off and on, saying “Off,” saying “On,” and everything happening, like there was power in her fingertips if only she would keep on exerting herself and not sink into the desuetude, where she customarily – since when? – had been sinking.
Her room in the new place had a loose board in the floor. She must remember, when she got home to the new room, to be wary of the loose board. Well, really, every other board was loose, but loose boards were better than having to walk in her naked feet over a carpet so filthy you could see the diseases in the fibres bumping heads with each other.
I. A One-Sentence Story Describing Henrietta Armani’s War with Rug Diseases.
Wwwhiich offf yyoou bbad ttthings ddidd ttthis tto mmmeeee uunnder the little apple trees?
J. A Longer Henrietta Armani Story Filled with Action.
She poured herself “a dring, a drinkie,” the finest, and sat first at the bar, then in the booth, then again on her favourite stool, where once upon a time she had been dangling a leg, smoking, when a man with bigoted intentions had said to her, “You are such a honey. You are such a sweetie. You are such a tomato, I am delirious.”
Then the man had sang “Set’m up, Joe,” which he said was a song someone named “Frankie” had made famous during his, the man’s, youth.
The man flirting with her had a big paunch which he called a beer belly and he left the change from his drinks on the counter, all those dollars, while she lacked the courage ever to be so blatant about the amount she meant spending.
The men and women passing on Amsterdam, a few now and then, night owls with slumping shoulders, their bodies sinking into their shoes, all looked to her like people she had known at one time. Which was why she was sitting at the bar and not in the booth, so she would know them.
It did not alarm her in the slightest that they did not know her. More than once she said to herself, I am the Queen of the Planet, and each time she voiced this thought she would wait in silence for someone to issue denials.
She had her own answer, You may be, but you are no better than me, but she was waiting for an answer better and more spiritual in nature than that.
Another reason Henrietta Armani was sitting on the stool and not in the booth was because of what was behind the bar, on a shelf beneath the cash register under a wet J-cloth. Under there was a pistol which she had already explored. She had explored its handgrip, its black, snubby barrel, and the little twig of metal which anyone in her right mind would know was the trigger.
The pistol weighed, she estimated, about the same as three full drinks. In the movie she had seen with the man she was now so furious at there had been a weapon called a forty-five. She did not think this weapon, which for a while she had slid back and forth along the bar, was that weapon which, when you write it, is written point45. That is neat, she thinks, because these are things that when you use them you point them at someone, or at your own self, in the extreme case. “Like,” she said aloud, “such is more productive than a sling shot.”
K. Henrietta Armani Thinks She Would Like to Feed the City. Not the End of the Story.
Once three men shook the bar’s door knob. Henrietta Armani was asleep on the stool when this happened, and knew nothing of this. Otherwise, she would have let them in and might have enjoyed herself.
Around five in the morning, daylight breaking, she went into the kitchen, breaking open into a gigantic crock every egg that could be found in the cooler, both the brown eggs and the white – close to two hundred. She was going to stir up eggs – bacon, if she could find it – for everyone.
The front door, however, would not open. It would not open from the inside. To open these grilled doors, they had to be opened from the other side. Which really was, to her way of thinking, a pathetic situation. People, clearly, would want breakfast. Already, gauging by the assemblage, there was an interest.
Henrietta Armani decided she would stir up the eggs in any case, since, otherwise, life had no meaning.
Home fries, bacon, a sprinkle of – the red stuff. Yes, not anise, not chili, but the red stuff. Not coriander, not thyme, not oregano or curry powder, none of which were red.
It amused and embarrassed her that she could not think of the name of the red thing.
Henrietta Armani had been known as an exceptionally gifted chef at one point in her life.
Because she couldn’t remember, she took the eggs off the grill and went and made herself three tall drinks, lining these up on the bar, better to do the weight test again with the pistol which was not a point45 that was to be pointed at someone.
Cayenne.
Naturally.
The right word came when you were not thinking about what the right word was.
Cayenne, of course, was not exactly red.
Whereas “Bastards” was a word which fell off the tongue like leaves from autumn trees.
Which was another song – the autumn leaves of red and gold drift by my window – that man with the beer belly claimed a person named “Frankie” had made his specialty.
She was not herself keenly interested in or much moved by romantic ballads, even in stereo wraparound at the movie house.
Dress the egg dish with clawed tomatoes, sprigs of parsley, why not watercress? She had done this all her life, bibs for the three of them because bibs seemed so attractively old-fashioned and certainly the baby required one.
“Oh, yes,” she said, “you are right, I stand corrected, that was ages ago.”
To grow your own watercress, if you have not a river or spring or pool of flowing water, prick sizable holes in your tub, fill this container with black earth, install and tamp your seeds, then bring your hose to the tub and leave your hose running for the balance of your years on earth, to thence awaken each day of every year, your tub overflowing with an abundance of the finest product.
Which was what she had done in her marriage, precisely as instructed.
“So sit yourself down and partake,” she told herself, seated at the bar with a plate of rock-hard eggs, the pistol, and the two remaining tall drinks.
Which was how Henrietta Armani was found when at eleven a.m. another barperson opened the Amsterdam Bar doors – another decent human being, whistling, tinkering with the heavy chains, then entering, thinking to himself as he saw her slumped there in the dead, shadowy air: “Why, there sits Mother!”
L. Mr. Bottle the Neighbour.
Mr. Bottle the neighbour built ships inside bottles, which ships each had the name, Mrs. Bottle.
Henrietta Armani was eight years old when Mr. Bottle invited her to forego her cartwheels on his lawn and experience the greater joy; to wit, to venture inside his lovely tract home and he would show her his bottles.
Mr. Bottle’s bottles were all arrayed upon a white mantle, each sailing along splendidly inside the glass, although Henrietta Armani was more interested in Mr. Bottle’s dress code.
She said, “Why is all that hair on your chest?”
To which Mr. Bottle responded by showing her his newest bottle, inside the bottle what he said was a ship known as a Shapper, invented by a Mr. Shapper, Esquire, of Birmingham, England, many many years ago, the special attribute of Mr. Shapper’s ship being that it possessed virtually no leg room above deck, save that needed for wrapping sails and coiling ropes and something called the “Grig.” While below deck, in that space Mr. Shapper called “the hole,” in agreement with other ship designers, there was immense space for the oars, the oarsmen, the slaves, plus a chapel where a good man would preach the Africans’ conversion.
Mr. Bottle told her all this and more, apparently having the highest opinion of Mr. Shapper’s attributes.
“My dear, you see here all my ships are named the same name, Mrs. Bottle, not even employing numbers, as you see, because all women are exactly the same, they are all Mrs. Bottle insofar as Mr. Bottle is concerned, which I recognize as a gross exaggeration although it still seems to me to be the straight-out gospel truth, the Christian truth, although I will ask you to leave now, my darling, because you are such a nice girl, so lovely doing your cartwheels, before I or Mrs. Bottle decide that we must hurt you.”
The truth being, as Henrietta Armani decided later, that Mr. Bottle, while deluded, was the first gentleman of her encounter, and far more advanced in the decorum of his thinking than any of those others with whom she afterwards had a relationship. Most of all inclusive in this her relationship with the man who said “I do” to her face, and kissed her, and from that moment turned inconceivably evil.
You do not have to go through with this was a phrase which all her waking days post-marriage existed as a plague in the mind of Henrietta Armani.
She had not shown pluck in removing herself from the worshipful courtship of the man suing for her affection.
M. Husbandry: A ‘Sadder’ Page in Henrietta Armani’s ‘Saddest’ Story.
Give me your poor and your disabled, he had said.
This, on their honeymoon. He had been quoting, imprecisely, the script on the plaque in New York City harbour. Henrietta Armani had believed he was addressing, personally, certain shores of herself that had not yet surfaced.
She had thought his words addressed her essence, which essence his quotation was meant to sincerely applaud, and thus she could now share her secrets with him, as soon she would share her body – provided she went through with it – and Henrietta Armani had welcomed the degenerate into her bosom – into her arms, spectacularly.
Not that this, her body, had seemed to make an impression on him.
N. Henrietta Armani’s Daughter, a Child Prodigy.
Her daughter, in conversation with grownups, would say, “I am not a conversationalist.”
To illustrate the point, she would then spill something on something precious.
There were hack marks on the furniture, which wounds in the fine wood pointed the way to future serious problems. Had Henrietta Armani been psychologically or psychically attuned to take notice.
Not that she didn’t, of course.
The question was what to do about it, other than have a seasoned restorer of fine wood come in and restore the fine wood.
Or drape their surfaces with cloth.
Both of these measures, as a matter of fact, were measures taken.
When Henrietta Armani first saw the child carving holes in the furniture, gouging the blade of her knife into the polished wood, the child had both heard and seen her, looked at her, but had gone on with her ruinous work on the elegant furniture.
Much later, several years, even though Henrietta Armani saw their dog being run over by a perfect stranger, when she saw the dead dog either actually or in her mind, she had been overcome with suspicions.
She said to her husband, “We have a disturbed child.”
In answer to this he had settled his tableware all but silently over his Beef Wellington, crossed to her chair at the opposite table end, and struck her.
Her daughter said, “Why can’t I chase cars too? Who is to stop me?”
O. Other Ingredients in the ‘Saddest’ Part of Henrietta Armani’s ‘Saddest’ Story.
“If you want to speak to me,” the child would say to her father, “why not speak to me? I like listening.”
The trouble with Henry – how odd it was, Henrietta Armani often thought – to actually say his name – is that when he stopped to think, he stopped entirely.
The trouble with her, with Henrietta Armani, is that when she stopped, the last thing she wanted to do was think.
When she stopped she wanted it to be over. Therefore, often – wherever she was and with who and whomever it was she was doing whatever she was doing, Henrietta Armani stopped abruptly. She stopped what she was doing.
The man she went to for help, who had been her friend and who loved eating buttered popcorn in the movies, would say, when she stopped, “What are you doing?”
They would have their clothes off, at his place or at her place or at the place of a third party, and he would say that. The air would be cold on her skin because of the sweat. Her flesh would be pebbly.
She would not look at him at such times, because of how he was looking.
At the movie, the popcorn between his legs, she had sometimes, to be playful, allowed her fingers to clutch like claws where the popcorn wasn’t.
He had made it clear to her that he did not find this amusing. Yet he also was not amusing, because often when she got home she would find butter stains on her skirt where he had wiped his hands. Which was not a friendly thing for him to have done, which was not a thing he would have done had he not believed, as he frequently was saying, that she was eating more than her share of the popcorn.
So there were these times but also thos
e other times when he did not like it at all that she had suddenly stopped what it was she had been doing. He would glower at her, and say hurtful things, if she stopped. So Henrietta Armani stopped stopping. She also stopped seeing him at all, with precisely that same abruptness. She did agree to this much. “I will see you outdoors. I will see in such places where we can be publicly seen, seated.”
He said, “Why should I want to see you publicly? Why should I be interested?”
Which provided her with a revelation as to his character, which she found interesting.
“But I thought you went to him for help,” another friend said. Which was such a silly thing to say that she stopped seeing this other friend, who in a score of ways had proved herself to be a False Friend.
When Henrietta Armani passed this False Friend on the street she was inclined to say, initially, “Hello, False Friend.” Later on, she learned to keep her tongue silent. Banter, insults, the tight expressions, she was finding disagreeable.
She would try secretly to wave at the small child the False Friend carried, to be sure. A child, her own included, was an innocent party. It hurt her to hurt innocent parties, such as her own child who was as innocent as any, despite the ferocity with which her child remarked on things.
Such as, “Why did you smile at that stupid baby?”
Over a long period afterwards, when one of these False Friends called – there were so many – and her innocent daughter lured her to the phone, the phone she held in her one hand as she listening to a familiar voice on the phone saying, “What are you doing,” she passed the phone over to her other hand – to the hand that was doing nothing until that moment – both she and her daughter then looking at the one hand that was now the new empty hand doing nothing except twist the cord, as if both she and her daughter were thinking that surely that empty hand – something – must have the answer.
Eventually these people stopped calling.
The pain of those days so amazed Henrietta Armani that when she looked back on them afterwards it was as though her skin was crawling with venomous lizards.