Henry & Eva and the Castle on the Cliff

by Andrea Portes

  Since the accident, Henry has had a really hard time sleeping unless she’s right there beside us. He wakes up crying sometimes and calls for her. She always comes in. Even though her bedroom is down the hall.

  I think Marisol feels like we’re her kids, kinda. She was young when she came here and she’s been with us the whole time. She never talks about what it was like to get here in the first place. From Guatemala. But I heard my mom talking to her about it once and, even just from talking about it, my mom started crying. Right there at the kitchen table. Marisol didn’t cry, though. It was like she wouldn’t let herself. Or maybe she couldn’t.

  And I am thankful for her every day.

  Especially now.

  “Um, Uncle Claude? Who exactly is coming to this party?”

  He’s on his phone. Of course.

  The caterers and bartender are walking back and forth through the house like it’s the train station. Terri the Terrible had wanted me to help her invite every one of my mom’s friends and donors.

  I might have told her I didn’t know how to get ahold of them.

  I might not have admitted I have been collecting the invites to every charitable event from Mendocino to Monterey that have been appearing in the mailbox for my mom, who is now dead, each day for the past two months.

  I might also have left out that I have a secret shoe box of all those invites hidden away.

  Let her build her own mailing list. This one is my mother’s, and she earned it.

  “Hmm?” Claude sort of answers.

  “Who’s coming to this party?”

  “Huh? I don’t know. Business associates?”

  “Sounds . . . fun.”

  He nods. I guess he doesn’t get my sense of humor.

  Henry and I look at each other.

  “Oooo. I have an idea,” I say. “Let’s play Boring People Bingo.”

  This is a great game. My mom made it up. What you do is this: If you know you’re going to be spending time with a person, or a group of people, who always talks about the same boring things, you make a bingo chart. You can make up things to put in the squares like “Real Estate Purchase” or “Cost of Something” or “Random New Diet.” You just fill in all the squares in the chart. Then you keep that little chart next to you, or near you, and you tally it up the whole night. You have to play it with someone, though. It’s no fun on your own. Whoever fills in all the squares first wins.

  “C’mon, Henry. You know you want to.”

  He looks at me. He doesn’t smile. He really doesn’t smile much these days.

  In fact, my job, and I take it very seriously, is to cheer up my brother. This usually involves dance numbers. Also, songs.

  I like to make up songs about whatever is going on around us and perform them that evening to rousing applause from Marisol and a roll of the eyes from Henry. But a roll of the eyes is better than nothing and I know I am closing in on a smile soon. I can feel it.

  Tonight, the cheering-up concept is Boring People Bingo.

  “Pleeeeeeease? Please, Henry? It’s no fun without you.”

  “Aaaaall right.”

  I jump up and down, clapping. I know this will compensate, if only momentarily, for Terri the Terrible’s gold-gilded, people-impressing extravaganza.

  “Eva, sweetie, can you please go out and close the gate to the path? I don’t want anyone falling off the cliff tonight.”

  Ugh. Terri always has a list of things for me to do. It’s okay, though. Might be nice to get some fresh air before the Business Associates’ Ball.

  There’s a little wooden gate you have to unhitch to get onto the path down the craggy rocks, which leads you to the beach below. The beach is a little sliver at the bottom of the cliffs. Just a tiny strip. At high tide it’s about eleven feet wide. At low tide it’s about eighteen feet. Narrow enough that nobody would want to hang out down there for fear of the tide or a rogue wave swooping them into the sea.

  From the gate you can barely see down the slippery rock path to the water, but tonight is the full moon, reflected off the water like a squiggling line going straight up the beach to the moon. We’ve lived here all my life but it still stops my breath every time I see it. That giant white moon over the tumbling sea and the cliffs. It feels like looking at heaven. Like for a moment, we get to see it.

  I’m just about to turn and go back to make my Boring People Bingo charts when I spy something strange.

  Down on the water, through the jagged rocks and the brambles.

  There, down there. I see it.

  Next to the water. Coming out of the water.

  There.

  Do you see it?

  Hovering there over the waves?

  4

  THE MIST ABOVE the waves is dividing itself in fractals and spinning forms, whipping around and then disappearing into the air. The fog makes nautilus shell patterns swirling up up up into the moonlit night. Circular trails into the stars above.

  I’ve lived here my entire life, was brought here the day after I was born, and have never seen a thing like this before. Not even on a science show. Discover. Planet Earth. National Geographic. I watch them all.

  And then it makes a sound. “It” being the indescribable, intangible, and probably imaginary spinning vortex before me above the shore.

  FSHHHHHHHHH.

  Fshhhhhh.

  FSHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhh.

  Needless to say, the alphabet leaves a lot to be desired in terms of describing the aforementioned sound. Imagine the sound of a hurricane coupled with a friendly snake—a kind of whistling wind crossed with swirling maraca.

  Here is the bizarre thing: For all intents and purposes, this swirling vortex sighting, accompanied by this otherworldly sound, should be terrifying. Yet it’s not. Instead, it hovers there, spinning out of the water and into the breeze, a luminous lavender whirling—whispering, with a kind of inviting warmth.

  The moon behind is nearly full, low in the sky, casting phantom squiggles on the ocean in shimmering light. Beside me, the jagged cliffs hurl themselves up to the stars like black and gray skyscrapers.

  This next part is going to make it sound like I lost my marbles somewhere in the northern Pacific, but there is really no way to spill the beans here unless I just admit it.

  I feel the presence of something . . . something familiar in the middle of this myriad of spinning light and shadows.

  I feel the presence of something sparkling and majestic, a kind of churning mischief. A kind of sheltering.

  As if at any moment it will appear.

  It will appear and carry me gently away with it.

  So I do the only thing I can.

  “HENRY!!!” I scream, and I tear up the rock path to the gate.

  5

  THE PARTY IS now going on up the cliffs; I can hear the clink of glasses and the sound of polite laughter wafting out the windows and through the air up into the night sky. The windows, glowing orange squares, beckon me from the green salt air below.

  There is only one thing to do.

  Find Henry.

  Over the sloping grass, up the wooden porch, through the entry hall smothered in coats and hats, I catapult myself into the mahogany ballroom. There, at the other end of the hall, is Henry.

  He is doing a magic trick.

  Fun fact: Four years ago, Mom hired a magician for my birthday party and, ever since then, you might as well call Henry “The Great Houdini.” At first, the tricks were pretty pathetic, but he was six and it was so adorable and nobody minded. But then he got pretty good at about ten tricks, tricks he mastered, tricks he spent hours going over and over in his bedroom, until one day, he emerged, the Great Henrini.

  Right now he is doing a trick involving a fake rabbit, a black box, and a rubber chicken. He turns the rabbit into a chicken. Everyone oohs and aahs. Then, he turns the chicken back into the rabbit. Everyone freaks out.

  It’s a solid trick. (It used to be his closer.)

  Even though I am hyperventilating a
nd need to get him down to the beach to see . . . whatever that is, I cannot bear to ruin his Great Henrini Magic.

  This is the first time he’s done his routine since the accident.

  I watch him, proud and a little bit wistful.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . .”

  He takes out the now-transformed rubber chicken.

  “A chicken!”

  The crowd of dressed-up but not-too-dressed-up adults applauds, wineglasses in hand.

  “Oh, but, wait. I forgot something. Hold on one second. I meant to say . . . I give you a . . . BUNNY RABBIT!”

  Gasps. Exclamations. Anarchy.

  The dazzled adults clap enthusiastically, some of them even putting down their wineglasses to do it. (You know it’s important when adults put down their wine. Especially here, in California wine country, where everyone is always talking about hints of berry and a slight peppery aroma and whether a certain vintage is “long on the tongue.” I mean, they really push the boundaries of acceptable things to say without bursting into laughter.)

  I have a flash of my dad imitating someone quite self-serious, nose-raised and pretentious, on the way back from a Christmas party in Pebble Beach. “Yes, yes, I detect hints of paprika. And . . . on the back of the tongue . . . lingonberry? Or perhaps the third egg of a Tasmanian sea turtle. But just a hint!” Now, in this memory, my mom laughs and joins in. “Peaches! Yes, yes, plums! Five grains of sand from the Tunisian desert!” Now we are all doing it. “Sandwiches! Pencil shavings, thatches from a roof in Bali!” Even sleepy Henry joins in: “The bishop off a chessboard carved in Bulgaria! No, wait . . . Latvia!” We are all driving down the coast, cracking each other up, spouting more and more random things, in voices that, basically, start as sort of snooty then devolve into something strangely reptilian. We are just making each other laugh with our absurd lizard voices.

  My dad was gasping for air. He actually had to pull the car over so he wouldn’t crash. I bet we looked ridiculous, a car full of people by the side of the road, guffawing uncontrollably. We’d catch our breath, there would be a lull, and another explosion. Trying not to laugh, laughing at each other’s laughs. Contagious.

  I think of that moment as Henry completes his last and final trick: the Disappearing Flaming Candelabra. It’s a real humdinger. Abracadabra, light the match, presto chango, and the entire ballroom explodes in applause. Ecstatic clapping. Ecstatic. Straight up the beadboard walls, over the oil paintings of long-dead ancestors, and high above into the rafters. Clap clap clap.

  Looks like they got their money’s worth. Not that anyone paid to be here. But who knows what they were expecting? Most of them have never been here before, these friends of Claude the Clod and Terri the Terrible. The guys wear gray pants and light blue button-down shirts, the uniform, and their wives are all a bit younger than they would be, say, in a normal place. A bit curvier. And again with the jewelry. This is the most gold jewelry this house has ever seen.

  But they’re nice enough, and the fact that they seem to adore Henry makes me like them a little bit, actually.

  Then Terri the Terrible approaches.

  “What a lovely magic show!” she trumpets to the room.

  “I’m glad you liked it,” she whispers to a woman to her right.

  “Well, isn’t he just a hit!!” She gives the next gentleman a jolly little slap on the bicep.

  She looks around the room, drinking in the success of her first event.

  Claude is over in the corner, surrounded by light blue shirts, regaling them with the story of the first time he paved paradise and put up a parking lot. They are all ears. It’s his party, after all. He is allowed all the real estate talk he can muster.

  Me? I need to get out of here. “Excuse me, Terri. Great party!”

  “Yes, it is. And isn’t it also time for you to scurry along to bed?” She narrows her eyes at me almost imperceptibly.

  “Yup. Scurrying.” I shuffle through the crowd to find the Great Henrini, who is packing up his magic accoutrement.

  I smile and talk through my gritted teeth. “Henry, you have to come with me. Right now!”

  “I kind of blew the three-ring trick—”

  “Henry, put that stuff down, you’re never gonna believe what is—”

  “The ring got stuck, so you could sort of tell—” He’s mostly talking to himself. “It was a little embarrassing, actually.”

  “Okay, stop talking. Listen to me. There is some kind of supernatural slash meteorological event happening down the cliffs and—”

  Now he stops putting everything into his mystical black suitcase.

  “What?”

  “You have to see. Levitating fractals. Or paranormal phenomenon. Or maybe both.”

  The mystical black suitcase falls to the floor.

  6

  LOOK. THEY SORT of didn’t know what to do with him, my brother. In school, they’d be going on and on about London Bridge falling down, and he’d be over in the corner somewhere building a ten-foot model of that very same bridge out of shoe boxes.

  That’s the way it is with Henry. You look over at him, have a five-minute conversation with someone, look back and he’s created a mile-long marble run. And there he would be still squinting into his work. Adjusting.

  Is that the Sistine Chapel made of stuffed animals, you’d ask? Yup, and there would be Henry, placing his oldest teddy bear as the keystone. Henry is always constructing. Always perfecting. In silence. It’s just how his mind works. Engineering. Experimenting. That’s where he lives. In those little worlds he makes.

  But they thought there was something wrong with him. Because he wasn’t interested in making eye contact. Or in human interaction in general. Or most of the trivialities of everyday interfacing. He just wanted to get back to his robot laboratory or his flying-car factory or his potion-concocting mill.

  Not that other stuff. Not that playdate nonsense.

  And so they made us test him. When he was six. And the test came back that he had an IQ of 180. And there was a word they used. The doctors. High-functioning something-or-other. Profound whatchamacallit. There’s a lot of words for it, I guess.

  Our word for it was Henry.

  They wanted us to continue, the institute. They hoped we’d keep returning to them so they could research Henry—put wires on him and test the synapses in his brain, follow the connections, the channels. To see how that thing between his ears worked.

  But my mother wouldn’t have it. Nope. He stayed right here, doing everything he was doing before, with joy and abandon. The only difference was that she did bring in this special instructor, on Saturdays, to “support, enrich, and participate” in all of his numerous obsessions.

  Almost like a brain friend. Or a traveling companion to help Henry on his journey through his mind. To guide him, to instruct him, and to magnify him.

  So, for instance, if Henry was building a robotic tree house, or a musical band of hamsters, or a ladybug chalet, the enrichment teacher would help him create the most elaborate robotic tree house, or ladybug chalet.

  But that wasn’t all. The tutor had a second task, tantamount to the first. To draw Henry, gently, into the world around him. Into the world of other people. To see them. To want to see them. To interact with them. To exist with them. On this plane. In this paradigm. In this world.

  “Whatever this world is.” (That’s what my mom would always say. I’ll get to that later. Kind of a doozy.)

  The first order of business: to open Henry up to the world inside and outside his brain using the power of . . . magic.

  Pick a card, any card. Silly tricks. Funny tricks. Terrible tricks. Tricks you’d never believe. And every week there would be a new box coming. A new kit. A new set of magic!

  Dad thought there were too many boxes coming to the house but Mom thought the enthusiasm Henry showed justified the excess.

  When Henry asked if he could give a magic show after dinner, we knew we had reached new territory. Sudden
ly after dinner wasn’t just a time to sit back and hang loose or just do the dishes. Now after dinner was . . . the magic show. The magic show with rabbits. The magic show with doves. The magic show with a wand, a tablecloth, and a disappearing hamster.

  And Dad never minded the boxes again.

  But right now, under the night sky, with the waves crashing below, Henry, little Henry, has abandoned his magic. He is running straight down the slope, foot over foot, to the gate that leads to the stairs, to the sliver of beach . . . to investigate potential supernatural and/or scientific impossibilities.

  I have a troubling thought as he crashes through the gate. What if I’m wrong? What if the presence I felt is dangerous? What if whatever that thing is down there is a trap?

  Wait. What have I done?

  “Henry! Heeeeen-ryyyyy! Stop! Wait!”

  But he’s not listening. Who knows if he can even hear me over the crashing of the waves? On stormy nights sometimes you can’t even hear yourself for the tide battering the steep bedrock cliffs. It’s worse than thunder.

  And I don’t know why this sudden dread has hit me, but I have to protect him. I have to make sure he doesn’t catapult himself into the water, desperate to decipher the physics. I have to keep his tiny little bones intact in his tiny little body.

  He’s always been slight. Wiry. Just two big eyes on a stick of a body. Like a lollipop.

  But he’s barreling down the hill now and before I can stop him the gate is unlatched and banging in the wind, which means that he’s probably halfway down the steps by now. The steep, serpentine steps, covered in the froth of the tide, slippery with moss, dangerous to even the most athletic, adult-type person.

  “Henry! Wait! Wait uuuuuup!”

  And when I get to the gate, clanking against itself, with the waves pummeling the rocks below . . . I look down. And I don’t see him.

  7

  THIS IS THE moment I learn how to fly, rushing down the path and craggy bluffs through the salty sea air. Catapulting forward, possessed, and hurtling down down down, over the moss-covered rocks, down the steps, and into the cove. This is the moment I fall to the seashore, looking for Henry, and with him the last of the remnants of my heart.