Henry & Me

by Sasha Clinton

  But as I move onto the next room, my mind stays on what he said.

  Imaginary numbers…I feel like I want to read up on them. Figure out more of their secrets. Understand what makes them tick.

  I have a feeling I’ll realize something profound.

  *

  Morning bleeds into afternoon rather quickly, and it is time to pick up Lucien from school. Lunch is done, and Ji-ae is curious to meet Lucien, so she tags along instead of going back home.

  “Who is she?” Lucien asks, eyeing Ji-ae with suspicion, hugging his cello case.

  In her patterned red pants and white tank top that says ‘Queen’, she probably looks like an oddball to him. Emilia Stone is a classy dresser. Every photo of her I’ve seen so far proves that. I doubt Lucien’s ever seen anybody so wacky.

  “Hello. I’m Max’s sister-in-law. Ji-ae.” She kneads Lucien’s cheeks, exclaiming, “He’s so cute!”

  “So are you,” he remarks, red spots patching his cheeks. “Unlike Max.”

  “Just move it along, kiddo,” I grind out from between my clenched teeth, giving him a shove. “The F train waits for no one.”

  Throughout the train ride, he drones on about photosynthesis (he learnt that in class today) and I stifle yawn after yawn. As long as he isn’t nitpicking the other passengers, I’m going to let him say whatever he wants. You know, I’ve just realized that there are way too many nitpickers around me.

  “He’s so smart. I want to have a kid like him,” Ji-ae remarks from my left, watching him longingly.

  The underlying message is clear: Hint, hint, get outta my house so my husband and I can make babies.

  “You’ll be a great mother,” I say to keep her happy.

  People underestimate the importance of a good relationship with your sister-in-law, but in hard times, it’s what shelters you (quite literally, in my case).

  “I hope you won’t be the aunt who spoils my kids.” Putting an arm around Lucien, she cuddles him.

  “Not at all,” I assure her. “I’ll be the best aunt ever.”

  “I’ll try next year then.” I glimpse excitement on her face, which makes me feel guilty. Maybe I’m really in the way of her happiness. I need to move out soon. “The business is my focus this year.”

  “Of course.”

  I spend the remainder of the ride working out how much it’ll cost me to rent an apartment. Although I only work part-time, if I share an apartment with someone, I should be able to afford to live away from Coop. I’ll try looking for some places when we go to the library this evening. I don’t want to ruin Ji-ae’s chance of motherhood any longer. When I moved in, I didn’t know she and Coop were planning to have kids. They’ve been married for five years without any, so I kinda assumed they’d wait some more.

  But if I have to become an aunt soon, I guess I’ll have to make sacrifices.

  *

  The public library is not very busy when we get there around five. The furnace-like heat outside might have a part to play in that. As the smell of books assails me, I appreciate the fact that this is the second time this week I’m at the library. For someone who never reads, I sure frequent the library like a regular.

  Henry’s changed out of his pajamas into smart-casual attire, consisting of light-wash jeans and a white linen shirt with loafers. Also, he’s wearing his thick-framed glasses. What nettles me is that even with them on, he still makes me stare at him in awe. This guy is aggravating—he should go back to looking like he used to.

  But it’s not just skin deep. His personality’s changed, too. He talks a lot more and he’s funnier. Even Ji-ae was laughing at his jokes today.

  A slightly plump, bespectacled woman wearing a skirt and blouse from the previous century steps in our path and immediately reaches for Henry.

  “Oh, hello, Henry. How nice to see you again! You haven’t been here in ages.”

  Goodness gracious. Her voice is so high-pitched and squeaky…exactly like Minnie Mouse’s. It’s incongruous with her appearance.

  Lucien scoffs. Henry motions us to go ahead, stopping to chat with the woman. Ji-ae’s already made her way to the restroom, so I guide Lucien towards the children’s books section.

  “That’s Glenda, the librarian,” Lucien whispers into my ear, pointing at the woman in the ancient ensemble. “She’s had a crush on Uncle Henry for years.”

  “How do you know?” I ask, suddenly annoyed by how picture-perfect she and Henry look together. That notion makes my stomach turn.

  “I have eyes.” Lucien sneers at me. “And a brain that’s not just for show.”

  I’m about to retaliate when I stop myself, vowing to be patient. Lucien is a child, after all. And all things considered he isn’t such a bad child. I mean, I was watching The Nanny Diaries on Netflix yesterday and that kid? He’s a monster. Compared to him Lucien’s really well-adjusted and well-behaved. He even helped me buy new curtains that matched the ones I bleached. Without him, I wouldn’t have known where to go.

  So I’ve decided to count my blessings from today.

  Caressing his hair, I coo, “Yeah, you’re really smart. A genius.”

  Suspicion lifts one eyebrow of his. “Max, don’t be like this. You’re scaring me.”

  Scaring him? But I’m only being nice.

  “What do you mean?” I protest, trying to get close to him while he seems intent on dodging my attempts.

  “Don’t lie to make me happy!” he shouts, inviting attention from the patrons around.

  Please don’t make a scene, I pray. Henry’s here. He’s going to fire me.

  “Calm down, sweetie. I’m not lying. You are smart. You helped with the curtains, remember? You’re such a smart boy—”

  Before I can pat his head, he swats away my hand. Bringing his eyebrows together, he casts an angry look at me. “I like you more when you treat me like an equal, not like a kid. And don’t call me sweetie. It’s creepy.”

  “Fine, then, behave like an adult. Get your books and let’s go.” Giving him a nudge, I scrunch my lips to one side, letting him know how annoyed I am.

  “Now that’s more like you,” he says, with a wolfish grin, then busies himself checking out the writing on the spines, going down row by row, until he’s found something to capture his interest. He scans the back covers quickly.

  That’s when I notice Henry dashing towards us. There’s a cast of red on his face, which vexes me, because it could only be due to Glenda. What does he see in that woman? Does he like women like that?

  “They didn’t talk too long,” I remark to the wooden shelves.

  “They never do,” Lucien utters, with a pitying look at Henry. “This has been going on two years.”

  I derive some measure of comfort from the fact that Henry’s relationship with the librarian hasn’t progressed in two years. Fate is apparently not on their side.

  I kneel down near the children’s shelves, watching Lucien closely. “So, I’ve been curious about this…who takes care of you on weekends?”

  “Mom or Dad. Mom avoids surgeries on Saturdays and Dad avoids surgeries on Sundays.”

  “They only get one day off a week? That’s brutal.”

  No wonder I’ve never seen Emilia smiling in any photo. I’d be too tired to smile, too, if I only had a day off a week and I had to manage my precocious son on that day.

  “They’re surgeons.” Lucien rolls his eyes. “Mom’s a cardiologist and Dad’s a pediatric neurosurgeon.”

  “Dad’s a what?” I ask.

  Shrugging, he grimaces. “Forget it. I should’ve known it was beyond your IQ level.”

  Now this ticks me off. I’m sick of him looking down on me. He might be a child prodigy and all, but I went to Harvard, too.

  Crossing my arms over my chest, I glance down at him. “I’m smart in my own way, kiddo. I bet you don’t even know the difference between ‘box set’ and ‘box office.’”

  “Yeah, if you’re so smart, then why didn’t you go to college?”


  “Who said I didn’t?”

  His hand freezes against the shelf. He stops picking out books to stare at me.

  “Whoa. That’s a revelation.”

  “You mean Henry didn’t tell you? We went to the same university. We were both in the theatre society together. That’s where I first met him.”

  “You went to Harvard?” His jaw hangs open. “No way!”

  “Duh,” I announce, flipping back my hair. “I was a drama major.”

  His jaw takes a while to go back to resting position. Riffling through the pages of the book in his hand, he mutters to himself. “Dad has a point when he says that standards at the Ivy League schools are dropping.”

  I edge my face until it’s a whisker from Lucien’s. “What did you say, you punk?”

  “I said having an educated nanny was better than having a stupid one,” he amends quickly.

  “I told you I’m not a nanny. I’m a child-care expert.”

  Snorting, he puts the book he was browsing back on the shelf. “You’re not very expert, though, since you can’t even help me with homework.”

  There he goes, nitpicking me again. When I was young, kids weren’t like this. I don’t remember Coop or me carping about our parents’ intellectual deficiencies.

  “How’s it going, Lucien?” Henry asks, rounding the corner shelves and coming to a stop in front of us. “What were you two arguing about?”

  He’s gotten rid of the books he was holding on to earlier. Maybe Glenda took them, I think sourly.

  “Uncle Henry, is it true she went to Harvard with you?” Lucien tugs my yoga pants, like he’s hoping Henry dismisses that as a bad joke.

  Too bad for him, Henry tells the truth. “She did.”

  Now, Lucien’s eyes roll back to me, and there’s an infinitesimally small glint of admiration contained within.

  “Ha, see, kiddo? I’m smart too.”

  “College education doesn’t buy brains, I see…” he mumbles to himself and finds another book to read.

  I’m in no mood for more jibes from him, so I tell Henry that I need to look up something on the computer and leave Lucien to him. The main reason I came here was to start looking for apartments and I should get to it.

  Hijacking one of the vacant computers, I enter my library card number and PIN, then Google ‘cheap apartments in New York’, narrowing my search to Queens. Coop lives in Queens, so it’d be better if I could live somewhere close. I’d like to be a hands-on aunt and help Ji-ae with the kid, since she’s having a hard time with the business already.

  A dozen search results pop up on the first page and I click on the first link, which takes me to apartments.com. Most of the apartments on the first page are way out of my budget . Three thousand dollars a month? No way can I pay that much money.

  “I didn’t know you were planning to move out.” A feminine voice drifts over my shoulder.

  I turn back and see Ji-ae reading the listings displayed on my screen. A red rose-shaped hairpin has been added to her hair. It’s really cute, but it would suit a girl of twelve more than a woman of thirty-one.

  “I figured I’ve overstayed my welcome at your place,” I reply, complimenting how cute Ji-ae looks with the hairpin (lies keep relationships alive, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise).

  Cocking her head, she pats my back. “Not really.”

  “It’s okay; don’t be nice. You’ve already been tolerant. I don’t think anybody else would put up with her unemployed sister-in-law for nearly a year.”

  “I understand you’re having a hard time.” There’s an undertone of sincerity in her voice which I try not to cling to. I really need to stop being the third wheel. “It would be worse for you to live alone when you’re going through all this.”

  “But it’s a hard time for you, too,” I say. “You just started a new business.”

  “That’s why I know how much it sucks to be alone when you’re struggling.” A sad expression hardens her face.

  I’m surprised at this—I thought she was really happy that she got those three extra orders last week. But I suppose everybody is struggling in their own way.

  “You have Coop, though. He totally supports you,” I remind her.

  “Yeah, I’m know. I’m lucky.” Wrapping an arm around me, she gives me a pat. “So I feel obliged to help the less fortunate ones. You can stay with me a little longer.”

  My throat burns. Chiding myself for being so overemotional, I slurp in a breath. Ji-ae’s right; life sucks less when you’re with someone who supports you.

  “You should follow your dreams, Max. Somewhere deep inside you, I know you want to be an actress.”

  Despite the fact that we’re in a public place, I close Ji-ae into an embrace. “You’re not saying that because you want me to go to LA and give you back your freedom, right?”

  “Of course not.”

  There’s no point ruining the moment, so I lie to keep her happy. “Maybe I will.”

  Chapter 5

  I arrive at Henry’s apartment next morning at eight am to cook him breakfast while listening to soft jazz. Usually, he scrolls through email on his phone while eating, and we co-exist in complete silence, but today, he wanted me to eat with him.

  So here I am, sitting on the chair opposite his, munching my meal awkwardly, wondering what I should do or say.

  “How’re you finding the work so far?” he asks, phone turned face-down on the table. He hasn’t had a shower yet, so he still has bed hair.

  Mouth stuffed with baked beans, I look up at him. “Huh?”

  “Do you like working here?”

  Domesticity was never my forte, so this housekeeping gig still feels funny to me, is what I would say if I didn’t have a filter on my mouth (which I thankfully do). So instead, I say, “I do. Lucien and I are starting to become friends.”

  Okay, that last line might have been a lie, but I’m not above petty lies.

  “I’m happy to hear that. Lucien’s not a very easy kid to get along with. And the house looks sparkling clean these days. I’m happy.”

  “Th-thank you…” I blush. Flattery is my Achilles heel. “Always happy to make my employer happy.”

  “That’s a turnaround from our college days,” he mutters.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Back then, I don’t think you’d have said something like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like wanting to make someone else happy.” He sips coffee. “You’ve changed.”

  “Yeah…I guess.”

  Dense as I am, even I can tell that he stopped himself short of calling me a ‘self-centered bitch,’ which is what I was when I was twenty. I’m his employee, but he doesn’t treat me any differently than a colleague. Countless times, he could have mocked me for the way I treated him. He could have been unkind. But he’s never done that. He’s really mature that way.

  “I’ll be hanging around at home a bit longer than usual today. I have a presentation to prepare for, so there will be a lot of talking to myself in my room. Hope it doesn’t disturb you.” Taking another bite of toast, he turns his phone face-up.

  “No problem. I’m used to working in noise.” That’s the second bare-faced lie for today. “By the way, what kind of presentation is it?”

  “An important sales presentation. I’m trying to rope in a new client.”

  “All the best. I’m sure you’ll do great,” I say, optimistically.

  “Thanks.” His smile is thin. “I usually leave presentations like these to the sales department. Public speaking is not my strength. But I have no choice today.”

  “I could help you,” I offer. “I’m really good at speaking in front of people because I studied acting.”

  Propping his elbow on the table, he rests his head on his palm. “I think I’ll manage.”

  Breakfast winds to a close soon after and both of us get a head-start on our work. Henry goes in to take a shower and I load the dishes in the dishwasher, waiting for him to
get out. He’s a man, so his time in the shower is five minutes, max.

  After he’s finished with the shower, I drag my unwilling body to the bathroom. Cleaning the bathrooms is today’s critical chore. If I postpone it any longer, Henry will realize that I’ve been slacking off.

  Thick steam circles around the bathroom when I enter. I may only have been at this job for a few days, but I already have a list of chores I hate; pretty much everything features on it, except laundry (surprise, surprise). Furthermore, bathroom cleaning is right at the top.

  Grumbling to myself, I scrub the tiles with Henry’s hurricane spin scrubber. It’s a neat little gadget, actually, although from the noise it makes, you’d think it was a dying mouse.

  The worst part is that I can’t hear the music in the bathroom because of the noise this contraption produces, so I can’t sing to keep myself distracted.

  As I make a feeble attempt at getting steam off the sliding glass doors of the shower enclosure, my imagination drifts to Henry in the shower. Water falling over his strong jaw, beading on his shoulder, trickling all the way down his stomach…I wonder what kind of stomach he has. The guy’s pretty thin, but I can’t imagine muscle.

  No, no, no. I shake my head vehemently. What am I doing, traveling down such a dark road? Where do I even get these stupid thoughts from, anyway? They’re irrational. I’d never want to have sex with Henry, nor can I.

  My back creaks as I push it back upright, finished dealing with the lower tiles. Thankfully, there’s no bathtub in this bathroom to kill my back any further. Moving on to the wash basin, I move Henry’s toothbrush, facewash, moisturizer (he uses Shiseido—no wonder he has such good skin), shaving cream etc. to the side, out of the way of my multi-purpose cleaner’s spray. Then I use a scrubber to scrub away the dirt and stains from the white ceramic.

  Wiping the beads of perspiration that have settled on my head, I survey the tiles that should be dry by now—and see a huge (and by huge, I mean HUGE) cockroach wriggling out the drain, a split-second away from tickling my toe with the antennas on its head. (I think that’s its head. I’m not sure. Do cockroaches have heads? They don’t strike me as the thinking type.)