Everything Must Go

by Elizabeth Flock

  “So? Can I tell him yes?” Henry asks.

  The spoon resumes clinking against the rough-hewn pottery, its surface purposely uneven in that craft-fair style.

  “You can tell him yes,” his father answers after a moment. Henry has no way of knowing that these would be five of only a dozen or so words ever spoken by his father about his job at Baxter’s.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Henry says, already backing out of the room. He is eager to get out of his father’s dark, tiny study, to get back out into the sunshine of the day. He would not know that his father will continue stirring and stirring his coffee until it grows cold and undrinkable. Obsolete.

  In the two weeks that follow, Henry and his father do not see much of each other as his summer vacation gives way to football practices twice a day. In fact, there are many days in which the only signs that other people live in the house at all are the plastic-wrapped plates of food in the refrigerator. Henry leaves the house at first light to go to morning football practice and by the time he returns his father is gone for work. The afternoon practices stretch into the twilight, the heat mercifully lifting off the grass, which finally cools in the summer air. Once home Henry, bad posture and tired limbs, hunches over a plate shoveling his cold dinner into his mouth in silence, his parents having eaten long before he returns from the playing field.

  One afternoon, Henry finds his mother in the kitchen.

  “Your father wants to talk to you,” she says. Henry’s mother does not watch her hands when she is cutting. Cooking-school cutting. She is gazing out the window at the house across the street. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, talk to your father about it,” she says. Henry pictures a huge invisible watch dangling in front of his mother’s eyes, hypnotizing her. Tick-tick-tick. Henry looks to see what has her so entranced and is not surprised to find it is the geranium-filled wooden-duck planter at the edge of the driveway.

  “Mom,” he says.

  Tick-tick-tick. His mother’s stare never wavers. She has finished cutting, but still she holds the knife in place on the cutting board.

  “Mom.”

  The head turns, eyes tearing away from the driveway duck at the very last minute. It is a smooth turn that suggests the hypnosis is still in effect.

  “Yes?”

  “Why…does Dad…want…to talk…to…me?”

  But slowed speech is not enough to hold her. Tick-tick-tick. The knife resumes its tempo on the cutting board. Over and over again, an even rhythm so familiar it has become the white noise of every dialogue.

  Henry makes a show of leaving the kitchen but knows his mother probably will not notice he is no longer there. Though her knife is moving, nothing is under it to slice.

  As he leaves the kitchen he glances up the stairs and, in Henry’s mind, the soap opera Vaseline-on-the-lens effect kicks in.

  The carpet runner, like a Slinky attached to each stair, is no longer beaten down and Henry’s mother is bounding down the stairs, toward her boys, her tennis skirt flouncing with each step. Tretorns. Socks with little pink pom-poms at each heel. Her white Lacoste shirt tucked in. A pink headband to match the socks.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” she says, whisking past them to the front hall closet and her tennis racket with its needlepoint cover. “Betsy’s here. If I hear you boys got into any trouble I’ll be telling your father. Betsy? I’ll be at the club if you need me. You can call the main number and remember to page Helen Wellington.”

  Helen Wellington invited Henry’s mother to play doubles once a week as her guest at the country club twenty minutes away. But Henry’s mother never thinks of herself as a guest. She has made a point of knowing the server’s names at the grill where the foursome has iced tea and crust-less chicken salad sandwiches following their game. She pulls in to the same parking spot in front of lower court number eight each week. But the inescapable fact is that if there were ever an emergency that required her presence she would have to be brought to the club phone by Helen Wellington, her own name unrecognizable to the club operator.

  “Be good,” she calls out while climbing into the family station wagon.

  Though he did not know what name to put on it at the time, a feeling of euphoria would overtake Henry every Wednesday when his mother left for her tennis game. It was not the fact that Betsy the babysitter was cute and let them do whatever they liked as long as they left her alone to read Tiger Beat. She even let them eat two Devil Dogs if they wanted (Henry always took two of whatever was offered but stowed the spare in his tiny desk drawer, to be savored later in little bites).

  No. It was the sight of his mother so carefree that meant the rest of the day and night would be okay. She might even talk his father into taking them all to the drive-through for hot dogs for dinner. Anything seemed possible on Wednesdays.

  But then a Wednesday came and went without the tennis game. Henry checked the calendar to make sure he had not gotten the day of the week wrong but he knew it was Wednesday because Wednesday was sloppy joe day at school and on that same day he had a stain on his school shirt to prove it. When he got home from school his mother was out in the backyard, on her knees pulling up weeds. No tennis whites. No pom-poms.

  The following week was the same except this time his mother was in the kitchen sitting at the table, angrily flipping the pages of a magazine. Henry could not have known the subtle gaff that banished his mother from the country club (Helen Wellington had grown tired of Henry’s mother, who had developed a nasty habit of arriving early at the court and greeting the others as a hostess would), but he felt its sting as acutely as she did. Wednesdays became like any other day of the week for Henry’s mother. Except on bridge nights, but by then there was an unmistakable hollowness to her that dulled even the joy of playing cards with friends.

  Two weeks after her last tennis game, Henry’s mother burned the roast but only Brad brought it up with a mean “this tastes like my shoe” that felled whatever tree of hope was left standing in the center of the family that night. Moments later she got up from the table, carried the platter of meat into the kitchen and threw the whole thing out. The flick and hiss of her cigarette lighter could be heard through the swinging dining room door that slowly swung itself back to center.

  Henry watched Brad look down at his plate, his mouth open in shock at the effect his words had had on their mother. His brother’s face moved from shame to sadness and then, on looking back up, to surliness. “What are you looking at?” They both knew that Brad had been about to cry.

  “Boys, go to your rooms,” their father said.

  Henry stopped in the kitchen before going upstairs. “I thought it tasted fine, Mom,” he said. In a whisper so Brad would not hear in case he was still nearby.

  On his way to his father’s study he stops at his mother’s purse and fishes past lipsticks, a compact and her wallet to find the pill bottle. He pours the little blue pills into the palm of his hand one-two-three…it is clear she has taken three today instead of the one that is prescribed by the family doctor he has never liked because he still offers Henry a lollipop after every annual visit. Usually she only doubles the dose.

  “Dad?” he stands at the doorway to Edgar Powell’s study. “Mom said you wanted to see me.” With the toe of his shoe he traces the strip of metal that is meant to smooth the transition between carpeted and hardwood floors.

  Henry’s father looks up from his work and takes off his glasses, a signal that this will be a difficult talk.

  “Have a seat,” he says to his son. “How was school today?”

  “All right, I guess.” Henry shrugs and shifts in the chair that faces the desk.

  “Good, good,” Edgar Powell says. He clears his throat and Henry shifts again, aware that his armpits are tingling in sweat preparation. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. School.”

  Henry sits up straighter. “What about it?”

  “I’ve noticed the light in your room stays on later and later into the
night,” he says. “I am concerned your schoolwork might be suffering under the pressure of all your…ahem…commitments.”

  “My grades will be fine,” Henry says. He concentrates on keeping his voice from climbing into the fear register. “Classes are going to be easy this semester, I can already tell. It’s senior year.”

  “Nevertheless,” his father continues, “I want to raise the possibility of streamlining your schedule. Your allegiance must be to the academic curriculum, after all.”

  “I’m not going to cut football,” Henry says. “I know that’s what you’re getting at and I’m just saying I’m not quitting the team.”

  Henry’s father tilts his head and even though his glasses sit on his desk blotter he gives the impression of looking over bifocals at his son.

  “You’re not playing, Henry,” he says. “I wonder if the coach has any more intention of putting you in this year than he had last year. And if this year is a replication of last then I suggest we take a long hard look at your mission. At your objectives.”

  Henry hears a rushing sound in his ears, like the ocean in a seashell. He feels his face burning.

  “My mission? What do you mean my mission? He doesn’t want me to push my ankle, is all. He said the next game I’m starting and staying in.”

  “Watch your tone, young man,” Edgar Powell says. “And I do not appreciate that look on your face.”

  “Yes, sir,” Henry says. “But he said I’d start.” His jaw is clenched through this last bit.

  He starts to repeat himself but stops when his voice cracks and his tear ducts tingle. “He said…”

  Every family has its own sign language. Every family has its own complicated set of signals, unintelligible to outsiders but loud as a shout in a tunnel to its members. In the Powell family it is Edgar Powell’s habit to clean his eyeglasses with the end of his tie when he wants to be finished with a conversation.

  “I simply don’t want to see a scholarship evaporate because of some fool’s errand on the football field. Or because of an after-school job.”

  “It’s senior year—they’re not going to take my scholarship away senior year,” Henry says, now composed.

  “Attitude, young man.”

  Henry notes the glass cleaning and decides not to challenge his father any further because the end of their talk is in sight. Which is, of course, his father’s original intention in rubbing the tie on either side of the tiny square of prescription glasses. No more words from you, the subtitles say.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” he says. “I’m glad we had this talk.”

  Edgar Powell turns back to his work. He holds the glasses up to what little light is coming in through the small window and inspects his cleaning. That is the signal that Henry is dismissed.

  The old headphones are huge, the springs have remained factory tight so that if he wears them too long they give him a headache. But at least they seal the sound of music into his head so none of it leaks out. Henry sees himself in the mirror that hangs over his dresser and thinks he looks like a fighter pilot.

  But this image is in contrast with the one he has cultivated in his mind so he is careful not to look in the mirror once he clamps them on.

  He tilts open the Plexiglas top of the record player with one hand, places the record on the turntable with the other. Henry has always liked this part. This is the part—the pops and nicks of the dust hitting the needle—when his room transforms itself into a recording studio. He closes the plastic top and readies himself for today’s session. The window that overlooks the backyard becomes the soundproof window that separates the studio from the room full of producers, a record company executive and, in many cases, a Rolling Stone reporter leaning eagerly forward in his seat, ready to be dazzled by the notorious Henry Powell Band.

  It started with “Rock On.” That echoey, bass-driven song sounded so cool to him back in ’74. He bought the David Essex album and played the song over and over and over after he was sure Brad was out of the house. Brad hated the song and called him a fag whenever he played it—Brad liked Three Dog Night and the Allman Brothers. Once Henry had saved enough allowance he bought the earphones.

  Standing on the far side of the room (as long as the headphone cord would allow) he mouthed the words to the song piped into his ears. Soon it wasn’t enough to be the lead singer so he began playing the bass guitar.

  “Not many bass-playing lead singers,” the Rolling Stone reporter would lean over and say to the producer at the sound board. “He’s incredible, this guy.” His producer would nod and say things like “Man, that was a great take” and “Right on,” and then “Let’s lay down some more just in case” which ultimately justified his playing the song over. And over. The record company executive was fetched by the assistant producer, who thought this Henry Powell so talented, “So revolutionary, man.”

  Rolling Stone came on board after Henry recorded “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” A reporter was dispatched to absorb all things Powell. He tagged along with Henry and scribbled notes in between takes and tracks, recording Henry’s wonderful wit and self-deprecation (“Seriously, I know it can be better. Let’s do it one more time,” Henry would say, apologizing to his band and crew for keeping everyone late.) Words like workaholic and perfectionist would litter the Rolling Stone guy’s notes.

  Over the years the Henry Powell Band branched out and recorded all kinds of songs, defying all sorts of genres. “Dream-weaver” was followed by “Lay Down Sally,” “All By Myself,” and then, of course, the seminal “We Are the Champions.” Rolling Stone had already put him on the cover but after “Champions” they did another cover that involved Henry standing, hands on hips, with a menacing look on his face. “Just the Way You Are” gave his public a glimpse of the private Henry. The one who never discussed his personal life. “They’re eating it up, man,” the reporter would tell him. “Men want to be you, women just want you,” he said. “I just love the chance to play music,” Henry would reply.

  This particular session was interrupted by his brother early on in “Band on the Run.” Henry hadn’t really given it his all.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Brad says. He stands in the doorway. Henry frantically pulls his headphones off and throws them onto the bed, running a hand through his hair to try to be cool.

  “What?”

  “What the fuck were you just doing?” Brad asks.

  “Nothing,” Henry says. “What do you want?”

  “I’m going out,” Brad says, shaking his head. “Dad said to come get you and tell you to keep an eye on Mom. He’s at a meeting.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “You freak.”

  Henry rushes across the room to close the door on his brother, who is already several steps away so the door slamming does not have the effect Henry had hoped. He calls out “knock next time.”

  “Freak,” his brother calls back from the bottom of the staircase.

  Henry cancels the rest of the session, his heart is beating so fast from this interruption.

  Later that night he takes a ball of string from the messy miscellaneous kitchen drawer and ties one end to the inside doorknob in his room. He unwinds the ball across his bed to the far side where the mike stand (with its spit guard) stands. Before cutting the string he makes sure it is fairly taut in his hand. He cuts it and ties it to his finger. This way if it goes slack he will know the door has opened, his privacy compromised. It is too late in the game to change vantage points so he can be facing the door. He has to be facing the window in order that the team of admirers and producers working the boards better see him in action.

  Rolling Stone (RS): I know you’re really busy—like, insane busy I know—but there’s this kid I know. Actually he’s the son of a guy I work with. Anyway, this kid is a huge fan. Is there any way I could…

  Henry Powell (HP): Bring him in! Sure, sure. Bring him with you tomorrow.

  RS: Are you kidding? I was just going to ask you to
sign a picture or an album cover or something.

  HP: Yeah, fine. But if you want to bring him into the studio it’s no problem. We’ll put his name on the list at the security desk.

  The Rolling Stone reporter shakes Henry’s hand and runs off to make a call. Incredible, he’d say into the phone. Just like I told you, man.

  By the time “Handy Man” comes on, the kid-who’s-the-huge-fan has cancer and Henry’s generosity grows accordingly (backstage passes, trips on the private plane, song dedications, the usual stuff). He’s so down-to-earth, Rolling Stone will write. He’s a megastar on tour but he still finds time to make a dying kid’s dreams come true. Incredible.

  “Hey, Steve?” Henry calls over to the quarterback on his way off the field, his father’s words from the night before still ringing in his ears. “Any chance you could throw a couple before heading in?”

  Steve Wilson drains the last of his Gatorade and nods, turning back to the dusk-lit fifty-yard line after tossing the empty plastic bottle aside.

  “God, thanks,” Henry says. He tosses the ball to the quarterback and sprints downfield.

  The ball comes fast over to the left…then to the right…sometimes down the center…always spiraling. Henry and Steve speak in numbers hollered in near darkness. The evening fills with the music of whooshing and panting and feet pounding across the field. The others have long since showered and gone home.

  “Last call,” Steve says. Henry catches the final throw…a perfect thirty-yard pass…and tucks it under his arm to run it to the opposite end of the field, past the quarterback. The crowd roars as he scores a touchdown in his mind.