Everything Must Go

by Elizabeth Flock

  “Oh, yeah, totally” and “Sure, no problem” and “Maybe we’ll see you later—at Blackie’s?” and then they turn to the shirt section. As he helps one man to a fitting room and another find the sport coat, he glances over to see the girls holding up rugby shirts over their down vests.

  A little while later tightly sweatered Jory asks him if they sell army jackets, which they do not. “I think there’s an Army Navy store in Newbury,” he tells her.

  “God, mellow out,” Farrah-haired Alissa tells her. Then, for Henry’s benefit she adds, “Don’t have a shit fit” and they are gone. “Bye,” they call out in unison.

  The next day the names change but the faces remain remarkably similar: Jory and Alissa are followed by Dawn and Heather, neither of whom had said more than three words to Henry before his success on the football field landed him on their radar screen.

  “Oh my god this is perfect,” Dawn called out in one long exclamation. “This is perfect.” She is holding up a butter-yellow V-neck lambswool sweater. “Tell me this isn’t perfect,” she says to Heather, though it is understood Heather will do no such thing.

  “It’s perfect,” Heather says. “Shit, you’re so lucky. Help me find something for Michael.”

  “God dammit this is perfect,” Dawn says, still holding it up. “What size? What size do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Heather says. She is rummaging through the thirty-percent-off bin. “Seriously help me find something, will you? What’m I going to do?? This was my last shot. I already went to Mitchell’s and Saks. Dawn, seriously. You’ve got to help me.”

  Her voice has reached just the right pitch of frantic—only heard and recognized like a dog whistle by other like-minded girls.

  “Okay,” Dawn says, with magnanimity reserved for those who have satisfied a quest. “What color, first of all? What is he, a Fall?”

  “Shit,” Heather says, tossing aside her own version of perfect in a not-so-perfect size. “What? Oh. Um, I don’t know. He’s blond.”

  “No, he’s not,” Dawn says. “In the picture he’s got brown hair.”

  “Blond-ish. Not really blond. Just kind of dark blond. What do you think of this one?”

  “It’s pink,” Dawn says.

  “So? It’s cute.”

  “If he’s dark blond he’s a Summer. Plus you can’t get your boyfriend a pink sweater. Jesus.”

  Henry has caught snippets of the exchange but has been busy helping with two receipt-less Christmas exchanges.

  “What about this one?” Dawn pulls out a blue crewneck.

  Heather reaches for it. “Let me see.”

  “It’s blue and blues go with Summers and Springs,” Dawn says. Henry knows she is ready to go. He noticed her checking her watch.

  “It’s okay, I guess,” Heather says. “Do you think it’s big enough? It looks small for a Large.” She checks the label and then holds it up to her body.

  “How tall is he?” Dawn asks.

  “I don’t know. Six feet, I think. I don’t know.”

  “Just get it,” Dawn says. “He’ll love it. Just get it and let’s go.”

  “Hey,” Henry says. “How’s it going?”

  The beam of attention turns from price tags to him.

  “Hey,” they say. “How are you?” Dawn asks.

  “Good,” he says. “You guys okay?”

  “Yeah,” Heather says. “You’re working here?”

  “How’s school?” Dawn asks.

  “It’s good. Fine.”

  “Are you playing football? Not now. I mean, at school. Are you playing at school? Football?”

  “God, who taught you how to talk?” Dawn says. “You? Playing? At school? Football?”

  Heather has turned red.

  “Yeah, well, season’s over now.”

  “Oh, yeah, of course. Yeah.”

  “Duh,” Dawn says to Heather. “Um, Henry, ah, do you guys give friend discounts?”

  “Everything’s on sale right now,” Henry says. “Those are both already thirty-percent off, I think.” He is careful not to appear too knowledgeable.

  “Yeah, I know,” she says. “I’m just wondering if…”

  “Yeah, we were wondering if you could like—I don’t know—like mark them down a little more, maybe?” Heather says, completing her friend’s question. “For us? ’Cause we’re friends, you know?”

  “That’d be so great,” Dawn says. Heather nods her agreement. Their backs arch at precisely the same moment.

  Henry hears himself say “yeah, sure,” and looks both ways to make certain he is not overheard. Then, “Don’t tell anyone.”

  Up at the register he writes up the true price minus thirty-percent discounts and then, off to the side he stretches a McDonald’s napkin tightly under his blue ballpoint pen, making note of the added ten percent he awards the girls’ breasts. The numbers are scrawled across the embossed M. He folds the napkin up and slides it into his back pocket for later when he can count out the eighteen dollars from his wallet.

  “Thanks,” they say. Their smiles—no longer necessary—are not so bright. “See ya.”

  “Yeah, see you,” Henry says, watching them go.

  The week is like a marching yearbook. Classmates Danny and Will come in to use gift certificates they’d each received for Christmas (“Is there anything here that’s not faggy?” Will asks). Jack comes in alone. Allison and Megan and Beth ask the same questions the rest do but in triplicate. Neal comes in, shows off a flask he’s just bought himself, and leaves to go “beaver hunting.”

  “Have a happy!” and “See ya” and “Take it easy” are all called out to Henry, who smiles, shakes hands and refolds.

  “Another year, another sale under our belts,” Mr. Beardsley says. He settles onto one of the two bar stools behind the counter and scans the store, which now resembles a Soviet market: picked over and low on essentials.

  “I’m going to take off,” Henry says, “if we’re done for the day.”

  “We’re done for the day,” Mr. Beardsley says. “We’re done for the week. Nice work, Henry. Good work. You worked real hard out there, don’t think I didn’t notice it. I did. And I want to give you a little something extra—no, don’t wave me off—it’s just a little something extra for all your hard work. I know how money comes in handy in college, believe you me. I could tell you some stories…but you’re trying to leave. I know, I know. You’re probably meeting the gang for some brewskis. I remember those days. I’m not some old fogey. Anyway, I thought you could put this to good use back at school.”

  He slides an envelope across the counter to Henry.

  “Um, actually, I could probably come in this next week if you need help,” Henry says. He is looking down, not at the envelope that is still lying between them on the counter but at his feet. Their eyes meet only for a moment when he looks back up, and after a pause Mr. Beardsley clears his throat.

  Mr. Beardsley says, “I’d love to have you. I sure could use the help, let me tell you. Ramon has next week off and the guy I’ve hired for spring help doesn’t start until February.”

  “Great, thanks,” Henry says. “Okay, well, see you then.”

  He walks away. Mr. Beardsley looks at the envelope on the counter and opens his mouth to call after Henry that he’s forgotten it. But then he sees the slump to Henry’s shoulders, the way his head is hanging, the resignation in his step, and knows at that moment that Henry is not going back to college.

  He reaches for a pen and writes Henry’s name on the envelope and stows it safely in his own locker.

  At the same moment his boss closes his locker door, Henry closes the front door to his house.

  “Hey, I’m home,” he says.

  Chapter twelve

  1979

  “Hello?”

  He closes the front door quietly. The house is dark and still smells like morning coffee since it has remained sealed shut all day.

  “Mom? Dad?” Henry calls his way through the fro
nt hall to the kitchen.

  “Who is it? Who’s there?” her voice calls.

  “It’s me, Henry,” he says. The refrigerator is filled with condiments. He takes note of what he’ll need at the market. He checks the pill bottles by the sink to see that she hasn’t run out. Shaking each one. The third one is light. He opens it, sees only two pills left and curses himself he hasn’t done this earlier, while the pharmacy was still open. This now means he’ll have to fill it tomorrow on his lunch hour and somehow get it back home to his mother before she hits her midafternoon dose.

  “Hello?” his mother says. He can tell she is on the couch. Her voice has a just-woken-up sound to it.

  “Hey, Mom,” he says. He leaves the kitchen and passes through the living room on his way to the stairs, to his room.

  “Oh, Henry,” she says when she sees him. “Oh.”

  “I’ll be upstairs.”

  “What’re you doing here?”

  “What?” he calls down from only two steps up.

  “What’re you doing here? Where’s your father?”

  “I don’t know where Dad is. I’m home from school, Mom. Remember? I came home a couple weeks ago? Remember?”

  She settles back into sleep.

  Upstairs he hangs up his jacket and loosens his tie, sliding it out from underneath his collar.

  He flips through the albums. Breakfast in America, Some Girls, The Long Run, 52nd Street…none of them catch him. Tapestry, The Carpenters.

  Finally: America. You can’t go wrong with America, he thinks to himself, lowering the needle, closing the top over the turntable.

  As “Horse With No Name” begins, its steady, calming vocal drumbeat, Henry is stepping onto the field. Henry before everything changed. He luxuriates in the fact that he did not know the scouts were there for that particular game. Thank God Coach didn’t tell me. Thank God.

  To Henry it was just another game. Just another beautiful game. Starting. Catching. Running. Bending over to catch his breath before taking his place for yet another play. The symmetry between Powell and Wilson subliminal. And beautiful.

  Henry isn’t recording today. Instead the music plays in the background of the game.

  He comes off the field to an extended arm. “Henry, I’m Don Lambert from Westerfield. I’d like to have a word with you, son,” the man is saying.

  He resets the needle on “Horse With No Name”—he never thinks to play it but whenever he does he wonders why he never thinks to play it. It’s a great song, he thinks.

  He had not known what it was about. Why this trench-coated stranger wanted to talk to him. He remembers being more concerned with what Coach would say about the game. He’d fouled up. A pass intended for him had been intercepted. The first time in a three-game streak that he’d allowed that to happen. He tells himself that nothing the coach could say could make him feel worse than he already did about it. They’d won the game, but still. It was a catch he could’ve made. If he’d only caught more air on his reach.

  They are headed into the locker room. Coach falls into step along Henry, but before Henry can say anything in the way of an apology the coach asks, “Did you meet Mr. Lambert?”

  “Yeah,” Henry says, sloughing it off. “I know I should’ve gotten that ball.”

  “He’s from Westerfield, you know. Did he tell you? Top-ten school. He wants to talk to you.”

  Henry is starting to get the picture. Coach isn’t sore after all, he says to himself. And that guy is here to talk to me about college. The twists in his stomach start to relax.

  Underneath the headphones Henry revels in this moment. The moment before everything happened. He tries to remember that flood of feeling he had as it dawned on him that good things really were going to happen to him. Before that moment he truly had not considered college. His parents had not brought it up—funny now that he thinks about it, since his father was always pushing him to put his studies first. Huh. Strange he wouldn’t have mentioned college even once. Or maybe he did and Henry just can’t remember. This could be. Naw…it wasn’t that long ago. Oh well, get back to the moment, the screenwriter says. No, it’s not the screenwriter this time taking notes. It’s a reporter from Sports Illustrated. That’s who’s saying it as Henry replays “Horse With No Name.” What were you thinking right then? When you realized that Mr. Lambert with the Bear Bryant hat and trench coat was there to talk to you about Westerfield? Henry sighs patiently as yet another pen is poised above yet another pad.

  Ah, yes. That moment. What was I thinking?

  Henry does indeed remember the change in the way the others started looking at him. He knew it the minute he walked into the locker room. It is awe. Mixed with resentment. With some jealously thrown in. Mostly, though, at that minute, it is awe.

  Now of course Henry wishes he’d taken it in. Appreciated the moment. Soaked it all up. All his hard work paying off. He should have met their eyes. Then, though, Henry remembers feeling guilty. Tremendously and unequivocally guilty. For being the one Lambert’d come to see. Steve Wilson should have been the one to “have a word” with the man. Lots of the guys were good: why weren’t any of them talking to Lambert? He had looked down, hurried through his shower and rushed out of the locker room without speaking to anyone.

  I should’ve taken it all in, Henry thinks.

  The door to the locker room closes behind him and, come to think of it, the coach hasn’t followed him in to talk to the team. This time it’s just the guys. Just the team. Welly talking to the team.

  “Hey, guys?” he says. Calling their attention. They’ve been whispering about him, he can tell. No matter.

  “Listen up!”

  Now that he has their attention he puts one foot Caesar-like up on the bench.

  “Look, I know what you’re thinking,” he says. He pauses to let the muttering die down. “I know what you’re thinking and I don’t blame you. I’d probably be thinking the same thing.”

  Henry thinks he’s seen this speech somewhere in a movie. Brian’s Song? Naw. Different speech. What movie is it? Huh. That’s going to bug me. Keep going, tell me tell me, the SI guy says. Oh yeah, Henry says. Sorry.

  “I didn’t ask for this, you know,” Henry says to his gathered team. “I don’t even want it, to tell you the truth.”

  Actually—he corrects himself to the SI guy—I didn’t say “to tell you the truth” because I hate it when people say that. It’s like everything else they’ve said before saying “to tell you the truth” is a lie. I think I said this:

  “I don’t even really want it. I just love playing the game, you know? Same as you. That’s why we’re all here, right? Because we love to play the game? Why else would we do two-a-days and then bust our asses out there every game?”

  This time the mutters aren’t mutters so much as agreeable smiles. A few nods of recognition.

  “Let’s face it: this is hard. It sucks to have to do homework with ice packs. I hate how it hurts to even walk down the stairs to dinner….”

  Chuckles. I swear there were chuckles, he tells the reporter. I believe you, the SI guy says, writing fast to keep up. So he doesn’t have to interrupt and slow Henry’s memory down.

  “So, please,” Henry says to the team, now gazing at him in admiration. Their eyes twinkling with pride. “Don’t be pissed. Know that that guy—whatever the heck his name is from whatever corn-cob school…”

  Henry has to stop here to let the laughter subside.

  “That guy wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. All of you. We’re a team. Right? Am I right?”

  And a cheer went up, swear to God, Henry says. Then they applauded.

  Henry cranes his neck over the SI guy’s head to make sure he’s getting it all down.

  The coach walked into the locker room and had to say “Okay, quiet down, everybody, quiet down” before he could do the post-game.

  Wow, Sports Illustrated says, finally able to look up from his pad. Incredible.

  When Henry laid his he
adphones to the side of his stereo he’d nearly forgotten that his coach had entered the locker room when he did. That he’d gotten to his locker and found someone had put a soaking-wet towel on top of his now-also-soaked backpack. And that sopping-wet backpack had to be stowed on the floor of Mr. Lambert’s car—the man had insisted on giving him a ride home “so they could talk”—and Henry felt embarrassed the whole way back to his house that this man’s nice floor mat would be left wet.

  The very idea that the SI guy would refer to this present period of his life as the Time in Which Henry Powell Moved Back in With His Parents…would perhaps even write a chapter about it…so shamed him he vowed to bring it up with his father as soon as the right moment presented itself.

  Henry considers his making dinner a step closer to his goal of moving out. Edgar Powell hates to cook and generally avoids it altogether: nibbling at cheese and stale crackers rather than have to prepare a meal. Henry figures this will put his father in a better mood, his cooking.

  Not that Henry’s mother particularly liked to cook. In her current state she most certainly would not tackle it, but Henry cannot conjure up a single image of his mother at the stove. Before—before—he knows she used to take care of these daily household chores. Marketing, cleaning, cooking—this was expected, required even, of nearly every wife and mother of her generation. And while he cannot recall her ever actually cooking, Henry does indeed remember her speeches. That is what Edgar Powell would call them. Your mother’s speeches, his voice reeking of amused condescension. Henry always checked his mother’s face when his father turned to pour himself a Scotch. He saw her flinch. She didn’t know he saw it but he did. Many times. Her smile tight, her own drink inches from her lips, the wince flickered across her brow and five-then-six-then-seven-year-old Henry knew there was something slightly amiss.

  Back to the speeches, the biographer is saying. He has settled into one of the four kitchen chairs. Yeah, oooh yeah, Henry says. Sorry about that.