Everything Must Go

by Elizabeth Flock

  The speeches. On many occasions Henry’s mother would announce—whenever a task presented itself—that this was not what she had had in mind. “You know what they’re doing right now?” she would ask over the loud vacuum motor. “I’ll tell you what they’re doing. They’re out catching a show right this minute. A musical. Something they read about in the paper.” She would pause by the ashtray, vacuum still running, to take a good long drag from her cigarette. A minute later, Henry on the couch would hold his legs up so she can get the crumbs under his feet.

  “And here I am,” she says, “here I am making sure the carpet is perfect. Just perfect. They’re having the time of their lives right now.”

  The angry and intermittent vacuuming would carry on, and as her cigarette burned down and her drink emptied, her speech would expand to include not just education but the Merits of Childbearing and—her favorite and the topic voted by the Class of Topics the one Most Likely to Crescendo into Total Abandonment of the Task—the Institution of Marriage.

  “What was the damned rush?” she would ask the polished coffee table, moving her cloth down each leg for any dust fragments she might have missed during the first pass. “I was in such a damned hurry to get married. What was the rush? Like it was a lottery ticket. I thought I held the winning numbers, meeting your father.”

  Other times Henry would be rolling his Matchbox cars to the sound of his mother snap-shaking the clean pieces of laundry before folding them. “That Phyllis is a dope,” he’d hear her say, “dumb as a stone.” Like a raccoon at the edge of a river washing its food, she would stare straight ahead, occasionally shaking her head at Phyllis Hartley’s stupidity, marveled at in silence then, while her hands felt for the seams along his jeans, lining up the ridges so they are perfectly folded in half lengthwise before being halved then quartered and stacked neatly on the pile.

  “You boys won’t have to worry about this,” she would say. “You’ll have wives to take care of all of it. The house will miraculously run itself.” The word miraculously slurs its way out of her mouth. “The laundry will be done and put back into drawers and you’ll hardly even notice. You’ll just always have clean undershirts whenever you reach for them. Because you’re men. Because women take care of all those things so you men won’t have to.”

  Sounds pretty good to me, young Henry would think. But he sensed this was not something he should say out loud.

  “And you know what your wives will be concerned about? Lipstick shades. Not the presidential election. Not civil rights in the Deep South. Nooo…they’ll be talking about wallpaper.” She said the word wallpaper as if it was the most vile conversation topic ever to be discussed.

  “Ah,” Edgar Powell would say on entering, “your mother is giving one of her speeches.”

  A week or so later it was his mother’s turn to host the weekly bridge game and, as one card or another is slapped down on the square card table unfolded for just such occasions, Henry hears this:

  “I have to ask,” a disembodied, unidentifiable voice says, “what detergent do you use? You just smell so clean.”

  “I noticed it, too,” an enthusiastic addition weighs in, “when I hugged you at the door. Something fresh. Like a meadow.”

  “Is it a perfume?” yet another voice.

  A card slap.

  Henry hears his mother’s answer. “You won’t believe it but it’s Oxydol. I don’t even wear perfume anymore, the scent’s so good. And it’s always on special at the store.”

  The murmurs of disbelief carry through the air to Henry, who is quietly coloring at the kitchen table.

  “Isn’t it always the way?” another voice says. “It’s always better to stick with tried-and-true.”

  “I’ve been using Wisk but I’ll tell you now I’m switching. You don’t mind? I just love that smell.”

  “Of course I don’t mind,” his mother says. “It’s great, too. The boys’ clothes have never been cleaner.”

  “Speaking of stores, did you hear A& Pis closing?” Phyllis Hartley says. Henry can tell it is her voice because no one else sounds like Phyllis Hartley. She is a grown woman with a little girl’s high voice.

  “Who needs a refill?” his mother asks. Her chair is pushing back from the table.

  “Mom, look.” Henry holds his picture up for her to see how well he has colored the fire truck and its station.

  She sets the glasses on the kitchen counter. “That’s nice, honey.” She pats him on the head on her way to the freezer for an ice tray. “Will you go check on your brother? I haven’t heard a thing from upstairs. That’s a good boy.”

  She pulls the metal lever and pop, pop, go the ice cubes from the tray into the glasses. She is pouring the drinks when he leaves to check on David.

  He does not see her pause before carrying the drinks back in on the black-lacquered tray that he thinks looks like something James Bond would have—does not see her brace herself at the sink, her wingspan ending in white-knuckled grips at either end of the sink.

  Henry pours water into the pot and silently practices his own speech.

  Dad, I’m moving out, he will say. I’ll still be here to take care of Mom when you need me but I’m getting a place of my own. I don’t care what you say. You can’t stop me. I’ll be moving out at the end of the month. Just so you know.

  No. This is too harsh. He imagines his father saying “watch your tone” and then it’s all downhill from there, he thinks.

  Dad, here’s the deal. Brad can come back and we can tag-team it. The Powell Men, just like old times. We’ll all three take care of her. But I’ve got to have my own place. I’ve just got to.

  The trouble with this option, Henry knows, is that there is no old time that recalls—fondly or otherwise—the Powell Men tag-teaming anything. This will baffle his father and he’ll be back at square one. Plus, Henry thinks, Brad would no sooner move back to help out than he would drive a railroad tie into his own foot.

  Dad? Can I talk to you for a second? He would start that way: Gentle. Calm. Dad, I really want to move out. I don’t want to leave you in the lurch with Mom but I really think I need a place of my own. I’ll come by every day and check on her. You’ll see. You won’t have to worry about a thing. Five-fifteen. I’ll come every day at five-fifteen.

  That’s good, Henry thinks. I like it. His posture reflects his resolve: straight-backed, chest puffed out. He waits for the water to boil.

  His eye wanders around the kitchen and lands on the door frame.

  There is Bradford, age two. They had started out calling him Bradford. Henry knows it is a ridiculous thought but still wonders if Bradford became Brad because the surplus letters plus the height mark plus the date were too tight to fit in before the wood indentation dropped off. No, he thinks. That’s a stupid reason to give someone a nickname. But sure enough there it is: BRAD, age three. All capital letters. Announcing to the world this child is now several inches taller. Henry’s lines are in blue. David’s are red.

  He drops the frozen square-shaped bag of chipped beef into one pot of boiling water and shakes out three cups of rice into the other, replacing the lid and lowering the burner to simmer.

  “Smells good in here,” his father says, rubbing his hands together on his way into the kitchen.

  “Nothing’s cooking yet,” Henry says, looking up at him.

  “Did you wake your mother yet?”

  “No, I thought I’d get this started first.”

  “I’ll go up. How long?”

  Henry checks his watch. The instructions say to let the bag boil for twenty-five minutes. He’s not sure about the rice.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “Half an hour?”

  “I’ll be back.”

  “Um, Dad?” Henry turns from the stove to face his father. “Before you get Mom…”

  “Yes?” His father pulls the cuff of his right sleeve out from under his sport coat.

  “I wanted to talk to you about getting a place in town,” Henry says. �
��Closer to work.”

  This isn’t at all what you said would happen, the writer says, flipping through his reporter’s notebook to find the exact speech Henry had planned. I thought you were going to put it off for now, he says. Look, Henry says, I couldn’t help it. It just popped out. Oh-kaay, the writer says, fiddling with his miniature tape recorder placed carefully in the middle of the kitchen table. Go ahead. They both know this will be a momentous chapter in his life story. Very dramatic, the writer scribbles.

  “I don’t understand,” Henry’s father says.

  “An apartment.”

  “We’ve lived here for over twenty years.”

  “Not for us,” Henry says. He takes a breath. “For me. My own apartment.”

  His father looks down and adjusts his left sleeve.

  “I saw a For Rent sign on Stone Avenue,” he continues. “I thought I’d call them tomorrow. Just to check it out. It may be out of my price range, anyway.”

  “I wasn’t aware you had a price range,” his father says. “You only just got back from school. I can’t imagine they’re paying you enough at your job to afford an apartment.”

  “I saved a little bit,” Henry says. “And I can ask Mr. Beardsley about an advance.”

  “What about your mother?” his father asks.

  “I’ve thought about this—I’d still be around to help do stuff. I’ll check in every day after the store closes. She sleeps all the time, anyway.”

  “Your mother is ill,” his father says in a stern voice that seems to Henry one Dickensian sentence away from young man, tonight you will have only porridge.

  “She needs looking after,” Edgar Powell says. “That was the whole point.”

  “I’ll look after her, I told you. I’ll come by every day. I promise. Same time every day. Plus you’re here. It’s not like you’re not here, Dad.”

  “Tone, young man. Watch your tone.”

  “Sorry.” Henry paces himself.

  “I’m just so busy with work,” his father says.

  They both look down, knowing this is not the case.

  There was a time Edgar Powell was indeed very busy with work. The bank afforded him a salary that placed them one or two inches over the line that separates a blue-collar existence from a middle-class one. Not comfortable middle-class. That would have meant Edgar Powell could have joined his colleagues on their noon-time restaurant jaunts (instead he waited until they left and drew out his brown bag from his lower desk drawer). Comfortable middle-class would have meant buying a new, not secondhand, car. It would have meant reupholstering furniture that had been in-law hand-me-downs they were happy to take as newlyweds but now, in middle age, looked worn and—even more offending to Edgar Powell—cheap. No, the Powells were just barely middle-class.

  Just Barely Middle-Class is perhaps the most difficult place for a proud man like Edgar Powell to reside. For it requires a full-time effort to keep up appearances, which are paramount to Henry’s father. It pleased him that young loan-seeking couples peering across his wide standard-issue credenza saw a man they could only hope to become someday. Nameplate polished, suit fitting just right, glasses lending an air of intellect, of confidence, of wealth.

  Henry looks at his father standing here in the kitchen beside him and remembers the first time he realized there was a difference between Edgar Powell the banker and Edgar Powell the father.

  “Hi, Dad,” he said, appearing at the side of his father’s desk, startling him.

  “Henry, my boy,” his father said a bit louder than was necessary. And Henry noticed his father smiling hard—an unfamiliar smile—and scanning the bank to see who was watching their interaction.

  “Is that little Henry Powell?” a bored and overweight colleague two desks over calls out. “My, my, my, you’re a grown boy now.”

  Henry’s father’s hand propelled him forward to her desk. “Henry, you remember Miss Merkin.”

  “Hi.” Ten-year-old Henry allowed his hand to be shaken though he dearly resented the fact that they were treating him as if he were a child.

  “How would you like a piece of candy?”

  This colored Henry’s cheeks, so offensive was her tone.

  “Here you go.” She ceremoniously held out a butterscotch and very nearly pinched his cheek. That would have been just too much.

  “Dad? Can I borrow five dollars?” he said, holding the candy in his hand just to prove he is old enough not be governed by candy. A child would have gobbled it up immediately.

  “What do you say to Miss Merkin? You know better than that….”

  “Thank you for the candy,” he said. And then, “Can I?”

  “Five dollars? Sure,” his father said, and fishes his wallet from his back pocket and with fanfare rivaling Miss Merkin’s candy presentation, produces a five dollar bill. Nice and crisp. He barely had to hunt for it among the bills as he organized his money in descending order: twenties along the outer edge (the line that is created when a man’s wallet is unfolded), then tens, fives and ones.

  He pats Henry’s head when his son thanks him and then says, “I’ll walk you out, son.”

  They leave the building and stand, out of sight, at the edge of the parking lot—an asphalt square optimistically filled with white lines enough for twenty-five cars on a busy day. Now only seven cars are parked there and one is employee of the month, the other reserved for the bank president, a dour man not given to appreciate something as trivial as a conveniently located parking space. Edgar Powell’s hard smile disappears. “You’ll be paying me back of course.”

  It didn’t take long for the bank to recognize that the town was not growing at the rate of, say, Westtown, so it closed and reopened there. Henry’s father then had to drive, not walk, to work every day. Which he did from then on.

  Every day Edgar Powell trudged out of the house with his briefcase and returned in darkness, never letting on that he had driven to his bench in the park on the outskirts of town. The bench out of view. The bench where, after nightfall, couples might be found necking. During the day, though, this bench saw the deterioration of a man with eyeglasses that lent a whiff of intellect, of confidence, of success.

  When Henry was in high school and got lunch privileges that enabled students with no demerits to leave campus in between classes, he piled in to his friend Connor Segman’s car with four others to pick up burgers and fries from the McDonald’s seven minutes out of town on Route 7.

  “If we eat in the car my Dad’ll kill me,” Segman said that sunny day. “He has a shit fit if we even open a candy bar in here. Let’s go to that park down the road.”

  It seemed like a fine idea. But it had rained the day before and the ground was still soggy so they looked around for an unoccupied bench.

  “Hey, Powell, isn’t that your father?” someone said.

  It only took a second for Henry to size up the situation. Why would his father have brought his briefcase along with him on his lunch hour? He wasn’t eating anything—he was spread out neatly, newspaper on one side, a legal pad on the other, a coffee cup he recognized from home balanced on one of the bench slats, his father dropping crumbs to pecking pigeons. The bench was his office.

  “There’s one,” someone else called out. “Let’s go. We’ve only got twenty minutes left and I’ve got a quiz in English I’ve got to cram for on the way back.”

  Mercifully they changed course to an opposite end of the park.

  His burger was ruined with the thought that the check that arrived in the mail every month, the check from a law firm carrying out the wishes of a long-dead great-grandfather, was what was keeping them alive. The French fries were ruined, too, though he assumed that it was simply that French fries don’t travel well. They only taste good on the spot, wherever they’re ordered.

  The picture of his father sitting on that park bench seared itself onto Henry’s brain while the others chattered between bites about the upcoming game, about Heather Lewis and her big breasts, about Jack Vernon
going all the way with her and how he said she wasn’t a virgin when he got to her. So who else had she done it with, they wondered.

  “Let’s go,” Segman said. Someone called “shotgun” and Henry found himself squeezed in back.

  As his father leaves the kitchen to awaken his mother Henry realizes he has been holding his breath. His exhalation is relief, fear, excitement and hunger. For he knows that the way is paved. His father will not stop him, as he had feared. After Henry mentioned a daily five-fifteen check-in time, his father had simply said, “You are nothing if not a man of your word, Henry. I expect you will continue to keep your promises.”

  Plus you’re over eighteen now, the biographer ahems from the middle of the kitchen. There’s really nothing he could do to prevent you from leaving—legally speaking I mean, the man points out.

  Henry looks over at the door frame and knows he won’t have to live with it any longer.

  The door frame with the lines, the dates, the names. Bradford. Then Brad. Then Henry. And then, close to the ground…David. He must have had to have been propped up for it, judging from the date and the fact that his little brother would only have been about a year old at the time. David’s lines were in red, amplified by the darkness (and dullness) of Brad’s black (faded almost to gray by now) and Henry’s blue.

  A foot or so up from that first entry is the final David entry. Just high enough to really catch your eye. It all stops after that last line. Henry and Brad were never again measured.

  Chapter thirteen

  1986

  Henry slides the letter into the mail slot in the bottom of the front door and worries for a moment that it might have flipped upside down. The lobby floor of Cathy’s building is white and he curses himself he did not put the letter into a colored envelope, one that would stand out. What if it got stepped on? Or, worse still, what if it got ignored? Days might pass, weeks, and she might not know how he feels. She might never get the letter: her superintendent might just sweep it up and carry it off with the market-savings mailings.