Everything Must Go

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2001Five-fifteen p.m. Henry pushes open the door, drops his keys on the front hall table. "Mom?"He turns into the living room, shut up and dark, the curtain drawn against the brightness of the fall day. His shrunken mother is on the couch balancing a highball in one hand, a cigarette burning out in the other, in clothes that once fit properly but now swallow her up. Her thinning brown hair is flecked with gray and hanging loose from a swirl of a bun."David?" she asks, not yet pulling her stare from the television set."No, Mom. It's me," he says, "Henry."She looks over and sees that yes, it is Henry. He can see the disappointment in her eyes,glazed over from the glow of the TV.He takes the cigarette from her, stubs it out in the overflowing ashtray on the coffee table and makes a mental note to clean up all the drink rings and ashes.He opens the curtains with the string pulley and when he turns back to her she is shading her eyes against the light, but then her hand drops back down to the couch."How are you?" he asks.She does not answer him, but he is used to that and so has not waited for a reply.In the kitchen he opens the refrigerator to see what he'll need to pick up at the grocery store.Over the din of squealing contestants spinning large dials, Henry asks, "How're you feeling?""Are you just home from football?" she asks. "How was practice?""I'm home from work, Mom," he says, taking a deep breath and leaning down to scoop her up. "Remember?"She clasps her hands behind his neck, holding on, bumping along in his arms with each step up the stairs.Henry is gentle placing her into her bed. Moving through the room, he picks up a Ladies' Home Journal that has fallen to the floor from her nightstand, and replaces it within reach, right side up. On top of the Readers' Digest."How was work?" she asks, pulling the covers up. He pauses on his way out of the master bedroom to answer her."You know what? It was a hard day," he says. He sighs the kind of sigh that carries a weight. "Bye, Mom. I'm going out for a while but I'll be back later, okay? I'll check on you later."She is already sleeping when he leaves. It was not always this way. 1967"Henry, pass the baked beans, please," his mother says. She rests her cigarette in the notch of the ashtray and reaches across the picnic table toward him.The clay container feels heavy to seven-year-old Henry and he concentrates very hard to make sure it does not tip on its way over the deviled eggs with the paprika sprinkled on top. Black flies scatter."Thank you,"she says.She is making a point by emphasizing the please and thank you and waits with an expectation of you're welcome from Henry. He stops chewing and with split-second reasoning decides the greater offense would be to talk with his mouth full so he nods his you're welcome and hopes his mother will accept this as the best he can do under the circumstances. Did you see I did the right thing right you looked at me like it was good so maybe I did, he thinks, in one jumbled seven-year-old thought process."Can I be excused?" Henry's older brother, Brad, asks."You haven't finished your hot dog yet,"she says.Henry races to finish his own, to escape into the sunny day, away from the fragments of adult conversation floating over his head: Detroit riots. Sergeant Pepper and The Downfall of The Beatles. The Smothers Brothers, which he had indeed watched with his parents one night when they let Henry and Brad stay up pas