Though at home Henry watched the Pirates every night, here, by design, they didn’t have cable. The antenna, being obsolete, could pick up only a couple of snowy channels from Buffalo and Toronto, limiting their choices to old VHS tapes or DVDs rented from the Blockbuster in Lakewood. Kenny and Margaret were members, and once or twice a week, depending on the weather, they’d take the children down to choose the latest releases from Disney and Pixar, animated fables Emily found irritating and juvenile. As the girls grew older, she tried to interest them in black-and-white classics like Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice that she and Arlene would end up watching together. Despite their differences, their taste in movies was surprisingly similar, both of them preferring the costume dramas and romantic comedies of their adolescence to anything modern. Kenny tended to go for low-budget horror flicks from the fifties that were supposed to be scary and fun, but which seemed to everyone else—the boys included—ludicrous and unwatchable. Margaret liked science fiction that addressed social issues, since her politics and Hollywood’s generally agreed. Henry enjoyed westerns, a genre that operated by an older code. It was a rare film that kept everyone’s attention, partly because the set was small and all the way across the room, and partly because they had books to read and games to play and puzzles to finish. They could watch TV anytime, and yet every night, after the dishes were put away and they’d settled in, inevitably someone asked, “Who wants to watch a movie?”
Because they’d been too busy during the day to make the extra effort, tonight’s film came from the permanent collection—Raiders of the Lost Ark, selected by Kenny with the boys in mind, since the girls were hostages to the puzzle. Henry, who’d watched the original swashbucklers at the Regent in East Liberty, riding the trolley by himself and blowing his route money on licorice whips, took the recliner in the corner and followed the plot at a remove, reading an old Smithsonian article about Lewis and Clark, glancing up and getting lost in the action so that the two stories blended. Eventually he set the magazine aside to stoke the fire. He had to reach over Rufus, who lifted his head but didn’t move.
“Don’t mind me,” Henry said.
They were making progress on the clipper ship. The border was done, and a dark corner of sky streaked with lightning. They’d segregated the pieces by color—a small island for the ship, a massive raft for the sea.
“Ratsafrats,” Arlene said when one didn’t fit.
“That’s a lot of water,” Henry said.
“We’ve done it before,” Emily said, nodding encouragement at Ella.
Behind him the tape stopped, making them all look.
“Who,” Kenny asked, “is ready for pie?”
“Oh, I’m so full,” Emily said. “Maybe just a sliver.”
“A sliver of which? We have cherry and we have peach.”
She put her hands over her mouth like one of the three monkeys, as if afraid to speak. “Both?”
It was a popular choice. Besides the pies, he’d stopped and gotten ice cream. He took their orders, enlisting the boys to serve.
As Justin was coming through the doorway, he dropped a fork, leaving a dribble of vanilla on the carpet, and stood there paralyzed, as if he might cry.
“It’s okay,” Margaret said, taking the plate from him and turning him around by the shoulder. “Go get a clean one.”
Of all the children, he would have the hardest life, Henry thought, with Margaret for a mother and Sarah for a sister. He didn’t include Jeff in his calculations, and realized that after discussing it with Emily so long, he’d accepted the divorce as a fait accompli. He was tired, otherwise he would have dismissed the idea as the passing notion it was (the boy was five, no clumsier than any child, and exhausted). Instead, unguarded, he followed it to its conclusion. He hoped he was wrong. He’d been sensitive too, a hermit and a worrier, and he’d done all right.
They ate, watching Harrison Ford drop through a trapdoor into a pit of snakes. Rufus faced the boys, intent, making Henry shoo him. The cherry pie was tart. When Emily couldn’t finish hers, Henry polished it off, knowing it would give him heartburn later.
“Oof,” Arlene said. “Too much.”
“I’ll do the dishes,” Margaret said.
“Thank you, dear,” Emily said.
Usurped, Henry picked up Lewis and Clark again, doing his best to ignore the blaring music and Keystone Kop Nazis. The movie went on and on, one cockamamie escape after another. His legs were jumpy, and he shifted in his chair. It had to be past the boys’ bedtime. They’d worked hard today. He thought of tomorrow and the antenna, how to get it down without damaging the gutter. The town landfill wouldn’t be open Sunday or Monday. When he’d read the same sentence three times, he set the magazine aside and stood. His hips were stiff. In the ring of lamplight, like competing teams, Arlene and Margaret concentrated on the bowsprit, Emily and Ella the sails. It was too late to put another log on the fire, and he consolidated the remaining pieces with the tongs, gathering the brittle embers beneath them. Rufus sat up and yawned, his long tongue curling.
“Does he need to go out?” Emily asked.
It was still sprinkling, the air damp. Rufus crisscrossed the lawn, sniffing the grass while Henry stood at the door of the screen porch, looking beyond him at the blurry lights on the far shore. The wind rose, and fat drops spattered in the trees. “Quick quick. Quick like a bunny.”
Normally it would be too late for a treat, but Henry relented. Emily, busy coaching Ella, paid them no attention.
The house felt stuffy after being outside. His gut was sour and he chewed some Tums. The movie refused to end. He took his seat again and tried to read, but the article was dull and the room was warm, and soon, though he fought it, lolling, blinking to stay awake, his eyes closed and he dozed off. He sat slumped over the magazine with his head bowed and his mouth open like someone dead, his thick breathing making the boys giggle and the girls turn around.
“Henry!” Emily said. “Go to bed.”