Henry, Himself

Stewart O'Nan

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781911630340
• eBook ISBN: 9781760870850
• Subtopic: Literature General

Soldier, son, lover, husband, breadwinner, churchgoer, Henry Maxwell has spent his whole life trying to live with honour. A native Pittsburgher and engineer, he's always believed in logic, sacrifice and hard work. Now, seventy-five and retired, he feels the world has passed him by. It's 1998, the American century is ending, and nothing is simple any more. His children are distant, their unhappiness a mystery. Only his wife, Emily, and dog, Rufus, stand by him.

Once so confident, as Henry's strength and memory desert him, he weighs his dreams against his regrets and is left with questions he can't answer: Is he a good man? Has he done right by the people he loves? And with time running out, what, realistically, can he hope for?

Henry, Himself is a wry, warmhearted portrait of an American original - a man who believes he's reached a dead end only to discover life is full of surprises.

The Company of Heaven

DR. RUNCO HAD DIED, FINALLY. THE NEWS CAME VIA A MASS email, which Emily considered tacky. Henry, ever practical, could see both sides. To call all of his patients would take days, and he was sure the office was pure chaos. The funeral was Saturday at St. Paul’s Cathedral, with a viewing Friday night at McCabe’s in Shadyside.

“I didn’t know he was Catholic,” Emily said. “Why did I think he was Greek Orthodox?”

“I’m pretty sure Runco’s Polish. I know he grew up in East Liberty because he went to Peabody.”

“Runco, Runco,” she said, testing, as if for her crossword. “I wonder if they shortened it.”

Dr. Runco dead. Though not unexpected, it was still hard to accept. Both Class of ’49, they’d grown old together. Henry—muddled and out of shape, with terrible cholesterol—thought it was wrong that he’d outlived him. But that was a tribute to him, wasn’t it? He’d kept Henry alive this long. From now on, he assumed, he would see Dr. Prasad, with whom he shared nothing.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as if they were close.

“The last time I saw him he seemed fine.”

“He probably knew. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse.”

“I don’t know.” His father had gone quickly, pneumonia, the old man’s friend, hurrying him along. He didn’t want to think about it.

“Does it say anything about flowers?”

“No. Wait, yes.”

Before he’d finished with the rest of his email, she’d ordered an arrangement.

“The big question,” she said, leaning in the doorway with the calendar, “is whether we need to go to both things or just one.”

“What’s your feeling?”

“What’s your feeling? He was your friend. I’m willing to go either way.”

“I think just one is enough.”

“Which do you prefer? We’ve got nothing going on this weekend.”

“Let me see what time the funeral is.”

“Eleven,” she said, and she was right. Where disaster sharpened her, he felt dull. He’d already forgotten the time, if he’d noticed at all.

“It’ll be longer,” he warned.

“If it’s at the cathedral I’m sure it’ll be full-blown mass. That’s fine. I’d rather sit through mass than stand around McCabe’s making small talk.”

“Let’s do that then,” he said, as if it were his decision.

His day, otherwise, was the same. He fed Rufus and picked up his poop. He replaced a bulb in the upstairs hall. He paid their estimated taxes for the third quarter, taping the envelopes closed, and dropped them in the drive-up mailbox at the post office, an unhappy task that, once complete, provided a grudging satisfaction. He kept crossing chores off his list, but every so often he’d remember Dr. Runco and go blank, biting the inside of his cheek as if lost in contemplation.

It was dumb. Despite Emily’s insistence, they weren’t what Henry would call friends. Beyond his tanned and sturdy family and their condo at Okemo, Henry knew little about him. Their relationship was strictly professional. The only place they saw each other was at the doctor’s office, in a windowless, fluorescent-lit examination room, for at most fifteen minutes, followed, weeks later, by a computerized bill. All those months Dr. Runco had been in St. Margaret’s, Henry had hardly thought of him, partly, he could admit, because he was afraid of confronting his own fate, but mostly because, unless he had an appointment coming up, he didn’t think of him.

The next morning at breakfast he looked for him in the obituaries. There were three full pages plus a gerrymandered arm encroaching on the classifieds, a reminder of how old the city had grown. Normally he skimmed the columns with the same gimlet eye he trained on the stock quotes, checking the ages of the newly deceased against his own. He would be seventy-five in a few weeks, which seemed around average for the dead. Having outlived his uncle by fifty years, he was both very aware of and grateful for the time granted him. Without gloating, he pitied those in their fifties and sixties as if they’d been cheated, just as he envied those in their eighties and nineties. What attracted his eye now were the young, victims of accidents and overdoses and the occasional murder. They died not peacefully, at home, surrounded by family, but suddenly, unexpectedly, their pictures innocent, clipped from yearbooks. He read their stories as if they might explain more. They never did, despite some going on and on, which Emily thought in poor taste.

Dr. Runco’s was appropriately medium-sized, topped with a dated shot of him smiling like Gatsby in a tux and bow tie, his hair slicked back, maybe at his wedding. Used to his lab coat and shiny dome, Henry tried to reconcile the man he knew with this toothy imposter.

75, of East Liberty, after a courageous battle with brain cancer.

“Jesus.” Though Henry only dimly understood the mechanism, brain cancer seemed worse than the other cancers, more painful, and for a panicked second, remembering the cat, wondered if that’s what he had.

“What?” Emily asked.

“It was brain cancer.”

“That’s awful.”

Like Henry, he’d enlisted right out of high school, then come back, graduated from Pitt, set up shop and never left again. He was survived by his wife, three sons and a long list of grandchildren. Like so many obituaries now in the Post-Gazette, it let readers know he was a fan of the Pirates, Steelers and Penguins, another tic Emily lamented. Besides the three sons, Henry realized, it might have been his, and before he could cut off the thought, he wondered what picture Emily would use. Not their wedding photo, he hoped.

She’d chosen his father’s. Henry had spent the final days at his bedside, sleeping on a rollaway cot behind the array of monitors that told them there was no hope. He and Arlene were supposed to trade shifts, but he’d been flying back from the desert when his mother died and vowed that would never happen again. His father was comatose, there was nothing they could do for him but hold his hand, squeezing it, willing him to sense their presence. His chin was bristly, his skin a mushroom gray, and every night before Henry took off his shoes and lay down on the narrow cot, he kissed his forehead as if he were a child. When he coded—crashing as the orderlies were serving dinner—Henry and Arlene were both there, mercifully, along with Emily, who made sure the nurses gave them some time alone with him after cleaning up all the IVs and wires. Leaving, she remembered his father’s glasses, in the top drawer of the nightstand, and his bathrobe, hanging in the closet. She was the one who took charge, planning his service with Father John and Donald Wilkins, helping Henry choose the casket and the vault. She paid his father’s last bills and returned his cable box. Having lost her mother a few years before, she knew what to do. He and Arlene were so overwhelmed sorting through his father’s condo, they welcomed the help, marveling at her energy.

Where grief paralyzed him, she was ruthlessly efficient. Often now, projecting his own death, he imagined her helpless without him, when the opposite was true. She would busy herself with the arrangements, making menus and readying the house for the children. Without her, he wouldn’t survive long. He’d end up like his father, eating TV dinners and drinking away the evenings, falling asleep in his chair to the news.

Rufus ducked his head under Henry’s hand to be petted, rescuing him from his thoughts.

“Here,” he said, and slid the page across the table.

“Who’s the mobster?”

“He’s a little younger there.”

She’d just begun reading when she let out a puff of dismay. “Why do they have to say ‘courageous’?”

“Probably because it took so long.”

“I don’t know why, it bothers me.”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be a comparison.”

“It comes off that way.”

“Don’t you want to be courageous?”

“I’ll take peacefully, thank you. Or quickly.”

“Instantaneously.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice,” she said, as if it had no chance of happening.

Despite her quibbles with the obituary, she fetched her scissors and neatly excised it. Later she’d slip it between the pages of her mother’s Bible for safekeeping, as if commending him to heaven with their parents and her beloved aunt June and the roll call of old friends and neighbors they’d buried over the years, and who was Henry to say he didn’t belong?

Friday night he watched the Pirates, whose season was effectively over, all the while recalling the last time they’d been at McCabe’s, for Margo Schoonmaker’s, the candles and piped-in music and thoughtfully placed boxes of tissues. The rooms always seemed too warm, the radiators ticking even in summer. The carpeting was thick, as if to absorb noise, the sofas and chairs overstuffed, the velveteen drapes from another era. Around the periphery, ranked on easels, propped on mantels and sideboards, would be baby pictures of Dr. Runco, school portraits and snapshots of him in uniform, or the whole family grinning in their ski togs, and on the many coffee tables, fat photo albums visitors were encouraged to leaf through. The Pirates were getting killed, and Henry was sorry they hadn’t gone. Though no one would notice their absence, he felt cowardly, letting their flower arrangement stand in for them. He hoped there was a good crowd.

Happily, there was at the cathedral the next morning. When they arrived, a solid half hour early, a sea of people mobbed the front steps as if expecting a bride and groom to burst from the doors. At the curb, instead of a limo, sat a hearse, a gleaming new-model Cadillac he’d never seen before. With Pitt in session, parking was ridiculous. Only on his second pass did he realize the valet stand was for them. He assumed it was free, an extra amenity provided by McCabe’s. He’d still have to tip, and hoped he had a couple of ones.

“I wonder how much that cost,” he said.

“Too much,” Emily said.

It would take them forever to get out of there, but he had no choice. Inching forward, he couldn’t turn the car off to lock the glovebox, where he kept a Sucrets tin full of quarters. Rather than ask her to bury it under his insurance and registration, he resigned himself to fate. It always felt wrong, handing over control. He left the engine running, setting the parking brake before climbing out. The stringy dude who gave him the chit had a ponytail and gray teeth. “All right, boss,” he said. Henry watched him swing the Olds into a gap in traffic and around the corner as if he were never coming back.

The cathedral had three sets of massive fortified doors worthy of a castle keep, but everyone was funneling into the center one. Emily took his arm and they joined the line, moving up a step at a time. He steered her to the iron handrail, shielding her with his bulk.

“Look at all these people,” she said.

“I’m sure a lot of them were hi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• In Memoriam
• Pedigree
• Near Miss
• Hide-and-Seek
• Spring Song
• Isn’t It Romantic?
• Double Coupon Days
• The Inconvenience
• The Second Sunday in Lent
• The Record
• Spring Ahead
• The Fearsome Foursome
• The Designated Driver
• Tulip Fever
• St. Henry of Assisi
• Solutions
• Mimosas
• Root-X
• Add It to the List
• Memento Mori
• True Value
• The Duty Rooster
• A 100% Chance
• Puzzles
• Kiss the Cook
• The Evening’s Entertainment
• Night Owls
• The Five Warning Signs
• The Last Antenna on Manor Drive
• Pillow Talk
• Too Quiet
• The Poor Chair
• Attic Treasures
• Visiting Nurse
• Funny
• Wish List
• GetGo
• The Last Time
• Fly Me to the Moon
• Sleeping Arrangements
• Fairness
• Waste Not
• The Brabenders
• Luck
• The Lost Art of Conversation
• Double Exposure
• No-Show
• A Debacle
• A Present
• Useful
• Thin-Skinned
• Dog Days
• Incompetence
• Aries and Virgo
• Side Effects
• FOD
• Seeing Things
• The Company of Heaven
• Depósito
• The Birthday Boy
• Good News
• Singleton
• Mr. and Mrs. Henry Maxwell
• Nature Boy
• Temptation
• Whole Life
• A Tough Cookie
• The Borrowers
• The Gold-Plated Anniversary
• Highway Robbery
• Standby
• 11 at 11
• Honeydew
• The Host with the Most
• The Old Lamplighter
• And Then There Were None
• Bon Appétit
• ’Tis the Season
• Charity
• Clutter
• Do You Hear What I Hear?
• Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
• In Memoriam
• Signs and Wonders
• Acknowledgments