Henry of Atlantic City (3 page)

Henry said he didn’t want to go to school or live with anyone called O’Brien.

“I don’t want any arguments, kid. I know what’s best.” He took another slice of pizza. “Besides, it’s not just my idea.”

Henry wanted to know whose idea it was.

His father took another bite and wiped his mouth before answering. The pizza restaurant was filling up with families and was getting noisy. “Some social workers’ve been getting on my case. That’s the long and short of it. If we don’t do it my way, they’ll take you and do it their way.”

Henry asked what social workers were.

“It’s a long story, kid. Don’t worry. It’ll all make sense to you someday.”

Henry asked what day.

“The day you stop picking all the anchovies off your pizza,” his father said and folded another slice in his hand and bit down and made a grunting noise.

Henry asked his father if he was growing a beard.

His father chewed and rubbed his cheek. “Thought I’d try out a new look. What do you think?”

Henry said it made him look different.

His father smiled and winked. “Thought maybe it would go with the car. Know what I mean? Hey, what about that chain I gave you?”

Henry showed him the chain. He wore it under his shirt.

“Don’t lose it,” his father said and took another bite of pizza.

After the restaurant they went for a drive. His father told Henry all about Maseratis and how it wasn’t just any old car but a car with a great history behind it. “Ever since I was a kid I loved Maseratis. The year I was born was the year Fangio won the Argentine Grand Prix and the World Championship in a 250F. He was one of the greatest race car drivers ever. When I was your age I wanted to be just like Fangio.”

It was bedtime when they got back to Sy’s sister’s house. Henry’s father tucked him in and went downstairs. Henry snuck out of bed and tried to listen at the top of the stairs while the grown-ups talked, but they went into the kitchen and he couldn’t hear. He went back to bed and dreamed he was Fangio driving the Maserati 250F that won the World Championship and the Argentine Grand Prix. In the morning when he woke up his father and Sy and Helena’s mother were gone.

“Where’d they go?” Helena asked.

“All they said is they have some business,” Sy’s sister said.

Henry asked where his father was.

“Don’t worry, honey,” Sy’s sister said. “You’re staying here with me. They’ll be back soon.” Then she handed him a box. “He told me to give you this.”

Henry opened the box. He didn’t want a Gameboy. He didn’t want any presents. He wanted to know where his father was.

Helena ran upstairs and locked herself into the bedroom.

Sy’s sister took Henry into the kitchen. It was a mess from the night before. “Mind keeping me company while I straighten up a little?”

Henry asked where his father went.

Sy’s sister bent down and put her hands on Henry’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, Henry. He’ll be back soon. You and Helena are going to stay with me for a little while. We’ll have fun together. I promise.”

It was getting to be afternoon and Henry could hear people coming and going from the rectory. Father Crowley asked if he wanted to go outside in the yard for some fresh air but Henry shook his head and just kept talking. He told Father Crowley about Sy’s sister’s clothes store called Mitzi. Helena got to work there. Henry wasn’t old enough to do anything useful so he went down the street to the library
and read books. One book he especially liked was by Procopius called
Anecdota
, or
The Secret History
. That was how Henry learned all about Byzantium and the Emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora. He also found some gnostic books that had been found in a cave in Egypt. They were very, very old. The books said how the whole universe was created and explained about how all the bad things came into it. Everything in the universe was all a big mistake. Henry read the books over and over every day until he knew them all by heart. When he was tired he slept in the back of the store.

Sometimes after closing the store they went to the health club. Sy’s sister and Helena worked out in the gym and swam laps. Henry horsed around mostly and got yelled at once by an old man for slamming locker doors in the men’s changing room. One time on the way home Sy’s sister said, “I’d kill to have a body like yours, girl.”

“Sometimes I think it’s more of a pain in the ass than it’s worth,” Helena said.

He asked Helena if her body always ached. Helena laughed. “It’s not
having
a good body, it’s
keeping
it. That’s what I meant.”

This was how Henry learned about the corruption of the flesh.

“What did I just say about the language, Henry?” Father Crowley had his eyes closed to listen but now he opened them and gave Henry a stern look. He shook his head slowly back and forth and wagged his finger. Then
he closed his eyes again so Henry could get on with the story.

After dinner when it was still too light to go to bed Sy’s sister would bring the phone outside on the back steps and smoke cigarettes and call people. She said “innnnner-estingly enough” all the time. Henry played in the back yard that wasn’t really a yard since it was mostly cement and used to be a driveway. There was a high fence and the gate was broken and the only thing holding it up was a rusty old chain. The key to the padlock was lost so you couldn’t open the gate anymore. Sy’s sister said it was more private that way. She told Henry he wasn’t allowed in the alley but one time when she was out he climbed over the fence.

Sy’s sister had a boyfriend. His name was Henry too and whenever he came over he said, “Hiya Henry, how’s it hangin’?” Big Henry was really, really big. He was more than six feet four inches tall and wore size thirteen shoes. He lived in Chestnut Hill but kept his underwear and shoes and socks at Sy’s sister’s house because he liked to spend the night. He liked baseball too and was born in 1958, the year Mickey Mantle hit his five hundredth home run off Stu Miller to beat the Orioles six to five. Once he took Henry to the Hippodrome to see a Phillies game and bought him a pennant. Big Henry had season tickets, which meant he sat in the same seat at every game and was friends with everyone. He had four hot dogs, two bags of popcorn, and seven beers. “Great game, Henry. Right?”

Henry said he guessed so.

“You want to know why it was good?”

Henry said yes.

“Because Scott Rolen homered twice for the fifth time in his career, going three for three with three runs scored, and to top it all off we gave the Diamondbacks their eleventh loss in twelve games. That’s why.”

When they came home Sy’s sister got mad. She said Big Henry was drunk. He went away mad and didn’t come back for a long time. Sy’s sister went around sad the next day and barely talked to anyone.

That happened right when Helena fell in love with Mohammed Ali—not the prophet or the boxer but one of the al-Samman clan in Egypt. He came into the store one day and when he left Helena said he was gorgeous. Mohammed Ali came in almost every day and bought something each time. Then one day he asked Helena to come to dinner with him and after that Helena started spending all her time with him.

Mohammed Ali was a businessman. He drove a Mercedes 450 SEL and traveled all over on business. Henry asked if he was a silk merchant but he only laughed. Henry told him it was good he wasn’t a silk merchant because the secret of silk had already been brought back from China by two Nestorian monks. They gave it to Belisarius’s wife. They even brought some worms with them and some mulberry bushes for the worms to eat. Belisarius made his wife pass the secret on to the emperor and empress and Procopius said Justinian
and Theodora built a monastery for the monks in return. Then
they
took over the silk business.

Sy’s sister said Mohammed Ali looked like Omar Sharif, but Helena said he was even more handsome than Omar Sharif. He smoked black cigarettes with golden tips that came from somewhere in the Caucasus. Sy’s sister let him smoke in the store even though it wasn’t allowed and when he offered her one she took it and lit up even though she never smoked except when she talked on the phone on the back steps. Mohammed Ali gave Helena lots of presents. He gave Henry a present too. It was a pure white Arabian stallion. But Henry had to give it back because he didn’t have anyplace to keep it.

Helena started staying out all night with Mohammed Ali and one morning they came back and told Sy’s sister they wanted to talk to her. They told Henry to go outside. Henry listened under the window and discovered that Mohammed Ali wanted Helena to come live with him.

“You’re barely eighteen!” Sy’s sister said.

“That’s old enough,” Helena said.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“Why do you say that?” Mohammed Ali asked. “You don’t think I can take care of her?”

Sy’s sister didn’t say anything.

“She will have everything she wants,” Mohammed Ali said.

“At least wait until your mother gets back,” Sy’s sister said.

Mohammed Ali got mad. “Why do you insult me like this? I will not ask that woman for anything!”

“She’s still her mother,” Sy’s sister said.

“She is no mother,” Mohammed Ali shouted. “I tell you what she is.”

“You don’t have to raise your voice,” Sy’s sister said.

“Excuse me,” Mohammed Ali said. “I apologize.”

“It doesn’t matter what she says. It’s up to me to decide,” Helena said.

“Don’t worry,” Mohammed Ali said. “I will take the full responsibility.”

Then they all went into the kitchen to talk and Henry couldn’t hear anymore.

After Mohammed Ali left, Sy’s sister and Helena talked in the living room. “You need to think this over,” Sy’s sister said.

“Well, I’m in love with him. That’s all that matters.”

“I’m happy for you,” Sy’s sister said. “But I still think it’s a good idea to think about it for a while. What about school?”

Helena got mad. “What about it?”

“You return in the fall, don’t you?”

“Are you kidding? So she can brag that she’s putting her kid through college?”

“Come on, don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth! And I’m sick of hearing it. Besides, who needs school? He’s taking me to Egypt.”

“Egypt?”

“He has a place in Cairo and a place here. We’ll go back and forth.”

“It sounds exciting, Helena. Really it does. When I was your age I would have felt the same way you do.”

“So why are you talking like I’m about to ruin my
life
?”

“Because I’m not your age anymore, and I’ve seen things like this before.”

“Don’t
say
that! What’s wrong with you? Don’t you understand? I love him, and he cares about me.”

“I think you should wait. Give it a little more time.”

Helena ran upstairs crying.

The next day Helena and Henry were in the back room of Sy’s sister’s store. Helena was putting labels on dresses and Henry was practicing writing Coptic on the empty boxes with a red marker. He asked her what happened to Sy and her mother.

“They ran away.”

Henry asked why.

“Because they’re crooks, that’s why!”

Henry used to think people ran away because they were sad but in
The Coptic Gnostic Library
he read that you didn’t run away, you fell away.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Henry explained that you fell from the light into darkness, from knowing into not knowing. When you ran away it was impossible to tell which way you were going. If you were going into darkness or light. It meant you could never know if things were going to get better or worse.

“Where do you get all this crap, Henry?” she asked.

Henry told her about
The Coptic Gnostic Library
. Then he asked Helena if her mother and Sy ran away to get away from them and be in a better place.

“I hope they went to hell,” Helena said.

Henry knew all about hell. One afternoon he was playing behind the store when he saw a chariot run over a dog. The chariot driver didn’t stop but whipped his horses up and drove off. Henry went to look at the dog. It was just like all the other dogs that lived in the streets and alleys of Philadelphia. They were skinny and ate garbage and mostly were scared of people. The one that was hit was still only a puppy and the wheel had crushed its back leg. It was crying and shaking and trying to get up and Henry didn’t know what to do.

An old man came over. “Kill it!”

Henry got scared.

“Put it out of its misery!” the old man said.

Henry looked at the dog again. It was howling and squealing. He still didn’t know what to do. The old man spat on the ground. He didn’t have any teeth and his spit was almost as red as the dog’s blood. “How would you like to go through hell like that? Lay there all mangled up? What would you want?”

Henry said he’d want to get better.

“You can’t get better,” the old man said. “You can only get worse.” He spat on the ground again. “Kill the goddamn thing.”

So Henry picked up a big rock and dropped it right on the puppy’s head.

This was how Henry learned that the world originated through a transgression.

“All right. That’s enough.” Father Crowley slapped his hands on his knees. “You’ve worn me out, son,” he said. They got up to go back to the O’Briens’. When they were in the car Father Crowley said, “We need to have another talk. I have lots of questions—especially about Philadelphia and Sy’s sister.” He also told Henry to stop telling stories in school because it was disruptive. “I don’t want to hear any more reports, okay? No more talk about gnosticism or any of those books you read in Philadelphia. Got that?”

Henry asked why.

“Because you’re not old enough to understand them. You’re way too far ahead of yourself, young man. You should put that remarkable brain to proper use. Forget the nonsense you’ve been reading and pay better attention in school.”

Henry asked the priest why nobody believed in gnostic books.

The priest frowned and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Then his eyebrows went up and down and when he talked he stared straight ahead at the road and didn’t look at Henry. “Because they are not the words of Jesus. They were written by men who wanted to create their own religion using whatever words and ideas they felt like.
They invented everything by mixing up whatever came into their heads with whatever pagan ideas they liked, and the only reason their books lasted is because some of them had been hidden in caves. They are not the true gospels. Period.” He put his hand on Henry’s knee and smiled. “Henry, you’re a remarkable boy. I’ve never met anyone like you. But you’d better watch out that your gifts don’t get you in trouble. God loves those who love the truth.”