The irresistible henry house by Lisa Grunwald

Author:Lisa Grunwald [Lisa Grunwald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Roman
ISBN: 9781400063000
Published: 2010-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

————

HENRY WAS ON THE TOP STEP of the ladder when the phone rang. It was just before noon. He had caught a tangerine drip with the side of his paintbrush, and he was smoothing it into a downward stroke.

He couldn’t answer the phone. He knew that. A mute couldn’t answer a telephone.

He redipped his paintbrush, and the phone stopped ringing. He loved the hum of the silence, amid the blast of tangerine.

Ten minutes later, the phone rang again.

“Damn,” he whispered to himself. “What the hell does she want from me?”

It had to be Martha, he thought. Who else would be so relentless, so droningly intrusive? And where the hell was Carol?

Ten minutes later, he heard Carol come in, then the sound of her fussing with Huck, and then the downstairs bathtub running.

When the phone started ringing for the third time, he threw the brush onto the newspapers below the ladder.

On the fifth ring, he picked up the telephone and merely waited, expecting to hear Martha’s voice coming through. There was a long silence, though, and then a man’s voice.

“Hello?” the voice said. Silence. “Hello?”

Henry started to hang up, but there was something—possibly just the tone of worry—in the man’s voice that he felt he recognized.

“Don’t hang up,” the man said. “Henry. Is that you?” Silence. “Yes, of course. You don’t speak. Henry, if that’s you, just tap the receiver with your finger.”

Henry did.

“Good. Yes. All right. Well, this is your—This is Dr. Gardner.”

It took Henry a moment or two: Dr. Gardner. The head of the college. Betty’s father. Henry’s grandfather.

“Are you there?”

Henry tapped on the phone again.

“There’s something I need to say to you.”

Henry could hear Dr. Gardner breathing: heavy, moist, old-man breaths.

“It’s your mother. That is, it’s Mrs. Gaines. She’s had some sort of fainting spell. She’s completely fine. But she’s going to stay in Boston at least for the night. Henry? Tap if you understand me.”

Henry tapped.

“Tap if you’re going to be all right there at the practice house.”

Henry tapped.

“I know that Nurse Peabody has been overseeing the practice house students, as usual …”

Hah, Henry thought. Nurse Peabody had apparently run into Carol on her way back from town, asked if she needed anything, and then said: Fine, call me if you do. If Henry had cared to make Martha happy, he knew he’d be able to delight her by telling her just how useless Nurse Peabody had been.

“But if you’d feel better with her staying there, just tap the phone.”

Henry let there be silence.

“You’re all right, then?” Dr. Gardner asked.

Henry tapped the phone.

“Good. I’ll see you soon, then,” Dr. Gardner said vaguely, and then he hung up.

Dear old Grandpa, Henry thought wryly. In truth Henry had never thought of Dr. Gardner as anyone other than a distant, awkward figure of vague and pointless authority.

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