The Art of Fielding_ A Novel - Chad Harbach [161]
When she arrived home, Henry was sitting on the living room couch, the television off, the remote control by his side, no book or magazine in sight. Pella touched the top of the TV to see if it was warm—yes. What kind of weird pride was that, that let you sit around someone else’s house all day long, doing nothing, but kept you from wanting to be caught watching TV?
“Anybody home?” she asked peppily.
“Just me.”
“How was your day?”
“Not bad.”
“That’s good.”
She was the wrong caretaker, or coach, for someone so depressed: she was too indulgent, too empathetic. He’d be better off with someone tougher, someone who’d never really been depressed and didn’t know what it was like. At least he’d managed to get his clothes from the washer to the dryer and back on his body. That was something.
His caved, vacant expression reminded her of all the days she’d spent pinned to her and David’s bed by the white sunlight that streamed through the high windows of their loft (There’s a certain slant of light… ). Bad days, those. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I brought some soup.”
He hesitated, weighing his aversion to food against the mild censure he’d face if he declined. “I’ll heat it up,” Pella said, and headed for the kitchen. She dumped the soup in a saucepan, cranked the gas, waited for the pilot to catch.
Henry, having followed her into the kitchen, went to the sink and filled his Gatorade bottle with water. He carried that thing everywhere. Or at least he carried it from the bedroom to the bathroom to the living room to the kitchen—those, as far as Pella could tell, were the only places he went. He took a long gulp that drained the bottle, refilled it, and screwed the orange plastic cap back on. The scruff was thickening on his face and neck. Men and their beards. “You did the dishes,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“Sure.” He unscrewed the cap and took another gulp. “Your dad called.”
“When?”
“While I was at class. He left a message.”
Pella doubted that Henry had gone to class—in fact, she realized, it was Saturday. Which meant tomorrow was Sunday, her day off. She swirled a spoon through the bubbling soup and headed for the living room to check the voice mail.
“I erased it,” Henry said. “Like you told me to.”
“Oh.” It was true she’d told Henry to do that, days ago—she wanted not to think about her dad for a little while, and she didn’t want Noelle and Courtney to hear any forlorn messages that might lead them to gossip about their school’s president—but it seemed presumptuous and maybe even cruel of Henry to have actually done it. “Okay.”
“He said he wanted to talk to you about something. He said he was going to the baseball game tonight, but he’d have his cell.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Henry’s fingers twisted the orange lid back and forth on its threads. Something had occurred to him. “What day is it?”
“Saturday.”
“Oh. Wow. Really?”
“Does that surprise you?”
He sank down at the table, twisted the orange lid. “Saturday night’s when they play the final. They made the final. They could go to nationals.”
There was little Pella could say to that. She set out two bowls from the wire dish rack and tried to pour the soup over the lip of the pot without spilling. There was probably a ladle in one of the drawers, but she didn’t know which. It was annoying to live in a place where nothing was yours, where every move you made felt like thievery. Noelle was already annoyed with Henry’s constant presence; kept making pointed jokes about splitting the rent four ways. Pella needed to talk to Henry about that, but it could wait till morning.
Even after the eggs Benedict, Pella was ravenous; she’d been eating more lately, a side effect of all the work and exercise. The soup was mulligatawny. It tasted delicious, and it would have been useful to try to parse the ingredients, but her first thought was that it would be too rich and spicy for Henry. Sure enough, he sipped a few mouthfuls and laid the spoon down beside his bowl. Something like chicken noodle would have been better, blander. Not that she’d had a choice: the soup of the day