The Heart of Henry Quantum

by Pepper Harding

  And here it was Christmas!

  Jesus is about love and forgiveness and joy and brotherhood, isn’t he? Not that Henry believed in Jesus. Not really. Only when he was scared, maybe. Or when he was really, really alone. Maybe it was because he wanted to believe in Jesus. Like he did when he was a kid. You know, beginner’s mind. That’s what he was after. Beginner’s mind. He was ashamed to say he mostly prayed to Jesus when he couldn’t sleep or if he thought someone was breaking into the house, which was frequently. As if God cared if Henry Quantum had insomnia or someone was sneaking into his house. Jesus has to be realistic, too, he scolded himself.

  And yet—if God didn’t care, if God didn’t care about Henry Quantum, if God didn’t care about each and every one of his creatures individually, if he didn’t have the power to care for every single soul at the same time, then he wasn’t God, was he? The mystical Jews, the cabalists, they thought that God had retreated from the world because the world was too broken for him, or maybe the world was broken because he retreated, Henry couldn’t quite remember. But it was true. The world was broken. Broken, broken, broken. That’s the God’s truth.

  He stood on the corner of Stockton and Sutter with JoS. A. Bank behind him and the new CVS across to his right, and Henry Quantum was bereft of God, although the Starbucks across the street did seem to be graced with people coming in thirsty and going out holding their paper cups of coffee, and all the money going into those registers, and all the people typing away on their laptops listening to something on their earbuds. And that made him feel a little better.

  Maybe she’s in Starbucks, he thought.

  He crossed Sutter but hesitated to go inside. Instead, he peered through the big plate glass windows and scanned the tables. Sadly, no Daisy.

  “Perfume!” he said. “Perfume!”

  So he continued his way down Stockton toward Geary, past the Campton Place Hotel, which was now the Taj Campton Place spelled in garish gold letters on the awning, and this saddened him, because why does everything change? Why can’t you hold on to anything? Why? Ask Buddha! He’ll tell you! Holding on is the source of pain. And pain is what we don’t want. He’d been studying Buddhism lately. And here it was Indians who owned the Taj, teaching him this all over again. Though he preferred Zen, and that was Japanese.

  Come to think of it, Zen didn’t say very much about pain. It was more about the immediacy of experience, about nothingness and everythingness being sort of one and the same, and also he was very taken with this idea they called lightning Zen, where you could achieve enlightenment by putting your shoes on your head. He’d actually tried it. Margaret came into the bedroom and turned around and walked out.

  He also liked reading those Zen koans. His favorite was:

  Lightning flashes,

  Sparks shower.

  In one blink of your eyes,

  You have missed seeing.

  And there it all came round again. Daisy studying the eye. Him trying to see what she was up to. But that’s the problem, the whole quantum, Zen, Heisenberg problem: If you look, you miss seeing. If you don’t look, there’s no way you can see, either.

  He had been inching down Stockton, thinking, Only through action can one achieve enlightenment, but all action is useless. And since all action is useless, he stood stock-still. You put one foot in front of the other in order to get somewhere, but all you get is nowhere. It was like Zeno’s paradox, only for the soul.

  That’s when he noticed the woman.

  The woman with the three children.

  They were in front of the Nike store having a meltdown. Actually it was the mother who was having the meltdown and the kids were staring at her with stricken faces and probably wet pants. She screamed at the top of her lungs and stomped her feet.

  What an interesting family! he thought. Why? Because the mom was white, the eldest daughter was black, the little boy was Chinese, and the two-year-old looked kind of Latina. That’s America. Naturally, they didn’t get along.

  “If you cry one more time—if you ask for one more soda or ice cream—if you hit one another even a little, if you whine, complain, run off, or beg for one more thing, or,” she said screaming, “if you say anything at all—then, then—that’s it!”

  The two older kids became quiet as stones, but the baby, the Latina one, or maybe it was Latino, who can tell at that age?—started howling more loudly than ever.

  “Goddammit! Goddammit!” the woman yelled.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” said the middle child, taking her hand. “We’ll take care of it.”

  And the older girl reached into the stroller and started cooing and tickling. “See?”

  Oh, how Henry’s heart went out to those children and to their mother. He knew exactly what she was feeling! She can’t take it anymore. She’s had it. That’s it.

  But no matter what the little girl did, the baby wouldn’t stop crying. The mother half collapsed against the plate glass windows of the Nike store and began to sob. And Henry thought to himself, here she is, the woman who got her wish. She’d wanted those children, she’d dreamt of them, even had their names picked out long before she knew what they might look like, or even what country they might come from; she’d convinced her husband she had to have at least three, when he would have been happy with one; she’d explored and researched fifteen different agencies, interviewed dozens of adoptive parents, hired a whole office full of lawyers, and coughed up twenty, thirty, maybe fifty grand for each one of those kids, even though they couldn’t possibly afford it—and finally her dream came true: she traveled to far-off lands—three different continents in five years—to rescue each one of these children from their shoddy orphanages and corrupt caretakers; she triumphed as she disembarked the aircraft at SFO, presenting her new baby conquests to their new grandparents, uncles, and aunts; and then diligently she fed and clothed them, lavished them with toys and books, televisions and computers, Xboxes and Wiis, reporting it all daily on Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest—and for what? So that she might see, in this one prescient moment, that her life was no longer her own, that it had become a shambles, a nightmare; that the kids couldn’t care less what she had gone through to get them, that they were spoiled rotten and that she hated them, hated them profoundly, and wanted nothing more than to run back to Nordstrom this very second, run back alone—as if they never existed, as if she could unwind the coil she’d wrapped around her own neck and be free.

  But of course that’s not what happened. Instead, she gently touched her eldest daughter on the shoulder and took up the baby from the stroller and said, “Ha-ha-ha, goo-goo-goo,” gently slipped a bottle in her mouth, and gathered the other two around her. They formed a kind of phalanx of family with the stroller in the middle, and calmly recommenced their walk up the street. Henry could not take his eyes off them, that United Nations of children loping along beside their mother in such careful quietude; and she, as if nothing at all had happened, cooing at the baby and instructing her children to stop at the corner and wait for the light.

  Margaret had not wanted kids. Perhaps she had once, but something in her changed, and then she didn’t anymore. Probably she was worried that children would derail her career, ruin her figure. She was a big real estate developer now. But he, Henry, had longed for them, and witnessing the agony of this desperate mother had not caused him to sympathize with Margaret one bit, because in the simple gesture of the middle child taking his mother’s hand, and in the way the eldest girl tried her best to stop the baby’s crying, he understood he was witnessing the emancipating power of a child’s love.

  Was it too late for them to have kids? Margaret was forty-two. You can still have kids when you’re forty-two, can’t you? And anyway, they could always adopt. In his mind’s eye it was Christmas morning, and scampering down the stairs at first light, rounding the tree on a beeline to the pile of presents, they would come, his children, and one by one they would tear open their gifts, while they—was it Margaret in this picture, h
e couldn’t quite tell—sat with their mugs of coffee watching, with hearts overflowing, the joyous tumult. They would have three, just like that woman, only it would be two boys and a girl, and the eldest boy would be the protector of the other two, and his name would be Hunter because that was the name Henry had always wanted for himself. Hunter had sandy hair and could already throw a football at the age of six, and Charlotte, whom everyone called Charlie, was five, with wild, red curls—which made him pretty sure the woman seated beside him wasn’t Margaret—but he let that slide because little Charlie loved to sing and dance and now she twirled herself over to Henry and jumped on his lap and kissed him and said, “Oh, dear Papa! What a happy home!” As for the youngest one, the three-year-old—well, he would be named Dylan and he was towheaded and had beautiful pink cheeks and was completely content with his hand-painted wooden train—little did he know that in the closet was his very first tricycle. And from the kitchen the aroma of gingerbread and French toast, and on the stereo Bach or Handel, and the doorbell would ring and the carolers would be out on the front lawn knee-deep in snow . . .

  But then it went blank, because someone had bumped into him.

  “Oh, oh, I’m so sorry!” she said.

  And he replied, “No, no, it’s my fault.”

  And she said, “Yeah, maybe it is. You’re sort of standing right in the middle of the sidewalk.”

  And that was his cue to continue on his way down Stockton toward Macy’s.

  * * *

  He didn’t have to walk far before he noticed the human robot at the entrance to Union Square. The human robot had painted himself silver from head to toe—clothes, skin, shoes, and bowler hat—and was currently frozen like a statue, as no one had put any money into his soup can, which was also painted silver. Even though Henry had ignored this guy a million times, today he found himself crossing the plaza to observe him. He wanted to see him move like a machine. But the human robot remained motionless, not a robot but a human statue, or maybe a robot that hadn’t been plugged in. But that turned out to be far more amazing than Henry had imagined. The guy didn’t bat an eye, twitch a finger, and you couldn’t even see him breathe. Who could do that? How could he so completely quiet the teeming multitude of himself? Henry knew he had only to drop a dollar or two into the soup can and the statue would move like a mechanical being, which, of course, was his whole shtick, but Henry suddenly decided he wanted to see how long he could keep up this statue business even though his right arm was outstretched as if to shake your hand and the other was twisted in a weird left-handed salute, and his eyes were frozen open and his lips were curled into a rigid smile. He wondered for a minute if the guy really was made of metal. There was not one iota of movement.

  And then with a laugh Henry Quantum realized that he himself hadn’t moved a muscle, either; he had been unconsciously mimicking the robot man for the last two minutes. Now, that was lightning Zen! But, of course, as soon as Henry became aware of it, he lost it—like the Heisenberg thing again. But the robot man—the robot man had learned somehow to forget his stillness, to become unaware of it, to lose himself on some other plane of existence, perhaps by focusing those unblinking eyes on some distant object. And that’s when the subject of the Sombrero Galaxy returned to Henry’s consciousness. Because it seemed to him that the vastness of the universe was no different that the vastness of this man’s soul, and the impossibility of understanding either of them oppressed him so much that he cried out, “Do something, for God’s sake!” And everyone thought he was yelling at robo-man, but Henry knew otherwise.

  Someone next to him explained, “You have to give him money.”

  “Yeah, I know,” replied Henry.

  “Eventually, though, he’ll have to move even without the money.”

  “I have a feeling they can last like this for a couple of hours,” Henry said, remembering something he had read. “Here, I’ll give him five bucks.”

  “No, don’t,” said the man. “He should make some gesture to show he cares about us.”

  “But the whole point is for us to give him money.”

  “No, he should care about his audience. He should want to connect with us. And since he can hear every word we’re saying, he’ll definitely hold out till we pay him.”

  “I don’t mind paying him,” Henry said.

  The man asked, “Where are you from?”

  “From here.”

  “Figures. But it’s kind of cool that you still take the time to watch these guys. We’re from Oklahoma City.” The man indicated his family with a sweep of his hand. “You would think he would do something for my kids,” he said. But the fact of the matter was the kids weren’t interested. They were playing on their phones. “They might as well have stayed in Oklahoma,” their father remarked.

  “Maybe if we get him to perform, they’ll pay attention,” Henry suggested, because by now he was feeling responsible for the robo-man’s well-being, and this guy from Oklahoma City sort of frightened him.

  “No, no, don’t. Believe me, he’ll break. How long can he keep this up?”

  “I don’t know. A long time.”

  “Everyone has a breaking point, my friend.”

  “I guess people are pretty tough in Oklahoma City,” Henry remarked.

  “You ever been to Oklahoma City?”

  “No. I’ve never been to Oklahoma City. All I know about it is cows or something.”

  “That’s Kansas City.”

  “Oh, right, right. You guys are the bombing.”

  “For God’s sake.”

  “No, I mean—jeez, I’m sorry—”

  “We’re much more than that.”

  “Of course you are. Restaurants, theater, opera.”

  “Opera?”

  “Steaks?”

  “You people think San Francisco is the be-all and end-all and the rest of the country is filled with hayseeds and sheep fuckers.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “All you’ve got is queers and Chinese.”

  Henry wanted to leave, but he felt if he fled now, he’d be capitulating to this guy’s bullying. So they stayed side by side, watching the robot man do nothing. Henry felt terrible. Why did he have to bring up that whole bombing thing? And opera? And steaks? Okay, the guy was a bigoted asshole, but hadn’t they shared something? A bit of human interaction, a moment of intellectual exchange, of artistic appreciation?

  “We do have more than queers and Chinese,” Henry said. “We also have Japanese. And quite a few Russians.”

  The guy turned to him with a bemused expression.

  “What are you,” he replied, “stupid?”

  Henry reached into his pocket, found five bucks, threw it into the silver-painted soup can, and bolted up the stairs to the plaza. Out of the corner of his eye he could see robot man spring to life. That’s how wars are started! he thought. Someone blurts out a hurtful word and even though he didn’t mean anything by it the other guy says something back and before you know it, nuclear winter! It brought to mind War and Peace and Levin having his epiphanies that vanished in the light of morning, and the vast armies moving about like chess pieces for the generals, but on the field of battle, a tangle of discord and confusion and dumb luck and grotesque misfortune—not to mention Pierre! Because no one really controls anything, do they? Not when they’re in the middle of it. You may think you have a handle on something, like history, but you don’t, you can’t. It’s just a trick of perspective, a fun-house mirror, some version of the world that has nothing to do with reality, because none of us know what is happening to us, ever. Oh, wait. Levin was in Anna Karenina.

  Henry could not resist the urge to glance back, like Lot’s wife, only it was the guy from Oklahoma who was the pillar of salt, frozen with anger, although Henry hoped he was just mesmerized by the performance of the human robot. The kids were still on their smartphones.

  But now atop the plaza, Henry was confronted by something he hadn’t expected. It wasn’t the huge
Christmas tree—you could see that a block away—or even the giant Hanukkah menorah on the east end of Union Square, no, it was the ice-skating rink that had been set up where the stage usually was, and people were gliding round the tiny rink as if in some New Hampshire wood. They wore mittens and floppy-eared woolen caps even though it was sixty-five degrees out. A huge crowd had lined up between a set of ropes, anxiously awaiting their turns, unconcerned that a large hand-painted sign declared they were allowed on the ice for only half an hour at a time. The children could barely contain their excitement, and the parents, in spite of trying their best to contain them, sooner or later succumbed to the same anticipation. Christmas music blared from the loudspeakers and off to one side Emporio Rulli café was selling hot chocolate and espressos. It was all a strange cartoon version of Rockefeller Center, with red and green bunting and mounds of cotton snow and Santa’s bejeweled sleigh parked on the roof of the hut where you rented your skates. But for all its ersatz atmospherics, it was also a genuinely happy scene, and it got Henry to wondering: What is it that makes us happy, after all? A person imitates a statue, a refrigerated concrete slab imitates a winter wonderland—and we’re filled with joy. He remembered when Margaret went to EST, or whatever they were calling it then, the Forum or Landmark or something, and all she talked about was “authenticity.” Maybe it helped her, but he doubted very highly whether she, or anyone else, could be authentically authentic. You know what Sartre called authenticity? Resisting the pressures of the external world. But if you lived in the external world, you would always be in relationship to it, so how could you ever be authentic in a world of culture? He thought again about his Papua New Guinea idea—saw in his mind’s eye the bare-breasted women and the mostly naked men. Ahhh, he sighed. But they stick animal bones through their lower lips, don’t they? That would be uncomfortable. And the women get old and ugly really fast, with breasts like two hanging frying pans and bumpy nipples the size of studded snow tires.