The Heart of Henry Quantum

by Pepper Harding

  “You’re being very nice, Officer. I appreciate it. I do.”

  She blew her nose again. He rocked back and forth on his heels, waiting for her to finish.

  “Okay,” he said. “Look, it’s almost Christmas. I’m going to let you off with a warning this time.”

  “Really?” she said.

  He scanned the interior of the car for a moment and then did the same to Daisy. “Yes. But you sure you are all right now? I’m taking you at your word that you only had half a glass.”

  “I’m fine, honestly. I’m fine.”

  “All right, then. Go ahead and move the vehicle.”

  “Thank you, Officer.”

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  And so, gathering her wits as best she could, Daisy engaged the turn signal and gingerly pulled out onto the road. By the time she got to Marin Country Day she was more or less back to normal, normal enough for Tasha at least not to notice, or at least she hoped so. By now she had completely forgotten that her phone had been ringing, and all she wanted was to throw Tasha in the back seat and get her the hell to ballet.

  * * *

  But it was not Henry Quantum who had been calling Daisy at that moment, though she had hoped it was. Henry at that hour was still engaged with Santa Claus on the bench in Union Square. It was only Ashiyana Malleshawari calling from India to inquire about a phone bill that had not been paid, because Daisy had thrown it in a pile with other mail and had forgotten all about it, which happened to her frequently, just as she ignored all the text messages and e-mails from AT&T. It was one of the things she never really got used to, paying bills—the accountant had always taken care of them—and at times Edward scolded her about it. The utilities for instance—the electricity came perilously close to being shut off, until Daisy actually read the note banded in red that warned her of the imminent cutoff. And there were also the credit cards, whose overseers invariably ended up calling Edward, who then called Daisy, who in turn refused his help no matter how much he pleaded “for the children’s sake.”

  And so when she arrived home that day, having deposited Tasha at ballet, she was surprised to see Jorge, the gardener, waiting at the front door.

  “Jorge!” she said.

  “Mrs. Hillman,” he said.

  “It’s not Tuesday, is it?”

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “It’s just you haven’t paid me in three months.”

  “Oh my God!” she cried, “I’m so sorry! Come in and I’ll write you a check. Next time just ask me sooner.”

  “It’s all right, ma’am,” he said. “No problem. It’s just, you know, three months.”

  Jorge spoke in a thick accent that she assumed was Mexican but actually was Guatemalan, and she barely understood anything he said, particularly when it came to what he was doing in the garden, so she got in the habit of nodding amiably whenever he spoke. It was because of this that she was shocked at the size of the bill, since it reflected the purchase of quite a few trees, shrubs, and perennials, on top of the work it took to remove a troublesome redwood and a rotten live oak.

  “Jorge,” she said, “I’m just renting here. All these purchases—”

  “Eh?” he said.

  “I’m just a renter. We don’t do improvements like that.”

  “Renter?”

  “You know, I don’t own this house.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Ah,” he said.

  “I thought it was just part of the monthly fee, all those plants.”

  “You want me to take them out?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “You want me to take them out?”

  “No, we don’t need to go out. I know what’s out there.”

  “No, take them to garbage.” He pantomimed carrying a huge load and tossing it toward the street.

  “Oh, throw them out. But I’d still have to pay for them, wouldn’t I?”

  “You can’t take that stuff back.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t take that stuff back.”

  “Yes, the stuff in the back.”

  “Sí,” he said.

  “Okay, look, I’ll just write you a check for all this. But no more planting without telling me.”

  “I do tell you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, okay,” he said. “No more.”

  “No más,” she said.

  “Right. No más,” he replied.

  She sighed at the impossibility of ever really communicating with anyone, even a gardener she’d had for years whom everyone said spoke perfect English. Suddenly she recalled the missed phone call in the car and realized it must have been Edward wanting to rescue her again, but not without first making her feel like an idiot. She fished her checkbook out of her purse and scribbled her signature as fast as she could, mumbling the whole time, “Jorge, I’m so embarrassed, I really am. It won’t happen again.”

  “It’s okay,” said Jorge. “No problem, really.”

  “You’re very kind, Jorge,” she said.

  “Lots of people forget to pay,” he said.

  “They do?”

  “Sure.”

  “Jorge,” she suddenly said, “come in and have a cup of tea.”

  “Oh, no,” he said.

  “Please.”

  He fiddled with the check.

  “Please,” she said. “Please.”

  Eventually he followed her past the Christmas tree with its dozens of presents piled beneath its emerald limbs and into her tiny kitchen, which the landlord had refurbished with bright blue IKEA cabinets. She sat him down at the counter and turned on the electric kettle.

  “What kind of tea do you like?” she asked.

  He offered her a blank smile.

  “I have all kinds. In black tea, I have Yunnan and Darjeeling, and I have chai and chamomile and Mighty Leaf Green Dragon. I have oolong if you like oolong, or rooibos—Would you like rooibos?”

  “Please, you choose.”

  “I like mango blend.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “But you can have whatever you want.”

  “That’s good.”

  “What is?”

  “What you said. That one.” He pointed to the tea bags in her hand.

  She was disappointed, of course, because she wanted him to feel comfortable and equal and she knew he didn’t. She had put him in an awkward situation and now she regretted this. She hadn’t meant at all to humiliate him—just the opposite, in fact. But there was no way to stop it now—that would have been far worse. So she put a mango-blend tea bag in his cup and a mango-blend tea bag in her own cup, and when the water was ready she poured first his, then hers, and then she sat down next to him on the stool and said, “Sugar? Sweetener? Milk? Lemon?”

  “Sugar,” he said, and she handed him the bowl and he put a tiny bit into his tea, though she knew, just knew, he really liked a lot of sugar.

  “Take as much as you like,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, but didn’t take any more.

  “Be careful, it’s hot,” she said.

  “Okay, thank you,” he said.

  Then they sat side by side for some minutes without speaking, and also without drinking, because the tea really was too hot, and finally Daisy asked him about his family and he told her everyone was fine and she asked about his eldest daughter, Estrella, and he said she was in college now and when Daisy heard the word “college” she said, “You must be very proud,” and he nodded, and then he began to tell her about his son, Antonio, and how he loved computers and wanted to make computer games, but that he would probably go into the army first because that way his education would be paid for, and also a little about Esme, his youngest, who just entered high school, who was very beautiful and had to be careful, but that everyone was fine, just fine.

  “I’m glad,” she said, assuming from his tone and also the word “fine” that everything at home was going well.


  And then she asked him the question she had wanted to ask him from the first, which was, “Why didn’t you call Mr. Hillman about the bill? Everyone else does.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I’m very sorry! I offended you—”

  “No, no, don’t be alarmed,” she told him. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  “I don’t know,” he said, staring into his teacup, “I thought you want to be the one to pay.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. It seems it is important to you. To do it yourself.”

  She made out only half of what he said, but what she pieced together made her happy.

  “You’re very sensitive,” she said to him.

  “Sorry?”

  “You are very kind.”

  “No, no,” he said.

  “Yes, yes,” she said. She broke into a warm smile, then went to the pantry and produced some cookies, which she put on a plate. She herself took the first bite, and the chocolate was still on her teeth when she laughed and said, “See? There is some sweetness in this world, isn’t there?”

  Jorge took his own bite of cookie. “For sure,” he said.

  “You think a person can change, don’t you, Jorge?”

  “Yes,” he said. “A person can change.”

  “I think I’ve changed,” she went on. “I think I’m starting to be my own person.”

  They drank a few more sips of tea; then Jorge stood up and looked at his watch.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hillman,” he said. “Another house.”

  “Of course, of course, I’m sorry to have kept you so long.”

  She led him to the door.

  “You probably think I’m crazy,” she said.

  “No, Mrs. Hillman. You are a very nice lady.”

  “I wish everyone thought that.”

  She could see how desperate he was to leave, but still she could not let him go.

  “Jorge,” she said, “it’s really okay that you planted all that stuff in the yard. You make everything so beautiful, and you were just following your instinct. How were you supposed to know we didn’t own this house?”

  “Yeah, I didn’t know.”

  “Some people just make the world more beautiful, Jorge. They can’t help themselves.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Hillman.”

  “Yes, of course, good-bye, Jorge.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hillman.”

  “You’re welcome. We’ll do it again some time.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “Bye-bye.”

  “Okay, ’bye,” she said.

  “Bye-bye,” he said, and almost ran down the driveway to his truck.

  Daisy closed the door and went back inside. The clock in the hallway chimed four fifteen. She’d have to pull herself together and go back for Tasha, she was already late. She guessed she wouldn’t talk to the instructor today. It was too much. She heard Jorge drive off and had to ask herself what on earth was she thinking, asking him in for tea? What had she wanted from him? She decided she had better look over her bills and pay them tonight. But for now, she just stared out the rear window at the fading light and Jorge’s beautiful plantings—azalea in wild clumps, hydrangea growing up along the back fence, roses, some of which were amazingly still in bloom, hibiscus waiting out the winter, lantanas in full color, and several trees—she recognized juniper and manzanita and Japanese maple in various states of sleep or growth. She held the teacup within her two hands, held it close to her chest where she might feel the heat radiate through her palms and into her body, and enjoyed the steam rushing up to her nostrils rich with the scent of mango.

  She was in love. There was nothing she could do about it. Edward would never have been able to stand up to that love and neither had Noah, the most recent boyfriend, and most likely no one else would, either. But she would have to try. Surely Henry Quantum wasn’t the only man in the world for her. Surely that kind of thing was nonsense—the idea that there was only one soul in the entire universe destined for you, preordained by God—as if God cared. But if God exists, she thought, then she must care. She must care for each and every one of us. Or else she wouldn’t be God, would she?

  Henry’s face came up to greet her in the steam rising from the teacup and in the bloom of those errant roses and in her own reflection in the glass of her kitchen window. And everything suddenly seemed rather beautiful to her.

  Her garden was beautiful, the grass pushing up between the faded brick path, the dark earth holding fast the bulbs that slept within, the fat blue jay fluttering merrily in the waxen lemon tree—so lovely! And the photograph of herself with her two children taken on Mount Tam near the cataracts, the silver rush of waters cascading behind them, that, too, was beautiful; and the copper pots hanging from hooks in her kitchen, these also were beautiful. And so was the scent Jorge left behind, and the faint aroma of fir drifting in from the living room, and the way the maple shivered in the wind that had suddenly come up from the sea, and—

  “Oh!” she cried. “It’s raining!”

  The rain on the window and the tears in her eyes turned everything into a kaleidoscope of colors shrouded in a forest of mist. The clock struck four thirty. She rummaged through the hall closet for her raincoat, found the umbrella, and went out to the car to pick up her daughter at dance class.

  PART FOUR

  HENRY

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  December 23rd, 4:17–5:49 p.m.

  He’d been sitting in Union Square still thinking about whether there was actual space between atoms or if distance was an illusion and we were all holograms projected from the edge of some black hole of a universe, when the downpour came—hard and cold and sudden and without warning. Right before he’d left, Santa had asked him what he wanted for Christmas and for some reason Henry blurted out “Rain!” And Santa said, “Well, you’ve been a good boy this year, so, okay.” And fifteen minutes later—pow! Henry had to laugh out loud. He raised his arms wide and opened his mouth as far as it would go so he might feel and drink every drop of that glorious rain as it fell on his face and hands.

  That lasted a good five seconds.

  He ran to find shelter at Emporio Rulli, but the tiny café was overflowing with tourists who were also trying to stay dry. There was a great deal of pushing and shoving, in fact, and the panicked faces of the waiters reminded Henry of movies he’d seen about prison riots—so he gave up on Emporio Rulli (and their wonderful Italian pastries, which he’d been thinking about for the last half hour at least) and decided he had no choice but to get seriously wet. Thus he made his way out of the square and over to the St. Francis hotel, where he thought he might at least be able to catch a cab back to the office—but of course it was a madhouse there as well. As if they’d never seen rain before. And this made him wonder, as he squeezed himself through the throng under the wrought-iron awning of the hotel entrance, if rainwater gets into our brains and washes away all knowledge of past storms. What, after all, would be so horrible if we got a little wet? What are we so afraid of? Well, of course, we’re all afraid of something, and maybe when it rains those fears are somehow activated. Because in wetness there are no boundaries—by which he meant, water had no outline, not unless you captured it in a bottle, and so when it rained and the bottle of heaven broke, or, at best, leaked, everyone was reminded that their bodies are bottles, too: just paper-thin membranes of skin holding in all that liquid, and if we began leaking, why, we’d bleed to death. Rain is just another way of saying your life is hanging by a thread.

  But we need this rain, he thought. It’s a blessing! Thank God, thank God, for this rain! Unless of course you’re on vacation. Then it sucks.

  The doorman’s whistle brought Henry out of his reverie long enough for him to shout over the general mayhem, “I’d be happy to share a cab with anyone! I’m just going to Jackson Square.” But none of the tourists knew where Jackson Square was and certainly had no desire to go there, and even when Henry reached into his wallet and waved so
me largish bills about, the doorman ignored him. Fate, Henry understood, was knocking. And his fate was not to score a cab. Henry steeled his heart, assured himself that rain was not really a symbol of chaos, muttered in a cool, low voice, “How much wetter can I get than I already am?” and leapt out into the blustering wild that was the corner of Post and Powell. Thus, ignoring the crowds surging along with their shopping bags over their heads, not to mention the cars splattering mud on all who came too close to the curb, and disregarding the stinging nettle of rain that slapped his cheeks and pricked his eyes, he commenced his trek back to Bigalow, Green, Anderson and Silverman.

  But he was wrong. He could indeed get wetter. In fact, there seemed to be no end to how wet he could get. It wasn’t the end of the world, though, because having entirely forgotten why he had gone downtown in the first place, he now saw himself as a lone pioneer crossing some unmapped, windswept plain, an explorer braving the torrential white waters of the San Francisco Amazon, a mountaineer ascending the Chinatown Annapurna without so much as a down parka or a pair of mittens, a ragged, bone-thin zek escaping the Union Square gulag with only a Muni Metro pass as his guide! No, Henry Quantum was not one to be afraid of a little rain. And something else happened, too. He noticed how the tourists and shoppers had disappeared, as if evaporated into the clouds, and he was finally alone, face-to-face with his great city. He had always loved San Francisco, loved it in his bones. But now, slopping through puddles and slipping here and there on a manhole or a sewer grate, he saw his town with new eyes.

  He had more or less retraced his steps through Chinatown, first along Grant Avenue and then up Pacific, emerging at the five corners where Pacific meets Columbus and Kearny. To his right he spotted the black and white sign of Bask, the tapas place, and to his left the wan neon lights of Tosca Cafe, where once he had seen Baryshnikov holding forth with friends over spiked cappuccinos, and up on Kearny, though he couldn’t yet glimpse it, he knew Tommaso’s was waiting, much loved for its calzone even though the place had been there forever, and across from that would be the Lusty Lady with the nipples that lit up at night—though it might have closed—so maybe he was thinking of the Hustler Club or the Hungry I or the Garden of Eden—it really didn’t matter. They were all equally and unrepentantly and gloriously seedy.