Henry Lightfoot: The Story of a Man (from Shorts)

On a third generation sofa, plaid, a rusty orange with olive and navy inter-weavings, purchased at a thrift store twenty years back by a woman, recently deceased and still lying upstairs waiting to be found, sat a man called Henry Lightfoot, aged forty-two years, who had never been outside. He was balding. His once handsome widow’s peak had been reduced to a U-shaped crown at the apex of his pointy head. He was tall and lanky, with thin arms and strong legs, and he could not remember even one day when he had roused before his mother.

He found it odd that breakfast had not been waiting for him. There were no eggs, scrambled, dippy, or fried over hard. The smell of bacon, sausage, or scrapple did not waft throughout the house as he brushed his teeth, mirror-less and shiva-like. He did not hear the comforting sound of hot oil, sizzling and splattering onto the countertops and backsplash as he sauntered down the stairs and into the kitchen, still in his night gown and cap. Nor was his mother was there to greet him, kiss him on the cheek, or ask him how he had slept (to which he would have replied, “I heard the strangest bang in the middle of the night . . .”). But he had been taught not to question the ways of things, and as such he sat down, lit a cigarette, and turned on the TV.

In order to protect her son, the aforementioned woman, Eunice Lightfoot, had placed a numeric pass-code on every station save The Weather Channel. This was all of the world that Henry Lightfoot knew: Louisianan floods, Arizonian heat waves, Illinoisan gusts, Pennsylvanian rainstorms . . . He had never been to these places, nor could he place them on a map, nor could he point north-east or south-west, but heretofore he’d never the trait of inquisitiveness, so he perched himself in front of the euphonious smooth jazzes and weekly forecasts until he felt pangs of hunger for lunch.

He wheezed a bit as he hoisted himself up off of the couch. He was presently faced with a dilemma, for he was hungry and wanted for food, but had never cooked a meal in his life. He walked through a set of French doors and into the kitchen, where he found himself overwhelmed at the thought of where to begin. He had, in fact, never before been able to choose his own meal: what a sense of power Henry Lightfoot felt at this present moment; what a sense of responsibility! This opportunity both terrified and excited him, causing a noise to escape from his lips that might be described as the love-child of a whimper and a chortle, and he looked like an eight-year-old boy on Christmas morning.

Our protagonist certainly would have fancied himself an elaborate meal, had he the wits about him to prepare one: a spinach salad, with pecans, goat cheese, and dried cranberries; a whole chicken and rosemary seasoning, stuffed full with caramelized onions and carrots and roasted potatoes; apple-pear-walnut dumplings, oozing thick with the sweet, steaming juices of the fruit . . . But alas! Henry Lightfoot hadn’t this knowledge and was presently sticking his short, stubby fingers into a box of generic wheat cereal, and eating it straight dry.

After having satisfied his immediate needs of feeding himself and taking a piss, curiosity finally struck the less-than-sharp-mind of Henry Lightfoot, and he began to wonder where his mother had gone, and how long it would be until her return.

While Eunice Lightfoot had left her house more times than her son, it was still a rare occasion for her to do so. She had groceries and cigarettes delivered by an illegal Mexican immigrant on Tuesday and Friday mornings while Henry was still sleeping. When she was young, she went out, and she danced to Clifford Brown LPs and kissed boys on their mouths.

Once, twelve years ago, she had had a love affair and would sneak out of the house after Henry had gone to bed. She had been married once, too, for Henry Lightfoot had to have been conceived somehow, but a few weeks before the little tyke’s second birthday, Eunice had found a note taped to the lamp on her beside table, which read:

Eunice, dear,
By the time you wake up, I will be on a plane to East Africa. I am on assignment to study the mating patterns of killer African honey bees there. I will write or call as soon as I can.
Best, Cedric LF.

Henry had never been told of the note or of his father. He had, in fact, not the slightest iota of what a father was.
Presently, Henry wandered through the kitchen, checking even the most unsuspecting of places for his mother. Even behind the drapes, even the in cabinet under the sink. In the living room, the dining room, the water closet, and about the entire ground floor, Eunice Lightfoot was no where to be found.

Step by step, Henry climbed the stairs. He walked across the hallway, past an oil painting of sail boats and a wicker corner piece which held a small porcelain vase with tiny plastic carnations, into the drawing room, out of the drawing room, across the hallway again. He entered his bedroom. The walls were bare and egg-shell white. His day clothes were hanging off a hook in the wall, freshly pressed and smelling of dryer sheets, and though he had always been told to don his day clothes, he did so today on his own free will and he threw aside his tie in frustration because he’d never learned to tie it. His index and middle fingers brushed the rocking chair as he crossed from his bedroom into the hall and stood facing the entrance to his mother’s chambers. With his face pale and his hands clammy, Henry Lightfoot did something he had never done before, which was open his mother’s door.

The first thing he saw were her shoes.

High heels, hanging off her feet, unmoving. Ripped hose clung to her legs. A small, black dress hugged her hips and torso. White pearls hung around her neck and laid between her breasts. The gray-pink goo of the temporal and optical lobes dripped from the back of her head, where a bullet had, for but less than a second, made a home. Henry didn’t move, didn’t breath. He kept his eyes fixed on his mother’s body, kept his mouth a little ajar. After some time, he realized death as something to him intimate and broke into an abruptly violent sob.

Henry had seen death. Hurricanes and earthquakes and typhoons, they kill people, but not in a sense such as this. Presently, Henry Lightfoot felt a very visceral feeling of confusion. Did all mothers commit such an act? Was it a rite of passage? Why now, on this day? Had he caused such an action, and if so, what had he done? He turned away and caterwauled to no one in particular, took a breath, deep, and turned back to examine things with a little more grace and elegance.

The room was dark and stuffy; it smelled of cigarettes and wool and cheap perfume. The lone north-facing window in the corner was naked. Not a part of the wall was untouched by a shelf or bookcase, on which sat porcelain dolls and toy bears and a bowl of hard candy. There were countless works of literature, books on philosophy and psychology, death and dying, French and Spanish and Portuguese, child-raising and home-schooling; the symbols on the books were, however, of little interest to him. The vase on the corner shelf had been shattered into pieces from the snub-nose that had flown out of her hand on impact. On the claw-foot vanity in the south-west corner sat a photo of a woman on the beach wearing big sunglasses and a white-and-navy swimsuit with some quilted bandeau top, pulling her floppy hat down over the sides of her head, laughing. There was another picture of the same woman holding an infant lovingly, backdropped by some antique European city, wearing the same glasses, which had been plopped in front of the mirror and were presently collecting dust. Henry put them over his face and looked at himself for a long time.

“Maybe this is for the best,” he said. Something had been lifted from him, and he stood a little straighter as he walked across the hall, down the stairs, through the living room, and towards the front door. His hand was sweaty as he placed it on the knob and turned it. Springtime. He was embraced warmly by the smell of freshly cut grass as he coolly lit a cigarette and walked outside, voraciously buried by the light of the sun.

© S. Levinson 2009