The Irresistible Henry House Read Online Free PDF Page B

two years passed without them sending cards in return, she would automatically remove their names from her list. Her father had impressed on her years before the sin of wasted effort.
    If Dean Swift and President Gardner had not welcomed her back, Martha thought, how many Christmas cards would she be sending out now? And from what tiny, barren rented room would she be addressing the envelopes? She tried to calm herself by remembering that at forty-eight, she was still not too old to seek a new job. Wilton College, however, was the only place where she’d ever worked.
    The house was so quiet tonight that she could hear Betty turning the pages of her book in the bedroom below. And once, she heard Henry let out a sound, like a laugh, in his sleep. Still at her desk, Martha moved on to the trading stamps, using a sponge to wet them and then pasting them tidily into a book. “Would you throw money away?” she had often asked her students when they grumbled about having to paste in the stamps. She would point proudly to the practice house toaster, the new electric coffeepot, and the brass-tipped fireplace tools by way of showing them what a little time spent pasting could buy.
    Martha paused to look around her room. The wood floor, with its wide, warm boards the color of a cello; the tall windows that framed the campus’s tall trees; the wainscoting on the walls; and the photos, and the mementos—these last, it was true, would come with her if she was ever forced to go. But how—and where—would she ever find any new ones?
    Sometimes—in the rare moments when she had Henry all to her-self—she would let him put his arms around her neck, and she would whisper to him, “Hold tight.” Now, sensing change like a scent in the air, she heard the words in her own mind, just as clearly and firmly as if she were talking to him. Hold tight.
    CHRISTMAS FELL ON a Wednesday. All the girls would be going home for the holiday. So on the Saturday before they took off, they gathered at the practice house for their own practice Christmas.
    Martha gave Henry a red fire truck, her standard gift for practice house boys. Beatrice had knitted him a stocking with an H that sagged dramatically across the top. Ruby had crocheted him a bright red sweater using yarn that had been sheared and dyed on her parents’ farm. The rest of the girls gave presents that suggested their own expectations of Henry, or perhaps their own views of themselves. Betty gave him a set of finger paints and a box of crayons. Connie gave him books. Ethel gave him a silly pull-toy dog on a little string leash. And Grace, who had the most money, gave him a miniature white piano that even Mozart would have been years away from being able to play.
    When they had all opened their gifts for him, Henry sat on the rug next to the Christmas tree and, ignoring each of the actual presents, chewed merrily on the plastic lid of a box that had held Christmas cookie sprinkles. After a while, Grace sat beside him on the rug and plinked out “White Christmas” on the little piano, and Henry grinned, allowing a mouthful of saliva to drop onto the rug.
    Surrounded by his seven mothers, only one of whom had tried to conceal the wish that her gift—and her arms—would be chosen above all others, Henry sat in his red sweater, plump and passionate, like a tiny Santa Claus himself, and looked from one to another of them, as if trying to figure out what he should give to whom.

  4  
Give Me the Baby, Dear
    Two weeks later, Martha heard the news from Ruby—that Betty had finally received a letter. From the somber tone in Ruby’s voice, Martha could only assume that this would have to be the letter.
    “When did it come?” Martha asked Ruby.
    Henry was in the nursery, taking his nap, and Ruby was helping Martha take down the Christmas tree ornaments.
    “I think it was just this morning,” Ruby said.
    “Did you see Betty yourself?”
    “No. I saw Beatrice in town on our walk,” Ruby