Richard Holinger: HENRY GOES TO THE SYMPHONY • Cleaver Magazine

Fiction by Richard Holinger
HENRY GOES TO THE SYMPHONY

“Your turn for the symphony, Henry,” his mother said at dinner. “It’s Shostakovich and Symphonie Fantastique. Would you like to go?”

No, he would not like to go. He stared at his meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and creamed lima beans. If he said No thanks, his mother and father would reprove him for being ungrateful for being invited, and for being irresponsible for turning down attending such an important cultural event that he would regret later in life. So instead he said, “Hey, pass the ketchup” to Peter, his next older brother, sitting across the table.

“‘Peter, please pass the ketchup,’” his mother corrected.

“Peter, please pass the ketchup,” Henry said.

“Behave, Henry,” his father said. He sat at the end of the long, polished dining room table in the only chair with arms.

“Henry, please pass the ketchup,” Lance, Henry’s oldest brother echoed, even though when Henry looked, Lance already had pools of ketchup spread over his meatloaf and potatoes.

“Henry, please pass…” Bobby, the second oldest brother, started.

“That’s enough, boys,” their father said.

By now, Henry had the ketchup that the family cook, Sally Brown, had poured from its bottle into a silver Revere bowl along with a ladle bearing the family’s English thistle pattern.

“Luther James will be there,” his mother said.

“He’s weird,” said Lance.

“He’s an intellectual, like his father,” said his mother. “Carl is a bigwig with the Chicago Literary Association. He’s written books about his life as an entrepreneur.”

“What’s that?” asked Henry.

“What you’ll never be,” said Bobby.

“A businessman,” said their mother. “Be nice, Bobby.”

“Yeah, Bobby,” said Henry.

“And something of a dilletante,” said their father.

“Just so you know, Henry,” Bobby said, “that’s a kind of pickle.”

“He’s teasing you,” said their mother.

“No kidding,” said Henry.

“No, I am kidding,” said Bobby.

“If you can’t say something nice about someone,” their mother started.

“Then you can’t talk about Henry,” said Bobby, and everyone at the table laughed except Henry.

“You’re as funny as a wet fart,” said Henry.

“Henry,” his father said.

“Go get dressed for the concert,” his mother said. “Black suit, white shirt, cufflinks, tie, and black shoes.”

“Have fun,” Bobby said.

“Conduct yourself like a gentleman,” said Lance. “Get it?”

“Ha-ha,” said Henry.

“We’ll take the Imperial,” his father said. “Fritz can drive us.”

To Henry, the stage looked like a gigantic shell in which miniature musicians played their instruments, the worst being the percussion section, including kettledrums, snare drums, bass drums, and, loudest of all, the cymbals. He knew their names because Luther, whose parents let him show up in a blue blazer, khakis, no tie, and brown loafers, had pointed each one out to Henry before the conductor walked on stage to begin the racket. Now, fifteen minutes later, Henry’s thick wool pants scratched and burned the back of his thighs and butt cheeks. The chair itself was also to blame, a thick, crimson velvet cushion right out of Versailles, a palace that Madame Blanchot, his French teacher, had bored the class with by showing slides taken on her honeymoon about a million years ago. Because Luther and Henry’s parents wanted their boys to have the box’s best position, they moved two chairs up to the two-foot lip preventing a fall into the box seats below. With no comic books or sleeping allowed, Henry surveyed the faces of the orchestra members, men in black tuxedos, women in long black gowns, all wearing black shoes silently tapping out a rhythm or bent back under their chairs. Their faces focused on the sheet music perched in front of them, one of a pair occasionally reaching out to turn the page. They looked like people who might be employed by a fancy restaurant, and after the concert they would ask people for their orders and later bring their steak and bottle of red wine.

Just like, Henry thought, the restaurant Henry’s father had taken the family to the night before.

On the drive north in the long, impressive, black Imperial, their father had insisted on their best behavior. “Don’t say anything negative. Don’t burp or tell jokes. Smile, if necessary, but don’t laugh. At least not loudly.” He hit his palm on the steering wheel. “This man, the owner, is my patient, and he has invited us all to dinner. But he is not a friend.” His father paused. “He is a very powerful man in Chicago.”

“Is he a gangster?” Lance, sitting up front between their mother and father, asked.

“That is a word we will not use,” their father said. “Let’s just say he is influential.”

“Mob boss,” said Bobby.

“What’s that?” asked Henry, who had seen one or two episodes of The Untouchables but needed to know more.

“That’s enough,” their father said. “I’ll ask Mr. Salerno what he recommends for dinner. It’ll be steak. All you boys will have whatever he suggests. It will be done to order. Don’t ask for anything, even ketchup. Especially ketchup.”

“Gangsters don’t use ketchup?” Peter asked.

“Not tonight, honey,” their mother said.

“That means no farting, Henry,” Bobby said. “And no silent-but-deadlies.”

“That’ll do,” their father said.

“Yeah,” Henry said. “That’ll do, Bobby.”

“That’ll do, Henry,” their father said.

“Yeah, that’ll do, Henry,” Bobby said.

“That’ll do, Bobby,” their father said.

Their waiter at The Naked Steer wore a tuxedo and looked like what Mr. James pointed out as First Violinist, tall, thin, and hair short as G.I. Joe’s. He bent over when listening to each family member repeat what Mr. Salerno recommended, just like the violinist who rocked back and forth attacking his violin like he was trying to saw it in half with the bow. Sitting there overlooking Berlioz, Henry felt helpless and vulnerable as at the restaurant. He couldn’t say anything at the restaurant or else he’d get tommy-gunned or slapped around while tied to a metal chair in a deserted warehouse by men instructed to teach him he couldn’t go around substituting French beans for French fries.

Life, Henry decided as the music poured out, first fast, then slow, then fast again, then slow again, was an infinite series of imprisonments. As he lifted one thigh off the scalding, red-hot, barbed wire velvet seat cover, then the other, he added up his jailers: parents, brothers, teachers, aunts, uncles, dentists, pool guards, tennis pros, Sally Brown. Heck, even Jerome, the cat, who bit and scratched when Henry kicked the infernal beast off the bed. He had no more freedom than a Northwoods ant walking in line along a designated path, antennae to gaster. “Le carnival romain, Overture, H. 95,” Henry read in the pamphlet his mother had handed him. Some carnival, Henry thought. More like a peppy funeral send-off for a relative no one liked and was thrilled to see check out.

Finally, the music soared and collapsed, the noisy conclusion emphasized by the percussionists who had been just sitting around most of the time the other musicians were playing, trying not to fall asleep. He turned to look at his mother, eager to get out of his electric chair.

“That was only the first movement, son,” said Mr. James.

“The ‘Passions’ is next,” whispered Luther.

Henry swiveled and glared at Luther. “Yeah? Why don’t you take your passion and stick it where the sun don’t shine?”

It was something he heard Bobby say on the telephone, and it sounded pretty cool. Actually, it came out before Henry thought about it, but now that it escaped, he was good with it.

“Come here, Henry.” His father had risen from his seat and stood near the back of the box where the walls hid him from other box residents.

“Peter,” said Henry’s mother as the Berlioz started up again.

“Peter,” said Mr. James.

“Let it alone,” said Mrs. James to her husband.

“Don’t sweat it,” whispered Luther.

Henry wove between the adults’ chairs over to his father whose hand reached out and swatted Henry once, hard, on his bottom. “You will apologize to Luther at intermission. Now sit down and listen quietly or you’ll get another one.”

Tears welled up in Henry’s eyes, not because the spanking hurt, but because he was humiliated in front of Mr. and Mrs. James and, worse, Luther. Back in his seat, through blurred vision, he did not look at the people making music, but at those listening to it: women decked out in gold jewelry, red lipstick, and glistening gowns; men sporting gold watches, thin hair, and identical suits and ties; children sitting next to their parents, dressed identically to their mothers and fathers. They all faced forward, entranced, as if Berlioz had sent out a malevolent brain wave and captured their minds, belittling them into total subservience.

Henry turned around and looked at his mother. “I gotta go to the bathroom.”

“Not now!” his father whispered.

“But I gotta go.”

“Just like at The Naked Steer,” his mother said to his father. “What is it with him?”

What it was with him was he liked getting away. After the plates holding steaks as big as cow pies were cleared by the bowing waiter, Henry had fidgeted. They had already been there long enough to eat twelve dinners at home.

“I gotta pee,” he had told his mother.

“Wait,” his father said. “Hold it.”

“Peter,” his mother said in a low voice like Mr. Salerno was somewhere she couldn’t see and was listening, “he may not be able to.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“Dad swore,” Bobby told the table.

“Oh, for gosh sake,” their father said.

“I’ll go with him,” their mother said.

“Baby,” Bobby said. “Can’t hold his water.”

“Bobby,” their father said.

“Moron,” Henry said to Bobby.

“Henry,” their father said.

Henry stood up and wove between the tables where mostly old people drank from wine glasses or beer steins and shoved large pieces of steak or chicken or hamburger or mashed potatoes into their mouths. Someone sang in Italian over hidden loudspeakers. Down a dark hall, Henry found a “MENS” room, pushed open the door, and saw two men peeing into urinals tall and wide as coffins. He pushed open the door to where a toilet offered a seat. He pulled down his pants and sat down because he didn’t want the two men to hear him peeing into a toilet and have them wonder why he didn’t use one of the other two vacant urinals. As he let go, he leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs, and listened.

In the ornate, ostentatious bathroom down the hall from the box he and his mother had just left, Henry, again sitting on a toilet rather than using the urinals in case someone had a similar emergency as his, remembered the conversation he overheard at The Naked Steer.

“Who’s the kid?”

“Don’t know. No one.”

“Everyone’s someone.”

“Not always. This kid’s no one.”

“How do you know if you don’t know?”

“I know. I sense.”

“Your sense is shit.”

“Then this is the perfect place for it.”

“Speaking of shit, what about it? Him and her?”

“What about them?”

“Yeah, what about them?”

“You know.”

“Yeah, I know, but do you know?”

“I know.”

“How do I know you know, you know?”

“How long have you known me?”

“Too long.”

“That’s long enough.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“What to do?”

“You know.”

“Okay.” A pause. “Good choice.”

“No choice.”

“Correctamundo.” Two zippers zipped up.

“What about, you know?”

“He’s okay.”

“Sure?”

“Sure.”

“You get a look at him?” The man’s voice had lowered. “Born yesterday.”

“Day before yesterday.”

“Last week.” A pause. “What, you don’t wash your hands? Your smegma don’t smell?”

“What, you want to smell my lilac fingers?”

The two men laughed, one a high-pitched cackle, the other a low, groaning guffaw, their hilarity distancing itself from Henry as they opened the door, went through it, and the door slowly closed behind them.

Sitting on the Symphony Hall toilet, surrounded by marble walls and gold fixtures, Henry could not pee. In the warm, faintly scented room, memories of The Naked Steer’s conversation surrounded him like a jail cell he could not escape from. In the near silence, slow, meandering streams of Berlioz flow into his stall, soon flooding Henry with hope, with possibility. He knew this feeling must be why his parents and the Jameses spent a small fortune on their symphony subscription tickets, keys to unlock whatever bars held them captive. The cymbals, the kettledrums, the bass drums, the snare drums did not scare the adults; the instruments instead helped free them, exploding with multiple sticks of dynamite the walls that surrounded them all week long.

Henry stood up, pulled up his pants, and opened the stall door. He walked over to the nearest urinal, unzipped his fly, and allowed the warm jet of yellow water to hit the marble and run down into the drain. Once he finished, he zipped up and stepped into the hall. There, in the chandelier light, standing on the soft, thick, green and gold carpet, his mother stood putting on lipstick and checking her image in an attached tiny flip-up mirror. She pressed her lips together and, liking what she saw, put the gold compact back in her black leather purse and closed the gold clasp.

Looking up, she saw Henry and smiled, her newly reddened lips parting to let him in. As he ran toward her, she opened her arms to receive him as she had done when he was little. Just as he reached her, the Berlioz crested, the big finale, the drums and cymbals pounding and crashing, doing their best to assault his composure, but they in no way could reach him here.

Richard Holinger’s work has appeared in Iowa Review, Hobart, Chautauqua, Southern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He is a four-time Pushcart Prize, two-time Best of the Net, one-time Best Small Fictions nominee, and will appear in Best Microfiction 2025. Books include North of Crivitz (poetry) and Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences (essays). His chapbook, “Not Everybody’s Nice,” won the 2012 Split Oak Press Flash Prose Contest, judged by B.J. Hollars. A forthcoming poetry chapbook, “Down from the Sycamores,” will be available for presale in February. He earned a doctorate in Creative Writing from UIC, and lives in rural northern Illinois.