Close to Hugh (18 page)

When they get to his house after second period, Ann is in the back yard, calling to Jason to come out. L for some reason—oh, wait, could it be experience, or good sense?—stays in the kitchen.

Ann’s smoking a cigarette, in a lounge chair. She doesn’t smoke. In a psychedelic sixties tea gown—that’s Mimi’s gown. Where the frick did she get that? Wearing a wig, some kind of vintage pageboy thing, the same colour as her hair but not her hair. Weirdly fake-looking, like the later Warhol wigs.

She’s got a little fire burning beside her in the bowl of the copper Turkish grill. Beside the fire, a stack of magazines. Oh boy. Mammoth set of boobs on the top one.

L watches, the horror of the moment burning her eyeballs. She can’t hear a thing. Jason bends—for an awful second, L thinks he might be bending over for the strap, but no. He takes the top magazine and flips through it while his mom continues to talk. He’s so brave.

He looks up, and her mouth moves again. A trap-mouth.

She’s tricky, L thinks. Especially since Jason’s dad left, yes, but she’s always tricky. She’s why Jason is the way he is. Shy, miserable. Maybe his dad is partly why too.

Ann lifts her hand and says one last thing, and then Jason starts to feed the fire with the magazines. A small bright fire, in the bright copper grill that Jason gave her for Christmas after his dad left, using $300 of the money he’d been saving for AutoCAD for his laptop. The grill she never used once, all last summer, but just left sitting there in the rain “patinating.”

L does not let her head show through the kitchen window. She is not going to witness Jason’s shame, and make him even more miserable from now to eternity probably.

5. HUGH OUGHTA KNOW BY NOW

Hendy lies back in his office chair, almost prone, fingers tented. He sits up quickly when they arrive, greeting Newell with the easy warmth of longtime associates. To Hugh, he’s cooler. Since Hendy is also Mimi’s lawyer, this makes Hugh feel uncomfortably suspicious about his mother’s will, or maybe he means her estate. What does Hendy know that Hugh ought to know? Nothing to interpret in the lawyer’s lack of expression; his face is flat, his even voice perfectly pleasant.

Lise Largely sails in. Newell gives her the same impersonally loving hug he gives to everyone. Lise
adores
Newell, she signals it with her saturated-blue eyes. She’s wearing casual luxury—jeans that cost five hundred dollars and fit like kid gloves, boots with heels. A scarf in muted colours that don’t wash out her ash-streaked hair. If you like that sort of thing, gorgeous: those overblue eyes under heavy lids, heavy lashes. Hugh watched Lise operate with Ian Mighton. Moving into his house while hers was being renovated—then after the reno, oops, her house got sold, so she had to stay in Mighton’s. But he’s finally pried her out. Whatever lever he used must have had a pointy end.

“
Hu
-ugh!” She has a habit of drawing one syllable out into two, her head cocked. She gives him a limp paw. Nobody’s ever taught her to shake hands like a human being. “You haven’t been answering my ca-alls. Never mind! This is exciting. Don’t worry, I’m going to look after Jasper! Can’t let him go bankrupt, when responsible development of the property will mean a comfortable old age for the poor old guy.”

Stiff with dislike, Hugh nods twice, then shakes his head. “Jasper’s friends understand that his shop is his—is his whole world.”

She makes the sound of a laugh. “Jasper’s an old curio, just like his store.”

If the price is high enough, Jasper will have to cave. Will Hugh? Mimi is dying, there’s the terrible legacy of her estate. Maybe. Who knows what’s left, after balancing her secret extravagances and secret stashes.

“We—those of us—” Hugh stops, tries to regroup. “You should understand that Jasper’s friends are ready to support him however we—with whatever makes his life worth living. When the people who—who
are your life
are in need, you step up.”

Newell touches his arm, and cuts in gently. “With financial support, in other words.”

“You
step up
,” Hugh says, sounding like a nut. Exactly how a pathetic old man is his life seems urgently clear at that moment: Jasper laughing with Ruth by the stove all those years ago, the ivy wallpaper, Hugh and Newell like white mice along the wainscotting.

He looks up. Newell is watching; but his eyes always look partly desperate. That heartfelt understanding made him a star, that pity for pain. He sits beside Hugh as if his body is ballast.

Lise has an agenda. Not as in something she wants, but an actual paper agenda in her hand. “I find things go more smoothly if we know what we’re going to address,” she says. A copy for each of them. The heading:
Purchase of Retail/Gallery Properties, L. Largely
.

Hugh stares at it. Seems to be a done deal.

But Hendy has an agenda too, just not on paper. “A few points to take up,” he says, putting down the sheet. “Re: the Statement of Adjustments: credits to the purchaser include arrears in taxes up to and including—” His voice steams on into jargon, regulations, this holder of fee, and that party of the second part.

Hugh drifts off, a figurehead anyway, only the titular owner of the gallery-half of the building she wants. He owns nothing. He is perfectly placed to be ousted, in a sea of debt. The Visas alone—the three of them put together add up to $70,000 now. Every sale goes straight to interest; he is behind the proverbial, mystical, physical eight ball.

But Newell is beside him on the black leather settee, while Lise Largely sits alone on a spindly chair. Hendy goes up one side of her and down the other, his smooth, shuttered face—he’s on Hugh’s side now. Although Hugh cannot fathom how, it seems that he may escape from this business with his hide, with his home. That even Jasper might escape too.

It’s a short meeting. Hendy rises, flicks Largely’s disused agenda into his recycling basket, and offers a hand to Newell and then to Hugh for a quick, manly shake. Okay.

Newell turns to Largely, clasps her hand, asks after Mighton. Being cruel? Hugh checks his face, but can’t tell. “He’s coming home this weekend,” Lise says, as if they’re still together. Knowing that’s not true, Hugh feels like he has a slight advantage.

Which she then takes away: “Before we leave, I need to talk to Hugh.”

Hugh realizes it’s him she means, not one of the others she’s calling
you
. Lise’s smile creases her skin in hairline cracks. “I’ve left six messages—of course you’re back and forth to the hospice. Which is why I felt I had to get hold of you. Assuming that your mother—that you—won’t want to extend the lease on her apartment for another year, of course the owner really has to get another tenant in there,
whe
-en …” Leaving off the
when your mother dies
.

A photograph of Mimi swims into Hugh’s mind: in a ballet tutu, eight years old, chin lifted and feet turned out, pink tights casing legs that are so tense they seem to tremble. Her fingers, each blessed finger delicately and artistically bent. Alive, alive in every tendril.

Hendy asks, “Has the owner requested—is it urgent?”

Who owns the place? Some company or other, Hugh can’t remember.

“
Sort
of.” Largely swoops her shiny eyes. “November first is the new lease year. If you’d
like
your mother to sign another year, that’s fine!” (squint-smiling to beat the band) “But I thought I could do Hugh a favour. In the circumstances.”

Hugh can’t think. Mimi’s apartment: main floor of a nice house on the river, near Della’s. Fully reno’d, brick kitchen, expensive. A year’s lease—$30,000. You could save Jasper’s life with that. Give it to Della and unstitch her worried forehead.

“I can’t get the place cleared out before the first,” he says.

Largely smiles. “I think I can request an extension from the owner. November 15?”

If he accepts her offer, he owes her, and somehow she will get the gallery.

“No,” he says. “I’ll get onto the movers. November 1 is Saturday. Say Monday the third.” Emptying Mimi’s apartment, arranging for storage, sorting, selling—how is that going to fit in with Della and Ken’s anniversary dinner on Saturday night? It will just have to. Ken may not turn up anyway.

Hendy interrupts. “Did your principal send a registered letter to inform Hugh?”

Largely has that one: “A registered letter went direct to the leaseholder,
of course. Mrs.—Hayden? Or is she Argylle? I’d have to check the file—I presume power of attorney covers Hugh picking up her mail, and reading the letters?”

Ruth runs by and picks up the mail every morning. She puts it on his desk every day, every fucking day. Hugh feels the weight of unsorted mail, the blue basket on his desk, like an old woman’s body settling over his shoulders. Two old women: Ruth pointing out the basket over and over; asking him, like Della is always asking him, and his mother’s sunken eyes and sunken voice asking him:
Is there mail?
He’s seen that letter, he just didn’t look at it.

“Get me a copy of the lease, will you, Hugh?” The first time Hendy has addressed him.

Hugh is in no shape to do anything but nod. Hendy must think he’s an idiot.

Newell is beside Hugh, gently pointing at the antique Patek Philippe on his wrist, the best thing to come out of
Catastrophe
. “Doctor’s appointment?”

“Right!” Hugh leaps at Largely’s hand, shakes it. Anything to get out of there.

By Monday. And this is what—Wednesday.

Out of the office and on the street in a single breath. Down the street to the gallery in six more. Hard-drawn, ragged breaths, because you can’t cry in the street. It’s bad enough at the movies. People here would see, would notice and think Mimi’s dead, would come to console, to condole.

He opens the door and stops, breathing again.

Ruth is about to order him to Conrad, but he holds up his hands. Not to stave her off, just giving up. “Largely says I have to have my mother’s stuff out of the apartment by the first. I said okay, by Monday.”

Ruth jumps up, like she’s going to whip over there right now and start working.

“No, no,” he says. “Ruth, you’re the best. But wait.”

He can hear Newell coming in behind him.

And Della will help, and you could pay the kids to—okay, you’ll need to rent a bigger van. And a storage space, okay.

He breathes; you can breathe, if you remind yourself.

“Okay, okay. Ruth, I can deal with it. We knew it was coming, I just have to face it.”

Ruth starts to weep, silently. Her dear little face in a screw.

“She’s not going back to that apartment,” he says. “Not ever.”

“I know, I know,” she says, all water.

You just don’t want to know, that’s all. Hugh doesn’t want to know either.

6. CAN HUGH FEEL IT WHEN I DO THIS?

“Remember the fall? All about it? When did it happen?” Conrad’s always doing that, all the questions thrown on the table at once, like a card player in a tantrum. Game called on account of earthquake!

Hugh takes a breath, stays calm. “I fell off a ladder.” He hates being medicoed. Especially by a bullet-headed lunatic with a machine-gun voice and a sense of godhead.

Conrad swivels back to the computer to enter the data. “When?”

“Monday morning. And then I fell down some stairs, on Monday night.”

“Two. Ah … And how long were you out?”

“Well, three or four hours. Dinner, then the party at Pink’s, and then I walked home—”

“No,
out
. Unconscious.”

“Oh.” Hugh thinks. Swings his black leather stool right, left.

“Were you alone?”

“Yes. I don’t think—I don’t know if I was out at all. I might have been.” He can’t figure out whether the safe answer is yes or no. “I don’t think I was out at all. Just winded. I thought I was having a stroke.”

“How far did you fall?”

Twenty feet. “Maybe ten feet.”

“Stupid.”

“I have put up those lights every year for ten years.”

“Here’s a piece of medical advice, I give you gratis, for free, thrown in on the public dime: don’t climb a ladder without someone there to hold the legs.”

“Okay.” Hugh does not wish to hate anybody else in this town. Conrad means well.

“Did you vomit?”

“No.” Then remembers that he did, didn’t he? He threw up red wine, all over some sink or other. He looks out the window.

“You’re not taking warfarin, by any strange chance, are you? Double-doctoring?”

“What for?”

“Oh, it’s a blood thinner, also a rare treat for the rats. Poisons them dead, I promise you.”

“No.”

“No allergies, and you’re not a bleeder.” Conrad gets up from the computer and comes at Hugh, flashlight pointed. “All righty,” he says, jabbing the light in each eye repeatedly. “Sore neck? No? Honestly, I can’t think you need a scan, you’re talking well and it’s been what, three days. Why didn’t dear Ruthie send you in sooner?”

Hugh remembers the casual formality of his old roaming days, when doctors hardly knew him, when they did not sit on arts boards with him or report to town council on the downtown rejuvenation project. When there was never anything wrong with him.

Conrad presses his head all over. Gentle fingers, taking his time, like the children’s aid nurse with her freshly picked toothpick going through his head for lice, or Ruth’s fingers, washing his hair in the kitchen sink. His own fingers, rubbing his mother’s head when she was forlorn. When she lay on the bed sobbing quietly or frantically, the only thing that soothed her was a slow, repetitive pulling of fingers, combing and combing through her pretty hair. Hugh passes a hand across his eyes, waiting for Conrad to finish.

“No bumps. Good job, you. If you notice a bump coming up in the next month or so, come back and see me. That’ll be serious. The thing that worries me”—Conrad spins Hugh round to face him— “is that second fall.”

Hugh is surprised. “Oh, that was nothing. Five steps, maybe. Conked my head against the wall, but it was a carpeted landing. Soft.”

Conrad shakes his head. “It’s twice in one day. Two falls, ten times the danger.” His eyes are sharp, so Hugh struggles to perk up. “Some subtle problems don’t show up right off the bat. Memory deficit, changes in cognition, obsessing … personality changes.”