Close to Hugh (22 page)

“Doesn’t mean a thing!” Savaya says, laughing again. Brilliant teeth. “My heritage is, like, nothing—just white-bread. My parents are, you know,
alternative
. Savaya was a coffee place they liked in San Francisco, sounded kinda yoga-y.”

She’s a beautiful girl, easy to like. No L, but smart and funny. A shame if that slimeball Pink pollutes her. Ivy laughs too. “Try Ivy,” she says. “And my sister’s name is Fern. We went through hell. Well, limited hell.”

They start again. The second half of the play is worse. Terrible to look up into Newell’s eyes again, to watch him peel away the covering from his poor soul and show you the rags inside. Blanche can’t even lie properly, can’t keep up her pretenses anymore.

“I don’t want realism,” Newell tells her in the blue light of the third eye, the fourth wall of consciousness not necessary between them, in this working moment. “I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don’t tell truth, I tell what
ought
to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it!”

All of that is entirely true, Ivy thinks.

As they move through the play Burton gives notes, praising with too much effusion (Orion, mostly). But it’s Savaya who surprises Ivy. That’s the joy of these workshops, of all teaching: the shock of how good the very young can be. Savaya has headstrong pride as well as kooky, useful humour, and the sexual confidence (or the gall) to bulldoze. Reading Stanley, her head rears back and she stares directly at Newell. Tough thing for a sixteen-year-old girl to do to a minor legend of the big and small screen. Taking on nationality, white-bread or not: “I am not a Polack. People from Poland are
Poles
, not Polacks. But what I am is a one hundred percent American, born and raised in the greatest country on earth and proud as hell of it, so don’t ever call me a Polack.”

They break again, the tension drops, and the students drift out to get drinks. Savaya and Orion go out arm in arm, kissing each other’s cheeks as they sashay, but of course that doesn’t mean anything in an arts school.

Only the grown-ups are left. Ivy bends over her script, drawing daisies with her yellow marker.

In the silence Burton lifts his head, saying, “There’s nothing there. Nothing.”

Newell is watching the students out in the hall. He half-turns back to Burton.

Who sighs, and picks up his script, spiritually spent. Lets it fall again. Staring up at Newell’s carved-marble ear, Burton announces, “I was wrong, Boy. They need more of the knife. Like
Spring Awakening
—Wedekind! No one else has touched the soul of youth.”

Orion (soul of youth that he is) appears, like Ganymede. He deposits a Diet Coke in front of Burton, and accepts thanks with a slight flush of
his lean, silken cheek. Burton returns to his script with much indication of despair: furrowed brow, fierce concentration.

From behind her hair, Ivy watches Orion open the other can, drink from it with his beautiful carved-marble mouth, and hand it to Newell. Who puts his mouth on it and drinks. Whose other hand rises to take a speck of lint from Orion’s chest, as Burton lifts his head again and also, Ivy sees, sees what she has seen.

But Burton is a pro. His eyes look west for a brief second and then back down into his script, deep into the dark recesses of
Desire
.

(DELLA)

playing stops the constant barrage

                  the list of all the things that must be done

pick up Elly / clean up / class tomorrow / pay bills /

Mighton all over the dining room table

late but one more piece will keep                      has kept, is keeping me from

Schumann,
Abschied

The Departure                            Le Départ

nicht schnell

everybody is losing everybody                            Mimi too losing Hugh

losing us, light, air, touch, sound

Gerald, his son, how can he bear it

wandering the streets, not thinking

like I don’t think about Elle

a mouth full of broken teeth                                    don’t bite down

what did you think, Mimi, all those times you lost Hugh?

my mama lost me too, each time she lost another baby

music helps                                                            thank you, Mimi

should I text an ultimatum?

>Call or don’t come

speaking or not speaking                            it is the usual thing, after all

we’re not meant not built to be monogamous  or loyal

but look at geese  all the geese flying away  each with a single mate

drawing their Vs along grey paper sky

he has stopped loving me

that’s all, it is the usual thing

nicht schnell

11. HUGH AND THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC

Getting dark early. At five o’clock, in a fitful wind, Hugh walks the leaf-scuffed, wet sidewalks to Della’s to tell her that Ken called. That rising inside-tide of dread: to be the bearer of bad news, the one to trouble your friend. Not the person who did it, but you, Hugh, blamed for saying what is true.

His head hurts, his teeth ache. He climbs the back steps, lightening his heavy tread so as not to give everything away. Why does Della never lock her door? Anybody could come in.

“Hello!” he calls. What a cheerful howl you have, Mr. Wolf.

Nobody answers but music: Della, at Mimi’s piano. That rippling thing, Schumann or Schubert,
Impromptu
. Long hours waiting at Della’s piano lessons after school, listening to Miss Bick bark at her. He’ll sit and listen again.

Out of Della’s line of sight, Hugh leans on the dining room table, littered with glossy photos of Mighton, bedroom-eyed, young for his age. We are ego-based life forms. Thank God that didn’t last, Della and Mighton. Ken is better. Even now. A better man.

Hugh’s head hurts so much. Orange bells on the sideboard, shoved all anyhow into a vase. He shifts a stalk or two to make a more pleasing line. Eye caught by Della’s boats, he follows them around the room, trying to see what she’s after. Too early in the process to know. Thick work, thick paint. Myriad layers on the ones she has collaged. Della’s mind, unrefined.

The house smells of linseed oil, oranges, coffee. Perfume, sharp rather than sweet, vetiver. Not much of Ken—but his law office is bare too. Spare everywhere, guarded, skin stretched thin over long bones. Intelligent, kind, hard-driven. By ambition or dislike of failure? Distant: from having to refrain from relationships with the succession of tragedies he works with, all abuse cases.

He’s disciplined. So the wild phone call, the fractured voice, the—breakdown, it sounds like, when Hugh lets himself think about it at all—is more disquieting. To think that Della is, that Ken is, in trouble. It ought to be fixable.

Everything should be. It should be possible to build Utopia. Hughtopia. At least among our friends, in one limited place, like L’s
Republic
in the basement. What would fix things for Della? They are careful never to talk about cash—maybe money is what makes her face so white? Money would fix old Jasper and Ruth, who are both essentially happy (business woe makes Jasper crawl inside the bottle, but the bottle creates the woe). Not Newell. Newell has plenty of money, he just lacks … peaceful love, or freedom from Burton. But there is nothing you can do about goddamn Burton.

Hugh can’t fix Ann’s disappointment, her marriage, or the built-in narcissism that makes her so discontented; can’t tell young Jason that porn is evil. Can’t keep Orion safe.

You can’t bring Gerald’s wife and son back to life.

L, help L. Talk to Gareth Pindar. Take a piece of L’s to show him, without telling her, so that if Gareth laughs she won’t be crushed.

From the piano:
Kinderszenen
, Della will be busy for a while. Hugh backs out of the dining room and cat-foots down the basement stairs—then stops, and almost bows before entering L’s
Republic
. Fool. Photos the installation with his phone, flash and no flash.

Okay, take the portrait of Newell on rice paper; the roughed-in sketch of Nevaeh. That map of the inner fortress too: intricate, brain-like. He rolls them up together, thinking.

Sound upstairs. The back door opening. Hugh waits for L to come down …

Footsteps cross the kitchen, instead. Reprieved!

He heads quietly up the stairs, not wanting L to catch him thieving. Three long steps to the back door. He glances to the dining room arch, his eye caught by a flash of tweed jacket, an elbow—not L, it’s Ken, he’s back. About to call hello, Hugh catches himself.

Ken stands by the table, staring at the mess of Mightons while the music flows on and on,
Von fremden Ländern und Menschen
. Tense shoulder, neck: he lifts a photo, two more. Flicks them aside like cards being dealt.

You should go in, be glad to see him—find out how he’s doing, what’s going on. But you can’t possibly be there when Della turns and sees him, when they start whatever fight they will have to start.

In the driveway, mist. Hugh tucks L’s drawings carefully under his coat. Dizzy, or tired, or is it just sad? He needs some supper.

(ORION)

Staring at his blank-screened phone. No message.

Fuck it anyway.

Give up, go to Savaya’s party? Fuck, hard to know. Hard/not hard/not impossible/I can do it. I can rise above, ride into the sunset, the blood-orange sun going down on darkness. On silver wheels—a night Phoebus pulling the moon across the sky.

Orion stands on his back deck, waiting for supper, for something, whatever his mom might pull together when she stops freaking out on the phone to someone about something that happened in The Department, or alternatively the NDP’s slide in the polls, and the plight of the Palestinians and what she said to Jerry Pink about the master-bation class. When she finally blows her nose and wipes her soft, red eyes and digs in the fridge for the last edible undead vegetable and the organic, free-range nest-laid eggs and calls it fritatta.

It might rain before the party.

Bike to the party or drive?

He’s no Stella.

He calls softly into the darkness at the end of the yard, “I
do
misrepresent things. I don’t tell truths. I tell what ought to be the truth. If that’s a sin, then let me be damned for it!”

Lit by the last orange stab of sun through gunmetal-grey clouds, Orion shoots up onto the railing, launches from the deck, and flies for a long moment, everything balanced in air.

He lands by his bike, and goes.

12. I WANT TO BE LOVED BY HUGH

Hugh sits with the windows rolled down in the parking lot of Black Cat Pizza, hoping damp wind will blow his brain into better sense. Waiting for his supper. Disconsolate because of Ken and Della. Also, inappropriately hurt—Ivy hasn’t texted. Maybe working still. Maybe he assumed too much.

Stupid head. Tooth hurting again; chew carefully when the pizza’s ready. Back molar on the right-hand side: death is waiting for you, first in the falling out of the teeth and the falling out of the hair and then, following, in the incremental death of the rest of the body.

Or else he’s just hungry. He checks his phone again. As bad as Della.

Clotted with clouds, grey sky reflects in the grey window where the men are cooking. On the wall-mounted TV inside the grey kitchen, Dorothy has landed in Oz—don’t worry, here comes Glinda the Good to solve everything! That other witch, ruby feet sticking out. Now Dorothy’s got the shoes, she’s setting off. Oz is the only colour in the place: grey steel grey windows grey tiles grey fluorescence white aprons black T-shirts on the pizza guys. Dorothy’s brilliant blue-red smile repeats the
Open
sign, red, blue. Grey-white pizza boxes. The men argue among themselves whether a pizza is done, pushing in and pulling out of the red-hot oven with their long-handled peels.

A car door opens near Hugh, and out climbs Newell. That’s not—oh, it’s Burton’s car. Somehow that vintage of Passat is always a little Euroslime, Hugh thinks. Prejudice.

Newell sticks his head in the passenger-side window.

“Pizza for dinner?” Hugh asks.

“One with everything. Bring yours to my place.” At that
my
, Hugh thinks he might go. “Ivy’s there,” Newell adds, luring him. “Burton kept her working.”

Hugh stares at the grey window, the grey men.

“Come,” Newell says. “Please come—Ansel’s buggered up the master class, they’re having a meeting, we might all be fired. It’s fraught, but we’ll have a party. Come?” He reaches in the window and touches Hugh’s arm.

Newell chooses to be kind to Burton, and that is none of Hugh’s beeswax.

“Okay,” Hugh says. They walk in to pick up the pizzas.

At the condo, Ivy and Burton sit at the long dining room table in drifts of playscripts and student lists. Ivy looks up as Newell and Hugh blow in on a gust of rainy wind.

“It’s you!” she says, heavy eyebrows arching in pleasure. “I mean, it’s Hugh!”

Her face is open. Honest and clear. He has been looking for her for so long.

Burton adds his own exclamations of
Hugh! HYou!
Ha-ha. His eyes take on a greedy-dog fix as Newell opens the pizza boxes. Anchovies and truffle oil—got to be Burton’s. Spinach & feta, Ivy’s; one with everything (Newell’s invariable order, only half Buddhist joke); double cheese, pepperoni and green olives (Hugh’s). Too much pizza, but Burton will wolf down whatever’s left over. His appetites are famous.
Stop
, Hugh thinks. Look at Ivy instead.

She’s looking at him. Not secretly or shyly but with every door, every gate thrown wide.

Hard to be depressed when someone you recognize has recognized you back, when you understand the unlooked-for luck of that. Hugh crosses to her and puts his arms around her, right there, in front of Newell. In front of Burton. Fuck him, anyway.