Close to Hugh (31 page)

That peaceful time ends soon enough: Burton and Newell, emerging from an alcove around the corner, see her before she sees them. Newell puts an arm around her shoulders.

“Sorry we abandoned you,” he says. “Burton had a few—notes.”

I bet he did, Ivy thinks.

Burton acknowledges Hugh in his usual fractured way, half knowing smirk, half sneer of hatred, and turns to Ivy. “I presume the afternoon proceeded apace, with muffled giggles at every mention of sex or masturbation?
Spring Awakening
is a bust, Hugh.”

Mighton comes down the bar and claps Newell on the back. “I saw the musical in New York last year,” Mighton says. “Lots of angsty wailing over not much, I thought.”

Not giving Newell time, Burton answers. It’s unclear to Ivy whether he knows Mighton or just senses and rises to the next-biggest ego in the room. “Glorification of wanking, plus a searing portrayal of sexual awakening et cetera, yes. It is a good play—but problematic: the circle-jerk,
we wouldn’t get that past Pink. And it’s hard to do bare butts in real life, for a company as young as this.”

Newell speaks into his glass, behind Burton’s bobbing head. “That’s the true thing Wedekind catches: shame, and the ignorance it rises from. How shame defiles us, ruins us.”

Ivy is perturbed by that, but Burton rides over him: “German stuff—that S&M scene where Melchior whips Wendla, that’s the key. One must be beaten into acknowledging one’s earthy bestial nature.” He pronounces it
beast
-ial, Ivy can’t help noting.

Newell’s face is distant, thinking, detached from everyone, one arm along Hugh’s chair-back. Newell is a sad man, but in these last few days she likes him more than ever.

Mighton asks Ivy over-interested questions about the class, which seems to annoy Hugh as much as Burton’s pomposity does. Interesting. “I did the mamas, all of them,” Ivy says, to briefly answer him.

“We all have to kill the mother, don’t we, Hugh?” Burton lets fly, a random shot.

Hugh doesn’t seem distressed. “You can’t kill Mimi,” he says. “At least this Hugh can’t.” Then to Newell: “Ruth booked movers for Monday—but maybe a meteorite will hit the earth and I won’t have to deal with it.”

“Maybe Hendy can find a loophole in the lease,” Newell says.

Hugh shakes his head. “She won’t be going back—just as well to get it done. I have to deal with it some time.”

“I’ll help,” Newell says. Burton darts him a look, and at the other end of the bar, Ivy sees the Largely woman’s head lift. Like a cat scenting the air, catching a wingflutter of bird or breath of mouse.

Hugh stands and flags the waitress. “I’ve got to run over to Mimi,” he tells Ivy. “Wait for me? Or—here.” He gives her his keys, speaks into her ear. “If I’m not back when you want to leave, go up to my place, I’ll find you there.” His hand clasps hers, and he goes out.

Mighton slips into Hugh’s chair and prepares to lay heavy siege to Ivy, which makes her laugh at his bravura, and his complete folly.

“I’m not laughing at you,” she says, at his affront. “It’s just funny because I’m so in love with Hugh.”

He looks up, startled, and she says, “I mean, in love with
Hugh
. With Hugh Argylle.”

11. NOTHING HUGH CAN DO

Hugh walks the long linoleum hall in the nightlight-yellow glow. Some doors are open. Old people sitting on beds, relatives visiting. Only occasional sobs. At Mimi’s door, he pauses, gathering courage. Relinquishing Ivy’s warmth, preparing to bear his mother’s deathly cold.

He pushes open the door and sees Della, standing by the window like a ghost.

“She’s out. The morphine’s working,” she says. “I came to spell Ruth off. Come talk for a minute?”

He’s downcast. Anticlimactic—sacrifice not required. He goes into the dusk-draped room and stands by the window, close enough for Della to whisper.

But then she doesn’t. “What’s up,” he finally has to ask.

Another minute. “I saw Ken. I saw where he is, out at Sturgeon.”

“I know.”

“No, he’s been there all this time.”

Hugh takes a deeper breath. “I know.”

Della looks at him. “What do you know?”

“I know he went there instead of to the Elora Gorge thing. He told me he was going out to Bobcaygeon, he asked me not to tell you about it.” In the grey night-window light Della’s eyes are painfully large, painfully dark, great shadows around them. Hugh feels worse about this than he even imagined he would. “He said he needed a few days to think things through—I saw him coming out of Conrad’s office, that’s the only reason he told me.”

“Told you—what?” Her unnatural stillness makes him think she might fall over, faint.

“Breathe,” he says.

She obeys, but only barely.

“He told me he was having trouble deciding what to do, that’s all. That
he couldn’t go on, he had to make a change, and wasn’t sure how you would take it.”

Della sits on the window ledge, as if her legs won’t hold her.

Hugh touches her shoulder, her arm. “Della, don’t—it’s not the end of the world, it’s just—Listen, he was afraid to tell you. He knows it will mean a huge change in your life, he needed a few days to find his courage. I couldn’t say no.”

She looks away, almost laughs. “You could have.”

He’s surprised she’s taking this so hard. She never wanted Ken to be a lawyer, after all. Wouldn’t she’d rather he teach, or whatever he’s intending to do, consult?

“I know you want his happiness—when he talked to me, I thought it might even be a case of his life.”

She shifts on the ledge. She looks as old as she is. As old as he is too.

“When someone wants so badly not to be—I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Dell. I should have told you anyway.”

“You promised,” she says, looking down into the hands abandoned in her lap. “He might have changed his mind, or something. Better if we

didn’t, if I didn’t know. It won’t make much difference for Elly, she’s leaving anyway.”

“I’m sure he’s figured out the finances, how you can manage.”

“Hugh,” she says. Her face is flat white. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

He’s beginning to lose patience with her, always crying poor. Everybody’s poor. “Look, if it’s going to mean hardship, I’ll help—we can do more classes, raise the fees.”

He stops. Della is shaking her head, tears falling into her loose-cupped hands. He sits, he puts his arm around her.

She takes a couple of hard breaths, then stands. “Thanks. Ken won’t talk, can’t talk. I’ll—I’ve got to go and think about what to do.” She turns and is out the door, made mobile by some awful collision of time and emotion.

Emotion everywhere, exhausting. Ken looked terrible.

Hugh goes to Mimi’s bed, to the chair that waits there, his predestined seat. Try not to move from it for an hour. Just in case she comes to life again, out of the sleep that is close, but not close enough, to death.

(ORION)

Sheridan’s implement: Sheridan Tooley sent away in the mail for some kind of masturbation aid that arrived yesterday, and he talked about it all through
Spring Awakening
in class. Excellent, apparently. Alone at home, Orion contemplates masturbation, but it’s so lonely, so stupid. Like sucking your thumb. Plus he has heard, not that he believes it, that it desensitizes a person. Instead of porn, he shifts the screen to eavesdrop on people he knows, to Facebook and Twitter, finding nothing. Instagram, Tumblr. There’s Jason’s vidblog from the beginning of term. Half-naked, fake-funny, his soul exposed in the worst way. Wandering around some bedroom, looks like L’s. How can you ever help the people around you to not be asswipes?

VidBlog, Jason the Egonaut

“I’m the first person in my class to get their own project. It’s down. Working with down. I’m down with that.” [Strikes black-culture pose, unsuccessfully.] “So, I’m looking at a slim-line take on the ski jacket. It saves on down, it’s wearable in all kinds of climes. Also I know some chunkier girls.”

[A pop can hits him in the head, L’s arm in frame for an instant; the camera turns on Savaya and Nevaeh: they are twined together on L’s trundle bed. While Jason talks, offcamera, they mouth extremely rude things.]

“I’ve taken the plunge and gone for purple. I figure black is great but … But there’s room in this world for purple. It’s pretty ugly actually. It was all they had left that would keep the down in. I’ve got a line on that bathing suit stuff, neoprene.”

Boring, boring boring. Every person, every thing, every molecule in this world is boring.

Unless part of, attached to, cellularly integral with the loved one.

Orion leaps up the stairs and silent, silent, so as not to wake his zonked-out mother who never does awaken, out the door and onto his bike.

12… . BUT HUGH CAN’T MAKE HIM DRINK

Knowing Ann is safely at the bar, Hugh deviates down the road that runs by her house. Ivy can’t go back there, it’s ridiculous. He sets the ladder up once more against the wall. Jason probably uses headphones, but Hugh is quiet anyway. At the top of the ladder he pushes the window up, holds on—hands sweating suddenly, because his head really does hurt, a lot—reaches in and gropes for Ivy’s duffel in the darkened room. Not too big. It’s got a shoulder strap, thank God. He mangles it out the window, steadies himself again, ducks his head through the shoulder strap, and braces as the weight slides down his back.

The ladder shifts under him and he clings unashamed to the window ledge. He shouldn’t have done this.

Then he hears Ann calling inside the house, sharp-tongued: “Jason? Jason?”

No answer.

“Jason! Mr. Pink called me—Jason!”

A pause. Hard feet hard on the staircase, coming up. Will she open this door, searching? Hugh ducks below the windowsill, fingers aching on the sill’s edge.

“I don’t know what you think you’re pulling, you can’t just
not show up
when I’ve—” Round the corner of the hall, still talking, getting louder as she goes. “Jason? Answer me!”

Now’s the time, creep down. Each rung like a knife under his foot. Ivy’s bag clunks against his back, throwing off his balance. There, the ground. Sorry, Jason, Hugh thinks.

He carries the ladder back down by the kayak and makes off into the dark. The bag is heavy—three more blocks, around the alley. He drops the bag on the gallery’s back step. Door? Locked. And he gave Ivy his keys. No lights on upstairs, she must still be at the Ace. He shoves the bag into the shadows of the porch and runs. Getting his
exercise tonight. But after ten or twelve strides his head hurts, so he walks.

In the pumpkin glow from the Ace’s windows, a small crowd of people stands silhouetted on the long wooden porch. No Mighton—his shock of hair would be recognizable. That explains why Ann left. But there’s Newell, Burton beside him of course. Coming up to the porch, Hugh thinks Burton looks drunker than Jasper, tonight. Ruth is telling Ivy something, her hand patting Ivy’s arm. So they’re getting along, that’s good.

Hugh has one foot raised to step up onto the far end of the porch when a bicycle zooms past directly behind him. Startled, his balance off, he stumbles forward onto hands and knees.

Ivy’s there, like a bird swooping down, touching his head, holding his shoulders.

He laughs, says, “No, it’s fine—” and turns to see whose bike that was, riding in the dark with no lights. No, the bike is lit, he just missed seeing it, anxious to get to Ivy.

The rider has pulled up and turned. Orion calls out, “You okay? Hugh! Sorry! I—you cut in front of me!”

“It’s okay,” Hugh calls back. “I’m fine.”

Orion sees who all is there, and glides back, one foot on the pedal, other leg languidly pushing. He’s a messenger of the gods, half-bare in the cool of the night, thin skin of T-shirt and shorts. He leans over to give Hugh a peacemaking hand, and a long shard of stone falls out of his shirt front and hangs in air between them, a subtle dark-glancing gleam in the thrown porch light.

There’s a little hiss, a breath.

Burton moves. “That’s
yours
, Boy,” he says. “Your jade.”

They all stand still.

Newell leans forward and catches the cord, pulling the jade piece through his hand so they all see how smooth it is, how smooth. “I wondered where that had gone,” he says.

Orion stares into Newell’s face, his own as open as a lamp. He pulls the cord over his neck, and holds the jade out like a gift.

“I found it,” he says, his young voice unstrained. “Lying in the leaves.”

That undoes Burton. His face cramps, contorts into a grimace, a rictus. He is instantly, uncontrollably, beside himself, past the red stage of anger and on to the blotched-purple rage that strikes out in all
directions. At Newell, now. He turns, fists flailing, slamming, making a drumming noise on Newell’s chest and arms. Newell holds him off, then holds him in, binds him close enough that the fists can’t swing.

Words bubble out of Burton’s sloppy mouth, words and spittle and bile: “It’s all perfectly all clear—I
gave
you that! I bought it for you, for
you!”

It’s awful.

Newell doesn’t speak. It seems he expends no effort holding Burton. He gives Orion a nod, a motion of the head, to say
go on, go
.

The wheezing shout continues, like foam, like sputum: “I knew! I knew it all along! I knew it as soon as I saw him!”

Orion looks shocked, but not upset. Clear-voiced, even over Burton’s raging, he says—speaking directly to Newell, as the sane one— “Sorry, I guess I should have turned it in to the office right away. I was looking for my pencil, in the papers under the workshop table, all the discarded leaves of the other plays, and I just—pulled the string over my head without thinking.”

Then, since Burton keeps crying and wheezing, Orion backs the bike with dignity. When Newell nods, he nods himself, and turns to go. He’s so young! As he rides off his arm lifts in a gallant wave, a fare-thee-well to all who are not maniacs.