Close to Hugh (56 page)

“Okay, get me to Mimi’s,” Ivy says. “I’ve got to find Hugh.”

Mimi’s old apartment is the bottom half of an old brick house on a nice street. The gingerbread porch is already stacked with boxes.

Ruth comes out with another and sets it on the porch swing, which wobbles; Jason darts over to hold it steady. “I started with the sheets,” Ruth says, as if they’ve been talking all morning. “I know what Hugh needs to keep for his place, not much, he’s well outfitted. We’re going great guns in here. But there’s still the china, and the cedar closet is full.”

Ann leans out the front door, one foot inside, and asks Ruth, “What was in that box?”

“Linens,” Ruth says. She is slightly stiff with Ann, Ivy’s noticed it before. Because she hurt her boy Hugh, maybe. So Ivy had better watch her step.

“Any archival quality? I’ll just take a look,” Ann says, and steps tightly across to the box. Ruth and Jason back away as she pulls apart the interlocked flaps—the box rocks on the swing and topples, Jason not fast enough to stop it. Perfectly folded sheets tumble slowly out, at first in a pile and then out of the pile, while Ann tries to keep them together. “Help me,” she barks at Jason, so he bends, and L bends with him. Ann yanks her sweater tighter around her and goes back inside.

They restack sheets carefully, trying to preserve the folds, but Ruth says, “Never mind, they wash them at the Mennonite Clothes Closet anyway; got to, no matter how clean they’ve been kept. I put Orion to work on the coat closet, Jason, you go help him out.”

When Jason’s out of earshot she allows her eyes to roll. “Ann’s rummaging in Mimi’s dressers, I keep chasing her out. I’ll put the boys to work there next. Hugh knows what to keep and what to let go to those who need it, which
she
does not. Archival.” Her contempt is deep, somehow Buddhist, Ivy thinks. Let go, let it go,
shenpa
. Ruth sends L off too: “You go grab five or six boxes and a stack of packing paper, and meet me in the dining room.”

With L safely gone, Ruth says, “Ann took a lot of old things away already. Her and that Largely woman gutted the front hall closet. The cedar closet has a padlock, so they couldn’t get in there.” Ruth leans over to whisper. “I made like I don’t know the combination.”

“But they came in last week, because Ann had Mimi’s clothes for that display.”

“Largely has a key, she let Ann in.”

“But—that’s not okay, is it?”

“No, it is not,” Ruth says, and stomps off to find L.

Where’s Hugh? Still at the hospice, arranging, or somewhere in the house? No, because here he is, coming down the street.

His face is blank. It does go blank, when he is hurt. He and Newell share that; Della too. Something they caught from each other during their siblinghood, or a product of their parents’ general abandonment.

He’s walking oddly, too. The beloved.

Ivy goes down the porch steps to meet him, her hands stretched out.

He catches them and looks into her face. “You can tell me,” he says.

“Hugh.”

His mouth stumbles. Tries again, “You can tell Hugh, I mean. I can tell you.” She waits, but nothing comes out of his mouth. He can hardly seem to breathe.

“You told me. I know. You already told me,” she says, the only gentle way she knows, putting her cheek on his cheek, merging her molecules with his.

Ivy takes Hugh to Mimi’s kitchen where Newell and Della stand packing the way they do everything, elegantly and efficiently: dishes flying from cupboard to wrapping to box. Brother and sister in all but DNA.

They see at once—how could they not?—that Mimi is dead. Della comes straight to Hugh and folds him in her arms. Newell wraps his other side, a trinity.

Ann is going through a drawer by the back door, magpie-picking through the jumble, searching for shiny things. Oblivious, she pecks at him, “About time Hugh got here. We’re doing all the work.”

Ruth comes from the bedroom hall with two full blue bags too heavy for her. Ivy takes them from her. “Those good boys have the bedroom closet all bagged up,” Ruth says. “Good to have that taken care of—put those bags in Hugh’s van, will you, my sweet?”

Ivy feels her cheeks pink up—an important honour to be Ruth’s sweet.

But Ruth has seen Hugh now, has seen his state.

Ruth’s own state changes, solid to liquid, in an instant. Tears bloom in her eyes and her hands begin to tremble violently. She puts one shaking
hand up to push something away—death, pain—and slumps forward, but the triangle opens and Hugh turns to her, and she doesn’t fall. She doesn’t cry out loud, either. She lets them pet her for a brief minute and then straightens her back again.

“I didn’t really need to see Mimi again before she died,” Ruth says. “But it seems hard that she did not have me there, saying goodbye.”

“She knew how much you—how long—” Hugh puts his elbow up to cover his eyes.

“Well.” Ruth wipes her own eyes, first with fingers and then her sleeve, until Della hands her a Kleenex. She blows her nose. “These things happen for a reason, one that we can’t know till later. I’m going to miss her, and Hugh will too.”

Hugh turns to the sink and pours a glass of water. “We’ll go back over after we finish here,” he says. “She’ll be lonely.” He drinks the water, not seeming to be aware of them all looking at him.

The boys come trooping through, two bags clutched in each of their hands, and Ivy turns to help them out the door.

Ann says, “Put those in Hugh’s van.” As if Ruth hadn’t said to.

But when Ivy opens the van doors, it is already full of bags and bags of clothes. How many clothes can one old woman have? The big truck’s back door is open too, it’s only half full, and there’s the attic space above the cab.

“Can you guys get these bags all the way up there?” Ivy asks. Foolish to ask! They flow, they leap up over obstacles, tossing the blue bags fire-brigade style, and Orion (perched on a chair on a dresser) packs them in tight. “Perfect,” she says. “Safe as houses.”

(L)

Anxiety, old friend, we meet again! Mimi’s dead—so everything’s weird. Gareth Pindar is coming to see the
Republic
. And now her dad is supposedly at Mimi’s to help but is just sitting on the porch. It would be better if he came in and got over himself a little bit, but yipes, don’t say that. Packing the dining room sideboard, L can see him outside the window. Sitting there suffering. She packs quietly so he does not get mad or give up and go away. How much she hates depression and frailty, even more since it’s hereditary and she’s obviously got it too and she’s often horrible to her mom too.

Who now comes trotting up the sidewalk with a paper bag from Reggie’s Burgers. Feed the brute, Ruth always says. The brute looks up, doesn’t take the bag. Doesn’t move.

They don’t know she’s watching. Maybe they won’t talk at all—maybe she should go pack the kitchen instead. Her mom stands there, holding the bag out. She’s angry, or she’d laugh at him and leave it beside his chair.

Then she says, “Fine. Go back to Bobcaygeon.”

Stress. L puts her head into the sideboard so she can’t hear, and carefully counts a stack of twelve beautiful plates. Cobalt blue, her favourite colour in the world, painted thick around the paper-thin rims, edged with gold. A plain silver bowl. L turns it over to see the hallmark. Jasper should be packing this good stuff.

On the porch they’ve carried on whatever they’re fighting about—she doesn’t want to know. Then her dad’s voice, raised. She doesn’t turn her head, but her hands stop moving. He sounds bad, really bad. Last night at the anniversary party he seemed okay.

“My life has been spent, and I mean
spent
, in that office. It’s gone, I wasted it. Worse than wasted, I was suckered. It was important to—I meant to do something worthwhile, but I haven’t done one thing that worked, that helped anyone.”

Her mom says, “Not fair, not fair. You have.” Is she crying? L sneaks a glance. Can’t see. Only her dad’s profile, staring out to the street, or to hell.

“I’m telling you how I see it,” he says.

“You act as if I made you go to law school—you’re the one who wanted the mainline.”

“Making the world better, that was a capitalist plan, was it?” Now he’s even madder. He takes the bag, finally. “So here I am—all the reward I can hope for is a hamburger one up from McDonald’s. A fair-trade coffee, to comfort me when there are no more days left.”

L slides silently down under the window.

Her dad’s making a lot of noise with the wrapper. Her mom tries to be reasonable, in a very irritating tone of voice. “We don’t need the house, we can sell it. I need a table to work on, a bed, a chair—they can all be in the same room as far as that goes. We could move—”

“It makes me so angry when you talk like this.” He takes a bite, half the burger at once.

L watches his jaw, his profile as he shoves the burger in. She hates, hates him. Because you have to acknowledge how you feel and not swallow your emotions. She leans over for the silver bowl, hugs it to her chest. It covers her breasts and lungs and heart, it’s a silver shield. Athena. Born from the head of her father.

“You’re describing a life that doesn’t exist,” he says, as soon as he can swallow.

“Look at Newell, all he’s got is a kitchen, a bed, a chair—all right, they’re in two giant rooms and a media alcove …”

“Yeah, I’d like to live like Newell too.” Over another bite of burger. “Selling the house won’t help, there’s no equity left in it and the mortgage is cheaper than rent.”

Her mom leans forward, eyes all tragic. “What are we going to do, then?” It comes out jerky, like she had to push herself to say it.

Licking his fingers (that was quick, he must have been starving), he crumples up the wrapper, puts it in the bag, crumples up the bag. “I’ll sell out.”

Her mom is quick to defend: “You didn’t sell out! You had honorable intentions and you worked with—”

“No, I’m going to sell
out
, sell out my partnership. Cash in. It’s enough for a boat.”

A pause, while her mother tries to work that out. So does L, crouched by the windowsill.

“…  a
boat
boat?”

“A small one.”

“On which you intend to live?”

“A boat and a camper van. Are you in or out?”

Her mother laughs. Gasping, but laughing. Her dad laughs too, and something breaks a little, like weather.

“Fine, then, no boat. But I don’t know what else to do,” he says. “I do not know.”

Agh. How about go back to work and don’t expect to solve every problem in the fucking world? How about get some medication for the anxiety you’ve been suffering my whole life, probably your whole life? How about my mom makes a different choice in the first place, stays single, without anyone blaming or hating her. Like Mimi did, after Hugh’s dad.

L leans her head against the wall because honestly, how can people stay together if it’s still so hard, so much later on? She has a pencil in her pocket. She scribbles on a piece of packing paper, getting down a cartoon of her mom holed up in a tower, praying to the sky, all alone. One twinkling star in the sky—that’s L, unborn, because her mom had a brain in her head.

Her dad has the sense to reach out and take her mom’s hand, pull her over while she’s crying. Put your arms around her, FFS!

He sits her with him on the swing.

“Mimi died this morning,” her mom says, still crying.

“Oh, no. Oh no. I’m sorry for Hugh. And for you.”

“I’m selling the piano. Mimi’s dead, it won’t hurt her feelings.”

“Not for a while. Just let me have a few—I just need—maybe I need a vacation.”

Her mom shrieks very softly. “With what, buttons?”

“You come too. We’ll sleep in the car. You’re not selling the piano.”

“Yeah, I’m going to buy a boat. And a camper van.”

They’re okay.

L gets up, no noise, and goes back through the hall to Mimi’s bedroom—nobody’s there, for a miracle. Will they put her false eyelashes on, in the funeral home?

She opens Mimi’s glove drawer and finds the black gloves Mimi wore to the MOMA opening. They are shaped to Mimi’s fingers, as if her hands are somehow still inside them.

L puts them in the silver bowl, and wraps it in her jacket to carry out, all casual. Because she has to have some things of Mimi’s, some way to
still be with her. Maybe that is bad, who cares. She takes the soap out of the dish in the bathroom, and the little bottle of Joy from the top drawer, and Mimi’s tiny gold-bladed scissors—and heavy, pouring, salt tears roll down her cheeks, because she will never be with her again, in this or any world.

(ORION)

Ruth cuts him loose to go find some lunch. Which is why he is on the top step of Hugh’s mother’s porch when Burton puts his pointed hoof on the bottom one. Wandering by whenever it suits him to lend a hand. Burton gives him a cool look, but inside Orion’s chest his heart is a giant cartoon jackhammer, rattling and bursting.

“Orion,” Burton says. “Just who I hoped I would run into.”

Orion keeps going down.

And Burton keeps going up, so that Burton has the higher ground when he says, “Listen, I had a talk with Boy—with
Newell
—and we thrashed a few things out. It’s clear I overreacted to your sensible suggestion of a different approach to the work. My qualms are stilled. Since I never got around to informing Pink or processing the fee repayment, there’s no tiresome paperwork to do. Procrastination is our friend, at times.”

Orion feels tethered. Does he have to say something, answer this? Burton leans in to whisper. Orion can see the blue veins around his nose and eyes.
“Truth
is, your performance yesterday was a little too good. A painful demonstration that I have been eclipsed.”

From above, he waves a jazz hand at Orion. “Good then, all settled, see you tomorrow,
ta-ra!
” He pirouettes on the top step and goose-steps in through the front door.

What a piece of work that guy is. You have to admire the sheer fucking gall. It’s all too much. This high-test atmosphere. He needs some youth.

> where ru?