Hugo & Rose (22 page)

Rose's mouth dropped. How did she not know?

“Isaac is eight,” said Adam, helpfully.

“Adam, hush.” Josh looked grim.

Rose's hands were on her mouth. “I'm so sorry.”

Hugo shrugged. “It's okay. It was a long time ago.”

There was a long, awkward pause while Josh's and Rose's brains searched for something appropriate to say regarding the loss of one's parents a very long time ago. Hugo's revelation had sent all sorts of chemical washes lapping through the meat of their gray matter: grief, fear, lack of comfort, curiosity, shame.

Josh's mind quickly surveyed the situation and rang the Klaxon known as “subject change.” It lit up to this sudden alert in a similar way when he was a Little League hitter, taking in the information of an oncoming baseball and sending the impulse to step into it and hit the ball in another direction.

“Well…” He said, “Adam and Isaac, did you know that Mr. David went to school with your mom when she was a little girl?”

Josh's boys were appropriately astonished. Josh relaxed as the ball of the conversation sailed back on course.

“You did?”

Isaac got to the heart quickly. “Did she ever get in trouble?”

Rose stepped in before Hugo had to think of a lie. “No. I never got in trouble. I was perfectly perfect. All the time.”

Isaac looked from his mother to the man who could confirm her statement. “Was she?”

“I thought she was.”

Rose smiled at him and he blushed. A shy smile back.

Josh saw it pass between them again. The same brief pulse he'd seen at the party. The same
something,
but it seemed here more intimate than it had then. More
immediate
.

“He knows about Hugo!”

Suddenly all three adults were staring at Adam.

“What?” said Josh.

Isaac answered, “Adam broke the map we made of Hugo's island—”

“Did not!” insisted his brother, but Zackie continued.

“—and he put it back together all by himself. He knew where everything went.” Zackie's hand was pointing at their dinner guest.

Adam was nodding furiously. “I saw him do it.”

Rose felt her stomach clench.

Hugo was nodding. “Uh, it wasn't broken.”

“See.” Adam stuck his tongue out at Isaac.

“It was at the party and I saw … I just put some of the pieces where they belonged, that's all.”

“You know about Rose's dream friend?” Josh's face was still as he said this.

“Uh … well … I know Rose … so…”

Rose felt the rock in her stomach condense, compressing into itself. She wasn't breathing.
Please let this stop. Please.
But Adam was talking again—

“He knew where to put all the labels and he even knew to put the Spiders in the Chasm, but not on the beaches.”

“Well…” Hugo's face was lit up. “Sometimes the Spiders are on the beaches. But they don't live there.”

Isaac got excited. “Like when the deer stampeded onto the beach because the Spider was chasing them and Mom got caught in the middle of them.”

“And then Hugo slayed the Spider!”

Hugo was grinning. “Well, your mom helped.”

“You remember that from when you were a kid?”

Josh's voice was dark. Hugo turned to him, the joy on his face melting.

“Well. Uh … yeah.” Hugo lied, “She talked about her dreams a lot.”

 

fourteen

“Who is he?”

The children were in bed. Their guest was gone. The dishes lay stacked by the sink.… But the table still bore the crumbs and paper from the cheap cupcakes the boys had consumed, their appetites intact, unaware of the chill that had settled upon their parents.

Rose had brought out the nut cake for the adults, but the slices still lay uneaten on Rose's good china. Three plates in the sink.

“Who is he?”

Josh said it quietly, sitting at the table, not looking at her. His fingertips made a line of the orphaned yellow crumbs.

Rose leaned against the edge of the counter, gripping the rim for support.

“Nobody. Just a guy.”

Josh inhaled through his nose. His index finger pulled another crumb into line. “He's three years older than you. I asked him.”

She was quiet, watching her husband pull the bits together on the tabletop. The line on the table grew.

“So … I know you didn't go to school together.”

Rose nodded. She knew he knew. She felt a folding within herself. A desire for a small, dark space.

“Are you fucking him?”

The word was like an arrow.
Fuck.
Pointed and fricative. Thrumming on its target.

But this, too, Josh said calmly. The surgeon getting all the pertinent details, sizing up the damage that had been done. Figuring out the extent of the trauma.

Rose shook her head. “No.”

“Who is he?”

“Nobody.”

“You didn't look at him like he was nobody.” Josh divided a crumb with his fingernail, pressing it into two pieces, stretching the line.

Rose felt as if her entire self were sinking, pulled down into the stony gravity in her center. Josh was still not looking at her.

“You won't believe me.”

She heard someone say it …
herself
say it … but she was still sinking and the sound of her voice, so small and distant, was far, far above her.

Josh had collected all of the crumbs. A line dotted across the table.

His finger paused in the center … then pushed the crumb there forward an inch. He started speaking, still quiet, but as he spoke he pushed the line forward, punctuating his words with each crumb.

“I won't believe [
push
] that this person [
push
] who came into my house [
push
] and knew intimate [
push
] details [
push
] about my wife's [
push
] fantasy [
push
] world is nobody [
push
]. I won't believe [
push
] that you lied [
push
] to me about how you knew him [
push
] and sat [
push
] him across from my children [
push
], to eat food [
push
] I paid for [
push
], out of the goodness of your heart.”

His hand swept over the line, scattering the bits of cake across the table.

Finally he looked at her.

“Who the hell is he, Rose?”

*   *   *

Josh watched as she dug through her nightstand. As she pulled a pile of the children's drawings from the drawer, placing on top of it a fistful of hair ties and ChapSticks. Change. Some errant Lego pieces. The lube.

Finally she pulled out the sleeve of a manila envelope. Its edges were worn, and there were darker patches where it had been handled, the trace oils from his wife's hands. Her name was written on it in neat block letters. Their address.

Rose swallowed as she handed it to him.

She looked as though she were going to say something, her jaw loosening its hinge, but then she shook her head.

Josh pulled the contents from the sleeve and sat on the bed to read.

Rose waited, leaning against the door frame, her breath shallow until he reached the final page and closed the comic.

Josh closed his eyes, hand resting on the cover illustration. Beneath it the Spider's legs splayed out in hairy ink.

“I don't ever want you to see him again.”

Rose blinked, not understanding.

How could Josh not see the evidence of a miracle in his hands? Her dreams on paper? The impossibility proved of its existence?

“But … It's the truth. He's—”

“Rose”—Josh cut her off—“What you're suggesting … it's not possible.”

“But, it's all there.” Rose took a step into the room. “You
read it.
The pictures.”

Josh shook his head. The pages in his hands were not a marvel; they were simply a more advanced version of the drawings his sons sometimes did. A retelling of his wife's dreams, but not by any stretch of the imagination
proof
that the man who had been at dinner had somehow been sharing dreams with Rose for almost three decades.

“Maybe he found a diary you wrote. Or heard a story you told. Maybe he's a scam artist, and he does this sort of thing all the time.”

How could he not understand? This wasn't something that could be faked.…

“But my dreams—”

Suddenly Josh was standing. Angry. “He is
not Hugo
! The man in your dreams does not exist!”

“Then who ate your beans tonight?”

Josh's head rocked violently. Words pelted out of his mouth. “A huckster. A con man. Somebody who wants something from you and went to these ridiculous lengths to get it.” He seized the comic book and tossed it onto the ground.

Rose went to scoop it up. “He is not a con man.”

Josh's chest was heaving. His neck flushed, teeth bared. “I have to believe he's a con man, Rose.” He paused, swallowed rage, and continued, “Because the alternative is me putting you in an institution because you've lost your mind.”

“I'm not crazy.”

“Then what does Naomi have to say about all this?”

Rose pictured the empty couch in her therapist's office, but she said nothing. Josh could tell by the look on her face. Beneath the rage, he felt the beginnings of more frightening emotions, pain, fear, loss. His wife was threatened or she was a threat … either way, anger was the more comfortable option. He leaned into it.

“You didn't tell her … because you knew if you did, she would know you'd fractured your reality. You didn't tell her because you know this is insanity.”

*   *   *

It was decided that Rose was never to see David again.

Which is to say that Josh decided Rose would never see David again.

Josh was very careful when he said this, never once referring to the man as Hugo.

Of course, this decision came naturally to Dr. Josh, whose mind was filled with the case studies he'd read in medical school about twin psychosis and hallucinations caused by brain lesions. This belief of Rose's must be the symptom of some malady. He was angry with Naomi for missing it, but what could you expect from a
psychiatrist
? He would call some more people. Schedule some tests. Get a view to the inside of his wife's head.

But in the meantime, this
thing
between his wife and this man needed to stop.

He had made her cry. His beautiful Rose. He hated to do it.

But he could tell that she needed it. That she still
believed,
despite the fact that she also knew it was impossible that this man had been dreaming with her.

So he used the children against her. He used her love for them to get her to give up the delusion. Told her what happens to mothers who lose their minds, where they end up, how much their children miss them, how badly they suffer.

And Rose cried.

But she agreed. She nodded her head through her tears, and Josh held her. Rocked her. Rubbed her arms. She was a little girl in his embrace, asking for forgiveness. He gave it to her with a kiss on her forehead. They would get through this.

So when she said she needed to call
him
to tell him it was over, Josh nodded. That would be best.

*   *   *

Rose took her cell phone into the children's bathroom to call him. She wanted someplace dark and private. She had thought about going out to the garage, calling him from behind the wheel of her minivan—but she knew that would make Josh wonder. Wonder what she was saying. Wonder if she was leaving.

So she left the lights off in the bathroom. Sat against the vanity cabinet with her feet braced against the cool porcelain of the tub. In the dim she could make out the faint lines of the children's tub toys: Isaac's submarine, Adam's water whistle, Penny's mermaid.

Rose felt the rising hiccup of a sob. The half catch of her breath. She didn't want to do this.

But Josh …

The phone rang twice before Hugo picked up. Her throat ached and suddenly the tears were there again. At the fore. She couldn't say anything.

“Rose?”

A small sound. A tiny squeak of a sound.

“Rosie, are you crying?”

“Hugo…,” she managed, and then sniffled. A hot, wet sound in his ear. “I … I told him. I showed him…”

On the other end of the phone, Rose could hear his silence. The sound of his lips parting. Her throat felt like it was going to break.

“He didn't believe you,” he said finally.

“He told me I could call you one more time and tell you that I can't see you anymore.”

“What? Why?” His voice sounded like Isaac's. Like a hurt child.

She was hurting him. This was all her fault. It was she who
saw him
, who
followed him
, who
pursued him
. She who confronted him at work, who let him know she was a real person.

“I don't think we were ever supposed to meet.” This she said quietly, brushing a tear away with the heel of her palm.

“Rose—”

She cut him off. “I think … I think we were just supposed to be in each other's dreams. I don't think this was ever supposed to happen.”

“But it
did happen.”

“He said … he said mothers need to be in touch with reality for their children … and … I think the same thing.”

“What we have
is
real.”

Rose shook her head. It was, but it couldn't be. She couldn't let it. There was too much to lose. That's what Josh had done. He'd just reminded her of what she'd forgotten.

“It'll just go back to how it used to be.”