Real Life (33 page)

He awoke bored and starving, and, though the knives and nails were gone, his cough was worse and his head was stuffy. Dorrie came in when she heard him sneeze, and looked at him with exasperation. “Don't tell me you're getting a cold,” she said, as if it were his fault.

“I'm hungry.”

She sighed. “You can have soup.”

He hated soup, but he ate two bowls of it and then, grudgingly, she let him have some ice cream.

He watched television all day. He couldn't believe it when she brought the set home and put it up on his dresser. “It's yours,” she said, plugged it in, and left the room as if she was afraid she might become contaminated. What did it mean, her getting him the television? She still seemed pissed off—barely spoke to him, just set down the food and ginger ale and went away, looking preoccupied. He wondered if Alex had walked out on her for good, and hoped so, then felt like a rat for hoping so. She could do better, he thought vaguely. Wouldn't anyone be better than Alex? He couldn't help it, he'd be glad to see the last of him—his silly-looking cowboy moustache and his crummy old clothes. He hated the way Alex made fun of everything, and the way he had just taken over, leaving his stuff around as if he owned the place. When Hugo lived in the loft, it hadn't been so bad—they'd hardly ever run into each other. If Alex and Dorrie got married, he'd move back to the garage, he didn't care what anybody said. If they didn't let him, he'd walk up to the highway and hitch to the Wylies' place in West Hartford.

He was waiting for Nina to call. When he thought of Nina, his nose clogged and his throat hurt more, as if invisible tears were choking him. All day he thought about calling her. He said her number over and over to himself, like an incantation: it was full of 5's, his lucky number, the number he most liked working with in math. If he said it enough, he would get up the nerve to actually dial it. But he didn't.

Thinking about it—his need to talk to her versus his cowardice—made him restless. That and his determination to have it out with Dorrie, another thing he didn't yet have the guts to do. Her unhappy obliviousness put him off as much as her hostility. He had no idea how to break through it.

He was glad of the television—it was company, and distraction—but after half a day of it, he was having trouble concentrating.
Family Feud
came and went and he hadn't even noticed it. He would call Nina after school—no, after
Upton's Grove
. I wondered if you were mad at me, I called to apologize, I'm sorry, Nina, I'm sorry … And then he would confront Dorrie. I know how my mother died, why did you lie to me, tell me the truth.

He sat propped against pillows, muttering to himself through
Ryan's Hope
and
One Life to Live
. He tossed and turned on the bed, dislodging the cat, who looked at him with reproach, then found a new spot and went back to sleep. Daisy fascinated him: all she did was sleep and purr. Was that all she wanted out of life? Plus a little Kitten Chow, a little affection? He envied her. He thought of all the things he wanted. First, to have Nina call him. Second, to get out of bed; his rear end was sore from sitting. Third, to have Alex disappear from the universe. Fourth, to have his old
Upton's Grove
notebook from the shelf in the garage where he'd left it. Fifth, to have some more ice cream. Sixth—

“So this is the famous
Upton's Grove
,” his aunt said from the doorway.

Hugo was startled. It couldn't be three o'clock already. But there was the frieze of white houses and church steeples and trees and winding streets, the familiar music starting, the words
UPTON'S GROVE
carved in chunky wooden letters. Then the commercials, all those concerned mommies, all those sexy girls going crazy over diet pills and deodorant soap. Then a woman sitting on a narrow bed in a small room, crying.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “That's Claudette! She's in jail. They must have found out about the necklace.”

“That jail seems to have a good hairdresser,” said Dorrie.

He ignored her. The scene changed to a posh business office. Big desk, Oriental rugs, a man on the phone. “I can't wait that long, Prescott,” he said. “I'm warning you. Three more days. After that, Jason is mine.”

“Who is this guy? That's Crystal's baby he's talking about! How can he get Jason from Prescott and Tara?” Hugo looked up at his aunt; she was gone.

But Claudette was there, and Charles, and Tiffany and Michael and Harley, and Crystal and that stupid Jamie. Even Jamie seemed somehow lovable, it had been so long since he'd seen him. He hadn't watched the
Grove
—that was what Nina always called it—in two months. He didn't seem to have missed a whole lot, thank God. No one had been killed off, as far as he could tell. He sat sucking on cough drops, smiling at his favorite characters, even those in trouble, like Claudette. Don't worry, Claudette, he wanted to say to her. You'll get out of it, you'll be all right. He remembered his grandfather saying that Claudette looked like a cocker spaniel, and he grinned—well, she did, a little, but prettier. And how his grandfather had hated Harley. At his age, Grandpa had said, the old geezer should have more sense. Hugo blew his nose. Watching the
Grove
after all this time was a little like being home with his grandfather again. He tried to pretend those comfortable, predictable days were back again—that the whir of Dorrie's wheel from downstairs was—what? His grandfather's electric shaver? Some kitchen noise? That his grandfather would come in and sit with him and ask, “What's that old goat up to now?”

When it was over, he turned the set off and sat there thinking about his notebook, out in the garage. He would like to have it so he could start updating. There were new characters, a huge batch of new statistics. And Dorrie had acquired a supercalculator, one that did everything. If she let him use it, he could figure things out faster, do more complicated charts. He heard her out in the kitchen, boiling water for her tea break. He gave a couple of fake coughs, hoping to sound pathetic and draw her in, and then he got into a real coughing fit, and she came in with water and cough medicine.

“Looks like you'll be out of school a while,” she said, as if she didn't relish the prospect. “Well. Do you need anything else?” What a joke, did he need anything else. He said, “I need my notebook. I left it in the garage. Can I go out and get it?”

She stared at him. “Did I hear you right, Hugo? Did you just ask me if you could go out to the garage? With a cough like that? Have you lost your mind?”

The coughing had brought back his headache. Her red sweater hurt his eyes, and he closed them. “I might get pneumonia and die. Who cares?”

“Come off it, Hugo,” she said. “Quit dramatizing.”

“I just want my
Upton's Grove
notebook.”

She sighed massively. “I'll go get it. Where is it?”

“Up in my loft. My ex-loft,” he said. “On the ledge over the west-side window.”

“I'll get it after I have my tea.”

He lay back bored to death, breathing through his mouth. He wondered how many days off his cold was good for. The whole week, he hoped—boring though it might be. He realized that not only could he not telephone Nina, he was afraid even to see her in the halls. She must despise him. What a baby he was. He couldn't believe he had cried in front of her, had let Alex push him around. Even now, tears threatened under his closed lids. I don't deserve this, he thought defiantly, and if anyone had asked him what he meant, he would have said, Everything: his stuffed nose, and Nina's rejection, and having to wait for his notebook, and those ugly purple flowers framed on the wall of his room.

Dorrie sat in the kitchen drinking her tea. Thank God the television was off. She had made Hugo turn it down twice, but there was no real escape. Even downstairs in her studio, the noise came through as incoherent jabbering punctuated by music; it was like having a loud, brutish neighbor. As soon as school started, she would make rules: no television but
Upton's Grove
after school and, if his homework was done, one additional program at night. She had seen the headlines on magazine covers:
TAME THE TV MONSTER, TURN YOUR KIDS ON TO READING, DON'T LET THE BOOB TUBE RULE YOUR LIFE
. She supposed she'd have to start reading them—all those dreary articles for parents.
YOUR SON'S PUBERTY PROBLEMS. TEEN SEX: EPIDEMIC OR EXAGGERATION? RAISING HEALTHY KIDS IN TROUBLED TIMES
. She sipped her tea, thinking, How did this happen to me? What good had been all her birth-control precautions over the years? Here she was, in the same situation as an unwed mother, saddled not with a cute little baby who snuggled in her arms and called her Mama but a surrogate son with puberty problems.

Alex wasn't going to call. Nor was he going to drive out to see her. Nearly three days had gone by. She imagined him in Boston, living his life without her: going out into the rain in his ancient London Fog, talking to his students about
The Great Gatsby
and the American dream, making Spartan suppers in his tiny kitchen. Drinking, probably, more than he should. Lying awake, a prey to the old nightmares he always said she abolished with her presence. Missing her? Suffering his own agonies over the teapot and mug she'd made for him, the books she'd lent him, the Grand Canyon poster on the wall?

She was still sleeping badly. She had been trying, during the long nights, to think of a solution so she would be ready if Alex did call. Not that he would. But he might. She would present him with Plan A, backup Plan B, compromise Plan C. So far, she had come up with nothing—except that Alex ought to be a little nicer about the situation, a little understanding. No help there. What did people do in this kind of crisis? People with children got married all the time; the world was full of second marriages and step-families and unorthodox households, some of them containing not just immature, mixed-up kids like Hugo but black sheep like Phinny. People survived. Give and take, she thought. Accommodation. Compassion. Love conquering all…

It occurred to her that it might, in fact, be simpler if Hugo were her son: her stake in him would be greater; Alex would have no choice but acceptance. This thought made her feel oddly tender toward Hugo. She heard him yawn, then give his metallic cough, and sigh—fagged out after a day of television. She imagined Alex accusing her of choosing Hugo over their relationship, of loving Hugo more than she loved him. Well, she supposed the first accusation was true; the second was nonsense. She didn't love Hugo at all. She didn't even like him most of the time. And she would love Alex, she told herself, until she died. But she would stick by Hugo; she would keep him from turning into a Phinny. The appalling firmness of this resolution surprised her. Monica had said it was wonderful of her. She wished she could feel heroic. All she felt was sad, and not quite resigned.

She finished her tea and went out to the garage. Hugo and his damned obsessions. It was getting dark, and the wind hit her as she went down the path, whirling leaves around her head. What if those headlights coming down the road were Alex's, what if he pulled into the driveway and bounded toward her, took her in his arms, murmured her name? She would bury her face in his old plaid jacket, breathing in the woolly smell, and they would forgive each other, they would come up with Plan A, Plan B. Send Hugo to boarding school, wish him on the Wylies, arrange a marriage between him and Nina, ship him off to his Tchernoff relatives. Anything, anything. Hugo was a good boy, but she didn't want Hugo; she wanted Alex. Damn.

She had forgotten the flashlight, but there was enough light to see by, dimly. She climbed the stairs to Hugo's loft. It hadn't taken long for the spiders and the mice to reclaim it. She heard rustlings and scurryings as she stood there getting oriented in the dusk. The west window was a square of lighter gray; a large and intricate spider web stretched across the bottom half. She felt around in the dust above the window, cringing from what might be there. The notebook, dusty and swollen with damp, and something else beside it on the shelf: a mug? She took it down and in the window light she made out
FAVORITE AUNT
.

She leaned her head against the frame and stared out at the darkening view. Oh, Christ. Oh, damn. That dear pathetic boy. All right. All right. She would try to love the child, try to be some sort of parent for him. She would read the articles, shut out the sound of his television, put up with his taste in girlfriends, forget Plan A and Plan B, settle down with her work and her house and her nephew. All right.

When she got back inside, Hugo seized the notebook and bent over his crabbed writing with a small smile on his face.

She said, “Hugo?” He looked up, and she held out the mug. “I found this out there too.”

He stared at it, and said, “Oh,” then snickered in an embarrassed way. “Oh, yeah, I forgot. That was supposed to be a Christmas present.”

“Here. Take it. I'll pretend I didn't see it.”

“No—no.” He waved it away, not looking at her. “Keep it. It can be a Halloween present or something. I'm sorry it got so dusty.” He snickered again, and coughed. She was surprised by the impulse to reach out and ruffle his hair or stroke his cheek. He said, “I guess it's sort of a dumb present. I mean you make those things all day.”

“To tell you the truth, it's nice to have one made by someone else,” she said, smiling at him.

“Oh—yeah, well, maybe.”

“Anyway—thanks, Hugo.”

She reached out one hand and touched it briefly to his, where it lay, crumpling a tissue, on the filthy cover of the notebook.

Hugo found, stuck inside his
Grove
notebook, the two old pictures he had hidden up on the ledge: one of him, in sixth grade, with his class; the other of his parents standing by the Camaro. He looked at his small face, hemmed in by Matthew Purvis and Jason Cantrell, and tried to find a resemblance to his mother or his father. His mother's face was young and pretty above her swollen-up body; she looked more like Jason Cantrell than like Hugo. His father, in this picture, looked exactly like Dorrie—could have been Dorrie, if her hair were a little shorter and she didn't have breasts and she wore his father's old jeans and T-shirt and that western belt with the big buckle. Well, he didn't resemble them, but they were his parents all the same. The thought, suddenly, overwhelmed him. His parents. How he missed them, how different his life would be if they hadn't died. He almost took the familiar comfort in tears, until he remembered that all that crappy daydreaming was over. His parents hadn't been so wonderful. His mother had been a junkie, murdered by a dope dealer. And who knew what his father had been?