Real Life (34 page)

He stuck the photographs under his pillow and toiled over his notebook until dinnertime, working variations on last summer's statistics. He was comparing Tiffany's time with Claudette's when the doorbell rang. His aunt bustled out from the kitchen, went downstairs, opened the door, and there was the miraculously beautiful sound of Nina's voice.
Nina
, oh God,
Nina
. He heard her clattering up the stairs, and then she stood before him in the doorway. She was dressed like a witch, and she was holding Daisy on her shoulder.

“Trick or treat,” Nina said. She wore a black mask; when she pulled it off her hair flew out around her head. The kitten jumped down. “She sure got big. You should see Dolly, she's gigantic.” She grinned at him; her front teeth were blacked out. “Like it? I used Black Jack gum.”

He couldn't speak; he smiled weakly at her and pulled his blanket up higher. He was in his oldest pajamas, and his plaid bathrobe looked as if he'd had it on all week, which he had.

“You look terrible,” Nina said.

He coughed, drank some ginger ale, and said, “I've had the flu. I've still got this cold.”

“Your aunt told me. I had it too. I puked my guts out for two days, and I slept all day yesterday, but today I was better, damn it. Back to school. But I was a mess.”

She didn't look like a mess; she looked beautiful. He drank her in as if she were some magic medicine: her pointed nose, her electric hair, her freckled wrists against the black costume. He had dreamed about her, one of the turbulent dreams at the height of his illness. She had been naked, yelling at him; he remembered nothing of the dream but her nakedness, how small and pale she had been, her little breasts like muffins.

“I'm not really out trick-or-treating,” she said. “I just came to see you. I thought the costume would be good for a laugh.”

Hugo sipped his ginger ale and looked at her. He couldn't believe it: here she was. He said, “Nina?” She was scraping the gum off her teeth with a fingernail. “Nina, you're not mad at me?”

“Of course not.” She sat down on the bed and bared her teeth. “Did I get it all off?”

“Most of it.”

“Why would I be mad?” She took his hand. “Did you get in much trouble?”

“I had to go over to the Garners' and apologize and pay them back with a twenty-dollar bottle of champagne.”

“She made you do that?”

“I didn't mind.”

She nodded. “Actually, I think you got off easy. I'll pay you for half the wine.”

How good she was, he thought. How generous and beautiful and perfectly, utterly good. “You don't have to,” he said.

“I want to. Tell me what they said—the Garners.”

“He was kind of mad at first, but she wasn't. They wanted me to stay, but Dorrie said I had to get back to bed. Mrs. Garner showed me pictures of the new baby.”

“Boy or girl?”

“Girl. Named Alison.”

“What a drippy name. Let's name ours Lurette and Drake.”

He stared at her. “You mean our kids?” His voice creaked, and he coughed again.

“Hugo, we're going together, aren't we?”

“Nina—”

“Aren't we?” She tried to take her hand away. “Shit—don't tell me you're going to pull a Carl McGrath on me.”

“Nina, believe me—” He squeezed her hand to his chest, pressed it to his lips. “Nina, I love you so much I can't even think about anything else.”

She smiled and leaned on his shoulder. “I've missed you, Hugo. All that time when I was sick I kept thinking of you in school without me, and I kept wondering why you didn't even call. And here you were sick in bed. We probably had the same germ. Romantic—right?”

He was overcome with admiration; she had doubted him, but she had come to see him. He hadn't even been able to dial her number. He thought, I'll never live up to her; I'll never deserve her.

She turned her face up to him. “You could probably kiss me without infecting me.” There was her warm breath against his mouth, her lips that tasted of chewing gum. She had always reminded him of a fox—elusive and quick, on the verge of darting away from him—but now she seemed softer, less jittery. She bloomed in his arms like a wildflower.

But, kissing her, he couldn't breathe, and he had to break away, embarrassed, to blow his nose. She stroked his chest, his old bathrobe, murmuring, “Poor baby.” He stuffed the tissue down behind the bed and lay back on his pillows. She sat propped against the wall, her legs slung over his, leafing through his
Grove
notebook. He studied her, loving the absent-minded way she got distracted by things—the way she took everything in, not wanting to miss a trick. She sat there frowning, chewing on her nails. The witch costume sagged around her in waves of black. Hugo thought: I love her more than I'll ever love anyone, ever again.

She looked up from the notebook and said, “I should have brought my guitar. I wrote a song about the
Grove
while I had the flu, and I'd like you to hear it. I could serenade you back to health.”

“I'm not really all that sick.” He added hastily, “Not that I don't want you to sing to me.”

“Well, obviously,” Nina said. She paused, thinking. “I really value your opinion, Hugo. I want you to always be honest with me about my stuff.” He thought guiltily of her “Heart of Clay” song. Was he really supposed to tell her he hadn't liked it? Probably not.

“You can judge better than I can,” he said.

“But I need constructive criticism, Hugo!” She looked at him with wide eyes and leaned over to touch his cheek. “I mean, if you're going to be my manager you've got to tell me when I'm good and when I'm lousy.”

“I'm going to be your manager?”

“Unless you've got something else in mind. I mean, don't you think about what you're going to do with your life?” Her hand slid down his cheek, across his neck to his shoulder.

“Well, yeah, but I've never been able to decide.” Her hand on his shoulder pulled him closer; he drew her to him and buried his face in her hair. He thought, Someday I'll actually make love to her. “I always thought I'd be a math professor,” he said. His voice trembled, and he cleared his throat. “At some college.”

“Forget it, Hugo. You can do better than that. You be my manager, and we can travel all over and make a lot of money. We'll take Lurette and Drake and a nanny and a governess with us wherever we go. People in airports will turn around to look at us. We'll have luggage on wheels that says ‘Nina Slaughter—Rhymes with Laughter' in silver lettering.” She spoke fast into his ear. These must be her daydreams, he thought, the things that went through her mind when she was sick in bed, when she sat in silence on the school bus, when she was bored. She had thought all this up, and he was part of it. He saw himself thinner, taller, in a white suit, striding through airports followed by servants, children, people trying to reach out a hand to touch his sleeve.

“I don't ever want a gold guitar, though, or one with jewels all over it,” Nina said. “I don't think I'm the flashy type. A plain guitar is good enough for me—like the one I got my start on, only better. We'll go to Spain and have one custom-made.”

Spain, he thought. His life seemed to be opening out like a fan, full of surfaces he had never suspected. “It sounds great,” he whispered. Nina's arms went around his neck, she lifted her face, and, breathlessly, he kissed her again.

She jumped up. “I've got to get going. My sister's waiting to drive me home. Wait—” She hiked up her witch dress. She had jeans on underneath. “I brought you some Halloween candy—here.” She held out some candy corn and pumpkins and a little sugar witch, linty and soft from being in her pocket. “A bit mangled, but still edible.”

“Do you have to go?”

“I'll be back tomorrow. Maybe I can come after school and watch at least part of the
Grove
with you.”

“Like last summer.”

“But different,” she said, smiling, leaning over to kiss him again. Then her face became serious. She jerked her head toward the stairs, where they could hear Dorrie running water in the studio sink, and said, “Have you asked her yet? About your mother—you know”

“Nina, I've been sick.” He looked at her helplessly, and she gazed back at him with infinite understanding and wisdom and love. She whispered, “Don't be afraid.” She took his hand and put it to her cheek, his palm against her soft skin, his fingers touching the silky-frizzy hair of her temples. The gesture affected him in a way nothing else ever had, not even those long kisses on the Garners' sofa. He moved his hand over her face, the bony hollow below her eye, the hard plane of her cheekbone, the curved softness of her lips. She closed her eyes, and he touched the spiky little lashes.
Nina
. Whatever happened, that word would be magic, this moment would be with him forever: Nina's face, the yellow lamplight, the tangled bedcovers and the cat curled in a ball.

“I'll talk to her tonight,” he said.

Nina opened her eyes and smiled at him. “You owe it to Lurette and Drake.”

When she was gone, he sat looking at the candy she had left him, and then he picked up the linty witch and ate it, slowly, as if it was a sacrament.

Dorrie came upstairs, and he heard her in the kitchen getting dinner. He worked on his notebook some more, his vow to Nina spinning in his head. He practiced, Tell me the truth, damn it, damn it, damn it. He would draw strength from Nina. Every time she kissed him he would become less of a jerk. He would be transformed, gradually, into the tall man in the white suit carrying a custom-made Spanish guitar through airports. He took the photographs from under his pillow and looked at the one of his parents. He thought of Lurette and Drake, frizzy-headed little babies sleeping in his arms.

Dorrie appeared with his dinner on a tray. “I decided to let you eat,” she said, and set it down next to the bed. “Hot dogs and french fries and frozen peas. Your favorite junk.”

He said, “Why didn't you ever tell me about my mother?”

“What?” She looked down at the photograph in his hand, took it from him and held it up to the light to peer at it. “What was I supposed to tell you?”

“How she really died.”

When he said it, out of the blue like that, without even thinking first, his aunt just gaped at him. Then she tensed up, as if braced against her red sweater. Her mouth was open, but she didn't say anything.

“I know she was murdered. I snooped. I saw the newspaper clipping. I know everything.”

She closed her mouth, handed him back the photograph, and sat down on the edge of his bed. “What do you mean, you snooped?” she said, as he had known she would. As if he was a little kid.

“Go ahead. Call me names.” He slumped down in the bed and put his hand over his eyes. What was the use? “Go ahead. I broke into the Garners', I stole their wine, I told lies, I snooped in your room and found the clipping about my mother. Who cares? Call me anything. Who gives a damn?”

Dorrie was silent. He lay there with his eyes squeezed shut. He wasn't going to say another word. He would remain without speaking until morning if he had to. He would concentrate on Nina. What else mattered? The silence stretched out, and he began to wonder what she was doing, how she was reacting. She shifted on the bed, and he opened his eyes a crack. She said, “Hugo?” and he took his hand away.

“What?”

“You didn't know about your mother?”

“That she was murdered? That she was a dope addict?” Saying the words made the damned tears come: damned, dammed tears. The stupid pun rolled uncontrollably into his mind. “Did I know that somebody killed her for drugs and it was all over the front page of the newspaper? They said she died in a car crash, like my dad,” he said. “Nobody told me anything. If I had known it I would have—” Would have what? Killed himself? Died of grief? He shook his head and said, “Shit,” willing the tears to dry up.

Dorrie put her hand on his arm, and he pulled away. “Hugo, I assumed you knew. I had no idea no one told you the truth. I figured Rose or someone—my father—”

It had never occurred to him that she thought he knew. His resentment seemed, all of a sudden, stupid. Typical, he thought. Hugo, the eternal jerk. “I'm sorry I snooped,” he said.

“Why did you?”

He wouldn't tell her it had been Nina's idea. “I wanted a picture of her.”

“Did you find one?”

“Yeah, the one in the newspaper.”
TEEN MOTHER.
God.

“I have some other photographs up in the attic,” she said. “Do you want me to go up and get them?”

He wiped his eyes on his bathrobe sleeve. “Yeah, I guess so.” She sat there watching him, frowning and looking thoughtful, with her chin resting on her fist. He had a terrible, mad impulse to fling himself against her and weep like a baby.

“I'll be right back,” she said, getting up.

When she was gone, he cleared his nose and breathed deeply until the crying stopped. He had turned fifteen at the end of last month. When would he stop crying at things like this? Making an idiot of himself. He wished that he were twenty-five, thirty, old and settled, with his crumpled life smoothed out and himself firmly in control of it. Nina by his side.

He heard Dorrie climb the attic stairs, then footsteps over his head. Something dragging across the floor. He waited. Nina had said he ought to keep a picture of his mother in a frame by his bed. He wondered if he should do that. Would he ever be able to look at it and think, That's my mother, without adding, the junkie, who was murdered?

Dorrie returned with a cigar box, smiling, anxious. “I forgot all these were up there,” she said, then gave him a shy look.
FAVORITE AUNT,
he thought, and felt guilty about the mug, meant for Rose. “Shall we go through them? Would you like to?”