Real Life (4 page)

Mr. Garner wasn't there; he had gone to Providence, to the dentist. But Mrs. Garner sat and watched with Hugo. It was interesting to him that his aunt wasn't unique; here was another person who had never seen a soap opera, and she said her husband hadn't either, that she was aware of. “Unless he has a whole secret life,” she said, smiling at Hugo as if that was pretty improbable.

“It must be living in the country,” he said. This was during the commercials. “I guess you get a little out of touch with things.” First they advertised a cake mix, and showed a big chocolate cake, kids snitching slices and then the mother, looking guilty (why?), taking the last one. Then there was a commercial for diet soda. Hugo hated the commercials—most of them, anyway. He hated the ones where some perky mom worried about her family's nutrition, for example, and the ones full of phony girls in bathing suits drinking soda from straws, with close-ups of their big lips.

“I guess we do,” Mrs. Garner said, still smiling. She was in her sixties, at least—tiny and pretty with plain white hair, something like the way he remembered his grandmother. “We're really out in the sticks here, you know. I don't suppose there's going to be much for you to do, Hugo.”

“It's pretty, though,” he said quickly. “The pond and everything. It's a lot nicer than Hartford.”

“You like living with your aunt?”

The Diet Pepsi commercial was winding down. The girls all stuck their hips out and shook their hair forward into their faces while they sang the jingle. “I've only been there a day,” he said to Mrs. Garner, with caution. “She's real nice, though.”

“If only she had a television.”

He looked at her gratefully. “That's it,” he said. “That's my only complaint. I mean, otherwise—”

Mrs. Garner nodded, and Tiffany appeared, crying. Hugo was glad he didn't have to finish the sentence.

When the show was over, he passed his notes over to Mrs. Garner. “Tiffany used to be just a minor character. Even last summer, she was just this waitress who worked at the club—that's the Grove Club, where everybody always goes for dinner and stuff. Of course, even then she was nice and everybody really liked her, but then she had an affair with Dr. Wendell—he's Claudette's stepfather? Claudette's the one with the necklace? Anyway, then she started being on all the time. It wasn't even gradual, which is what surprised me. She went boom! like that! from two minutes a week to seven or eight minutes a day, and now—” He shrugged, and indicated the flowered stationery. “She's definitely a star. See for yourself.”

“How long have you been keeping your records, Hugo?” she asked him.

They were sitting on a kind of enclosed porch, where the television was—the sun room, Mrs. Garner called it, but she had pulled the drapes to shut out the light, and it was like evening in there. Hugo thought he would like to live in that room, he wondered if he could move in, he would sleep on the short fat little sofa, he could do chores for them and watch television.

“What?”

“Your records,” Mrs. Garner said. “How far back do they go?”

“I started the first of this year. January third, to be exact. I didn't miss a day, even when I had the flu. I was really sweating, I was throwing up—I felt really awful, but I knew I'd feel worse if I screwed up my records. And then—” He stopped. He had been going to say he had managed to see it even on the Monday his grandfather was buried, that Mrs. Wylie had insisted he sit down to it with David. “Your life should go on as normally as possible,” she had said. “That way you'll be able to handle this better.” He didn't think he'd handled it particularly well. David had kept the records that day. Hugo had watched
Upton's Grove
in tears. One good thing about David was that you didn't have to hide things like that from him. Hugo wasn't even sure he'd noticed. “My friend Dave and I used to do it together.”

“I suppose it's educational, in its way.”

“My grandfather said it was. He said you don't find all that many good practical uses for math. Of course, he was an English professor.”

She gave him another glass of apple juice, and then he went outside to mow the lawn. He hauled the mower (a hand mower! first clothespins, then no television, now a hand mower!) out of the garage, thinking what a nice lady Mrs. Garner was. She hadn't hesitated: “Of course you can watch your program!” and led him into the sun room, talking all the way. “You're Dorrie's nephew. Well, she told us you'd be coming, I think. I didn't even know she had a nephew, but of course—and how about a cookie or two? a glass of apple juice? We had some blueberries, but I think—” He liked that kind of chatter; it was just being friendly, you didn't have to listen to it. He was afraid she'd continue it during
Upton's Grove
, but she was silent and attentive, and waited for the commercials to ask him questions. He wondered if he'd made a convert, and the possibility thrilled him.

He mowed an H, filled it in, mowed another. Years ago, his grandfather used to mow the lawn with a hand mower much like this one, old and on its last legs. Wheels, he corrected himself, snickering. Then his grandfather had got an electric mower. He never let Hugo use it, always mowed the lawn himself. Hugo mowed another H. He could look across the pond and see his aunt's house. From here it looked shabby, in need of paint, the yard full of tumbledown sheds. His underwear on the line. He thought of how she had laughed at him and wished he'd leave so she could work in peace. He began to miss his grandfather again. Not even a week ago he'd told himself he was finished with missing him, he was handling it, he was coping, adjusting, accepting—all the things Mrs. Wylie, who was a psychologist, had said he should do. And now it was back, rising in his throat like apple juice—sour but with an undertaste of sweetness that he wished he could just give in to, just huddle in a corner somewhere and cry it out all over again, huddle in the dark sun room or in the room he had shared with David. It was lonelier over there with a blood relative than it had been at the Wylies' house. What a life: a life of missing people. He pondered that for a minute, pleased with his pun, and then he began to list them.

First his mother. He couldn't remember her but he knew he'd missed her because Rose had said he'd cried for a week when she died, and wouldn't eat. Then Rose and his father. He'd been sometimes with one, sometimes with the other, sometimes with both together, so that when his father died and he was taken from Rose there were two of them to miss, not to mention his cousins—the little ones, not Shane and Monty. Then his grandmother in her coffin, looking stuffed, with too much rouge on her cheeks. Then his grandfather, and that was the most recent and hardest because he was older and knew what death was, as Mrs. Wylie put it. He did know what death was: Death is missing people, he thought. If he were the type to write poetry—which he wasn't, except when forced to in English class—he would begin a poem with the line “Life is missing people,” and end it with “Death is missing people,” and the idea would be that first you stress “missing” and then you stress “people.” He wondered how that could be done. A poet would know. David would know.

He came to the end of the lawn, and that distracted him. It had taken practically no time; the lawn wasn't big enough to pay for a half hour of
Upton's Grove
. He put the mower away and was searching for something else to do when Mrs. Garner came out the back door. “You don't have much lawn,” Hugo said. “It took me about two minutes.”

“Grass is too much trouble to keep up,” Mrs. Garner said, smiling. He wondered if it was the same smile she'd had before, if she had kept it on her face while she puttered around the house. “When you get to a certain age,” she added. How could she say that and smile at the same time? Hugo couldn't understand how old people, close to death, could stay so cheerful, could take so calmly their loss of strength, their inability to mow a lawn. Well, he would mow the Garners' for them; he would have done it even if they didn't have a television. And he'd weed the garden, shovel the walks, haul wood. He surveyed their property, looking for chores, and was struck by the prettiness of the place: fir trees making a green-black frieze for the yellow house, a red umbrella over a white table on the patio, whole armies of marigolds and some kind of blue flower, and down a little slope the pond with a willow drooping into it. He had a sudden mad vision of himself with a girl, rowing on the pond or sitting in the Garners' dim sun room eating cookies and watching
Upton's Grove
. Weeding in the garden together. Even watching his aunt make bowls and mugs. The girl would say, “I just love things like this,” reaching out one slender finger to touch a rim. He could hear her voice: “I really like your aunt, Hugo, she's such a character. And I love this pond. Could you row me across?” Her name would be—Tiffany? Susannah? Sandra? He had liked a girl named Sandra in seventh grade. “Where did you get the name Hugo?” she had asked him once. “It sounds like a made-up name. What's your real name, Hugo? Or are you a Russian spy?” All the kids had laughed, because that had been when the spies were on
Upton's Grove
, and everyone was waiting for Prescott to catch on before they kidnapped Tara. “What's your real name, Hugo?” Sandra had asked.

“Hugo Phineas Gilbert,” he had made himself reply, for love.

“Oh, my God,” Sandra had said.

“Do you want to come over tomorrow?” Mrs. Garner asked him. “I don't see why you couldn't come over every afternoon to watch your program.”

His heart was full. He realized that he'd taken it for granted that he'd come every day. What if she hadn't offered? “Oh, thanks, Mrs. Garner, thanks so much.”

She continued to smile. He wished she wasn't so old; it seemed wrong to have to feel sorry for such a nice person. “Tomorrow you'll meet Ross—my husband.”

“I'd like to do some more chores. Anything.”

“Maybe he can find something for you to do. It's awfully good of you to offer, Hugo.”

“It's the least I can do!”

There was a pause. She stood on the step, looking down at him, puzzled through her smile. “Your parents are dead, Hugo?”

“They've been dead for years,” he told her, astonished. It was such an old fact, he hadn't thought there was anyone who didn't know it. “They both died really young. I've been living with my grandfather.”

“Oh, I see. Dorrie's father.”

“He died in April.”

“Yes, I did know that.” She reached down one hand and touched his cheek. “And you're what? Twelve?”

“Fourteen,” he said, humiliated.

“Of course. You're older than twelve—what am I thinking? I see so few young people. Or at least, young people your age. My grandchildren are two and four.”

Jealousy first, then interest. He liked little kids. “I hope I'll get to meet them.”

“I'm sure you will.” She stood beaming down at him, as if she was waiting for something, and Hugo realized he should go. God, here he was yakking when she probably had to get dinner or something. “Well,” he said, and looked across the pond. What a dump. “I'd better get home.”

“You'll have to get used to calling it home, won't you?”

It was just what he had been thinking—or nearly. He had been thinking how it made him feel sick, to call his aunt's place home. “I'll see you tomorrow,” he said, trying to match her smile.

He could sense her watching him walk down to the boat and get in. He tried to wave at her, nearly lost an oar, and rowed in circles before he remembered how the oars felt when they were right. When he got back to his aunt's dock, Mrs. Garner had gone inside.

Dorrie was cleaning up when she saw Hugo rowing back. He'd been over there an hour, way past the end of his soap opera. She washed her hands and dialed the Garners' number.

“I apologize,” she said when Mary answered.

“Dorrie? Apologize for what?”

“My nephew. I assume he hit you for his soap fix.”

“He's delightful, Dorrie. We had juice and cookies together. He's the nicest boy. And I didn't even know he existed.”

“Well, he does,” she said, watching the erratic progress of her rowboat. “I'm his legal guardian now that my dad is dead. I hope he didn't make a nuisance of himself.”

“Dorrie, he mowed the lawn. I mean, he was so grateful, it was absurd. And he's a riot about that crazy
Upton's Corner
or whatever it is. Did you know he keeps records on it? He has all these statistics. Oh, Dorrie, he's a sweetheart. And so bright!”

“Don't let him take advantage of you.” She pictured Mary and Ross tied to chairs, gagged, their house ransacked, herself hiring lawyers, seeing social workers, bailing Hugo out. She heard Phineas's voice saying, “It was no big deal, and it wasn't even my fault, I don't see why all the fuss.”

“We have a little agreement, Hugo and I,” Mary said. “He's going to do some odd jobs for us in exchange for television time.”

“Well, see that he sticks to it, Mary. And don't let him hang around getting in your way. If you don't want him there just—”

“Dorrie! Don't be so down on the boy. We like children; he won't be a bit of a bother.” Reproachful: what had Hugo told her? That his auntie was a disagreeable old bitch who hated kids and wouldn't let him have any fun?

By the time she hung up, Hugo was pulling the boat up on the grass. She watched him turn it over and lean the oars against the tree. Good boy. Maybe not delightful or a sweetheart, but he was trying. It came to her suddenly that she should buy a new television and get the cable company to hook her up. Why not, for heaven's sake? She had the little inheritance from her father; she had put most of it into money markets for her old age and a college fund for Hugo, but surely she could abstract a couple of hundred for his present needs. The thought came and went, like a cramp, and she knew she wouldn't. Not yet, at least. Let him earn it, let him prove himself, she thought fiercely, having no idea what she meant.