Close to Hugh (13 page)

“I’m not like her,” Ann says. “Not in every way.”

“You’ve had a rough year.” Della is all warm good sense, one arm easing around to comfort Ann. “Jack’s a jerk, that’s all. You’re not wrecked,” she says, stable and kind. Ivy wants to lean on Della too for a while.

Weeping, weeping, Ann says, “Hugh loves her so much.”

“Yes, he does. You want Jason to love you like that, so it’s—a burden?”

“No, no—I’m so much like her, though, I
am
. She was more my mother than my real mother ever was, and now she’s dying—” Ann bursts out again, real carrying-on sobs now. She catches herself back from hysterics and grabs one of the loose Kleenexes lying around on the floor. Which she provides herself with in advance because she knows
she’s going to woo-hoo-hoo within a few minutes of settling anywhere. A sad, semi-freddo state of affairs.

She blows her nose, and Ivy can see her strain away from Della’s kindness, brittling up again; but Della’s arm stays firm. “Honey, I hate to ask, but where’s all the furniture?”

Ann says nothing. Then—this is strange—she laughs. “I’m just trying to figure out how to carry on here, and I’m not at all happy.”

Ivy wants to laugh too, but at the same time she knows that state, that stretched-out time of not being at all happy, not ever, no matter how much cake you eat.

“Nobody is,” Della says sadly.

And that snaps Ann’s fragile temper. “Oh, fuck
off
.”

Della straightens up herself, sits apart. Seems like she too felt a need for bracing. “For example, Ken—”

But Ann is on her feet, and flying up the stairs. “I don’t want to hear a word about what
Ken says
, you
wife
!” she flings back at Della—and almost falls over Ivy, whose knees unfold too slowly to get out of the way.

Ann grabs the banister to steady herself and stands, staring at Ivy. The pause, or the surprise, gives her back some poise. She calls lightly down to Della. “Or what
you
say either. Look at Ken. How happy is your own husband?”

Self-contained again, she glides up the last steps and down to the end of the hall, to her new un-master bedroom; she does not even slam the door.

Oh, impossible. Ivy hopes with all her heart that Della has not seen her hiding there. Humiliating, to be caught eavesdropping, and when she liked her so much, too. She hears Della clamber to her feet and stand, breathing, in the living room.

On the stairs, Ivy stays still, waiting her out, invisible.

8. HUGH’S SORRY NOW

It has to be done, but Hugh can’t make himself shut up the gallery and walk over to Burton’s. To
Newell’s
, he corrects himself. But no: Newell’s place no longer.

He hates Burton. The feeling shocks him. Come on. He’s just an old guy, just an old—

An old molester. Stop. You can’t keep thinking like this unless you’re planning to do something about it. And there is nothing to be done.

A relief to see Della climb the steps, one hand rising automatically to stop the bell from tinkling. “Hey,” she says. “I thought you might still be here.”

“It’s like you’re psychic,” he says, his mood improved. Della gives him the opposite of the heebie-jeebies. Her eyes are red, but she seems to be over her earlier spasm of sadness, or whatever drove her away from the teenage costume try-on. Is Ken being a jackass? Then Hugh will have to punch him too, which would be sad because he likes Ken.

“Thanks for proofing the flyer text,” Della says, giving him a sideways look, a fond horse, examining.

“Come for a walk?” he asks her.

“At your service,” she says. “Elle’s out with her peeps and Ken’s still away.”

“But not dinner.”

“No, so I gather. Ruth tells me,” she says, lightly, “that you are having dinner with Mrs. Lovett. Some people might hesitate.”

“She’s not doing the cooking,” he says.

“I met her. She seems very nice.”

“That’s tepid.”

“Just careful of you, that’s all. Assessing the minefield.”

“How did Ken’s rappelling go?” (Speaking of minefields, Hugh thinks.)

“I guess they’d have told me if he fell off the cliff.” Her tone, her face, precludes chat re: Ken. “How’s Mimi today?”

“Pretty good, we talked about you, the piano—then she went to pieces.”

“I’ll go over at dinnertime, keep her company.”

“You’re kind. She— I’d be glad.” Hugh flips the sign and twists the key, and they walk along the early evening street in good companionship, through the misty air.

“I was at Ann’s this afternoon,” Della says. “Interfering.”

“Hard to imagine,” he says, and she swats him.

“Telling her off. I didn’t intend to, but she’s covering her walls with black marker.”

“I saw.” Hugh slips up onto a low stone wall to avoid a sidewalk puddle.

Della takes the low road, down into the street. “Marker is a bitch to paint over, that’s all I know. But I didn’t say that.”

“Old Ann. Can’t live with her, can’t tell her anything.”

The spines of yellow leaves show red against the concrete sidewalk. From square to square the markings vary, official stamps or twig-dragged lines; very occasionally, a small handprint. Hugh could draw a map showing all the handprints in town. One day jackhammers will tear them out for something new, moving sidewalks or jetpacks or hydraulic tubes to swoop you from place to place like in old department stores, everything old new again.

“I’m a fogey now,” he tells Della. “I call everybody Old So-and-so, now. Like goddamn Holden Caulfield or something.”

“Makes you sound like Newell. It’s just a tic, or a phase.”

“Or aphasia. Brain rust of some kind. I’ve got to go apologize to Burton.”

“What are you going to say?”

Hugh wheels their formation to the left, into the Bloomsday flower shop. “Here are some nice flowers, Burton.”

“Good plan.”

They pick through the stock. While Della buys some dried orange lanterns, Hugh ponders roses and their meaning. Yellow, according to the card, conveys friendship, jealousy, infidelity, apology, a broken heart, intense emotion, dying love, extreme betrayal.

“Okay,” he says, and takes three dozen.

It’s only another block to Deer Park, Newell’s condo.

Della refuses to come up, but she takes his hand. “They get along pretty well, don’t be so mad,” she says. “Look at Ann—an object lesson on how not to take a breakup. Don’t you be the lesson on how not to take a hookup.”

“You see things so clearly,” Hugh says. Respect for her good sense in his heart, even if it doesn’t make it into his tone.

“Wish I could see Ken so clearly.” She turns down to the river with her arms full of orange bells. “Wish you could.”

A tickle of worry scratches Hugh’s ear. He brushes it away.

Up the long flight of private stairs to Newell’s shining kingdom. Glossy hedge like a maze shunts him along the wall of glass, great panes flaming in the setting sun. Hugh can’t see whether anyone is watching from inside as he comes forward with his suitor’s gift.

In fact it’s easy enough. Burton has worn pale yellow to accentuate the brilliant blue-black of his eye, swollen to magnificence. Hugh schools himself to civil contrition, unless there’s talk of suing him for assault, but the plum-black mess of that eye makes the words honest: “Burton, you look— I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry, I am really sorry.”

There’s a pause, just long enough for Burton to measure the truth of that, to judge it. Then he swings an arm wide, and takes the flowers. “For
me!
” He smiles, showing all his yellowy teeth for once; by that Hugh can tell he really is pleased. “You are a rascal, first to use your fists, instead of your words, and then to bribe me so magnificently.
You
know, as not
everybody
knows, that a mere dozen is stingy. Let me see to these right away. I feel, dear Hugh— an increased friendliness toward you after our altercation, as those who engage in prizefighting tell me is quite common.”

Not much of an altercation, Hugh can’t help thinking as he moves with Burton to the sink in the jet-black island. All that happened was I knocked you down.

But he doesn’t let that loose, and Newell comes back with a bottle and three glasses. “Almost as if you knew Hugh was coming,” Burton cries archly. Or maybe that was “…  as if you-know-who was coming!”

Newell is in running gear. Burton displays him: “Boy’s off to do his daily ten K. The obligations of success. You could do with a
K
or two yourself, or do you scorn the physical entirely, Hugh?”

Nothing to say to that, Hugh thinks. A) it’s true, and B) he’s still on sufferance, being re-accepted into the circle of intimate inferiors to whom Burton doles out pinpricks.

But A) it’s certainly true. He sits in his slackness.

They give Hugh the rundown on the master class: how little talent there is, from Burton; from Newell, how surprisingly good the kids are. Burton rails about the impossibility of musical theatre. “Not a voice among them! I’m seriously thinking
Streetcar
, an avant-garde imagining, thirteen ways of looking at
desire
—a tantalizing one-two, a switcheroo.”

Newell looks patient and partly amused.

“None of them can
sing
, Boy! I can’t, I cannot spend a whole month working with clodhoppers who can’t dance, don’t ask them, who will
not
open their mouths, and couldn’t hold a tune with a pair of filigree sugar tongs.”

“Aren’t you contractually obligated?” Hugh asks.

“I’m changing the scenes, that’s all. We do have some talent—the boy Orion, for example—although not, dear
God
, in the musical theatre line. Light years from what these children should be working toward.
Glee
’s an aberration. There’s not the smallest chance that any of these tykes will be asked or expected to sing or God knows
dance
in their future lives, whether packing groceries for the A&P or in some regional summer repertory theatre troupe-slash-commune in Pisspassthequodit, Maine.”

“We are contractually obligated,” Newell says. “Yes.” He ties his gel-packed, light-filled silver-sided running shoes, a B-list god, going for a run.

Burton puts a loving arm around Newell’s bent neck and squeezes, hard. “
Streetcar
—I’ve got such a vision! We could do these students some real good.”

Hugh thought those same words last night, that Newell could do Orion some real good. But not Burton— who’s getting excited, enlisting Hugh in the new idea. “To explore what Tom was really getting to the root of!” (Calling him Tom, not Tennessee, as if he knew him. Maybe he did, he’s old enough.) “I’m thinking of an X’d cast, you know: male Blanche, Stella—that giant girl Savaya, what is she, six-two? Contemplate the violence inherent in that system!”

Perhaps there’s something actually wrong with Burton, Hugh thinks. Beyond the usual psychosis; maybe he’s sick. There’s a weird dark smudge across his eyes, his temples. Or else, okay—that’s probably bruising from
the punch. Hugh drains his extremely good scotch in one swallow, and gets up to go. “Appointment,” he explains, not wanting to say more.

Newell must have heard him talking to Ivy last night, but says nothing.

Burton, though—damned Burton never misses a trick. “An ap
point
ment! Well! Give the lady our best regards, and make sure to ask about her recent performances. I understand there was a request for a remount of her one-woman I of O show, an Elizabeth Bishop bio-epic, at the National—ask her how
that
went.” No attempt on Burton’s part to disguise his own tone: malicious, leering, greedy for the mortification of others.

Hugh has no idea what he’s talking about, but doesn’t need Newell to say, “Leave it alone, Ansel.”

Burton giggles and leaps up to rearrange the yellow roses in the great square crystal vase.
Friendship, jealousy, infidelity, apology, a broken heart, intense emotion, dying love, extreme betrayal
.

“Okay,” Hugh says. His apology is over. “I’ll be sure to report back any personal agony she may confide.” He kept his shoes on, he can walk straight out.

Newell follows him onto the terrace, though.

Now, out of Burton’s gravitational pull, Hugh is ashamed. But won’t apologize again. “Don’t bother excusing him,” he says. “I don’t like people who like humiliation.”

It’s a short walk across the sifted stones.

“Everybody has hard stuff,” Newell says. “Everybody is stupid sometimes.”

Hugh reaches the stairhead.

Newell tries again. “Everybody has bruises. Not just him, me too. And look at you! Your mother when you were a kid—even now! That didn’t get better, but you’ve never cut her loose, have you?”

“She is my
mother
,” Hugh says. (Not my molester, he wants to shout. But still, always, knows he must not say.) He starts down the stone steps.

Newell stands there at the top of the stairs. “Maybe you just don’t like gay people. Did you ever consider that?”

That hurts Hugh. “I don’t know how you even dare to suggest that. For example, however little at the moment, I like you.”

“But you only like the parts of me that don’t seem really gay.”

Hugh says, stiffly: “I like the parts of you that are human. I don’t care about your sexuality.”

“Weirdly, all of me is human. Including my—sexuality.”

Hugh is almost at the bottom of the stone steps. “I like everything about you, I always have. I just—don’t—like—Burton.”

“Well, you’ve got to,” Newell says. His voice is not raised, but its skill and beauty carry it down the stairs to nestle in Hugh’s ear, beside the gadfly Della set there earlier.

Got to like Burton, can’t like Ken.

(ORION)

Down along the grey path by the river, tiny pebbles moving sliding underfoot, the best bike in the world and the long ride, mind into rapture, everything in the body awake and moving, mercury sliding, bones and sinew triumphant. No boss can best this breasting of the autumn air. Leaf mould, water, silver air that slips through cells, the whole body breathing
fall, fall, fall—