Close to Hugh (37 page)

Summoned by the power of his name, Gerald walks in. Five-thirty, he must have left his staff to sell. “Like the look of this,” he says, hovering at the Mighton.

“A large piece,” Hugh says. “Overpowering—not easy to live with.”

Gerald steps toward it, backs away, attempting judicious distance. Hugh’s heart sags. “My—we—” Gerald’s throat works to produce a sound, fails. Hard to watch. Then nothing.

Hugh rushes in. “It’s an investment piece, no question—but steep, at ninety. I wonder, Gerald, if you might be happier with something from Gareth Pindar’s gallery, something a little less demanding.”

Night and day the dark gates stand open
, the plaque reads. Around the blazing, ferocious crack of blue-white light down the middle, the dark gates gape. Thousands of shards and fragmentary details woven and soldered into those giant gates, open but not wide open, nothing generous about them. The blue glare down the middle is very hard to take.

Gerald is staring too. Head a-tilt. The patron’s stare that after all these years still irritates Hugh—evaluative, cow-eyed pretend-thinking. But
maybe Gerald is not-thinking of his wife, or of Toby. Hugh feels tears start into his eyes and turns quickly away, terribly embarrassed. It’s his head, the unsteadiness of everything. He’s all right when Ivy’s there, but otherwise he falls to pieces. All the thousand faces in the gates.

He ought to be with Mimi.

Gerald stands stubbornly planted, silent, staring. Hugh goes back to the desk. He sits holding his head with one cupped hand until a shuffling noise at the communicating door between the stores catches his attention. Jasper. Wisps of white hair straight up on one side, matted flat on the other, like he’s been asleep on his desk.

He pokes a full glass through the crack at Hugh. “Care for a taster? A cheeky Malbec.”

“No, thanks. Conrad says no booze till my head gets better.”

“Your loss, your loss. Here’s looking up your old address!” Jasper is well-to-do, as they used to say about drunks. Three sheets to the wind.

Hugh returns the salute, raising his coffee cup.

“Worried,” Jasper says, looking up the store to where the Mighton hangs, lessening, cheapening everything else in the place.

“Well, no more than usual, I guess,” Hugh says.

“No, no,
I’m
worried.” Jasper whispers, hugely:
“About Gerald.”

Hugh shakes his head, motions with it to Gerald, wishes he hadn’t tried that motion.

“That he’ll — himself. You know.” Jasper draws a shaky old finger across his throat.

Even though it is not funny, Hugh almost laughs. “Quit it!” he says, shaking his head. He goes to the framing room to finish.

Ruth is there, stacking the certificates in a box. “Looks like Ivy was a dab hand with these! Lucky you, to find a good apprentice.”

Hugh throws his hands in the air, winces again. “Della’s with Mimi. You’re doing all the work. What’s left?”

Ruth looks at him, sparkle-eyed. She’s a bucket of vim. “Go put an ice pack on that head, that’s what. Did I hear Gerald out there? I’m going out to his place to help him bundle up some things for the Goodwill.” She leans forward, like Jasper in her whispering.
“Her things, and the boy’s.”

As he goes upstairs, Hugh hears Ruth calling out to Gerald in the front, “Won’t be a minute. I brought some Hallowe’en taffy; you never know—might get some trick-or-treaters out at your place.”

(L)

Her mom swings into the driveway, late.
It’s in my phone
, she always says, and yet she is always late. Grey circles under her eyes. She spent all last night in the dining room working on boats, and now she’s been looking after Mimi. After whatever happened with Dad.

Slide in, buckle up, etc. Her mom grinds the clutch and backs out of the driveway. Two lurching turns later, there’s Savaya’s house. L texts: > savaya savaya let down your long hair. Then settles in to wait, because Savaya always takes forever too. The only person in the world you don’t have to wait for, in fact, is Jason.

Her mom is fiddling with her phone, so the music keeps changing.
Here Comes the Sun
, that’s not going to cheer anybody up. L grabs the phone and dials it round to Hawaiian guitar, which has proved soothing in the past. “We need to stop at FairGrounds for Savaya to get her cheque, ’kay?”

Savaya runs down the walk, waving behind her to April and Justice, whose real name is Scott. April’s white-blonde hair is teased, and she’s got over-mascaraed, spooky, black tear-stained eyes; Scott is in a sheet with cut-out eyeholes. They’ve been making sponge toffee for trick-or-treat, and the smell comes pouring out of the house, dark, heavy, burnt. Savaya used to hate it, she wanted to give out bags of chips, but now everybody goes by to get some famous organic sponge toffee and she’s proud of it. They make it with fair-trade sucanat. They tried locally sourced sugar beets one year, but the toffee never set.

L’s mom waves up at the porch. “Who’s April dressed as, Savaya?”

“Courtney Love. On a rough day, I guess. And my dad’s Kurt Cobain.”

Funny, very funny. Her mom laughs too loudly. But sad too.

“Courtney Love had
plastic surgery
,” L tells Savaya, another piece of tragedy.

Her mom says, “That’s not surprising.”

“She was a riot grrrl!”

“But she has a lot of money. Money likes plastic surgery. All those grrrls are getting to the age now where they look in the mirror and think, I wouldn’t have to look like this if I had a little bit of work done.” L’s mother has no sense of anything but herself. Everything is filtered through approval/disapproval. Just because she wouldn’t do plastic
surgery herself or get a decent haircut or use some fucking moisturizer, anyone who does is condemned.

Savaya bubbles over into the gap between the seats, straining her seatbelt. “Nevaeh’s mom called me!” L turns to stare at her. “I know! Like,
never before!”
Savaya twirls her head. “Her dad is at the hospital so her mom had to do the calling, we can visit her tomorrow after noon. They’re keeping her in till Monday to put pins in her ankle.”

As usual, L’s mom cannot keep it in. “How many of these girls end up in hospital! I really do have suspicions of the whole cutting thing, these kids need to take up art, find something other than themselves to obsess over.”

“Mom, this is not at all helpful.” Because a) she knows nothing about cutting, and b) shut
up
. “Anyway, she’s not—”

“Reading a book helps with depression better than TV ever could, or the internet.”

The car stops, FairGrounds. Savaya springs out, but L can’t stop the lava boiling out of her mouth. “You are
so crazy!
Jeez—nobody in the world makes me as mad as you do!”

Shit, shit, shit, there goes the Buddhist vow. Give her a loving, gag-me, big-toothed smile, maybe she won’t start sobbing while Savaya can still hear.

L’s mom smiles back, in the brave precursor-to-tears way. She says, “Sorry, sorry.”

Fuck!
L kicks the glove compartment with her flowery vine-laced shoe. “You’re doing it again—you’re apologizing when you didn’t
do
anything! It was me who was crabby. What the fuck, Mom!” Her mom just sits there staring out the window.
“Dad
left, you didn’t leave! Anyway you always do that, you just apologize no matter what, so you’re not at fault.”

“And am I?”

“No! I don’t know what’s going on, but he’s still my— He’s not crazy, he wouldn’t!”

A person deserves a little faith. Of course he is not having a thing with Jenny, for fuck’s sake. L slams the door open and stands on the wet pavement for a second, then leans down into the car. “Fifteen minutes, half an hour? Go see Hugh for a while.”

She runs up the stairs onto the FairGrounds porch, shaking the rain from her flying feet, going, going.

(DELLA)

oh L so sorry Mimi says sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry  I say sorry too

nothing to do but wait don’t dare go back to Hugh’s  in case Mighton

Jasper’s still open lights on                            one light, desk lamp

junkshop shelves shadow into cross-hatch

orange glow holds Jasper’s jack-o’-lantern face                            devil

his lantern eyes don’t change                              slow shift  refocus
  

    Happy Hallowe’en! Glass of cheer?
 

empty mouth empty eyes                  hand to glass a puppet moving

hands it across the counter with a leer—  did he see Mighton, biting?

wine dark, strong                                         drink up
 

Another?
One for my baby one more for my baby …  gloomy listen to me
 

he stares into the middle distance

does not recognize me                            the stab of hurt is sharp

the store has no floor                                        because familiar

because Dad

back out  not fair to look when he is in this state                      devil

quarters taped to his skin lucky cat on the counter

spells to draw money to him  hopeless

Ruth frets as stuck with him                    as Hugh feels stuck with her

Hugh must be at Mimi’s  needs to be  black streets wind pushes leaves

straggling troops a band of monsters              shepherded by a ghoul

shouts, streets over, short glittery children                      each house

lit and garnished

here, adults running

black leather man and woman    the man’s run           is that Ken

running hand in hand     with Jenny?

they turn

their unmasked faces young

younger than Cobain

9. HUGH HAS GOT MY GOLDEN ARM

Mimi’s eyes open—searching, beseeching—when Hugh comes into the room. A hand comes from under the blankets, a gesture. Thin-turned forearm half-blue, tape from a needle wound on the back of her blue-ivory hand. Does she know you, though, except as part of herself?

Hugh kneels. He puts the hand to his lips. So smooth it’s frictionless, soft as the lining of her old sable coat. The one she wore to get the groceries, when they lived in the highrise on Avenue Road where a cabby delivered the groceries to the lobby. Coat on over her nightgown, feet shoved into boots for the elevator ride: an outing, her hand reaching for him at the door, laughing in fright. He helped with the door, with the buttons. He was her knight. Until someone realized they hadn’t left the apartment for a month or three. Who rescued them that time? How old was he, six? He remembers the apartment: creamy white carpet, floor-to-ceiling windows, a white plastic chair like an egg on a chain, where he read. Beautiful books came to the lobby too, and cartons of cigarettes, bottles, a bag of limes. Then she got a little better, a stream of visitors came, then babysitters, then she was working all the time. But still needed help dressing in the mornings and in the evenings, before the other babysitters came. A parade of faceless strange-smelling women showing him their scars.

Forgive her. It’s not like she had any choice. Hugh kisses her hand again. This time Mimi motions to the button; he presses to make the bed-head rise. She points, or ghost-points, to a drinking cup with a bent straw. He puts it to her mouth. She drinks dutifully and smiles around the straw. “…  to the last drop,” she whispers, throaty as her old commercial.

Hugh laughs, at her insouciance, at the thread of the well-loved voice back to sense and sanity if not volume. Pushing the cup away, her own hand catches her eye. She spreads the fingers, disapproving.

“Shall I do your hands?”

She nods, pleased, so he pulls the metal bedside drawer open to find
her cream and a small glass file, knowing they are there because he packed them at her apartment and unpacked them here. One hand at a time, he covers the frail skin with a veil of Joy, gently pushing the skin down to reveal the moons on each fingernail, as she likes him to do. The hands are the map to her death, coming soon. Pink gone from the nails, but they are still pretty almonds. Her rings, left in the drawer, rattle loose when he pulls it open to replace the cream.

Mimi looks at her hands again, still dissatisfied. She turns her head slowly to the drawer, eyebrows up a little. “Polish?”

He laughs, it’s so nice to hear ordinary sense out of her. He shows her a bottle of topcoat; she makes a sad mouth. The deep pink she’s always used is not allowed. Nurses need to see the blue of her fingernails. He shakes the topcoat to make the tiny rattle. Mimi spreads a docile hand on the over-bed table. Even strokes, enough bead on the brush. He has been schooled in manicure. He holds each finger in turn and thinks that he might lean his head down on the bed and cry for ten years, except that would not do any good, so he does not.

“It’s Hallowe’en,” he says, tidying the last finger. “They give you any candy?”

Her eyes reproach him. She loves candy. “Ghost story,” she says.

Obediently, he starts off on the first campfire one that occurs to him. “There once was a man who had a beautiful wife, and this wife had a golden arm. They lived happily together, but after a time she fell ill, and he nursed her.” He forgot about the necessary death. But there is death in all ghost stories. She’s listening.

“Knowing she was near death, the wife said, ‘Promise you will bury my golden arm with me,’ and he said, ‘Of course I will.’ When the day came that she died, he did as she had asked. But as time went by, the man thought to himself, here I am poor and grieving, with doctor’s bills to pay. My wife is dead, she will not know, she does not need it now. So he went to the cemetery in the dark of night and dug down to her grave. He opened her coffin, and from her body he took the golden arm. He carried it home through the darkness, fearful at every step, because the night was wild and stormy. Twice, he thought he heard someone calling, and stopped to listen: nothing but the wind, or an owl calling
whoo, whoooo
. When he reached his house he ran straight up to bed. He lay the golden arm beside him where his wife had lain for so long, and pulled the covers
up over his head. Then he heard the voice again, from far away, calling,
Who, who … who has taken my golden arm? Give me back my golden arm.”