Close to Hugh (44 page)

L nods to Hugh, her hands wide, helpless.

“Thought he’d never leave,” Hugh says. He pulls out his papers: the menu, doodled around the sides like a French restaurant, and eight pages of recipes. “Okay, I’ve had a lot of stuff going on over the last few weeks. So instead, I thought about dinner.”

L comes to the kitchen to look over his shoulder. Foolish, proud of his angular calligraphy, of his cooking, of his cake conceit, he lets her see the front page:

ANNIVERSARY DINNER

TRANSFORMATION ~ TROMPE L’OEIL

aperitif cake

cake salé    mushroom macarons

main cake

sushi cake    seafood crêpe cake

meatloaf petits fours    potato tortilla cake

dessert cake

fried eggs & toast    baked potatoes

cake surprise

macaron mushrooms    30-year-old port

He runs down the list, ticking as he goes. “Okay,
cake salé
, that’s a French savoury bread with olives, made it last week, thawing now, we’ll
serve it warm with little fake-beer cocktails. Sushi cake, last thing this afternoon, the seafood filling too; but we’ll make the crêpes now. Meatloaf petits fours, ready for warming in the oven—red currant glaze for them, that’s easy. Meringue for the fried eggs, in the oven now. Have to make curd for the yolks. Baked potatoes, that will be your job: scoop and shape the ice cream, refreeze, roll in cocoa at the last minute.”

“Homemade ice cream?” L asks.

Hugh rolls his eyes. “Okay, look, I’ve been run off my feet—my
mother
. It’s the best bought, they’ll never know. Take this, you can start the tortilla cake. Mandoline—be careful.”

L takes the recipe, eyes it. “I love potato tortilla. Is it sit-down? Can I do place cards?”

“Perfect. Let’s get busy—it’s almost nine, and I have to run over to see Mimi at ten.”

They get busy.

3. MASTER CLASS: EARNEST

Freed from the low-ceilinged workshop room because it’s Saturday, the master class moves into the theatre. On stage, focused pools of spotlight warm the long table. The students are gathered. Ivy settles into her own name-tagged seat at one end of the table.

The scuffed black-painted stage, dotted with phosphorescent tape for the actors’ marks, the ceiling vanishing in blackness high above—this is home, even if it can’t be her home anymore. She’s on the verge of weeping. Stupid. She sits still and regains control.

Hovering, Jason finds his name and sits across from her. So he’s been seconded to the class. At the other end of the table, Orion sits facing Savaya: for the
Blue Bird
brother and sister, Mytyl and Tyltyl? Both subdued, looking no happier than she must herself.

The murmurs die away into the theatre’s hush. With a change of the lights, Burton and Newell make their entrance from the wings. Oh, this is no
Blue Bird
.

They’re both in black: Newell in a plain leather jacket, Burton in showy black velvet with a Nehru collar. Ivy is amused to see Jason giving it the onceover, and approving. Burton wears a large green scarab ring, jade or aventurine mounted in gold—a beautiful piece Ivy hasn’t seen before. His hand moves self-consciously to display it. Must be a new acquisition. He has a sprig of lily of the valley in his buttonhole, and carries a bile-green carnation.

Newell sits at the foot of the long table, beside Ivy.

At the head, with Orion on his ring-heavy right hand, and Savaya on his left, Burton stands to declaim: “Our week of exploration culminates in today’s play. Yes, a new play.”

Everyone around the table takes this news in character: Sheridan Tooley (still red-eyed from glitter) smirks, Savaya glows, Mikayla (still white-faced from drink) shrinks. Orion and Jason look at the table in front of them. Ivy wishes she’d been so unflappable at that age.

Burton raises his hand, and She-Terry and He-Terry emerge from the wings, bearing a stack of scripts. They split behind Burton and go along the table, delivering scripts to each place, choreographed. The Terrys look a little less drawn than usual. Burton must have calmed their fears. The stacks deplete, until at last a script arrives at Ivy’s hand:
The Importance of Being Earnest
. What secret runs under this one? Well, that the boys are gay.

As if hearing her thought, Burton purrs, “The Love that dare not speak its name …” He takes the stage, almost noble in a pool of golden light. “Let us embark,” he says, “on this darkly, deliciously subversive play, from a writer of genuine genius, leader of the Aesthetic and Decadent movements at the
fin de siècle
. On the surface, a heterosexual drawing-room comedy, arguably the pinnacle of that form.” Burton pauses to contemplate bliss. “But beneath the froth lies secret depth, a flood of homoerotic reference hidden in plain sight, as it was in their society. A code understood by half the audience.” He waves his flower. “Wilde called the green carnation he wore ‘the arsenic flower of an exquisite life.’ The badge of the Aesthetes’ movement, the poisonous colour of absinthe.” A line from a Hemingway story comes into Ivy’s head: “Everything tastes of licorice, especially all the things you’ve waited so long for, like absinthe.” Wouldn’t it be nice to be in a Hemingway story right now. Cool water, a stab of Anis del Toro.

“Now, to
Earnest
. Wilde himself summed up the play: ‘The first act is ingenious, the second beautiful, the third abominably clever.’ ” Burton bows to his right, green ring gleaming. “Ingenious, beautiful, abominably clever: a pocket guide to the constellation of Orion.”

Orion glances up, coolly registering appreciation, even gratitude, for the compliment, and then returns to his script. Watching, Ivy is disturbed both by Burton’s strangely placed flattery and by Orion’s careful nonreaction. Jason is watching too, she sees. And Newell.

Burton continues, confident in his erudition. “It is a comedy of current manners; better-written than but not unlike
Will and Grace
or
Modern Family
, which also boast gay characters. With this difference: though we still find reasons for concealment—infidelity, or the unsuitable age or station of partner—in those days, the consequence of ‘the Love that dare not speak its name’ was prison. Wilde was charged with sodomy mere weeks after the play opened, sentenced to two years’ hard labour, and died in exile shortly afterward his release, disgraced, poor and broken.”

Silence around the table, Burton’s desired effect. In the silence, he casts the play. “Orion will play Jack Worthing, also known as Ernest. Sheridan Tooley, Algernon,
also
also known as Ernest. Savaya, cool and lovely Gwendolyn. Mikayla, piquant Cecily. And because there’s nothing like a dame, Newell will embody Lady Bracknell, Gwendolyn’s ferocious Mama. When we travel to the country in the second act, Jason will undertake Canon Chasuble—and Ivy, my dear, can I trouble you to tackle Miss Prism? Thank you.”

Ivy looks down at her script. After all she
is
Miss Prism, to the life.

Jewel of the English theatre. It is going to be a long day.

4. THE VERY THOUGHT OF HUGH

Hugh watches Mimi sleep, watery morning light falling on translucent, blueish skin. Just as he watched when he was a kid, when some pill had had the desired effect. Her mouth a little open. No more foolish-looking now than she was back then. If anything she looks younger now, made childlike by the looming transformation. The fret and fray of life floating away.

Almost too late, now, to tell her how much he loves her. She can’t hear, hasn’t heard him all day. Lost in chemical sleep, death’s waiting-room. Why was he reluctant or shy to say so—what anger, what resentment could still plague him now? Let it drop away. Everything in his heart and body is turning sadly down, dropping as she is dropping away now. All those stupid years of being cruel to her, distant, less than a son. She was never less than a mother. Or at least. Well. Always loving if not always capable.

Ruth tiptoes in. He tries not to be irritated.

“Well!” she whispers. “She’s looking lovely.” She is not. She looks like death.

“I was at Ian Mighton’s first thing this morning,” Ruth says, as if explaining where she’s been. Her voice lowers: “He had a
friend
over.”

Hugh lets that go unremarked. Unlike Ruth to mention that—there’s nothing new about Mighton having a
friend
. She trots round the bed to sit on the other side, fidgets with the lines.

Hugh gets up. “Since you’re here, I’ll go back to work on dinner—Della and Ken’s party tonight, remember? L’s helping, we’re making something specially for you.”

Ruth stares down at the taut sheet, smooths it over Mimi’s knee. “Well, I just wonder,” she says. “I wondered, this morning. You talk to Della, see what she says.”

The streets are drying under lemony sunlight. Two kinds of curd to make for the trompe l’oeil egg yolks: lemon and blood orange. Half an hour each, start to finish? He breaks into a jog. Round the corner, there’s
Jasper on the porch, sweeping away dead leaves. Okay, as long as he stays off that ladder.

I opened up for you
, Jasper mimes. Always a little pale and shaky on a Saturday morning. No sign of him around town last night, he must have fallen into a stupor early on. Once Hugh is close enough: “You have a customer! I kept an eye on him, don’t worry.”

It’s Gerald. “Sorry,” Hugh says as he enters the gallery, a little out of breath from running. “I’m actually closed today, what with my mother, and it’s Della’s—” No need to go into all this. “Something quick I can help you with, though?”

No quick left in Gerald, now. No hale-fellowship, no deal-clinching. He always used to crowd slightly inside your personal shield. Now he is far away. He points vaguely to Mighton’s
Dark Gates
. Hugh waits, forcing himself to be patient.

Gerald stares up at the massive piece. “You have another client?”

“Well, Newell has expressed an interest.”

Another wait. Then, “There’s an empty wall at the house, and this …”

Okay, are you a fellow human being? In the presence of someone who has been stabbed by fate, by life, his wife, his son, can you stand separate, apart? Hugh puts a hand on Gerald’s big shoulder. “You sure this is what you want, what you need?”

Gerald shifts and trembles. His face does not alter its gaze.

“If you need to fill that space, I’ll help you,” Hugh says. “But give it time. Newell’s not in a hurry. Mighton has work to do here in town, teaching, selling his house. He’ll be around. We could talk about a commission, if it’s his style you like. Might be more expensive,” he forces himself to say. “But I’d hate to see you living with a work so—catastrophic.”

“It might be hard to live with,” Gerald says. His voice is calm, but his face twists in the effort not to weep.

The door bangs, Della blows in from the front porch. Wild hair, wild eyes. What now?

Seeing Gerald she pulls her own strife inward. Hugh lets him go; the big man moves away, passes Della with a half-raised hand, and wanders out. A drone bee, drunk on lilies. Through the window they watch him halt on the sidewalk, head moving, then turn away from the dealership and walk off toward the river.

Hugh says, “Hope he’s not going to drown himself.” Then to Della, “How are you?” He can’t take her upstairs, or into the framing room, where the boats are all laid out.

L saves the day: she comes running down the stairs and leaps for Della. “
Mamacita
! Can you take me to see Nevaeh before her operation? They’re putting six pins in her ankle, she won’t be able to do dance for months, can you take me now, please, please?”

Della wraps her arms around her daughter. Speaks over her head, to Hugh: “I want you to know—” To L: “Baby Girl, go out to the car, give me two seconds.”

L obeys, giving Hugh one silent
The Scream
behind Della’s back.

“About Ken,” Della says quickly, when the door closes. “Being at Jenny’s.”

Hugh doesn’t know what to say. You have to say something. “I don’t believe it.” That took too long. “I mean, I know he’s been staying out there, but it’s just not—”

She nods. “I know. But look at Jack, with that nice young woman.”

“Okay, but Jack was married to
Ann
. As someone who has held that position, I have to say that pretty much any nice young woman would do. Ann is not you. Ken’s not Jack. You were horribilizing.”

“No. He could,” she says, being fair. “Anybody could. But he’d never do it like this.”

“No.”

“So I just wanted to say I’ll try to bring him tonight.”

“Good!” Hugh says. “That’s good.”

At the door, she pauses. “Have you talked to Ruth today?”

“She’s at Mimi’s, are you looking for her?”

“No! I just wondered if she knew—never mind.” She goes out, banging the door again.

He locks it. Puts up the
Closed
sign this time.

Okay, he’s got a dinner to make.

(L)

Twenty minutes till Savaya can get here. L’s not going up to Nevaeh’s room alone. Chickenshit, but what if N’s father is there? L stands under the portico where her mom dropped her
—she
was in a hurry. Is she going to Bobcaygeon? Maybe she’s painting lake boats now. Down the block, there’s the hospice. Mimi’s window.

There’s time. L sprints the block, springs in through the back door and up the stairs. You have to take the chance to see people who are dying because you never know, and then you’d feel so bad.

She inches open the door. Ruth, in a chair beside the bed, sound asleep. Hey, that vintage corduroy jacket, she finally got it! Go Ruth!