Close to Hugh (54 page)

“Often happy,” she repeats, obedient to his will.

“I always loved you best,” he says.

“Hugh best …” She looks into his face. Seeing Hugh?

In this extremity, you can’t be sure.

The cot is too far away. Hugh finds a way to rest his aching head, cheek cool on the clean sheets, letting his arm fall on the sheet along her poor thin leg. Lying like that, arm extended, he feels himself extending, expanding, overblowing—a rose opening out into the wilderness, into the world—what Mimi must have felt on her glorious days. He feels himself broadening out, embracing the whole world—the open feeling of loving Mimi without restraint (which Ivy has made possible), the slow unbinding of loving Ivy without fear.

The headache, present all the time for days now, seems to bloom too. Pricking his scalp from the inside like rose thorns. He is unaccountably sleepy. Maybe not unaccountable: how much sleep has he not had in these last few—in a week, in a year, a lifetime of not sleeping?

Hugh dreams that Burton is dead. You must have killed him, yes, Hugh pushed him down the long concrete stairs at Newell’s place, head swollen, broken, blood, and there’s a funeral procession: Ann hand in hand with Gerald, walking through golden leaves; Ken and Della, reconciled, riding swingboats in the park, her work selling at a Mary Poppins gallery in the FairGrounds; teenagers mysteriously dancing in the cupola in pretty dresses, long evening gloves—that’s how Hugh can tell, how you can tell it’s a dream.

The funeral procession winds through the park, Newell strewing flowers in front of the casket-catafalque, looking happy. Looking relieved, his burden finally set down. Thank you, Hugh, you are all singing.

4. I CAN’T STAND THE RAIN

They all run from the stinging spray—what is it? what’s—oh! the sprinklers have started, all over the park. Horrifying at first, an attack of freezing bees, but then it’s—well, you can’t help laughing, it’s pretty funny, all the drama doused and drenched, all the faces gaping. Ivy gets a bad case of laughter, the helpless kind that makes her snort—so humiliating, older-ladyish,
snort
—she stops behind a tree, which blocks some of the water coming at her, and bends to try to release her diaphragm.
Snort!
Oh dear.

The others find her, and the sanctuary of the big tree’s girth, all huddling there as the water changes to a regular cyclic
spat, spat, spat, spat
, calming from the first fervour.

“They must be blowing the lines,” Jason says. “Like they do with our underground sprinklers in the fall, before it freezes. There’s just way more water to clear out.”

Looking around the tree again, Ivy sees Newell coming through the park, dodging the spray. Shit, it’s cold, being wet on a windy night. She pulls back into the lee of their tree. L and Jason are huddled together; Orion holds Savaya close to him, trying to warm her up. Doesn’t anybody wear a jacket anymore? It’s almost winter.

Fury bristles off Orion like a charge; he is still accusing L and Jason of prejudice. He’s practically split himself in two, one half still comforting Savaya, the other spitting at L like a sprinkler: “I know, Burton, other people, you name it. It doesn’t—it doesn’t take away from, from love.”

Ivy ought to intervene, re: people are just worried about you, power dynamics, position of influence, etc. “Everybody has just heard too many bad stories,” she forces out, being careful, aware of Newell coming closer, listening.

Orion is too busy ranting to notice. He shouts, “It is not the same thing! I’m the one who wants—in the old days things were different. Now it’s—
different
. My mother kept me safe, even though she was such
a wack job, hovering around the dressing rooms at dance class, never fucking leaving me alone for a minute.”

“Well, we worry,” Ivy says. Taking the blame for all the mothers, though she is none. Newell gives her a thumbs-up, quietly coming closer.

The water eases again, the stinging spray subsiding.

Orion, calmer, says, “I’ve been perfectly well aware of myself, who I am, all my life. I tried out the other just in case I was bi because that would be so handy, but I’m not.”

“I vouch for that!” Savaya lifts her drowned face to laugh.

From Jason’s coat, L says, “Sorry, Orion, sorry, I didn’t mean that at
all
, I was being mean about Savaya, not you. I meant another, um, like another Pink, I think—I hate my saying that, it’s just what came up from my—”

Everybody has a flooded basement in their mind, Ivy thinks.

“It’s okay,” Orion says. He’s tired, his voice is cracking. Ivy has to get them all home somehow.

Newell appears around their tree, a jacket in his hand.

A rippling shift of dissipating tension. Orion says, reaching out, “Hey, that’s my jacket. It’s got our phones in it.”

Newell hands it over. “How I found you. That and the shouting.”

Orion laughs, what a good sound to hear.

Perfect, but how will they all cope now? Ivy says, “We can’t get in Gerald’s car like this, we’ll ruin it.”

“I’ll get him another one.” The sweetness of Newell’s smile is a little weird—Ivy often finds it so. Lots of money makes a person strange.

“We can’t drive back to Peterborough all wet. My apartment isn’t far—we can dry out and then go home. How about I take these guys in Gerald’s Saab—I don’t dare drive yours—and you two follow along?” Ivy appropriates Savaya’s freezing hand. Leaving Newell to take Orion. As seems right to her, never mind the rules.

Newell nods, and lopes off between the trees, Orion running after, swinging around a lamppost and hurdling benches in joyful, elastic, springing leaps over the damp grass. Love made visible. No wonder, no wonder. She and Hugh struggle along earthbound making love, bodies held by gravity. How these two in the glory of their strength must spree.

5. HUGH CAN’T LET GO

Narrow. The room, the world. The body narrow in the bed. Replacing the oxygen mask over and over.

A long time ago they promised she would not be in pain. Conrad coming in the darkness promises again, no pain, no pain, but there is pain, there is the pain of leaving.

But there is not any shrieking that would be

that would be

pain we forget so fast we must

We make things up, we tell ourselves the happy story of a life well lived. We must. These things are for a reason, the old people say, Ruth says. They have to say that.

“Nolie, where are you, there is pain, she is—”

Hugh cannot let go of her hand.

this is too hard, his head will

She is laughing, frightened to laugh, at the enormity of this. At the great step on which she perches still, the diving board. Afraid to dive, but there is no way down but death.

After her, nobody can die. Years will go by and he won’t let anyone die, the world will fill up with people. Or at least, nobody he knows—nobody he guards will die. Sometime in the night he sees that Newell must love Burton. So Hugh must let them be who they are, leave it, let it go. Be Newell’s brother, Della’s brother, Ruth’s son. Be Ivy’s: nobody else will die.

Shivering and shivering, fingers nervous on the sheet, skin shining blue and sheets of water coursing down the pane, the night so blue and black.

6. MOLE END

The red door opens onto darkness. Is Jamie sleeping? He’s usually up at night. A clean smell—fresh lumber, plaster dust, paint. Ivy finds the switch and turns it on. She braces herself, not knowing what chaos she may find, and steps around the little alcove wall.

The kitchen is clean. No sign of damage. The floor is clear, unstained—even the counters are clean, and the sink, clean and empty.

“God bless you, Dave, Ruth’s pal,” Ivy says, deep in her heart.

There’s a note propped on the island counter.

All fixed, ceiling downstairs needs a coat of paint, we’ll do it Tuesday. I got my cousin to come & clean while we were working. Took out your garburetor don’t get a new one they’re useless. That guy went to stay with his brother for a couple days, guess the noise was too much for him. I’ll give the bill to Ruth
.

Dave C
.

Clean. The kitchen is clean. It smells so good.

And the new order goes beyond the kitchen. The big windows are clean—Jamie’s protective foil taken down, glass shiny between interior light and exterior black. The floor, too. Boxes and cases, gone. The computer station denuded, the desk polished clean.

Everybody has trailed in behind her, and now Newell and Orion are at the door. It’s not till then, till she’s bringing them inside, that Ivy looks down at her feet. The beautiful shoes covered with roses: perfectly ruined from the sprinklers and the grass. All is vanity.

L catches Ivy’s cry of sadness, and says, “Oh, your shoes!”

Newell takes one shoe and feels it. “Ruined,” he agrees. And Jason, seeing the roses all muck, says, “That’s the saddest thing. I loved those.”

Their sympathy is enough to snap Ivy out of selfishness. She laughs.
“They’re only shoes. Never mind, maybe I can get them cleaned. Okay,” she says, Hugh’s word. “L, take Savaya to the shower, through that door, and find towels for everyone in the bathroom cupboard. I’m going to make us something to eat.”

Maybe she shouldn’t have said that—what’s in the cupboards? Milk in the fridge, a Styrofoam pack of cheap white eggs, frozen garlic bread in the freezer. She’d forgotten Jamie’s thing about white food. Well. Teenagers won’t mind. A dusty can of maple syrup in the pantry that she was supposed to send to an old acting friend in England—that never goes bad. She has flour, salt, yes. Okay, perfect. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, garlic bread: there’s a comforting supper, or rather breakfast. It’s 3 a.m. A long time since Hugh’s trompe l’oeil.

Newell cracks eggs, she whisks pancake batter. The stove warms her. Ivy is happier than she’s been in this place for a long, long time. This is like Mole End, when she played Mole for Young People’s Theatre, bustling to give Rat tea when they stumble on Mole’s old home. Old Ratty. Donald’s dead now. He was so good—the antiretrovirals did not work for long enough. She bends into the fridge to hide her smarting eyes.

Orion is witty at table; Newell expands, talking to him, easy and loving. A relief after watching him always so careful with Burton—what a toxic little partnership that is, and always has been, Ivy thinks. Bugger the age difference, the problem is that Burton is cruel and jealous. Food gets everyone giddy, making jokes; even Savaya. She sings, only partly under her breath,
“This bread is thick/just like my dick
. Sorry, couldn’t pass up the rhyme there.”

She has cratered. Ivy leads her to the futon couch and flips it flat. Savaya crawls up and is asleep before Ivy finds a duvet to pull over her.

“I’m taking the last two pancakes. Arrest me,” Jason says. “FTP.” It takes Ivy a minute to translate that in her head.
Fuck the police
. How rude. She laughs, happy to have her counter stools filled with people she likes. When they’re fed and calm, and the dishes loaded into the gleaming, empty dishwasher, she puts them all to bed: L with Savaya on the futon, Jason on the long couch, and Ivy can sleep in her own (clean-sheeted!) bed, alone. Newell says he’ll return Gerald’s car and take Orion home. So Newell can get back to Burton, and Orion to his mother. Newell didn’t tell anyone where he was going, and still hasn’t, at least in Ivy’s sight,
taken out a phone to text or check. Burton will be livid. But when, after all, is he not livid? Can’t live with him, can’t seem to ditch him.

“Wait,” she says, at the door. “I told Hugh I’d empty the buckets in his basement!”

“I’ll do it,” Newell says.

“I’ll bring these guys back out in the morning, and get your car back to you, somehow.”

“You’ll find me,” he says, smiling at her. His lovely sculpted arms envelop her. “I’ll be at Mimi’s apartment—we’re packing it up, she’s got to be moved out by five.”

“Oh perfect,” Ivy says. “Perfect. I’ll be there.”

Orion has himself collected, his jacket. “No master class, anyway.” He gives her a wicked look and a smart salute. “Thanks,” he says, and kisses her cheek as he goes past.

(DELLA)

can I let it go?                            if I had he could never let it go

he sleeps                                I drive over rain-glossed pavement

my soul thirsts after knowledge

like moths fly into the headlights of my car

what they did when and for how long  and how

and how he turned to her   and what he said

what she did then  and how they got undressed

what way he came inside what they spoke of later

and how his head turned on the pillow

looking for me perhaps in that cool room

go home

maybe I won’t come out of this all right

climb into bed beside him

how can he sleep

as if he never left it

his baseball bat abandoned by the bed would fit the hand    vision of

the eye resists that vision    but there he is asleep

I could hit him                            end all this

I am so full of fury                            I can see him

the fullness of his mouth           the liquid motion

don’t think don’t

in the shower in my fucking helmet of purity      hatred filling my mouth

washing the sin off me no sin at all                              
but it is him

what is the thing that makes it possible to betray the other   how could

he look at her taking off her clothes and think yes      yes how could he

7. HUGH ALONE

Hugh wakes, a great gulp of waking, gasping for air because he was drowning. He looks to Mimi.

She was sleeping, and now she is not sleeping.

The mystery of knowing, instantly knowing. How can she not—How can she not be.