Real Life (11 page)

She was lying, of course; the fire was sparse and chancy. Hugo beamed. “Thanks.” He cleared his throat elaborately: a joke was coming. “Uh—maybe there's some hamburger in the freezer.”

His silliness, his susceptibility to Rachel irritated Dorrie. “Oh, loosen up a little, Hugo, for heaven's sake. You've got to try things, at least.”

Hugo tipped the cap back so the sun fell full on his face. He was grinning widely. “That's just what Claudette said to Charles today.”

Rachel looked up from the hibachi. “Did Claudette and Charles ever get married? And Tara and Prescott?”

“You watch
Upton's Grove
?” Hugo took the cap off, as if in tribute, and stared at Rachel. Briefly, with his eyes squinting in the sun and that laughing, eager look on his face, he reminded Dorrie for the first time of Phineas. A memory fluttered at her, of some long-lost picnic, and Phinny's monkey face contorted with the pleasure of tormenting her.

“I used to, at a time in my life when I wasn't responsible for my actions,” Rachel said. “I was temporarily insane.”

Dorrie spread a cloth on the picnic table and anchored the corners with silverware. She could feel herself giving in to the bad mood that had dogged her all day: a holiday, nothing accomplished, the Boston show only a week away, Hugo underfoot in the kitchen, and now this—Rachel's happiness and her own petty resentment. Of course, she was glad for Rachel.… She looked at her friend, tanned and pretty in her sundress, not plump so much as ample, lovable. No, she wasn't glad for Rachel: that was the shameful truth. All she felt was self-pity, and a kind of aversion to Rachel's good fortune, as if Rachel's being happily in love were a hideous, debilitating disease.

“So what about Tara and that stick Prescott?” Rachel was asking Hugo. “And that other couple—Tom? Was there somebody named Tom? And a red-haired woman with a lisp?”

“Sabrina? Sabrina was shot last winter.”

Dorrie went inside for the macaroni salad, carrying a beer with her. Upstairs, she detoured to the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Bitch, she thought. Unnatural hag. She inspected her face: pasty, droopy, lifeless. She must get some exercise, some sun; she must sleep more, work less, get out and meet people. She ran cold water on her hands and pressed one palm to the hot back of her neck. She knew she would do none of those things. She closed her eyes, letting the water run over her wrists. It was cool and quiet up in the bathroom. She almost dozed off, standing by the sink. She imagined taking her razor and slicing neatly into each wrist, following the blue lines, then watching the blood run pink and diluted down the sink with the cold water. She opened her eyes and looked in the mirror again. Hair: all she saw was heavy black hair: an aging woman oppressed by a mop. She had a sudden impulse to cut it all off, get rid of the hot tangle on her neck. She imagined her hair lifting free in tiny waves, so the wind could blow through it. She hadn't had short hair since eighth grade.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she got the nail scissors from the cupboard and sawed off a hank of it, near her left ear. Hell: it hung there, stiff as crabgrass. Why had she thought it would do anything else? And it was crooked. She straightened it out, making it shorter, and then cut the other side to match and began recklessly on the back without a mirror, by feel. Her thick hair defeated the nail scissors. She found a better pair in the sewing box—pinking shears, but what did it matter? The point was to get rid of it; she could always go down to Laurelle's House of Beauty in town and have them make it even. She chopped at it urgently, remembering, for some reason—it must have been the beer—that she used to cut Mark's hair, all those years ago: his brown curls that always looked good no matter how she hacked them. She remembered running her fingers through his hair, and bending to kiss him, and what it had been like, kissing Mark. Mark and then Teddy, and that was all—all you could count as romance—in nearly forty years.

When she finished, the sink was full of hair, heavy black clots of it. She was sweating. Snips of hair stuck to her neck and the sides of her face, and she could feel it down her back, scratchy under her shirt. She brushed what was left and looked at the results. Prince Valiant.
Bernice Bobs Her Hair
. “Oh, Jo, your one beauty.” She reminded herself of someone: who? Her hair hung down like the ears of a spaniel, but with jagged places. She tried to clean them up, but she only made it worse, so she put down her scissors and frowned at herself, tried smiling, checked out her profile. She thought it didn't look too bad, but she knew she was no judge. She hoped it wasn't ludicrous, at least, but suspected it probably was. But what did it matter? It would be cooler, less trouble. Another slap of memory: once she had gone to a beauty shop in Providence and had her hair done in an elaborate pileup of curls, and had asked Teddy, “How do I look?” He had replied, “You look intelligent.”

From the yard she could hear Hugo's voice, Rachel's laugh.
Upton's Grove
. And Rachel had a new beau. And it had become hot in the bathroom, horribly hot. She pulled off her clothes and stepped into the shower, knowing she had done something absurd: she had cut off her hair because Rachel had a lover and she didn't. Then she knew whom she reminded herself of, with her hair cut short: Phinny, she looked the way Phinny would have looked if he had lived into his thirties.

While the hot dogs were cooking, Hugo's aunt disappeared, and then she came back with all her hair cut off. Rachel had been talking
Upton's Grove
with him, but when she saw Dorrie she let out a little scream. “Dorothea Gilbert! What have you done?”

“If thine hair offend thee, chop it off,” his aunt said. “Maybe you could straighten it out for me later, Rachel.”

“Straighten it out! God, Dorrie, you should let a professional handle this. It needs thinning desperately, for one thing.” Rachel was up, fluffing out Dorrie's hair, standing back and squinting at it as if at a painting in a museum. “Hmm,” she said. “Well. You know—it's not bad. What do you think, Hugo?”

Hugo thought it was bad. He hated short hair on women. All pretty women had long cascades of hair. Even Rachel, who was too fat but otherwise pretty. Dorrie hadn't been good-looking even with long hair, especially pulled back with a rubber band the way she wore it, but with her hair short she looked like one of those street kids from someplace in Europe—those French pickpocket kids he'd seen in a magazine at the dentist. Except that she was older. “It looks nice,” he said. He meant it to sound inadequate. “Nice and cool,” he added with a small, insincere smile.

Dorrie burst out laughing. “And there's always the macaroni salad, and the pickles.”

“No! I meant it!” He repented his meanness. “I really like it,” he insisted.

Dorrie smiled at him crookedly—her unhappy smile, he knew it well—and got a beer from the cooler. “And there's always beer, thank God.”

“Really,” he said again. “It's sharp. It's just so different.”

“I'll mess with it after dinner, Dorrie,” Rachel said. “I could probably shape it some. Do you remember when we started letting our hair grow, back in the ninth grade?”

“Your mother accused us of trying to look like beatniks.”

“She was probably right.”

“What are beatniks?” Hugo asked politely, making amends, but Dorrie only said, “Ancestors of hippies,” laughing, not paying him much attention. What was so funny anyway?

“Those were the days,” Rachel said. “Long stringy hair and black stockings.”

“White lipstick and men on motorcycles,” said his aunt.

Hugo took off his cap and picked at the Red Sox insignia. He hated baseball and especially the Red Sox. He was starving, and the day had suddenly fallen apart. He had been telling Rachel about Claudette and the necklace. It was so great to be really listened to instead of what his aunt usually did, which was to endure patiently and then cut him off short. And now the two of them were off on a nostalgia trip, laughing, guzzling beer. They were on their second six-pack already.

“Men on motorcycles—God, didn't we wish.” Rachel took a long drink of beer, tipping her head back so that he could see the three parallel creases across her neck. They disappeared into the shadow of her chin when she lowered her head. “We had the long hair and the black stockings, but that was about it. I was too fat and your Aunt Dorrie was too thin,” she said to Hugo. He wondered if he was supposed to say something gallant or if it would sound weird. In any case, he couldn't think what it could be.

“The fifties were medium-size years,” Dorrie said.

So are the eighties, Hugo thought. “The hot dogs are done,” he said.

They sat at the picnic table. Hugo put mustard and pickles on his hot dog and took a bite. He was about to say, “Speaking of motorcycles, Crystal's boyfriend, Jamie, cracked his up,” but Dorrie got going first, asking Rachel about her book, and they dissected some boring problem Rachel was having with her agent, and then she asked Dorrie how business was and Dorrie said business was good. She told Rachel about the big order from the restaurant, and about the local movie star who'd come in and bought a couple of teapots and a dozen mugs and six of the big casseroles.

“He said they make good hostess presents,” Hugo broke in, cheered. The movie star's visit had been one of the few bright spots of his stay. “Like when you go and visit somebody for the weekend and you take them something? Some little gift? Like Dorrie says, maybe a piece of cheese or a bottle of wine. But this guy takes these eighty-dollar tea sets!” He still couldn't believe it. And he had sneaked a look at the bank balance when the movie star wrote a check: six thousand plus! In his checking account! He told that to Rachel, “And you should have seen the car he drove up in. It looked like a Rolls-Royce or something.”

“A Mercedes, I think,” Dorrie said. “And Hugo was trying to convince me not to cash the check because he wanted the autograph. I told him, Hugo, honey, you want his autograph, you can bicycle over to his place and ask for it, for heaven's sake!”

Hugo blushed. He had thought there must be a way you could manage to keep the check and still get the money—talk to the bank or something. And she hadn't called him honey. “I don't want it that badly,” he said.

“How was the hot dog?” Rachel asked him. He looked at her in surprise. He'd finished it without noticing. The two women laughed at his expression.

“I guess I could force down one more,” he said, getting another laugh. But it only brought back his gloom. He was tired of being laughed at. He wished there were someone his own age around, preferably some pretty, long-haired girl who didn't talk much, who would sit and listen to him without saying a word, and when he was through talking she would say, Hugo, that's fascinating! She would look at him the way Crystal looked at that jerk Jamie.

He ate the hot dog and some more macaroni salad and drank a Coke and a half. Dorrie had bought ice cream, and they ate that down on the dock. Hugo kept going up to the house for more. He felt he could eat ice cream forever. The cold chocolate slipping down his throat was the only thing that could cool him off. God, he was sick of heat. The summer seemed to have gone on for years instead of weeks. But when he started for his fourth helping, his aunt said, “That's enough, Hugo,” and he left his dish out on the picnic table and went up to the garage loft, seething, feeling like a baby.

But in the loft, he was immediately soothed. Curiously, it was almost always cool up there, probably because of the two oak trees that flanked it—the branches high enough not to obstruct his view but providing shade for the roof. He looked out of the window: there they were, the two old biddies gossiping down on the dock. He knelt by the window, watching them, watching the sky turn peach and gold, with shreds of mauve. He'd discovered that the sunset was different every night. He wondered if you could keep records on something like that. A painter could, a photographer, even a poet. David would think of a way. But what good would it be to write down “Gold/peach/lavender” one night and “Rose/orange/ light brown” the next?

Bits of conversation reached him:

“He was a dreadful man, a terrible man!”

“Can't imagine him retiring and just—”

“Of course, I'm happy for you! It's so wonderful that you can—”

Their laughter rose to his window, subsided, drifted up the lawn when they walked back to the house for more beer. “Hugo?” his aunt called up to him. He stuck his head out the window. “Hugo, keep that screening up there; you'll be eaten alive with bugs.”

“I'll put it up before I go to bed.”

“Are you tucked in for the night?”

“I guess so.” Jesus: tucked in.

“Well, good night, for heaven's sake.”

“Good night.”

“Tell Rachel good night and thank her for the baseball cap.”

“Good night, Rachel,” he said, deeply embarrassed. “And thanks for the cap, it's really neat.” They stood below, squinting up at him. How silly they looked, his aunt with her chopped hair and long neck and beanpole legs, Rachel with her big flowered dress and flabby arms.

“Good night, Hugo,” Rachel called. “That looks nice and cozy up there, from here. Is it cool?”

“It's not bad.” He wondered if she meant to come up and see it, and he had a terrifying vision of clutching her tight on his mattress. He was glad when they turned and walked back to the house. Their laughter drifted back to his window, and even after he peed out into the dark and got into bed and lay there waiting for sleep he could hear their voices, far into the night—a sound no less sad and lonesome than the whistle of the train that passed, somewhere not far off, every night around ten.

4

Dorrie had dinner with her old friend Gregory Vere on the first night of the Boston Art Center Invitational Crafts Show. Gregory was a successful potter from Michigan who specialized in
raku
and had studied in Japan. He was a large, ugly, good-natured man in his fifties, and he had flirted with Dorrie for years. She told him about Hugo.