5. IF I WERE HUGH
At four p.m. Hugh pours himself a glass of wine, a civilized thing to do at a small gallery without much hope of selling anything on a Monday afternoon. Maybe he should get back on the ladder, do those lights.
Ruth walks in. Outside her working hours.
“Look what was in here,” she says, pulling a gloved fist out of her pocket. There’s that bright brown hundred. “I’m going to have to take this back. It’s too much to keep—I’d be stealing it from the Clothes Closet. Those Mennonites do such good work.”
Hugh pours a little more malbec and offers to make Ruth a coffee. He drains his glass, standing at the espresso machine in the framing room.
“Nice jacket,” he calls back into the office.
“Well, it does fit,” she says, smoothing her cuff. “Lucky day already, even without the extra.”
“I don’t know,” he says. “I think you ought to keep that.” Spurs his sputtering brain to think of why. “It’s like it was meant. You’ve been looking at that jacket for so long … It was your luck, waiting for you.”
“Lucky for the Clothes Closet it was me that bought it, because some of the people in there would not think of giving that money back, and you know who I mean.”
He knows, he knows exactly who she means. The Asians, the Natives, the blacks. Here’s where he wants to smack her upside the head, but she’s an old woman. How do you go about changing her now?
“I thought of giving it to the Conservative Party,” she says. “They really need it.”
Hugh’s teeth tap together tenderly. It makes him feel like a dragon, a tempered, brutal force that helps smaller beings, but someday might eat them. Or burn them to ashes.
“You really need it,” he says.
She pulls the hundred taut between her fingers, staring at it. You don’t see a lot of those around. “What would Hugh do?” she asks.
No, that’s his own ear’s Hugh. Ruth’s just saying you.
“Take us out for dinner, is what you’d do,” he says. “If I were Hugh.”
She shakes her head, says she’ll think about it. What would be best. “I’ll go to the hospice now, and I’m working tonight, catering. Must be off!” Out she goes.
Okay, next thing. Over to Curios & Curiouser, old Jasper’s antique/junk shop, next porch over on this touristy, flower-hung Main Street, Yourtown.
Jasper is hanging his own lights, birdlike on the top board of a worn stepladder. He should not be up there, not after a long, late lunch. He’s brought his wineglass out onto the porch with him, forgetful of yardarm convention. Watching Jasper’s thin limbs tremble on the ladder is physical pain; hurts you in the head, the hands, the legs.
Hugh can’t remember when Jasper did not drink. Was a time, Ruth says. Long ago, she and he were almost, or sometimes, a couple. Jasper at the stove in Ruth’s kitchen, wineglass in hand, telling rude jokes that Hugh and Della did not get—later, Newell explained them. Jasper’s shop is in trouble, that troubles Ruth. Hugh too. The old guy can’t be allowed to sink. The cheque is ready. Hugh wrote it out first thing and put it in his pocket with Ruth’s hundred dollar bill.
A frail grey hand quivers, stretching out and searching behind him, and Hugh takes it. Jasper descends, legs not shaking so much once he’s on the ground. They go through to the little cash desk at the back, Hugh tripping on Jasper’s heels past jars and tea-chests stacked on brittle chairs; sliding pyramids of boxes, mahogany and ormolu, ivory-inlaid and trick-trapped, Jasper’s specialty being things in which to put other things. A litter of orders and accounts and bills crowds the clear desk space down to six inches at the drawer’s edge. Jasper doesn’t sit at his desk anyway, even when drinking. Always agitated.
Hugh takes the cheque out of his shirt pocket, neatly folded in half. Unfolds it, still warm from his chest, and puts it on the desk.
“Pay me back when you can.” (Jasper wouldn’t take it if he didn’t say that.)
Jasper’s wattley throat works. “Ten thousand—you—it’s too much.”
Hugh can’t be bothered to argue today. Trots out the unassuming smile, the shrug he learned from Newell. That will win Jasper over. “Cluttering up the bank. Useless unless it’s used,” Hugh says.
“You—you can trust me for it.”
“I know, but don’t be worried. It’s nothing. I like your store, that’s all. I need to buy my curios somewhere, and you’re handy.”
Out of the store again before Jasper can cry. That would be unpleasant.
6. GUESS HUGH’S COMING TO DINNER
Heading out onto the porch, look, there’s Newell himself, crossing the street. His head lifts to the evening breeze, hair swooped back and cheekbones strong—matinee idol superimposed on a ten-year-old boy, to Hugh’s eyes. Hugh’s oldest, dearest friend, his Ruth-brother.
Seeing him, Newell calls, “Hugh! Just who I want. Help me pick a bottle of wine.”
Hugh looks back at Jasper’s window. The old guy seems not to have heard that Pavlovian wine bell; his stiff arm comes up to salute again, waving the cheque in thanks.
Turning away, Hugh quickens stride to catch Newell on the doorstep of the new wine shop, a fancy place people still eye with suspicion.
“You okay?” Newell’s attention, a strong beam, focuses on Hugh.
Hugh shakes his head, then nods. “Squandering my inheritance.”
“Slipping Jasper some cash?”
“Tell me, does money fix everything?”
“Physician, fix thyself. That Largely woman is not answering my lawyer’s calls.”
Hugh does not want to talk about all that. “Late for a wine run. Emptied the cellar again?”
“What are you doing for dinner? Come eat with us.”
Newell puts an arm round Hugh as they duck through the door, hung with blinking pumpkin lights and mini-nooses. Friday is Hallowe’en. How often does it fall on a weekend? Never, that Hugh can remember.
“Yes?” Newell checks the stacked cartons, the specials, waiting for an answer.
Hugh’s been stalling. He hates—hates—Newell’s current houseguest and old mentor, Ansel Burton, a plump and aging queen who hates Hugh right back in spades, doubled and redoubled. But Hugh loves Newell, his oldest friend, and derives comfort from his company. He could use some comfort. And a good bottle of wine, since he’s spending all his money anyway. If Newell will let him buy.
“Pinot,” Hugh says. Clarity, that’s what he needs this evening, and a decent meal. “And if you’re cooking, yes.” Burton’s cooking is ghastly, all veal and cream.
Ten thousand was too much to give to Jasper, but it will get the curio shop through till Christmas, maybe prevent him selling his half of the building to Lise Largely. So you had, Hugh had, an ulterior motive. It was only going into the RRSP anyway, to lose value in a sinking line. Jasper can be the bad investment this year.
Newell breezes around the store, chats up the pretentious clerk, charms the girl restocking the beer fridge, finds a thirty-year-old port. Spreads his effluence effortlessly to make the world a better, more flowing place. And buys the wine. He always, always buys.
Hugh watches this performance, not at all for the first time, and compares it to some of Newell’s best work. Not Blitzed Craig or Catastrophe, that’s just formula TV stuff. But earlier, when he was a smart, hilarious japester kid in New York. Or Henry V, the years at Stratford before he went to pieces. Once more into the breach, dear liquor store girl! A little touch of Newell in the night … An older king, these days. Now when Newell stops smiling, lines still fold his eyes, skid down from nose to mouth.
They climb the single long flight to Newell’s condo in Deer Park, the new building on the river. There is an elevator, of course, but Newell has outside stairs as well, up to a rooftop patio with a glossy border of dark green hedge. A tree up there. Money is its own reward.
From Newell’s open black-lacquered kitchen bulges a great white toad, bulbous head squatting on a pair of drooping Victorian lad
yshoulders cased in mauve cashmere. As always, Burton combines the gross and the dainty.
Hugh knows his physical revulsion has always been plain to Burton, and causes most of Burton’s hatred for him. Honestly, why has he come? He can’t be that lonely. He pauses on the threshold, thrown into gloom by Burton’s rich vowels.
“Why, Boy! You didn’t tell me we were having guests—I have not made my toilette!”
He is meticulously dressed, as always. The archness, if not soured by such sharp dislike, might be funny. Some people do like Burton. Does Newell? Not really, Hugh believes. Is indebted to him, tied to him by a purple string of mutual obligation and shame.
“Hey there, Burton.” Hugh makes a small production of wiping his clean shoes on the coir mat. “You’re in town?”
“Patent-ly,” Burton says, an actual sneer developing his lip.
You’d think Newell would stop putting himself through this, but it’s one of his little innocences: he can’t help believing his two closest friends will someday be friends.
“Now, what have you brought me?” Burton asks, burying his nose in the bag. “Lovely! I do relish a good Pinot—ooh, port! and it’s primeval !—must I wait for après-ski?”
Newell pulls the port’s cork and pours, a gentle slide into each heavy glass. “It’s an occasion, Hugh—Ansel starts his master class at the performing arts school tomorrow. Scenes from Sweeney Todd. He’s the master, I’m just a ringer, brought in to play Sweeney.”
“I cast my pearls,” Burton says, calm after a long swallow of mahogany port. “We’re to Meet the Creatures tonight, you’ll have to come help Newell remember who’s who. And whatsie, the broken-down one they’ve brought me for Mrs. Lovett—Ivy. Ivy Suet, is it, Boy? She was a fixture at I of O.”
“IFO?”
“Idea of Order,” Newell says. “Experimental theatre company, big in the nineties.” Burton sneers again. “Not Suet. Ivy Sage,” Newell tells Hugh. “Nice, intelligent. Eccentric.”
“Pudding face, that must be the connection.” Burton waves his hands in a self-forgiving swaggle.
“Good casting for Mrs. Lovett,” Newell says.
The port calms Hugh, too. In a high leather chair at the counter he prepares to watch the dinner show. Burton, swaddling a huge white apron over the mauve cashmere, stations himself at the other end of the long black slate counter to chop for salad, playing the humble prep cook with a running commentary and a tea cozy squashed into a porkpie hat on his head.
Newell cooks fast and fluidly, like he does most things, relaxed and at peace; Burton boasts about the beef, organic wagyu (his choice, no surprise), and the truffle oil tater tots now sizzling away, which he made and froze last week. “Merely choux paste with riced potatoes in the batter, but between Hugh and I, ha ha, I dispensed with the black truffles. It’s the truffle oil that gives the true tendresse …”
Truffle oil, the biggest scam perpetrated on the dining public since artifical vanilla: pale chemically induced resemblance to truffles fading quickly into gasoline and damp rot. But Burton likes to be an expert. Hugh nods into his port and lets it go.
From time to time, in the inexplicable good mood that settles over him whenever he has manoeuvred Burton and Hugh together, Newell breaks into a line of song, “… the trouble with poet is how do you know it’s deceased? Try the priest—”
The third time, he checks himself as Burton pokes the button on the iPod. Paul Simon fills the room instead, “The Mississippi delta was shining like a National guitar …”
Burton stops the music. “How can that be glorified with the term Music? If you must have rock, where do I find Pink Floyd on this thing? You find it, Boy. Dark Side, now that’s an album.” In an egregious gangland grate he grinds out, “Monee-e-ey! It’s a gas …”
Hugh watches with a schooled expression; he feels painfully old, but considerably younger than Burton. Wiping his hands on a linen towel, Newell slides the iPod to something Cuban. Burton swishes off to the washroom, in a huff.
Exhausting, really.
“Sad this morning,” Hugh tells Newell, while they’re alone. To explain away his glum face. “Della and I went to the funeral, the woman who killed herself and her four-year-old.”
“I knew them,” Newell says, surprising Hugh. “I bought the Saab from Gerald, he had to import it. You knew that.”
Hugh can’t remember if he did.
“The kid was great. Toby.” Newell has immense capacity for sadness. More than Hugh, by a million miles. But he’s cooking now, at the apex: steaks sliding onto warmed plates, pretentious tater tots jostled and nestled, every move skillful and graceful. Newell’s hands are beautiful.
Returning, Burton tosses his exquisite salad, teak claws clap-clacking in his clutching old paws. It is Hugh’s job to be civil and pour the wine, and when they sit at table, to enjoy the steak and swallow the potato things whole. He hears himself say, “How long are you visiting, Burton?” The plaguing question he had not meant to voice.
“We thought you’d never ask!” Burton puts out a fat hand and covers Newell’s, which lies discarded beside his still-full plate.
Newell seems not to be eating, but has opened the second bottle of Pinot. He looks up and meets Hugh’s eye. The frank, unfamiliar shock of contact makes Hugh realize they haven’t talked in a long time. He finds his breath constricted.
“I’ve asked Burton to stay here for good,” Newell says.
Fucking fucking fucking hell.
Newell’s face is a mask. Only his mouth moves, as if there’s a person under there somewhere, in the dark. “We’re both alone, and neither of us is—”
Burton simpers. “Oh, I’m an old crisis, Hugh knows that! But I think there’s something to be said for returning to safe harbour, don’t you? After life’s journeying.” The port, the steak, the wine have made him expansive. Powerful enough, here, to lie back in his chair. “I see myself as Newell’s—what? His elder brother.” Burton’s pasty hand squeezes Newell’s, which does not move. Then it does, turning to clasp his kindly.
“His loving introducer to matters of the heart.” Burton’s eyes are downcast, his mouth a reflective rosebud. It’s a pose out of an old acting manual: emotion recalled in tranquillity.
Every time, every time Hugh sees the toad Burton, Newell’s voice comes back to his ear from years ago, saying, “I was twelve, but he knew already what I was.”
What, not who.
Back then, when they were twelve, Hugh knew who Newell was. Not Burton’s pet. Newell was an open heart, an open face; a boy as unhappy as he was himself, but without the sideways look he acquired after Burton introduced him.
Hugh remembers feeling it even in childhood, the powerful fury rising in his chest, his head, into his jaw, and gently turned aside by the control of delicate tapping.
7. I’VE BEEN EVERYWHERE
Ivy stands in the empty living room. Four French doors (three French hens) open onto a garden pavement that leads over to a low wall, and the river flowing gently along. It’s pretty. They go upstairs, turn right, and the woman opens the door.
A beautiful empty room. Silence.
Ivy takes a breath.
She’s so lucky to get this, a broad, airy bedroom in a pleasant house by the river. For a month-long artist residency, the school won’t keep her in a hotel. The other offer is the drama teachers’ spare room, but their marriage is coming apart and Ivy can’t bear fighting. This place is perfect. An old family house built in the thirties, substantial, stained glass, inlaid floors, front and back staircases. But only two people living in it, a woman and her son, in grade twelve at the school.
The woman, the owner of the house—Ann, and Jason is the son—Ann walks to the window and tries to open it; for air, or to show Ivy a silver knife of river coming up beside the house, but it seems stuck. Ivy’s window (hers already) looks over the short driveway. The tree outside has lost half its leaves, but the black branches are pretty. The glass is spotless.
Perfec
t, Ivy thinks. Her ill-arranged life back in Toronto is dirty, upsetting, and crammed full of stuff. This is so clean and bare—an empty bookshelf, an empty dresser, an empty bed.
“There’s an ensuite,” the woman—Ann, Ann—says. She opens the door to display white tiles, a bevelled window over the bathtub. “This used to be the master. Before. Jason’s dad left us, last Christmas, but we’re getting over it.” She’s blonde, a bob cut straight across and dragged behind her ears. Minimalist hair. “He was in management at the Quaker plant, he ran off with his secretary. Like a fifties movie.”
She draws her thumb along her bottom lip to lock her mouth closed. Then she says, “It’s a new mattress.”
“Well, that’s—perfect,” Ivy says. “Ann.”
Ann takes her cheque and goes away.
The inlet of river spears right up into the side garden. Here, close by the window, Ivy can see it lapping, happy at the brink. Yellow kayak belly-down against a silvered old stepladder, black steps cut into the green bank of grass. The boy must use it. Or maybe that’s Ann’s shirt flung to dry across the yellow. Ivy tries the window again, but nope. It is painted stuck, three inches up. A flap in the storm window lifts to reveal three round ventilation holes, a slight breath of air. Ivy presses her face against wavering glass to see the real river’s edge. Railway ties brace the bank; the river floods every year, Ann said. Perfect, Ivy tells herself. If it floods, the kayak will float up to my sill—I need a chisel to pry this window open—and I’ll paddle away. Somehow managing to screw myself into the kayak without flipping upside down.
She lets the curtain fall and listens. Down the hall, the boy, the son is laughing, cackling. Sounds like he’s practising laughing. Not much to laugh about in this strange vacant house. The living room downstairs is entirely empty. No chairs, not even a carpet. Bare fireplace, hearth and innards stark black. Not one picture. Ann’s aesthetic “embraces austerity.”
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