Ivy laughs at him. “That’s not why!” she says. “All my own shit is why.”
“I am used to shit,” he says. “I can take it.”
“You can take it, but you can’t dish it out?”
He nods. He’s too upset to speak.
Ivy pulls at his arm. “You can cope with a mountain of whatever horrors, but I can’t?”
Hugh nods again.
“And your mother— I’m so sorry.” She takes his hand.
They go on walking. Their hands fit. The mist hanging over the streets has caused a compression of sound, a minor slapping echo of shoes on sidewalk.
Or wait, no—it’s somebody following them. Newell, again?
“Hey,” L calls, from behind.
Almost at Ann’s walk, they turn and wait for L to reach them.
“Hi,” she says, breathy from running. “Hi, hi, Ivy. I saw you at the costume room but I didn’t say hi then because we didn’t want to see Jason’s mom; she was on the warpath this afternoon—she went to see Pink, Hugh, about the—”
Hugh closes his eyes. “I know,” he says. “I should have said I’d talk to Jason.”
“Now he’s got to see Mr. Pink tomorrow, and the appointment is for forty-five minutes.”
“Where is Jason? Home?”
“I’m not sure—but there’s a party at Savaya’s tonight. We’ll all sleep over there. I’m not telling my mom about the, you know, the magazines. It’s not fair, please don’t tell her.”
“None of my business,” Hugh says. “But I bet Ann already has.”
“Oh shit, right, thanks.” L trots off into the fog.
Ivy hesitates. “I was going to ask you in, but I’m pretty sure there’s no coffee, or even a chair to sit on.”
Hugh is thinking how to answer that when the door opens.
Ann gleams in the hall light. Her sweater, her hair, perfect. The minimalist thing, she’s good at it. “Hey, you.” Is she angry? Or no, that’s Hey, Hugh. “I’ve been calling you. Don’t you ever answer the phone?”
“Usually Ruth gets it,” he says, conscious that this is weak-kneed.
He and Ivy move slowly up the walk to the porch stairs.
Ann laughs, sharp as teeth. “I wanted to tell you—Lise Largely says you’re clearing out Mimi’s place. It’s going to be a huge job, poor Hugh. I’m going to go through her clothes for you and decide what to give away and what to sell.”
He’s taken aback. “I don’t think I’ll—”
“Some of those things are valuable,” Ann says.
Something in her eyes warns Hugh to just agree. Something glassy, not blank but breakable. “Absolutely,” he says.
“She was my mother too, for a long time. My creative mother.” With that bizarre embroidery, Ann turns to Ivy, eyes on highbeam. “Hugh had to help you find your way home?”
“I’m not lost.” Ivy isn’t giving ground, the way Hugh always does.
Ann stares at her. A beat. “Are you—?”
Ivy stares right back. Waits for the question to finish.
Ann almost staggers, as if she’s missed a step, and reaches for the door handle. She turns to Hugh. “Are you—?”
He weighs the options, decides there aren’t any, and nods. “We are.”
She’s hit.
She had me in her sights again, he thinks. A wave of hot/cold, relief/sorrow washes over him. He puts out a hand to comfort her.
But Jason dashes out between them, slipping past Ann’s thin frame in the doorway, jostling Ivy almost off the stairs in his headlong rush.
“Sorry, sorry, late,” he calls back, running backwards for a few steps. Making a sorry-face, more lively than Hugh’s seen him since childhood.
Ivy megaphones her hands at her mouth and yells, “Watch out for those fan-tailed beavers, mister!”
A great shout of laughter comes back through the mist by the river’s edge.
“His dream, this morning,” Ivy says to Ann, apologizing, after all, Hugh sees; because you have to when someone has been in the dark, and has stubbed her toe so badly.
Ann nods once to each of them. The ice goddess Freya hammering their heads with her bronze sledgehammer.
She swings away to let Ivy slip inside, and shuts the heavy door in Hugh’s face.
(ORION)
The leaves are almost all down. Wind pulling her fingers through her hair, Orion thinks. The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse, it says in Revelations. Like, apocalyptic carbon capture. When his mother makes him go to her weird all-denominations church he spends the hour flipping through Revelations, one long acid trip. Not that he has done acid; it’s actually quite hard to get around the school.
Savaya’s parents are going out—pulling out of the driveway in their ’89 Eurovan, held together with duct-tape. Probably going to drive out to Bobcaygeon and do bong hits, that’s how hippie they are. Tragically unhip. Orion locks his bike to a wrought-iron fence. Ought to, wrought to, deter thievery. He stands in shadow for a minute, checking out who’s already there. Twelve or fifteen guys milling around the lighted doorway—Philip and Coran; there’s that fuckwipe Sheridan Tooley, who only drinks Baby Duck, who got the kid lead in Auntie Mame in Toronto and quit the master class to go in to the city every night for singing classes with some guy at the opera. Fucker.
Here’s Jason running down the sidewalk, not that any of them ought to be in a hurry. Orion puts out a long arm and a jazz hand to stop Jason. “We enter with deliberation, Boy,” he says. They’re calling each other Boy these days. Burton, you old slag.
Jason nods.
“Where’s L?”
“Her mom’s driving her—I had to wait till—” Jason’s breath is gone.
“You are out of training, my man. Your mom again?”
“Yeah. You sticking around?”
Orion checks his phone. No message yet. “I might.”
The crowd around the lighted porch bursts into a clap of laughter. Savaya comes to the door and waves her hands to bring the noise down. The last time the cops came, and her parents said she couldn’t have a party if she couldn’t control the guests.
“How was it at Newell’s?” Jason asks. Hands on knees, getting his breath back.
“You know. Pink told Burton he wants him to go back to Sweeney fucking Todd, and Burton told him to basically fuck himself. Burton won.
We start Spring Awakening tomorrow: two masturbation scenes, onstage sex, and I’m the main guy, Melchior.”
“I mean, how’s it going with Newell?” Jason says.
“Polyamory is a recognized sexual choice.”
“Right.”
“How’s your own sex life?”
“Right.”
“Here comes L, let’s go. I need to punch that fucker Tooley, but I am not going to.”
“Yeah, Hugh do you think you are?”
Orion laughs. “Jase! Good one!”
They flit, they fly.
(DELLA)
these parties tell Elly to be careful don’t tell her
Elly DJing Short Skirt/Long Jacket
be acerbic be witty and now her Tom Waits impression
she will be gone
a Hallowe’en party in the 80s walking in to get my coat
Ann fucking some guy on the heap of coats who was that? not Hugh
Hugh was beside me seeing her Ken?
not Ken not Ken
how that hurts
was that the night we met?
or we were already together and it was Ken
I was busy feeling bad about being with Mighton
All Saints All Hallows old ghosts gone
Bye, sweetness, turn your phone on …
Jason running up good, he’s good
Ann in Mimi’s old polyester teagown how to talk to your teen about porn
that’s a short skirt not a long enough jacket
not a baby anymore
no protection from bareback boys or gir
ls
I guess it might be girls how would I know?
the guys hug shake hands are men adults setting out into the world
where no one can humiliate them
only it is all humiliation
drive away
I Will Survive
if I’da known for just one second
you’d be back to bother me
did you think I’d crumble?
14. ALL I WANT IS HUGH
The ladder clunks gently against the windowsill, the windowpane. The sill again. In a moment, like a moon rising, Hugh’s face rises in the window.
He has a chisel. Ivy laughs, and gets Newell’s cheese knife from her purse. She runs it jagging and digging along the dried paint lines inside as Hugh does the same outside. She gets hers done first, and shoves the inner window up. He jimmies more, and mimes for her to shift the metal clasps. He shoves upward on the storm window, hard.
A crack, loud in the darkness. Then silence again.
He grins at her, takes the weight of the storm window carefully, and disappears down into darkness again. The ladder trembles, trembles.
A small cautious thud, the window planted on the ground. Then careful steps, climbing. She backs away from the sill to let him in.
He knows to duck his head for the low ceiling. “A little awkward, knocking on the front door when she’s …”
“… hot-tempered?”
“Never hot. In a feverchill.” Hugh looks down into the garden. “We’ll have to put that storm window back on when it really gets cold. Ices up in here if you don’t.” He walks quietly around the room, looks at the shelves. In her strong effort to keep the room clear, there are only two things there: her old silver mirror, and a stone.
Neither of them speak. Is he as nervous as she is? It seems so. Ivy’s teeth clamp on a small laugh. Then she lets it out.
“I like this room,” Hugh says. “I’ve always liked it.”
“Perfect. It’s a new bed, Ann tells me,” Ivy says.
“Hm. Okay, then.” He puts out a hand and touches her face.
They speak to each other in low voices, and in a little while they go to bed.
Hope and fear are a single coin, one
entity with two faces—on the other side
of a moment in which we hope for more
happiness will be our fear of more suffering.
Until attachment is eliminated, we can be
certain of having both hope and fear.
The Great Secret of Mind,
Tulku Pema Rigtsal,
translated by Keith Dowman
I entertained her as best I could.
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City,
Nick Flynn
1. HUGHREKA
Hugh crashes down—falls out of the dream-sky. Wide awake. The daily shock of consciousness. How do you keep your mind from eating itself? He reaches for his phone … 5 a.m.
He slept.
He looks up, dim light. The old slanted ceiling. For a fraction of a second, confused, he thinks, Oh no. But— Oh. This is a change in the program. Letting his head fall to the left he stares at Ivy’s dark head, nose, her closed eyelids that slant at the corners and hide her consciousness from him. Her cheek is pale in the still-shadowy room. She brushes her fingers across her mouth. Even in this light, he can see the pores in her skin, he is so close.
You can’t know another person. We cannot know each other. It’s hopeless.
Her eyebrows are thick, matted, the hairs almost braided together, dark against the white of her skin. Blue veins show in her eyelids. They match the map of blue veins on her breast, slipped from the sheet, pearl or ivory texture. Doeskin, dear skin.
You shouldn’t—listen, don’t kid yourself. This will never work.
But Ivy, not asleep, not waking, says, “I know you. You are Hugh.” Or perhaps she said, “I know Hugh. You are you.” Their arms go round each other and they might make love. But instead, because we were up very late, you and I, they fall asleep.
Hugh wakes again; he listens to the hesitating tender percussion of rain, not much of it, eavesdripping, broken rhythm. It’s 5:40. Time to go. Of anything in the world, at this moment, Hugh least wants Ann to find him lying here, however new the bed.
On the other hand, his headache is a little better. He turns slowly in the bed, so Ivy won’t wake. Kisses her pale cheek. Slides out of sheets, dresses in the cold dawn air. The window will make noise. If he’s fast and silent, he can take the stairs.
He finds his phone and texts Ivy: > let me know when your eyes open
Sees the text light up on her bedside table. Good, okay. Bedroom door open, shut. His feet know the treads, know the count of stairs to the empty, black-scribbled living room. The front door opens and closes without appreciably disturbing the silence.
He shuffles into his shoes. First, Mimi. Make her happy too, at least for a moment.
(ORION)
Lying on Savaya’s bed in the sunrise after a long party, reading Oscar Wilde—Savaya, what is this doing on your bedside table, crazy girl? Audition fodder?
It’s quiet now, everyone tired, Savaya’s parents too stoned to yell. While she puts the Desire/Despair costume on again for Jason, Orion reads Salome out loud: “It is thy mouth that I desire, Iokanaan. Thy mouth is like a band of scarlet on a tower of ivory.”
Worrying, really, the volume of porn watched by today’s youth. Jason’s mom freaking out, as if Jason even— But apparently it’s not good for you, makes you dependent. Except that, except, he is not dependent. Not incapable. “O tower of ivory, oh, mouth upon it.”
Savaya glances at the book. “I tried it, but I couldn’t do all that thy moutheth cometh stuff. Terry gave it to me to look through.”
Huh! Was that Terry He, or Terry Her? Like temple acolytes in a weird rite, L holds the gold cloth taut and Jason snips, to underscore the slashes over and under the right breast. Shit, Savaya is a tall, tall girl. She could be so great, if she would just keep her head in the game, and quit fucking assholes like Pink, or whatever’s going on there, which she won’t talk about. She wields a bright gold lipstick in the mirrored door. She was so good as Stanley Kowalski.
“Thy Mouth is like a branch of coral that fishers have found in the twilight of the sea, the coral that they keep for the kings.”
“It’s either too early in the morning for lipstick,” Savaya says, staring at herself, “or too late at night.” She wipes her mouth off. The burnt-black hem trails at the back right down to the red stilts of her Despairing round-heeled, down-at-heel shoes.
There is nothing in the world so red as thy mouth.
Where’s the phone?
> Suffer me to kiss thy mouth.
In twenty seconds, it pings back. Always right on cue.
< Never! daughter of Babylon! Daughter of Sodom! never!
He texts, sings, shouts, > I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. I will kiss thy mouth.
2. EVERY TIME I THINK OF HUGH I GO BLIND
In the middle of the night he said say you love me. And why not, why not say it? Why make it precious, when it is so precious? “I love you,” Ivy tells the slanted ceiling. Meaning I love Hugh. If she had a marker she’d write it all over the wall. She stretches in the bed, wondering what what what she will do with this beautiful day.
Then memory comes back: at first a bud of misery—then blooming, fading, falling out of the pastoral, back to the city. It’s got to be done. If she leaves by ten, she can get back with time to have a good cry and wash her face and get to the master class before three.
She pats for the phone—email? None from Hugh. Three from Jamie, very long, re: the dishwasher and the water damage. (One from Alex, all caps again, delete without reading.) Prickling duty kicks her up and into the shower.
It’s not just fixing the dishwasher. She’s got to get serious with them, get Jamie the heck out of her apartment. Alex promised he’d be sent to Winnipeg by September. This is no good for him, he needs real
help. Why do so many people have to be crazy? I must have sought them out, her mind says. And what about Hugh? Who’s to say he’s not crazy too?
Hugh’s to say. She laughs. He is so not crazy, so sane. His sanity buoys her up, drowning in indoor rain while outdoor rain sluices down the window that’s over the tub, water in and out, and a view out to the rainy river where water pours into water like the soul pours itself into the world, over and over, looking for home. He said it—love—we said.
Whatever we meant by that. Is it lying, not to have told him about Jamie; about Alex, when she knows about Ann? Avoiding, withholding, that’s lying too, yes. Phone on the sink—oh, a text from before! How did she miss that? Sound was off—she flips it on.
< let me know when your eyes open
She answers: > my eyes are open but I do not see you
Half-dressed, she looks at her body in the mirror, how it must have seemed to Hugh last night. It didn’t matter, in the night. Our flesh was made one, as the bishop said to the actress. Breast waist bottom thigh—under Hugh’s hands all golden. One with everything.
Will it matter in daylight?
A gentle horn from the phone: < but you will, you will
And another: < come to the gallery? ten?
Ten is cutting it fine for getting to the city and back in time for the master class. Dress fast: grey pants and tunic, because who the heck knows what mysteries of Burton are on the menu today, whether she will be man or womankind in Spring Awakening.
Now to beard the cold-eyed lioness downstairs.
Ivy takes the front stairs without noise, so Ann doesn’t turn from her work: standing on a chair at the front door, she’s writing something over the lintel. Ivy reaches the short landing as Ann steps off the chair. In a perfect arch over the doorway, so anyone going out must read it:
Lying is done with words and also with silence. Adrienne Rich
Perfect. So life in this house is now impossible.
Back up the stairs. It is not unheard of for a landlady to change the locks, for people not to be able to get their stuff out later. There’s not a lot to pack. Ivy leaves her cases under the window, in case she has to climb the ladder to get them later, and puts on her warmer coat. She opens the door and listens. Nothing. She goes to the top of the stairs, pauses—
Close to Hugh Page 18
