Close to Hugh

by Marina Endicott

  Right beside her, Jason says, “You okay?”

  She jumps, and turns to him. His face is sharp in the ghostlight of the upstairs hall.

  “I think your mom …” Feeble. “I was just checking to see if— I guess she’s mad at me.”

  “Because of Hugh?”

  Ivy nods, guilty. Jason is carrying his shoes, looks the worse for wear. Sneaking in after a night out? He doesn’t seem the tomcat type. He checks the stairs himself.

  “She doesn’t, she wouldn’t, get back with him,” he whispers, in a rush. “Don’t worry.”

  She nods again.

  “Also, L thinks you guys are good. You and Hugh.”

  A surging bubble of happiness sings up through Ivy’s whole body from foot to head—joy, joy, that other people know about this amazing, unlikely thing. “Thanks,” she whispers, not able to look at Jason lest he see the light in her face, even in this dark upper hall.

  She slips down the stairs, makes the front door, scoots through with her shoulder bag—and beats Ann’s entrance from the kitchen by the kind of quarter inch that gives a person the shudders. Raining still. Ivy dashes for the car, praying it starts.

  Reversing down the damp-dark driveway, she sees Ann staring out the open door. Above her head in the doorway, Jason is waving.

  (DELLA)

  Mighton in the morning might help me forget the disappearing Ken

  at the train station too early always either too early or too late

  Gerald plodding along where’s he off to? sad head sad body sad sack

  the rain station the drops have slowed

  is it clearing? glimmering shimmering

  thirty years of knowing Mighton I’m so old he’s so famous

  what makes one succeed and another not? his exhibit at the AGO

  cool, hot, too clever, puzzling boxes, hidden compartments

  brilliantine, bits of glass a box himself dark glasses

  arrogant, intricate too bright for his boots

  surface glitter shallows, no depth

  depth, plunging—Ken

  his boat half-sunk seen through waves

  beyond my ken

  train’s early too a miracle—

  there’s Mighton always bright monkey-face I like him

  long ago dinner at where was that cachaça

  no older that night him a thin arrow inside me

  streetlight shining in the round window

  Hugh & Ann’s it could have been

  Hugh and I walked in Ann & (who) on the coats not Mighton

  I think it was Ken

  Your new piece, can’t wait—let me take that—I’ve got Hugh’s van

  he has a concussion, can’t—phew, no ticket!

  easy in middle age to be together no self-consciousness only a gleam

  intelligence in his work but he himself is a little stupid I always forget

  Largely kept the mandarin orange door best thing about his house

  Wonderful! I’ll come back—All right, if Lise can give you a ride

  to the Argylle? Great!

  nice to drive away

  best thing about people is driving away from them

  I sound like Ken

  (L)

  Someone’s been sleeping in my bed. Somebody walked through the Republic and tried to cover the traces. Not Hugh. He’d see half the pieces were backwards and fix them. Not Jason. He has a permanent pass for all L’s purlieus—anyway he spent the long night at Savaya’s. How to feel about this?

  L wanders through the misplaced maze, smoothing, repositioning.

  So her dad is back, but not back. Not here, but here, mouse-feet, moving stuff on the dining room table. And searching through the underworld down here. Poor dad, poor dad.

  Four are missing. Why would her dad take them? It’s—count them: the drawing of her mom; onion skins of Newell and Nevaeh; something else, some map, which, where’s the schema … The inner fortress. Well that’s just weird, and if her father has taken away her vagina, that’s a thing that makes L both laugh and want to stomp her feet, thunder them together, drum them on the floor in a fucking tantrum.

  No. Always careful, always calm.

  We stay very stable in this house. Knowing that any moment, any one fraction of any moment, her father could split apart, husk shedding, and a creature could come out the middle that would frighten you to death. Still her dad, always, always to be relied on. But under that, this problem, such a basic foundation that we’ve built our whole house on it: careful, careful.

  For a bad moment L’s hands might stretch out and tear everything down, pull pull rip ruin the whole thing.

  But no. On all fours, she crawls out backwards to the door like an olden slave making obeisance, obeised/abased, removing herself from the presence.

  Up the basement stairs, coat, bookbag, out. Late for FairGrounds. Will Jason be at school by now? Because she needs some help. She would like to know, for instance, where her dad is sleeping. Why he is not—why her mom is not—dealing with this.

  And for this one last year, before she is gone from them pretty much forever, why the fuck the two of them cannot keep it together for just—count them—nine more months until she leaves for good.

  3. HUGH CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD

  Hugh takes the inside stairs two at a time up to Mimi’s hall. Racing up is sometimes the only way you can go in. The quietude, the ambient air of death is so thick.

  Halt. Ruth’s backing out the door with a tray of dishes, tubes, cloths.

  “You missed Newell, he brought flowers. I chased him out, though.”

  Hugh takes the tray from her and sets it safely on a cart left in the hall. No crashing, no broken glass this morning.

  “She’s not herself,” Ruth says, to warn him.

  Ah, but she is, Hugh’s willing to bet. The door is ajar. From inside he can hear a buzzing droning singsong. The litany streams on without pause, as if breath doesn’t pertain. He nods to Ruth, shoulder-clasps her.

  In he goes.

  “Hugh Hugh Hugh Hugh Hugh Hugh,” his mother is saying, brokenhearted. (Or else, of course, “You you you you you you …”) Tears track down her crepe de Chine cheeks.

  Happy time is over, it seems. “What’s the deal, what’s the deal here,” he murmurs, keeps murmuring, a stream of Yes it’s me, it’s all right, it’s okay. Heavy scent of Newell’s roses, white hearts opening outward, waterdrop halfglobes on the green table.

  Leaning over in the familiar partial kneel, since there’s no room to sit on the bed beside her, Hugh takes Mimi’s hands to stop her fretting with the blankets. Tubes and sticks get in the way, but he is patient. He untangles them all gently, without causing her to cry out.

  Today she is not coherent, at least not intelligible. But he’s been listening to this language, this deathspeak, for a while now. He can hear the words—not so different from bad racing manic-anxious times he recalls from childhood. “Thank you Ruth. Thank you. Thank Hugh.” That for some time, bead-telling, rote-repetitive. Then singsong Mairzy doats and dozy doats, also for a good while, over and over, never progressing. Crouch-kneeling by her side, Hugh joggles the needle of her mind in one of the pauses: “… and little lambs eat Ivy,” he sings. Nibbling lambs circle Ivy’s green skirt, her small hands patting their heads. Her lamblike hinder end—he almost laughs.

  Mimi falls silent. Then begins the whispered recounting that he’s afraid to listen to. One thing that keeps him away from her, away from here. Snatches of memory thrown up from her disintegrating mind, urgent to impart: “She drove us in her little car all the windows open down along the shore he sat beside me our legs touching she told me I was only there to make up to him and no kind of a friend it hurt me so much to have her say that he sat beside me our arms touched all along the upper lengths I shifted on the seat in the heat he’ll never amount to anything she said he only …”

  You can’t know another person, can’t know anyone. You are alone, alone. No matter what life yo
u construct, no matter what duty you give them or how you love them. She can never know you, or you her. Huge white roses rise from thick green thorns; heavy glass refracts, magnifies the stems and the thorns.

  “I knew him that’s why I went I trailed my hand along the tops of the stones grey lichen green moss stubble graveyard dust the horses the horses were buried under that mound he told us then later he climbed into bed with me when no one was about.”

  He can hardly bear to hear. It murmurs on and on, so much life to be confessed at last. He thinks and thinks and still she goes on recounting, the tape spooling out of the cassette.

  “I pushed him aside I promise I but he was there with me and what was I to I told him I knew all about her and what she’d said it was all so clear, all perfectly all clear I knew I knew it all along I knew it as soon as I saw the blood that they were that I was that it was I who, I did, it was my …”

  Hugh bends to kiss his mother’s cheek. Swollen in the early stages, then shrunken; now a soft husk around her bones, not her face that he has always known. But more her face than ever, the face he now knows best of all. He presses his cheek to her cheek. He hums to her along those mairzy dozy lines, floating the song along, easing her. “Never mind,” he says to her. “Never mind, never mind, it wasn’t your fault, it’s all done with now, you don’t need to worry now.”

  “Now no now no thank you, no thank you Hugh thank you, thank you,” she whispers.

  It gives his head more pain to hear her thanks—more pain than he can in any way allow,

  and since she seems quieter he stands and leaves the room

  and there is Ruth outside the door, she nods and trades places with him

  and off he goes blind

  into the long-stretched wet autumn sunlight

  down the hospice steps away

  (DELLA)

  up the steps to Ken’s office: insist on information

  no Jenny

  her assistant says Ken’s assistant has an assistant now

  down the steps down the street

  they are not together they must be together

  —Buckthorn/County Rd 23—

  Ken loves her as a friend, who’s needed help from time to time

  when her boyfriend went off the rails he helped, that was good for him

  that’s the law, helping people who go before the courts

  he loves to help he loves me

  —Bobcaygeon, 30 km—

  still after all this time who knows why

  he does not have another wife in Toronto and four children

  he is not with Jenny, he could not have kept that from me

  he is in pain distraught

  —having a nervous breakdown—

  in the middle of the night no matter who I am now

  how I have failed in everything I’ve set my hand to he pulls me to him

  to kiss my mouth and body no erasing that for him or me

  he loves me he is such a fool

  —Echo Bay Road, left at the windmill—

  here is a nice leafy road a quiet place to park

  I’ll sit and listen to the birds

  look there is Jenny driving in trim tidy car

  trim tennis figure bending to the trunk

  pulling out groceries a carton of Diet Dr Pepper

  no one else drinks that

  so there is where he is

  Jenny armsful at the cottage door:

  Hey, I’m back! Lunch!

  the snap the buckle of the screen such long brown hair, sweet-eyed face

  a lovely person, intelligent, kind, on her way up in the law

  axe in the head axeblade in the belly where it hurts the most

  4. A BONE TO PICK WITH HUGH

  Hugh comes to himself again ringing the bell at Newell’s big glass door. But the squat shadow strutting across to answer is not Newell. Of course not. Burton’s glass-blurred hand fumbles with the lock. His bruise reminds you to be kind—yellow now, a jaundiced eye.

  “Hey, Burton!” Hugh says, fake cheer/light beer. “I’m looking for Newell.”

  Of course. “Of course,” Burton says, drawing back to let Hugh in. His sourness may not be personal. The huge Paris clock on the kitchen wall says it’s nine, early for Burton. His robe is just the right rich purple to pop that yellow eye. (Wouldn’t it be nice to pop that eye again. Sick feeling of fist again on bruise.) To atone for internal loathing, Hugh attempts a smile.

  Burton waits. He is a cat. Hugh: mouse or dog?

  “I brought Mimi’s lease for him to pass along to Hendy,” Hugh says. Trying, he is trying, honestly. Head aches, pulses. “Is he out for a run? I could wait.”

  “I am not quite sure …” Burton is careful with the words, “exactly where he is.”

  “Oh.” Now what? “Mind if I—?” Hugh gestures toward the washroom.

  “Be my guest,” Burton says. And then, “An espresso? I was just about to grind.”

  Surprise. “Sure, thanks. Be right back.”

  Huge apartment. High ceilings, all the surfaces hard. Shoes sound down the hall. Past the many pieces Hugh has sold Newell. There’s Mighton’s portrait, him as Hamlet—not as old as the entwined Newell/Della/Ann thing that Hugh remembers. Wherever that now is.

  In the powder room pale glass reaches the zenith. Glass sink, glass tiles on floor and ceiling; like being inside an aquamarine. An aquamarine submarine. He’s tired, elation deflated by Mimi’s sad condition. Yet she carries on. So you will have to too. Hugh will.

  The flush is loud. He shuts the door to contain it; stands for a while in the hallway. The bookcase built into the end of the hall is full now. Burton’s books. Hugh looks along the shelf. Pulls out a—oh. Another. Yes. Well. Jason might find these interesting. Hugh is not disturbed by porn, whatever turns the crank. He doesn’t (does he?) despise Newell? No, he never could. But he shudders still, however blinkered, bigoted, wrong he is, imagining Burton’s crank. Trying to imagine what bond it is that he and Newell— Stop. You can’t.

  Not your business. How often you’ll have to say that. As, presumably, long years go by. In fact, Newell is lost to you. Lost to Hugh. Friendship will be impossible with Burton always here.

  Burton is watching from the end of the hall. “Espresso, Americano?” Archness: “Or would you rather browse?”

  Hugh puts down the last book. Stupidly quickly. “Coffee, yes. I’ve been visiting Mimi.” Playing the death card, to get out of feeling smutty. He follows Burton to the vast kitchen.

  “Bali taught me the art of coffee,” Burton says, attending the copper-swathed machine. “That is the place to repair the soul. A tarot reader I consult in Ubud—and I very much subscribe to that sort of thing—warned me that the soil in Canada is too new. I need to root myself in ancient soil.”

  Hugh takes the tiny, perfect espresso from Burton’s outstretched hand. He sips. Delicious. Anything he can like about Burton he’d better practise liking.

  A wave of Burton’s plump palm at the papers and books lying on the black slate counter: “Remounting my one-man Swinburne show for the Edinburgh Fringe—refining my verses.”

  “Much of a market for Swinburne?”

  “Well, it wouldn’t play the Edmonton Fringe, no!” Burton laughs loudly, Newell not being there to keep him reined in. Vile teeth peep between flexible purplish lips; you don’t often see those teeth in the first world. He has an unsavoury habit of allowing his tongue to lie forward on the bottom teeth, his mouth slightly open. “But I have to make my own way in the world, unlike you, dear Hugh. No longer really employable, you know—the school only wants me because Newell is part of my package.”

  Everything Burton says has a taint. Hugh takes a second sip of espresso.

  “We have the privilege of perfect understanding,” Burton says.

  (We, Burton and Hugh? Or Burton and Newell?)

  “We have, we’ve always had, an open, mutually supportive relationship.”

  (Ah. Burton and Newell.)


  “And we’ve had our vicissitudes!” A modest moue of the mouth: “We won’t get married, in case you were worrying. That was a gesture, an emotional exchange. We have no need of marriage. You hate me, Hugh, and that’s all right because I mostly hate you too, but here’s the thing you don’t take into account: I really do love Boy. I always have. I always have. He and I are all in all to each other. Whoever may, from time to time, come between us.”

  Hugh drains the cup, welcoming bitter distraction. He can’t answer this.

  Burton stares at him, waiting. Then gives a bitter chuckle.

  “You know, Hugh know, there’s really something very beautiful in the relationship of an older to a young man—stretching back into ancient history. A rootedness—a way of bringing the young forward into the world and introducing them—not only to the physical, don’t think I mean only that—to the whole life of the mind, of the soul and heart. A friendship more than ordinary, one that elevates the junior into the society to which he aspires. It is the basis for so much in art, so much in philosophy. Well, the Greeks!”

  Hugh looks down into his cup. The dregs. He wants Newell to come home. Burton doesn’t spout this kind of shit with Newell in earshot.

  “That boy—Orion—he is a very talented young man.”

  Oh, that’s it. Burton is justifying himself, posturing against the long window that looks out over the river.

  “A mentor. You know—better than I! Every young artist needs a mentor who recognizes talent, who sees the possibility in a young mind and heart and body, whose experience and vision grant the generosity to sponsor—”

  Hugh can’t listen to any more. He pretends to drink from his empty cup, so he does not have to nod or disagree, or look at the purple dressing gown flapping over Burton’s grey old chest, satin clinging to each roll of pompous pitiable belly and butt. Don’t hit him again, some small voice sings, back behind Hugh’s ears. Which are ringing, slightly.