Close to Hugh

by Marina Endicott

  The ladder shifts under him and he clings unashamed to the window ledge. He shouldn’t have done this.

  Then he hears Ann calling inside the house, sharp-tongued: “Jason? Jason?”

  No answer.

  “Jason! Mr. Pink called me—Jason!”

  A pause. Hard feet hard on the staircase, coming up. Will she open this door, searching? Hugh ducks below the windowsill, fingers aching on the sill’s edge.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re pulling, you can’t just not show up when I’ve—” Round the corner of the hall, still talking, getting louder as she goes. “Jason? Answer me!”

  Now’s the time, creep down. Each rung like a knife under his foot. Ivy’s bag clunks against his back, throwing off his balance. There, the ground. Sorry, Jason, Hugh thinks.

  He carries the ladder back down by the kayak and makes off into the dark. The bag is heavy—three more blocks, around the alley. He drops the bag on the gallery’s back step. Door? Locked. And he gave Ivy his keys. No lights on upstairs, she must still be at the Ace. He shoves the bag into the shadows of the porch and runs. Getting his exercise tonight. But after ten or twelve strides his head hurts, so he walks.

  In the pumpkin glow from the Ace’s windows, a small crowd of people stands silhouetted on the long wooden porch. No Mighton—his shock of hair would be recognizable. That explains why Ann left. But there’s Newell, Burton beside him of course. Coming up to the porch, Hugh thinks Burton looks drunker than Jasper, tonight. Ruth is telling Ivy something, her hand patting Ivy’s arm. So they’re getting along, that’s good.

  Hugh has one foot raised to step up onto the far end of the porch when a bicycle zooms past directly behind him. Startled, his balance off, he stumbles forward onto hands and knees.

  Ivy’s there, like a bird swooping down, touching his head, holding his shoulders.

  He laughs, says, “No, it’s fine—” and turns to see whose bike that was, riding in the dark with no lights. No, the bike is lit, he just missed seeing it, anxious to get to Ivy.

  The rider has pulled up and turned. Orion calls out, “You okay? Hugh! Sorry! I—you cut in front of me!”

  “It’s okay,” Hugh calls back. “I’m fine.”

  Orion sees who all is there, and glides back, one foot on the pedal, other leg languidly pushing. He’s a messenger of the gods, half-bare in the cool of the night, thin skin of T-shirt and shorts. He leans over to give Hugh a peacemaking hand, and a long shard of stone falls out of his shirt front and hangs in air between them, a subtle dark-glancing gleam in the thrown porch light.

  There’s a little hiss, a breath.

  Burton moves. “That’s yours, Boy,” he says. “Your jade.”

  They all stand still.

  Newell leans forward and catches the cord, pulling the jade piece through his hand so they all see how smooth it is, how smooth. “I wondered where that had gone,” he says.

  Orion stares into Newell’s face, his own as open as a lamp. He pulls the cord over his neck, and holds the jade out like a gift.

  “I found it,” he says, his young voice unstrained. “Lying in the leaves.”

  That undoes Burton. His face cramps, contorts into a grimace, a rictus. He is instantly, uncontrollably, beside himself, past the red stage of anger and on to the blotched-purple rage that strikes out in all directions. At Newell, now. He turns, fists flailing, slamming, making a drumming noise on Newell’s chest and arms. Newell holds him off, then holds him in, binds him close enough that the fists can’t swing.

  Words bubble out of Burton’s sloppy mouth, words and spittle and bile: “It’s all perfectly all clear—I gave you that! I bought it for you, for you!”

  It’s awful.

  Newell doesn’t speak. It seems he expends no effort holding Burton. He gives Orion a nod, a motion of the head, to say go on, go.

  The wheezing shout continues, like foam, like sputum: “I knew! I knew it all along! I knew it as soon as I saw him!”

  Orion looks shocked, but not upset. Clear-voiced, even over Burton’s raging, he says—speaking directly to Newell, as the sane one— “Sorry, I guess I should have turned it in to the office right away. I was looking for my pencil, in the papers under the workshop table, all the discarded leaves of the other plays, and I just—pulled the string over my head without thinking.”

  Then, since Burton keeps crying and wheezing, Orion backs the bike with dignity. When Newell nods, he nods himself, and turns to go. He’s so young! As he rides off his arm lifts in a gallant wave, a fare-thee-well to all who are not maniacs.

  Ruth takes Jasper’s hand and walks him toward the store, their heads bent toward each other. Ivy keeps hold of Hugh, as if he might need some protection, but Hugh is mostly worried about Newell. His thoughts are muddled. Burton gave— But Orion— Did Orion steal the jade? He found it in the leaves.

  Hugh’s head is pounding, shaken again by the stumble onto the porch, or by confusion, or not wanting to know.

  He turns away, into Ivy’s supporting arm, and says, under or over Burton’s sobbing, incoherent yowl, “Okay, goodnight, I guess, goodnight.”

  Only Newell is left there with Burton, whose wails turn to watery washed-out weeping as they go. Hugh looks back. He watches Newell put the cord back over his neck and pull, persuade, half-carry Burton to his car.

  13. I’LL SEE HUGH IN MY DREAMS

  She puts him straight to bed. It takes two minutes to find the key, to climb the stairs, to say no no to tea, to find the bedroom and persuade him, like Sweetums, to “lay his ugly head down upon his wretched bed.” He closes his eyes, just blinks, and he’s out like the famous light. Not snoring, that’s a mercy, but breathing slow, asleep. His head can’t take much more jangling.

  Neither can hers. That was awful, Burton screeling.

  Ivy stands at the window looking down on the street, on the Ace in the distance, the stub tower of the Saab dealer, FairGrounds shut up tight next door. Hugh’s grey van, just visible, says ARGYLLE GALLERY on the side in an elegant serif typeface. Little black swoops link the interchangeable letters, top and bottom.

  He should not lose the gallery, Ivy decides. It is his spiritual home. Plus, the apartment is so nice.

  She walks around the rooms, touching the wooden shelves, the clean-lined chairs, the kitchen’s shining surfaces. A row of turquoise Le Creuset pots above the cupboards. Someone who likes to cook.

  She washes her face with his soap and slooshes water in her mouth to take away the taste of scotch; she takes off her pants and tunic and quietly opens drawers until she finds a T-shirt she can sleep in; she walks once more through the peaceful rooms to turn off all the lights and climbs into Hugh’s bed, curling beside him and bending knee in knee.

  In the middle of the night they semi-wake and once more make careful, yielding, boundary-dissolving love. Ivy’s head fills with unexpected visions: a wolf on a winter hillside, a woman bending near the earth to touch a flower. A great map of all the world, made well.

  They sleep.

  Someone asked him: “Why may we not

  worship the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas?”

  He answered: “Ogres and hobgoblins

  can at will assume the outward form of

  Bodhisattvas; such are heretical and not

  of the true Buddha. There is no Buddha

  but your own thoughts.”

  Zen Buddhism and Its Relation to Art,

  Arthur Waley

  1. I SATURATED HUGH

  The dawn comes up like wonder. Ivy is not asleep when light begins to leak through shade. Almost six. It’s raining again—not a downpour, just a steady-seeping sleep-inducing sound that doesn’t break the spell of night. Wide-eyed, she lies under Hugh’s arm, flung across her chest. His skin on hers, the whole substance of the lover’s person: she had not believed it was true. He is the person of her person.

  How can he be so loving and clear of heart, when on his last legs in every other respect? She lies wondering as long as her r
estless brain will let her, and then slides slowly, slowly, out from under his arm and softsteps off to the slightly brighter bathroom.

  Hugh wakes to the sound he hates most: water running down window-panes, down the downpipes and the downspouts, down into the damned drowned basement. He shudders up in bed, but crossing the warmth of Ivy’s side he remembers. Did she leave?

  His ear sorts out sounds: shower, rain, falling light. Six-ish. Too early to get up.

  Except: the basement, the rain. Coffee.

  Okay. Okay. He hauls the covers back. Gets his bearings. Not bad. Turns out, evidence is, you don’t feel so bad in the morning if you slept beside Ivy. He finds pants, a clean shirt. Has she locked the bathroom door? No. Not nervous, good. “Coffee?”

  “What?” (Her silhouette turns under the water, slicking her hair back to hear better.)

  “Coffee?”

  “Oh, please.” She sticks her head out, holding the curtain round her chin like a movie vixen. “Did I wake you up?”

  “I woke from joy. And then I heard the rain.”

  “This is a good shower.”

  “I put that rain-head on last month. Probably brought the weather down upon us by that one foolish act.”

  “It’s worth it. Coming in?”

  He leans forward to kiss her shining cheek. “Coffee, and I have to check the basement, see if the walls are worse.”

  Not worse, per se. But wet. All the buckets full—one spilling over, farthest from the drain. He finds a plastic scoop and ladles three cups out before moving the bucket to pour the whole thing through dirt-smeared drain holes. Old basement, old bricks and concrete, muck beneath. One day you will all be gone, you human mites, the water says, chuckling down the drain. Back to water and dirt. And what’s so bad about that?

  Ivy comes down the wooden stairs, re-dressed in the same clothes.

  Hugh smacks his head with the non-bucket hand. “I eloped your bag from your room last night, and then I forgot about it!”

  Interested, Ivy cocks her head. “Up that ladder again? Yikes. Where did you put it?”

  Hugh blanks. Just … blanks.

  “Did you leave it in the van?”

  “No, I was on foot—I— Shit.”

  “Was it the big one or the little one?”

  “Were there two? It wasn’t very big.”

  “Oh good, then just the little one. Nothing much in there I need.”

  He can see her flipping through the contents in her mind, and says, “No, no, it’s here somewhere. I put it— Oh! I left it, because you had my keys—it’s on the back porch, under the seat. I hope it isn’t wet.”

  “No matter if it is, it’s just shampoo and socks. Nothing I need.”

  By the single inadequate basement bulb he looks at her face, a beacon in a damp dead world. “You are the easiest person to love,” he says. She blushes, blushes; she puts up her hands to cover her face. “But you could help with the buckets here.” A task, to cover her confusion.

  They’re all empty when the phone begins to ring. Hugh takes the stairs three at a time, unable not to think Mimi. He doesn’t really think she’s dead—he dekes to hit the button on the coffee machine as he goes by, so he must not think it.

  It’s Dave on the line, Ruth’s tame repairman, at Ivy’s apartment and already working at seven. Dave talks so loud that Ivy hears it all, even before Hugh hits the speakerphone. The floor is salvageable; her worried look lightens. The ceiling in the apartment below, not as bad as it looked: say, three-fifty for the ceiling, about six hundred for the kitchen floor and dishwasher repair.

  “No need for a new dishwasher,” Dave announces to the general air. “That was human error. Maybe work on that kid rinsing his dishes? That’s a good stainless dishwasher—don’t let her get a new one, you’ll just be buying trouble.”

  Hugh gestures to Ivy to take part, but she shakes her head. “I’ll tell her. That’s all good. And what about my basement?”

  “Buddy, that’s a bigger job. We’re going to have to dig a trench all the way around your store. That’s the only way to do it.”

  “Jasper’s side too?”

  “Afraid so. Dig down, put in the weepers, seal her all up again, gravel, dirt, pack, you name it. It’s not, like, fifty grand, but it’s going to set you back.”

  “I can just imagine.”

  “And you need better windows in the basement, now’d be the time to do that.”

  Ivy is looking bleached. When the coffee machine begins its self-cleaning cycle, she goes into the framing room to catch the water, missing the rest of the back-and-forth about when, how long, etc. Not soon enough, too long, is the short answer. But Dave says he’ll start on Monday. “Ruth says I got to.”

  “Whatever she says goes,” Hugh says, acknowledging the iron contract of obligation, fondness, and loathing so many people have with Ruth. Especially now she’s old.

  Empty cup in hand, Ivy is staring at the machine, perplexed.

  “It’s complicated,” Hugh says, instead of thinking about forty thousand plus the windows. “Watch and learn.”

  (ORION)

  Slanted half-conscious in his gaming chair, coming or going from sleep, Orion still feels some bad thing looming. That childish feeling: I am in so much trouble.

  Oh. Right. Right, he is. And no text.

  No text.

  What is important, anyway? To work. Not to antagonize fucking Burton. The play is the most important—but what play are they actually doing, after all?

  So did he buy that leaves thing?

  What is jealousy? Same as it means to say polyamory but not mean it.

  Don’t dare to text now.

  Fucking fucking fucking shit.

  Well fuck school, anyway.

  No text.

  Orion gropes for the keyboard, checks email—checks Facebook. Nothing to quell his sick uneasiness. Somebody (Nevaeh, of course, Queen of Darkness that she is) posted a Tumblr of famous photos, and Orion clicks through to it.

  Disasters, cruelty, poverty, war. Guys getting shot right in the photo, bleeding out on slanted streets so the blood runs downhill. Climbers, fighters. Stuff he should be doing with his life instead of all this art shit.

  Photo after photo. Tears come without bidding. The monk in the bus station, oh man, bending over the dead guy to bless him. Orion cries and clicks through all the hundred shots, like fucking God watching how fucked up we are in The Fifth Element or some fucking thing, unable not to look, unable to shut it down, compelled to see what shits we fuckers are.

  2. I REST MY CASE

  The plaid bag is there, pushed under the bench and down into the bushes beside the porch. Ivy gropes under dripping leaves and pulls it out. Damp, but toothbrush, yay. Foolishly unable to decide whether putting it inside Hugh’s door is presumptuous, Ivy takes it with her to the Volvo. Now for the other bag.

  The rain is spotty now, stopping? Streets sopping still, black-wet, misty sunshine peeping like a baby, like a lady who stops crying. At the house, she parks a few houses down and slips around to the kitchen door, hoping to sneak up the back stairs and evade Ann.

  The kitchen, incandescently clean, glitters under shy watery sunbeams flooding through the sink window. Ivy reaches the door to the back stairs—open, in, shut.

  Quiet. The doors at top and bottom make a decompression chamber. A breath in the blackness, then up to the top door.

  Ann’s room is perfect, as always. Jason’s, spotless. Down-storm vacuumed, color-block pillows heaped on a single bed, the magazine ideal of a teenaged boy’s room. No flamboyant cloth, no sewing machine, no dressmaker’s dummy. No Jason.

  Too Marie-Celestial in here. Ivy nips to her room, grabs her bag, and heads for the front stairs. In the living room laid out below, pale sun picks out new writing on the floorboards, words Ivy can’t make out from halfway up the stairs. But look—furniture! Two black leather armchairs by the fireplace, looking almost comfortable. On a glass-topped table a vivid slash of colour: full-length pi
nk satin evening gloves and a Lucite head in a strawberry blonde wig, tied with a hot pink headband. An exhibit. Lined up against the French windows to the garden, six dummies in a row, draped in wildly coloured clothes.

  It’s a museum. Are those—yes, the white go-go boots, on the mantelpiece.

  The front door opens. Ann comes in with a half-bearded young man. “Hi, Ivy, there you are.” No evil eye, no anger. “This is Stewart—the photographer from Ontario Living.” She points for him. “Through that arch, to the left.”

  Stewart heads through the arch to the powder room, and Ann turns back.

  “Hi,” Ivy says, feeling like a thief, suitcase in hand.

  But Ann gives her a sparkling smile. “I hope you’re not moving out,” she says. Then, in a confiding rush: “I used to live with Hugh, did he tell you? I mean, you know how you always think you could go back—you know, maybe you should go back?”

  Oh, Ivy knows. Seeing Alex at her place yesterday, for a moment it seemed like she never got away, or was doomed to go back to him. And he’s not even a decent, loving, sane-hearted person like Hugh. She sets her case down to rest her arm.

  “It was Hallowe’en last year. When Jack told me he wanted out. He left at Christmas.” Ann’s cool blue eyes fill—overfill, spill over—and one corner of her mouth flutters. But she catches herself, as the photographer breezes back from the washroom.

  Stewart is too cool to talk to Ivy, but he bends this one time. “We’re doing a feature on Ann and her stunning style. This house, a living statement of her art philosophy. The influence, the legacy of Mimi Hayden, with a TV tie-in. Charlaine and a guy from Farrow & Ball are going to discuss the paint techniques Ann utilizes in her design meditations.”