Close to Hugh

by Marina Endicott

  Newell feeds the fish, a casual casting of crumbs: “I’ve always wanted to—but no. Torture, terrorism—timely, but the Kiss My Hands piece, that’s just too difficult.”

  Ivy is full of admiration for Newell. “I have a copy,” she says, idly. Gentle tickle of worm-fingers, luring the fish. “I don’t like it much myself, it’s too dark.”

  Newell’s sidelong eye caresses her. (No wonder Orion loves him, she thinks. I do myself. Everybody, everybody does.) Burton’s purple lips purse, considering.

  But before he can bite, Hugh comes in the door, back from Mimi’s, and Ivy jumps up to meet him and take his hand, checking his eyes for news on Mimi’s condition.

  “Could be any day,” he says, without visible distress. “Conrad’s taken her off whatever was giving her the jim-jams, so she’s calmer, more lucid. She can stop eating now, that’s a relief. He’s upping the morphine, though, so she’ll have fewer periods of … I need another coffee,” he says. “Savaya, can you make me a—”

  Savaya finishes it: “Quad long-shot Americano, three-quarters full.”

  He puts a ten in the tip jar. “That’s the stuff.”

  “Yikes,” Ivy says. “I’ll make your coffee, for that kind of money.”

  “Will you, every day?”

  They look at each other with pleasure, long enough for Savaya to set the coffee on the counter. Hugh pulls Ivy into the biggest chair with him, one for two more to curl up in, his comforting leg beside hers. Expecting Burton to shoot it down, she says, “Canadian?”

  “Hm.” Burton ponders. “Crackwalker? Ivy cut her teeth on that one, Hugh.”

  “And then I spent the next five years playing all the broken girls.”

  “Culminating in a very good Laura in Glass Menagerie, as I recall.” It’s the only compliment Burton has ever paid her. Ivy puts up a hand to one burning cheek. She likes that Hugh heard Burton say that. Foolish and immodest heart.

  “You could do Taming of the Shrew backwards,” she says. “A woman taming a spoiled-brat boy, a reality-show comedy. Or—or, you could take it seriously. Play it straight, look at domestic violence, what husbands have always been allowed, encouraged, to do to wives.” Ivy’s scalp prickles, thinking—always a good sign.

  Burton purses his lips, and his ankle rotates, the tell that he’s engaged. But he has to dismiss the idea, because she thought of it. “I’m thinking about Twelfth Night. Full of disguise and deception, and we could double-load it: Orion as Viola and Sebastian, Savaya a corrupt young Duke, you for Olivia, Boy. Lots of nice stuff there.”

  Is he not even conscious, Ivy wonders—has he been able to wash the whole Orion thing out of his mind so well? Or maybe he can compartmentalize it. Work/love separate. Or perhaps he’s so doctrinally aligned with not-faithfulness that he cannot allow betrayal to bother him for more than the initial hurt, the first outrage.

  Burton’s pen moves across the paper. “And for Malvolio, hm …”

  “Some have greatness thrust upon them,” Newell says. He reaches out one long hand to Ivy’s shoulder, and gets up. Session over.

  (L)

  Down in the Home Ec kitchen, Jason runs a frenzied bee of sewing and stapling before the costume parade at noon. Between writing up labels for each dress, L takes photos and video of the milling, half-dressed bodies. Cut off their heads and they’d fit the Voynich strand of the Republic. Nevaeh’s torso, tense in neoprene, strains as she raises her hands to tie the string behind her rope-tight neck. All her movements are tight today. She’s angry with Savaya because of Pink, and taking it out in lightning strikes on everyone.

  L loves/hates N.

  She could write that on a bathroom wall, but she can’t put it into the Republic, why? Because her mom might see? Nevaeh’s pink mouth makes her own mouth itch makes her fingers touch her own lips but but but, but—let N be the unknown number.

  It is a problem. For example, Savaya is obviously super hot in the slutty Desire dress, but to L’s eyes, just funny, nothing bothersome. Whereas Nevaeh is prickly, heartbroken, remote. Putting on a thick coat of MAC Lovelorn. Something wild about her, ragged, like she knows about the pit, the worst things—except come on, she’s perfectly middle-class, even rich. Nevaeh’s father is a big Marxist guy at the university; she lives in the fanciest house they know. Kind of a dichotomy. He’s a massive, arrogant, slow-moving thinker; N’s tiny mother jitters around the edges. Her brother is doing a Fulbright; she’s going to have to do something amazing in dance. Or else. She could never tell her parents the truth.

  But neither could L, her stomach in a fist at the prinking thought of saying anything about Nevaeh, about knowing her, seeing her beauty and her inside sadness, her lovelorn mouth that is just as beautiful upside down, her tortured heart, her shyness.

  Jason is still getting Nevaeh tied into the thing with feathers, fixing the eyelashes curled below one breast and above the other—one eye is open now, Hope half-blind or winking. Where’s the Sharpie? “EMILY DICKINSON” Maybe he’s doing this quote thing in case his mom comes to see the show. She’s prancing around in Mimi’s old clothes today, some skeezy photog following her around town. There has to be some way to still like Jason’s mom because it is too sad if she’s just a narcissist. That’s not fair: she’s freaked, she’s still crying all the time because Jason’s dad left last year. What was feminism even for, if not to make it so you don’t collapse without a man? She can be fun, she used to be. L’s mom still hangs out with her, sorry for her probably. Hugh’s kind to her too. At least she didn’t get him to talk to Jason about porn, because that would have been the last straw for Jason. L’s stomach-fist clenches again, thinking about it.

  The party being at Nevaeh’s house tonight also fills L with foreboding. The fancy floors, the swimming pool. There’s no way Nevaeh’s dad will be leaving the premises, and he’s scary, with the verbal prowess and the rock-carved face that says: remember, I am an international intellectual. Around him Nevaeh gets nervous, off balance. She needs help or reassurance—so over-needy that L steps back, recedes.

  Nevaeh heel-teeters on her stepstool and puts out a hand—Savaya grabs it, not L.

  See, L is already pulling herself away, because because, because she wants to work, she needs to stay sane enough to work. Because there is not enough money and it will all be up to her, if her mom goes to pieces. Hugh said he would talk to the gallery guy. She should go home now and finish twenty more things.

  Or stay, stay and go crazy with Hallowe’en, which comes but once a year. This school has its faults, every school does, principal among them Pink. But one thing we do well is dress up: costume/disguise, masquerade/reveal.

  The Loved One, nice title for a dress, whose is this?—it’s attached to a white, drapey tunic thing, a new one. Nice, very nice, feels like silk.

  L letters it carefully, thinking of Nevaeh. On the reverse, Jason’s sticker says: “Ah bird, our love is never spent with your clear note. H.D.” She wonders who H.D. might be. Hannah Dixon in grade eleven? But Jason never hangs out with her, he could not love her. He can’t love anyone or L would know about it.

  Done, okay, got to go—her own costume is still in her room at home, time to run back before Studio class.

  5. I ONLY WANT TO BE WITH HUGH

  Ivy stands at the photocopier in the basement, leafing, pressing, double page after double page. Better than counting sheep to fall asleep. Only the racket of students preparing for the lunchtime costume parade keeps her awake, shriekingly pleased with their finery. Jason is king down here, nice to see. Echoey halls, blue walls, exposed pipes that bang and slosh: this is the underground palace from his watery plague dream.

  L trots past, giving Ivy a gleam of grin, quick-flashed and gone. The urgency of every act at school. How restful that this is only for one month. Four thousand, four thousand.

  Principal Pink wanders down the hall, gives Ivy the eyeball. “Always read, read, read, eh?” He takes the book and flips through, losing her place. Grunts at Shakespeare
and puts it back in her hand, brushing needlessly against her skin. Ivy reminds herself that he is just a natural-born dick, not evil. “Cold hands, warm heart,” he says.

  “No, I have a thyroid condition,” she says.

  Pink paces past the door of the Home Ec room, and hearing the din, he pauses. Puts that eye to the crack. Over the next few minutes he moves only to change his angle of view.

  Ivy keeps the photocopier going, but principally she watches the principal spying on his charges. Are they getting dressed/undressed in there?

  A shout, a slam—the door pulled to. Then it opens again and Nevaeh storms out, half-stripped in high-heeled shoes, cloth clutched to her chest. Slit-eyed, she stares, she glares at Pink. Who stares right back, asshole authority giving him gall. He puts out a hand to arrest her movement; she whirls to go back to the classroom, but stalls—she just rushed out of there.

  She turns again to throw a stiff fist at Pink’s plaid sportscaster blazer. He moves before the fist connects. Spinning again, Nevaeh runs off down the hall on those dagger-heels, sure-footed and raging. A mad maiden, a young Fury.

  Pink smirks at Ivy, woo-woos with his hands, and passes on. The satyr Pan infesting girls with frights and plights.

  Hallowe’en is no treat if you are already in the pretending professions.

  Over the PA system comes a wild cackling, then the grim tolling of a giant bell—the costume parade, beginning. The scripts are finished. Burton won’t notice if she slips out to the Argylle Gallery for a breather, away from this overheated, multi-costumed sweatshop.

  6. HOW IS THE WORLD TREATING HUGH?

  The Mighton looms on the north wall, dwarfing the gallery space. Beautiful/dreadful. A thousand dead faces, everything that is lost. Enough to make you weep.

  If anyone ought to be gay, it’s you, Hugh thinks, surveying his domain: if these things went by love of colour and line, by having too thin a skin, by complicatedly loving your engulfing, badly behaved mother. Being Oedipusly-whipped, as Burton said the other night. What did you say to provoke that? Asked Burton not to compare some beach pickup to your beloved mother. Who in fact has treated Hugh, over the years, pretty much the same as a beach pickup: sunny charm, ice cream, saltwater tears, high-tide abandonment. Repeat.

  Della went out the back in a hurry just as he came in, what was that about? Maybe she got a text from Ken—maybe he’s made up his mind to talk about his job change, his own abandonment. “No one is alone,” that Sondheim song from Into the Woods. Another gay marker: life advice from musicals. Equally wrong. Because you are, you will always be alone.

  Not that Hugh is alone at the moment: Mighton stands staring at his piece. A discreet card at one side reads, THE DARK GATES, price on request. They decided on ninety. No red dot, because it has not yet been sold.

  The bell over the door tings. Hugh jumps—but it’s okay, it’s Ivy. He opens his arms and Ivy walks straight in, asking, “Am I too late? All that framing done?”

  Shit, the framing. Hugh checks—there’s time, still, the Ace guy will be there till six.

  Mighton turns from the window and says, “I can keep an eye on the store, if you have back-end work to do.”

  Grateful that Ivy did not say certificates, maintaining the fragile dignity of the gallery, Hugh nods to Mighton and ushers Ivy past the cash desk into the back hall.

  “Coffee?” she says, the only word that could make her dearer.

  He nods, then stops. Della is still standing out there, on the back porch, leaning her head against the rickety roofpost. He’s got to get that fixed.

  “You make it,” he tells Ivy, pointing silently out the window. She sees, nods, disappears. What a lovely thing a discreet companion is. You are not, in fact, alone.

  Hugh opens the door and steps out onto the porch, jingling keys in his jacket pocket as if on his way somewhere.

  Della looks up. “I can’t go home, I’m afraid Ken will be there.”

  “Has he talked to you?”

  “He doesn’t talk. He turns up from time to time, glares at me, and leaves.”

  Hugh can’t think what to offer. “He might need help, might need you to bring it up?”

  Della gives a miserable laugh, eyes hidden under cloudy hair. “Jesus, I’m not helping him! I don’t want to talk—I just want it not to be true.” She pulls on the creaking pillar. “Remember when we went to the funeral? I was so happy that day. Because Ken wasn’t dead, and neither was I, and we were happy together, with our daughter, our life.”

  “You must change your life.” Then he wishes he could pull that back into his mouth.

  Della looks away, probably hating him. She takes the two steps down from the porch as if she will never darken his door again, and walks to her car.

  From the spruce trees between the gallery and FairGrounds, Newell springs up the two steps on a quiet foot, watching as Della zims out in her little car. “Ken’s giving her hell,” he says, not a question.

  Which Hugh chooses not to answer. His head hurts all the time. He puts up a hand and presses the spot that hurts.

  Newell says, “Hey, Hendy says Lise Largely doesn’t just manage that company, it’s hers. She wants Mimi’s apartment for herself, since she had to move out of Mighton’s.”

  Okay. That makes the haste less weird, at least. Hugh stares into the distance at an invisible list of everything that has to be done, movers, storage, cleaning. At the bottom of the list, Mimi lies dead in the white-clad hospice bed, far from her bright extravagant linens and flowers and treasures and dust. He should be over there.

  Down at the street end of the porch, poor Gerald Felker waves to them. “Are you—is the gallery—?”

  Hugh waves back. “Yes, open, I’ll be right in. Door’s open, go ahead.”

  He tells Newell quietly, “I can hardly stand to talk to the guy, but he wants to buy something big. He’ll probably take the new Mighton, have you seen it yet?”

  “No, that’s why I came. But listen, I wanted to say—last night—” Then nothing. He stares off into the parking lot.

  Hugh is afraid to hear what Newell will tell him about the jade piece and Burton and Orion. Won’t let himself think about the possibilities. “Burton was in fine form this morning,” he says pre-emptively. “He’s a flamboyant personality.”

  “He’s a flamboyant fuckhead. I’m on my way to the class now. Going to Pink’s party?”

  “Pink’s having another party?”

  “Hallowe’en Treat, for the board. Some kind of fundraiser, that’s why we’re invited.”

  “I wonder if Ruth’s working it. She can’t keep knocking herself out like this, and then spend all night up in Mimi’s room.”

  “She did my place this afternoon, and she’s doing Mighton’s in the morning.”

  “How can we miss her if she won’t go away?”

  “You’d die without her,” Newell says. “You’d go into a decline.”

  “And you? You keep coming back here.”

  “Look, this place is Burton’s retirement plan.”

  Hugh laughs.

  “He won’t let me give him money.” Hugh snorts again, and Newell adds, laughing himself, “Not straight out—there always has to be a reason, a gimmick. It’s exhausting, thinking stuff up.”

  Newell slides down the creaking post and sits, stretching his legs along the steps. He sleeps about as little as Hugh does, but it looks better on him. “I leave before Christmas, back to LA, for Catastrophe. Burton can stay here safe, and I won’t have to worry about him.”

  “But I will,” Hugh says. His head really hurts.

  “Well, that’s why you’re my friend. Why you’re my brother.”

  (DELLA)

  drive away, drive

  Gerald going into the gallery death’s head lolling at the edges

  that’s what can happen people can die on you

  Gerald’s wife unfixable because she didn’t tell anyone

  maybe Toby

  what could he do, little b
oy, but love her and listen

  like Hugh with Mimi in the old days

  Elle on the back porch skipping school? no, it’s trouble

  glass of milk, slow mouth thin shoulders rapid-voice

  Nevaeh flipped out at Pink, or maybe at Savaya, nobody knows—

  remember you’re driving us to the party tonight, right?

  [Nevaeh : heaveN]

  Yes it’s in my phone. Hallowe’en is no fun now I don’t

  get to take you round the streets.

  Dad’s here.

  can’t meet my eyes as she turns to go

  go in go in not in the kitchen

  dining room black cloud black gaze

  I can’t hold any more anger

  but he is suffering so I will

  people can die on you

  his eyes pull up from the table

  stare at me in silence

  Like the boats? I was thinking of my mother’s endless boats, what

  she put in them …

  he is not thinking of boats

  he is thinking blame blame blame

  Mighton photos strewn on the table

  right

  serves him right he is suffering he is in pain

  as I’ve been as I am in pain

  but in the mind’s eye: Mighton biting tooth on skin

  then a new slide: Jenny bringing Ken supplies brown hair

  thin brown tennis-playing arm lunch

  Dr Pepper dangling cools my head

  Do you have a problem with Mighton being here? He

  has an opening at Hugh’s and he’s selling his house.

  long-stretched silence this again

  eyes lasers of black light after thirty years

  refusing to look at me his old contemptible

  a thin glaze of ice snaps

  I can do without him we’ll be fine

  I’ll sell the house Elly and I can—