A surprise, then, when he pushes his chair back at the end of this second run-through. His arm goes up in salute, and he says, “Good. Well done. But no. Here is why we would never produce it this way: blatant all-male casting neuters the hiddenness, the closetedness that was in their time so vital to the green-carnation life. It takes the secret mainspring out of the play, and ignores the truth that many gay men in those days married to disguise themselves, including Wilde himself. In approaching a production, it would be our work to enter into the world behind the world of the play: to research and understand that Victorian culture of propriety and secrets, of rigid class distinction—a culture where the worship of class still edged out the worship of money.”
Burton is not an idiot. A clever creature who is the product of his time, of his training, and of the wrongs done to him, no doubt over and over. Ivy cannot hate him. Maybe Orion can.
“We’ve tested out five plays from the canon,” Burton says. “Look up canon if you don’t know what I mean. We’ve played rich, poor, clever, stupid, cannibal, German, American, English, Illyrian; that gorgeous brute Stanley, shipwrecked Viola. We’ve read the musical, the domestic tragedy, the drawing-room comedy—each at the pinnacle of perfection.”
The young faces around the table, turned to him like daisies, register various degrees of hope and confusion. Only Orion looks down at his script, thinking his secret thoughts.
Burton surveys them. “All right. On Monday, we go farther back into the canon, to the dawn of the written drama—the Greeks. We will read the original bill of divorcement, the first wronged woman wreaking havoc: Medea. With one interesting twist—but I’ll save that for Monday. Away, all of you. Thank you for your energy this week. Total rest tomorrow.”
Orion looks up. “I don’t think so,” he says.
Like a ring has been twitched in his nose, Burton jerks his head. “I beg your pardon?”
“I don’t think we should do a different play,” Orion says, white around the nostrils but calm outside. “No more changing. I think we should stick with Earnest. We’d do a great job, we could really work. I don’t care about the—I mean, cast somebody else—and I don’t care if you can’t stick with the cross-casting, but I think we should work on one play, one project, instead of jumping around so much.”
He stops talking.
Ivy feels faint. Everyone else is quiet. Even Newell, whose cloudless gaze stays on Orion’s face.
Burton’s throat works, Adam’s apple jumping unpleasantly under the wattled skin. But he restrains, contains himself. “Thank you for your input,” he finally says. “I will take that under advisement.” The maestro’s nod, dismissal.
It’s over, no lightning or thunder: Phew.
Anticlimax, in fact. The students gather their wits and papers and begin to drift off.
Terry-She snags Newell to sign some posters for her sponsors. Terry-He and Pink stand chatting at the door. Savaya postures and laughs for them.
Ivy’s phone is plugged in behind the curtain leg. She goes to retrieve it.
“Scripts in the recycling, please, not under the table again,” Burton calls. Then, as the others disperse in clumps, he says, “Orion, a word?”
The plug sticks, it has to be wiggled gently to come out. In the wiggling time Ivy hears Burton, very cool, professional. None of the bombast now.
“I don’t want you in my class any longer, Orion.” Simple as that.
Orion makes no sound.
“For Medea, which you clearly scorn, Mikayla and Newell will take the leads. All the others will be chorus; I wouldn’t want to demean you by using you in such a minor way.”
Orion still does not speak. Perhaps he is frightened.
Burton huffs. “Your very commercial talent is wasted in this investigative, exploratory work, and your impatience with the class has been crystal clear.” (What?) “I suspect you’ve got a big future, if you learn to submit to direction. You think your working life has already started, but you’re banking on the cheap—facility—you already have, rather than deepening your work and digging harder for more truth, more grit. I can’t work with you, and I won’t have your arrogance polluting the group. Your fee will be refunded.”
Ivy looks around the curtain. Orion stands on the black stage straight and tall as a shaft of light through branches.
“Are you going to answer me?” Burton’s voice betrays him. Choking, fat with fury.
“I think this is a fight between the two of you,” Orion says, his voice cool water, undisturbed. “It’s not about me.”
Ivy can’t see Burton’s face, only the purple edge of his cheek.
Silence.
Then Burton gestures at Orion’s still figure, flaring out, “Go, go! The decision is made.”
“All right, old man,” Orion says. As if old man is the worst thing he can think of.
He walks away.
(L)
Hugh likes the place cards! L is happy with them: each one the bottom half of an Oreo, icing carved away to make a profile of the person, like a cameo. Camoreo. Her mom, the knot of hair behind her head, and the strong nose; her dad was hard to catch, no hair sticking out, just a plain silhouette, Some Guy. L deals out two more: Ivy looking up, eyebrows raised; Hugh, looking down, another nice nose to cut. Then Ruth. Sad to do Ruth but not Mimi. “I brought the bag of cookies, I can do more. I didn’t know who was coming.”
Hugh makes a face. “I’ve been avoiding thinking about it. But it’s no good, I have to ask Newell, and he has to bring Burton—I’ll call them later. And Ann, I asked her. Maybe more, later, but those are the sit-down dinner people.”
Newell will be easy, the famous profile, hair flying back. Burton too, piece of cake, piece of cookie. All chins, like a Roman emperor on a coin.
Hugh drags out a large, flat package from under the sofa, all proud. “I couldn’t keep this in the framing room,” he says. “Your mom is always bustling in there to help—don’t let me forget to take those damned certificates to the Ace.” He pulls off the masking tape.
Ha! It’s a paint-by-number kit, a picture of her mom and dad. A big canvas with pale blue outlines, tiny pale blue numbers, and an assortment of bad acrylic paints in little pots.
“I sent away for it weeks ago, there’s a website where you upload a photo. It’s them, in 1984. I took it the night they met. All Saints.”
“Cool! They’ll love it.”
Wait—feet on the stairs. Heavy ones. Hugh snatches the brown paper, refastens the tape.
It’s her dad. His head rises above the railing, slowly, as he climbs the stairs. He turns to look at them. He’s got a black eye.
He stares at them standing awkwardly to block his view of the big parcel on the coffee table behind them. “Hey,” he says, after a pause. As if he’s out of the speaking habit.
“Hey,” L says.
“Had a chat with your mom.”
They don’t speak, both too busy looking at that eye.
“Looks like we’re coming for dinner. So, put me to work.” He pulls himself up the last two stairs, using the railing to help. Is he badly hurt?
Just his eye. Black, slashing stripe below the eyebone, purple smudge around it. Wow.
He stands by the kitchen counter. Seeing the tray there, he says mmm and goes to grab an Oreo. “No!” L says. “Those are place cards.”
“Neat. Now I see—there’s Della—neat-o.” Oh, the uneasy goofiness. Her dad.
“Do you need an ice pack?” Hugh gestures at the black eye, points at his own helplessly.
“Oh, no, it’s fine now. Hurt a bit when—when I walked into that door, though.”
Sure, they all agree to let it be that way. Hugh turns to his list: “Okay, rice for sushi cake, the crêpes, we’ve still got a lot of work to do.” Then, bright idea, he asks her dad to run down to the basement to check if the buckets need emptying.
The footsteps fade to the basement stairs.
Hugh points down after him. “What the hell?”<
br />
“Do you think my mom punched him? He doesn’t seem upset.” Lots of punching these days. Must be some astrological conjunction of Mars with Neptune, planet of surprises.
Hugh spreads his hands wide, not knowing. “Maybe it’s good. They were legendary for fighting in the old days. Wasn’t a party until one of them stormed out shouting. They fought for—how old are you, eighteen?—for twelve straight years. Till they had you.”
When her dad comes back from the basement he’s got Jason with him. Two heads rising up the stairwell—Jason’s hair in a cockscomb, is that what you say? (Aieee, the word cock!)
“Buckets emptied, none were full,” her dad reports. “You need work done down there—I wonder if it might be the city’s problem, though, Hugh?”
Hugh leaps at that and they get into sewers and bylaws and weeping tile and the river, because around here it’s always the river. While they blah blah blah, L looks at Jason for his master class verdict.
He shakes his head. “Something with Orion and Burton—I took off.”
The timer bings, the rice has finished steaming, and against his protests, Hugh hands her dad an ice pack and makes him go lie down for a while.
“Too many cooks,” Hugh says, coming back, dusting his hands. He asks Jason, “Here to work? Okay, you can start on the crêpes.”
Ruth doesn’t like sushi—how possible?—so they’re doing crêpes too. Hugh has drawn a picture: a tower of lacy crêpes, filling oozing between twelve layers, like wedding cake.
“Scallops, salmon, crab. She won’t eat shrimp since that documentary. When you’re chopped, I’ll teach you to make a roux.”
He gives Jason an apron and a station, and Jason rolls up his sleeves and gets to work, melting butter and whisking batter. (L can’t help thinking of the white apples of his butt, the springing tension of everything, his fingers, hers, quiver, everything.)
L wonders if Hugh was always like this, free and happy while cooking, and if so why did he stop and run a gallery instead? When he’s framing he’s pretty anal, like he’s always afraid of screwing up. Here he’s good at making an occasion without getting fussed. When her mom has a party she panics and all the joy dies. L likes the casual way Hugh cooks, his effortless order, even the music he plays—not anything you might expect, just weird stuff he likes. Banjo music. Now at Last, that’s Blossom Dearie. In another life L would like to be Blossom Dearie. Wearing Mimi’s pink gloves, which she has in her coat pocket. She’s carrying them everywhere now because she can’t forget that Mimi is dying.
A bang at the bottom of the stairs—the outside door.
Everyone swivels to see whose head rises next. Satin gold: Orion, lightning-flashing up the flight of stairs. His face is blown apart, eyes wild, not even—
“I’m out,” he says to Jason, not even seeing the others. “He kicked me out, I’m gone. It’s not—it’s so not fair—he knows I’m the—” He stops, he can’t complete that.
The best, yes.
Jason says, “You are the best, man. What the fuck?”
“He kicked me out. Cheap facility, he—” Orion’s voice stops working. His great black eyes lock shut and he turns away so they won’t see.
Jason pulls the crêpe pan off the stove and turns the burner off, deliberate smooth action, and goes to put his arms around Orion.
Hugh takes his apron off. He gives L the sheaf of recipes.
“Carry on as best you can,” he says, heading down the stairs, already gone. “I’ve got to see a man about a dog.”
7. FUCK HUGH
Up the concrete staircase at Newell’s place. When these buildings went up, people gasped. Million-plus for a condo?!—this isn’t Toronto. But it sort of is, now. Newell’s slice of glass and rock, plus the stairs, plus the hedges and the terrace: this one must have been three times that price, Hugh thinks, or four. But he is entirely naïve; he has no real idea what Newell paid, or has, or earns or costs. His head hurts from running. Maybe shouldn’t have made love at lunch—but then his head always hurts. He’s going to have to confess that to Conrad soon. Maybe he’ll beat Mimi to the punch and die on everybody, on Newell and Della and Ruth. On Ivy.
Climbing the endless stairs, Hugh casts his fractured mind backward, trying to think what he knows about this mess, what he could swear to. He witnessed that first approach, in Pink’s parlour, whatever it was Burton said to Orion. Orion said it was a line from Streetcar. Then he saw—what?—the other night at the Ace: Orion taking off the jade piece, giving it back to Newell. No idea what that meant, or why Burton wept. Hugh’s head was in bad shape by then. Ivy took him home and put his sorry ass to bed. Last night at the party, he knew it was Newell who was the problem. And now—
Orion breaking down, kicked out of class. There could be some reason or excuse for that, some acting thing he wouldn’t know or understand.
Talk carefully. The point is to fix things for Orion, not to achieve eternal justice.
The doorbell at the terrace door peals like angels coming in chorus, Aa-ahhhh! A shadow, a self, emerges from the shadowed glass.
Burton. “Hugh!” he exclaims, with mock delight. “A sight for a sore eye.”
“Is Newell here?”
“Not at the moment—I believe he went for a run, to restore the tissues. May I, poor I, be of use?” Burton plays puzzled, one tended eyebrow arching.
“You kicked Orion out of the master class,” Hugh says. No more preamble.
Burton purses his purple mouth. “Oh dear, I’m afraid I can’t discuss a student with you, Hugh. Confidentiality, the FOIP, you know. Curiosity will just have to kill you.”
You won’t punch Burton this time, but the sweetness of the memory is sustaining. “I came to tell you,” Hugh says, “you need to retract this.”
The mouth smiles, the pig-eyes fold. “I’m renowned for the gentleness of my disposition. But I warn you, Hugh, you may go too far.”
Hugh shakes his head. That hurts. He puts a hand on the glass. “Burton—I don’t know what’s going on, but you can’t pull this highhanded director stuff. These are kids, they don’t need the drama. Orion is their friend, their star. I don’t believe you can justify kicking him out. They’ll all quit, if you do this. It will make trouble for Newell, as well as for you. It’s just not—it isn’t kind, and it’s stupid.”
He has never been so straightforward with Burton. It’s kind of a relief, except for the splitting headache it’s giving him. Only the memory of Orion’s eyes makes it possible to keep standing there, the deep visible wound to his whole tentative, youthful being.
Lazy, content, refusing to fight, Burton stretches out his right hand to the door handle. Hugh puts his own arm out to stop him—not that he could. “Like the bling?” Burton asks, pretending to think Hugh wants to see his lump of green scarab. “From Newell. An antiengagement ring, a consolation prize, I guess you would call it.”
“If you don’t fix this,” Hugh says, his head pounding rhythmically like it will actually break open, “I will make it my business to see that you’re investigated for abuse.”
The smile again, elongated, if anything.
“Oh no, dear Hugh. I never touched the child. Never had the chance. It’s Newell’s career, his life you’d be jeopardizing. I’m sure Pink is putty in your hands, or at least in Ruth’s, behind whose apron you all hide so coyly. But here is my response,” Burton says. “Fuck Hugh.”
He allows the great glass door to swing, to glide, to shut.
8. AND THE HORSE HUGH RODE IN ON
Okay, that didn’t work.
Hugh steps, staggers, down the concrete stairs again. Dark hedge hides the street from view until he almost reaches the ground—and there’s Newell, sprinting the last stretch, sleek and gleaming in running gear.
“Did you know?” Hugh asks. Demands.
Winded, Newell leans against the concrete, waves his arm: Carry on.
“About Orion?”
Newell looks at Hugh then, hands on his knees. Finally,
his breath back he says, “Know what?”
Hugh waits. Newell waits too, not speaking. Okay, fine. “About Burton kicking him out of the class. For good.”
That makes Newell stand. “No,” he says, looking up the stairs. “That I did not know.”
“Well, Burton says—”
“You talked to him?”
Hugh is getting angry. “Yes, I talked to him. He’s gone too far—Orion’s not some sixth-rate kid. Terry will go to bat for him, so will Terry—even Pink. Burton has to—”
Newell waves an arm again, “Shut up, shut up. I know. Fuck me.”
“That’s what Burton said.”
“What?”
“What he said to me. Fuck Hugh.”
Newell laughs. But he is angry too.
So’s Hugh. His head hurts, he can’t see very well, he’s tired of feeling confused. “I want you to stop this now,” he says. Stop what? Burton, his head, the world. Della in pain, Mimi. It’s not getting through to Newell, who stands looking up the street to the river path, thinking. Or not thinking, just drifting, like he’s done his whole floating life. “You have to do something,” Hugh tells him. “For a change. You have to engage, here.”
Newell pulls his eyes back from the trees, looks at Hugh. Not angry now. Sad, or something. “You’ve never known what it’s like being me,” he says.
“I know you better than anybody,” Hugh says. “You just don’t see Burton, you don’t know how bad he is.”
Newell laughs again. “That, I do know.”
“Then ditch him.”
“It wouldn’t be … right.”
Hiding behind Ruth’s apron, Burton said. Like Newell hides behind Burton.
“He’s not your friend, not your mentor. Not your father.”
Newell’s eyes go blank, flat. His version of anger. “Can you ditch Mimi? Or Ruth? Can you stop doing all the things that make you yourself?”
Close to Hugh Page 35
