Ivy surveys the table and the room, pleasure more acute for being tinged with dread. Orion: a tinder-box. What will happen with all that? Fine for Newell to say it’s fine, but it can’t be. Out on the deck, Orion mans the barbecue with Jason. Grilling something—slices of the almond cake Hugh was pulling from the oven at lunch time, before they made transcendent, headache-conscious, almost-motionless love. She feels her face warming again.
Across the dining table, Ken draws Newell out about his television show. Newell hates talking about it, but is patient. “I think it’s Hercules all over again. Our stories are no more absurd than the Nemean lion—I’m just a guy who has not done well by his family, who’s screwed up in every conceivable way, trying to do better.”
“But the stunts, they’re so violent. Do you do it all yourself?”
“They won’t let me. It looks like I do, though, doesn’t it?” Newell asks, but he speaks out the open doors to Orion. Who also looks like he does his own stunts, Ivy thinks.
“I like Catastrophe,” she says. “The mental toughness that makes physical toughness possible. Plus, I always love a caper.” It’s tricky for Ivy to suss out exactly what Newell’s position in the fame arcana is these days, now that she’s so far off the table herself.
Della asks her, “How are you liking Importance of Being Earnest?”
Orion can’t hear her disloyalty, out on the deck, and Newell won’t mind, so Ivy tells Della the truth, that she is bored by Wilde’s epigrams. “They’re not true now, anyway. We’ve unbuckled some old social shackles. Even gay people get to be people.”
As if called up by an incautious word, there’s a slam and a shout from below, a tromping on the stairs. Satan rising from Hell’s mouth: Burton’s roosterish head appears over the stair railing, then his bulging eyes, his babbling mouth, already announcing himself to the room.
“I’m here, I’m here, let the bells ring out—” he peals. “Ring out, wild bells, and let him die! No, live! Let him live!” He corrects himself. “Another thirty years, at least!”
Ivy looks out to the deck where Orion stands, tongs arrested by Burton’s voice. He hands the tongs to Jason, turns in one graceful, discusthrowing motion and launches himself up to the deck’s railing—and then straight out into air, arms high.
Before volition can catch up Ivy is out through the door; she’s with Jason at the railing almost before Orion lands, strong hands and springing feet, on the lawn below.
He looks up, shakes his head, and takes off across the grass.
Wow, impressive. Real-life parkour.
“Guess he had an appointment,” she murmurs to Jason.
Who covers a laugh and boasts, “He could jump back up here, if he wanted to!”—then gasps and whirls back to his toasting cake, tongs grabbing to turn the slices.
Inside, Burton is divesting himself of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne (which he hands to L, stage-whispering “straight onto ice with the Widow”), and a large box he plumps onto the table in front of Della. “A toast to the happy couple,” he cries. He is in his very liveliest mode. “The pearl anniversary, the thirtieth, you know.”
“It is not present time,” Newell says, removing the box to the kitchen counter. “Sit, Ansel. You have such a gift for disruption.”
“Dear Boy, now is always present time!”
L puts a plate in front of him. He whips his napkin into place and accepts her offer of cake. “Oooh, sushi, please! Scrumptious, Hugh—all of you—I’m sure Hugh must have had help!” He takes a bite, the more to swoon about the food.
Ivy is aware of Hugh’s iron control. All his fume stays inside, like a backyard hamsmoker. She elbows his arm as he passes by and sends him a glance to help him cope.
Burton is under control too. He has not once glanced at Hugh, even when complimenting him. Spikes seem to stick up all over him, more medieval mace than hedgehog. Della asks him about Earnest too, his current obsession being the only imaginable topic for Burton; he waxes on about Wilde’s subtext, his own experience at the Public, and his unproduced one-man show on the friendship between Wilde and Beardsley, until he catches Ivy watching him.
“You, Ivy—what’s your take on today?”
He doesn’t want to know, but a devil makes her answer, “I don’t much like the play.”
“You resent playing pruney Prism? Gay nineties banter depresses you? Or is it a deep-seated prejudice?”
“Nope. It’s because I believe that people are—that we are humans before gender, or sexuality, and I don’t like glorifying the things that set us apart from each other.”
Burton gives this a glazed, offended smile and turns away.
But Ivy does not take it back, arrogant or not. I love Hugh because he is you, is me, because of humanity, the parts of us that are the same. I love Newell the same way. And I try, I try, to like you that way too, Burton.
On Burton’s other side, Ken—the only one here who can talk to him without constraint—is boasting about Della’s grand piano. “A gift from Hugh’s mother when she moved into the apartment, last year. A real treasure, once belonged to Glenn Gould. It’s a Steinway D—not the 318, the NAC has that on display, but an earlier practice piano. Mimi was a friend, as you probably knew.”
“An honour, to play in the maestro’s fingerprints! I had no idea you had real skill, Della.”
“Then you haven’t heard her play,” Newell says, and down the table Jasper agrees with a sudden raucous “Hear! Hear!”
Della disguises her painful modesty by clowning, by breezy arrogance: “Oh, I don’t play accurately—anyone can play accurately.”
Burton laughs. Catching Hugh’s blank expression he laughs again, condescending to explain. “A line from Earnest, dear Hugh. She panders to an old man’s obsession.”
“After Gould died,” Ken asks, “was that when Mimi first had electroshock, Hugh?”
It shocks Ivy that he’s so blunt, or clumsy—this is the first time she’s encountered Della’s husband in real life. She reserves judgement. He’d better be nice, to be with Della, to be L’s father. But that black eye! His right eye, so it wasn’t Hugh who hit him.
Oddly, it’s Burton (his left eye’s bruise now faded to a yellow memory) who saves the electroshock gaffe. “Anyone who was anyone had ECT in those days,” he says.
“You?” Newell asks from the other end of the table. Ivy is shocked again.
“Ow, yes,” Burton says, trotting out his horrendous cockney accent. “ ’Ad it as a nipper, to cure me kink.”
Newell laughs, and then (permission somehow being granted) everybody else laughs too. It’s so absurd, such a perfect example of the hopelessness of every single thing, they cannot help but laugh.
DESSERT CAKE
fried eggs & toast baked potatoes
Hugh escapes the shock-talk, makes himself busy in the kitchen. Let the skies rain down complete histories of unsuccessful treatments, let memory blind you with Polaroid snaps of raddled fearful/forgetful eyes, cakes must continue to appear.
L announces, deadpan, “And for dessert: fried eggs, toast, and baked potatoes.” She and Jason set the plates at each place.
Hugh allows himself to be happy, as his audience applauds. Lemon curd yolks in meringue-nest whites: sunny-side-up eggs. Toast slices of grilled marzipan cake, they turned out well, and ice-cream baked potatoes fat in their sifted-cocoa skin, with a dollop of crème fraîche. Peculiar plates, but pleasing.
“Homemade ice cream is ten thousand times better than bought,” Della says.
Behind her, L and Hugh exchange a sober nod.
“Hugh,” Ken says, picking up his spoon, “you are a culinary mastermind.”
He and Della are behaving well together, tonight. Only his blackened eye betrays the fight they must still be having. Thirty years together makes concealment easier, even as it makes the quarrel deeper. Nice things to eat help too. Down there at the table’s end, Ken absorbs Burton’s bile, discoursing on some legal brangle Hugh can’t bear to
think about, because it brings his own brangles back to his brambled mind. He has the vertigo feeling again, avoiding thought/memory/pain.
Della takes a bite of ice cream potato, white horse teeth biting down. “Remember that peach-raspberry ice cream you made once, Hugh—you called it fire and ice?”
Hugh can’t remember. His head swirls unpleasantly. “Best I ever made,” he says to Della. You can’t remember every dish, every summer night, every person of the past. Only a spoon of mango ice cream through the round ports of the old storm window.
Where is Ivy, why is he not sitting beside her? He does.
Newell leans over. “I had some of that, fire and ice. I drove out here after a show, or was it a Monday? Ian Mighton was there with his girl of the moment, which one was that?”
“Ugh, it was the week he spent with Ann,” Della says. “Right after she and Hugh split up. Everyone was being so civilized. Hugh was entirely decent. Honourable.”
Newell looks around, as if checking for Ann.
You did invite her. Decent of you, of Hugh. Doesn’t matter if she hovers over Mimi, waiting for the closet key to drop out of her claw-like hand. Not hard to be civilized about that Mighton thing, he was so relieved to be out of Ann’s clutch. Good policy, as it turned out: the commissions on Mighton’s work keep this whole putrid disaster afloat now.
“Bohemians,” Hugh dismisses it out loud, to Ivy. “Artists. Worse than actors.”
Della looks up, eyes suddenly bright. “Hugh! Was it Mighton that we found Ann, um, on the coats with, that night?”
Hugh passes a hand over his forehead, feeling like he’ll never speak to Della again for bringing that up. Why did she? For Ken’s benefit, perhaps? Doesn’t make it less painful. Hugh has always secretly known who it was, anyway. It was Newell.
But Ivy slides a hand onto his thigh under the table and tells Della, “You know, I took the side mirror off my Volvo today, it was the craziest thing. I must have been in some kind of dream state. It was right after I’d had a very good lunch.”
Hugh laughs, misery eased for a moment.
People get up, walk; they disperse for a little while between courses. A breather.
Hugh slides through playlists to change the music. The rules of honourable behaviour. You know when you break them. Laws change, mores, but nobody is confused about honour. Not rules, requirements: being open, having fair expectations—and the simple one, loving the other more than the self. Where does Newell stand on all that now?
Orion has vanished. Probably for the best. Ivy’s at the table with Burton and Della; Ken by the fireplace with Jasper, discussing the curio shop’s finances and the legal position re flooding; L and Jason are busy in the kitchen, plating the macarons from Jasper’s freezer.
Hugh drifts with Newell out the open doors onto the roof deck. Nice night after all the rain. Black branches bend over and around the roof, black crayon against the night sky. They lean on the back railing like they used to do when they smoked. When everybody did.
In the stillness, Hugh is at last able to say, “What’s going on with you and Orion?”
Newell doesn’t move, or grow shuttered. He looks out into the blue-black dark, the black branches, the few stars over the FairGrounds roofpeak. “I—like him. Since you say I don’t love people. This is new for me.”
That’s true. Newell’s never been involved with anyone younger.
“He’s brilliant, he idolizes me, maybe it’s ego. Do you feel no pull to L, for example?”
Hugh is revolted. “No, none.” Images offer, though: the clean dent between nose and mouth, the pure outline of her mouth. You must have seen those things.
But Ivy. Not that she is salvation, or settling. She is destiny, density.
“I might be of some help to him,” Newell says. Always diffident about his stature.
Hugh needs to say something else, though. Not about responsibility or morality, that’s not it. “I just—aren’t you, isn’t it a question of—” Good work, that’s articulate. “Of honour?”
A silhouette, dark against pale pearl-grey porch rail, Newell looks at him.
Listen carefully, Hugh thinks. Remembering earlier, talking to Ken, how lonely you feel when your friends fail to understand you. When you wonder if they’ve ever known you.
Something in Newell’s face shifts, an inner gate moving from closed to open. “Oh, Hugh. He’d break my heart anyway in a year or two. I know he’s too young, but the heart can’t help wanting what it wants—”
A voice says, “When you find yourself sounding like Woody Allen, you know that’s not a good sign.”
It’s Della, coming out onto the deck. They turn to her. “In grade thirteen,” she says, “I was so in love with my French teacher, I thought I was going to die. He was married, I don’t suppose he ever thought about me for a nanosecond. I still love him.”
She blushes. The pink is visible on her long white face, even with her back to the living room’s pouring light. “Not that this is the least bit useful, I know.”
Newell puts out an arm and gathers her in, letting his chin rest on her head as he has done ever since he was first taller than her. “Come back inside,” he says. “You’re cold.”
“Just tired,” she says. Hugging close to him, taking warmth from his warmth. She puts out a hand to Hugh. The three of them were the world, all the time they were at Ruth’s. Being at Ruth’s was— Not their real lives, the real lives were the misery. Ruth’s was refuge. At Ruth’s they were together, shielded and shielding; strong and smart and unscathed, together. Able to think.
Hugh can’t think—he needs a pill or two.
He can’t think without thinking of Mimi, and there’s no thinking of her now.
CAKE SURPRISE
macaroon cake macaron mushrooms 30-year-old port
Ivy busies herself, helping L and Jason clear away dessert plates. The whole trompe l’oeil thing makes her love Hugh with every ganglion of her tired mind, every thrum of her tired heart: that he thought it up; that he thought it would be funny; that he got L and Jason to help; that he pulled it off, even though he almost didn’t.
Another bang at the downstairs door. Ivy peeks over the banister. Oh, good! A charming bustle, chiming laughter, a gorgeous welling of scent: Gareth Pindar rises, majestic, Léon harrying behind him, carrying his train. They are elegant and happy in beautiful suits, carrying more flowers, brandy, and cigars, half of them chocolate.
“Impeccable timing. Dessert,” Hugh says, coming in from the deck to welcome them. Della is kissing Léon, Ken being bear-embraced by Gareth, who must outweigh him by a hundred pounds. Jasper, asleep in a quiet corner, never stirs.
Della says, “We’ve had dessert! Fried eggs and baked potatoes!”
“No, no, that was joke dessert. There’s still cake. There’s always more cake.”
L appears carrying the rest of the cake and the port, and Jason brings the macarons (bitter chocolate/salted caramel, shaped like fat mushroom caps).
Places are found for Gareth and Léon, Della and Ken shifting their chairs closer together so that Gareth can sit beside her; Léon (who seems to have an eye for what is needful) sliding in to introduce himself to Burton. Hugh takes Ivy away to be his espresso slave, so she spends ten minutes shuttling up and down from the frame room with small cups, while he pulls Della’s pictures from their hiding place and gives them a last polish.
He points out the gold fillet he added inside the linen mat on the State of the Union piece, obviously proud of Della’s work. Ivy would like to know if he still paints himself, but so far has been afraid to ask. Everybody is afraid all the time. Of asking or of knowing. Like about Mimi, how she is faring; and what’s the deal with Orion—Burton—Newell?
Another, another, until all the cups are made.
She follows Hugh up the stairs: his very nice backside before her. He is old, as old as she is herself, yet she does not see age and decay, only the answer to her long true question: who am I to love? He is m
y work, she thinks, following him. That’s good. Whether he’s painting or not, in pain or out of it, damaged or clear. I like to have a little job.
Hugh’s job at the moment is to fête Della, and by extension Ken. Arms full, he takes the head of the table and draws L to him with a cock of the head. “I—we have to confess, we’ve done the unforgiveable, Della. L and I went over your head and decided that some of your work is finished.”
He turns to the long low bookshelf behind him, and begins to deal out framed boats. L looks at her mother, with pride and worry. Della has half risen in her chair, at first just tucking one foot beneath her for more height, then almost standing. “My boats!” she says. She looks to Ken briefly, then to the framed pictures.
Her eyes flick over them until she comes to the middle picture, the sea-green mat, and Ivy sees her face relax. When we give someone else power over us, when we take power over them by loving, what a long string of obligation we begin to unwind through the maze of life.
“As you’ll see when you have a chance to examine these pieces closely,” Hugh is saying, “the boat in this one is called State of the Union—that’s what we’re here to celebrate tonight, the ship you and Ken have sailed, through all kinds of weather, for thirty years. You can all come and look in a moment, but first I have a present for Ken—in case you are feeling a bit left out, Ken. I know you’ve always thought you might paint too, once you retire.”
He reaches behind the chair and picks up the final oblong: a large white canvas, marked with a pale blue pattern—oh! Ivy laughs. Paint-by-number. Hugh flips the board around, and there is the original photo, a much younger Ken and Della, standing with their arms around each other’s waists, staring into the camera, defiant and determined.
Ken hoots, he almost honks. He rushes from his chair to take the canvas from Hugh’s outstretched hands, overcome, eyes blearing, napkin up. “I’ve always—this photo—”
Close to Hugh Page 37
