Real Life (9 page)

“Hi, good lookin',” one of the girls called, tossing back her shining waves. She was speaking to Hugo. Her T-shirt said
DURAN DURAN IN CONCERT.
Hugo felt his face turn scarlet, and a fever of happiness took him over before he realized it was a joke. Another girl punched her on the arm and squealed, “Kathy!” and they all laughed, except for Mr. Cool, who said, “Jeez,” and allowed himself a detached smile. Hugo turned and walked back down the street, hearing their laughter, hearing how quickly they forgot him. “There's Jerry,” one of the girls screamed, and another Mr. Cool loped across the street to join them. How did they tell each other apart? Hugo hated them. Twits, he thought. Idiots. Lunchmeat. All the way back to the Stop & Shop he could hear them behind him, their shrill cries, their brainless laughter. He looked sideways at himself in the Carvel window: short and pudgy, a wimp. Nothing had changed, nothing ever would. He would look twelve years old until he died, which he hoped was soon.

He wouldn't have gone along on the second trip into town, but he had been sitting in the boat all morning, rowing back and forth, fishing out weeds and flinging them back, with the sunbleached sky pressing down on him until his eyes and ears and teeth ached. He was hot and bored, so bored it was like being desperately ill, it was like the flu. He hadn't known such boredom was possible. The town wasn't much, but it was better than the boat. He went to the Stop & Shop with his aunt, and it turned out to be sort of fun. She let him pick out his favorite foods—some of them, anyway. Hot dogs and cantaloupe and wheat thins and Breyer's butter almond, but no soda or packaged cookies, and raspberries were too expensive. He had a good time until at the check-out counter he spotted a copy of
Soap Opera Digest
. David used to grab it in the drugstore where they had stopped for candy on the way home from school, and Hugo used to have trouble tearing David away from the thing. Hugo hated soap opera magazines; he had no use for what they had to tell him: lame predictions, rumors that came to nothing, endless summaries of events he already knew by heart. Worst of all were the details of the stars' lives. These were painful to Hugo. He didn't want to know what Tiffany ate for dinner, how many wives Prescott had had, who wore gowns by whom at the cast party after the Emmy awards. He wanted these people to exist for an hour every afternoon—thirty-eight minutes, actually, after the commercials. He allowed them, in addition, that shadowy realm no one was privy to, in which Claudette did actually take dictation from her boss and Crystal had her pregnancy test and Tiffany got up in the morning and put on her makeup and made coffee for Michael—or whatever. But outside
Upton's Grove
he refused to allow them life. And then, in the Stop & Shop, on the cover of that loathsome magazine, while he was helping his aunt stack groceries for the cashier, he saw a photograph of a man and a woman embracing, with the headline
UPTON'S GROVE
ROMANCE HEATS UP: EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH MARCIE AND SCOTT.
But it was Paula and Michael, brother and sister on
Upton's Grove
. He stared sickly at the picture. How wrong it was, how disgusting. He wished he hadn't seen it, the two of them pressed up against each other.

“Do you want that?” his aunt asked, beside him, with the isn't-he-cute look on her face. She had two ways of looking at him: isn't-he-cute and what-kind-of-kid-is-this. The way she'd looked when he beat her at Scrabble, four games out of four. They didn't play anymore.

“No,” he said, and began piling up toilet paper.

“No, thanks, Hugo,” she corrected him. “Please.”

“No, thanks,” he said. He wished he could tell her about the picture and why it upset him. There was even something in her schoolmarmish correction that he liked, that made him feel almost comforted, but it put him off too—that and the way she had of treating him like a troublesome pet of some kind. Couldn't she see that he was upset? That good manners didn't come into it? But it wasn't a thing he was sure he could explain, anyway. Better just to forget it.

The Stop & Shop, though, like the pizza parlor, became tainted for him. It was like a corner near his old school where a small dead dog no one ever bothered to remove had decomposed slowly, unobtrusively, a white lump by the curb covered and then uncovered by snow and thaw, which could have been a chunk of ice except that Hugo had seen it when it was fairly fresh and still had its whiskers, its teeth bared in a death snarl, its fluffy tail. There was a bakery on that corner where he and David sometimes stopped for doughnuts, but after the dog appeared Hugo couldn't bring himself to go in there anymore.

But he knew it was weird to feel like that. It was like David, worse than David, and he had to overcome it. He knew also that there was more to his new hometown than a bunch of stupid girls and
Soap Opera Digest
. And so when his aunt suggested they drive in and get his supplies he was glad to go.

They went to a big discount store—not as vast and new as the one in East Hartford where he and his grandfather used to buy socks and toothpaste and, once, the new TV, but for East Latimer it wasn't bad. They found a mattress cover and a lightweight blanket (brown, which wouldn't show the dirt, his aunt said) and a battery-powered light bright enough to read by if he'd wanted to. Grass rugs turned out to be too expensive, but Hugo liked a red fake-fur throw rug, so they got that. He couldn't believe how kind, how generous his aunt was being. He wondered if people mistook her for his mother. He hoped they didn't, but aunt—aunt he wouldn't mind.

There was a sale on towels, and while she poked through them Hugo browsed around the store. He thought he might buy her a present—but what? He rejected perfume, cookbooks, jewelry—the things he recalled his grandfather giving his grandmother. They weren't right for Dorrie. He looked at mugs with names on them, but there wasn't a
DORRIE.
Or
DOROTHEA.
Not even
DOROTHY,
which he would have considered risking. But there was a mug with a red heart on it, and inside the heart,
FAVORITE AUNT.
Hugo pondered. The mug was $3.95; he could afford it. That she wasn't his favorite aunt was a technicality. Rose was his favorite aunt. But he couldn't remember Rose all that well, and she had disappeared from his life—though, standing there with the mug in his hand he remembered what he could of Rose, and imagined giving her the mug, saw her smile and her soft, loose chins and her beautiful eyes, which he knew were just like his mother's. He remembered what it had felt like when she hugged him: she was soft everywhere, and she hugged tight.

He bought the mug for Dorrie, and went back to the towel department. “An impulse item,” he grinned, holding up the bag.

“Hang on to your money, Hugo,” was all she said.

They got towels and washcloths, in the ugly blue that Dorrie favored, and a plastic wastebasket for Hugo's loft, and she stopped to leaf through a
Time
magazine cover story about some writer she liked while Hugo looked absently at hardware. Then she got Scotch tape and masking tape and a paring knife. When they got to the check-out with their basket, Hugo searched around for a clock, couldn't find one, got a look at the digital watch on the cashier's wrist. It was 3:22. He was missing it. He couldn't believe it. He had assumed he had an inner timesense, as migrating birds do, that kept him in sync with
Upton's Grove
. This had never happened before.

He looked at his aunt. She was counting out bills. “I'm not going to make it,” he said. “My program.”

She said, “Oh, Hugo,” in her irritated voice, paying him no attention. “I thought those towels were on sale,” she said to the cashier.

“Not the blue,” the woman said. “Just those flowered ones that come in sets.”

“Oh, well, never mind, I'll take them,” his aunt sighed. He watched her skinny white fingers receive the change and stow it in her wallet. He watched the cashier tuck everything neatly into bags, wrapping the rug in two bags and stapling them shut. Who cared? Was it going to get dirty between here and the car? He watched the minutes dissolve on her watch. It was past 3:30 when they left the store. His aunt stomped ahead, frowning, unconscious of him. Hugo considered tossing the mug into the Dumpster in the parking lot. What a dumb present, anyway, for someone who made mugs all day! He must be losing his mind. But he didn't throw it away, and when he got back to his loft he tucked it up on the ledge under the eaves where he kept his secrets (the photograph of his parents by the Camaro, the pottery cat he had stolen from the basement, the eighth-grade class picture in which he looked almost handsome). Maybe some day he'd get the chance to give the mug to Rose—though he doubted it. Despair filled him.

Later, when his aunt was working in her studio, he rowed across the pond to see Mrs. Garner. She had not only watched
Upton's Grove
for him, she had kept the records on a piece of her blue stationery. “It looks as though Tara and Prescott are going to adopt Crystal's baby, after all,” she announced. “What did I tell you? You owe me a dime, Hugo.” Betting on
Upton's Grove
was their latest thing. Hugo hugged her, remembering Rose again, though Mrs. Garner was short and thin. “You're a dear boy, Hugo,” she said, and his heart lightened. That there could be such goodness in the world!

When he got home his aunt was at her table, carving a blue border of leaves and flowers into the rim of a bowl. He approached her warily. He suspected her of dawdling at the store on purpose, so that he'd miss his program, or at least of being glad it had happened, but she looked up when he came in and said, “I'm sorry we didn't get home in time, Hugo.”

“You are?”

Her bony smile. “I really am.” As always, it seemed, after she had been working, she looked fagged out but calmed, and her voice was kind.

He touched a carved bowl on a shelf, a teapot, a plate—gently, as he had learned. “These are nice,” he said.

“But what about your records? This will screw everything up, won't it?” The hint of laughter was there as usual, but she looked genuinely concerned—and guilty?

“Mrs. Garner watched it and told me what happened.”

“Oh.” She bent over her bowl again, with that smile. “Anything good?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” He hesitated. “The Palmers are going to adopt Crystal's baby.”

She frowned. “Crystal's the teenybopper with the mean parents?”

“Yeah—well, they're not that mean. See, Crystal's boyfriend, Jamie, was trying to back out of marrying her, but then—”

“Hugo?” She put down her knife and looked up at him. “Enough already.”

“You asked.”

“That'll learn me.”

She set the bowl down on a shelf and stood up, stretching. She removed the rubber band from her hair and scratched her head violently with both hands, then bent from the waist so that her dull black hair hung down and nearly touched the floor. “Oh, God, am I stiff,” she said, coming up. He watched her. He couldn't believe they were related, though she looked like pictures of his father. His father had been handsome, of course—not so stringy looking. He wanted, suddenly, to ask her a question about his father. Anything: what his hobbies had been, whether he had liked math in school, what he used to do on long summer days.

“What are you looking at?” She pulled her hair back again, smoothed it with both hands.

“How come you never say anything nice to me?” It wasn't what he had meant to say, but he went on. “All you do is make fun of me.”

“Oh, Hugo—” He thought for a minute she was going to cry (her eyes closed briefly her forehead furrowed up), but all she did was twist on the rubber band and say, “Please. Give me a break. It's been a long day,” and head for the stairs. “Come on. Let's have some dinner.”

“He's probably the only child you'll ever have,” said Rachel. “Considering.”

“You don't have to be so brutal.” It was the Fourth of July. Rachel had driven down from Boston, bringing hot dogs; Dorrie supplied the beer. They were sitting on the dock with their feet in the water while Hugo, up near the house, attempted to start a fire in the hibachi.

“Brutal doesn't come into it,” Rachel said. “Let's face it, Dorrie. You and I are pushing forty—not the optimum age for motherhood.”

“Or for immaculate conception.” Dorrie made herself laugh, not very convincingly. “You're right, of course. It's just that it's not easy to replace a batch of imaginary children with Hugo.”

“He's not a bad kid, you said so yourself.” Rachel spoke idly, leaning back on her elbows and raising her face to the sun. There was something more urgent than Hugo on her mind. Dorrie had known Rachel for nearly thirty years, and she recognized the symptoms: the secret smile, the bemused staring into space, even the way she was wearing her hair, hanging down from a barrette instead of pinned into a chignon. Definitely: Rachel had met a man. Dorrie braced herself for the ache of envy that would come when the details were revealed, even if he turned out to be a paunchy, golf-mad investment analyst like the last one. “Really, Dorrie. He seems like a nice boy.”

“He is, in his own way.” Dorrie looked over her shoulder at Hugo, crouching by the hibachi. He wore cutoff jeans. His legs were thick and pink—babyish. He wore a black T-shirt and the Red Sox baseball cap Rachel had brought him. “Oh, hell, Rachel, I wish I liked him better.” Dorrie turned back to look at her own legs dangling off the dock. If she were pregnant, she thought, she would look like a stork, puffed up plump above skinny legs and knobby knees. “He can be charming sometimes, and he's very bright, but he's just so empty, Rachel. He gives me the willies. He never does anything on his own but sit down here poking sticks into the water. Or he rows—around and around the pond. And he eats. And that's all—that's absolutely all.”