Close to Hugh (38 page)

At the trembling in her hand, he checks her face. Is this too scary, now? She moves her mouth into a sort of smile, motions with her hand, go on …

“The husband pulled the pillow over his head, not wanting to hear that voice he knew so well. But it came again,
Who, who, who has taken my golden arm? Giiive me baaack my gooolden aaarm
 … He screwed his eyes tight shut, he put his fingers in his ears. The voice came closer, closer, it was at the bedroom door, it was inside the bedroom—
Who has got my golden arm?”
Hugh pauses, because the story must always pause here, and then pounces tenderly on Mimi’s wasted arm:
“You’ve
got it!”

“You,”
she says, or maybe
Hugh
. Not frightened. Amused and comforted. She closes her eyes slowly and seems to sleep, mouth falling open a little. Little cat mouth, still. Wide-spaced teeth terrible within, what’s left of them.

The good visits are worse than the bad visits. Hugh can’t do this any longer, come to this room and watch her dying.

He lets his head fall onto the clean sheet beside her head, to rest with her.

Ruth touches him on the shoulder.

Oh. He fell asleep holding Mimi’s hand.

He loosens his hold—her hand is slack, the polish clean except for his thumbprint on the baby finger. It’s all right, she won’t notice. Dusk in the room, everything is tidy. Nolie must have been in.

Ruth is miming. Hugh blinks and stretches his eyes, not able to make sense of her exaggerated gestures. He gets up, knees creaking. Mimi does not wake.

They go to the door. Ruth whispers, unnecessarily, “I’m back from Gerald’s, we put the bags in the back of your van. I said you’d take them to the Clothes Closet, won’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you go on now, I’m sure Ivy’s finished with that class thing by this time. I had supper, I’m set for the evening. Brought my crossword puzzle.”

She waves him out, moving away already into the twilight by the bed.

10. I GET A KICK OUT OF HUGH

After the post-class consult, Ivy melts into the middle distance, leaving Newell and Burton to their own devices. She refuses an over-lavish dinner, refuses to go with them to Pink’s party. You can’t look after everyone, you can only keep an eye out. It sometimes seems like the true work of life is to observe and not be asleep.

Bit sleepy now, though. And hungry—almost seven-thirty already. She throws script and coat in the back seat and reaches for her phone with two fingers.

> supper?

In a minute, Hugh comes back.

< pizza? I ought to get the framing packed etc

> I will pick up.

< go to Black Cat on parkhill no anchovies otherwise what you will

> ha! that’s the 12th night subtitle!

< okay by that I meant spinach and feta on whole wheat

He remembers what she likes!

> but you like double cheese pepperoni and green olives

< get both we will eat leftover for lunch tomorrow

To be capable of non-compromise/independence already, to be planning tomorrow’s lunch—the luxury of that sends Ivy happily down the street. She phones in the order from the number on the sign. The car is warm, thinking is pretty much over for the day, and she likes being alone, since in a minute she will be with Hugh. The thought of him makes her inner works pulse and contract—how hilarious to be in love at this late date. How hilarious that there is no obstacle. No choice, no escape, no question.

A pickup truck pulls in beside her; she glances over. A large cat is driving.

Oh yes. It’s Hallowe’en. Three people get out, grown-ups or teenagers, all masked, laughing. They come out in a minute, carrying twenty pizzas, and drive away. Cat, witch, Frankenstein.

(DELLA)

wine seeps down like rain warm rain warms face arms chest warms legs

round the block  twice enough!

up the stairs to FairGrounds          warm light quiet bustle of evening

L behind the till, tallying

stern goddess in a flowing Greek chiton

Jason made that?

what she must see in me: a hag, a witch

windblown hair, fright, tragedy, old age

she frowns, arrested:

    Have you—been
drinking?

        I had
a
drink, a glass of wine at Jasper’s.

    Well you can’t drive us to the party drunk.

        I am not—Elly, of course I can—         what could hurt more?

silence from the goddess

angry-eyed Athena she hates me

she doesn’t
hate
you, she’s
mad
at you
 

    Never mind, we’ll walk. We’re early anyway.

she turns  out they go  delicate queens

who will inherit the earth  we are old

everything that once was ours  dying

mine and Hugh’s and Newell’s

Mighton by the fireplace heard all that

    Need a coffee?

        I am not drunk!

the urge to defend

reveals drunkenness

Mighton = malice but his Dark Gates ≠ not malice  a crack/a crater

ache for all humanity                              Hughmanity

    I never thought you were. I wanted company.

he gives up half the settee

moves aside a silver canister helmet  a wooden shield  sword

    I’m King Arthur. I have to go to that party at Pink’s in costume.

    But I’m hiding. Hallowe’en weirds me out. The whole deal of

    dressing up, putting on a mask—it takes away identity and

    gives us back nothing but wildness.

I forgot this: Mighton holds

conversations by himself

Didn’t you worry about Elle running through the streets?

    I went with her, then. Sometimes I dressed up too.

    I went as my mother, one year, in the old beige raincoat

    she used to wear over her pyjamas to drive me to school

    and her blonde wig.

Your mother had a wig?

    It was the seventies, everyone’s mother had a wig. Hugh’s

    mother had twelve! I stood waiting for Elly like my mother

    used to wait for me, arms crossed across my chest, shoulders hunched—spooky.
 

my mother invades my skin my bones

my mouth my neck my heart braced

for something bad to happen

Mighton sees the transformation     makes a face   still spooky

    Now every time I stand waiting, impatient and tired, I realize

    that I’ve been trying to peel off that raincoat and that damn wig

    ever since. But I was her on a bad day. I could have worn

    her paint smock, happy at work. Her peacock feather dress,

    when she was beautiful.
 

Mighton’s dark inquiring eye       a nut of old kindness buried in bile

    You don’t see angels out on Hallowe’en. You’re not your mother

    We choose to look at the hardest parts of ourselves.

wine moves in my chest in my legs

I’ll look at the worst of myself

I’ll go wild

(ORION)

Candy duty—fuck it, fuck everything. Eight o’clock, the little kids are finished. Orion leaves the bowl of chocolate bars on the step. Jason needs him. Everybody has indoor parties these days anyway, to get away from child molesters. Like those guys only come out once a year, wearing Freddy Krueger masks so you can spot them.

His bike flies through black alleys, skims the river path, skids on gravel round to the back of Jason’s. The kitchen door is unlocked. Nobody there. But hark! Voices, up.

Orion slinks up the back stairs, stopping behind the closed door at the top to listen: Jason, somebody else. The Maria, Mikayla? She just came this year, nobody knew she could act. But that was good, today.

“The strap goes through—yes, and—” Jason is dressing her up.

Orion pops the door and slips along the hallway, judges his moment and does a grand-jeté into the room. Stealth-bombs Jason’s Despair/Chastity. Mikayla, half-dressed in Nevaeh’s moulted Hope feathers, gives a satisfying
shriek
, upped by the pin Jason shoves into her rump as she jumps.

Jason apologizes, dumbass, and Mikayla sobs for a second but smiles through the rain, saying “I’m so happy to be here” like an idiot. Too bad, it seemed like she might be smart. She hiccups and burps. What’s she drinking, Bailey’s? Ah. And underage, too, so Orion cops her glass and takes it to Jason’s bathroom, pours it down the toilet, and comes back.

He takes Mikayla by the shoulders. “Shhh.” She shudders and shuts up.

“You have a chance, here. Don’t blow it. Nobody knows you, now suddenly everybody knows you, you get to work with Ivy and Newell, and me—don’t drink anymore.”

Mikayla nods.

“Don’t throw up in the kitchen sink or take off your clothes or laugh like a hyena. For fuck’s sake don’t
burp
any more. I’m telling you this for your own good. Ivy can do it because she’s a trained genius.”

Jason laughs his quiet, happy laugh, and Orion feels that the night is already made.

(L)

L goes up the back stairs to find Jason. He’s in his bedroom primping the new girl, Mikayla. Weird that he’s put her in Nevaeh’s dress. Is that okay, actually? Looks entirely different now, of course, especially since Mikayla’s like a foot shorter. L leans in the doorway, tilting on her vine-painted shoes. “Better get down there. Savaya put on Facebook that people should bring food and drink and come for nine, and it’s nine now.”

Orion jumps up, neoprene suit snapping back into perfect form. God, he looks good—Jason’s a genius. The cut lingers over Orion’s wide shoulders and tapers with his shape, down to where L has to actually look away or her eyes will get stuck. “Savaya’s dad is bringing two folding tables, she’s waiting for him in the driveway. Hey, Mikayla, I hear you were great this afternoon. Savaya said.”

The new girl gasps. Jason flicks her arm and says she’s done.

But he takes L’s hand at the doorway and pulls her back—what for? Oh, to fix her dress. The tunic has fallen to one side. He straightens it, adjusting the folds, fingers cool on her skin. His breath on her shoulder.

Orion takes the front stairs, so they follow. “Holy shit,” he says.

The living room has furniture in it. Chairs, a glass table. And along the wall, a parade of dummies dressed in psychedelic clothes.

“Those are Mimi’s pink gloves,” L says. She has tried them on many times, on many dull Sundays.

Jason sinks to sit on the stairs. “I don’t know about this.”

Orion shrugs, neoprene shoulders moving deliciously, his don’t-care grin that always means trouble. “Too late to stop the party, we’ll just have to work with it.” He runs down the rest of the stairs, pulling a black paper mask out of his pocket, which he puts on the wigstand foam-head on the glass table. It looks freaky over the strawberry-blonde afro.

“Okay,” Jason says, going down. “But some of this stuff is valuable, I don’t want it wrecked or stolen. That Afghani dress, it’s like, a relic. L, help me take this one upstairs.”

They cart the body up, L holding the foot and Jason at the waist, tending the dress carefully as they go. “Where to?” she asks.

He stops a moment, and turns left. “Ivy’s room. It’s got a lock.”

Savaya’s at the back door, shouting for help with the tables. Orion leaves them to it.

He tells Mikayla as they go, “Also, keep your mouth shut. Don’t say anything bad about anyone for at least a year—you don’t know who’s dating who.”

Jason and L take the dummies upstairs, one at a time: the backless, black-skirted, paisley-sequined cocktail dress; the Mondrian colour-block; the hot-pink mini that goes with the pink gloves. L puts the gloves in her pocket, rolled together the way Mimi always did. It’s kind of a nightmare, because the clock is ticking—they’re still on the stairs with a long black satin Audrey Hepburn–type gown when the first bunch of people comes banging at the door. Faster! Ivy’s room looks kind of crowded by the time they’re done.

“Do you have the key?”

“Nope.” Jason pushes the button in and pulls the door of Ivy’s room shut. “You can open it from the outside with a skewer in the little hole. Not much of a lock. Used to be the master bedroom, I guess it’s for keeping the kids out when the parents are banging.” Ghastly thought. “Enough to deter people tonight, though.”

L nods. “Want to keep them out of your room too?”

“Doesn’t matter—my mom cleaned it out. She had that magazine shoot today, that’s why she’s been doing the quotes so fast. I didn’t know she was going to use Mimi’s clothes.”

Jason’s mom: a continuing enigma. “You ready?”

But at the top of the stairs, he hangs back. Lots of people milling in down there. “Let’s go down the back.”

Happy to. L loves the back stairs, doors at the top and the bottom. Momentary darkness as you go down, a chamber in a spaceship, or a time machine. All might be different by the time you reach the bottom. That door sticks. Jason jiggles it.

L stands on the step behind him, looking at the barely visible back of his neck, the two cords standing out. He’s so concentrated, so exact. She reaches out to touch—

“Got it,” he says, and the door opens into a flood of light, the kitchen full of people, bottles, bowls of chips, everyone from the master class and the art people and the tech guys, hubbub. A good party already.

11. HUGH SAY PARTY, I SAY DIE

Pink’s place is green. Bile-green skull lights along the veranda roof, spooky music. Hugh takes Ivy’s arm and mounts the wooden steps again. The bevelled glass of the door frames Burton, scarlet-coated over yellow plaid trousers, hair fluffed, red cheeks chomping.

Ivy whispers, “What is he, Toad of Toad Hall?”

Not even a week since Hugh punched him, in this very house. Phew, because you could have—what if you’d killed him, head on a fireplace fender, some old mystery-novel thing? Burton’s bruise has vanished, or been varnished by concealer.

Newell pulls the door wide, grinning above the thick noose around his neck.