Close to Hugh (39 page)

“Ah,
Godot,”
Ivy says. “Lucky and Pozzo, very good.”

Looking remarkably fit, Newell wears a wife-beater over tattered trousers, and carries a heavy bag, a folding stool, a picnic basket and a greatcoat. “No idea why you came,” he says into their ears. “But very, very glad.” He shifts his burdens to dot a kiss on Ivy’s cheek.

She kisses him back. “I made Hugh come. I realized after I left your place, I need to know what’s happening tomorrow or I won’t sleep tonight.”

The rope from Newell’s neck stretches taut to Burton’s hand, who shouts, flicking his red leather whip: “Is everybody ready? Is everybody looking at me?”

“What were you, eighteen, when you did Lucky?” Ivy asks Newell. “No, you must have been older. I saw you in the Fringe version, before it got picked up.”

“Twenty?” Newell looks at Burton, who has stuck his bowler hat back on.

“Nineteen and one-half, I believe.… ‘Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua.…’ ”

Newell rolls his eyes for Hugh. “He knew the lines better than I did.”

Hugh passes a hand over his forehead. Is there punch? Not that you ought to drink any. Takes Hugh a minute to recognize Mighton, by the drinks table, wearing some kind of tin can on his head. A helmet. He’s carrying a shield and sword, standing with Della. That old twining portrait, Hugh can’t stop thinking about it. Della looks up, sees Hugh. Blinks and turns her head away. Still mad at him? That’s ridiculous. Irritated, Hugh makes his way over there. He’s saying hi to the back of Della’s head when Ann appears, with some guy in tow.

She grabs his arm, crying, “Hugh! This is my photographer, Stewart, he’s doing the shoot for my exhibit, for the minimalist—Stewart, Hugh’s my ex. My
ex
ex.”

As Ivy comes up, Ann adds, “And his current! Oh, you met her this morning.”

Hugh nods at the photographer guy, who’s wearing a too-tight jacket, too-tight too-short pants, giant boots. Everything coal black. “What are you?” Hugh asks, to be civil.

“A pho
tog
rapher,” the guy says loudly, as if he thinks Hugh’s deaf.

“I mean, what are you dressed as? More Beckett? Chimneysweep?” The guy just stares at him. Oh, those are his own clothes. Hugh gives up.

“We didn’t dress up either,” Ivy says, saving his bacon. “Only as old lovers.” Her warm voice makes the guy smile, even though baffled.

Ann pulls him away. She’s wearing Mimi’s purple Halston jumpsuit, the one Hugh always thought of as Virginia Slim. He stares after her. Ghosts.

Mighton tilts the helmet back on his head, a plate of hors d’oeuvres on one arm, Della on the other. He says, “Let’s find some place to hide.” They process along into the hall, scene of the famous Burton-punch. Hugh rubs his head. A lie-down might help.

Conrad, not costumed, is at the front door. Hugh shies, and tacks left with Ivy, heading up the grand staircase to a clear space above the swarm. They move together like an old couple, like Ruth dancing with Jasper at the Ace. Ruth is at Mimi’s. The thought of that quiet room cuts Hugh’s breath, makes him stumble on the stairs.

But Ivy is with him; they reach the broad half-landing, a vantage from which to watch the crowd. There’s Orion’s mother—Hugh points her out to Ivy—wearing a sheer curtain. He feels some kinship with Orion.

Della and Mighton lean into the banisters to let Pink pass behind them, coming down. Pink is Dracula, fake widow’s peak vivid against his chalky skin, the freckles a surprise. From below, Burton bounces up the stairs, Newell roped behind him.

Burton seizes the hem of Pink’s passing cape. “Everyone seems very pleased with the master class,” he boasts. “I’m happy. Not an easy week, by
any
means.” Sparkling titter.

Hugh bends away, not wanting to witness Ivy and Newell Pinkpandering too. “Della,” he calls, waving to snag her attention from Mighton. “Della—dinner tomorrow. Six or seven?”

She looks at him, finally. “I don’t know if Ken’s going to be able to make it.”

Hugh is shocked. The groceries—the planning. Della’s eyes are black and blank. He hates her like this. “Never mind, come anyway,” he says, not knowing how else to take the misery out of her eyes. “It’ll be a good dinner, no matter what.”

“Oh, absolutely.” Della turns away again. When things are very bad, you can’t bear to be looked at by the ones you love. Hugh knows that feeling.

Ivy wishes Pink/Dracula wouldn’t argue. “Don’t know why you’re not doing some one-act Canadian plays,” he protests. Of course they ought to be, it’s the only thing that makes sense.

Burton, exploding: “Dear
God
, they’ll be doing Canadian plays the rest of their lives, can we not introduce them to the
canon
here, to the
real
plays?”

Ivy disagrees with this so profoundly she cannot even speak.

“I’m all for gay rights!” Pink’s fake fangs chomp. “We’re an LGBTQIA-friendly school. But cross-dressing is …”

Burton waves his hand, the one with the red whip in it. “Hogwash, it’s
entirely
classically grounded—played by a boy in 1602, investigate Original Practices! But you’ve won already. Viola and Sebastian can’t be doubled. Too much of the plot is lost. Film, yes. Onstage, sadly, it simply doesn’t
work
. Not without pulling the play
completely
out of true.”

Burton’s finicky, fustian phrases make Ivy want to wash her own mouth out of anything but plain Americanese. Now he’s going on about Mytyl and Tyltyl, technical obstacles-slash-challenges—what’s this?

Newell turns, hiding his mouth from Burton. “He was in a production of
The Blue Bird
in Texas as a child.”

Ivy asks: “He came from Texas?”

Hugh: “He was a child?”

Behind them, Burton lathers on. “I considered
Our Town
—in drag. And I thought,
yes, maybe
, but
not for this venue.”

Ivy nudges Mighton’s hors d’oeuvres plate closer to the edge of the banister, and coughs, so that it falls to the floor below with a violent crash. Oh dear!

The throng of board members looks up, and Pink, furious, fusses down the stairs to deal with the mess, cape billowing behind him.

(L)

A text bings on L’s phone. Her tuned ear catches it through the noise of the party. No pocket in her chiton, she has it wedged under the side strap of her bra.

Her mom.

> when do you need me to pick you up?

< I’m staying at Savaya’s

Not that she’s going to. Savaya’s parents always get wasted on Hallowe’en, the night they first got high or something. Like tomorrow, for L’s parents. Not that they—ha ha ha, the very thought of her parents getting high! They just go to Hugh’s for dinner every year, since he introduced them, however long ago. L’s stomach squeezes at the thought of this year’s dinner.

Everybody is so interested in everybody else’s business.

Behind her, L can hear a circle of performance-program girls talking about Nevaeh in shocked carrying whispers: “Raped, she was raped.” L turns away as another one, that short fat girl who does improv, gives a giggling gasp. “I heard she was molested by Terry. She-Terry, not He-Terry.” A burst of laughter from the circle. A third one says, “I heard she’s been cutting all year.”

L ought to interfere. Say something to shut these girls down. The cutting is none of their business. But is it being none of their business any of her business?

“The anorexia got really bad, she fainted in the master class.”

“She’s a mess. I hear she’s in for a thirty-day assessment.”

Fuckheads. L turns finally, finally going to say something like they are all
fuckheads
.

But Savaya’s already there, in her gold sheath, lips red like they’re bleeding: “Why don’t you dickwads go down to the hospital and ask her about all this to her face?”

Jason tugs L’s hand to pull her away, but she can’t abandon Savaya. Another one, a guy, not even from school but some loser from Trent drawn by the excitement, laughs loudly. “What’s this I hear? The skeez-ball got all rapey with that black chick Navy?”

Savaya turns to tear into this guy. He sneer-laughs, and Savaya puts
out a blood-nailed hand and shoves him to make him shut the fuck up, so he stumbles back toward the fireplace and trips and—slow motion—just lies back, lies down onto the big glass coffee table where the pink gloves used to be.

As he goes down, as the glass is cracking, through that slow-spooling time L is praying that he will not cut an artery.

All the noise of the party stops—the glass makes such a lightning crack! Not deep thunder, but bright and flashing. The boy wallows on his back in the shards like a turtle.

Jason steps carefully over the glass to take his reaching hand. Orion surges through the crowd and takes the other hand, and Jason says, “Put your feet on the metal.”

With him braced like that, Orion and Jason pull the guy up and out of all the glass, now crumbled into a rubble of sparkling, dangerous cubes.

Sheridan Tooley bustles in with the broom, his unexpected boyfriend with the long slinky gloves holding the dustpan up like a fan. The circle widens out to make room for the cleanup, and Orion and Jason turn the guy around to see if he’s got glass on him.

“Not much—you’re lucky, asshole,” Orion says. He brushes a couple of square shards off the guy’s leather jacket, which saved him from most of it. “Too bad, Jase. But it’s a rule: if there’s a glass table in act one, it has to get broken by act three. Where’s the vacuum?”

The guy is sputtering about Savaya: “She— You pushed me! I was just
asking
 …”

Savaya barrels in on him, not sorry at all. “Quit saying stuff about Nevaeh, you racist shitpig. She broke her fucking
ankle
, and that’s all there is to it.”

L is trembling. Why did she not shut those girls down herself? Where is her loyalty, or her love?

12. I REALLY MEAN IT

Walking away from Pink’s party down dark spook-ridden streets, Ivy asks Hugh, “Do we see light and dark differently when we’re little? Or is it just that memory darkens it? Scenes from my childhood are so often poorly lit.”

“All the scenes from my childhood are poorly lit. I don’t remember trick-or-treating.”

Ivy hugs his arm carefully, so his head does not jar. “Sorry for yourself? You can have my childhood: running for dear life over damp lawns in a long trippy skirt, fat pillowcase, banging on a spiderwebbed door for stale taffy handed out by a freaking
skeleton.”

“I don’t like dressing up.”

“Me neither. I spend enough time doing it in real life. Spent.” Ivy shivers.

Hugh looks down at her with grave attention. “Do you think you can’t work anymore?”

She looks down herself, at the boot-tops appearing and disappearing under her coat. “I think—I think maybe it’s like my eye-tic, mostly stress. If I calm down, if I get Jamie moved out of my apartment …”

“Or just give it to him and that Alex jackass, and come live with me.”

She beams up at him. “Yeah, well—find some solution.”

“Dave will get the repairs done quick. Do you have the money?”

“I’ll find it. I can borrow from my sister, if I have to. I’m just debating which will be less galling, asking Pink for an advance, or hitting up Fern.”

“Money. Fucking money.”

“Yeah. Fuck
money
, anyway.”

The wind picks up and pushes them along a little faster, throwing leaves at their feet and shivering around their arms, cold as death. Trotting to keep up, and keep warm, Ivy searches for something to distract him: “What did Della say on the staircase?”

“She doesn’t think Ken will come to dinner tomorrow. I’ll have to go get him. He borrowed his assistant’s cabin out at Bobcaygeon, I know the place.”

“It was in Bobcaygeon, I saw the constellations / reveal themselves one star at a time.” Ivy sings quietly in the darkness. “Drove back to town this morning with working on my mind, I thought of maybe quitting, I thought of leaving it behind.”

“Poor guy. You heard him on the speakerphone. He struggles with depression, and the case he’s been working on for years is appalling. I don’t know how he functions as a lawyer—he can’t make a decision to save his life; Della decides. Good marriage. Except now. Della’s in a state. I guess Ken knows her better than I do—when he was dithering, trying to decide about quitting his job, I said she wouldn’t care, even if they had to sell the house.”

“Are you sure that’s all that’s happening? She looks to me like someone who’s lost—well, not her house, but her life.”

Hugh throws up his hands. “I can’t— Look, nobody else can be sick, nobody else.”

The road has taken them to Ann’s house—every light on, door wide open, music clamouring out. Ivy draws her coat close to her neck. “A party? But Ann was at Pink’s.”

“Must be Jason.”

“Hm, she had a bunch of your mother’s clothes on display this morning,” Ivy says, not knowing how Hugh will take this. “I wonder whether they got put away or …”