Close to Hugh (48 page)

“In the guest room,” L says. “Jason made him lie down with the ice pack. My dad was here but he went to change and find my mom. Hugh said he had to see a man about a dog.”

All right then. “Did Orion tell you?” From their faces she can see they know. “So that will be what Hugh’s gone to fix.” Ivy gives them encouraging nods. “You do the dishes, and I’ll get myself ready so I can help.”

She dashes off to Hugh’s bedroom. Ten minutes’ fast work and she’s back, clean, coiffed, wearing her best linen dress and a cobweb-fine crimson alpaca sweater. Looking like everybody’s maiden-aunt drama teacher, but never mind, the crazy beautiful (crazy expensive) Cydwoq heels covered with roses give her verve.

She raises her hands at the now-sparkling kitchen. “Wow! Perfect! Still no Hugh? Okay, don’t worry—okay, I’m good at setting table, if that’s any use to you?”

L nods. “Sorry, I was panicking. There are leaves for the table and extra chairs in the basement. He only has one kind of dishes, so we know which to use.”

Restaurant white, lots of them; heavy linen napkins in a drawer; good wineglasses, good silverware—that makes sense. Holding the knives, the weighted forks, is like holding Hugh’s hand. Dinner is such a ritual of communion. Ivy feels a spring of startling desire for Hugh, his body and mind. Beloved!

10. ALL SHE NEEDS IS HUGH

The country of the dead. Many people, these days, have never gone to those gates. People are old before they learn to deal with death. Not that Hugh has learned.

Conrad’s in the hall, his hand on Mimi’s door. He turns to Hugh with serious eyes. “Any time,” he says. “Could be tonight, tomorrow. Early next week.”

Hugh nods. He nods and nods.

“I’m sorry,” Conrad says. He is good at saying that. Empathy without sympathy. We have work to do, you and I, he means.

“I am too,” Hugh says.

Conrad looks at his eyes, and asks, “How’s that head? Taking care of it? No intellectual effort, right?”

Hugh laughs, almost. “None.”

“Pain?”

Oh, pain. What is pain? “None to speak of,” Hugh says, and goes into the room.

Mimi is still. Then not quite still. A twitching in her hand. He takes her hand. The pain is easier now, is it? She’s so far gone. Her skin loose, her bones revealed, her shadow shrunken. Not his mother now but a dying woman, a mystery, almost separated from us on earth.

Ruth is there on the far side of the bed, pink-eyed with weeping. Her old twisted hand holds Mimi’s knee. The sheets are yellow today, pale lemon curd, pale yolk. How can he go back to dinner, that foolish feast? He smiles at Ruth although he hates her for being here. She lifts her lids, gives him back a watery smile, and tilts her head slightly in warning.

A sound, a sigh. He cricks his neck, turning. What’s Ann doing here? Sitting on the sill, notebook in hand, making tickmarks on a list: at least she’s not writing on the wall.

He should apologize. “Sorry I couldn’t talk to Jason about the magazines.”

“Stewart says they’re actually worth a mint, vintage issues.”

“Truly, you don’t need to worry about Jason.”

Her face is calm, close as she ever gets to happy. “I know. L stayed over last night. They’re an item, they posted it on Facebook!”

Okay, with her there the room is too full. He’ll come back later. After dinner, he’ll come.

As he goes past Ann she puts out a long hand to hold him back. “Hugh, stay … I was the same, I couldn’t take watching her suffer—but she was so important to me, you know, to my work. You’ll regret it for the rest of your life if you leave, if you miss her passing.”

The sentimentality of that
passing
revolts him. Her cool, predatory uninvolvement. Her manufactured connection, now that stuff will be up for grabs. Mimi is not hers.

No point in hating her. He tells himself that, and some calm descends.

He turns away and talks to Ruth, only. “You want to stay, okay. I’m going home to look after my friends, to celebrate Della and Ken’s long solid-sterling marriage and their recent reconciliation.”

Ruth is crying again, tears all over her face, giant bug eyes staring up, wanting him to fix the ordinary physics of the world.

“I wish you’d come for dinner,” Hugh says to her, and to Ann too. “You’re not doing any good here.”

Conrad’s still standing outside Mimi’s room, writing on a chart held against the wall. “Hugh,” he begins, turning his head.

Hugh walks on.

Go be with the living, who you might be able to help. Probably not, because everybody he knows is screwed up. It’s insufferable. Hugh lopes along the sidewalk, too fast for the state of his skull. In his head he makes a list of what everybody needs:

 
Nothing can help what ails Burton.

Okay, nobody needs a trompe l’oeil anniversary dinner. Clearly. But that’s what they’re all going to get.

Then a nice thing occurs to him: Ivy is not on his list. That’s because all she needs is you, is Hugh. And she’s got you already.

Up the back porch steps, in, up the stairs: everyone’s eyes turn as he rises above the rail. There’s Ivy. He kisses her in front of them, and she kisses him back.

He tells her, “I went to see—” No, never mind. Death can’t enter here tonight. That’s the penance for leaving Mimi: he can’t bring her with him.

“I saw Burton—Newell’s on it,” he says instead.

“Right,” she says. “Good. I was there when Burton kicked him out.”

“Fucking
Burton
, man,” Jason says, bursting, and L says,
“Fucking
Burton.”

Hugh surveys the rooms. Kitchen cleaned, living room good, table set, all the leaves in. “Okay—table ready too? Beautiful, you guys! Better than I could have done! Okay, red currant sauce, put the crêpe cake together, believe it or not, we’re done,” Hugh says. “L, cut and plate the
cake salé;
Jason, shoot those mushroom caps under the broiler, and Ivy—”

The world is so fucked. He kisses her again.

(DELLA)

At Hugh’s back door

we don’t want to go in                                     we must

a call from the street—what?                            
no no no no

push Ken up the stairs

    You take the wine up, I need to talk to Ruth—

Ruth trotting along up to the porch                 curious bird with red eyes

    Well, don’t you look just lovely. I left Mimi for an hour,

    couldn’t miss the party!

humiliation

say it now

    Ruth, that was me this morning, in the shower.

None of my business!

bright bird eyes

make her believe you

But we—                                             there is no explanation

rough hand clasp warm skin

No, no, I didn’t think so!

    I wanted to tell you—

panic / Ken / Jenny

money / ugliness

nothing that can be told

another confiding squeeze

scratchy overworked hand

    It’s spic and span for selling now, hope it goes fast. Doesn’t

    need it anymore, does he? I’m just running to get the macaroons

    or what-not Hugh left in Jasper’s freezer. Happy anniversary to the both of you.
 

oh Ruth

Aunt Truth

11. HUGH CAN HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO

aperitif cake

cake salé mushroom macarons

Hugh looks down the long table in the long room, white and silver. Kitchen: pedestal cake plates in a row. Teen army: L, Jason, Orion (emerged from the guest room, ice-cool in server’s black). Wine breathing, glass aglow in candlelight. Okay.

Downstairs, voices: Della and Ken, right on time. Ken climbs the stairs alone, six bottles of extra special wine cradled in his arms. That eye, purple/black, but no longer pulsing. Della’s talking to Ruth downstairs, he says. Not wanting to spoil the trompe l’oeil joke, Hugh waves a squelching hand at L and keeps Ken penned at the landing till they hear Della coming up.

It’s always like this at a party, the falseness and theatricality of entrance. Stiff chat and laughter between people who earlier that afternoon were telling each other their marital difficulties or making tender whoopie in the lunch hour, were in despair or vertigo, attending at a death. Put it aside, put it aside.

Newell now, climbing the stairs. Freshly elegant in the softest of linen shirts, hair damp-tousled. He doesn’t care about it; he doesn’t have to care, because it falls in that wild wave as he shakes his head from the shower. A kiss for Della, for Hugh, a warm embrace for Ken, both shoulders held for a moment as Newell studies him, taking in this new black eye. Newell laughs with Hugh in the general direction of Della (who accepts it as anniversary joy), then breaks away gently to move into the living room.

Seeing Orion he salutes, briefly. The ironic gesture of one who has spent the afternoon in the service of the other. Orion nods his head but stays aloof.

So Newell goes across to him, his radiant warmth making a path between them, and says, “Listen, that great ape Burton came to his
senses. He’ll tell you later what was in his mind, how confused he was when he made that snap decision he now regrets very much.”

Does that fix it? Hugh can’t say, looking at Orion’s iron face.

L breaks the tension, arriving with her tray of tiny, pretty, fake beer cocktails. Jason gives Orion a plate of
cake salé
to hand round; he has napkins and the mushroom fake-macarons.

“Here,” Hugh says. “Everyone!”

People come to order, all that are there. Still missing—Burton—but here’s Ruth, coming up the stairs with the salted caramel macarons from Jasper’s freezer, and Jasper himself in tow, just-shaved, just-shoved into a fresh shirt and jacket. Is there a place-Oreo for Jasper? L catches Hugh’s anguished eye and nods happily.

Hugh continues: “First course,
cake salé
and mushroom macarons!” The guests exclaim at mushroom caps sandwiched together with caramel-smooth foie gras. “Welcome to the thirtieth anniversary of the meeting and entanglement of our friends Della and Ken, making possible their offspring, our amazing L, who is even now handing round small beers.” Shot glasses of amber liquid, white heads. “The first and simplest toast: to Della and Ken, a little beer!”

Della is the first to drink. Maybe needs a drink the most, next to Hugh. She drinks, chokes, looks at the glass.

“Not beer—trompe l’oeil,” Hugh says. He takes a sip. Hm, pretty sweet. “Cuarenta y Tres, a vanilla-citrusy Spanish
licor
, topped with a little cream for the head.”

People drink, slowly—if this is not funny, the whole party fails. None of them see Mimi’s face every time they close their eyes. It’s possible they still could laugh? But they don’t.

The party is nonsense, Hugh thinks, and sinks.

But Ivy threads her arm through his, upending her glass with pleasure. “Better than beer! This is like absinthe ought to be.”

Okay. Hugh can carry on.

“This evening will be All Cake All the Time, one cake after another. Because you two take the cake for longevity, passionate attachment, and progeny. You take all the beautiful cakes as a shining example of joy in each other and steadfast love in action.”

By saying things out loud, you can breathe them into being true.

MAIN CAKE

sushi cake seafood crêpe cake

meatloaf petits fours potato tortilla cake

At the table they discover and exclaim over L’s place-card silhouettes, Ivy’s lilies, and Ken’s very good wine; the pleasure of unblemished linens, shining glass and silver.

Brief disappearance of the wait-staff: then L brings in the first big piece, the sushi cake, pink-ginger-petalled on its pedestal. Hugh carries the dangerously mobile seafood crêpe cake, thirty lacy layers, followed by Jason and Orion with tiered plates of petits fours: glossy red-capped meatloaf squares and golden diamonds of potato tortilla, each wearing a saffron aioli rosette. The boys clasp and clamp with their tongs while L and Hugh carve up the larger cakes.

Ruth watches Hugh cut a careful wedge of crêpe cake for her. “All cooked, no shrimp,” he whispers in her small pink ear. She darts a grateful look up at him, her nice pursey mouth like a closed rose. If Mimi was there, she’d have the crêpe cake too. Two old ladies, not entirely unalike.

The company sets to. Della’s delighted by sushi cake and ginger roses. “So beautiful! Elly, we had this at Zoom, twenty years ago, remember, Ken?—oh, tortilla petits fours!”

Hugh bows modestly. He gestures, and Della’s glass refills: wine bottle napkin-wrapped, Jason sommeliers the long table.

Too soon, Ruth takes her plate to the kitchen. Hugh follows, helps her to find a plastic tub, listens to her whispered apologies as she sets off back to sit with Mimi again. Caught in a vision of Mimi’s blue-white hands, her cheek like chalk smeared on a yellow pillow, he has to turn away, bend to the empty oven and hide his face for a while.