Close to Hugh (9 page)

As Hugh finishes sweeping the steps and flips the gallery sign to
Open
, Gerald comes out again onto the FairGrounds veranda and sees him. Bulging muffin sack in one hand, Gerald raises his cup in a salute, a toast. Hugh lifts an imaginary cup back. “Good to see you yesterday,” he says, before he can pull back the words. Gerald’s face crashes from cheer to painful shame, caught having fun behind his dead wife’s back. It’s just habit, Hugh wants to tell him, to comfort him. You don’t mean it, I didn’t mean it. You didn’t mean it even in the old days, the ol’ glad hand, it’s just Chamber of Commerce, just business sense.

Off goes Gerald down the street, around the corner. Hugh is suddenly afraid that he won’t make it, will park himself in his garage and die there one day soon. He can see Gerald’s office window—it will spring into light in a moment. Hugh stands in the shadow of the gallery’s porch, waiting for the light to come on. Willing Gerald to get there, to live.

When she arrives (ten minutes late, because he told her to take the morning off), Ruth starts right in. She’s in a mood. It’s age or something, calcifying her mind, Hugh tells himself. She’s the most sane and helpful person, except for this crazy awful stuff.

“Dave’s got a new person working for him, moonlighting from the hospice. Dave lets him drive the truck! I didn’t like the look of him. I always think he seems lazy, at the hospice. You can’t be too careful. Everywhere you look these days—well, you can see the difference. In the faces. At the hospital, too. Many, many more dark faces these days, you see it.”

Oh, you do. Hugh sees it. One thing about his mother: never any of this, even on her worst days. Bile rises in his throat but he looks away, studies the place where he will hang the big Mighton.

“It wasn’t like
this
before, that’s all I have to say,” Ruth says. Liar. She has much more to say. “In my days in this town, you knew everybody and they didn’t have the kind of strange ideas that you find now.”

And what can you say to that? Anything Hugh could say would be politically correct and practically false.

Even Ruth can hear her own incalculable wrongness, and it bulldogs her jaw. “These people—”

“Please, please, stop,” Hugh says. Not sure if he has said it out loud or not.

She stops, adjusting the front blind: “Look, here’s Newell, with his friend!”

Funny that she doesn’t have the same trouble accepting gay people. Ruth adores Newell. She has DVD sets of all his series. Of all her part-time kids, Newell’s her baby.

There they go. Newell and Burton ranging down the street to FairGrounds, Burton’s arm tucked into Newell’s bent elbow, his head up, catching the breeze of a cool morning. They trot up the steps in unison, almost a shuffle-off-to-Buffalo; musical theatre being much on their minds of late. Newell sports a goofball grin and Burton an eyepatch and a slouch hat. And what looks like concealer and foundation.

You realize he’s going to sue you, Hugh tells himself.

He leaves Ruth in charge and walks round to the hospice. The son, as required, going to sit by the deathbed of the mother.

Stairs stretch endlessly upward like a video game or (back to his own childhood) the
Sorcerer’s Apprentice
. Mop and pail, mop and pail, endless stairs and water, all out of his control.

The hall, the quiet corridor. No bodies laid out there today. Nolie is just coming out of her room. Always better when she’s on duty.

From the bed, eyes open, Mimi smiles for him. About the eyelids, much sweetness. Still eighteen, at seventy-eight. Hard to believe some days that she is dying. Her face is peaceful. The drug cocktail mutes or translates pain, makes it unintelligible.

“You, did you, busy. Have you have, Hugh?” The darling husky voice is hazy these days—hurry, answer before she realizes that she is not making sense.

“Phew, busy, yes, I had some running around to do. I can’t remember—” Hugh runs his fingers through his hair, a thing he got from her. “Oh, I went to Della’s. I found her playing your piano—she loves it.” That was days ago, but it doesn’t matter. Days and nights have no more meaning here.

“
Her
piano,” she says, and seems to know what she’s approving of.

“Yes, she loves it. It means a lot to her that you gave it to her. She’s coming to see you this afternoon.”

Mimi’s eyes light up. “Ken?” Always a man’s woman. She likes Newell best, though. Like Ruth does.

“Ken’s away,” he says. Her eyes close, she is drifting. Keep on, a mild gossiping tone will ease her way.

“He’s having a mid-life thing. Wants to quit his job, or take some kind of a leave from the firm. Not good timing, though. I think money may be—” No. Don’t talk about money. Background, not foreground. “They put the piano against an inner wall, as you suggested. It sounds great.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, eyes up, open, searching. For him?

“I don’t play. No sense me having it.”

But that is not it. She is shaking her head, fitful on the propped-up pillow. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry—sorry, sorry—” Half sobbing, “I’m so sorry,” in a child’s voice that pierces him to the quick. She puts her hand on his. Papery, pale, silky with sickness and age. She looks at him, looks, looks.

Sometimes
forgive me forgive me forgive me
is in everything she says. Sometimes,
it’s all your fault
. Remembered from her violent childhood, things she has let slip or that he guessed.

It kills Hugh. You can’t do anything about it; she could never set it aside. In a long, privileged life, she only ever felt betrayed and beaten and bad. How long life, how long childhood lasts. Mops and pails, water everywhere.

He wipes her eyes, careful with the cobweb skin, and slides an arm behind her shoulders. But she turns away, maybe pretending that he is one of those who hurt her. Maybe thinking it, or knowing it.

(DELLA)

he’s in a fugue state

he smashed into a tree               rapelling in Elora Gorge

and they don’t dare                   can’t bear to tell me

                                                      I think that was a lie   Elora Gorge

he won the lottery                     can’t decide what to do with it

he’s shopping for a present        for our anniversary

                                                can’t find one                    can’t face me

his other wife is sick                  he’s got to look after her  his secret wife

he got religion

started speaking in tongues       at a Kinsmen’s breakfast

                                                like Dad’s friend Phil Millman

                                                burly in a brown 50s suit

                                                then a clerical collar            struck

he hates me                              can’t bear to tell me                he’s left me

no

none of those                                                                               please

3. WHIRLING AWAY FROM HUGH

Okay, away from the hospice, running over to Della’s to get the January flyer settled. And for the collage course starting next month. Ian Mighton arrives tomorrow—wait, Thursday? Lucky turn of events, Mighton able to teach the class because he’s got to be in town to sell his old place. The house he let Lise Largely live in, while they were dating. You’d think (Hugh’d think) Mighton would have more sense than to fall for full hair and an empty, roaming eye.

Hugh veers across the street in body, veers his mind away from Lise Largely, the realtor-slash-developer who has a bid in on Jasper’s place, who wants to buy Hugh’s too, who wants the whole building for a naturopath/allergy spa. Hugh could find another venue, or give up, give up, give up. A gallery is a mug’s game at the best of times and now is not the best time, no. Who’s to say she shouldn’t have it.

Hugh’s to say. He says
Never give up. Never give in
.

And Echo replyeth:
Give up … give in
.

He strides along anyway in the fresh tangle of leafsmell, rainslick; the sun sulking, slumped behind a bank of fog climbing off the river. Red flash—a cardinal, flying low across his path. Another follows, a pair of bright crimson males. Some note from Audubon or
Birds of North America
slides into his mind, that males with brighter red have greater reproductive success than males that are duller in colour. Mighton is as bright a bird as you can get, except for Newell, the brightest, yet neither of them has had reproductive success. Does Newell mind? Does he mind the way Hugh minds? You never know. Newell is detached.

At Della’s corner lot, a dash of coat out the back door—red and gold paisley lining flaring, not the solid funereal black of yesterday. Well-kempt, unkempt,
verklemmt
. The car, Della’s green Mini, flicks out the side drive and off downtown, without a glance behind to Hugh, jumping, waving his arms, a mad puppet dancing to yanking, tangled strings.

He gives up. Goes to the house, to wait till she gets back.

“Your mom on her way to see me?” he yells as he opens the front door.

Up the short flight of steps, Elle’s head appears around the louvered kitchen door, nods. It’s nearly ten, don’t people ever go to school?

“Does she have her phone?”

Shake of the head, after a quick look at the kitchen counter.

No, she never does. “I watched her drive off,” he says, begging pardon for busting in. “It’s the Mighton flyer. She knows his stuff better than I do.” He doubts Elle would know that Della and Mighton were once
an item
, as Ruth says.

Elle holds up a coffee cup, queries. He nods and follows her into the kitchen. Which is a worse shambles than usual: dishes piled along the counter, long sideboard stacked with piles of papers, photos, brushes, books bristling with bookmarks, three unmatched shoes.

On the built-in dinette table Jason lies flat on his back, considering a feather held up to the light. He drops his head to see who’s here and jumps up in one elastic burst, skinny legs wheeling briefly through the cool kitchen air. Colour flares around him in streaks and flows, weird, migraine-like—what’s that thing, synaesthesia? Then Hugh sees the colour is real, is cloth and feathers. “Hey, Jason. What’s all this?”

Jason stares at Hugh, as if not understanding the question.

Elle hands Hugh a cup of coffee, holds out cream; he dollops in enough to calm the black, to quell the bile.

“Fashion project,” Elle says. Maybe her first words of the morning.

“No FairGrounds this morning?”

“Tuesday—school in an hour. I work tonight.”

Elle’s schooling is complicated. Home-schooled for years, now in her grade twelve year she’s taking courses at the high school to get credits. AP Art, Math. She’s been doing Option Art there for years, all the extracurricular stuff and projects, because Della teaches at the school too. It occurs to Hugh that Della is a bit too thinly spread. Why all the jobs? Ken must do all right, lawyers—But he was a sessional at Trent for years, went to law school late, on student loans. And he’s expensive, all the hobbies. Wine, sailing, etc. Hugh remembers Ken on Friday, heading into the bank, looking hounded. Is money every trouble, for everyone?

Elle is talking: “—first-unit project, he’s doing birds and virtues. Down is for November.”

Hugh nods as if this makes sense. Down,
down …?

“Give me mine,” Elle says. Jason bends to his overflowing baskets. Like a magician slipping silks from a sleeve, he strings out shattered, glittery shreds until Hugh rubs his eyes, seeing each thing as feathered—more, plumed.

Arms full, Elle vanishes back into the bedroom hall. Moved by avuncular over-politeness, Hugh looks the other way, and his eye hooks on an easel just inside the dining room.

And another one, and another. He goes through the arch and finds two easels, three, six, seven; the art-class kind. Canvases propped on chairs and bookshelves, tacked on the wall, trailing into the living room. The pieces normally hung there stand stacked in the dining room arch. Hugh follows along the line of work. Each one is the same, or nearly the same, a series of seascapes, harbourscapes. A boat, a wharf, rocks roughed in. Charcoal, smears of tempera colour, glossy paper (cut from magazines?). What’s this—playdough? Pie crust? Some have small nudes in the boats, figureheads perhaps; some boats are strangely built. One is a whale.

Twelve canvases march along the wall and into the living room, past Mimi’s piano, the last three crowded onto the mantelpiece.

“What’s your mom doing with—” He stops. Elle is changing, she can’t hear.

Jason slips through the archway, arms full of slick-sliding silks in orange, green, bright blue. “It’s—she says her mom says it’s homage.”

Hugh turns to look at Jason. Why so shy, after all these years? When Hugh and Ann once were … what, Jason could not know. Can’t know, how Hugh knows Ann’s body so well, still, can see the skin under her clothes no matter what she wears, can feel the slight weight of her left breast in his hand. No matter how married she was, or isn’t, now.

“Um, homage to
her
mom.” Jason looks at the pictures. “Was she a fisherperson?”

Della’s mom was a hack painter who turned out seascapes a dozen at a time, factory-style. In between bouts of ferocious depression. Homage, right.

The back doorbell rings. Jason lets Orion in.

Hugh watches from the dining room as Jason works, draping Orion’s straight shoulders with more confections, concoctions, a concatenation of bird and person.

“This one looks backwards.” Jason is serious and concentrated. “Tuck, see, the tail comes around, wraps twice and then—unfolds, explodes—I’ll fix it when it’s on.”

Orion disappears, Elle emerges, coated or clad in something black, blue. What’s the word—neoprene? Wetsuit stuff. Scales, sequins. Fish or bird? She turns, reveals a coxcomb hood with long blue feathers trailing down the back. Her legs appear, revolve, beneath the abbreviated hem, thin as Barbie legs. Too thin, he thinks. Pretty as all get-out.