Close to Hugh (15 page)

It’s heavy going, Ivy can see that. But she can’t do anything to help except sit with him.

He smiles at her, sudden sun through clouds. “It’s probably good to love your mother. Even if she was batshit crazy half the time, she was always a beautiful nut. She’s finished with acting up now. And since I’ve looked after her for the last few years, I don’t even have to feel guilty, right?”

At this point, feeling Fate’s cartwheels trundling over her chest, Ivy’s chief sensation is dismay. What fresh trouble is she getting into here?

“Right, right,” she says. Her hand crosses the table to touch his fingers. Straight, smooth-skinned, plain, over-sensitive. Such a nice hand.

(L)

Hope
. L letters it carefully, behind the muffin case. Tuesday night is always dead. Thinking of Nevaeh’s beauty in the black-and-blue Hope dress, stalking off to change again because Jason didn’t like the way the crest emerged. He’s fussy about the lettering too, and L’s already thrown away too many of these little cards he made for dress labels. Perfectionist. But in her opinion there is not enough perfectionism in this world. People having the gall to decide to make things properly, to insist on things being right.

Nevaeh leans on the counter drying cups. Superimposed, L sees her leaning on her bedroom chair, explaining just how it came about that she and Savaya were necking. How Savaya got a text and said,
Wait, that’s Jerry, I’ve got to go
; how it would always be that way, and how it hurt her
so much
. And how she needs, needs, what? Maybe me, maybe?

But it is not real. What is between them, what delicate things they, delicately—oh, swoop, the rush of feeling comes once again. But still not real. It was not good enough that night, it is not now. There is some barrier, some dissonance, not between them, maybe, but where they come from. Money, partly, Nevaeh being rich; Nevaeh’s famous, ferocious father, scary slow-speaking guy, asking “What is
wrong
with your
family
?” L’s own father being basically the opposite of ferocious.

Maybe solitude is best.

She could talk to Orion—but Orion’s distracted, off on a stratagem; making the best of Newell and managing Burton very well. An education just to watch him. It’s a strange burden, to look at him. Newell has the same quality. Draws the eye, and shakes it off.

Maybe I am too much of a perfectionist and there is no perfect, only a sequence of making do. What is attraction, anyway? The dent over Nevaeh’s upper lip, her collarbone, the slender turning of her upper arms. Her wide-open, flame-throwing heart. Or Newell’s wide-spaced eyes, is that it? Or else it is how sad he always, always is, beneath the charm.

Orion is not sad, not yet. But his mother, hokey jeez,
she’s
a mess. And my mother too. And where is my dad?

Into the labyrinth, lost like I am, in
The Island Republic of L
.

11. HUGH NEVER CAN TELL

Ivy is the kind of person you can talk to. Hugh can. You tell her things you should keep quiet about: “It’s the automatic actions that worry me. For instance, I didn’t mean to punch Burton. My arm just came out. I hate him so much.”

“Why?” He looks at her. “I do myself,” she adds quickly, “but why do
you
hate him? He doesn’t tease you like he does me, and he doesn’t have any power over you.”

He adjusts the candle, which is guttering. “I don’t like … how he is with Newell.”

“Jealous?” She blinks, as if wishing she hadn’t gone that far. “I mean, I only mean, yes, Newell is the best. And you’re obviously very good friends. It’s hard to have to share him.”

“I’ve known Newell all my life. All my conscious life. I’ve known Burton as long as Newell has. And he’s—”

A brief silence.

Ivy smiles at him. “You can tell me. I’m safe, because I forget everything.”

Some cautious or honourable streak stops Hugh from spilling his suspicions of Burton. Or some desire to protect Newell. But he says, shamefaced for himself, “Newell said today that maybe I just don’t like gay people.”

“Do you think that’s true?”

“No.”

“No hidden prejudice? Nothing in your subconscious’s, um, closet?”

“No!” He laughs this time. “I just really don’t like Burton.”

“Well, that’s a big club, you can share my annual membership.”

“I would like to belong to all your clubs,” Hugh says. “If you will have me as a member.” That came out a little forced, a little lame. He sighs to himself and tries to smile.

She is looking thoughtfully at her butter knife. She polishes it on her napkin, and puts it in her purse. Is this part of her forgetfulness, he wonders, or kleptomania?

Purse shut, Ivy looks up into his eyes. Her own are surprising, liquid and bright in the candlelight. She asks, “So here’s a question for you, for Hugh: is life a submitting to fate? Or do we have to decide, have to choose what to do?”

“You have to live the life you have,” Hugh says. “Except I haven’t.” He has done nothing, nothing good.

“I always want to be somebody else,” Ivy says, ashamed too. “But it’s good for work.”

Except she can’t work now, he thinks. Terrifying. “Okay, how about improv—lines don’t matter there, right?”

“Yes, except some days I can’t remember what people were just saying.” Ivy leans her head on her hand. “Can’t follow a conversation.”

He looks at her sane, sad face.

“Well, never mind,” she says, straightening up. “Tell me about your life, your lives.”

“I had a couple of other lives, yes, away from here. A couple even while I was here, going back and forth between my mother—crazy, glamorous—and Ruth—ordinary. I went to art school; then I came back here and lived with a woman for four years while I taught art at Lakefield, and tried to paint. That didn’t work. We split up. I went out west to be an artist full time. Didn’t work. I’m just not that good, I’m better at teaching. So then I took over a small-town hotel in Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. Whole other life, hardest I’ve ever worked.”

Her mouth can’t seem to stay straight while he reels off his CV. But as far as he can tell, she is not laughing
at
him. Happy to be here, or something. That makes him happy.

“After ten years without a day off I sold it, went to California, made jewellery with a silversmith from Peru; I painted portraits on the beach for a year. Twenty bucks for a single, fifty for the whole family. Not good portraits. I lived in a strange motel, full of druggists. Not weed or cocaine—pharmaceutical dispensers, cheap drugs from Canada and the UK. People trooped up and down the halls all day getting their Dilaudid and their blood pressure pills. Okay—then I came back to Canada; I cooked for a while, short order not haute, wrote an art criticism column for the Halifax paper; on the side I did some book design and worked for an auction house—”

“You’re like one of those invented author bios on the back flap: ‘Neville has been a brain surgeon, lumberjack, car thief, tango dancer and cowpoke.’ ” She makes him laugh, internally, a pleasurable effervescence. “Are you a good cook?”

“More cook than cowpoke. I cooked breakfast at the Waegwoltic, posh country club in Halifax. I make the best omelette you’ll ever eat. After noon, I mostly eat out.”

“So why are you here?”

“At the Duck? It’s after noon.”

She cocks her head, patient, and he laughs.

“Okay, Peterborough. Ten years ago my mother got sick, and I came back here and opened the gallery.” That sentence covers an awful lot of ground. He won’t be fool enough to unpack it for her tonight. He can’t even talk about Mimi, her present state.

“My parents are eighty, still going strong,” she says, as if understanding that he’s done in. “My twin sister lives next door to them in Thornhill, so it’s like I never left at all. She gets a medal when they croak, boy.” Her eyes are agate-coloured, dark grey-brown. Grey-green? Shining in the candlelight. “They’re self-sufficient, interesting people; gave me everything and so on. Both lawyers. They wear the same clothes.”

He laughs. “Always Toronto?”

“Mostly. School, theatre school, et cetera. I travel around for work, a lot, I guess. I have an apartment, College and Spadina, a loft!” Proud of it. Then her face twists up, she is sad. “But I haven’t been—well, somebody’s living there. Jamie, a friend’s younger brother. Sort of looking after the place while I’ve been in Banff, and up north.” Her voice peters out.

“Parked on you?”

“The poor guy, he’s not very well, it’s complicated. I don’t know how to go back.”

“If you can’t live there, where do you live?”

“Oh, with my sister. Or I house-sit, or I get another gig. Like this one.”

“You don’t seem like a twin. You seem like yourself.”

“Well, that’s not really how it worked with us, but I will take it as a compliment—”

Catching his eye, she looks down, and the heavy creamy lids stay lowered. She looks at her plate, adjusts the knife and fork to less-perfect parallel. The fork crosses the knife, tines engaged. Like legs entwined.
The dark eyes come up again. Her mouth twists, she knows his mind. But there is still coffee to come. “Well then, tell me about your childhood. Your earlier childhood,” she says.

“My parents separated when I was three. Divorced a year later. Which may explain her really difficult breakdown when I was four. I went to Ruth’s for a year or so. My mother would never speak about him again.”

She looks troubled, sorry for him.

“Don’t worry. I don’t really remember him. From time to time I used to get an urge to Google him, but I suppressed it.” (Over and over, feel and stop feeling.) “A lot of stuff in life seems to be like that—like being an alcoholic. Or eating too much.” He pushes the bread basket away, signals to the waiter for another of the red.

Ivy says, “Aldous Huxley said most of life is one prolonged effort to stop thinking. Is he still alive?”

Hugh doesn’t pretend it’s Huxley she means. “No.”

The waiter fills his glass and goes.

Hugh hasn’t thought about his head for a while. The ache is still there. “Okay, there were a few of him on the internet.” He puts his glass down.

His father, somewhere in the world, not ever thinking of Googling Hugh. Hugh is filled with knives and pieces of glass; furious with Ivy for making him dip down into childish disappointment. “Once I found an obit in the
Vancouver Sun
—died in 1987. Two daughters, wife, extended family, Rotarian Award. Dry cleaning business.” (Where’s your specialness now?) “So for a long time I thought he might be dead. There were others, a Henry Argylle the right age in New Brunswick. One in New Jersey, two in the UK.”

She’s watching him. Her mouth is a pleasing line, her face open. A loving face.

“But in fact I was sent ten thousand dollars from his insurance money last month. He died in Winnipeg, he’d been living with a married stepdaughter and had no other family left. She wrote me a letter.”

“Maybe kind of a relief?” As if she can’t even tell he’s angry. Or is choosing not to let him stay angry. “You don’t have to talk to him, now. And you won’t have to stop yourself from looking him up all the time.”

“Either I was the dry cleaner’s boy, or I am my self.”

She looks at him, autumn-eyed. She says, “You are your self. You are Hugh.”

12. I’LL NEVER WALK ALONE

They walk home in the cool night. Fall sharpening into winter. Glad of her warm coat, Ivy tucks her arm into Hugh’s without even thinking, without wondering if she should. His good, warm arm.

As they pass the gallery they hear a grating thunk: L, locking the door of FairGrounds. She and the thin dark girl from behind the counter embrace—then with a wave of one long arm the other girl slips into the passenger seat of a waiting car. Getting off work at ten. Late for a school night, going to walk home alone now? L’s mother’s name has slid out of Ivy’s mind again; that makes her fist bunch tight inside her jacket pocket.

“Hey, Hugh!” L says. “Oh, hi, Ivy—I mean, Ms. Sage.”

“Oh, Ivy, please,
Ivy
,” says Ivy. Besides liking L for herself, Ivy loves girls at this age, girls going wild, going like roller derby girls, each one a firecracker, a graceful, mad bacchante flying toward you in a violent swirl of eyes and arms. They make her think of the girls she hung out with, nights in swimming pools behind rich people’s houses, sneaking from yard to yard all night, each new pool still as heaven, blue-lit from below. They make her remember dancing, and walking through dark streets with people you didn’t know. Being in hot smoky places, never going home, being up all night at a party with hot knives cooking in the kitchen at the Delta Phi. Various, oh various, various people, and never any reason why not to. Delta Phi,
Della
, L’s mom is Della. Phew.

L and Hugh are talking about her work, a series she’s doing, has done? Hard to piece together from the scraps of their conversation, which might as well be semaphore or Morse.

They walk down London, Harvey, streets Ivy is trying to learn. She can see how much L likes Hugh. Trusts him. Her art teacher, her half-uncle. They have a world here, a life, a long community. For the first time in ages, Ivy thinks about how it would be to belong to some people, some place.

Dublin Street: and here is L’s house, evidently. Green, spreading, odd. Big old trees. Hugh slows, clearly expecting L to peel off, but she says, “I’ll carry on with you—I have to go see Jason, he’s got my
Charity
dress almost ready and he wants me to try it on.”

Hugh gives L a strange look, and then looks at Ivy, as if this is not fitting. But of course it is, it’s a fitting.

Ann’s house is across the street from L and Della’s, farther down on the river side.

Just as they get there, Jason opens the front door to peer out and sees them coming up the walk. “Quick, the glue’s setting!” he shouts, darting down to grab L’s hand. The loudest and the fastest Ivy has heard or seen him yet. Behind him, Ann is kneeling by the stairs, intent on her work.

L and Jason go inside, and the door shuts.