Close to Hugh (19 page)

Hugh nods, looking away.

“Experiencing violent tendencies lately?”

“Well obviously Ruth told you about the other night. I can only assure you, doctor, that Burton had it coming.”

Conrad nods. “I’ve met the man.” His lips pooch out, pooch in. “Look. What I’m worried about with you is PCS, persistent concussion. In some, the symptoms of concussion last. Past six weeks, those patients are almost always treated with antidepressants. In my own view, I’ll tell you what, they were depressed already, their brains already in a depressed condition. The standard thing is to put someone on antidepressants and bedrest, absolutely no exercise. No exertion, no excitement; no snakes, no ladders.”

Hugh thinks of last night at Ivy’s window, the old ladder wobbling as he went up, shaking badly as he went down. His feet cramped as he reached for the ground.

“If you ask me, Hugh, your brain was—you were already, before the fall, the
two
falls—already a candidate for antidepressant medication.”

Hugh swings his black leather stool back to looking out the window.

“As we discussed, last time you came in.”

The leaves, fading from the first red down to burnt-out cinders, to yellow ash.

“But you refused.” Conrad taps his pen on his table. “So what’s the unbearable part of it? Why are you here now?”

I think about suicide all the time, with longing, he wants to say to Conrad. I can’t let myself yet—but after my mother dies, I can. She can kill me and herself. Like a leaf detaches, slips to the ground. Autumn is what happens. Everything dies.

But you don’t say those things out loud.

“Can’t sleep,” Hugh says at last. “Not sleeping. Never more than three, four hours. I’ve gained weight. Ruth nagged me till I agreed to come.”

“Headaches too?” Conrad puts the pen under his nose, a black moustache. He twirls it.

“Okay, no, I don’t have headaches. I just can’t sleep.” That sinking feeling, quite literal, as he falls asleep—sinking into the pillow, the pit full of all the things he doesn’t let himself think about all day. So many!

“I can give you sleeping pills.”

“I don’t want pills.”

“Fine, I’ll give you ten of them.”

Hugh takes the scrip, pockets it. He is very, very tired.

“So no exercise, no stimulants. No alcohol. Nothing. No ladder climbing.”

He’s going out the door.

Conrad adds, now jovial: “You’re old, Hugh. You don’t want to let this get out of hand.” As the nurse comes in, Conrad shouts, so that the whole waiting room must hear. “There’s nothing shameful about being depressed. If you’d broken a leg, you’d fix it.”

“Not depressed,” Hugh says. To the room.

7. HUGH AND I BOTH KNOW

On the sidewalk outside the Argylle Gallery Ivy feels absurdly shy. Maybe he won’t like her today. This has been known to happen, in the firmament of first dates. But the taste of mango comes back to her, gold melting on her tongue. The spoon through the ventilation hole, Hugh standing on the silver stepladder. She laughs and opens the gallery door.

No Hugh. Humph.

“May I help you?” It’s a little older lady, trim and pert-faced, coming out from the back. The one who was the server the other night. Her name.…

“I’m here to see Hugh?”

“Well, here I am,” the woman says. Ruby? Trudy? She lifts her eyes and hands upwards, tsking. “No, no—you mean
Hugh
! I’m always doing that.” Rueful.

“You must be Ruth,” Ivy says. “I’m Ivy. Is he—?”

“Oh! Off to the doctor. That bump on the head, you know.”

“Good thing you made him go.”

“I watched it happen.”

“You did? You were here?”

That seems to give Ruth pause. “I saw him fall down the basement stairs over at Mr. Pink’s. You were right there.”

Oh, he hasn’t told her about the ladder, putting up the lights. “Right! It didn’t seem too bad. He got up right away. But he wasn’t quite … lucid.” Neither is Ivy; she makes a face.

“You’re the one with the trouble over learning your lines, I hear?”

Everybody knows. Everybody. “I am.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that passed off. Once you’re through the Change.”

Ivy looks at Ruth. Unable not to hope, it’s the saddest thing.

“I had an awful time myself, but I’m back now, sharp as a tack!” Ruth gives Ivy a self-delighted pat, then turns and heads back into the nether parts of the store.

The door sounds, and Ivy turns.

Hugh, back. “Hey,” he says. She is so happy to see his face!

He looks miserable. Afraid her smile is too big, she tries to tone it down, fails, smiles more widely. He gives her his hand, or takes hers. Both.

“Hugh came back, did you?” Ruth calls, coming in, face bright as a new penny, copper jacket snug around her, red hat clapped on. “Then I’m off like a dirty shirt. Conrad give you the all-clear?”

Hugh rolls his eyes. “I’m fine, I’m fine. He says I’m not concussed and Burton had it coming—thanks for that.”

“He had to know,” Ruth says, defending herself. She gives Ivy a conspiratorial wave.

The bell tinkles her out.

“Thought she’d never leave,” Hugh says, still holding her hand.

They stand there for a moment. Even with his face so drawn, it’s quite exciting to be beside him—what will happen?

Hugh releases her hand to take her elbow (as if he still wants to be touching her, as if they cannot come unglued) and steers her through the arch into the other gallery showroom, saying, “Come, come see the place.”

Perfect. It’s a gallery, sure enough. Tables with ceramics, moveable screens holding smaller pictures, a few stone carvings; one big fabric mishmosh that Ivy can’t figure out at all. The discreet price tag says $13,000. She gasps. The artist’s name: Della Belville.

“Yeah,” Hugh says. “She’s not a fabric artist, turns out—an experiment years ago, she went back to painting. It covers a big crack in the wall. I put the price high on purpose.”

“You know one day someone is going to buy it.”

“And then the crack will show. But the world may end before that. Lunch?”

There are things that Ivy wants to look at longer, but she nods and he leads her to the back, and through into a back hall. A big darkened room ahead, through another arch: Hugh says, “Framing in there. Where the actual money comes from.”

Stairs go up on one side, turning the corner. He ushers her up, so she arrives at the top before him, and can take a quick glance around. Wood
floors, wooden kitchen shelves. Books along the walls. The oak all gleaming clean. Does he live like this, or did he clean for her?

She moves forward to give him room at the top of the stairs. Past the long counter of the kitchen, into the living room. A fireplace, glass doors to a roof deck. Old brown leather couch, amber striped linen curtains. It’s surprisingly nice. Surprisingly. Is this the inside of Hugh’s head, like Jung says about houses in dreams? She likes it a lot.

Hugh lets Ivy roam and goes to the kitchen. You should have thought about what was in the fridge before offering lunch. You just wanted her to come upstairs.

His eyes hurt. He rubs them, stares past his fingers into the fridge. “Omelette?”

“Yum,” Ivy says, looking at books. Okay.

He cracks, chops, whisks, dots butter into the hot pan, toast into the toaster, calls her to the counter—sets in front of her a perfect omelette. She is properly impressed; she eats with attention and pleasure.

“I seem to know you,” he says, looking at her face, her little teeth.

“I know,” she says. Grey eyes lift and light up. Green or grey? They must be her main asset in the theatre. In life, too.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he says. He is surprised to hear it coming out of his mouth, and it hangs there in the air between them for a moment.

Then she sighs, crosses her eyes wildly and takes another forkful, and he breaks more eggs to make his own. He is happy. And still miserable. Which lies deeper?

“You all alone up here?”

“What?” He turns from the stove, then back—eggs require attention. “Yes! Alone. I redid it when I bought the place. I’ll show you in a minute. It’s small. Two bedrooms, but they’re small. A mess.”

Only they aren’t, Ruth did a quick tidy while she was up here. It’s safe to give Ivy a tour, to open doors and show her his white bedroom, the shipshape bathroom. She talks nicely about the space, the light. In the empty guest room they look through the windows onto the street: FairGrounds, the Saab dealership, the Ace, the river. Seeing the little neighbourhood at its best, from above the fray.

Back in the main room Hugh opens the sliding doors to show off the deck. In semi-warm sunlight, under die-cut shadows of bared branches, they sit on the chaise longue because it’s all there is: Ivy curled up in the seat, Hugh on the leg-half.

“Like the Friendly Giant,” she says.
“One for two more to curl up in.”

“Della and I watched that every day at Ruth’s,” he says. “However old we got.”

“Is she—is Della your, what, cousin? I’m sorry, you probably told me, but I forget.”

“No relation. Ruth babysat us, and Newell, whenever our families collapsed. Della’s mother was sick for long periods; my mother—” There he halts. Then he goes on. “Went off the rails from time to time. Nervous breakdowns, they called it. She’d have a few months in the hospital, and then she’d come out, pick me up from Ruth’s, and we’d start off again.”

Ivy nods, not interrupting.

“My father—I told you about him. So just me and Mimi, driving off in her little yellow Karmann Ghia. I was always relieved when she came back. Always relieved, next time, to go back to Ruth’s.”

Ivy takes one hand off her ankle and puts it on his arm.

He smiles at her. “Nothing to feel sorry about. Newell stayed with Ruth a lot too—his parents were well off, they travelled. He and Della and I rode our bikes around town, out to Bobcaygeon, wherever we wanted. We had a club, we had siblings for a while. Good for all three of us. And Ruth got paid, and that was good.”

Except that it was awful. Pain that never can be told. For a second Hugh wonders what Ruth did with that hundred, whether she gave it to the Mennonite Clothes Closet—that’d be fine, he tells himself.
They do such good work
. Better them than the Conservatives.

“I like you so much,” Ivy says.

Saying it right out like that—easy, or brave? He has chocolate ice cream—he could— The phone starts ringing inside.

Or he could kiss her. No glass between them now.

“Hm,” she says, grinning at him like a kid. Then, “Should you answer the phone?”

“Come in, I’ll make coffee.” He takes her hand to pull her out of the chaise. It’s still going, still—Hugh makes it to the kitchen counter, sure the ring will quit. He hits the speaker button. The ringing stops.

“Hey, Hugh!” Ken’s voice, distorted by the speaker. Or is he crying? The voice wobbles into the room, too loud: “It’s you! I thought you weren’t there.”

“What’s up?”

“Della’s not answering her cell—”

“Okay,” Hugh says. “Everything’s okay, as far as I know. I know L’s fine.”

“Della’s phone is turned off, I can’t get through. Is she teaching tonight? I don’t have my calendar, I can’t remember if she teaches Wednesday— I need to get hold of her, she’s—”

What the hell is all this? “You okay?” Hugh asks.

Then there’s a silence while Ken breathes. Like a man between bouts of vomiting, breathing to hold off the next painful rush.

The back door slams downstairs. Hugh sees L’s pale head, Ken’s colouring, at the bottom of the turn. She’s coming up.

Before his mind even frames the thought, his hand takes the receiver from the stand and hits the speaker button to shut off Ken’s voice. Into his ear, unstoppered, Ken floods a ranting stream, so unlike his usual reserve that Hugh feels some alarm, which he conveys to Ivy by wild eye-rolling—she goes to the top of the stairs, gives L a big happy greeting, and draws her into the living room to look at something on the wall in there, allowing Hugh time to listen to Ken. Which he does not want to do. He takes the phone, nodding to Ivy, and slips off to the bedroom.

While L wanders around the room touching things, Ivy wonders what Hugh was going to say, or do, before the phone rang. That must have been L’s father on the phone. What’s going on there? Della seems pretty conflicted—her layer of warm calm is like custard skin, gently set over a seething mass beneath.