Close to Hugh (24 page)

“She was my mother too, for a long time. My creative mother.” With that bizarre embroidery, Ann turns to Ivy, eyes on highbeam. “Hugh had to help you find your way home?”

“I’m not lost.” Ivy isn’t giving ground, the way Hugh always does.

Ann stares at her. A beat. “Are you—?”

Ivy stares right back. Waits for the question to finish.

Ann almost staggers, as if she’s missed a step, and reaches for the door handle. She turns to Hugh. “Are you—?”

He weighs the options, decides there aren’t any, and nods. “We are.”

She’s hit.

She had me in her sights again, he thinks. A wave of hot/cold, relief/sorrow washes over him. He puts out a hand to comfort her.

But Jason dashes out between them, slipping past Ann’s thin frame in the doorway, jostling Ivy almost off the stairs in his headlong rush.

“Sorry, sorry, late,” he calls back, running backwards for a few steps. Making a sorry-face, more lively than Hugh’s seen him since childhood.

Ivy megaphones her hands at her mouth and yells, “Watch out for those fan-tailed beavers, mister!”

A great shout of laughter comes back through the mist by the river’s edge.

“His dream, this morning,” Ivy says to Ann, apologizing, after all, Hugh sees; because you have to when someone has been in the dark, and has stubbed her toe so badly.

Ann nods once to each of them. The ice goddess Freya hammering their heads with her bronze sledgehammer.

She swings away to let Ivy slip inside, and shuts the heavy door in Hugh’s face.

(ORION)

The leaves are almost all down. Wind pulling her fingers through her hair, Orion thinks.
The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse
, it says in Revelations. Like, apocalyptic carbon capture. When his mother makes him go to her weird all-denominations church he spends the hour flipping through Revelations, one long acid trip. Not that he has done acid; it’s actually quite hard to get around the school.

Savaya’s parents are going out—pulling out of the driveway in their ’89 Eurovan, held together with duct-tape. Probably going to drive out to Bobcaygeon and do bong hits, that’s how hippie they are. Tragically unhip. Orion locks his bike to a wrought-iron fence. Ought to, wrought to, deter thievery. He stands in shadow for a minute, checking out who’s already there. Twelve or fifteen guys milling around the lighted doorway—Philip and Coran; there’s that fuckwipe Sheridan Tooley, who only drinks Baby Duck, who got the kid lead in
Auntie Mame
in Toronto and quit the master class to go in to the city every night for singing classes with some guy at the opera. Fucker.

Here’s Jason running down the sidewalk, not that any of them ought to be in a hurry. Orion puts out a long arm and a jazz hand to stop Jason. “We enter with deliberation, Boy,” he says. They’re calling each other Boy these days. Burton, you old slag.

Jason nods.

“Where’s L?”

“Her mom’s driving her—I had to wait till—” Jason’s breath is gone.

“You are out of training, my man. Your mom again?”

“Yeah. You sticking around?”

Orion checks his phone. No message yet. “I might.”

The crowd around the lighted porch bursts into a clap of laughter. Savaya comes to the door and waves her hands to bring the noise down. The last time the cops came, and her parents said she couldn’t have a party if she couldn’t control the guests.

“How was it at Newell’s?” Jason asks. Hands on knees, getting his breath back.

“You know. Pink told Burton he wants him to go back to
Sweeney
fucking
Todd
, and Burton told him to basically fuck himself. Burton won.

We start
Spring Awakening
tomorrow: two masturbation scenes, onstage sex, and I’m the main guy, Melchior.”

“I mean, how’s it going with Newell?” Jason says.

“Polyamory is a recognized sexual choice.”

“Right.”

“How’s your own sex life?”

“Right.”

“Here comes L, let’s go. I need to punch that fucker Tooley, but I am not going to.”

“Yeah, Hugh do you think you are?”

Orion laughs. “Jase! Good one!”

They flit, they fly.

(DELLA)

these parties     tell Elly to be careful           don’t tell her

Elly DJing        
Short Skirt/Long Jacket

be acerbic        be witty              and now her Tom Waits impression

she will be gone

a Hallowe’en party in the 80s walking in to get my coat

Ann fucking some guy on the heap of coats who was that? not Hugh

Hugh was beside me seeing her                                                     Ken?

not Ken not Ken

how that hurts

was that the night we met?

or we were already together                                                and it was Ken

I was busy feeling bad about being with Mighton

All Saints All Hallows old ghosts gone
 

    Bye, sweetness, turn your phone on …
 

Jason running up good, he’s good

Ann in Mimi’s old polyester teagown        
how to talk to your teen about porn

that’s a short skirt not a long enough jacket

not a baby anymore

no protection from  bareback boys  or girls

I guess it might be girls  how would I know?

the guys hug shake hands  are men  adults  setting out into the world

where no one can humiliate them

only it is all humiliation

drive away

I Will Survive

if I’da known for just one second

you’d be back to bother me

did you think I’d crumble?

14. ALL I WANT IS HUGH

The ladder clunks gently against the windowsill, the windowpane. The sill again. In a moment, like a moon rising, Hugh’s face rises in the window.

He has a chisel. Ivy laughs, and gets Newell’s cheese knife from her purse. She runs it jagging and digging along the dried paint lines inside as Hugh does the same outside. She gets hers done first, and shoves the inner window up. He jimmies more, and mimes for her to shift the metal clasps. He shoves upward on the storm window, hard.

A crack, loud in the darkness. Then silence again.

He grins at her, takes the weight of the storm window carefully, and disappears down into darkness again. The ladder trembles, trembles.

A small cautious thud, the window planted on the ground. Then careful steps, climbing. She backs away from the sill to let him in.

He knows to duck his head for the low ceiling. “A little awkward, knocking on the front door when she’s …”

“…  hot-tempered?”

“Never hot. In a feverchill.” Hugh looks down into the garden. “We’ll have to put that storm window back on when it really gets cold. Ices up in here if you don’t.” He walks quietly around the room, looks at the shelves. In her strong effort to keep the room clear, there are only two things there: her old silver mirror, and a stone.

Neither of them speak. Is he as nervous as she is? It seems so. Ivy’s teeth clamp on a small laugh. Then she lets it out.

“I like this room,” Hugh says. “I’ve always liked it.”

“Perfect. It’s a new bed, Ann tells me,” Ivy says.

“Hm. Okay, then.” He puts out a hand and touches her face.

They speak to each other in low voices, and in a little while they go to bed.

Hope and fear are a single coin, one

entity with two faces—on the other side

of a moment in which we hope for more

happiness will be our fear of more suffering
.

Until attachment is eliminated, we can be

certain of having both hope and fear
.

The Great Secret of Mind,

Tulku Pema Rigtsal
,

translated by Keith Dowman

I entertained her as best I could
.

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City,

Nick Flynn

1. HUGHREKA

Hugh crashes down—falls out of the dream-sky. Wide awake. The daily shock of consciousness. How do you keep your mind from eating itself? He reaches for his phone … 5 a.m.

He slept.

He looks up, dim light. The old slanted ceiling. For a fraction of a second, confused, he thinks,
Oh no
. But— Oh. This is a change in the program. Letting his head fall to the left he stares at Ivy’s dark head, nose, her closed eyelids that slant at the corners and hide her consciousness from him. Her cheek is pale in the still-shadowy room. She brushes her fingers across her mouth. Even in this light, he can see the pores in her skin, he is so close.

You can’t know another person. We cannot know each other. It’s hopeless.

Her eyebrows are thick, matted, the hairs almost braided together, dark against the white of her skin. Blue veins show in her eyelids. They match the map of blue veins on her breast, slipped from the sheet, pearl or ivory texture. Doeskin, dear skin.

You shouldn’t—listen, don’t kid yourself. This will never work.

But Ivy, not asleep, not waking, says, “I know you. You are Hugh.” Or perhaps she said, “I know Hugh. You are you.” Their arms go round each other and they might make love. But instead, because we were up very late, you and I, they fall asleep.

Hugh wakes again; he listens to the hesitating tender percussion of rain, not much of it, eavesdripping, broken rhythm. It’s 5:40. Time to go. Of anything in the world, at this moment, Hugh least wants Ann to find him lying here, however new the bed.

On the other hand, his headache is a little better. He turns slowly in the bed, so Ivy won’t wake. Kisses her pale cheek. Slides out of sheets, dresses in the cold dawn air. The window will make noise. If he’s fast and silent, he can take the stairs.

He finds his phone and texts Ivy: > let me know when your eyes open

Sees the text light up on her bedside table. Good, okay. Bedroom door open, shut. His feet know the treads, know the count of stairs to the empty, black-scribbled living room. The front door opens and closes without appreciably disturbing the silence.

He shuffles into his shoes. First, Mimi. Make her happy too, at least for a moment.

(ORION)

Lying on Savaya’s bed in the sunrise after a long party, reading Oscar Wilde—Savaya, what is this doing on your bedside table, crazy girl? Audition fodder?

It’s quiet now, everyone tired, Savaya’s parents too stoned to yell. While she puts the Desire/Despair costume on again for Jason, Orion reads
Salome
out loud:
“It is thy mouth that I desire, Iokanaan. Thy mouth is like a band of scarlet on a tower of ivory.”

Worrying, really, the volume of porn watched by today’s youth. Jason’s mom freaking out, as if Jason even— But apparently it’s not good for you, makes you dependent. Except that, except,
he
is not dependent. Not incapable.
“O tower of ivory, oh, mouth upon it.”

Savaya glances at the book. “I tried it, but I couldn’t do all that
thy moutheth cometh
stuff. Terry gave it to me to look through.”

Huh! Was that Terry He, or Terry Her? Like temple acolytes in a weird rite, L holds the gold cloth taut and Jason snips, to underscore the slashes over and under the right breast. Shit, Savaya is a tall, tall girl. She could be so great, if she would just keep her head in the game, and quit fucking assholes like Pink, or whatever’s going on there, which she won’t talk about. She wields a bright gold lipstick in the mirrored door. She was so good as Stanley Kowalski.

“Thy Mouth is like a branch of coral that fishers have found in the twilight of the sea, the coral that they keep for the kings.”

“It’s either too early in the morning for lipstick,” Savaya says, staring at herself, “or too late at night.” She wipes her mouth off. The burnt-black hem trails at the back right down to the red stilts of her Despairing round-heeled, down-at-heel shoes.

There is nothing in the world so red as thy mouth
.

Where’s the phone?

> Suffer me to kiss thy mouth.

In twenty seconds, it pings back. Always right on cue.

< Never! daughter of Babylon! Daughter of Sodom! never!

He texts, sings, shouts, > I will kiss thy mouth, Iokanaan. I will kiss thy mouth.

2. EVERY TIME I THINK OF HUGH I GO BLIND

In the middle of the night he said
say you love me
. And why not, why not say it? Why make it precious, when it is so precious? “I love you,” Ivy tells the slanted ceiling. Meaning
I love Hugh
. If she had a marker she’d write it all over the wall. She stretches in the bed, wondering what what what she will do with this beautiful day.