Close to Hugh (42 page)

His eyes are filling, that won’t do. Can’t cry at this shit, that is
not allowed
. He turns as if he will climb slowly out of this, but his feet betray him and he stumbles and falls down the odd-shaped stairs, past Newell, slipping and turning, and he opens the door and—flees.

16. HUGH KNEW

Hugh and Ivy carry cans and bottles to the kitchen where Burton is washing glasses, red jacket hung on the doorknob, up to his elbows in soapy water. Easy to clean up empty rooms, turns out—Hugh begins to see method in Ann’s madness. It’s late, he’s tired.

In the lull, a rush: Orion bolts out the back stairs door, a knife in flight.

An instant later Newell emerges, looking like hell.

Orion halts at the back door, turns and tells the room, “I’ll go check the—the riverbank, make sure the fire, the others—” A brave stand, a fair recovery of dignity. He smiles, almost an honest smile, and almost-bows to Burton—of all people—before he goes.

You can’t blinker yourself forever, bury your head up your own ass. Hugh can’t. Burton isn’t a danger to the fledgling Orion. Newell is. Your dear friend, your brother.

Burton offers Newell the rope. Newell puts the noose around his neck and starts to dry the dishes.

Ivy leads Hugh out of the kitchen and up the stairs, taking him to bed. Why didn’t she take him earlier? His head hurts. The right side pounds and sings, causing a kind of blindness. The living room is empty, empty again; crazy. The writing on the walls makes no sense, he can’t get his eyes to focus on it.

Then what is Newell doing to Burton—how can that be justified? By rights, should Hugh want Orion and Newell to get together? His head hurts. No solution. Sleep will be surcease.

Ivy is fiddling with the locked door, doing something, and after a blank space he is in the dark familiar bedroom, crawling in beside her, and asleep.

(L)

Not even 3 a.m. and the garden is empty. The fire truck arriving cleared off the frayed ends of the crowd. Orion ran past L and Jason, said he was going for eggs to make his famous after-party scrambles, but he was crying. So probably lying about the eggs.

Jason’s mom is not mad; she’s relieved that for once he has a social life. Even about the broken table; she wanted better glass anyway. She asks about Mimi’s clothes, and Jason tells her they’re locked safely in Ivy’s room—then she says she has to get some sleep because TV lady Charlaine is arriving in the morning and Jason says he’ll get up and help, which placates her completely. Or else she’s distracted by Photog Guy, who is hepped on himself for both getting good pics and putting out the fire with the lid of the pumpkin, he’s all whoop-de-doo I’m the man etc. Jason’s mom is finding that pretty charming.

The photographer turns out to be called Stewart, which for some reason makes Jason and L laugh so hard, so they pretend to be clearing up bottles and cans, blue recycling bags carried high to hide the hysterical giggling. They fill one bag each, leave them propped up in the kitchen, and drift off up the back stairs.

Taking off her chiton, L hands it to Jason so he can fold it properly. She pulls on one of his T-shirts, stacked by colour and fiber content on his orderly closet shelves.

The thing is, autonomy. She’s unwilling to give up her personhood, her autonomy to another person, Nevaeh or anyone. Orion might be worth giving it up for, she can see that, or Newell—there, you see, that’s how women (and men) get themselves into trouble. Better to be with Jason who is an extension of herself than to be with the Other who will rule her. But some people choose differently.

He turns off the light, and they get into his big bed, as they have done since the earliest time she can remember.

In the darkness, Jason says, “You know that word
charity
means love, right?”

That makes her heart stop beating, makes her throat unable to take in, to breathe. Then sweet air comes in flooding again.

“Sometimes I want you to touch me,” she says.

Oh, the humiliation, if he says no.

(DELLA)

everyone else does                      I might  might I   one might Mighton

Ken isn’t/won’t be home  Elle   isn’t/won’t be  nothing to go home for

Mighton needs help carrying sword and shield                            3 a.m.

he can drive he hardly drank unlike me                    mandarin orange door

    Come in, come see what damage Lise has wreaked …

copper pots hangledangle from a grid over the island

Mighton’s helmet clangs a sauté pan

doesn’t want to take it off, that’s funny—he likes being king

    Come see—she bought a giant bed—California King, it’s called.

Mighton’s gazelock                                      once upon a time

comes close looses his shield      lies his sword   in the centre of the bed

Lancelot, Arthur

what would it matter to fall into bed again

fall on the sword with my old Mighton                            old flame

kind old kindled king kindling

nice new bathroom no barriers no shower door            nothing but glass

Mighton brushing his teeth

vain mirror-admiring Mighton    both of us

being nothingness                      because there is      nothing between us

inconceivable to touch to kiss

anything, nothing there is                                         nothing between us

but Ken and Jenny

those two together

if my beloved has left me

I will not be the one deceived

not the one the joke is done to

it’s
better to be in the right
, my dad said                            clothes like leaves

who spent forty years under the yoke of                            fall in a heap

being in the right                                                                           fall in

17. NEVER LET HUGH GO

Hugh wakes, washed in cool light. Clouds blown away, the floating moon flows through uncurtained windows. Around the room, Mimi stands in various familiar poses. Her backless cocktail dress, glinting redoubling sequins laid over paisley, dazzling as his eyes sweep. The Afghani wedding dress, tiny mirrors making dabs of silver light. The strapless sheath she wore to the American Embassy ball with Trudeau. Hugh zipped it up for her, she bent and kissed you.

The room is full of Mimi, full of her. Her perfume, Joy. The indefinable other smell that is just her, her breath and body. Like her dreams, when she dreamed the house full of people and talked to them all night, only all of these are her.

Hugh sits up. Stares around the room, at each separate form and shape.

Not a dream. It’s real, it is her, it is—these are her clothes.

He slides out of bed. Ivy
purrrps
her lips, a baby’s noise, but does not move.

He pulls on his clothes. He has to go. Why has he been anywhere but her room, these last few weeks—he can’t remember. No, it’s Ivy who can’t remember. He knows why.

He does not want her to die. He wants her not to die, not ever, never to be gone, never to leave him. All his anger was just clouds, only love left now. He touches the sequins, the mirrored sleeve, the bow at the black sheath’s breast. He goes.

(ORION)

Behind the glossy hedge at the big grey condo building, in the shelter of the shadows there, Orion waits. The lights go on, room to room. The men walk through, they move from one room to another, first one and then the other. They pause, drink, one laughs and shakes his head. They speak to each other. He can’t hear words. They move back into the darker room.

He turns away, drops down the grey stairs, gets back on his bike and rides away again into the maze of streets.

That lead him once again around, around, around.

To pause without hope by the stairs again.

But Newell comes out of the stairwell, onto the road. “Beauty, grace, truth of the first water …” That’s from something, not
Twelfth Night
. Godforsaken
Godot
probably.

He walks ahead, down to the river path and in under the overhanging branches. “Intellect is subordinate to the body,” he says, waiting for Orion to dismount. And then, “I don’t know what to do with you.”

Orion feels his mouth breaking into a smile, too big. Too wide open. He begs himself: hold back! But how can he, with the only one?

The noose is no longer around Newell’s neck, but Orion’s fingers feel it still there, feel the welt it left under the black cord. He crows, sadly.

“That’s how it is on this bitch of an earth,” Newell says.

Three poisons are the root cause of

dukkha:
ignorance (misunderstanding

the nature of reality, bewilderment)
,

attachment to pleasurable experiences
,

and aversion (the fear of getting what we

don’t want, or not getting what we do want)

entry on Buddhism
,

WIKIPEDIA

1. SHE KNOWS HUGH

Empty streets, rain-cleaned, shimmering in half-dark. Not darkest before the dawn, but beginning to fade from black to grey.

Crossing Water Street, Hugh sees Gerald in the distance. Slump-backed, clumsy or drunk, tramping the night streets. A ghost with two ghosts trailing behind him. Hugh does not raise a hand to catch his down-trained eye. Gerald’s wife, his son—impossible to take in those deaths.

People die on you. Hard as it is to believe. They are there, and then not there, never to be there again. What it means to be alive: you will be dead.

She’s not dead. Her face turns as he enters the room. She is glad to see him, her face is warm and loving. She remembers, she knows Hugh. Through every slight or fight, every abandonment or embrace, she knows Hugh best.

She whispers. Lean close.

“Hugh. You waited so long. I’m always awake, you know.”

Her eyes are her eyes, for a moment. Her self.

It won’t last, though. They’re already closing. She is on her last last legs, her face on its last face. Thinned cheeks, high forehead, hair still spilling but thinning, thinned, lessened as is everything about her. A shell of herself. But still herself, still the woman of the world to him. Always, whatever consolation and comfort others give him. Ruth kept him safe, Della kept him sane, Ivy is his great joy now, but Mimi is the root of his life. Bewilder, betray, frighten him as she may.

When she is dead the root will be torn out, and how will he survive? He’s in so much pain already he can hardly stand.

He sits, he sinks at her side. This is his childhood’s death, the entry into an empty world. Loyalty to Ivy rises up and scolds him, but it’s no use. He loves Mimi best of anything in the world and cannot live through this, this, this great stabbing pain.

(DELLA)

waking from a terrible dream                                         Ken bleeding

tangled in sheets, strangled   Mighton bleeding              the cremation

in the dream waking waking    it isn’t true             no that was a dream

bare skin sheets eyes unglue      empty bed                      Mighton’s bed

oh consciousness returning      what did I do?                      oh memory

(it’s absurd he isn’t never could be not with Jenny not like this if he fell in sudden flaming love but not like this not this not with Jenny it’s absurd)

Mighton! talk talk how he not a word on why I was in his house his bed drunk and alone not about  Ken or me     I’d rather be lonely by myself nothing between us but  old rue and a toy sword
 

it’s all right                              no-one will ever know   he’ll never tell

coward  me too  coward           out before he wakes       wherever he is

clothes in the bathroom?          close the door                no clothes

bare body in the mirror            turn away!       bare body on the wall

that old painting me/Ann/Newell

tied in a knot

the doorbell                               key in lock        clatter-bang bang-slam

voice calling
 

    Good morning! Bright and early, hope I’m not waking you!
 

Ruth cleaning Mighton’s house   no lock on the door  no towel  no clothes

she always starts with the bathroom                            no shower curtain

tin helmet by the sink                                                     nowhere to

helmet on   it hurts my head                                            into the shower