Real Life (30 page)

“Then call the Verranos,” Alex said. “Obviously.”

“Oh, God—it's one o'clock in the morning, how can I call them and say, ‘Is Hugo there?'”

“You just do it. Just pick up the fucking phone and call, for Christ's sake, and quit talking about it. It's not as if you're calling in the middle of the night to chat, Dorrie. The kid is missing, isn't he? Or so you seem to think.”

She did her best not to get impatient with him. “I'll drive by and see if there are any lights on.”

“Good,” Alex said. “I'll sit here with Daisy and stay warm and dry like a sensible person.”

“You do that.”

She took his keys and went out into the wet again, slamming the door. The rain seemed fiercer. She gunned the motor and backed fast out the driveway, hoping he was watching her from the window. The road was unlit and dimmed by a thin fog, but she could see that there were no lights at the Verranos'—not in front, at least. She got out of the car and went down their driveway to the back of the house. Pitch dark: no lights in house or yard.

“Hugo?” she called softly. She felt foolish, but he had to be somewhere. Why not out behind the Verranos' house, sitting in the rain? What if she found him there, sitting on the grass, staring out at nothing as he used to, all those evenings down on the dock? “Hugo?” But the only sound was water beating down, and flowing out of the Verranos' gutters, drowning the sound of the waterfall.

She drove back to her house, then decided, on an impulse, to pass it and circle the pond, slowly. Maybe Hugo was on his way home from somewhere. She would meet him on the road. Maybe he was at the Garners', watching television. She took heart. That was certainly a possibility. She would kill him for not leaving a note. And she hoped he hadn't rowed across—remembering in that moment that the Garners were out of town. Damn. Then their house became visible from the causeway, lights in all the windows.

She stopped the car down the road from their place, watching. The lights didn't make sense. Even if they had decided not to go to Albany, they never—come to think of it—stayed up this late. Hugo wouldn't be there watching television until one o'clock. Maybe he was staying all night. But Mary would have made him let Dorrie know. If he'd forgotten to leave a note, Mary would have made him come back and write one. Dorrie leaned her head on the steering wheel. It wasn't right: the absence of Hugo, the presence of lights. She gripped the wheel hard, trying to think. All that came into her mind were guns and knives and child molesters and perverts and thieves.

She put the car in reverse and backed across the causeway until she could turn around, and then she drove home fast and burst in on Alex. He hadn't moved. He and the kitten looked up at her sleepily.

“Alex, please believe me, there's something wrong. Please don't joke. Just come with me over to the Garners'. The lights are on and I know they're out of town. I don't understand any of this. There's no reason for him to be missing.”

“Why don't you just call the Garners?” He held up a hand before she could protest. “No. Don't tell me. It's one o'clock in the morning. You can't call people at one o'clock in the morning.”

“No, I can't. What if—oh, never mind. Maybe I should call the police.” She stood wringing her hands, realized she was doing it, and folded them tightly together at her waist. “I don't know, I don't understand this.”

Alex sighed deeply, picked up the kitten and deposited her on the floor. He stood up and finished his beer in one long drink. “All right. Let's go.” He reached for his trench coat and said, “Not because I think there's anything wrong, Dorrie. Only because I don't want you getting hysterical. The kid is obviously over there watching television.”

“Alex, they're away for the weekend. They went to Albany to visit their daughter and her new baby.”

“So they decided not to go. They came home early and invited the kid over. There's obviously an explanation. Ockham's razor—the simplest explanation is the most likely. Of course, I admit that Ockham never met Hugo.”

The kitten followed them as far as the door, then withdrew when the rain blew in, and began washing herself on the rug. “Smart cat,” Alex said. He ran ahead, shoulders hunched, toward the car. “He has to do this in the rain, of course,” he called over his shoulder. “He can't decide to visit his surrogate grandparents on a nice summer night.” He wiped his face with one hand and slicked back his wet hair. “Damn the little bastard.”

But his gallantry was uncompromising: even in the rain, he opened her door, waited until she was in, and slammed it before going around to his side. “That was crazy,” she said as he got in.

“Too old to change, love.”

She touched his arm. She sensed that he was fed up, that the fact of Hugo, which he had been ignoring while they made plans, was becoming real to him. Here was a teen-age brat, a troublesome presence you had to go out in the rain for. Here was the woman he wanted, saddled with the brat. Here he was pushing fifty, trying to write, teach, support himself, in search of peace and a quiet life and a last grab at the ecstatic bit, dripping wet at one o'clock in the morning because of the brat. Himself and the brat like weights on either side of a balance. She said, “Thanks for doing this, Alex.”

“My pleasure,” he said, grimacing at her. “Anything for that gallant little nephew of yours.”

They started down the road. If Hugo was sitting there with Ross watching a late football game, she would never hear the end of it. It would become one of Alex's jokes: the night Dorrie and I went out in a flood to rescue dear little Hugo from the New York Giants. Why was it that Hugo always turned Alex's ironic humor caustic? She supposed the answer had something to do with his own sons—so beautiful, so superior to poor Hugo, so lost. She looked out into the dark night and prayed vaguely, to no one:
Please
.

“Don't park right in front,” she said as they approached the Garners' house. “I know I'm being absurd, but all I can think about are people breaking in, people doing things to him.” She had a lurid, horror-movie vision, suddenly, of Hugo and Mary and Ross lying on the kitchen floor with their throats slit.

Alex made a grunting sound, suppressing a laugh. “I'd like to do a couple of things to Hugo.” He opened the car door and got out. “All right, Watson. Let's go peek in the windows.”

All the way up the house, he cursed. Dorrie, in her wedding shoes—little heels, with straps—felt her feet sinking into mud and puddles. Her teeth began to chatter. She took Alex's arm.

“Have you still got those shoes on? Christ, Dorrie.”

“Never mind, it doesn't matter.” The shoes were disintegrating—her only decent pair. She smiled grimly in the dark; for her own wedding she would have to get new ones. “Just please don't make noise, Alex.”

“I'm not making any fucking noise, damn it.”

They came to the Garners' garage, and she looked in. By the lights from the house, she could see that there was no car. She said, softly, “Alex, it isn't right, that there's no car.”

“Quit worrying,” he said. “Think of Ockham's razor.”

She stopped and faced him, the rain streaming down her face. “Alex, the Garners are obviously not home, someone is in their house, and Hugo is missing. What am I supposed to think?” Her voice had become shrill, too loud.

“Try this,” he said. “The little bastard broke in to steal the silver.”

She turned away, toward the house. He caught her up and said, “Dorrie, wait,” holding her arm to stop her. “All right. I'm sorry. I know you're upset, I didn't mean to be flippant. I'm just so sure there's nothing wrong.” He put his arms around her, in spite of the rain. “I don't know what it is, the cat or what, all those piles of newspapers in your living room—something. The place didn't feel as if some evil act had taken place there. I'm sorry—I just think the kid is up to something. He and Nina. They're out making mischief somewhere. I mean, it's what kids do, isn't it?”

Her hair dripped water into her eyes. His moustache hung down wet. She felt tired all of a sudden, soaked and chilled through, angry with Hugo for putting her through this, and with Alex for not caring what had happened to him. The kid, the little bastard, the gallant little nephew, Alex called him, always with derision. She couldn't tell him her greatest fear, that he would someday throw himself into the pond. How many times had she pictured him floating there, fat and buoyant and dead, with seaweed in his hair? Alex would say, Hugo? he wouldn't have the guts to drown himself. He would say, Hugo can't be in both places, Dorrie, drowned in the pond and bleeding on the Garners' kitchen floor.

“Dorrie?”

The surprising certainty came to her, as she stood there with him, that one way or another she would lose something. As soon as the thought entered her mind, it was as if it had been there always. How could she not have known this—during their ride home, and all these last happy months, and when she used to imagine little wrinkled babies mustachioed like Alex? How could she have kept herself from knowing that there were things that would wash away, into an abyss more massive than the Grand Canyon? Alex's face, dimmed by the rain, was peevish in the hazy light. She remembered her surprise when, at Rachel's wedding, he had turned out to be a graceful dancer, light on his feet, leading her expertly, slightly drunk, humming along with the old tunes. And then he had smiled at her over Rachel's flowers. And then they had drunk coffee together and talked about marriage and a trip out west. And a week ago Emma Northrup had called her and asked, “How are you, Dorrie?” and Dorrie had begun babbling at her that she was fine, she was wonderfully well, she had never been so well and happy in her life—astonishing Emma, who had known her since the days of Mark.

We could just go back, she thought. Go home and get into bed and hold each other, and forget the rain.

Alex said, “Dorrie? Believe me, the kid is all right. He deserves to have his ass kicked, but he hasn't met some terrible fate at the Garners'. Come on. Buck up.”

What he loved about her was the neatness of her life. He had said that. She kept her voice even and cheerful. “I'm sure you're right, Alex. I'm sure there's some cute boys-will-be-boys explanation.”

“But you still want to look in the windows.”

“Yes.”

“Let me.”

She shook her head and moved away from him toward the house.

As far as she could tell, the lights were on in the kitchen, the living room, the sun room. The windows were too high to see in. Alex, behind her, put his lips to her ear and hissed, “Okay, baby, this is it. You grab onto the sill, and I'll give you a leg up to the porch. Watch out for cops.”

She took hold of the slippery sill, then stepped out of her muddy shoe and put her foot into his cupped hands. The certainty of some loss to come had calmed her down: things couldn't get much worse, and if they did she could deal with it—which didn't keep her, as she hoisted herself to the level of the window, from dread. Of a twisted face peering back at her. A maniac pointing a gun. A gory head. Mary Garner gone mad, with a carving knife. She braced herself and looked in.

From the end window, she had a clear view of the room. The first thing she saw was the television, and once she saw it she found she could hear it too, over the noise of the rain. There was no other sound. And no one there, she thought at first, until just below her, on the sofa, she saw Hugo—asleep, it appeared, lying on his stomach. Those awful black jeans against the flowered slipcovers. Thank God: Hugo. She slipped in Alex's hands and jumped to the ground just as she saw that it wasn't Hugo alone, that he was lying there with someone. Clouds of wild hair and a skinny little arm around Hugo's back.

She leaned against Alex, her bare foot in mud. He was in there safe—the little bastard. Wild laughter rose up in her. “Ah, God.”

“Well?”

“All right. You win. He's in there with Nina.”

“Is that the telly I hear?”

“Yes. And they seem to be necking on the sofa.”

“Hugo?” Alex snickered, no longer bothering to keep his voice down. “No kidding. Well, good for him, maybe there's hope for the kid after all.”

“I don't think the Garners are here, Alex.”

“Then how did Romeo and Juliet get in?”

“Who knows? Maybe they gave him the key. He never tells me anything. Let's go around to the door.”

The front door was closed and locked. So was the side screen. In back, they saw the open cellar door, with the rain driving in, made clear by the light from the kitchen window.

“Like father, like son, I see,” Alex said.

They stood looking at each other in the rain, and then Dorrie pushed past him down the cellar stairs.

8

Hugo was sick in bed with the flu compounded by a hangover. He awoke in the night with his skin burning and an urgent desire to throw up. He had a temperature of 102, his bones ached, his throat felt scraped raw. All that night, and all day Sunday, in between trips to the bathroom, he slept, or lay on his bed dazed, looking at the picture on the opposite wall—purple flowers painted in watercolor by his grandmother. Whatever he did, even in his sleep, while his head pounded and his stomach churned, the thought stayed with him: I don't deserve this.

He knew, though, that when he recovered there was worse punishment in store. Dorrie had told him he would have to go over to the Garners' with a bottle of expensive wine (picked out by Dorrie, paid for by Hugo), admit his crimes, and apologize. He thought of this obsessively as he lay there. It would be awful, it would be the worst moment of his life—not counting lying there with Nina and having Dorrie and Alex burst in on them like maniacs—but he was willing to do it; he considered it a suitable punishment. The remorse he felt was bound up with the Garners: it had nothing to do with Dorrie, or with her repulsive lover. The weird paramour. His aunt had no right to abuse him, or pass judgment, or punish. Alex had no right to say those things Hugo had overheard in the middle of the night.