Close to Hugh

by Marina Endicott

  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

  Oops! Somebody in here? No rush!

  I’ll do the kitchen first.

  water run

  run

  (ORION)

  Light filters into the basement through last summer’s raspberry canes and grass that nobody cut; nobody as in it should have been him. His mother out there in too-short shorts struggling with the eco-friendly blade mower, unsharpened, so noble and so stupid. Who knows where she ended up last night, she wasn’t home when he got in at four.

  Unsleeping, unslept, Orio
n sits at the computer crying over the flash mob symphony at Sabadell, Ode to Joy, as it builds—fuck he should have kept on with violin, except that he was never going to be good enough, not good enough, not like these people who live and die for their violins, or their oboe, the beautiful woman playing the oboe. People making things beautiful, working together to make art together, to make that one afternoon …

  He blows his nose again and waits for his eyes to calm down, waits for something to happen.

  No text.

  No text ever anymore?

  The mystery of Burton’s value. Long association.

  In the dark mirror of the computer screen Orion can see himself saying that to some future flashing, ardent boy, about Newell. A vision. He didn’t mind being a secret before. But this is sad, to be rejected out loud and in secret. He is so fucked. Newell is. Burton is.

  Orion is. Stuck, fuck, this so fucking sucks.

  (What is he going to do with this cracked and useless heart? Make art?)

  (L)

  Jason’s legs lie empty on the floor. One eye open, she sees them: his pants on one side of her, and (without looking, she knows) his body on her other side. Caught between pants and person.

  So what was that, last night?

  Her phone brrrings.

  “L, too early, sorry, but I wanted to catch you—” It’s Hugh.

  “I remember, boats. I’ll bring them.”

  “Okay, no rush.” But there is rush in his voice, because today’s the day of the dinner and he likes everything to be perfect.

  “All I want to know is, cake? Will there be cake?”

  “You have a sweet tooth.”

  “My dad too. And Jason has a whole sweet head.” Jason’s arm flails up and whacks her, not in an angry way, in a yes cake way.

  “Cake first,” Hugh says. “Cake second. All cake, in fact.”

  “Their twenty-what-th?” she says.

  “Thirtieth, according to my calculations. And I believe that is the Cake Anniversary.”

  “Happy times.”

  She clicks off. Jason’s arm descends around her, wire and springs, and pulls her back into him while she looks at the bedside table and the clock and the phone in her hand that she is setting carefully on the edge of the bedside table—Jason’s new bossiness: how is that going to work? But weirdly she likes him pulling her in and she likes the new crescent shape they make, their bodies aligned and curved together, the springing smooth silk of his et cetera but they have to she has to they ought to go get those boats and it’s 9:20 already.

  9:40 whoo now they really have to go.

  Downstairs, coming back to life in the blue light of morning, the living room is strange. Pale, foggy blue with hints of grey. The kitchen gets all the sun in the morning. Ann is tying a garbage bag. Stewart sweeps the floor. He looks a lot younger this morning, still in that stupid black outfit, a zit or two burning bright pink on his pallid forehead.

  Stewart empties his dustpan into the last of Ann’s garbage bags. He checks his giant technophone. “Right, so Charlaine will be here stat,” he says.

  Pretty gay for someone who stayed the night. A puzzle: did he sleep with Ann? What happened to the chairs?

  Jason runs down behind L and jumps the last four stairs, mid-text. “Orion’s here. We’ll run you over to get the boats and then to Hugh’s. I’m going to the class in case they need me.”

  Seems he liked being Feste after all. Oh great.

  At L’s house it takes some nerve to go in the back door. Because a) What if her dad is down there? And b) her mom. Nobody there though, the house dead and empty.

  Where is everybody?

  She picks the best six boats, at least the ones she likes best. Stacks them with paper between.

  And then gathers more nerve, to run down the basement stairs. Because it always takes nerve to go down to look at it, to see if it is shit, as so often suspected. The Republic that has been her home for so long, two years, three, making and making and thinking, always somewhat thinking about it in the turning gyre of the back of her spacious mind.

  And now now will Jason occupy that space—? That can’t be right. A person still has to do her work.

  He has work, she has work, they can both work?

  Look at her parents, though.

  She will have to go see Nevaeh. Does a person have to decide permanently, one way or the other? Is the decision made by glands, or growing, or by that which we know as love?

  2. WHISTLE WHILE HUGH WORKS

  The hall, the stairs; so many stairs in this life. Unfixable. But if, if you could find the force. Okay, some things are unfixable, but—because it is so short, we are here so briefly!—there must be some way to fix, say, Newell’s life with the toad Burton, or Della’s pain, or at least get L some recognition. Hugh’s heart lightens for no reason, rounding the last corner to his apartment, up to the porch, in, home.

  The place smells different—something’s out of whack. Burnt toast, the smell of having a stroke. Hugh climbs the stairs, slow as his head thumps, wondering who he’ll find.

  Ken, asleep on the couch, toast-crumbed plate on the floor beside him. Everybody gets to sleep but Hugh. He walks over and stands looking down, wondering what to do. “Everyone knows where you hide your key,” Ken says, muffled by couch cushions. “It’s not break and enter if I use your key.”

  “Not calling the police, yet,” Hugh says. He picks up the toast plate, the milk glass.

  “Thanks for that.” Ken moves the cushion. Paper crinkles. He shifts, and pulls a small drawing from under his arm. L’s work? He swings his feet down, gropes under the couch—another under there. Pieces from the Republic.

  Having plundered it without permission himself, Hugh can hardly take him to task.

  Ken sees Hugh looking at the drawings: one a small sketchy self-portrait, the other Ken himself. “Do you think she’s good?” he asks. Hugh nods. “I didn’t see it before. I thought she should do law. This walkthrough thing, it’s a surprise.” Ken rubs his creased, sleep-shadowed face. Strain and unhappiness ironed right in. “Got any coffee?”

  “Espresso machine, down in the framing room. Want a cup?”

  “For the love of God.”

  Hugh is unable to gauge exactly what degree of despair Ken is clocking now. “Latte, Americano?” is all he can think to ask. When he comes back with the coffee, Ken is sitting upright in the blankets, pale and stub-bled. Unable to meet Hugh’s eyes.

  Okay. Since it seems there will be a dinner after all, better get cracking. Hugh finds his list. Copper bowl, oven 250. He cracks eggs, saving the gold yolks in a turquoise bowl.

  “I remember the day Dell’s mom died,” Ken says. Staring into the mass of untidy half-bare branches overhanging the wooden deck, he says, “We went down there daily, when things got as bad as they were by the end. She was torn up. Della.”

  “I know.” Cream of tartar … there, behind the vanilla. Salt. Whisk.

  “Because she couldn’t be sad. She played the piano all day, that halfsize upright in their parlour, not even in tune. All her mom’s old music books, all day.”

  “Playing helps get rid of pain.” Egg whites flick-flick into thickening mindless foam.

  “The thing is, Hugh—you never get rid of your mother.”

  Has Ken forgotten that Mimi is dying right now? He comes to lean on the kitchen bar, watching Hugh shake sugar spoon by spoon as the egg-whites build and stiffen. Strong-arm, concentrated whipping: another way to shed pain.

  Ken says, “You don’t know how much you’ll miss her.”

  It feels so lonely when your so-called friends fail to understand anything about you. Makes you wonder if they ever knew you. Knew Hugh. Hugh who?

  “Like I said to Della: she won’t ever leave you. In a way.” Ken’s tight, dark-shaded eyes are anxious, searching Hugh’s face.

  “I know,” Hugh says. It’s okay. Let him search, let him find. “They’re not gone, it’s like—a whale listening for another wha
le across the ocean—I understand that.” He slips a silpat mat onto the half-sheet for the meringues. “What I don’t understand is why you’re putting Della through the wringer like this.”

  Ken shifts again, moves his hands on the counter—leaving? Not yet.

  He pushes away and stands straight. “The trial’s coming up, November third,” he says. “The guy is going to take the stand, he’s going to say … the things he will say. He’s eighty-seven. He’s like Della’s dad, he’s got that helpless thing. A sweater vest, a Hang in there! kitten poster on his classroom door in 1974.”

  More than Ken has ever said about the case, in the six years he’s been working on it. He can’t meet Hugh’s eyes. He goes to the couch, can’t sit; he stands there. “Forty-two plaintiffs over eighteen years. I’ll have to talk him through the whole thing. We did a meat chart.”

  Hugh puts the bowl down. Pay attention, pay attention. “What’s a meat chart?”

  “This age, and this touch, and this number of occasions … a big chart on the wall.”

  Something looming, a train, or a tree about to fall. On Della, on himself. On Hugh.

  “When we have meetings, the client always says a prayer at the beginning.”

  Hugh remembers that once, Ken was Catholic too. “What do you do?”

  “We pray with him, and then we go on.”

  Hugh wonders if the we is Jenny.

  “So if it’s coming to trial, then it will be over?”

  “There are separate actions; some settled, not all. Some of them want, want their day in court. More than the money.” Ken’s eyelid is twitching. “The trial hasn’t done them any good, it hasn’t given them closure. The machinery of the law prevents us from tearing the guy limb from limb. That’s a good thing, I still believe. I’ve listened to them all those years, taking careful notes, staring at the paper while I write. Not looking up too often, not intruding on their pain. None of what we do does anything for anyone but the insurance company.”