“We drank yak butter tea. You like it, as I recall.”
“I liked it, I liked it,” Hugh says. “Very refreshing, after a day in the water.” No, that’s not right—he looks to Ivy for correction.
Conrad lets go his knee and pats Hugh’s, getting up. “Right,” he says, to Newell, to Ivy. “Confabulation, that’s called.”
They all look at him.
“Pressure on the brain creates it. Prime test for a late-presenting subdural hematoma. Given that he’s functioned fairly well all this time, it must be a very slow bleed. Hugh, you bastard, you lied to me about the headache, didn’t you?”
Hugh puts his hand up to his head, the saddest little gesture. Ivy’s heart is being juiced by a giant hand, she can’t speak. Newell puts his arm around her.
“Watch this,” Conrad says. His empty hands, in front of Hugh, pull apart as if he’s drawing out a string. “See my coloured beads? What’s your favourite bead, Hugh?”
Hugh stares down at the hands, making an effort. After a minute, he points, his finger back and forth along an imaginary line. “I like the blue the best,” he says.
“Right. You need a scan pronto,” Conrad says. “And you will have to have an op. Being Sunday, better first thing tomorrow than later today. I’ll shove you into the neurosurgeon’s schedule at 7. You two take him to the CT area now, sub-basement over in the main building, and I’ll run by the operating rooms. I’ll try to meet you at CT, I’ll phone them to expect you.”
Hugh sits blankly on Mimi’s blank white bed.
“Nothing to alarm. It’s a fairly straightforward procedure, just a craniotomy—a hole to drain the blood. Sounds dramatic but as neurosurgery goes it’s pretty good. You’ll look like Frankenstein afterwards, where they stitch the little dot of skull back in. Chris Peterson’s on tomorrow, she’s a champ. We won’t have a bed for you tonight,” Conrad says, putting out an affectionate hand to help Hugh up. “If I miss you at the scan, just go home, and don’t eat or drink anything after 7 p.m.”
Standing, Hugh moves his head gently. He seems to recover himself a little. “Can I still do the wine and cheese for Mighton?”
“Oh for Christ’s sake, anything you like, you bloody hound. You’ll do so anyway, whatever I say.” Conrad is out the door, leaving them to follow.
12. I WILL FOLLOW HUGH INTO THE DARK
It’s more than Ivy can take. It’s all right while they’re at the hospital, in the waiting room, Newell never leaving them, keeping Hugh calm. The scan itself, being slid into the machine, seems to interest Hugh. She can be stable for him. The conversation about the drill, the—releasing. Watching a video of his head, the marking. For the piercing. The brain inside there, the sleeping snail of mind/memory/life. Then Ivy can’t remember where she put her car, or—no, she didn’t drive, she just ran over from Mimi’s, that’s all right.
Newell takes them to the gallery. Hugh is supposed to rest for the rest of—the rest of, what’s left of the day. Her eyes feel both hollow and swollen. “I’ll find Ruth,” Newell says. “She’s got the caterer coming at four, what’s that, two hours? I’ll come back to let him in, or she will. Get Hugh to lie down until then. And you lie with him, you could use a nap.”
She takes Hugh up the stairs, her hand on his back. All the stairs in this world.
No sign of Gareth or Léon—oh, Gareth was going over to look at L’s Republic, wasn’t he. They must have gone there. Hugh doesn’t comment, doesn’t speak, asleep on his feet, or dopey. She leads him down the hall and takes off his shoes. He doesn’t want to undress; he seems to hold the wine and cheese as the next necessary part of living, so she lets it go.
He lies back, cradling his head in one hand and lying very still. She covers him with the mohair blanket and closes the curtains.
Then she gets into the shower, where nobody can hear her, and cries for half an hour. Not knowing if Hugh is damaged, is dead.
I waited so long. I waited so long for you.
When the water turns cool she shakes her head and washes the tears off one more time. Now stop being selfish. Conrad said it’s a straightforward—trepan—terrifying prehistoric word. Calm down. Dress, and wake Hugh; have a good time at this wine and cheese. Charm Mighton so he brings more paintings to keep the gallery afloat, keep watch on Della and Ken so there’s no fighting. See that Ruth doesn’t do all the work. Bolster Hugh, make sure he doesn’t have an absent-minded drink.
Perfect. I can do those things. Okay, perfect.
(L)
They go down the stairs. Her mom stays up in the dining room where Gareth was looking at the other boats and more stuff she pulled, talking in a quiet voice for a long time. Now he and Léon go down the stairs. L feels the worst stabbing contortion-pain, right in her ovaries …
I see now—she sees it. It’s shit, it’s impossible, every piece of art is futile—what did Burton say, Art is useless. I have been fooling myself and I fooled Hugh too.
The gate, the warning, the sign: THE ISLAND REPUBLIC OF L do not enter Why didn’t she get there in time to take that down? Her hands are like wet cakes of soap.
Gareth looks at her, head tilted and mouth considering. Léon taps him.
They go in.
It’s just a rec room, too full—L closes her eyes, shuts off the voice inside her head. Turns to watch them walking through, like she watched Hugh on Monday. It’s not done, it’s not ready, shitted is not painted. She flicks her X-Acto knife inside her pocket.
Gareth examines the plans; the street of translucent portraits; makes his way through the Mylar brambles. Stops at a photographic print wrapped around a pillar, leans from one side to the other to see the two girls leaping in the air; steps right to get the whole view as they repeat and repeat around. The print watches Savaya and Nevaeh dancing on the street in front of the movie theatre. L’s just in it at the side holding the camera in the repeating mirror of the shop door, watching them, jealous. He points to the bra and garter belt display of the lingerie shop, vanishing over and over in the upper corner behind her head: a thought-bubble, she now sees.
This is good because there’s no need to talk, he’s not talking yet.
Léon holds out a long, black arm, taps once on the big silver frame Mimi let her have. It is suspended in air and Mimi is suspended in the frame, drawn from the back with the bones of her spine showing and her waist taut in a hanging basket chair; the frame revolves like the chair and there she is from the front. Hello!—eyes hollowed and fresh, crone and child, about to dance. One drawing L is sure of. It makes her happy to have this much left of Mimi. The pink gloves and the black gloves, there might be a way to—get inside them, if you had—
Gareth speaks. “The Voynich, of course. This is Jacques Callot you’re thinking of here? Walker? Ed Pien? Yes. The Kusama; but are you referencing Leonardo in this sector?”
L nods. “The Val di Chiana topographic map … colour-drained, bands, haze.”
Then she says, “But too, there’s this guy Aozaki making a map from directions people write out for him. Faces turning, hands—ways in, ways you find your way—” She stops, because staring at the face/map of Nevaeh she has just figured out that she doesn’t hate Nevaeh, she’s mad at her. She can still love her. The relief of that is intense.
Gareth stays in the Republic for more than an hour. L goes to sit on the stairs when it gets too hard to take. Her mom looks over the banister, and goes away quietly.
Then Gareth comes to the gate, motioning with his hand as if they’ve been talking all along, “Yes, undisciplined, ragged thought, ideas simply unspooled, juvenilia interspersed with oddly mature—well. Brilliance is not the same as depth. It’s a mess.”
L nods. He is entirely correct. She follows him in, in, farther in.
They stand in the core, all the strings leading up to nothing. She seems to be in stasis.
“You don’t have room to work here. It’s a straitjacket, ridiculous.”
Well. Yes.
“A relationship
with a gallery is not the only route. You might choose to put your work on a website, YouTube, Flickr, whichever.” Gareth looks around the shifting web of paper and string and ribbon. “The structure of a gallery gives you the chance of significant critical response; makes it more likely that you will end up in museum collections, a validation many artists seek; and it will eventually help to raise your prices.”
L nods.
“We create a context for solo exhibitions, we connect you to the market. An ongoing conversation—not the mentorship you have experienced with Hugh, although he disclaims any responsibility for this piece. We ask for exclusivity, at least at the beginning.”
L nods.
“For our part: you may expect to feature in our inventory, to have prime exposure at the many major fairs we attend, and—eventually—sales. We will be investing in the hope that your work matures, expands, refines. The financial risk we incur justifies our 50/50 split. You might join an artist-run gallery; but we are in a position to spend five years developing both your work and the market for your work. With a piece like this, an installation, we’ll be looking at a solo exhibit sooner than later, once individual pieces begin to sell.”
L forces her head to stay still.
Gareth nods. “And we may have a room big enough to hold the vision.”
13. WHOSETOPIA?
The gallery is already hopping when Ivy lets Hugh go downstairs. He finds the world askew, tilted somewhat on its axis. Your mother died, he tells himself. You have a hematoma. Not surprising.
Still, he is surprised: at the spread of savories on wooden boards, at the deep glow of the wine—those greeny yellows! those infinitesimally differing reds!—and at the press of people. Mighton militant, triumphant, posturing before his piece. Ann, that’s Ann beside him, the black Sharpie chimney-sweep. Behind them the louse Lise Largely simpers, whimpers sorry, sorry, but she has no power over Hugh, no power of attorney.
He shakes or nods his head. Ivy leans in to his ear and whispers, “I got the deposit back from her. For the apartment.” O woman in a billion. He is overcome with love.
In the shattering shards of framed and unframed faces one looms close: he knows that nose: it’s Ansel Goddamn Burton. Where is Newell, right behind, that’s fine. Burton’s voice rings in the ears, it’s rude to put your fingers in but—oh, there, volume has been adjusted. He is telling secrets.
“All art is quite useless, Wilde decreed,” Burton says. “Yet it seems a use has been found for mine. My play—at a little place called Louisville.”
He’s a purring, post-canary cat. Hugh likes him in this state. “Go on,” he says—something he’s never said to Burton before.
“Have you been drinking?” Burton asks, suspicious.
“Not allowed,” Hugh says, and Ivy chimes in: “A drink, Burton? Lots of choice.”
He raises his full glass. “You two are odd.”
Newell gives Burton back his phone. “You’re checked in,” he says. “All packed?”
“Like the tents of the Arabs, but I must attend to one last thing. Hark, Pink!” Burton tacks and wends his stately, plump Buckminster Fuller way—Hugh laughs because in fact the I’m-a-director black glasses frames do have a Fuller look. This is a strange world, and everything in it shines.
Another shining thing: L the lovely girl, his niece, his—you could say—protégé, coming in the front door, glass opening in the middle of glass to let in glass: her fair slightness shining in the last late low slant of sun. Her hairline speaks of peace. Behind her a giant bear rears: old Gareth, and his slighter shadow, lovely Léon. So many people are so lovely now.
Hugh goes to them, so happy he’s afraid he’ll weep. Gareth stretches out one great limb and pulls Hugh in, a little confab. “That’s what I’m doing these days,” Hugh tells him, in confidence. “Confabulating.”
Gareth nods as if this all makes sense; L is too dazed to respond at all. “I’m taking on this startling young woman,” he says. “I want to secure your blessing before I do—I know you have been integral to her education thus far.” He talks on for some little time, Hugh nodding as he thinks might be polite, smiling most of the time. No idea what Gareth is saying, or what L may be thinking. Hugh hopes she wants this, isn’t just bedazzled—
No, that’s Hugh, it’s you who is confused, contused. Ivy?
There she is. “Hugh’s got a headache,” she tells Gareth. She hugs L. “Everything working out to your satisfaction?”
L nods, not able to speak either. Hugh hopes she has not had a bump on the head. That’s what he has. He sits. There is a chair against the wall, so he sits in it.
Mighton, in front of him now, confabs with Ann. That’s not a good idea. Those two too much of two feathers. Ann says she’s got a treasure trove of clothes and Hugh says that’s just fine, he nods and then stops speaking for a while. She made off with the fine feathers of Mimi’s frantic youth, that’s good. Feed her till she’s finally full.
Mighton leans over and kisses her, what’s that about, what’s this?
The good thing is that Mighton’s leaning reveals the Dark Gates he’s been blocking, and Hugh can sit and stare at that beautiful, that magnificent thing, that piece of work.
Gerald sits beside him. Two chairs, who knew? Hugh knew there were more, but not where they were. Language has become a serpent slide, no longer a ladder of logic. Ivy? No, no, she’s talking to L, that’s all right, she’ll guard L.
“Gerald,” he says. He searches for something to say that will please Gerald. “I need a new car. Or no, wait. I can’t afford one. I’m afraid I’m not myself.”
“Funny thing about that,” Gerald’s mouth crooks. “Saab just went under. We knew it was coming,” he says. “Might not be able to buy Mighton’s picture after all.”
“Okay. You’ve lost everything now. They’re puncturing my head in the morning.”
“But you’ll be all right. Conrad’s here—he told me, he said you can be fixed.”
Conrad: he’s come to check on him, no doubt. You should never lie to the doctor. Hugh never will again. If you live to tell the telltale never, no. Conrad bends to look into his eyes.
“How you doing, Hugh? Time to go to bed, is it?”
A trick question? What time is it? Hugh panics for an instant but there is Ivy, she has not left him. “He’s allowed to eat until seven, the O.R. nurse said—I thought I’d give him a quick supper, I don’t think he’s eaten since last night. Then we’ll have a quiet evening.”
Conrad nods. “See you in the morning, then, Hugh. I’m on for that picture, if Newell hasn’t already beaten me to it.”
“Nothing is settled,” Hugh says. “I am unsettled.”
“You are. You will be much better tomorrow,” Conrad promises. Off he goes.
Gerald leans over. “See you tomorrow,” he says. “Day after. I’m counting on you.”
So that means Hugh can’t die. Nobody else can die.
Ivy scans the room. Things are winding down—there’s only the one piece, after all. Hurry up, go! The wine has been drunk, the canapés devoured by the pre-supper crowd. Hugh sits against the wall, staring at the Dark Gates. Ivy sees that the painting is good, but resists being pulled in. Not liking Mighton, although he likes her. He’s swung his searchlight onto Ann, great.
Jason’s worried. He tells Ivy that Ruth asked him to bring Hugh’s van from Mimi’s place. “There were all those blue bags of clothes in the back, but they’re gone.”
“I took those,” his mother says, idling by, Mighton close beside her. “They’re all things that ought to be appraised.”
Ruth pauses at Ivy’s elbow, tugs her aside to whisper. “Ann took the bags I gave you?”
“Not those ones,” Ivy says. “There wasn’t room. The van was already full of bags, so I got the boys to put the bags you gave me into the big truck, up on the top shelf.”
Ruth laughs, a tiny explosion. “Well, doesn’t that just beat the Dutch. Those bags she took from Hugh’s van, t
hose were poor Gerald’s wife’s old clothes. I dropped off the other bags at the Mennonite Clothes Closet. They’ll have a high old time over there when they go through them. I guess Ann will have to buy the things she wants back from them.”
“Oh no!” Ivy says. “I think Hugh was quite happy for her to have Mimi’s clothes.”
Repaying the deposit cheque of their old relationship, maybe.
Ruth nods, chuckling again, enormously amused. “Well, I’ll go explain there was a small mistake, and get them to give her a deal. But let’s wait a day or two.”
She trots happily off to the door where a delivery man is arriving. And Della and Ken, coming in around the delivery guy—what is that? Ivy goes to help. Four cartons. Ruth signs, signs, while Della and Jason and L and Ken take boxes through to the framing room. Della is signalling—They’re for you, Ivy.
What? She opens the first box: it’s full of other boxes, and each of those is full of shoes. Red velvet shoes, with lovely Spanish heels. 37? Yes. Another box, red suede wedges—another, another—oh, the roses shoes! Sixteen pairs of red shoes.
She looks up. Leaning in the doorway, Newell says, “I asked for all the reds.”
It makes him happy to give people things. Ivy will not get weepy again, because what if she can’t stop? Will rose red shoes stop Hugh’s head from bursting? No. But her ruined shoes, new again! “Roses fix everything,” she says, kissing Newell’s cheek.
Hugh is at the doorway too, lost without her; she shows him a rosy shoe. He nods, carefully. “Newell’s got a gift for gifts. Like the house for Della and Ken.”
There’s a silence. Ken asks, “The box? The travel box?”
“Okay, but the place. The house.”
Della looks up from examining a pair of red leather sandals. “What place?”
Newell sighs. “Bean spiller. What’s the use of a travel box without somewhere to go?”
“She left it here, upstairs,” Ken says. “I’ll get it.” He clatters up the stairs and comes back down with the mother-of-pearl box. He hands it to Della, who sets it on the framing table and opens the lid. She finds the satin ribbons, and lifts out the tray. More silver-capped jars below—and resting on top of them, a grey envelope. She pulls out paper, several pages, and a key slides out, clunking on the table. She and Ken look through the sheaf.
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