Hugo & Rose

by Bridget Foley

  But if she did, he might see her.

  The thought of this terrified Rose.

  Rose didn’t know what she thought would happen if the Man Who Was Not Hugo saw her.… Something … something not bad, but also not good.

  The idea of it made her stomach feel hard. He couldn’t see her. Shouldn’t see her.

  So she stayed outside the restaurants and the Laundromat. Hidden in the safety of her minivan.

  In all this time she saw him take only one phone call. He had stepped outside the Orange Tastee, cell to his ear. Paced back and forth in the shadow of the restaurant’s eaves. As he talked, he squinted at the bright cars passing on the street. And for a brief moment, his eyes had passed over her car, parked on the opposite side.

  For an instant Rose felt as though he had seen her. Caught.

  Adrenaline flooded her body, causing her muscles to tense, her breath to quicken, pupils to dilate, the delicate hair on her skin to lift at the root.

  But he looked away quickly, seeing only the reflection of the street on her windshield. Rose knew she was safe.

  But her body still roiled with the aftereffects of the flight impulse. It took minutes for her heart to steady. The hairs on the back of her neck and beneath her panties shifted, settling back to their unalerted positions.

  His phone call was short. Eight minutes, Rose noted, before he headed back inside.

  The Man Who Was Not Hugo led a life of quiet routine. He seemed happy enough, though Rose had seen an existence that looked lonely. Probably single, she thought. There was little evidence of anyone in his life.

  But Rose supposed she could be missing things: things that happened on the weekend, when she could not get away to watch; things that happened in the evenings, when she was required at home.

  It was during these times that she thought of him most, extracting meaning from the details she had observed. She made dinner and tended to the kids and Josh with the same parts of her mind that had driven her to Hemsford in the first place. She ran on automatic, all the while allowing her higher functions to fill with the life of the Man Who Was Not Hugo.

  * * *

  Penny, compliant baby, happy girl, was witness to all of this—though “witness” is a hard word to use for the way a two-year-old observes the world.

  The little girl settled easily into Rose’s new routine, soothed with the electronic crack of Disney’s oeuvre playing on repeat over the minivan’s entertainment system. She napped in her car seat. Ate lunch in her car seat. Lived in her car seat.

  After a spectacularly messy accident, Rose had started to bring Penny’s potty seat on these trips. This she would set up in the aisle of the car, where Pen would sit, straining her neck to keep her eyes on the still running movie.

  Rose would empty the leavings in a gas station on the way back home. All the driving was certainly having an effect on how many times she needed to fill up during the week. Thankfully, Josh never looked too closely at the credit card bill.

  So Rose limited Penny’s fluids. Less in meant less out.

  When the car was finally too much and her little girl started whining and pulling at her seat belt straps, and even Elsa and Anna couldn’t convince her to settle, Rose would drive to the flat, grassy park on the edge of town. There she would watch Penny romp through the playground for an hour, hanging from the swings, digging in the sand. And when time was up, Penny would easily climb back into her seat, ready for another “wideo,” as she would say it. Rose would then drive back to the Orange Tastee, hoping to get one last look before heading back in time to meet the boys as they disembarked from the bus.

  Penny’s mother knew none of this was good for her. Penny had a full life back home, filled with music class and pre-preschool, swimming lessons and enrichment. Penny had playdates, scheduled weeks in advance.

  She deserved better than this, Rose knew.

  But Penny’s willingness to go along with whatever Mommy said made it easy for Rose to think that this “thing” she was doing wasn’t all that bad. Pen wasn’t unhappy. For her, all these videos were like a vacation.

  And there was the added benefit that she couldn’t yet tell anyone what Mommy was doing all day.

  * * *

  Rose canceled three appointments before Naomi called to ask if she was terminating therapy.

  “Oh no,” Rose had said. “No. I think that would … I think that would be a bad idea.” At the moment she said this she had been on the highway, driving back from Hemsford.

  When Naomi finally had her, guilted into the gloom of her office, Rose confessed only to following the Man Who Was Not Hugo once.

  She told her the tale of Walmart.

  Naomi’s reaction made her glad she had not let on to the deeper truth. Her therapist’s body shifted as she spoke, alerting to the danger in Rose’s words.

  “This was just one time?”

  “Uh-hm.” Rose was afraid a full “yes” might reveal the lie.

  But leaking this smaller truth allowed Rose to finally give voice to the thoughts that had occupied her for the past weeks.

  “I feel like … like, he’s hijacked my brain. It’s becoming a problem. I’m always thinking about him. Obsessing.”

  Naomi was quiet.

  “I know he’s not Hugo.” Said Rose firmly, “I do.”

  Naomi relaxed a little in her chair. The danger had passed, her patient had a grip on reality. “Okay. Let’s try another tack. Let’s indulge this fantasy that this is the man of your dreams.”

  “In,” Rose responded.

  “Pardon?”

  “He is the man in my dreams. Not of.”

  Naomi pursed her lips at the distinction. Moved on. “What would happen if you introduced yourself?”

  A granite hardness landed in Rose’s stomach.

  “Rose, you’re asking me for the quickest way to detach yourself from this fixation. This man isn’t Hugo. Hugo doesn’t exist. But some part of you—the part that is obsessing over him—isn’t quite convinced. The quickest way for you to convince that part of yourself that this man isn’t who you think he is is to introduce yourself to him.”

  Introduce yourself? Rose couldn’t really wrap her brain around the idea. One introduces oneself to people at weddings, to insurance salesmen, to neighbors. One doesn’t just walk up to strangers and hold out one’s hand. “Hi, my name is Rose and I’ve been stalking you for weeks.”

  And this man was a stranger. Though she knew details about him, the schedule of his life, he was no more to her than any other person in the world. She didn’t even know his name. He was just some guy, who through some trick of the genetic lottery looked an awful lot like someone she had made up in her mind.

  “If I do this … then what? What happens?”

  “You will confirm that he is just a man. That he is not Hugo. You will be able to detach from these obsessive thoughts and go back to your normal life.”

  And my normal thoughts, thought Rose.

  She had been so occupied with this man, the project of following him, that it had been weeks since she had thought about what a disappointment she was. What a failure she was. What a waste of sad flesh she was.

  It had been nice, obsessing about someone else instead of her own failings.

  A holiday from herself.

  But still, it had to stop.

  Rose just wasn’t sure that letting him see her was the way. It felt perilous—though what the danger was, she had no idea.

  Her stomach was still hard as stone when she drove away from Naomi’s office.

  * * *

  Isaac was giving the hard sales pitch as Rose got them ready for school. Talking a mile a minute: “Ben Winters said if I had a bike, then this summer we could ride on the trails by the river. And Teddy Kosar said he got a bike when he was five. And Ben said he got his when he was three, but I don’t believe him.”

  “I don’t believe him either.” Adam was trying to be helpful.

  Oh, Lord, thought Rose. Again wi
th the bikes.

  Isaac was refusing to act as he had in the past. Until now he had never settled for long on what toy he most desired; the constantly shifting landscape of greed made Christmas shopping difficult and birthday shopping a nightmare. At Christmastime Rose combated this proclivity by making the boys write letters to Santa in the first week of December. That way when they (inevitably) changed their minds about what they wanted, she could remind them they had written to Santa about their old heart’s desire and that he wasn’t likely to be able to read their minds.

  That said, this did not keep Rose from going shopping on Christmas Eve, attempting to put whatever newer better cooler thing they craved into Santa’s sack. But at least if she failed, she had managed to curb their expectations and avoid a little bit of Christmas-morning disappointment.

  Usually this far out from “B-day” Isaac would have changed his mind five or six times already, leaping from the latest gaming system to whatever new piece of masculine crap Nerf was selling and back again.

  But, to Rose’s chagrin, the bike was sticking.

  Rose had left toy catalogs on the kitchen table in hopes of something new catching Zackie’s eye. Instead of fast-forwarding through the ads flanking the boys’ favorite shows on the DVR as she usually did, she had let them play, steeping the boys in their bright commercial flogging.

  But still the bike stuck … though Zackie had a few fresh ideas for what he’d like from his grandparents.

  Finally Rose just told him to pick something else.

  “But why?” he’d asked.

  She had shown him the scar buried in her hair. She had told him the story of that day when Papa had shown her how to ride a bicycle.

  “Bicycles are dangerous, sweetie. And I don’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to you. I just want you to wait a couple more years.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Maybe when you’re ten.”

  Isaac had closed his mouth at this. Looked away. But he was quiet.

  Rose knew better than to think it was over.

  Instead of accepting his mother’s proscription, Zackie began collecting evidence in his favor, hence the polling of his friends for the age at which they had gotten their bikes.

  And he had, naturally, recruited Adam in this endeavor, which was even worse, as Adam discovered that most of his friends, too, already had bikes and knew how to ride them.

  “Dad said the reason you got hurt is because when you were kids people didn’t wear helmets … and I would always always always wear my helmet.”

  Rose wanted to murder her husband. When had he said this? He knew how she felt about it. So much for a united front.

  “Did Daddy also tell you that I didn’t wake up for five days and that Baba and Papa thought I might never wake up?”

  Adam’s little mouth opened. “Like Sleeping Beauty?”

  Rose shook her head. “Not fun like Sleeping Beauty.”

  Isaac furrowed his brow. Rose could tell he was already thinking of his next plan of attack.

  Josh was repentant.

  * * *

  “Sorry, honey. I didn’t think it would be a thing. He just asked after you showed him your scar.”

  Rose had had Josh paged. He had called immediately, thinking that something had happened to one of the children, and was relieved to find that it was just this quirk of Rose’s. He relaxed. Even though he could hear the edge of frustration in her voice, it was nice to hear it during the day. She sounded clearer than she had in recent weeks, closer.

  Rose sighed. “I’m sorry. This is my fault.”

  This had happened because she hadn’t been paying attention. She had been too busy thinking about that man to attend to her kids.

  “Oh, before I forget, the preschool called me. They must have our numbers mixed up.”

  Rose felt her heart stop. Penny hadn’t been to school in weeks.

  “They left a message asking if Pen was okay. They said she hasn’t been in in a while?”

  “That’s weird.” Rose felt the lie come easily. “Must be another Penny in one of the other classes. I’ll call and let them know they have the wrong one.”

  “You’re such a good mom, Rose.”

  Rose was quiet. She was a horrible mother. She was the worst mother. She was a negligent liar of a mother.

  “I love you so much.”

  “You too.”

  Rose hung up. She had to fix this. She had to get rid of these thoughts that had pulled her away from her family.

  Her stomach seized again.

  eight

  She called the neighborhood woman. Mrs. Delvecchio, the widow with the lovely garden and the house that smelled of stale potpourri. Could she take Penny for a few hours?

  Of course, dear.

  Rose had dropped her off with a stuffed diaper bag and a promise to be back soon. The ancient television in the Widow Delvecchio’s den was already running network cartoons when she left. Rose shrugged it off.

  “No worse than she’s gotten in the car with me these past few weeks.”

  She was getting started later than she’d like. Talking with Josh and waiting for Mrs. D to call back had eaten away her morning. She’d be rushing to get back on time.

  But what she had planned wouldn’t take too long.

  Just a quick encounter, a brief eye contact, and she’d be healed. She’d be home in time to have ants on a log waiting for the boys when they got back from school. Their mother returned to them, as good as she ever was.

  Whatever that was worth.

  Rose had decided she couldn’t do what Naomi had suggested. She couldn’t introduce herself.

  But there was a simple way to get close to him. To look him in the eye and see.

  Today was his shift. All she had to be able to do was order lunch.

  * * *

  Traffic was heavier this late in the day. Clogged with trucks from Denver’s distribution centers sent out to the exotic reaches of Nebraska, Kansas, and beyond. It took Rose longer than usual to reach the battered exit sign, to turn onto the loop of the ramp and head into town.

  Two large touring buses dominated the parking lot of the Orange Tastee, their bifold doors open. Teenagers teemed out of them, filtering from the buses to the restaurant. Rose parked the van and watched them through the windshield.

  She could tell they weren’t American teenagers. The boys’ pants were just a little too high and the girls’ shirts were just a little too loose. European, probably, possibly German, their faces characterized by wide, round cheekbones. A few of the boys wore highlights in their spiked hair, shyly touching the hardened tips as they smiled at the girls.

  This was good, Rose reasoned. She could just slip in among them.

  Still, her heart thumped. No. No. No. No.

  It was two thirty.

  If she was going to do it, she had to do it now. The boys got home just after four.

  Rose sat for another five minutes before she finally was able to force herself out of the car.

  * * *

  Inside, the restaurant was packed. Every table was filled with exuberant Aryan teenagers, happy to be off the bus, filling the air with the scent of foreign pheromones. These überkinder flitted from one table to the next, chattering in their hard language, their cadences a strange music in this place.

  Rose stood in line behind a passel of them. What were they doing here? What lame tour of America had included this stop?

  Though she had stared at its interior for weeks, Rose had never been inside the Orange Tastee. She hadn’t tasted its food. Even that first time she had ordered only for the kids.

  It smelled of oranges and burning meat, the char of the grill carrying over the sickly sweet smell that comes from too much fruit. The scent called to her mind the bees and flies that hover over trash at summer barbecues.

  The small staff was clearly overwhelmed with the demands of the customers, ordering hot dogs and Pepsis in careful, Teutonic-accented English.


  The teen girl Rose had seen that first night was at a register (“Could you say that again, I don’t understand you”), struggling to handle the influx of cash and sending the orders to the cooks in the back.

  Rose saw no sign of the boy who had been with her on that first night. The Bullshitter was absent.

  For an oddly hopeful moment, Rose thought maybe the Man Who Was Not Hugo would not be there either. Maybe she had gotten the days wrong. Maybe he was sick. Maybe she wouldn’t have to do this.

  But then he stepped out from the back, shooing the girl away from the register. Sending her into the recesses of the storeroom to fetch more cups.

  Rose couldn’t breathe.

  Everything will be okay.

  Rose repeated the mantra that got her through takeoffs and landings.

  Everything will be okay. Everything will be okay. This is perfectly safe.

  Rose looked at the glass doors of the exit to her right. She could leave.

  “Ma’am, may I take your order?”

  Rose looked up at him. His eyes were on the register. Waiting.

  This was as close as she’d ever been. She could see the spot on his cheek where he’d missed with his razor this morning. The frayed edges of his fingernails.

  She swallowed. “Uh … a Tastee Dog … and fries.”

  His fingers danced over the keys.

  “Would you like a drink with—”

  He looked up and Rose saw it happen.

  His bland smile faltered as his eyes met her searching face. Pupils widening. His breath stopped.

  “—that.”

  He stared at Rose, the pink draining from his cheeks. Rose heard a sound bubble from her lips.

  “You…”

  He pulled his eyes back to the register, his head shaking slightly, flicking her away. Shaking her off. Swatting at that impossible thing that just transpired, sending it away.

  Recognition.

  “You know me.”

  Rose heard a voice say it, and he flinched. It took a moment for her to recognize the voice as hers. Her voice speaking words from her mouth, far away, beneath the rushing sound in her ears.

  He turned away from her, his hands shaking as he pulled a tray from beneath the counter. He pulled a dog and a cone of fries from the stainless shelf.