Hugo & Rose

by Bridget Foley

  There was a man kneeling by his Legos. Playing with them.

  Adam pulled back into the dark of the bathroom, suddenly shy.

  Adam recognized him as the daddy/stranger who had been thinking about touching the cake. The one who had given him the compass. Adam could feel it there now, in his pocket.

  The man was leaning over his little table, putting things on it.

  Adam watched him pinch up the little pile of labels. The man smiled as he read them … then he placed them, one by one, on different parts of the table.

  Something caught his eye in the bin. He turned away for a moment and Adam could see him pluck two tiny objects from the pile. The man paused, looking at whatever it was in his hand. Then suddenly he turned back to the map, lifting the crumpled wad of the Blanket Pavilion and placing the objects under it.

  A cheering sound carried in from outside.

  Assholes, thought Adam.

  But the man turned toward the voices, like he was remembering something. He stood quickly. Adam was surprised when he didn’t go out back; instead the man thumped his way to the front door. Adam heard his footsteps get fainter and then the sound of the front door closing.

  When he was gone Adam left the safe darkness of the bathroom, rushing to his Lego table.

  The daddy/stranger had put everything in the right place.…

  Well, almost. He’d put a few Spiders just outside of the Lagoon, when everybody knew they all belonged in the Chasm—unless they were hunting.

  But the man had put all the labels right where they belonged. “Rock Cove.” “Swampland.” “Green Lagoon.”

  Adam lifted the Blanket Pavilion.

  Under it the man had set two mini-figures. A dashing man and blushing woman. He had set them on their sides under the tissue. Facing each other.

  Adam set the Pavilion back on top of the figures, his mind turning.

  * * *

  Josh already had Isaac out on the street while their guests were leaving. Zackie was skidding along, feet pushing against the ground, waving good-bye to his friends with Josh at his side. Rose’s husband was helpful as ever, making sure everyone had their goodie bags, shaking the fathers’ hands, hugging the mothers, remembering everyone’s names.

  Rose wanted to murder him.

  She got them inside with the promise that they’d open presents as soon as they’d picked up. Isaac came swiftly, dumping the bike midway up the drive. She glared at Josh, hands on hips, as he made his way toward her. He picked up the bike to pull it into the garage, and before she could even say anything he said, “I know. I know … but, later. Okay?”

  Screw him. And screw later.

  But Rose waited. She wrote the names on a legal pad while Isaac opened presents. He’d be doing the thank-yous tonight. Josh held Adam on his lap while Isaac opened presents. Assured him he’d get his turn on his birthday.

  There was a brief moment of tension when Isaac caught Rose pulling the large rectangular box she’d wrapped from the bottom of the pile.

  “What are you doing with that?” he asked.

  “I need to take this back,” Rose said with a quick glance at Josh.

  “But—”

  “No buts, honey. You got some really great presents.” She smiled at him, trying to soften the blow. Isaac pouted.

  Josh moved to intercede (Come on, honey, just let him have it), but she cut him off with a look. Don’t say anything.

  Rose put the wrapped Lego box in her closet, hoping she would be able to find the receipt without too much trouble. She hit the lights, trying to keep her temper about the whole thing in check.

  How much had he spent on that bike, anyway? Certainly more than the hundred dollars she had spent on the Lego set … but only after she’d called all over town and searched the Internet to find the best price.

  So, no, Isaac was not getting to keep the Legos, no matter that it was his birthday. No matter that he had already seen the present. No matter that he had heard the rattle of the blocks inside and already knew what was beneath the paper.

  Because Isaac’s dad had gotten him a bike. A bike would have to be enough.

  Rose stopped for a moment in their room. She sat on the edge of the bed.

  She was a petty person.

  Why was she punishing Isaac for something Josh had done?

  But still, they couldn’t afford to spend so much.

  How much was that bike, anyway?

  Maybe she wouldn’t return the Legos. Maybe she would just tuck it into the attic. Save it for Christmas. Give it to Isaac then.

  The monitor on her bedside lit up with a little cry. Penny was up from her nap. Rose went to get her and brought her back down to join the boys.

  * * *

  Why did Josh buy that bike? What drove him when he woke up the morning of Isaac’s birthday party to look up listings of local bike stores, despite the fact that he knew he would suffer the wrath of his wife?

  He didn’t rightly know.

  And when he slipped out of the house without telling her, gone to run his fingers over the soft leather of saddle seats, to smell the off gas of those still prickly new tires? What was he thinking?

  He had seen Rose secure the wrapping paper to the expensive kit of Legos the night before. He had smiled at her and nodded when she had said, “He’ll like this, won’t he?”

  But somehow when he looked at the box later, he could only imagine the disappointment in Zackie’s face. The “not-bike-ness” of the present.

  It’s just that things in his life had been feeling so right. The pieces all perfectly aligned. Like a family portrait drawn by Adam, two big happy faces, three smaller happy faces.

  And that wrapped present Rose had shown him …

  It was not right.

  He thought of how grown-up Isaac looked the night he brought home chicken for dinner. His voice was deeper than Josh remembered it being the week before. Not changing yet, but carrying more gravity than it had previously. He would be a teenager before Josh knew it.

  A teenager should know how to ride a bike.

  It was ridiculous that the boys didn’t already know. A product of an overcautious mother and a dad who worked too much.

  This particular thought was tripping its way along his dendrites when he saw the bike he wanted for Isaac. The bike he could picture his son on.

  It was gorgeous. Shiny red and chrome. The tread of its tires was a pattern of flames licking at their whitewalled centers. Its seat was two-tone leather, even more flames stitched here, probably by hand.

  A proper boy’s bike.

  Josh barely noticed the four-hundred-dollar sum that the clerk rang up. His mind was too full of thoughts of what Isaac would look like on his beautiful new bike. How grateful he would be.

  Josh felt giddy with the knowledge of what was in his trunk all through the party. Knowing that no matter what, the look on Zackie’s face would be worth it.

  And it was. Isaac loved it. Josh could tell this was a moment he would remember for the rest of his life.

  And Rose?

  Well, sometimes people needed a little push. He remembered in medical school some of his teachers had encouraged them to … well, if not to bully, then to lean on reluctant patients. They were the doctors, after all; they knew best.

  She was going to let the boys have bikes sooner or later … so why not now, when Isaac so dearly wanted it? When he could get it in front of all of his friends and enjoy it on his birthday?

  Josh was certain she would come around. There was nothing else for it.

  thirteen

  Josh knew that Rose would be sore about the purchase of the bicycle. He also knew that the way in which he presented it—as Isaac’s birthday present, in front of a crowd of people, and at a time during which she would have difficulty pulling him away to yell at him—would all work to his advantage.

  By the time the children were asleep and Josh and Rose could talk about his purchase, alone in their bedroom, Rose was still angry with
her husband. But the damage had been done, and because she loved him and did not want a fight, she was ready to concede the loss.

  There was also the fact that Rose had had the opportunity to actually see her son on a bicycle as he waved good-bye to his friends. On an actual bicycle, Isaac had looked quite different from how he had ever looked in her mind. Rose realized now that in all her imaginings of Isaac and Adam spread out bleeding on the pavement, the bikes that lay next to them were always twins to the one she had gotten as a child. In her fantasies the boys’ heads were never in helmets, and they were always unconscious—this was quite a difference from the happy, helmeted boy that Isaac had been that afternoon.

  So perhaps it wasn’t all that bad.

  Still, she was sore with Josh for going against her. When he defended his actions by saying that “they were going to give him one eventually,” Rose did manage to see the truth in his words.

  But there was something about the way he said it that pushed at Rose. Had Josh been able to seem even a little bit sheepish about the purchase, about his circumventing her authority, Rose could have forgiven him easily. She wanted to forgive him.

  But Josh could not bring himself to pretend that he felt bad about his action. He felt that he was right to have gone around his wife … that she had needed him to push her.

  So Josh sought neither permission nor forgiveness.

  And to not seek forgiveness was, to Rose, unforgivable.

  “Rose, can you just recognize for a moment that your feelings on this are just a little bit irrational?”

  Josh could not look at his wife and see that an apology would cost him nothing and gain him peace … but an accusation of irrationality would only be greeted with sarcasm.

  “Nice, Josh. Nice.” Rose felt the desire to forgive her husband slip from her grasp.

  “I just want you to acknowledge that what happened to you was a fluke. Every kid who climbs on a bicycle doesn’t end up in the ER.”

  With that statement, Josh planted an image of Isaac in a hospital bed into his wife’s mind.

  Rose bloomed with a fresher, newer anger. Forgiveness was now out of reach. Her husband had not thought of any of the practical realities of Isaac’s bike ownership. “I can’t ride a bike, Josh. I have to watch Penny and Adam. You teach him to ride and he’s going to want to ride. What am I supposed to do when he’s tired of riding to the end of the block and back again?”

  “Tell him I’ll take him out.”

  “You’re never here!”

  And there it was. The old resentment. The unstated truth of their lives. Josh was there now, but he wouldn’t be later. He wouldn’t be there most of the time, no matter what he said.

  That was the reality of their life.

  But Rose had broken the rules by saying it. Josh was quiet. Rose sat on the edge of the bed, head in her hands.

  “I just … want to go to sleep.”

  Josh was angry now. Didn’t she see that he was trying? Didn’t she know how hard he was working, to give her what she wanted? Didn’t she know that he knew he was never there, that he hated it, and that was why he got Isaac the bicycle?

  For a moment, through his anger, Josh saw Rose as she saw herself. Ugly, fat, and aging, hunched over on the edge of the bed. He wanted to wound her, to make her feel the way she’d made him feel.

  “Sure. Go to sleep, Rose. Go see your dream man, who’s always there for you and who does everything you want.”

  Josh decided he would go downstairs and pour himself a Scotch. Maybe watch SportsCenter for once. Try to forget about this.

  Feeling petty, he turned off the lights on his way out of the room, pitching Rose into the dark. Rose felt her way to the edge of the blankets and climbed under them. She hadn’t yet brushed her teeth or washed her face, but somehow, at that moment, sleep seemed so much more important.

  * * *

  Hugo spotted a cave halfway up the cliff of Rock Cove.

  Rose had never noticed it before, though they’d been coming to the cove for decades. Had it always been there? Or was it part of this new “shifting” island?

  “I think it’s always been there,” said Hugo, hands on his hips, “I just think we’ve always come here for the Orb and never really looked at the cliff.”

  He suggested they explore it and started to climb the rock face before Rose really had a chance to respond.

  “What if there’s something in there?” she called up after him.

  “Then we’ll kill it.” He didn’t look down at her. “We always do.”

  Rose followed him up, her bare feet clinging to the rock. Hugo was right: they always did kill the “something.” What an odd question for her to ask.

  Why was she afraid? She was never afraid on the island.

  But she was.

  Rose looked up at Hugo, mildly irritated that he hadn’t consulted her before starting to climb.

  Goddamn it. That was new, too. Irritation. Grumpiness. Anger. Fear.

  Lust.

  These feelings from her other life were bleeding into the dream. She never used to feel anything but strong and beautiful here.

  Hugo was waiting for her at the cave mouth. Excited. “It goes really far back! This could be the way to Castle City!”

  Rose felt herself roll her eyes.

  “Rose, are you okay?” Hugo was staring at her, his face concerned.

  Was she okay? Rose didn’t know. It was just that when Hugo had said “Castle City” she had felt … what was it … Tired? Bored? Not quite. But it was a familiar feeling.

  Suddenly she was thinking about how she felt when the boys roped her into their playacting. How she was always just humoring them … thinking about how long she would have to do it before she could get out of it and get to the stuff that she really wanted to do.

  But that couldn’t be it.

  “I’m fine,” she said, smiling. “Let’s go.”

  The cave did go quite far back. Though at the cliff face it was large enough to stand, as they moved farther in, the cave ceiling dropped and soon they were crawling, feeling their way through the darkness. Each time Rose thought they had reached the end, Hugo managed to find a passageway into another cavern. They continued crawling, though Rose could tell by the drop in temperature and the way their whispers echoed that the caverns they moved through were vast. She had no idea how Hugo was finding his way forward, but he never hesitated.

  “Hugo,” she whispered, her voice sharp.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “What happens if there isn’t a way out? What happens if we get lost in here?”

  The sound of his knees against the ground stopped. He had stopped moving.

  “Well, I guess we’ll just wander until we wake up.”

  He was right, of course. That’s what always happened. They searched for the way to Castle City. They didn’t get there. And then they woke up, lived their real lives, and the next night, they went to sleep and did it all over again.

  Rose felt the heel of her hand slip and dig into the sharp edge of a stone. A hot gush of fluid broke out over her palm.

  “I found something,” Hugo said, and there was light.

  Rose turned her head away, the sudden brightness a pain to her eyes. She shielded them, and in the light she could see the blood on her hand, red trails staining her life and love lines.

  “It’s the ruins.” Hugo’s voice was disappointed.

  Rose crawled forward and squinted into the brightness. Hugo was already fully out of the cavern, standing scout on the parched earth that blanketed the place. Trying to get their bearings.

  Rose cradled her injured hand to her chest and pulled herself through the hole. She could see the crumbling clay brick Hugo had pushed aside to reveal the passage.

  She climbed to her feet, her eyes adjusting.

  Over the rolling peaks of the hills, Rose could just make out the tips of a few of Castle City’s towers. The flats went on for a mile or so in the other direction before ending in the flat
blue line of the sea.

  “Damn it!”

  Hugo picked up a clod of dried earth from the ground and threw it against one of the crumbling mud towers. It shattered and fell to the earth, leaving a cloud of brown dust hanging in the air.

  Rose watched as he pitched another clod at the tower. Then another and another. Hugo’s face was twisted in a way she had never seen … at least not on the island.

  “Fuck!”

  He threw another shard. But this time it was the tower that cracked, a fracture radiating out from the site of impact. Hugo’s eyes widened as the top half of the tower slipped and began to fall toward him.

  Hugo just managed to get out of the way as the whole thing came crashing to the ground, breaking into large chunks of dried dirt. The air was stained reddish brown, clouds of particulates loosed into the ether.

  He emerged from the cloud, dusty, coughing. “That was unexpected.”

  Rose couldn’t help it. She started to laugh.

  And then he did, too.

  “I am in a bad mood.” He grimaced.

  “Me too.”

  They sat, facing away from the city. Toward the flat and the sea.

  “You said fuck.” Rose giggled.

  “I did?” Hugo was surprised.

  She nodded, girlish. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before.”

  “Well, I do all the time … In the real world.”

  Rose took a breath. In the real world. She thought of her real world as she had left it. With Josh so angry at her and Isaac on his bicycle.

  Bicycle.

  “Do you remember when we met?”

  “You came to my work.” He smiled at her.

  Rose shook her head. “No. When we met here.”

  Hugo nodded.

  “I was in a bicycle accident. I was learning and I fell and hit my head. I was in a coma for almost a week … but I wasn’t … I was here with you.” Rose looked at Hugo. His face was serious. “Until I saw you in that drive-through window, I thought you were something my mind created to keep me from dying from fear.”