Hugo & Rose

by Bridget Foley

  “Rosie, your hand.” Hugo took her wrist and turned it so he could see the wound. The blood had dried, but new stuff was still welling up from the gash. Slower than before, but still there.

  Rose ignored the new feeling Hugo’s touch brought up in her. She needed to say this before she forgot. “Hugo, I was so sad when I woke up in the hospital. I cried. My parents thought it was because I was frightened … but it was because I thought I’d lost you.”

  “But then the next time you went to sleep…”

  “There you were.”

  “Always.”

  Rose fought the impulse to lean into Hugo. To push her mouth against his. She made herself look away.

  There in the distant shimmer of the flats, Rose saw a something. Several somethings, lumpy and irregular.

  She squinted.

  It was the stack of old dining room chairs. She remembered them from when they had been chasing the figure through the forest around the Lagoon. What were they doing here?

  And the black shape next to it … it must be the old battered trunk. Two brown somethings sat on it … boxes?

  Rose stood up, pulling her hand from Hugo’s grasp. She walked closer to the mirage. There was a scrawl on the boxes, something written there.

  “X-mas Decor.”

  And on the other, it read: “Mom’s Photos.”

  Rose turned to Hugo. “What happened to you before we met?”

  But he wasn’t looking at her. Or the somethings. His eyes were fixed on the blue line of the sea in the distance.…

  Or the not-so-distance.

  Rose’s eyes widened. The water had formed a wall and it was racing toward them at an incredible rate. It was huge, gray. Filling the horizon as far as she could see.

  Rose looked back at Hugo. He was terrified.

  * * *

  She woke up just as the water came crashing down over them.

  Her body was wet.

  It took her a moment to realize that it was sweat causing her clothes to stick to her body … the water of the looming dream sea had not drenched her in this world.

  She rolled over.

  Josh’s side of the bed was empty.

  * * *

  Rose would have liked to talk to Naomi about all of this—about the fight with Josh and the new feelings of her dreams, about the strangeness of having Hugo meet her family.

  But she couldn’t because she had stopped seeing her.

  When Rose lied to Naomi about what occurred in the parking lot of the Orange Tastee in Hemsford, she had halfway convinced herself that what she told her therapist must be the truth. When she said that she “ate lunch and went home,” it was still possible for a part of Rose to believe it.

  But there was no such possibility of self-delusion when Rose met with Hugo in the food court of the outlet mall.

  Yet when Rose met with Naomi that week, setting her purse on the coffee table in the dark confines of her office, Rose decided that she would say nothing of her encounter with the man who lived in her dreams.

  There were many reasons for this, the first being that she would have had to admit to the lie, and Rose, like most people, did not enjoy being thought a liar … even when it was the truth.

  The other reason Rose did not mention her encounter was that she was not crazy.

  And she knew that the belief that you have been sharing your dreams with a stranger for most of your life, and that you have now met him in your waking life, is an insane belief.

  And just as Rose did not want Naomi to think she was a liar, she also did not want her to think that she was a loony.

  Which, one supposes, can be a bit of a handicap when one is seeking help within the mental health community—that is, people trained to recognize madness.

  So Rose told Naomi of the events in only one half of her life. She complained of her struggles with the boys, her concerns about Isaac, her frustrations with the life she was leading—but she never let on to the wonder of her discovery of Hugo. This made her hours with Naomi exhausting, as she had to make sure nothing she said revealed her true mental state to her doctor.

  This is, of course, something that mental health providers are used to experiencing from their patients.

  Naomi knew that she was getting only half of Rose … but she never suspected the truth. She thought perhaps Rose had begun drinking heavily or engaging in some form of self-abuse that she wasn’t yet ready to discuss. Like many therapists, Naomi decided that Rose would soon enough get around to talking about whatever it was she was not saying.

  But soon enough never happened.

  Naomi went on a ten-day vacation (Barbados), a happenstance that interfered with two of Rose’s appointments. When she told Rose this at the end of a session during which Rose had had to rack her brain to come up with non-Hugo-related material, Rose had told her she wasn’t sure what her schedule would be and to call her when she got back.

  Naomi had a lovely time on the island (though she did get a sunburn), and when she returned she left a message on Rose’s voice mail. “When would you like to come in?”

  Rose never called her back.

  She justified this by saying that she was simply too busy, that there was just too much going on for her to take the time to go talk about herself.

  She also told herself that it was too expensive, and even though the insurance paid for most of it, there was still the babysitting she had to get for Penny. That managed to add up.

  So Rose erased Naomi’s voice mails without listening to them and tried to ignore the twinge of guilt she felt when she did it.

  There were times when she missed Naomi, when she would have liked to have someone to talk to about her life. But she couldn’t fathom catching her therapist up on the events regarding Hugo. It would take forever, and doing so would reveal all the lies she had been telling.

  And Rose had to admit she was a little afraid that Naomi might become alarmed at the current state of Rose’s mental affairs and she might call Josh.

  * * *

  Rose did not see Josh again until the next evening.

  They kissed and pretended that nothing had happened. No one mentioned the bicycle. No one complained about Josh’s hours.

  No one apologized for anything … to have done so would have been to recognize an infraction had occurred.

  Josh told Rose gossip he had heard about the hospital administrators. Rose caught Josh up on the various school events he would likely miss. She would tape them for him, though they both knew he would never watch the tapes.

  Josh told her he had a free evening this week if she wanted to have David over.

  “Who?”

  “David. Brown hair. Little pudgy. The guy you went to school with.”

  Hugo.

  “Oh. Right.”

  “I thought we should have him over here. The kids are always a pain at restaurants.”

  Rose reeled. She had never thought he would actually follow through on having Hugo over. People said they should get dinner all the time. It was just something people say, without ever actually meaning to do it.

  “Does he have any family?”

  “A daughter … but she doesn’t live here. It would … it would just be him.”

  “He’s a little weird don’t you think? I mean, nice, but you know…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing … he seemed … lonely. But I guess if he’s just moved here … I dunno, was he always like that?”

  No.

  “I don’t remember. Maybe. It was a long time ago.” Rose shrugged as she felt the lie slip over her shoulders.

  “Well, text him and see if that night will work for him. I can’t imagine he has too much going on yet.”

  Rose nodded. She knew already. Even if he was busy, if she asked, Hugo would come.

  * * *

  Hugo brought cupcakes, the grocery store kind with tacky plastic knickknacks buried in room-temperature icing. Isaac and Adam squealed when they saw these in their visitor’s
hands.

  “Can we have those instead of what you made, Mom?”

  “Yeah. Please, Mom? Please?”

  Rose had made a beautiful nut cake, grinding the flour in the food processor for almost half an hour, microplaning orange peel into the glaze. The completed loaf was cooling in the pantry, making the room smell like a bakery in Paris, but to her boys it was no competition for the lure of Crisco frosting and football-shaped rings.

  “Sure, guys.”

  The boys cheered and ran back into the kitchen. Hugo looked sheepish. “Sorry, I guess I should have asked.…”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I just thought … Someone told me when you go to someone’s house, you bring something.”

  “It’s fine.” Rose smiled at him and he smiled back. He was nervous. “Coat?”

  He turned and she helped him take off his windbreaker, her hand grasping the worn collar against his neck. She felt the warmth of his shoulders through his shirt on the backs of her fingers.

  This was so strange. Why were they doing this?

  She felt Hugo’s eyes on her as she turned to put the coat on one of the hooks that held the boys’ jackets. Its blue nylon enveloped the bright yellow of Adam’s parka, like a hug, hiding it away.

  “I’m just going to put some music on!” Josh called in from the kitchen. Suddenly jazz blurted out of the speakers in the ceiling, and farther in the house came the sound of Isaac and Adam groaning in unison. Hugo furrowed his brows at Rose. She giggled, but before she could say anything, they heard Josh’s voice again. “Come on, guys, it’s not that bad.” But the music shifted to an apparently less offensive mix of forties standards.

  Rose took a deep breath and grimaced at Hugo.

  Not Hugo. David.

  She would need to remember to call him David.

  * * *

  Josh made a big deal of presenting his herbed haricots verts. It was one of the few things he knew how to make, and he had texted Rose twice to make sure she got the ingredients for him. It was sweet, she supposed, but for a man who regularly saved people’s lives on the operating table, Rose thought he made a bit too much out of his ability to steam green beans.

  Rose had given Hugo/David a beer as soon as he had come into the kitchen. One of Josh’s microbrews. He had taken a sip right away, but his mouth had puckered almost instantly. She offered him something else, but he had refused, insisting that he liked what she had given him.

  By the time they sat down to dinner, the bottle was sweaty with condensation, still full to the neck.

  Adam whispered secrets into Isaac’s ear, both staring at Hugo, as Rose carried the rosemary pork loin to the table. “Stop it, boys. Be polite.”

  Adam snapped his hands back from Zackie’s ear and sat on them. Whatever they were up to, Rose just didn’t want it going on at the dinner table.

  Josh slipped Penny into her booster. She had a bib on over her pink-striped pajamas. Penny smiled at Hugo, pointing at him with her fork. “No kitty?” she asked.

  Hugo looked at Rose, stricken. She answered for him. “No, honey. Mr. David does not have a kitty.”

  Josh smiled at their guest. “She asks everyone that.”

  Nervous, Hugo took another sip of his beer and immediately grimaced at the taste. He coughed a little, covering his mouth. Everyone was staring at him. “I … uh … I want to thank you for having me over. It’s been a while since I had anything that could be called a family dinner.”

  Hugo looked at the table while he said this, his eyes resting on nothing in particular.

  “Rose said you had a daughter.”

  Hugo shot a quick glance at Rose, then to Josh. “I do. I don’t get to see her much. She lives in Florida. With her mother.”

  Josh provided a “That’s too bad,” but his condolences were overlapped by Isaac, whose ears perked up at the mention of the Sunshine State.

  “Where Disney World is?”

  “No, lower. Fort Lauderdale.”

  For Isaac, who imagined Florida as a penis-shaped puzzle piece with a pair of mouse ears in the center, “Fort Lauderdale” had no meaning at all. He supposed this man’s daughter must live with the alligators, since that was the only other knowledge he had of the place.

  “You must miss her,” said Rose.

  “They’ve lived there for a while.” Hugo’s voice was ambivalent.

  Josh caught Rose’s eye and she could tell he was thinking, What kind of guy doesn’t miss his child?

  But Rose felt herself instinctively push against the thought. This was her Hugo, after all. Yes, she had heard it, too, the flatness in his voice, but there must be a good reason for it. A story she didn’t yet know and was too polite to ask for. But it couldn’t mean that he didn’t actually care about his daughter. Or that he hadn’t seen her in a long time. She knew Hugo, after all, and he just wasn’t that kind of person.

  She was half-lost in this thought when she heard Josh ask if David’s parents still lived in Cow Town.

  “Cow Town?”

  Rose nearly choked. “That’s what—” She hit her chest. “That’s what—” She hit it again. Josh and Hugo watched her as she took a sip of water and croaked out, “Excuse me … That’s what Josh calls our hometown.”

  Rose hoped desperately that Hugo would understand her, that he would hear the emphasis in the our.

  But Josh was grinning, getting ready for the setup. “I call it that because—”

  “More cows live there than people.” Rose joined him in the familiar singsong. It had been a joke he had made when he had first visited her parents, driving past the cattle yards on the outskirts of the county. It wasn’t really funny then, and it wasn’t now, but it had become a “bit”—something Rose groaned her way through and Josh enjoyed doing. Ultimately it became cute. Rose and Josh thought about it as one of their “couple things.”

  But Hugo didn’t laugh, though he did get the joke.

  “Oh … No … my parents died when I was eight.”

  Rose’s mouth dropped. How did she not know?

  “Isaac is eight,” said Adam, helpfully.

  “Adam, hush.” Josh looked grim.

  Rose’s hands were on her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  Hugo shrugged. “It’s okay. It was a long time ago.”

  There was a long, awkward pause while Josh’s and Rose’s brains searched for something appropriate to say regarding the loss of one’s parents a very long time ago. Hugo’s revelation had sent all sorts of chemical washes lapping through the meat of their gray matter: grief, fear, lack of comfort, curiosity, shame.

  Josh’s mind quickly surveyed the situation and rang the Klaxon known as “subject change.” It lit up to this sudden alert in a similar way when he was a Little League hitter, taking in the information of an oncoming baseball and sending the impulse to step into it and hit the ball in another direction.

  “Well…” He said, “Adam and Isaac, did you know that Mr. David went to school with your mom when she was a little girl?”

  Josh’s boys were appropriately astonished. Josh relaxed as the ball of the conversation sailed back on course.

  “You did?”

  Isaac got to the heart quickly. “Did she ever get in trouble?”

  Rose stepped in before Hugo had to think of a lie. “No. I never got in trouble. I was perfectly perfect. All the time.”

  Isaac looked from his mother to the man who could confirm her statement. “Was she?”

  “I thought she was.”

  Rose smiled at him and he blushed. A shy smile back.

  Josh saw it pass between them again. The same brief pulse he’d seen at the party. The same something, but it seemed here more intimate than it had then. More immediate.

  “He knows about Hugo!”

  Suddenly all three adults were staring at Adam.

  “What?” said Josh.

  Isaac answered, “Adam broke the map we made of Hugo’s island—”

  “Did not!” insisted his br
other, but Zackie continued.

  “—and he put it back together all by himself. He knew where everything went.” Zackie’s hand was pointing at their dinner guest.

  Adam was nodding furiously. “I saw him do it.”

  Rose felt her stomach clench.

  Hugo was nodding. “Uh, it wasn’t broken.”

  “See.” Adam stuck his tongue out at Isaac.

  “It was at the party and I saw … I just put some of the pieces where they belonged, that’s all.”

  “You know about Rose’s dream friend?” Josh’s face was still as he said this.

  “Uh … well … I know Rose … so…”

  Rose felt the rock in her stomach condense, compressing into itself. She wasn’t breathing. Please let this stop. Please. But Adam was talking again—

  “He knew where to put all the labels and he even knew to put the Spiders in the Chasm, but not on the beaches.”

  “Well…” Hugo’s face was lit up. “Sometimes the Spiders are on the beaches. But they don’t live there.”

  Isaac got excited. “Like when the deer stampeded onto the beach because the Spider was chasing them and Mom got caught in the middle of them.”

  “And then Hugo slayed the Spider!”

  Hugo was grinning. “Well, your mom helped.”

  “You remember that from when you were a kid?”

  Josh’s voice was dark. Hugo turned to him, the joy on his face melting.

  “Well. Uh … yeah.” Hugo lied, “She talked about her dreams a lot.”

  fourteen

  “Who is he?”

  The children were in bed. Their guest was gone. The dishes lay stacked by the sink.… But the table still bore the crumbs and paper from the cheap cupcakes the boys had consumed, their appetites intact, unaware of the chill that had settled upon their parents.

  Rose had brought out the nut cake for the adults, but the slices still lay uneaten on Rose’s good china. Three plates in the sink.

  “Who is he?”

  Josh said it quietly, sitting at the table, not looking at her. His fingertips made a line of the orphaned yellow crumbs.

  Rose leaned against the edge of the counter, gripping the rim for support.

  “Nobody. Just a guy.”

  Josh inhaled through his nose. His index finger pulled another crumb into line. “He’s three years older than you. I asked him.”