Hendy lies back in his office chair, almost prone, fingers tented. He sits up quickly when they arrive, greeting Newell with the easy warmth of longtime associates. To Hugh, he’s cooler. Since Hendy is also Mimi’s lawyer, this makes Hugh feel uncomfortably suspicious about his mother’s will, or maybe he means her estate. What does Hendy know that Hugh ought to know? Nothing to interpret in the lawyer’s lack of expression; his face is flat, his even voice perfectly pleasant.
Lise Largely sails in. Newell gives her the same impersonally loving hug he gives to everyone. Lise adores Newell, she signals it with her saturated-blue eyes. She’s wearing casual luxury—jeans that cost five hundred dollars and fit like kid gloves, boots with heels. A scarf in muted colours that don’t wash out her ash-streaked hair. If you like that sort of thing, gorgeous: those overblue eyes under heavy lids, heavy lashes. Hugh watched Lise operate with Ian Mighton. Moving into his house while hers was being renovated—then after the reno, oops, her house got sold, so she had to stay in Mighton’s. But he’s finally pried her out. Whatever lever he used must have had a pointy end.
“Hu-ugh!” She has a habit of drawing one syllable out into two, her head cocked. She gives him a limp paw. Nobody’s ever taught her to shake hands like a human being. “You haven’t been answering my ca-alls. Never mind! This is exciting. Don’t worry, I’m going to look after Jasper! Can’t let him go bankrupt, when responsible development of the property will mean a comfortable old age for the poor old guy.”
Stiff with dislike, Hugh nods twice, then shakes his head. “Jasper’s friends understand that his shop is his—is his whole world.”
She makes the sound of a laugh. “Jasper’s an old curio, just like his store.”
If the price is high enough, Jasper will have to cave. Will Hugh? Mimi is dying, there’s the terrible legacy of her estate. Maybe. Who knows what’s left, after balancing her secret extravagances and secret stashes.
“We—those of us—” Hugh stops, tries to regroup. “You should understand that Jasper’s friends are ready to support him however we—with whatever makes his life worth living. When the people who—who are your life are in need, you step up.”
Newell touches his arm, and cuts in gently. “With financial support, in other words.”
“You step up,” Hugh says, sounding like a nut. Exactly how a pathetic old man is his life seems urgently clear at that moment: Jasper laughing with Ruth by the stove all those years ago, the ivy wallpaper, Hugh and Newell like white mice along the wainscotting.
He looks up. Newell is watching; but his eyes always look partly desperate. That heartfelt understanding made him a star, that pity for pain. He sits beside Hugh as if his body is ballast.
Lise has an agenda. Not as in something she wants, but an actual paper agenda in her hand. “I find things go more smoothly if we know what we’re going to address,” she says. A copy for each of them. The heading: Purchase of Retail/Gallery Properties, L. Largely.
Hugh stares at it. Seems to be a done deal.
But Hendy has an agenda too, just not on paper. “A few points to take up,” he says, putting down the sheet. “Re: the Statement of Adjustments: credits to the purchaser include arrears in taxes up to and including—” His voice steams on into jargon, regulations, this holder of fee, and that party of the second part.
Hugh drifts off, a figurehead anyway, only the titular owner of the gallery-half of the building she wants. He owns nothing. He is perfectly placed to be ousted, in a sea of debt. The Visas alone—the three of them put together add up to $70,000 now. Every sale goes straight to interest; he is behind the proverbial, mystical, physical eight ball.
But Newell is beside him on the black leather settee, while Lise Largely sits alone on a spindly chair. Hendy goes up one side of her and down the other, his smooth, shuttered face—he’s on Hugh’s side now. Although Hugh cannot fathom how, it seems that he may escape from this business with his hide, with his home. That even Jasper might escape too.
It’s a short meeting. Hendy rises, flicks Largely’s disused agenda into his recycling basket, and offers a hand to Newell and then to Hugh for a quick, manly shake. Okay.
Newell turns to Largely, clasps her hand, asks after Mighton. Being cruel? Hugh checks his face, but can’t tell. “He’s coming home this weekend,” Lise says, as if they’re still together. Knowing that’s not true, Hugh feels like he has a slight advantage.
Which she then takes away: “Before we leave, I need to talk to Hugh.”
Hugh realizes it’s him she means, not one of the others she’s calling you. Lise’s smile creases her skin in hairline cracks. “I’ve left six messages—of course you’re back and forth to the hospice. Which is why I felt I had to get hold of you. Assuming that your mother—that you—won’t want to extend the lease on her apartment for another year, of course the owner really has to get another tenant in there, whe-en …” Leaving off the when your mother dies.
A photograph of Mimi swims into Hugh’s mind: in a ballet tutu, eight years old, chin lifted and feet turned out, pink tights casing legs that are so tense they seem to tremble. Her fingers, each blessed finger delicately and artistically bent. Alive, alive in every tendril.
Hendy asks, “Has the owner requested—is it urgent?”
Who owns the place? Some company or other, Hugh can’t remember.
“Sort of.” Largely swoops her shiny eyes. “November first is the new lease year. If you’d like your mother to sign another year, that’s fine!” (squint-smiling to beat the band) “But I thought I could do Hugh a favour. In the circumstances.”
Hugh can’t think. Mimi’s apartment: main floor of a nice house on the river, near Della’s. Fully reno’d, brick kitchen, expensive. A year’s lease—$30,000. You could save Jasper’s life with that. Give it to Della and unstitch her worried forehead.
“I can’t get the place cleared out before the first,” he says.
Largely smiles. “I think I can request an extension from the owner. November 15?”
If he accepts her offer, he owes her, and somehow she will get the gallery.
“No,” he says. “I’ll get onto the movers. November 1 is Saturday. Say Monday the third.” Emptying Mimi’s apartment, arranging for storage, sorting, selling—how is that going to fit in with Della and Ken’s anniversary dinner on Saturday night? It will just have to. Ken may not turn up anyway.
Hendy interrupts. “Did your principal send a registered letter to inform Hugh?”
Largely has that one: “A registered letter went direct to the leaseholder, of course. Mrs.—Hayden? Or is she Argylle? I’d have to check the file—I presume power of attorney covers Hugh picking up her mail, and reading the letters?”
Ruth runs by and picks up the mail every morning. She puts it on his desk every day, every fucking day. Hugh feels the weight of unsorted mail, the blue basket on his desk, like an old woman’s body settling over his shoulders. Two old women: Ruth pointing out the basket over and over; asking him, like Della is always asking him, and his mother’s sunken eyes and sunken voice asking him: Is there mail? He’s seen that letter, he just didn’t look at it.
“Get me a copy of the lease, will you, Hugh?” The first time Hendy has addressed him.
Hugh is in no shape to do anything but nod. Hendy must think he’s an idiot.
Newell is beside Hugh, gently pointing at the antique Patek Philippe on his wrist, the best thing to come out of Catastrophe. “Doctor’s appointment?”
“Right!” Hugh leaps at Largely’s hand, shakes it. Anything to get out of there.
By Monday. And this is what—Wednesday.
Out of the office and on the street in a single breath. Down the street to the gallery in six more. Hard-drawn, ragged breaths, because you can’t cry in the street. It’s bad enough at the movies. People here would see, would notice and think Mimi’s dead, would come to console, to condole.
He opens the door and stops, breathing again.
Ruth is about to order him to Conrad, but he holds up his hands. Not to stave her off, just giving up. “Largely says I have to have my mother’s stuff out of the apartment by the first. I said okay, by Monday.”
Ruth jumps up, like she’s going to whip over there right now and start working.
“No, no,” he says. “Ruth, you’re the best. But wait.”
He can hear Newell coming in behind him.
And Della will help, and you could pay the kids to—okay, you’ll need to rent a bigger van. And a storage space, okay.
He breathes; you can breathe, if you remind yourself.
“Okay, okay. Ruth, I can deal with it. We knew it was coming, I just have to face it.”
Ruth starts to weep, silently. Her dear little face in a screw.
“She’s not going back to that apartment,” he says. “Not ever.”
“I know, I know,” she says, all water.
You just don’t want to know, that’s all. Hugh doesn’t want to know either.