Hugh takes Ivy’s hand, which she has flung out to him like a small life preserver. Time to go.
“Okay,” he says. “I left the van at the Black Cat—I’ll walk you home.”
Jacket. Nothing else? His arms feel empty. Pizza, that’s what he was carrying. Okay. Hugh nods to Newell and they slide away, out the back door to the terrace and the long set of stairs running down to the street.
Newell follows, seeing them out into the rooftop wind in his shirtsleeves. He kisses Ivy and she heads down the stairs, going carefully on those pretty, silly shoes.
Hugh pauses for a moment at the brink, moon blinking through the charcoal drama of overwrought, fast-scudding clouds.
“How’s your mother?” Newell asks, clearly in no rush to go back inside.
Newell: his strength, his health, his glowing human-ness—and all the misery he carries with him. Hugh asks him, “How can the body die? Tell me. How can the person who is here not be here any longer? How is this—how can it be right, even be possible, that this has to happen?”
“I love her.” Newell’s voice is gentle, sweet, ordinary. “I’ll go over in the morning.”
“Okay,” Hugh says. He goes down that long, long flight of concrete steps to where Ivy waits.
They walk through misted streets, avenues, a vanished town, to Ann’s.
In the quiet, Ivy asks, “Are you upset?”
Hugh tests how he feels, probes down into his inmost heart. No answer there, just lava.
“What made you angry? Do you think gays shouldn’t marry?”
“No! They can marry the hell out of each other. It’s nothing like that. It’s just Burton.” Can’t tell Ivy the truth. What you think is the truth.
“I know he’s kind of hateable. But he’s fond of Newell.”
Right.
You just don’t know. You don’t know, you don’t know, what is right, what would be best. Not Burton, that’s all Hugh can think. “I’ve known Newell for a long time. I don’t—Burton is not good for him. Newell’s my oldest friend, my Ruth-brother.”
“He loves you,” Ivy says. “What’s the bad part, besides that Burton’s an asshole and will be an expensive husband? Newell can afford it. And I don’t think, you know …” She proceeds a little carefully: “I don’t think Newell does anything he doesn’t want to do.”
Hugh thinks about that, or tries to. All he can see is Newell’s lost face, not helped, not saved. He can’t tell Ivy what he suspects—okay, never mind suspects. What he knows. Knew, when he was twelve. The knowledge of what Burton did all those years ago has been buried deep in his head for a long time. Hurts to think about, not allowed. And it is not simple. Burton and Newell have been together on and off for a thousand years, they have grown into each other by now, have worked out some complicated fucking agreement.
And who is he to say what Newell should think or do.
He kicks through a slump of leaves by the curb. He says, “How can I know anything about it?”
“No. Me neither.”
“Hard enough to know about myself.”
There’s a pause. Half a block of silence.
Ivy stops. “I can’t be with you.” She just comes out with it baldly. “In case you were wondering, which I thought you might be.”
“I know,” Hugh says. “I’m too damaged. And my mother is dying. Any day. When she does I’m going to be a mess. You don’t need any of this.”
Ivy laughs at him. “That’s not why!” she says. “All my own shit is why.”
“I am used to shit,” he says. “I can take it.”
“You can take it, but you can’t dish it out?”
He nods. He’s too upset to speak.
Ivy pulls at his arm. “You can cope with a mountain of whatever horrors, but I can’t?”
Hugh nods again.
“And your mother— I’m so sorry.” She takes his hand.
They go on walking. Their hands fit. The mist hanging over the streets has caused a compression of sound, a minor slapping echo of shoes on sidewalk.
Or wait, no—it’s somebody following them. Newell, again?
“Hey,” L calls, from behind.
Almost at Ann’s walk, they turn and wait for L to reach them.
“Hi,” she says, breathy from running. “Hi, hi, Ivy. I saw you at the costume room but I didn’t say hi then because we didn’t want to see Jason’s mom; she was on the warpath this afternoon—she went to see Pink, Hugh, about the—”
Hugh closes his eyes. “I know,” he says. “I should have said I’d talk to Jason.”
“Now he’s got to see Mr. Pink tomorrow, and the appointment is for forty-five minutes.”
“Where is Jason? Home?”
“I’m not sure—but there’s a party at Savaya’s tonight. We’ll all sleep over there. I’m not telling my mom about the, you know, the magazines. It’s not fair, please don’t tell her.”
“None of my business,” Hugh says. “But I bet Ann already has.”
“Oh shit, right, thanks.” L trots off into the fog.
Ivy hesitates. “I was going to ask you in, but I’m pretty sure there’s no coffee, or even a chair to sit on.”
Hugh is thinking how to answer that when the door opens.
Ann gleams in the hall light. Her sweater, her hair, perfect. The minimalist thing, she’s good at it. “Hey, you.” Is she angry? Or no, that’s Hey, Hugh. “I’ve been calling you. Don’t you ever answer the phone?”
“Usually Ruth gets it,” he says, conscious that this is weak-kneed.
He and Ivy move slowly up the walk to the porch stairs.
Ann laughs, sharp as teeth. “I wanted to tell you—Lise Largely says you’re clearing out Mimi’s place. It’s going to be a huge job, poor Hugh. I’m going to go through her clothes for you and decide what to give away and what to sell.”
He’s taken aback. “I don’t think I’ll—”
“Some of those things are valuable,” Ann says.
Something in her eyes warns Hugh to just agree. Something glassy, not blank but breakable. “Absolutely,” he says.
“She was my mother too, for a long time. My creative mother.” With that bizarre embroidery, Ann turns to Ivy, eyes on highbeam. “Hugh had to help you find your way home?”
“I’m not lost.” Ivy isn’t giving ground, the way Hugh always does.
Ann stares at her. A beat. “Are you—?”
Ivy stares right back. Waits for the question to finish.
Ann almost staggers, as if she’s missed a step, and reaches for the door handle. She turns to Hugh. “Are you—?”
He weighs the options, decides there aren’t any, and nods. “We are.”
She’s hit.
She had me in her sights again, he thinks. A wave of hot/cold, relief/sorrow washes over him. He puts out a hand to comfort her.
But Jason dashes out between them, slipping past Ann’s thin frame in the doorway, jostling Ivy almost off the stairs in his headlong rush.
“Sorry, sorry, late,” he calls back, running backwards for a few steps. Making a sorry-face, more lively than Hugh’s seen him since childhood.
Ivy megaphones her hands at her mouth and yells, “Watch out for those fan-tailed beavers, mister!”
A great shout of laughter comes back through the mist by the river’s edge.
“His dream, this morning,” Ivy says to Ann, apologizing, after all, Hugh sees; because you have to when someone has been in the dark, and has stubbed her toe so badly.
Ann nods once to each of them. The ice goddess Freya hammering their heads with her bronze sledgehammer.
She swings away to let Ivy slip inside, and shuts the heavy door in Hugh’s face.
The leaves are almost all down. Wind pulling her fingers through her hair, Orion thinks. The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse, it says in Revelations. Like, apocalyptic carbon capture. When his mother makes him go to her weird all-denominations church he spends the hour flipping through Revelations, one long acid trip. Not that he has done acid; it’s actually quite hard to get around the school.
Savaya’s parents are going out—pulling out of the driveway in their ’89 Eurovan, held together with duct-tape. Probably going to drive out to Bobcaygeon and do bong hits, that’s how hippie they are. Tragically unhip. Orion locks his bike to a wrought-iron fence. Ought to, wrought to, deter thievery. He stands in shadow for a minute, checking out who’s already there. Twelve or fifteen guys milling around the lighted doorway—Philip and Coran; there’s that fuckwipe Sheridan Tooley, who only drinks Baby Duck, who got the kid lead in Auntie Mame in Toronto and quit the master class to go in to the city every night for singing classes with some guy at the opera. Fucker.
Here’s Jason running down the sidewalk, not that any of them ought to be in a hurry. Orion puts out a long arm and a jazz hand to stop Jason. “We enter with deliberation, Boy,” he says. They’re calling each other Boy these days. Burton, you old slag.
Jason nods.
“Where’s L?”
“Her mom’s driving her—I had to wait till—” Jason’s breath is gone.
“You are out of training, my man. Your mom again?”
“Yeah. You sticking around?”
Orion checks his phone. No message yet. “I might.”
The crowd around the lighted porch bursts into a clap of laughter. Savaya comes to the door and waves her hands to bring the noise down. The last time the cops came, and her parents said she couldn’t have a party if she couldn’t control the guests.
“How was it at Newell’s?” Jason asks. Hands on knees, getting his breath back.
“You know. Pink told Burton he wants him to go back to Sweeney fucking Todd, and Burton told him to basically fuck himself. Burton won.
We start Spring Awakening tomorrow: two masturbation scenes, onstage sex, and I’m the main guy, Melchior.”
“I mean, how’s it going with Newell?” Jason says.
“Polyamory is a recognized sexual choice.”
“Right.”
“How’s your own sex life?”
“Right.”
“Here comes L, let’s go. I need to punch that fucker Tooley, but I am not going to.”
“Yeah, Hugh do you think you are?”
Orion laughs. “Jase! Good one!”
They flit, they fly.
these parties tell Elly to be careful don’t tell her
Elly DJing Short Skirt/Long Jacket
be acerbic be witty and now her Tom Waits impression
she will be gone
a Hallowe’en party in the 80s walking in to get my coat
Ann fucking some guy on the heap of coats who was that? not Hugh
Hugh was beside me seeing her Ken?
not Ken not Ken
how that hurts
was that the night we met?
or we were already together and it was Ken
I was busy feeling bad about being with Mighton
All Saints All Hallows old ghosts gone
Bye, sweetness, turn your phone on …
Jason running up good, he’s good
Ann in Mimi’s old polyester teagown how to talk to your teen about porn
that’s a short skirt not a long enough jacket
not a baby anymore
no protection from bareback boys or girls
I guess it might be girls how would I know?
the guys hug shake hands are men adults setting out into the world
where no one can humiliate them
only it is all humiliation
drive away
I Will Survive
if I’da known for just one second
you’d be back to bother me
did you think I’d crumble?