In the elevator hall Hugh stands with Ivy between two doors.
Ivy offers a third option. “Maybe you should wait in the van.”
One door is red, the other blue. The elevator clunks down and away, called to do another’s bidding.
“I don’t want you to come in,” she says. She pulls at her lip, the first nervous thing he’s seen her do. “I don’t want you to know about my stupid life.”
“I want to see where you live,” Hugh says. He puts out a hand and touches the open plane of creamy skin below the hollow in her neck. Touchstone.
“Right, but I haven’t really been here for a couple of—”
The red door opens.
“Jamie?” Ivy turns, keys still in her hand.
A head appears at doorknob height, a narrow face gleaming pale as lard between a small round chin at the nadir and Brillo-pad reddish hair at the zenith. It disappears.
Three lizard fingers grasp the edge of the door. Bitten nails.
“Jamie?” Ivy says the name again, quietly.
“Ivy?” A soft-squeaking disused tenor. The head appears again, higher, between door and jamb. Eyebrows engage in the long face, arched high over pale eyes, looking Ivy over from boot to hat. Jamie speaks slowly—not irritated but bemused. “What are you doing out there?”
Ivy glances at Hugh, checking his expression. He gives her a solid, I’m-not-crazy kind of look, and a hand at her back. Not to propel, just to bolster. Also for the relief of contact, okay.
Voice pitched to kindness, she says, “Hi, Jamie, I came to see about the flood.”
The pale fingers still hold the fort of the door, the door of the fort. The pale eyes shift back and forth from Ivy to Hugh to the blue door to the elevator, evaluating and assessing. Then the door draws back again. “I added a stronger chain,” the soft voice says. “Just give me a minute, I have to find the key.”
Ivy looks through the slit. Her head turns to catch Hugh’s eye. Whole face compressed into a screw of misery, she says, hardly more than a whisper, “It’s actually a nice apartment. You have to take my word for that.”
From somewhere inside, “I found it!” A small-boy announcement, nervous and proud.
Hasty feet, a scraping, then the lock-twist sound. Ivy pulls back to let Jamie shut the door again, to slide the chain. Then the door is open and the vista clear.
A broad space, a bank of long windows on the far side, thin metal pillars: a reclaimed factory. Old plank floor, what you can see of it; grey walls. The windows are half-masked by sheets of various papers and foil taped haphazardly to the glass and to each other, which has darkened the room. Stacks of cardboard boxes and grey equipment cases litter the space like an obstacle course, like a bad moving day. A long leather couch under the windows has been used as a nest: greyish blankets and sheets tangled all over it, bogged at one end. Several unsavoury articles of clothing litter the floor by the couch, and there are piles in other places. Everywhere, wire and cords. Tangles of wire cross the floor, extra cords cross the counter that separates a galley kitchen from the rest of the big room; wires trail in from two other rooms and a half-open door with a light on, a bathroom? The cords converge at a long work station: four monitors, at least five laptops, a couple of high towers, a synthesizer keyboard setup at one end. Everything is grey with grime and dust.
“Oh, Jamie,” Ivy says. “When did Yolanda stop coming to clean?”
“I couldn’t let her in, she was moving things.” The childish voice is odd, the form odder: he’s of medium height, too thin, with wide swimmer’s shoulders and a slight paunch. One hand goes up to scratch at his bristly hair, patched with white shocks in the red.
Ivy turns to Hugh. “This is my friend Hugh, Jamie. Hugh, Jamie Carr, my … I guess my sort of brother-in-law. My ex-brother.”
Jamie gives a conspiring little snicker, heh-heh! Then looks ashamed, or diffident, or just miserable. This guy’s a mess.
“Did Alex come over?”
“Well he came over last night but I couldn’t find the key, so he couldn’t come in,“ Jamie says, heh-heh-ing again. He drifts away to the computer set-up by the wall. Under the desk, another cocoon. “He’s angry at me, Ivy, he always is, and I didn’t think he would be a good guest.”
“No, no,” Ivy says, slowing her natural speech to match his rhythm. “Not angry, only worried.”
“No need! I am just fine. In fact, I’m better than fine! I’m working, I’m writing articles all the time, I get paid and it’s not a problem.”
“Well the problem—the problem is the flood, right?” Ivy moves from the entryway now, clapping her hands on her arms to brace herself, around the corner created by the coat closet.
Hugh follows. There’s the problem.
The kitchen floor is covered with towels and sheets, all soaking wet, reeking. Dark liquid stains the floorboards outwards in long runnels from the kitchen, ending in a tidemark of paper and towels. Two red pails, assorted cake tins, cups, all full of grey water.
Ivy says, more sad than surprised. “Did you have to use my linen sheets?”
The sweet high voice floats over from the computer desk, almost emotionless. “Well the water wouldn’t stop coming out, and I knew you wouldn’t mind. You’re so kind, Ivy. You’re kinder to me than my own family ever is. You never mind.”
“Actually, I mind this time.” But her voice is neutral. “What happened?”
“The water stopped, I don’t know how. I think the lady downstairs called the super when it started coming through her ceiling. But now the toilet doesn’t flush, I ought to say …”
Ivy looks at Hugh. “I can’t even think about this,” she says.
“Insurance?”
“I don’t know. Alex didn’t know how much damage there was to the other apartments.”
“The super came up this morning, he put a letter under the door,” Jamie says, hunching farther over the desk, almost fetal. One white finger points over his shoulder, to the hall shelf. Miraculously unpiled, in all this mess. Just one envelope there. Ivy looks at it.
Jamie’s disembodied voice continues in a pallid singsong ramble, punctuated by an occasional small ha. “I opened it because I thought you’d want me to but it was—incomprehensible, really it was.” His voice goes higher. “And I’m an English major! Ha. The man is unlettered, Ivy. It’s like he doesn’t even, ha, know the language.”
Ivy seems to gather herself. Short body tense, her hands clench into fists. Not toward Jamie, just the letter. Three steps to pick it up: she opens it with one quick rip, and reads.
Hugh is sorry, not just for the water, the kitchen damage, but for this hopeless, hapless boy-man suffering at the desk. For Ivy’s being tangled up with him at all. Where’s the brother—this Alex Carr?
Footsteps in the hall. There, probably.
Nope—it’s a woman. She pauses in the doorway. Hugh takes her in; he likes her looks, her manner, her thin face. Plain clothes, mysterious chic.
“Oh, Fern,” Ivy says, sighs, sobs. She turns to embrace the woman. “Get this,” she says, urgent to appeal to this new mind in the room—then, her hand goes out to him, “Hugh! This is my sister, Fern. Hugh came with me, I wanted you to meet him but this is not—”
Fern laughs, same laugh as Ivy. “Stop,” she says.
The hunched figure by the window gives a wistful cry: “Hey, Fern.”
“Hey, Jamie,” Fern says, not sparing him a glance. A harder mind, Hugh thinks. Her eyes are like Ivy’s but cooler, acute. “So, Hugh. You drove Ivy in?”
“She drove me,” he says. “I have a concussion, she was kind—”
“Ivy’s always kind,” Jamie says from the desk. He’s put his head down on a pile of papers, face turned away from them. But still present, unable not to be present.
Ivy sets the letter down. “They’ll have to sue me, I guess,” she says.
“Alex is on his way, I saw him on the street.” Fern takes the letter.
The elevator grinds up again and halts, clanking.
In the silence the doors open, close.
A man in the doorway. Jamie’s brother: same lily-white skin, but a lot of snap in the mouth, a lot of bad temper. Avoid this one, Hugh’s hackles tell him. Taller than Jamie, same shoulders, the new guy has a bullish bearing that seems unhelpful in the current situation.
He’s talking right away, pushing over Ivy’s faint Hi with, “Don’t give me any bullshit about Jamie being responsible, because he’s not—that dishwasher was a piece of shit the day you bought it, and if you’d gone for a better brand you wouldn’t be in this situation now.”
“Hey, Alex,” comes from the desk in a whispery wail. Jamie’s head burrows farther down, his shoulders cramped flat, as if they could meld right into the table.
The brother doesn’t bother responding. He eyes Fern and Hugh as possible combatants, and dismisses them both. Possibly a mistake there, Hugh thinks, watching Fern.
Ivy has turned away, making her way through piles of detritus to a closed door. “Hugh?” she says, half over her shoulder. “Can you …?” He goes; Fern distracts Alex with the super’s letter. Ivy opens the door and pulls Hugh in to—her bedroom, it must be. Clear walls except for one big piece on the wall above the bed. A lithograph, a long landscape, shadowed by long clouds.
“He’s been sleeping in here too,” she says. Hugh checks her face, her eyes: no tears yet. The bed is mounded with blankets and sheets worked into a rat’s nest, a dog-basket mess.
“Why are you letting him—” Hugh stops even asking.
The rest of the room is still pristine. Just the bed, greyish and disturbing. “It’s gotten way worse,” she says sadly. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen him.”
“How long has he been here alone?”
“He—well, most of the time, since Alex and I split up.”
“Like, months?”
Her face is so sad. “I’m sorry, Hugh, I wish you’d stayed in the van. We broke up three years ago. It was civil, mostly, and mutual—I left, I went to the Banff Playwrights Colony for a two-month gig, so he’d have lots of time to get a new place. Then I went to Halifax, three shows at Neptune, I was gone most of that winter, and Jamie came and stayed. So when Alex found a great place but it was a one bedroom, he moved out, and Jamie stayed to house-sit for me …”
Hugh laughs. After a second, Ivy laughs too. “And in the spring, he was going to stay with his mom for a couple of months, so that was fine, but she got sick. Then I did a few episodes of a series that shot in Yellowknife, so—it made sense for Jamie to stay, and then—we get along, you know, better than he and Alex do.”
“Three years?”
“Turns out, yeah.”
“He looks like he needs help.”
“Oh, he’s got help. He sees a shrink three times a week. He’s an outpatient at the Clarke. He’s helped six ways from Sunday. But none of them has a place for him to live, and his mother can’t—she’s in North Bay, she’s seventy-eight, and not well.”
So’s Mimi, Hugh thinks, before he can push the thought away. Hard to live with someone crazy. This room is unmarred, except for the bed. But the bed is bad.
“He’s too sad for you.” Hugh means Jamie. “And the brother—I hated him on sight.”
“Yes.” She smiles at him, accepting his hatred as a love-gift.
“So what’s going to happen?”
“Their brother Ray is a doctor in Winnipeg. He’s got connections, you know, people who would—if we could get Jamie out there he could stay with Ray for a while and get into a facility. But …”
But they’re good at taking advantage, Hugh doesn’t say.
“Ray’s not, not patient with him, so he doesn’t want to go.” Ivy looks at her bed. “I’ve been avoiding this— I can’t help him, I don’t have the skill. His brothers aren’t helping either. I’ve been sleeping on Fern’s couch, or house-sitting, or staying with my parents, or getting jobs elsewhere. I need my place back, but he hasn’t got anywhere to go. I don’t know what to do. Before I left for Peterborough, Alex swore black and blue he’d be out by the end of October, but it doesn’t look like it, does it?”
He wonders if she might cry after all, but she doesn’t. He takes her hands. “Okay, listen, the leak, the water damage, we can get that fixed, we’ll do that first.”
They go back out. Fern and Alex are arguing over the super’s letter.
Hugh goes into the hall. He walks past the elevator, past the blue door to the window, and calls the gallery.
“Hell— Argylle Gallery, can I help you?” he hears.
“Good answering, Ruth,” he says. “Hey listen, did you get hold of Dave about the basement? Okay, can you tell him I need him for a different job first? It’s here, in Toronto, it’s more urgent. I can keep emptying buckets down there for a couple of days. Tell him I’ll pay his travel, and get him out here this afternoon, okay? It’s Ivy’s place, she’s got a dishwasher gone bad here, and nobody’s doing anything sensible.”
Ruth takes the address and promises.
drive sickening quickening heart does a loon dive
brain shrunken to a walnut pain in the chest
mystery why he stayed so long: inertia?
no we are soulmates
Savaya’s mother years ago long-legged April at playschool in the morning leaning languid-eyed against the wall, I love my husband—he is my soulmate, I think we were actually made for each other, I mean it! languid and lazy too I leaned too laughing at our starstruck luck
but I myself am no April no Jenny no no Jenny
half-assed at everything
paltry talent lazy teacher poor pianist drifty mother weak friend
Hugh suffering with Mimi I’ve done nothing for him or her
can’t bear to think about my mother can’t help Hugh because of that
I am no Jenny
not telling me
whatever it is between them
Ken
MORAL COWARDICE
MINE HIS
it isn’t true
it’s true I know it is it must be true
I know he slept with her I know he did he did it how could he
how could he what is the thing that makes it possible to
betray the other the beloved how could he
he is sleeping with her
say the right word
he loves her
Walking up the alley, Jason tells L, “I miss going to Mimi’s, before she got sick.” L nods. That apartment in the old house, full of nice/weird things, photographs, clothes; it was a sixties museum. The piano her mom has now—nine feet long, belonged to some dude. Last thing her mom would ever have bought herself, or could ever have afforded, it’s worth like fifty grand or something. When they were kids, Mimi would open her closets and get them all tricked out, scarves and wigs and hot pink swathes of psychedelia. Jason loved her too. Loves her. She is not dead yet.
Orion’s ill at ease. You don’t often see him like that. Moving lightly, knees soft, as if he’s afraid they’ll all get in trouble—for what? Illicitly visiting the sick? Death scares him.
L too. She feels that barrel-stave/barrel-band feeling, the beginning of an attack, anxiety and claustrophobia leaping and pumping inside her lungs and heart. Go, go, go—she makes the stairway door and leaps the stairs three at a time, noisy as fuck in the stairwell but it’s insulated from the building and nobody ever uses the stairs, only Joseph the porter sometimes to smoke a joint, beside the one wire-gridded windowflap that opens. He is Trinidadian; so smooth and sleep-possessed, careful when he moves the oldsters room to room, down for their bath, back from the therapy room. This place must cost a bomb. How rich is Mimi? So why does Hugh look pinched all the time? The adult world of money makes no sense. Her dad ought to be rich. Her mom shouldn’t have to work. They spend whatever they feel like on the things they feel like; but if she asks for fifty to buy Japanese paper they give her the pinchy look, the Oh hellish GOD how will I afford this look. It’s priorities, they have screwed themselves.
She does not ask for much. Neither does Orion. They know not to. Jason, OTOH, just calls his dad and five hundred appears in his account. Because his dad is wracked with guilt.
Okay now quiet quiet quiet along the halls. She just wants to see Mimi one more time because what if, what if? The boys follow, their footfalls audible to L’s ear. But they are trying. Four doors, five, there’s Mimi’s. Press the door a little. Peek. Okay. No Ruth to talk their ears off, or shoo them out. L slides in and leaves the door ajar, for Jason to catch.
In the bed Mimi lies mouth-gaped, faintly blue.
L turns to motion the others away, but the air or the sound of her sleeves wakes Mimi and her eyes open wide, afraid. L bends quickly to say, “No, no, it’s okay—it’s just me, it’s L—I came to see how you are doing.”
The eyes, clouded, yellowy-grey around the still iris-blue irises, search her face: zip zip zip. How we collect data! Not finished yet, never finished. But the zipping eyes don’t recognize her.
L straightens again, touching the petal hand, old white rose-petals, ready to slipslide, slump to the black piano of death. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I miss you, that’s all.”
The mouth shuts, opens, grey tongue inside, grey spittle on the edge. The mouth works, teeth inside sliding as she swallows. “Oh,” the old one says. “L.”
O L, oh hell, oh well, she tried, LOL.
The hand turns, holds her arm. Not clutching. Velvet skin, a soft surprise. L blinks, and looks—Mimi’s eyes are still inside there. At first this was a puppet made like death, a cage for something, but now it is still Mimi again.
“Fun,” the mouth says, and the mouth is Mimi too: her mouth, her little, far-spaced teeth, not rotted but gone grey. Her mouth, but paler; in real life she is never un-lipsticked.
After a pause, a hiccup of time, L sits on the edge of the bed. There’s room.
“How you doing?” she asks. Dumb question.
Mimi swallows, with difficulty. “Missing you, Miss L,” she says.
“Well, I could come in sometimes. I was just chicken.”
The old head nods a little; the cheek pits. Her dimple. It is still Mimi darling, still her somehow, in this ravagement. But it is hard to sit here.
“We were thinking about your house, how much we love it,” L says. “I’ve been making a big thing, I thought maybe I could bring you some pieces of it to see.”
Mimi nods.
“It’s so nice to see you,” L says, in a sudden flood. Then there is not anything else to say.
Jason seems to be scared to death but is hiding that under a veil of formality. When Mimi’s eyes fall on him he almost bows. Orion does bow. He comes forward and bows again, closer to the bed. “This is our friend Orion,” L says.
All the ladies like Orion. Mimi twinkles. “Handsome … boy,” she says.
Boy having new connotations since Burton, Orion’s colour rises. Bronze-red sweeps up his neck, front and back, up to the crop of his hair—even his lips go red.
It’s funny that he’s so sensitive to being called Boy. But then L thinks, wait, why? What have I missed, exactly? She remembers red lips, she puts two with two and two and two, Orion reading Salome in Savaya’s room that morning and texting—
Now L is herself swept with a wave of red and gets up from the bed so Orion won’t see that she knows he’s got something happening with, not-Burton, something with Newell.
Newell, Newell’s eyes, the tiredness in them that is so deep in his mind that he will never recover. That’s not so good for someone like Orion, whose eyes are still awake and wild.
Everybody knows Orion is gay, he’s been out for like seven years, for ever. Everybody always knew and he made sure we did. And anyway, in our school it’s like cooler than not being gay anyway. So but—so it’s okay, and anyway, he is okay with all that.
And not that there’s anything wrong with it except <jealous!> re: Newell, and what about Savaya, who loves Orion partly, because whatever the hell she’s got going on with Jerry Pink is stupid and probably arrestable and not real anyway. And also, Newell is, when you think about it, pretty old. So.
L sits on the radiator cover at the window to figure out what she thinks while Orion tells almost-sleeping Mimi about the master class. Jason sits beside her as he always does. Their arms touch all along the length of them, it’s helpful.
“My dad,” she says in a low voice. “He came back, but he’s gone again. He took some pieces of the Republic away.”
Jason takes his arm away, to put it around her. But they have to go. Mimi will wear out. And Jason’s got that date with Pink.