Hugh watches Mimi sleep, watery morning light falling on translucent, blueish skin. Just as he watched when he was a kid, when some pill had had the desired effect. Her mouth a little open. No more foolish-looking now than she was back then. If anything she looks younger now, made childlike by the looming transformation. The fret and fray of life floating away.
Almost too late, now, to tell her how much he loves her. She can’t hear, hasn’t heard him all day. Lost in chemical sleep, death’s waiting-room. Why was he reluctant or shy to say so—what anger, what resentment could still plague him now? Let it drop away. Everything in his heart and body is turning sadly down, dropping as she is dropping away now. All those stupid years of being cruel to her, distant, less than a son. She was never less than a mother. Or at least. Well. Always loving if not always capable.
Ruth tiptoes in. He tries not to be irritated.
“Well!” she whispers. “She’s looking lovely.” She is not. She looks like death.
“I was at Ian Mighton’s first thing this morning,” Ruth says, as if explaining where she’s been. Her voice lowers: “He had a friend over.”
Hugh lets that go unremarked. Unlike Ruth to mention that—there’s nothing new about Mighton having a friend. She trots round the bed to sit on the other side, fidgets with the lines.
Hugh gets up. “Since you’re here, I’ll go back to work on dinner—Della and Ken’s party tonight, remember? L’s helping, we’re making something specially for you.”
Ruth stares down at the taut sheet, smooths it over Mimi’s knee. “Well, I just wonder,” she says. “I wondered, this morning. You talk to Della, see what she says.”
The streets are drying under lemony sunlight. Two kinds of curd to make for the trompe l’oeil egg yolks: lemon and blood orange. Half an hour each, start to finish? He breaks into a jog. Round the corner, there’s Jasper on the porch, sweeping away dead leaves. Okay, as long as he stays off that ladder.
I opened up for you, Jasper mimes. Always a little pale and shaky on a Saturday morning. No sign of him around town last night, he must have fallen into a stupor early on. Once Hugh is close enough: “You have a customer! I kept an eye on him, don’t worry.”
It’s Gerald. “Sorry,” Hugh says as he enters the gallery, a little out of breath from running. “I’m actually closed today, what with my mother, and it’s Della’s—” No need to go into all this. “Something quick I can help you with, though?”
No quick left in Gerald, now. No hale-fellowship, no deal-clinching. He always used to crowd slightly inside your personal shield. Now he is far away. He points vaguely to Mighton’s Dark Gates. Hugh waits, forcing himself to be patient.
Gerald stares up at the massive piece. “You have another client?”
“Well, Newell has expressed an interest.”
Another wait. Then, “There’s an empty wall at the house, and this …”
Okay, are you a fellow human being? In the presence of someone who has been stabbed by fate, by life, his wife, his son, can you stand separate, apart? Hugh puts a hand on Gerald’s big shoulder. “You sure this is what you want, what you need?”
Gerald shifts and trembles. His face does not alter its gaze.
“If you need to fill that space, I’ll help you,” Hugh says. “But give it time. Newell’s not in a hurry. Mighton has work to do here in town, teaching, selling his house. He’ll be around. We could talk about a commission, if it’s his style you like. Might be more expensive,” he forces himself to say. “But I’d hate to see you living with a work so—catastrophic.”
“It might be hard to live with,” Gerald says. His voice is calm, but his face twists in the effort not to weep.
The door bangs, Della blows in from the front porch. Wild hair, wild eyes. What now?
Seeing Gerald she pulls her own strife inward. Hugh lets him go; the big man moves away, passes Della with a half-raised hand, and wanders out. A drone bee, drunk on lilies. Through the window they watch him halt on the sidewalk, head moving, then turn away from the dealership and walk off toward the river.
Hugh says, “Hope he’s not going to drown himself.” Then to Della, “How are you?” He can’t take her upstairs, or into the framing room, where the boats are all laid out.
L saves the day: she comes running down the stairs and leaps for Della. “Mamacita! Can you take me to see Nevaeh before her operation? They’re putting six pins in her ankle, she won’t be able to do dance for months, can you take me now, please, please?”
Della wraps her arms around her daughter. Speaks over her head, to Hugh: “I want you to know—” To L: “Baby Girl, go out to the car, give me two seconds.”
L obeys, giving Hugh one silent The Scream behind Della’s back.
“About Ken,” Della says quickly, when the door closes. “Being at Jenny’s.”
Hugh doesn’t know what to say. You have to say something. “I don’t believe it.” That took too long. “I mean, I know he’s been staying out there, but it’s just not—”
She nods. “I know. But look at Jack, with that nice young woman.”
“Okay, but Jack was married to Ann. As someone who has held that position, I have to say that pretty much any nice young woman would do. Ann is not you. Ken’s not Jack. You were horribilizing.”
“No. He could,” she says, being fair. “Anybody could. But he’d never do it like this.”
“No.”
“So I just wanted to say I’ll try to bring him tonight.”
“Good!” Hugh says. “That’s good.”
At the door, she pauses. “Have you talked to Ruth today?”
“She’s at Mimi’s, are you looking for her?”
“No! I just wondered if she knew—never mind.” She goes out, banging the door again.
He locks it. Puts up the Closed sign this time.
Okay, he’s got a dinner to make.
Twenty minutes till Savaya can get here. L’s not going up to Nevaeh’s room alone. Chickenshit, but what if N’s father is there? L stands under the portico where her mom dropped her—she was in a hurry. Is she going to Bobcaygeon? Maybe she’s painting lake boats now. Down the block, there’s the hospice. Mimi’s window.
There’s time. L sprints the block, springs in through the back door and up the stairs. You have to take the chance to see people who are dying because you never know, and then you’d feel so bad.
She inches open the door. Ruth, in a chair beside the bed, sound asleep. Hey, that vintage corduroy jacket, she finally got it! Go Ruth!
Mimi lies flattened, almost invisible under the sheet. Cheeks old satin, sagged over skull. Thinner than Wednesday, good idea to come today.
The shut eyes look strange without her giant false eyelashes. When her eyes got bad, way back, Hugh screwed a swivel-magnifying mirror to her dressing table. L loved to watch her put them on. Delicate caterpillars. They made her into Mimi; also made her look a little crazy.
Oh Mimi. She was my best friend, when I was little. More than these girls are now.
Ruth stirs, murmurs. She must be Mimi’s friend too. Some way. Weird to think about Ruth looking after Hugh and her mom and Newell. Ruth knows about everybody, and never tells. Ruth was in Sullivan’s when L stole a tube of stripey toothpaste in grade four. The clerk grabbed L by the jacket, but Ruth was there in two seconds. She marched with them up to the pharmacist’s office and made the clerk go away and talked to the pharmacist about when he was a kid, and pretty soon they were out on the sidewalk, and then Ruth gave her a giant talking- to and an ice cream cone at the Dairy Bar. And never told her mom or her dad.
L kisses Mimi’s paper-lidded eyes, not worried about waking her, with all the drugs. Then she goes around the bed and kisses Ruth’s pink cheek. Ruth wakes, eyes opening quickly, and smiles. “Oh, sweetness,” she says. “Don’t be worried.”
L nods. “About anything, I mean. It’ll be all right, your mom and your dad.”
L nods again. Ruth turns to find a more comfortable position. Her old-turtle eyes close.
All righty then. Off L goes. She has an idea for place cards. There’s the hospital snack store, and she has her trusty X-Acto with her.
cottage: empty boat: adrift
hanging on the closet door his shirt
over the bed L’s portrait of me on the table lists DO PAY FIX
read everything read his mind and heart? or agree not to look at that
he is not with Jenny
here for some other darker worse thing to kill himself?
photo stuck to the bathroom mirror us the night we met
thirty years gone into air windspray
me the same as rudderless the same me
as buoyed not buoyed
where is he
where are you, my beloved, my only one?
don’t make me so afraid to see you not to see you
the ardent man one I fought with he would never have left me
that Ken the one I love I loved
the door-spring there he is
eyes like coals and mine must be the same
we hate love each other
always
I will never forgive him the pain he causes me
that was him fucking Ann on the coats for all the it wasn’t him it wasn’t
what is this physical bond this mental bond
what terrifying joy he is alive
He says, Hugh says I have to tell you.
(okay tell)
I’ve been here all along. I’m trying to—she’s been—
I couldn’t talk to—
(meaning: I judge you she thinks you’re great)
I don’t have any way to—I can’t speak to you—
(why are we not the only people we can speak to?)
I try to think what is the worstthing that could happen, that’s why
I got angry about Mighton—I know it isn’t true
(you don’t know what I would have done
except that nothing makes any sense
no body has any salt but yours)
I can’t go back I don’t deserve, I
I deserve for you to be with … I
I deserve to lose Elle, I, I—
I, I, I, I make him stop talking like this such a fucking fake fake fake
garbage of fakeness of false pretending not to know me know us
stop stop again again
crack my head against the wall because then it will stop
crash my head on the wall, to make him see what pain he causes me
outside pain is easier to bear out out into the woods
into the empty trees and the rainsoaked leafmold under them
blind with crying what is the way to get back to my
he comes run from him
to get back to my to ourselves in this terrible thundering after me duck
branch—smack
it hitting him hitting it shouting
stop / turn
hand to eye—torn? is he blind?
he takes it away red and white not bleeding
I can’t, he says.
neither can I so dark so sad it is his turn to talk
I can’t go back to work. It’s like there is nothing left of life,
like it is all over for me. Is what I feel.
Well then don’t. this is all?
We don’t have the money.
For you to quit? We’ll sell the house. Elle can get student
loans, I’ll work, I’ll get a real job.
Not enough—I can’t—we can’t—
I’ll sell Mimi’s piano, it’s probably sixty thousand.
He laughs. That’s nowhere near—And no, I like to hear you play.
pressing his reddened eye
two hands both eyes blind
It’s not the end of the world. Have you already talked to—
never mind can’t ask, can’t pry can’t know
should say / can’t say now what the dental insurance didn’t pay for
on Elle’s teeth and the still cracked windshield on the car from nearly crashing it will have to be fixed, nothing left in the line of credit so how will that be managed … the car bucking beneath me almost going over instead touch his bruise his eye his mouth
the relief of touch
it’s all right wait a while
my own my only my love
Your eyes are beautiful.
the woods are wet from all this rain
these thirty years of rain
Help me pack up my stuff?
so we go
I guess we can go back
to dinner with Hugh and the others I guess I guess
(but there is something between him and Jenny)
(we will just agree not to look at that)