Close to Hugh Read Online Free PDF Page B

movie.”
    She draws her thumb along her bottom lip to lock her mouth closed. Then she says, “It’s a new mattress.”
    “Well, that’s—perfect,” Ivy says. “Ann.”
    Ann takes her cheque and goes away.
    The inlet of river spears right up into the side garden. Here, close by the window, Ivy can see it lapping, happy at the brink. Yellow kayak belly-down against a silvered old stepladder, black steps cut into the green bank of grass. The boy must use it. Or maybe that’s Ann’s shirt flung to dry across the yellow. Ivy tries the window again, but nope. It is painted stuck, three inches up. A flap in the storm window lifts to reveal three round ventilation holes, a slight breath of air. Ivy presses her face against wavering glass to see the real river’s edge. Railway ties brace the bank; the river floods every year, Ann said. Perfect, Ivy tells herself. If it floods, the kayak will float up to my sill—I need a chisel to pry this window open—and I’ll paddle away. Somehow managing to screw myself into the kayak without flipping upside down.
    She lets the curtain fall and listens. Down the hall, the boy, the son is laughing, cackling. Sounds like he’s practising laughing. Not much to laugh about in this strange vacant house. The living room downstairs is entirely empty. No chairs, not even a carpet. Bare fireplace, hearth and innards stark black. Not one picture. Ann’s aesthetic “embraces austerity.”
    In her hollowed-out, hallowed-up bedroom, the empty space, the holy, Ivy sits on the bed for a little while—planning, in spite of herself, what to put on the empty shelves.
    Next, back to the school office to sign forms and get keys. She walks along reading Arms and the Man , for relief from Sweeney Todd . A car horn blats beside her, and she jumps.
    It’s the school principal—Rosy, Jeep, Cherry—Jerry Pink. “Want a lift?”
    “Oh, thanks,” Ivy says. “That would be—perfect.” She feels sad to leave the leaf-strewn sidewalk. “Pretty town,” she says, with some idea of flattering Mr. Pink by extension.
    “Full of divorcées.” Eyes on her, not on the road. He laughs. “You always read a book while you’re walking? Better not let our parents see you doing that.”
    Ivy does not need to ask why not: it looks weird. She doesn’t mind.
    “Party at my house tonight, after Meet the Teacher—we hand out the teaching awards from last year. Newell is coming, and the great AnselBurton, all you drama types. Come along and get acquainted. I’ll send a kid to pick you up.”
    He swings into the drive by the portables. Pats her leg, staring to see if that causes trouble. Ivy stares back at him using her Downs’ syndrome face, borrowed from her last gig, an interactive improv workshop production for the differently abled, one of the best things she’s ever done in her life. I am completely unaware of you as a man, and therefore not prey, her face says. Plus, see? I am ugly. She steps out of the car.
    He laughs again. “No more reading books while you walk!” he shouts as he pulls away.
    The world is so full of men, no wonder there are so many divorcées.
    Ivy walks home in the late afternoon. A long walk in sprinkling rain; she should have taken her car after all. The woman (Ann, Ann is her name; and Jay?—no, the son is Jason) is moving a big armoire out of the living room. The last piece of furniture left in there. With a mat under one end, Ann is yanking it along foot by foot.
    Ivy can’t get up the stairs until the thing is shifted. “Do you need help?”
    “I learned how after the divorce,” Ann says. “You can move anything you want to by yourself.”
    “Where are you putting it?”
    “Out.”
    Ivy steadies the other end and pushes. Not too much, so she’s not butting in and helping. They make some headway.
    The son— Jason , yes—blows in like leaves drifting through the front door. He slides through the armoire gap and up the stairs, completely silent, dragging a gym bag, a