interesting,” she’d said, but I couldn’t tell if she’d actually liked it.
It wasn’t until a few weeks after Christmas that I got the chance to prove to someone that Hugo was a real person. My mother told me she was going to visit me in Montreal for the weekend, her first visit since driving me in the fall.
“I want you to meet my mother,” I said to Hugo that night.
“Sure.” He was sitting on the couch reading a magazine.
“She’s visiting this weekend. I told her about you.”
“Oh,” he said.
Hugo wasn’t close to his parents. My mother and I had naturally gravitated to each other after my father’s death, but Hugo distanced himself from his parents, who, unable to cope with the sprawling mess of grief associated with Marie’s death, became crazy in a way that pushed Hugo away from them. They’d decided that if they answered two fundamental questions, they would somehow get over their sadness. What concerned them most was whether or not Marie was safe and happy in the afterworld and what had they done to deserve her death. They shopped around for opinions. For their first question they found a medium who, with the help of one of Marie’s unwashed t-shirts, fell into a trance as she attempted to make contact with her in the realm of the spirits. Hugo imitated the medium’s voice for me—low and reedy and definitely otherwordly. Marie was fine, she told them.
For their second question, they settled on religion and concluded that the cost of their sins had been too great. Less than a year after Marie died, they sat Hugo down and confessed their sins to him. Affairs they’d had, money stolen from jobs. His father urged him to confess his sins too, but Hugo couldn’t speak. He wracked his brain and couldn’t remember anything he’d ever done wrong in his life. What did anyone do to deserve anything? Fat tears rolled down his parents’ cheeks as they spilled their secrets and Hugo just sat there, silent. It occurred to him that his parents could do whatever they wanted and maybe they’d get goodness, but they could just as easily get fluky tragedy. It didn’t matter. After he moved out, he hardly talked to his parents again and he told me that other people’s parents made him feel uncomfortable too.
“I don’t know, babe,” he said. “Maybe it’s too soon.”
“What do you mean?”
“We just started seeing each other. Let’s take it easy.”
I’d assumed that this step was a natural part of the trajectory of our relationship. We’d been together for over a month, and although I knew it wasn’t a long time, it felt more substantial than that. When I wasn’t with Hugo, the yearning I felt for him was overwhelming, a rumble in my belly, something gnawing and impossible to brush away. I’d never felt that way about anyone else. Hugo looked up from the magazine and saw my disappointment.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll meet her.”
As much as I loved every bit of Hugo and told myself I didn’t care what my mother thought of him, I cut his hair the day before she arrived, just a trim because it was frizzing out into clown wig territory. We were by the window and he kept his eyes closed as I cut the shaggier parts. My hair was a bit longer than his, and I would use his mousse to scrunch it up into curls. They came out more like frizzy waves, but there was something vaguely comforting about matching my boyfriend, or at least trying to.
“What if I don’t want to meet her?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Adults make me uncomfortable.”
“You’re an adult,” I said to him. “And it’s really important to me.”
“Is that a threat?”
When we were done, he swept the hair off the floor. Later I picked up a lock he’d missed. I recalled my high school geometry class, using a compass to draw perfect circles. His hair in my hand curled just like a Fibonacci spiral, the kind of perfection you find only in nature.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that Hugo never ended up
It wasn’t until a few weeks after Christmas that I got the chance to prove to someone that Hugo was a real person. My mother told me she was going to visit me in Montreal for the weekend, her first visit since driving me in the fall.
“I want you to meet my mother,” I said to Hugo that night.
“Sure.” He was sitting on the couch reading a magazine.
“She’s visiting this weekend. I told her about you.”
“Oh,” he said.
Hugo wasn’t close to his parents. My mother and I had naturally gravitated to each other after my father’s death, but Hugo distanced himself from his parents, who, unable to cope with the sprawling mess of grief associated with Marie’s death, became crazy in a way that pushed Hugo away from them. They’d decided that if they answered two fundamental questions, they would somehow get over their sadness. What concerned them most was whether or not Marie was safe and happy in the afterworld and what had they done to deserve her death. They shopped around for opinions. For their first question they found a medium who, with the help of one of Marie’s unwashed t-shirts, fell into a trance as she attempted to make contact with her in the realm of the spirits. Hugo imitated the medium’s voice for me—low and reedy and definitely otherwordly. Marie was fine, she told them.
For their second question, they settled on religion and concluded that the cost of their sins had been too great. Less than a year after Marie died, they sat Hugo down and confessed their sins to him. Affairs they’d had, money stolen from jobs. His father urged him to confess his sins too, but Hugo couldn’t speak. He wracked his brain and couldn’t remember anything he’d ever done wrong in his life. What did anyone do to deserve anything? Fat tears rolled down his parents’ cheeks as they spilled their secrets and Hugo just sat there, silent. It occurred to him that his parents could do whatever they wanted and maybe they’d get goodness, but they could just as easily get fluky tragedy. It didn’t matter. After he moved out, he hardly talked to his parents again and he told me that other people’s parents made him feel uncomfortable too.
“I don’t know, babe,” he said. “Maybe it’s too soon.”
“What do you mean?”
“We just started seeing each other. Let’s take it easy.”
I’d assumed that this step was a natural part of the trajectory of our relationship. We’d been together for over a month, and although I knew it wasn’t a long time, it felt more substantial than that. When I wasn’t with Hugo, the yearning I felt for him was overwhelming, a rumble in my belly, something gnawing and impossible to brush away. I’d never felt that way about anyone else. Hugo looked up from the magazine and saw my disappointment.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll meet her.”
As much as I loved every bit of Hugo and told myself I didn’t care what my mother thought of him, I cut his hair the day before she arrived, just a trim because it was frizzing out into clown wig territory. We were by the window and he kept his eyes closed as I cut the shaggier parts. My hair was a bit longer than his, and I would use his mousse to scrunch it up into curls. They came out more like frizzy waves, but there was something vaguely comforting about matching my boyfriend, or at least trying to.
“What if I don’t want to meet her?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Adults make me uncomfortable.”
“You’re an adult,” I said to him. “And it’s really important to me.”
“Is that a threat?”
When we were done, he swept the hair off the floor. Later I picked up a lock he’d missed. I recalled my high school geometry class, using a compass to draw perfect circles. His hair in my hand curled just like a Fibonacci spiral, the kind of perfection you find only in nature.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that Hugo never ended up
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