White Ivy(109)

“You said you saw him a few weeks ago?” Gideon asked his sister.

Ivy dropped the tissues.

“We ran into each other at Frederich’s exhibition.” Sylvia sobbed. “And I ignored him. He l-l-looked horrible… there was some woman with him…”

Gideon looked at Ivy. She couldn’t breathe. Gideon knew. His eyes were full of accusation… of hate!

Gideon tilted his head, still staring at her. His mouth moved but no sound came out of it. It took a second before Ivy realized he was mouthing tissues as his eyes flicked toward the fallen box of Kleenex on Sylvia’s carpet.

Covered in cold sweat, Ivy reached down with trembling fingers…

“How are you feeling?” he asked, thirty minutes later on their drive back.

“A little sleepy,” she said. “Too much wine.”

“I meant about Roux. You must be upset.”

“Oh, I know. It’s such a tragic accident.”

“You guys were close”—Ivy recoiled—“when you were young,” Gideon finished. His eyes gleamed red in the reflection of a stoplight.



* * *




ROUX’S MEMORIAL WAS on a Wednesday. It was drizzling, the leaves just beginning to bud, the wet earth and grass and worms drenching the graveyard with smells of spring. The ceremony was already under way when Ivy arrived. There was a small group of people, no more than twenty, most of them Italian, and two pasty-skinned men conversing in what sounded like Polish. There were only three other women there besides Ivy, all over the age of fifty and wearing identical outfits of wool, knee-length skirts with black stockings, and turtleneck sweaters with silver brooches on the left breast.

Ivy knew it was stupid of her to come. But since the article announcing Roux’s death, the floodgate had opened and she could think of nothing else but Roux. Roux, naked in his apartment, drinking orange juice. Roux at Finn Oaks, his feet propped up on the deck of the boat, one arm thrown over his eye. Roux in the tub with skin like pink pebbles. Roux’s dark locks flicking over one eye, dimples flashing, as he bent down to light a cigarette. The body she’d left behind on that mountain—she placed no more significance on it than on the roadkill she passed on the freeway. That wasn’t Roux. At least not her memories of him. But over the last month, time had slowly thawed her frozen emotions and now she awoke to the reality that Roux was really gone. It felt like a bad dream. It was as if he really had died in a hiking accident, an event that had nothing to do with her, and she was only here at his funeral to mourn their friendship, the same as any other bereaved guest.

They’d cremated his body and the ashes were held in a silver urn. When they lowered the urn to the ground, a flock of crows took off from a nearby power line; their wings flapping, their desolate cries sounded to Ivy like an accusation. She thought she was relatively hidden under the awning of a giant oak, its dark branches brushing the ground like knuckles, but one man kept glancing toward her. When he took off his sunglasses, Ivy recognized Ernesto Moretti, now a bulky man of thirty, with a long hooked nose, deep-set eyes, and floppy black hair. She stepped farther back into the tree’s shadows.

The officiant said a few words, then the mourners went up and dropped handfuls of dirt onto the mound. The workers began to fill the hole. By the time the ground was level, the light drizzle had turned into a downpour.

“Excuse me? Are you Ivy?” Ernesto’s surly face was suddenly before her. She’d been too focused on the workers.

Blood rushed to Ivy’s face. “I—no—” She backed away.

“Would you like to get a cup of coffee?”

Before she could decline, Ernesto was steering her into a black Benz parked around the corner. Ivy’s heel caught on a sewer hole. Ernesto said, “Be careful now,” and gripped her tighter with one meaty fist.

He knows everything, Ivy thought. And then the fear left her. She could finally surrender; there was need for futile pretenses in the presence of an all-knowing being.

The driver went around the corner to a Starbucks.

In a dimly lit booth, Ivy and Ernesto sat facing each other, waiting for the other to speak. The barista called out Ivy’s name. She went and fetched their drinks, carefully placing the espresso in front of Ernesto with two hands.

“Roux’s spoke of you to me,” Ernesto said finally.

“Yes.”

“So you know?”

“Yes.”

He reached down and pulled out from his briefcase a small package wrapped in brown paper.

“Open it when you get home,” he said. “If you ever need anything, my number’s on the inside. Just call.”

“What is it?” Ivy asked.

“Open it at home.”

They stared at each other—she in confusion, he with an air of expectancy.

“Thank you,” she said at last.

“You were the little girl from Fox Hill, weren’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“I never forget a face. You and Roux were always hanging around back in the old neighborhood.” All the lines on Ernesto’s face smiled with him.

Ivy said, “I guess.” Her throat closed in sorrow. She waited.

“Do you know how he died?” he asked.

“I—I read about it in the papers.”