White Ivy(41)
She walked over to the window and rolled it open. The cool air felt good on her skin. The moon was fat and pale orange, like a Ping-Pong ball hanging low in the sky between two steepled rooftops. Gideon’s street was much quieter than her own; other than the occasional rush of tires and rustling of leaves, there were no sounds. She could have been anywhere, in any city or suburb or countryside. She wished for a cigarette, for a drink, for something to break or someone to scream.
Gideon came back, rubbing his hair with a towel and wearing his favorite pair of pajamas, the pale blue ones with his initials embroidered in white thread on the breast pocket. She’d teased him mercilessly about them at first. But they’re so comfortable, he’d explained sheepishly. And it was a Christmas gift from Grandma Cuffy, on the Whitaker side; Sylvia had a matching set.
“Everything good?” he asked.
She smiled.
“I’m exhausted. Should we call it a night?”
She climbed back into bed. He was asleep within minutes but she could not sleep for a long time.
10
“IT’S NOT GOING THROUGH,” said the cashier at the co-op.
“I’ll get this one,” said Andrea, fumbling for her purse. Ivy shook her head and pulled out her second credit card—the one she’d opened for the “onetime expense” of the ski trip back in January—and handed it to the cashier. He looked embarrassed. Resentment warmed Ivy’s face. What was the big deal? The whole country was in debt.
But when she got home, she regretted buying the grapes—who knew a small bag could be so expensive, and also the organic milk. She could have bought regular. She steeled herself to check her credit card balance, then lost her nerve. Instead, she spent the night giving herself a manicure with an old bottle of nail polish. The effect was so gruesome she went to the corner nail salon the next morning. The Korean girl did a beautiful job trimming her cuticles so Ivy felt compelled to leave a large tip. Anxiety twisted her insides. She did not see how she could cut back further—she had already stopped going to movies and paying for books, coffee, restaurant delivery. Her cigarettes were her main indulgence, but each time she tried to quit, her expenses only increased because she would throw out a perfectly good pack, then immediately rush out to buy another one after her self-control ran out. All those good cigarettes, rotting in a dumpster! She’d only bought the grapes for the vitamins. She would stop buying fruit.
Ever since summer break began, she’d felt torpid and lazy, without appetite. When she stood up too quickly, she grew light-headed and had to lie back down. Her meals consisted of Andrea’s chocolate stash, eaten in a supine position, the box balanced on her chest, and cold Italian subs from the diner down the street, where, to extend the meal, she’d tear off little pieces of the stale bread and dunk them in instant coffee, letting the dough bloom in her mouth until it disintegrated. Every week, she received another email from an overachieving colleague organizing do-gooder events like repainting the gymnasium or volunteering at TeachU. She never responded.
Andrea said she was getting too thin and made Ivy weigh herself. She’d lost six pounds. “Eat this right now,” said Andrea, pushing the last bites of cheesecake across the table. Crumbs dotted Andrea’s lips; a moist tongue covered in congealed graham cracker darted out to lick them. Ivy shook her head. “How do you have so much self-control?” Andrea lamented. Ivy went outside for a smoke.
The gangsters were still there, guarding whatever precious cargo was inside their indestructible SUVs. Ivy thought of her mother’s shiny new van. Everyone needed something to live for.
She spent the day shopping at her favorite boutiques and, on a whim, bought a digital camera for Austin. Nan said he was doing better and Ivy wanted to reward him. He’d been taking his vitamins, said Nan, and Shen had put him in charge of the yardwork so he could get some sunshine every day. He was going to resume classes at a local college, where they could keep an eye on him and wake him up for his classes. Austin didn’t want to go back to school but eventually they’d persuaded him. Shen had sat down with him and they’d drawn up a schedule together: what time Austin would rise, what time he’d exercise, what time he’d eat and sleep and shit. “He just needs some discipline,” said Nan. “Even I’d get strange thoughts if I stayed locked up in my room all day long. It’s unnatural.” Ivy hadn’t left her house for four days at that point. She felt this would be futile to point out to her mother.
The digital camera had been a splurge but she justified it by asking herself when was the last time Austin received a nice gift. That month, however, she didn’t send the usual three-hundred-dollar check to Nan. She pushed her calls from home to voicemail.
* * *
ON A SCORCHING afternoon in July, she stopped by Gideon’s office for the first time. His company rented a corner unit on the tenth floor of a coworking space, furnished with Ping-Pong tables, secretaries in horn-rimmed glasses, colorful egg-shaped chairs. She met Gideon’s cofounder, Roland Wellington, a pale man with a thin nose and nasal voice, along with their ten employees: fresh-faced boys right out of Ivy League schools, and the only female employee, a pretty Indian girl in a mustard-colored turtleneck who’d just graduated from Oxford. The topic of discussion was a barbecue one of their investors, Dave Finley, was hosting the next day at his house in Wellesley. There were rumors that Mark Zuckerberg might make an appearance.