White Ivy(42)

Gideon invited Ivy to come, but warned her that she might find it boring as it would be an older crowd.

“I’m happy to come,” she said.

“You’ll love Dave and Liana,” Roland added.

“Everyone loves Dave and Liana,” said Gideon. Something about his tone made Ivy’s ears perk up. These people whom he’d never mentioned until now were special to Gideon in some way. Each new member of his social circle was a potential key that might allow her further access into his interior life, a place she saw as a series of rooms through a long corridor, of which she had only frequented the outermost rooms. She thought she would feel more secure since they’d made their relationship official six weeks ago, but actually, it was the opposite. Their intimacy hadn’t caught up with the proclamation, and in fact, they became more unnatural around each other because both felt the pressure to appear closer—in one horrible instance last week, she’d tried out Giddy-Bear as a nickname and could see, even in her tipsy state, that he was taken back. “Y-y-yyes?” he’d stammered in response. She was embarrassed, he was embarrassed, and she’d reverted back to calling him by his proper name. It was easier to display affection in front of Tom and Marybeth and Andrea. When they faltered, they could simply fall back on familiar group dynamics. Alone, however, there was nothing to defuse the underlying awkwardness, as if they were two actors in a play, trying to cue the other into remembering the right lines, only their scripts were slightly different.

Dave Finley’s barbecue turned out to be the kind of gathering that made Ivy glad she had splurged, after an agonizing hour debating with herself, on an expensive blowout at a downtown salon and a new pleated midi dress with a high ruffle neck. A prim-and-proper trophy wife. She’d taken her cue from Gideon—he showed up at her house in a linen seersucker suit, that particular shade of Easter blue lightening his hair to a creamy almond blond so that she wanted to lick him.

On the way over, Gideon told her the basic facts: Dave was his longtime mentor and one of the partners at the largest VC firm in Boston; his wife, Liana, was a human rights lawyer turned philanthropist; they had a five-year-old daughter named Coco. Because of Coco’s age, Ivy imagined Dave Finley in his late thirties or early forties, powerfully built, with cunning eyes and dark stubble over a cleft chin. But when a lithe, white-haired gentleman cut across the lawn to welcome them, Ivy realized she’d pictured the Dave Finley from twenty years ago. This Dave wore jeans, striped espadrilles, and a sports shirt of some terry cloth material. No one else at the party was dressed so casually. It was one way of displaying power: to show you didn’t have to dress up for anyone. A maze of laugh lines covered his deeply tanned face, the kind of face you immediately pictured on boating catalogs or ads for senior homes in Florida.

“You look marvelous, my dear,” he said, his blue eyes bright and admiring as he enveloped Ivy’s hand with his own. When he leaned forward, she could smell the alcohol on his breath, along with something medicinal. Within minutes, using the same twinkling charm, he managed to extract from her her age, education, job, pay grade, all without coming across as presumptuous or nosy.

“Teaching is a noble calling,” Dave said, flashing very white, very straight teeth. “If only they weren’t so underpaid and overworked. I was just in Korea last month. Teachers over there are deities. The parents bombard them with gifts—electronics, vacations, sometimes good old cash—and they’re asked to become godparents and host baptisms. Forget tenure, there’s a shortage of qualified teachers there. The good ones can work wherever they want. Over here, teachers live like church mice, off the scraps of public funding and are forced to plagiarize shoddy research papers to make a name for themselves.”

“I suppose that’s true,” said Ivy. He seemed to be under the impression she was a professor of some kind. “My first graders sometimes bribe me with Girl Scout cookies,” she joked.

He appeared not to hear her.

“And most of our teachers are quite stupid. The folks in Utah are telling their students that the theory of evolution is created by the devil to discredit Jesus. And just look at the state of our STEM education compared to other countries. Disgraceful, is what it is.”

“Well, not everyone—”

“Of course not. Like I said—a noble calling. You’ve a golden heart, my dear, I can see it beating as we speak.” Dave’s gaze roamed around the lawn. “Where is Liana?”

It seemed impossible to Ivy that Dave would be able to spot his wife through the throng of guests in elaborate blazers and summer dresses, fluttering from group to group like butterflies methodically pollinating every flower in the garden, while the catering staff, severe in their black vests and white gloves, hovered around them like giant moths carrying trays of canapés and cold drinks in various sherbet colors.

“There she is.” Dave called out to a tall Asian woman standing on the upper deck holding a child in her arms.

Holy hell, thought Ivy.

Liana Finley had one of the ugliest faces she’d ever seen. Wider than it was long, and asymmetrical, with one cheekbone higher than the other, the jawline neither round nor square. A shimmering pink-and-white silk qipao hugged every long line of her erect stature, the slit up to the hipbone revealing a muscled bronze leg. Spray tan? No, that was just Liana Finley’s skin tone. No wonder Dave had been able to spot her. She would be eye-catching in any crowd, the fierce Chinese-Amazonian.