White Ivy(51)

Last night, her knee-jerk reaction after seeing him had been to gape stupidly in shock, wondering if she was seeing his doppelg?nger; he shattered this illusion by saying her name: “Ivy?” Then there had been the back-and-forth with the Speyers of You two know each other? and What a small world! followed by the inevitable questions of just how they knew each other (same hometown), and to what extent (neighbors). Then Poppy had ushered Roux and Sylvia away for a late dinner, and Ivy had retreated back to her bedroom.

She’d slept fitfully, half-hoping Gideon really would sneak into her room, but also relieved he hadn’t so she would have more time to get her story straight. She thought back to that summer day thirteen years ago, the blinking computer monitor, the dusty windowsill, the sound of the leaf blower, and felt once more the dampness of Roux’s skin, the flutter of black lashes, the look on his face, scrunched, as if in pain. No doubt Roux would recap it all for Sylvia as a bedtime story. Men loved to talk about how they lost their virginity. It was different for women. Ivy had lost her virginity at fourteen. Fourteen was two years below respectable. Fourteen was trashy territory, for girls who got themselves impregnated and had to drop out of school. Gideon thought she’d had a strict and sheltered childhood, that her parents were well-to-do entrepreneurs who’d insisted on an all-women’s college, that she’d been a virgin until eighteen: she knew he imagined the incident had come about through a chaste kiss on a fifth date, that perhaps she’d cried a little into her pillow afterward. We were only children, she’d say to Gideon. So many of life’s mistakes could be swept under this magnanimous explanation.

She took extra care in dressing that morning: white cotton shorts, a lacy scalloped blouse, navy ballerina flats. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail at the base of her neck and pinned her bangs to the side with bobby pins. A touch of concealer, bronzer, blush, lip gloss. She looked as firm and new as a poached egg.

When she came down, the Speyers were nowhere to be found. Roux was sitting in Ted’s armchair with a mug of coffee and a box of donuts. He wore a white tee and blue jeans ripped around the pockets and knees, as if he spent his time working on his hands and knees. A mechanic. A construction worker, perhaps. Definitely blue-collar, judging from the clothes and donuts.

She said his name, startled at how natural it still felt: “Hello, Roux.” At her voice, he stood up to his full height. Nothing gangly about him anymore. The traits she’d disliked about him as a boy—his unkemptness, his contempt, his familiar way of looking at her—were now the very signs of his manhood; any woman would remain aware of him long after he entered a room. Ivy felt something warm and joyful leap from his smile and latch on to her skin; she recoiled slightly, mostly out of embarrassment.

“When I saw you last night,” he said, “I couldn’t believe my eyes. Are you real? Or a ghost from my past come to haunt me?”

“I’m real.”

They stood around awkwardly until she sat down, rather primly, and he followed her lead.

“How are you? What are you doing here?” Then, without waiting for a response: “You look exactly the same.”

“So do you,” she said, though this wasn’t remotely true. She nodded at the donuts. “You still love your Dunkin’.”

Roux said he had to drive around for half an hour to find it. “It’s in this old brick building that’s supposed to look like some fancy establishment. I mean—it’s goddamn donuts. Who’re you trying to fool? Tastes the same. Want one?”

She shook her head. She noticed that Roux’s left sock had a large hole at the heel. This detail comforted her. It bridged the gap between this Roux and the seventeen-year-old one of her memories.

He asked about her life. She explained how she’d moved to New Jersey for high school and the trajectory that brought her back to Boston.

“You ended up a teacher?” He seemed to find this funny. “Damn, I feel sorry for your students!”

She laughed. “I just quit, actually. I’m going to apply to law school.” I’m having fun, she thought in amazement.

They were just getting into a comfortable rhythm when Sylvia came into the room, her hair still damp from the shower and smelling strongly of coconut oil.

“Baby, are you ready? We have to go pick up some swim trunks for you—oh, hello, Ivy.” She perched herself on the side of Roux’s armchair and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “How are you liking Finn Oaks?”

Ivy parroted the usual adjectives—beautiful, sweet, cozy—but her mind was reeling at the sight before her: Roux Roman and Sylvia Speyer, arms and legs entwined, flashing their pearly teeth at each other like a stock couple from a Hallmark card. Was there a more incongruous pairing in the entire world? Or was the clichéd allure of dating a man from the wrong side of the socioeconomic line at play here on Sylvia’s hormones? Sylvia asked Roux if he took out the car that morning and they began carrying on a side conversation about car mechanics in their bedroom voices. Sylvia nuzzled her head into Roux’s neck, calling him her “little kangaroo.” He pinched her ribs. Sylvia emitted a loud squawk. Roux cooed You like that, don’t you… don’t you… as if he were talking to a dog. Some forms of seduction were more thrilling in front of an audience, perhaps Roux and Sylvia were into that sort of thing. But as they carried on… and on… and on… Ivy thought that no self-respecting adult would behave so embarrassingly on purpose. Other people had a sense of themselves in the larger context of some objective world. For Roux and Sylvia, there was no larger context, no objective world. And thus they lacked all self-consciousness.