White Ivy(57)
“Sylvia was always a bad sleeper,” said Poppy, referencing a photo of Gideon and Sylvia sleeping underneath a striped blanket, crown touching crown, one of Sylvia’s arms thrown over Gideon’s chest. “They shared a bed until high school. When Sylvia finally asked for her own room, it almost broke my heart.” She pointed out another photo of Gideon and Sylvia soaking naked in a freestanding white tub. “And they loved their bath time. After every softball game or beach day, they’d beg for their rubber duckies and vanilla-scented bubbles.”
Ivy saw no bubbles or rubber duckies in the photo. The smooth brown of Sylvia’s back, the sinewy back of a teenager, was sliced in half by the surface of the water. Gideon’s brown legs were tucked between his sister’s in the small tub, which was a normal-sized tub but felt small in proportion to the long-limbed siblings inhabiting it. Ivy and Austin had never been allowed to sleep side by side, only head to feet, like sardines, and Nan always took great care to inform them that the genders were never to mix, Ivy should never let a boy see her nude, even her own brother or father. Was this perversity, then, this freedom between Gideon and Sylvia? Or innocence? But the innocent were often perverse, the perverse innocent.
Later that afternoon, the roof began to leak, staining the old floorboards in dark gray rivulets. Ivy and Gideon had been eating a cold pasta salad in the alcove when Poppy cried out, “Oh! Oh! Someone get me a bucket!” They hurried to the living room. Sylvia was covering her head with the coffee-table book Roux had been reading the other day. Roux, for some reason, was naked from the waist up and wringing his shirt into a potted plant. Ted came running down from upstairs, his hair flattened on one side, clearly having just awoken from a nap. “A bucket, Ted, hand me a bucket,” Poppy cried. Ted picked up one of the woven baskets by the fireplace. “A bucket, not a basket.” Ted’s face turned as bright as the tomatoes in the fruit bowl. Roux began to laugh. He draped his wet T-shirt like a towel around his neck. “You look like the plumber,” Ivy informed him. Soon they were all laughing, Poppy the hardest, shrieks of uncouth laughter emitting from her dainty bird mouth.
The small leak had the effect of a thunderstorm in clearing the stifling air. They placed basins to catch the drops falling from the ceiling and mopped up the remaining puddles. “Our old cottage has been showing its age,” said Poppy, “but we haven’t gotten around to repairs.” She gave a regretful sigh. When Roux said he knew a contractor in Boston who could do the job, Poppy said, “What a wonderful idea, I must think it over,” which was her way of deflecting unwanted suggestions. Afterward, they ate ice cream sitting on the porch, listening to the pitter-patter of the rain while Poppy and Ted regaled them with anecdotes about the storms their “dear Finn Oaks” had weathered throughout the years. The way the Speyers spoke about old objects, chipped teacups, rusted silver spoons, the old gramophone they found in the attic, as if they were living creatures, was absurdly charming to Ivy. Sylvia sat beside her on the love seat. “The ice cream made me so cold all of a sudden,” she said, shivering and dropping her head onto Ivy’s shoulder. Ivy felt an unexpected thrill, not unlike the feeling when the boy who’d bullied you in school suddenly confessed he’d done so because he liked you. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of rain and salt and soft female warmth, all the while keeping pace with Sylvia’s breaths rising and falling against her arm.
I must have been overreacting, she told herself. Sylvia has no reason to begrudge me.
The good mood carried over to the next day when they finally woke to a broiling sun and cloudless blue skies. The younger crowd decided to take the boat to Coven Island and go clamming for that night’s dinner. Poppy packed them turkey sandwiches and a huge Tupperware of new strawberries. Gideon filled the icebox with beers.
It was not yet ten o’clock on Friday morning and already the marina was teeming with families, dogs running off-leash, fishermen perched on the yellow and orange rocks jutting into the harbor. At the edge of the water a gray shingled shack had a placard that read CATTAHASSET YACHT CLUB. Farther up the road was Cattahasset Point Club, a multilevel estate with two enormous white wraparound decks in which couples and groups of middle-aged women brunched underneath striped umbrellas.
“It gets more crowded every year.” Sylvia frowned, narrowly avoiding being barreled down by two boys in matching sailor shirts. “When we came here as kids, there was hardly anyone around. Now look.”
She was right about the summer tourists, but Ivy was delighted rather than put off by the crowds. Vacation, in her view, should be a little excessive sometimes—it couldn’t always be solitary beach walks and books and restrained dinner conversations about politics and art—and the loud, happy voices of people in flip-flops and open-collared shirts drinking iced lattes seemed the perfect antidote to the hushed atmosphere of Finn Oaks. She slipped her arm through Gideon’s. He said, “Hey there,” and she said, “Hey there,” and they smiled at each other. He led them to the pier where the boats were bobbing up and down on the water, indistinguishable to Ivy’s eyes.
The Speyers’ boat was small and white except for two green stripes running along the side. The four of them fit quite comfortably with Gideon taking the driver’s seat, Ivy perched on a bench in the cockpit, and Roux and Sylvia up front on the deck. A small set of stairs led down to a tiny cabin. Soon they were swerving past the other sailboats, the little yacht club where Gideon had parked shrinking into a flat square in the distance. Their boat was fast and light in the water. Gideon pointed out various landmarks on the coast; on the bow, Roux’s arm was draped around Sylvia’s waist. She’d already taken off her cover-up and was sunbathing in a black lace bikini.