White Ivy(60)
She spent the next half hour exploring a small cove by the cliffs, to give the appearance of amusing herself. When she got back, the siblings had returned.
“How was your walk?” said Gideon.
“Marvelous. Look what I found.” Ivy showed him the little seashells and dead mollusks she’d collected. She was relieved to see that Sylvia and Roux had moved on to their own towels a little ways away. Sylvia was lying on her belly, tickling Roux’s nose with a feather. Ivy looked away but she sensed every one of their movements and she felt she was suffering.
She snuggled her head into the crook of Gideon’s shoulder. His hair, normally neatly combed, was curly and coarse with sand and the tip of his nose was pink from where he had missed a spot applying sunscreen. She flipped over onto her stomach and leaned in for a kiss. Gideon gave her a quick peck but she prolonged the contact, leaning her weight into him and running her tongue over the ridges of his teeth. She could feel his surprise in the stiffness of his chest. For once, she didn’t stop herself. Why should she? She was his girlfriend. She had rights. Needs.
Gideon wrangled free from her grasp with a bemused smile.
“I love you,” said Ivy.
He opened his mouth. A second passed. There came the sound of waves lapping at the rocky cliffs. She flipped over onto her back and let her eyes drift. This isn’t real, she thought. None of this is real.
“I care about you a lot,” came Gideon’s tender voice. The tenderness was meant for himself, she knew, and not for her, tenderness meant to reaffirm the position he was determined to take. She felt his hands over hers, his soft lips lingering on the center of her palm. She didn’t move. Then his face filled her vision, he was on top of her, kissing her mouth with a fervor she had never known. Instinct made her draw her arms around his neck and arch her back off the sand. His hand was on her lower back, something wild and frantic released in her—she slipped one hand down the cold, wet waistband of his swim trunks, cupping between his legs. He was completely flaccid. He continued to kiss her, his tongue wet and hungry, running his hand down her back. Above them, the sky darkened. It was Sylvia’s shadow blocking the sun.
“Sorry to break up the show but we should get going soon if we want to catch any clams—we’re going to miss low tide.”
* * *
CLAMMING—OF ALL THE ridiculous activities WASPs loved, this one took the cake. Ivy had imagined that clamming would involve a boat and nets, similar to catching lobsters or crabs, but really, it was just pulling a rake through the sand until you hauled in something, and more often than not, it was a pebble or a shell, and not anything edible. They arrived at the Great Pond to kids splashing around little tide pools while their parents, in large sun hats and rolled-up chinos, dug for their dinner with a Puritan work ethic that would have made Ivy’s yam-digging farmer ancestors proud.
It was the golden hour, the sky a haloed blue with wistful streaks of pink and orange, a sliver of a moon high in the sky. After they collected enough clams, they headed to a nearby park for the bake. Gideon got out Poppy’s aluminum stockpot and set it on the outdoor grill; Roux and Sylvia dumped the clams inside with an entire stick of butter, half a bottle of Albari?o wine, and a bunch of bayberries. They all gathered on the grass, getting rapidly drunk, brushing sand from their legs and the hollows underneath their ankles. When the shells popped open, they feasted, all of them starving, and no one talked much as they chewed on Portuguese bread, driftwood-smoked clam meat, another bottle of wine. The sky slowly darkened. Moths flittered toward the streetlights. Everyone was beautiful but their beauty had a sinister quality, like the beauty of Venetian masks that might hide the glorious or grotesque. The sight of Roux and Sylvia sharing a kiss was enough to bring sudden tears to Ivy’s eyes. I care about you a lot. But caring a lot was not love. Caring without loving was only pity. Roux looked at her. It was too late to rearrange her expression. His eyes were dark and stormy and honest—the only honest thing around her!
At ten o’clock, Gideon said they had to get going if they wanted to make it home before the tide turned. He held her hand very tightly on the walk back to the boat. She felt like telling him to cut it out, he didn’t have to mollify her in these cheap ways, as if she were such a simpleton, like Andrea, the kind of naive girl who’d believe in such apologies. It occurred to Ivy that she and Gideon had never before quarreled. He’d never had a reason to apologize. Now he did and she was the one who was sorry.
Immediately after they boarded the boat, she went down into the cabin area and lay on the trundle bed. It was hard, cramped, and smelled of seaweed. From the little window she saw the hazy brushstrokes of the Milky Way: burning stars millions of miles away, where she wished she could be, if only she could be reborn as something other. She counted two hundred stars before she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep. The next thing she knew, she opened her eyes and Gideon was murmuring, We’re back.
14
THE NEXT MORNING, IVY WAS in the kitchen making breakfast before anyone else was awake. Roux was the first one down. He took one look at her appearance—fully made-up, her hair clasped back in a mother-of-pearl clip, a new apron tied around her skirt—and asked whose body she’d buried. “Gideon find out and put you in the doghouse?” he added, pouring himself a cup of coffee. Instead of leaving for his usual morning donut run, he sat on one of the barstools and watched as she arranged the raspberries in concentric circles atop a bowl of yogurt. “You missed a spot here,” he said, plucking up a raspberry and popping it into his mouth. “Better start again.”