White Ivy(65)

Slowly, she let out her breath, the room coming back into focus. Her first thought was to check the window—thank God it was closed and their sounds, quiet as they were, hadn’t reached the beach. Her second thought was that it wouldn’t be long now before the Speyers came back inside to get ready for bed. Still, she allowed herself to lower down to rest her cheek on Roux’s chest.

“Do you have any cigarettes left?”

Roux motioned at his crumpled jeans. Ivy fished out a battered pack of Camels from his back pocket. He lit hers, then his own. He smoked with his left hand, his right hand draped in the valley between her chafed thighs. She picked up a coffee mug from the bedside table and placed it on the bed between them as an ashtray. “I’m going to break up with Gideon tomorrow,” she said as the flood of pleasure released from the nicotine reached her brain. “Stay tonight. I have nothing on my schedule next week. I can go with you to New York tomorrow.”

It was startling to see Roux’s smile without any of its usual derision or irony or scorn. His smile was just that. A man smiling because he was happy. “You’re beautiful,” he said, running his hand down her leg. Her heart fluttered with delight and sorrow. Beautiful… Roux was the first person ever to have called her that.

“What are you going to tell Sylvia?” she asked. For a second, as his hand paused in its caresses, she was afraid. But then he frowned and said he would tell her the truth, that it was never that serious to begin with. His dismissal of his girlfriend, contrary to Ivy’s expectations, felt like a letdown. She would rather it had been a struggle for Roux to choose between them. “Why were you even with her then?” she asked.

“Why else? Her face.”

Ivy looked out the window, where the shadow of the oak tree brushed up against the glass like gigantic palm fronds. “I should go. They’ll be coming up soon. Will you wait for me until tomorrow?”

She heard the thrum of his voice reverberating against her eardrums as he brushed his lips on her temple: “Of course.” Ivy suddenly saw that life could always be easy like this. A postcoital cigarette. Pillow plans. Honest duplicity, instead of the infinitely more exhausting duplicitous honesty.



* * *




I CONSIDER THAT our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Romans 8:18. The priest closed his Bible. Let us pray.

Ivy closed her eyes. Uncertainty gripped her. Had she done another stupid thing last night? She pictured Gideon’s downturned face working on his laptop, distant and unbothered, oblivious—or indifferent—to her sufferings. Her heart hardened. Then she tried to imagine the glory awaiting her with Roux. They’d leave New England, forsake its frigid winters and maddening rotaries and crumbling brick buildings, for… for what? She pictured the hole in Roux’s sock. The faded workman jeans. At least he had some money and a nice car. Maybe they could go on a road trip across the country, eat burgers and chug beer while drifting through gambling towns like the lovestruck couple in a country song music video. They’d make their way to California, buy a ranch house, plant a lemon grove. It was a version of someone’s success, somewhere in the world.

Around her, the congregation stood as one, hymn books open. Their voices rose through the dome: Shall we gather at the river… Where bright angel feet have trod… Ivy glanced down the pew where the four Speyers’ heads were bent, sunshine halos around their crowns, their sweet voices singing together in harmony. If you love me, she thought at Gideon, you’ll look at me. If one couldn’t ask for a sign in a church, then where could one ask? But he didn’t look at her. He didn’t look.



* * *




GIDEON ASKED IF she wanted to take one last walk down to the beach, he said there was something he wanted to say to her. She almost wished to save him the effort; he looked so pale and serious, still dressed in his black Sunday suit, as if returning from a funeral, with two frown lines between his brows. But then her eyes met Roux’s across the kitchen countertop. He gave her an imperceptible nod and she smiled bravely to show she understood.

She followed Gideon across the lawn, which over the past week had become as familiar to her as her own house. Down the narrow trail with its vivid fuchsia rugosas, the bushes lush and overgrown from days of rain, and the sand, damp and soft, between her toes all the way until the water’s edge. Gideon walked barefoot, his pants rolled up to midcalf. She stepped inside the lines of his footprints. Even with sandals on, her feet could not fill the indent.

They didn’t talk much. Gideon occasionally pointed out a neighbor’s house: See that flat-looking one facing us? The Scollocks live there year-round…They don’t have kids and mostly keep to themselves… Mr. Scollock takes a swim every morning for his arthritis… the Clarks are in that one… Always small talk first. Then business. There was an order to everything for people like the Speyers.

“It’s nice that you’re close with your neighbors,” said Ivy.

“This”—Gideon waved his arm at the ocean—“is in my blood. I get homesick all the time for this place. When I was little, I’d make my parents drive here from Andover in the dead of winter just so I could climb these rocks. My best summers were here. My first kiss, my first, well, you know.” They’d stopped by a part of the beach hidden from view of both the Clarks and the Scollocks. Tangled strips of seaweed draped over a piece of driftwood like a rotting carcass. Ivy tried to imagine a young, naked Gideon rolling around in this smelly, dead stretch of beach. Such self-abandonment was beyond her comprehension of him. But he had been that way once. Just never with her.