White Ivy(97)

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GIDEON SAID THE meeting with Costa Rica’s health minister had gone well. They would receive their funding check at a formal dinner on Friday. He asked after Meifeng’s recovery.

“Nothing can slow her down,” said Ivy. “She ate more than all of us combined, and was complaining that she wasn’t allowed to drink liquor.”

“I hope I’m that spirited when I’m eighty.”

“Eighty-seven.”

“Wow.”

Ivy heard a man’s voice in the background and Gideon turned away from the phone briefly to respond to him. It always made Ivy lonely to hear noisy gatherings in Gideon’s background. His life always seemed so busy without her; her phone line was always clear.

“How’s Costa Rica?” she asked.

“Humid. These mosquitoes are eating us alive down here. One of our engineers was sick all night from dinner.”

“You want to practice your speech with me?”

“You don’t mind?”

“Of course not.”

She waited as he went to fetch his computer. When he returned, she lay down diagonally on the bed, closed her eyes, and let the soothing cadence of his voice wash over her like a warm bath. Nan said that the secret to marriage was that you had to give a man something to fight for. But Gideon was not Shen Lin. He was not a fighter or a gambler, and he would not believe that a woman who’d been with another man could truly love him, could love him more purely because she had been with another man, to spare him her own depravity. Five days. Ivy tried to imagine the future waiting for her in five days. A Gideon-less future. It was as unimaginable to her as a formless desert upon which she would wander aimlessly, running through the shimmering heat toward golden palaces and lush palm trees that were not there.



* * *




SHE CRAWLED INTO bed that night with Meifeng. She wanted to lie still and lick her wounds, like a sick cat. Meifeng was surprised but pleased. “Just don’t kick me,” she warned. “I might break my other hip.”

Ivy asked if it’d hurt when she fell.

“A pinch. I called out for help but Shen wasn’t home, just your mother. She carried me on her back to the car and drove me to the hospital.” Meifeng sighed. “Nan’s not a young woman anymore. I didn’t think she’d have the strength. It’s good to have children, Baobao. They’re insurance for old age.”

“I don’t want kids,” said Ivy.

“To understand a parent’s love, you have to have kids yourselves.”

“It’s too risky. You have no idea what kind of monster will pop out of you.” Ivy knew now what kind of blood ran in her veins. It was no kind to pass on.

“Monster! What kind of stupid idea is that? If you don’t have kids, who will take care of you then if you fall in the shower?”

“A live-in nurse. Nurses don’t expect anything from you. You pay them to do a job. It’s clean and fair.”

Meifeng snorted. “There’s no outtalking you when you get like this.” She reached for her mug of tea, wincing a little with discomfort. “You’ve always had strange ideas about children. Remember the time you wet the bed because you saw that little ghost girl? You begged me to leave the light on.”

“I’d just watched The Exorcist.” Ivy laughed, then shivered. “I thought the devil that had possessed the girl would come through the TV and get me.” Her eight-year-old self had been frozen at the image of the black spirit entering her, turning her into a thrashing child-monster.

“But I didn’t keep it on,” said Meifeng. “Too wasteful, I thought. I’ve always regretted not providing you comfort that night. I keep imagining how scared you must have been to wet the bed. It’s strange to be old. All the little regrets keep you up at night.”

Ivy huddled her head reassuringly into Meifeng’s shoulder. After a silence, she murmured, “Do you believe that the bad things we’ve done come back to haunt us?”

“I can’t say I do. I’ve done plenty of bad things. I’ve been punished for some of them but overall, I’ve had a good life.” Ivy felt Meifeng’s body rise in a shrug. “Ask me after I’ve died. Maybe the punishment comes in the next life.”

“What bad things have you done?”

“Ha! What haven’t I done?” She began to list her sins in a grim voice that betrayed a hint of pride—Meifeng, at least, hadn’t changed much from the grandmother of Ivy’s youth. She still believed her wrongdoings were another form of survival, a method of getting the upper hand on a world that had always tried to get an upper hand on her.

All day long, Ivy’s mind had been a buzzard circling around something she couldn’t yet pin down. She thought of Roux, of the gun. She thought of Nan’s past, of Shen’s stoicism and ignorance, of Mimi the employee who was probably a better daughter than Ivy was to Nan and Shen, and of Austin’s fancy suit, and of family and money and past mistakes, and of Gideon, most of all, of Gideon.

“Have you ever killed anyone?” she interrupted Meifeng’s nostalgic monologue.

“Once,” said Meifeng, adjusting the blanket around her hips.

Ivy stilled. “You never told me that.”