White Ivy(99)
Andrea looked glum. “Shit, I’m going to regret this in a few hours when my face bloats up before rehearsal.” She shrugged. “Oh well, make me one, too.”
Ivy spread the marshmallow fluff and peanut butter onto four slices of white bread. It wasn’t the low-calorie kind Andrea bought, but she didn’t tell her.
Ivy turned around to hand Andrea her sandwich. There were two Andreas.
“Yooo-hoo? Ivy?”
Ivy blinked and the vision went away. “I think I’m coming down with something. I’m going to stay in bed this week. Can you make sure no one bothers me? I want to sleep it off.”
Andrea swore she’d keep a lookout, promising to bring takeout pho on her way back from work. In a moment of fondness, Ivy leaned over and brushed her fingers over Andrea’s cheek. “I’d marry you if I could,” she said.
Andrea laughed, then launched into another story about her and Norman’s last date at a rave club where they’d dropped acid together—drugs really lowered your guard—and Ivy was so right, you had to teach a man how to treat you…
It was exhausting to watch someone try so hard to get such ordinary things. Andrea wanted to be wanted, to be validated, for someone to say, I’ll take care of you. “I’ll be the one taking care of you,” said Andrea, and Ivy realized she had spoken out loud. Andrea licked the corners of her lips of marshmallow fluff and lowered her voice in what Ivy knew was sure to be some confession that Andrea thought of with utmost secrecy but was, in reality, utterly insignificant.
“You know, and I didn’t even know he was—you know, when I met him…”
“He was what?”
“The founder of Swingbox.”
Something clicked in Ivy’s mind. “Wait—the company that IPOed. The billionaire founder?”
“He hated that Times article,” Andrea said proudly, reaching for a spoon and eating the peanut butter straight out of the jar.
Norman returned from his call. He pulled his chair closer to Andrea’s before sitting down, draping one arm around her shoulder. Both of them assumed a posture of grinning anticipation, as if waiting for Ivy to say Cheeeeese and take their photograph. She excused herself. Moments later, she heard their footsteps tread quietly up the stairs. She lay on her bed, waiting. It soon came. The rhythmic squeaks of a mattress, thumps of a headboard hitting the wall, a woman’s muffled moans—sounds of passion that Ivy might once have mistaken for sounds of love. Or maybe it was both. Love. Passion. Money. That they could all coexist in the ordinary, unspectacular bodies of Andrea and Norman seemed to Ivy the most miraculous of things.
* * *
PERHAPS BECAUSE OF the hair and corduroys, Andrea’s new boyfriend reminded Ivy of Daniel Sullivan, the man she, too, had thought would propose on their big trip to Vermont, but who instead told her she wasn’t wife material, that she was guarded, he didn’t know who she really was. Daniel was the only man she’d ever begged for love, perhaps the only true heartbreak of her life thus far. And still he hadn’t trusted her. She’d thought he was going to propose and he’d dumped her. She thought Gideon would dump her and he’d proposed. So why couldn’t Andrea have Machu Picchu with her new billionaire?
Early on in their relationship, Daniel had taken her on a weekend hiking trip to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. They’d hiked for six hours until her heels were bloody and her toes blistered under her wool socks. She hadn’t complained because she’d still been trying to impress him by embracing his hobbies as her own. Andrea would soon see for herself—all that sweat and blood women spilled, it was usually for nothing.
The trail they followed that day was one Daniel had created on one of his solo mountaineering trips. Ivy could still see it because he had made her memorize it in case they got separated. There was no cell service, no forest ranger for miles. The mountain had many sharp turns and mossy holds, he said, but it would be worth it because the view was spectacular. And it was. At the top of that cliff, the sky was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
On the way down, Daniel had boasted that only adventurous hikers could brave such terrain. “Do you know how many people have died in these mountains?” He listed the dangers around them: snakes and bears, drowning on the river crossing, a simple misstep that would lead to a hundred-foot drop over the cliffs. She’d had the thought that he didn’t value her life much, to bring her here so early on in their relationship, without having taken any precautionary measures for her safety. Looking back, however, she only felt thankful for the experience. Danger often created unique opportunities. Daniel had understood that.
That night, the thumping noises of hail hitting the window became, in Ivy’s dreams, the sound of Daniel’s hiking boots striding in front of her over the narrow, rain-soaked path. The backs of his heels were coated with mud and dry grass, a little mud even smeared on his herringbone gray wool socks. Once more she saw the yellow dust around the muddy, curved bend; the tiny wildflowers that poked through the underpass; the hidden platform off the top of the ledge; the V-shaped ditch, a hundred feet below, lined with ragged boulders and spires, impossible to climb back up once a person fell down down down.
* * *
SHE WOKE WITH the taste of mud in her mouth. Her room was so dark she thought it was still night, but when she flicked on the lamp, her clock read half past noon. She checked the weekly forecast on her phone. Little frost symbols lined the calendar. Three days, pattered her heart. She called Roux. She didn’t expect him to answer; in fact, she was already rallying herself to get up, dress, and drive over to Astor Towers to pound on his door. She was unprepared for his short but resigned “Hello?” Her mouth hung open in silence until he said, “Look, don’t get any ideas. I just wanted to ask about your grandmother.”