Susie Yang - White ivy

Ivy knew it was stupid of her to come. But since the article announcing Roux’s death, the floodgate had opened and she could think of nothing else but Roux. Roux, naked in his apartment, drinking orange juice. Roux at Finn Oaks, his feet propped up on the deck of the boat, one arm thrown over his eye. Roux in the tub with skin like pink pebbles. Roux’s dark locks flicking over one eye, dimples flashing, as he bent down to light a cigarette. The body she’d left behind on that mountain—she placed no more significance on it than on the roadkill she passed on the freeway. That wasn’t Roux. At least not her memories of him. But over the last month, time had slowly thawed her frozen emotions and now she awoke to the reality that Roux was really gone. It felt like a bad dream. It was as if he really had died in a hiking accident, an event that had nothing to do with her, and she was only here at his funeral to mourn their friendship, the same as any other bereaved guest.

They’d cremated his body and the ashes were held in a silver urn. When they lowered the urn to the ground, a flock of crows took off from a nearby power line; their wings flapping, their desolate cries sounded to Ivy like an accusation. She thought she was relatively hidden under the awning of a giant oak, its dark branches brushing the ground like knuckles, but one man kept glancing toward her. When he took off his sunglasses, Ivy recognized Ernesto Moretti, now a bulky man of thirty, with a long hooked nose, deep-set eyes, and floppy black hair. She stepped farther back into the tree’s shadows.

The officiant said a few words, then the mourners went up and dropped handfuls of dirt onto the mound. The workers began to fill the hole. By the time the ground was level, the light drizzle had turned into a downpour.

“Excuse me? Are you Ivy?” Ernesto’s surly face was suddenly before her. She’d been too focused on the workers.

Blood rushed to Ivy’s face. “I—no—” She backed away.

“Would you like to get a cup of coffee?”

Before she could decline, Ernesto was steering her into a black Benz parked around the corner. Ivy’s heel caught on a sewer hole. Ernesto said, “Be careful now,” and gripped her tighter with one meaty fist.

He knows everything, Ivy thought. And then the fear left her. She could finally surrender; there was need for futile pretenses in the presence of an all-knowing being.

The driver went around the corner to a Starbucks.

In a dimly lit booth, Ivy and Ernesto sat facing each other, waiting for the other to speak. The barista called out Ivy’s name. She went and fetched their drinks, carefully placing the espresso in front of Ernesto with two hands.

“Roux’s spoke of you to me,” Ernesto said finally.

“Yes.”

“So you know?”

“Yes.”

He reached down and pulled out from his briefcase a small package wrapped in brown paper.

“Open it when you get home,” he said. “If you ever need anything, my number’s on the inside. Just call.”

“What is it?” Ivy asked.

“Open it at home.”

They stared at each other—she in confusion, he with an air of expectancy.

“Thank you,” she said at last.

“You were the little girl from Fox Hill, weren’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“I never forget a face. You and Roux were always hanging around back in the old neighborhood.” All the lines on Ernesto’s face smiled with him.

Ivy said, “I guess.” Her throat closed in sorrow. She waited.

“Do you know how he died?” he asked.

“I—I read about it in the papers.”

“Do you believe it?”

She whispered, “Do you?”

Ernesto sighed, a deep rattling sound from the depths of his protruding stomach. “This shit’s fucked up. Poor fucker.” He stood up, then scanned the Starbucks with the aggression of checking for bombs.

It dawned on Ivy he was leaving. Astonishment made her feet tap violently against the floor, the rubber heels of her sneakers squeaking against the linoleum tiles.

“Wait,” she said.

Ernesto turned.

She had the wild idea of blurting out the truth—that it was her, it was her .

“Roux spoke of you, too,” she said instead. “He said your family helped him out all those years ago. He talked about his mom and your dad…”

Ernesto’s shoulders rose up. “The old man’s dead,” he said curtly. Then the door opened and the sound of rain drowned out his next words. She could see his mouth moving—the wide lips, the nicotine-stained teeth—but she couldn’t make out his voice over the rush of tires, the howling of the wind. The door closed with a sharp bang.

IVY WENT HOME and opened the package. It was a book. The glossy front cover was a photograph of some business tycoon smiling with all his teeth showing. She opened it and made a noise of surprise. The center of the pages had been cut out. There was a pristine stack of hundred-dollar bills, almost two inches thick, and a note scribbled in a childish handwriting in permanent marker: Call me when you run out . It was the same handwriting as the person who’d left her the keys to the Audi in her mailbox. She hurried to the window and drew the blinds closed.

She lay facedown on her pillow. She didn’t bother counting the money. Was he watching her, even now? No. I’m alone. The anguish came all at once, hot and suffocating. She hit the side of her head, once, twice. I’m alone, Roux.

WHENEVER SHE CAUGHT Gideon’s eyes without meaning to—looking up from cutting her steak, coming out of the bathroom, when he glanced up from his laptop without warning—Ivy would feel a jerking sensation, like when your chair leans too far back. Fear would prick her temples, her heart would wrench as if trying to leap out of her rib cage. She could see the flicker of doubt and uncertainty as he sensed in her the presence of some furtive secret.

Then she woke one morning and discovered it was May. The sun was out and the dripping of snow melting outside her windowsill sounded like hope. Gideon came over with a sesame chicken salad and a huge carton of strawberries. “First of the season,” he said. Ivy noticed that he’d cut off the stems of the strawberries, including the little brown knobs that she’d once told him she didn’t like.

“I d-don’t know why I’m crying,” she said as Gideon held her. “Look, I’ve ruined your nice s-s-sweater… I’m so s-sorry—”

“We don’t have to rush things, you know,” he said, smoothing her hair. “If you feel any doubts whatsoever…”

She practically had to beg him to marry her all over again, blubbering that it wasn’t the wedding, she loved him and she wanted to marry him, she was just being sentimental, her grandmother was getting old, there was so much pressure —

“But that’s what I’m saying,” Gideon said, gripping her tightly by the shoulders, his own lips pale, his eyes insistent with some unutterable message he wished her to understand. “There shouldn’t be any pressure. We can push things back, take our time to make sure this is what we really want, what you really want. I don’t want you to regret anything—”

“You don’t love me anymore?” she whispered. He knew. He knew.

I love you, he said, of course I love you. But he wanted her to be sure, he felt guilty sometimes because—

She kissed him to stop him from talking about guilt and other laughable things he couldn’t possibly understand.

After that, no more was said about delaying the wedding.

From time to time, when Gideon didn’t know she was watching him, she would see on his face the same conflicted, unhappy expression that told her she wasn’t doing a good enough job of hiding her restless paranoia. She was on constant vigil against herself, observing her face each morning with the suspicion one feels for an enemy spy masquerading as a friend. She felt she was capable of anything—her arms might jerk the steering wheel and send her body careening into the Charles, her hands might choke her to death in her sleep. If only she could make it to the wedding, she would be able to breathe again. All her old hopeful vibrancy would be restored to those early days of her and Gideon’s courtship, when the city air seemed perfumed with wine and sweet blossoms, and the indestructible certainty of her life was as present as her own heartbeat.