What Happened to Ivy (10 page)

At a flash of movement in my peripheral vision, I glance up.

Rushing toward me is Hannah. Every inch of her skin is glistening. Strands of sweaty hair stick to her face. She hurls herself to her knees beside me, practically collapsing against me.

“I needed him to be better,” she cries. “I thought he was perfect.”

The back of Hannah’s shirt is damp beneath my hands. She smells like summer even though she’s been running.

“But you wouldn’t lie to me, David. Why would you? I just…” She wipes her face across my shirt. “I just didn’t want to have to believe you.”

Chapter 25

All I can do is hold her. She doesn’t try to say anything more and I can’t speak at all. What is there to say now, anyway?
I’m sorry. I’m sorry, too.
Hannah’s breathing gradually returns to normal and she eases herself away from me.

“I have to go,” she says, standing up and brushing dirt off her knees.

As she’s crossing the street to go home, I can see I’ve left grubby handprints on the back of her shirt. My shirt’s still damp from where she was leaning against me.

There’s nothing left for me to do in the garden right now, so I hop on my bike, ride out to the nursery and talk to a guy there about delivering some mulch. On the way home, signs at the mall shout ‘Back to School Blowout Specials’. Hard as it is to imagine being back at school, I’m going to need paper and pens and stuff, so I go inside.

Parents are hauling kids from one store to another shopping for new shoes and backpacks, and going for fries and slushies. A couple of girls I’m sure never noticed me while Ivy was alive eye me from behind a rack of sweaters, whispering behind their hands. As I’m passing the fountain, a little kid breaks free of her dad’s grip and wobbles toward it. He scoops her up and flies her through the air back into her stroller.

I load up on paper and pens and binders at the department store and realize I won’t be able to carry everything on my bike without my backpack, so I put everything back on the shelves and leave.

Pedaling up our street, something doesn’t look right. Closer to home I can see that the purple phlox near the sidewalk is all bent over. A small mound of mugho pine has been flattened. I see as I ride closer that a long board is lying haphazardly across them both.

Up near the house, Dad is leaning into a crowbar. Ivy’s wheelchair ramp – what’s left of it – twists crookedly away from the wall. Gaping bolt holes scar the bricks where the ramp used to be attached to the house. The delphiniums and coreopsis and other plants lie crushed on the ground. Dark circles of sweat soak the armpits of Dad’s t-shirt.

“What are you doing?” I yell. My heart is pounding like a jack-hammer.

“Taking down the ramp. What’s it look like I’m doing?”

My bike crashes to the ground and I charge across the garden.

“It’s not enough that you…you…” I shove Dad hard into the brick wall. “You drowned her, didn’t you!”

Dad opens his mouth but I cut him off.

“I might have been one lousy brother but I would
never
have done what you did!” And I smash my fist hard into his face. His nose flattens under my knuckles.

I watch the blood gush. And then – for my sister, for Ivy – I smash him again.

Just then Hannah rounds the corner of the house. She’s changed out of her running clothes but looking all grubby. Dad swipes an arm across his face, leaving a streak of blood. “She’s been helping stack the lumber. She—”

“
Yoo-ou
—!” I bellow at her. “
You traitor!
”

“David,” Hannah says, moving over beside my dad. “It’s not like that. I just—”

My feet pound the pavement hard. Down the sidewalk and past the end of our street. A sharp, angry smell rises off my body. How could she go help him, knowing what he did? How could she help him wreck the one thing left of Ivy’s?

And my garden! How
could
she?

Chapter 26

My chest feels like someone’s running a buzz saw through it. My shins are screaming. I can’t run any farther. I can hardly walk. I stumble through the streets not caring if I look like a madman.

Even if I could run forever, I’ll never escape how it felt to see Hannah standing beside my dad. After telling me, not more than an hour before, that she knew I’d told her the truth about him. After letting me hold her.

The only person who ever really cared about me is Ivy. And Will.

I duck into a variety store and ask to use their phone.

“I’d love to see you, David,” Will says. “One of the staff here is taking me to the botanical gardens this afternoon. How about I meet you there?”

It feels so good just to hear his voice. I should have called him ages ago.

At the entrance to the botanical gardens, I hand over some of my school-supply money.

The perennial beds here look tired. Or maybe it’s just me that’s tired. I’ve got a lot of time to kill before meeting Will, so I take a deep breath and turn along a path I haven’t taken before. It’s lined with lilies. Butterflies flit from one to another. The lilies smell different outside than they did in the church at Ivy’s funeral.

Will everything be defined now in terms of Ivy and how she died?

Apples in the orchard are starting to turn red. I haven’t been here since the trees were blooming. When life was simple but I didn’t know it. Before Ivy died.Before I met Hannah.

The path through the lily beds leads to a shady area where speckled lungwort carpets the ground under spruce trees. Lungwort’s Latin name,
Pulmonaria
, sounds much better. The bottom branches of the spruce trees have been removed so people can walk underneath them. This afternoon I’m the only one here.

I should have brought Ivy here. She would have liked how the sunlight dances in patches where it’s filtered through the tall trees. She was always noticing stuff like that. And giggling. Like she did in the bath. Even if you didn’t know what she was giggling about, when Ivy giggled, it made you want to giggle, too.

That was enough to make her life worthwhile, wasn’t it? Worthwhile for her?

Or was Ivy’s life tougher than I ever let myself believe? How do you weigh crappy stuff like seizures and physio and people hardly ever understanding you, up against giggles and grins and just being happy with birds and pretty flowers and your sunhat and your turquoise bathing suit? How can anyone know whether someone else’s life is worth living or not, especially if that someone can’t tell you about it?

The formal garden I’ve wandered into is mostly roses. The paths between the beds are straight lines. As soon as I see a way out, I take it, and wander instead into a wilder looking area of meadow grasses and ponds.

Would dying seem like not such a bad thing if you believed in heaven? Hannah’s idea of heaven sounds better than the idea of angels singing and playing harps and stuff. The day of Ivy’s funeral she said she thought heaven could be different things for different people. Like for me it might be a garden and for Dad it might be someplace where he could actually live like the ancient Greeks and Romans, and not just give lectures about them.

In the shade of a large maple, I spot a bench and sit down. I’ve been wandering the gardens for a long time and I was beat before I started.

On a nearby pond, water lilies open their petals to the pale sun.
Nymphaea
something – I forget what the white ones are called. Perched on their shiny leaves, fat frogs bask in the warmth. Dragonflies dart back and forth over the surface of the water.

A warm breeze strokes my face, my hands feel heavy, resting beside me on the bench. On the far side of the pond cattails sway, and I feel my eyes beginning to close.

From far across a huge field, Ivy is running toward me with a pack of dogs – little, big, red, yellow, and blue – just like the dogs in her favorite book. There’s one brown dog, too. As clearly as anyone anywhere has ever spoken, Ivy calls out, “Is that you, Livingston?”

The brown dog barks, “To the tree!” And into the tree Ivy flies like a bird.

The dogs in the tree are wearing hats. Ivy shouts, “A dog party!”

Something tickles the back of my hand. A feather from a party hat.

I open my eyes.

A dragonfly has landed on my hand. Its eyes are huge. They take up a good part of its head. And I can see how each separate leg is attached to the dragonfly’s long slender body. Its wings are like stained glass, a bunch of tiny panes all knit together with intricate black lines. Ivy would have noticed the tiny rainbows in the wings that are both delicate and strong. They sparkle in the sun as the dragonfly leaves my hand.

Water laps against the reeds growing at the edge of the pond. Water, lapping the shore.

Too bad my dream of Ivy’s heaven was just that. A dream.

“Do you mind if we join you here?” Two nuns smile down at me.

“No, it’s okay,” I say, getting up. “I was just leaving. Seriously. Nothing personal.” I hurry then around the pond and through the Japanese garden toward the tea house.

Just approaching the door as I get there, is a woman pushing an old man in a wheelchair. I don’t recognize him at first, till he lifts a hand and smiles. “David!”

The woman with him says, “You must be the young man Mr. Paley has been telling me about. I can’t tell you how pleased he was that you called today. I’ll leave you two to chat alone for a while. Say, half an hour?”

“Sure. Yeah.” The sight of Will in a wheelchair is still a bit of a shock.

The tea house hostess leads us to a table on the patio. When she goes to move a chair to make room for Will, he says, “I’d like to be facing the coreopsis, please.”

“You always did like the yellow flowers best, eh?” I settle in across the table. “So, Will, what’s with the wheelchair?”

Will shakes his head. “My first night in the home, I fell going into the bathroom.”

“I guess it was good you were there then.”

Will dismisses my comment with a shaky flick of his hand. “You didn’t call me up today to talk about the foolish frailties of an old man. Tell me, what are your new neighbors like? Nice people living in my old house, I hope?”

I can’t bring myself to talk about Hannah. Not now.

“Yeah. Turns out it’s someone Mom used to know.”

Will orders tea and I order a root beer. We talk a bit about the library at the seniors’ home – it’s so-so – and the meals. Pretty good. We talk about school starting up soon and music the choir might do this year. The waitress brings us our drinks and Will gets me to do the sugar in his tea. Tapping his fingers together, he says, “I’ve lost a little something here. Coordination.” He asks me about my garden.

Again the image of Dad and Hannah among the broken plants and the wreckage of Ivy’s ramp. “He let her go, Will. In the lake. Dad let Ivy go.”

Will’s eyebrows shoot up, then he looks down into his tea. “I was sorry to hear about your sister, David, and I was surprised when I didn’t hear from you sooner. I was sorry not to get to her funeral, too, but I was in rough shape for a while after my fall. I would have sent a card, but…”

I wonder if he heard what I said, and think maybe it would be better if he didn’t. It’s not something I was planning to say, when I called him. I wasn’t planning anything. I just wanted to see him. I take a long sip of my drink. Will lifts his cup in two hands and sets it down again.

When he finally looks up at me, his gaze is direct. “I wish I’d been brave enough to do something for my Vera.” His wife. Before she died, her Alzheimer’s was so bad she didn’t know who he was anymore.

Behind Will, pincushion flowers nod their blue heads.

“I never thought of it like that. But Will—?” I swallow hard and tell him carefully, “Will, it’s not the same.”

He licks his dry lips, rubs his hand across his face and says, “No. You’re right, David. It’s not.”

Neither of us seems to know what to say after that, but we’ve spent lots of time together not talking, just watching TV or gazing at gardens, so I think we’re okay. I hope I haven’t wrecked everything that was easy about us, blurting out about Dad and everything.

I see Will’s caregiver coming along the path back to the tea house, carrying a bag from the gift shop. “I’m glad we met up today,” I tell him.

“Me too,” Will says, and before we say good-bye, he makes me promise I’ll come see him at the home.

As I’m leaving the botanical gardens, dark clouds cover the sun. Before I’m half way home, it looks as if the sky could open up any minute. I duck into the library and settle into a corner with a book about trees. Who knew there’s a species of tree that was destroyed in the Ice Age everywhere except in China?
Gingko biloba.
If a bunch of Buddhist monks hadn’t planted them around their temples, they’d be extinct. I should come back when I have my card sometime. Take the book with me when I go see Will.

I leave the library when the rain stops. The setting sun reflects brilliantly off the wet sidewalks and streets as I trudge slowly in the direction of home. Car tires hiss along the wet pavement. The humidity is gone from the air.