What Happened to Ivy (8 page)

I suppose she might forgive me, some day, for that stupid, oafish kiss. But I need Ivy to forgive me, too, for stuff I did to her. And that can’t happen. I look up again at the empty window. I can’t feel her here at all. Not like I did last week, standing beside her crib, listening to her mobile, with the baby powder smell of her still clinging to her blanket.

I put the rest of the birdseed in the garage and head inside, hoping to get Ivy back, at least for long enough to tell her I’m sorry. I wash the earth from the garden off my hands and head to Ivy’s room. When I reach the doorway, I stop.

Where my sister’s crib used to be, where it should be, where it has always been, clumps of dust waft across the hardwood floor.

Heavy footsteps trudge up the stairs from the basement. Dad looks surprised to see me. Has he forgotten I exist? That I live here, too?

I shove my words in his face. “Where’s Ivy’s crib?” As if it’s not obvious he’s taken it apart and stashed it downstairs somewhere.

“In the basement,” Dad says, as if that’s a perfectly logical place for it.

“Well, what if…?” My voice is too high, but I can’t help it. “What if I wanted to hear Ivy’s mobile again? Eh? What if I did?!”

“
What
?
Hear her
mobile
?” Dad throws up his hands, lets them drop, and shoves past me. “Honestly, David, sometimes I wonder about you.”

“
Me
?
You wonder about
me
?
Who’s the one trying to make like Ivy never even existed!? Did you even talk to Mom before you did it?! Did you?!”

Dad stops and turns. “Excuse me?” He shakes his head. “I don’t have to answer to you,” and he storms back downstairs.

I jab my thumbnail into the soft wood of the doorframe on my way to the family room and mutter, “Yeah, tell me about it.” The van pulls up the driveway.

After Mom puts away the groceries, Dad comes up from the basement. He tells her about Ivy’s crib and apologizes for taking it down without talking to her about it first.

“Oh, Stephen,” she says, starting to cry again. She turns away and empties a can of soup into a pot.

Sitting down with Dad, she says, “Come on, Davy. Come have some lunch.”

I glance at Dad. “I’m not hungry,” I say.

Chapter 20

That night at supper, none of us is speaking. The clinking of cutlery on our plates sounds amplified. Even chewing and swallowing sound loud. Mom asks for the butter. It seems Dad didn’t hear her, so I take some myself, pass it to her, and go back to pushing vegetables around my plate. The bread is stale and the potatoes aren’t hot enough to melt the butter.

From across the table comes a sudden spluttering, like someone’s choking. Dad raises a napkin to his face. I jump up from the table. I know the Heimlich maneuver. I can be Dad’s hero.

But he’s not choking. Mom has cried plenty in the days since Ivy died, but not like Dad is sobbing now.

She puts a hand on his arm. “Stephen, what is it?”

It’s embarrassing is what it is.

Dad shakes his head, his mouth moving the same way it did when he was pacing the shore after the ambulance left. “I started to lift her,” he finally says. “As soon as I saw that Ivy was in trouble, I started to lift her.”

“Of course you did.” Mom’s voice is calm, reassuring.

“I
started
to…”

My fingers clench around my fork. Mom wipes her lips with her napkin.

“You see, Anne…” Dad’s voice has gone high like mine does when I’m upset. “She looked so…
happy.
Just before the seizure. Ivy…well…” All the color has drained from Dad’s face. He clears his throat. “It occurred to me…”

Oh God.

“Well…I…” He covers his face with his hands. He breathes into his palms like someone who can’t get enough oxygen.

“Stephen, please don’t do this.”

Yes. Stop. Now.

Dad drops his hands to his lap. Lines of anguish etch his face and I can’t look at him.

“There was just a second…I swear…when Ivy’s pain…and I thought…”

“You can’t have thought…” Mom’s voice is slow and quiet, as if something will break if she doesn’t speak carefully.

“I thought…No I didn’t, but I…you know…our marriage. Just a second or two.”

Just a second or two what?

“Stephen…”

“David, too.”

Is he trying to say…? He started to lift her, then for a second or two…Pins and needles shoot through my arms to the tips of my fingers. Ivy was limp, Dad said, when he carried her out of the water.

But she goes rigid during a seizure. That’s why her head went under the water. My heart pounds. Whatever Dad thought, or whatever the hell he did, it wasn’t for just a second or two.

My knees bounce up and down under the table and I can’t stop them.

Dad speaks quietly, so quietly I can barely hear. “I let her go, Anne.”

His words are like a punch in the gut. And I’ve taken too many. Starting with the sound of eggs cracking. When I knew it was the sound of death, but not that death wouldn’t be the worst thing. I race to the can. I puke.

Later, I burrow into my bed. He let her go. He could have saved her and he didn’t. My dad took Ivy in the water and he let her
die
there! And
I’ve
felt bad about feeding her a few lousy
worms
!?

Through the wall I hear change from Dad’s pocket dropping onto the dresser. My parents haven’t spoken since supper. I hear a short, single creak of their bed followed by footsteps in the hall and someone settling in on the couch.

I guess they’ll split up now. I mean, their kid is dead because Dad decided that would be okay. Mom couldn’t possibly stay with him knowing that, could she? So they’ll have to split up, won’t they?

I don’t even care.

Chapter 21

Mom’s eyes are puffy when she asks me to go pick up a sleep remedy she got the pharmacist to set aside. I’m glad for the excuse to get out.

There’s no one around on the streets or in the playground beside the school. Despite the strong wind, it’s too hot for most people. But I spot Hannah running along the street between the new video store and the vet clinic. She’s been running more often since Ivy died. Since the day I kissed her, over a week ago now.

At the mall, flags are flapping straight out from their poles. I lock up my bike. A few guys from school are hanging around the entrance, but they just look at me. I guess making fun of the guy whose sister died would be going too far.

I head right to the drugstore. As the pharmacist hands over Mom’s package, she says, “I was sorry to hear about your sister. If you’re having trouble sleeping, you can use that remedy, too, if you want. It’s perfectly safe.”

I soon find myself parked on a bench by the fountain, staring into the spray. Ivy was right. There is ‘ngo waybo’ here. I hear a snippet of conversation from the other end of the bench.

“But is it wrong to kill a kid if she’s suffering and you know her life’s never going to get any better?”

All anybody knows for sure is that Ivy died. No one knows what Dad admitted to last night. Maybe whoever is at the other end of the bench isn’t even talking about Dad. Ivy’s life wasn’t that bad.

“…seriously, what’s the point of a life like that Ivy kid’s anyway?”

I open my mouth to tell them. It won’t be like it was with Murray this time. But while I’m still struggling to find the words I need, they get up to leave – two people I recognize from last year’s History class. They’re disappearing quickly down the mall. Standing up, I shout at their backs, “Letting someone go and killing them – it’s not the same.”

Shit! That’s not what I meant to say!

They turn around and look at me like I’m some kind of freak, and they’re not the only ones.

I pedal across the bridge over the highway, past the road to the cemetery, past motels and car dealerships, and beyond the edge of the city to where old barns and farmers’ fields line the road.

No one knew how Ivy died before I opened my big mouth. What was I doing defending Dad anyway?
If
that’s what I was doing. Whatever people want to say about him – he deserves it. I ride for another hour, maybe more, hot sun and wind blasting me before I turn back.

Sweat trickles down my forehead and into my eyes. When I come to the road to the cemetery, I turn down it and ride on through the gates.

Someone else is already at Ivy’s gravesite. It’s Dad, standing with his back to me. I should have noticed our van parked on the edge of the road nearby.

I turn around and start pedaling hard. I stand on my pedals to get my speed up so I can get out of the cemetery before Dad sees me. Because what if he didn’t just let her go? What if he actually drowned her? And what if he didn’t just decide to do it right then, when he had her in the water and her seizure started?

Leaning into my handlebars I pedal as hard as I can out of the cemetery. Did Dad know when he took Ivy in the water that day that she was going to die there? Is that what he meant by the bonfire, when he kept telling her, ‘It’s okay, Ivy, it’s going to be okay’? Or was it Mom who said that? Maybe it was Mom.

My left calf cramps in a painful knot. Still, I keep on pedaling. My thighs burn and all I can see in front of me are Dad’s big brown hands and Ivy’s turquoise bathing suit under the water. My legs start to wobble, my hands are trembling on the handle-grips.

Be-ee-ee-eep!
A passing car swerves around me. I crash into the curb and go down.

My elbow and the side of my leg sting. They are scraped raw and full of gravel. They sting so bad my whole body sweats and my head spins. But I pull myself up, and then my bike. Leaning on it, I hobble along the shoulder of the road. After a couple of blocks, our van pulls over just ahead of me.

Dad lifts my bike into the back, slams the door, and gets in beside me.

“Where have you been?” He eases back into the traffic. “You’ve been gone for hours.”

“Nowhere.”

“We were starting to worry.”

I could ask him now. I could ask him:
Did you drown her? Did you plan it, like I planned the worms? Did you know when you helped her into her bathing suit – her ‘bi-yee bay zoot’ – what you were going to do? Or not till you carried her into the water and made her laugh one last time?

But do I really want to know?

Chapter 22

I hand Dad the sleep stuff that Mom wanted and go knock on Hannah’s door. She has to be back from her run by now and I’ve got to see her.

Shamus barks but no one else comes to the door. I cup my hands around my eyes and peer in the narrow window beside the door. Shamus grins and wags his tail.

At home I clean up my scrapes and try to lose myself in a search for info about plants that should grow well in our area. Maybe Hannah’s not avoiding me, maybe she’s just been busy.

Eupatoriadelphus maculatus.

I have to talk to her.

Parthenocissus tricuspidata.

But what if I’ve totally messed things up with her for good?

I shut down the computer, turn on the TV, and click mindlessly past soap operas and talk shows and dozens of ads. There’s nothing on that I want to watch. I cross the street and knock on the door again. This time Hannah opens it.

“Are you okay?” she says. “You look awful. Do you want to come in?”

“You don’t mind? After…”

Stupid of me to refer to it. It was days ago and she asked me in, didn’t she?

Hannah shrugs and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “People do weird things after someone dies.”

Is that what it was to her? Me kissing her? Her kissing me back?
A weird thing
? So, what was I expecting? For it to mean ‘true love’ and ‘happily ever after’?

“Hannah, I have to tell you something.” She’s walking down the hall so I follow her to the kitchen at the back of the house.

“What?”

“My dad…well…At supper last night…he kind of broke down…”

“That’s hardly surprising, David. He’s lost his little girl.”

“Yeah, but…”

From across the kitchen Hannah is staring at me like I’m nuts, and maybe I am. But having to talk to someone, not even knowing what I want to say – and Hannah’s arms are crossed and she’s leaning back against the counter and maybe she
is
still ticked – there’s like this war going on inside me. Do I want to tell her about Dad or just about my stupid outburst at the mall? But why tell that? She already thinks I’m an idiot, and telling her that would be like telling her everything anyway.

“Hannah, Dad didn’t just lose Ivy.”

I should stop now. This was a bad idea. I should just take myself out of Hannah’s kitchen and forget the whole thing.