Forty-Six—Ivy
I
boarded the mostly full flight and prayed for an empty seat beside me. Thankfully God was listening. My nose was pressed to the window when the lovely older man a seat away said, “I guess we got lucky. Do you mind if I put my briefcase here?” He indicated the empty space between us.
“Not at all.” I tried to smile.
He looked at me with kind eyes. “Are you okay?”
I don’t know what it is about kindness that makes my eyes water, but that’s exactly what happened as I took in the Black man’s gentle concern. I imagined myself saying I’m here , and Okay is somewhere on another continent, but thanks for asking. Instead, I said, “I’m fine. Allergies.”
He didn’t buy it, I could tell, but he smiled—not big, but understanding. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Allergies can be very upsetting.”
I nodded and turned back to the window. Bless Bo for getting me a window seat, where I could hide my misery. I closed my eyes and tried not to cry, tried not to imagine what was happening with my mama, Geneva. Bo. I squeezed my eyes shut. How was I ever going to make it through the next eight hours?
The last thing I’d packed was the book Bo had given me, and now I took Precious Bane out of the bag I had shoved under the seat in front of me. Just in case. I knew I was too preoccupied, too worried to read, but maybe there would be a lull in my overflowing angst and I could speed the time along by getting into this story. He’d left me a note in the book that said , Ivy, this is my favorite novel. It’s about what is truly beautiful and worthy of love…
What did that even mean?
I felt so bad about how things had ended with Bo. I should never have put him on the spot like that. What had I been thinking? What had I been thinking? I’d been thinking…how much I needed him. Needed? Him? Him or just someone? Did I really need Bo Sutton? Or was it want? Wanted? Him? Could that be it? Yes. I wanted Bo to just be here and take my hand—which he didn’t really do because of the germ thing, so I don’t know what I was thinking. I just knew that right now, wondering if Mama would be alive when I got to Savannah, it would be so nice to just look over and see Bo holding back the world.
He knew that the last thing I’d done was fight with Bree over her rendezvous in Carmel. He knew how hurtful her letter had been. He knew hers was the last mean voice in my head. He knew I hadn’t called her back. And now…now it might be too late. And not suffocating under all that guilt only seemed possible if Bo was sitting close enough to remind me to breathe.
Maybe if he was just sitting there close enough to touch, my thoughts of Liz Proctor and her place in my dad’s magazine-cover family wouldn’t make my chest ache like it did. Honestly, I didn’t know a person could hurt this much. And I had no idea how to tell my mother that the love of her life was too tied up to make it to her deathbed. I just knew it would all be easier if Bo was with me. But he wasn’t. And he hadn’t wanted to see me before I left, and now I had to fit that sharp piece of pain in with all the rest.
Lord, what if I never saw him again?
As more tears filled my eyes, I listened to the flight attendant give her instructions.
Eight hours. A connecting flight. And a head full of terrible.
I opened the book and began to read.
** *
I was exhausted when I landed in Savannah the next morning, exhausted to the point of dizziness. It was everything, I’m sure. No sleep, worry on steroids, deep sadness, and unrelenting heaviness. I’d been stuck on a plane with a running commentary on my life, my mother’s life, pick-axing through my gray matter, each pick determined cruelly to explain and clarify my existence, and hers. When it got too painful, too overwhelming, the state of our affairs, I read about Prudence Sarn—a girl also heavy with circumstances outside of her control, living a life she would not have chosen had she been in charge. She had a harelip—a heroine with a harelip— unspeakably homely and incapable of beauty, if you ask her. But clearly, she was an unreliable narrator—just like Bo said.
While I waited to disembark, I made a quick call to Mia because I’d promised, then I gathered my things and trudged off the plane. In the restroom, when I finally faced the mirror, I wanted to cry. I looked like I’d been slapped, a lot. The makeup was long gone, so there was no camouflaging the pain in my red eyes. I brushed my teeth and doused my face with tepid airport water, but I still looked like a girl something bad had happened to.
I made my way to baggage claim, expecting Geneva to materialize and tell me something miraculous—Mama was awake and doing amazing, she’d made it through the worst of it—but I didn’t see her, and I knew I was fantasizing. I was just digging for my nearly dead phone to call my grandmother when I heard, “Ivy?”
I turned and perused the faces of strangers, thinking I was hearing things.
“Ivy. Hi. Sorry, have you been waiting long? I don’t know your freeways well enough yet to get anywhere on time.”
“Camille?”
“Hi, sweetie,” said Mia’s and Bo’s beautiful sister, giving me a quick hug. “How was your flight?”
“I…I was expecting…Hi. It was all right. Long. Is my grandmother here? ”
Camille Diamond made a sad face. “No. She won’t leave Bree’s side, so I volunteered to come get you. We should go.” When her eyes made clear the gravity of the situation, adrenaline found its way through my veins. I picked up my bag. “Where’s your car?”
On the way to short term parking, Camille brought me up to speed, and I appreciated her dispassionate delivery. My mama had been crushed by the front and rear wheel of a stolen Escalade. She had a shattered pelvis, broken back, collapsed lung, and several broken ribs. She’d been pinned and taped and splinted back together, and now she had a very high fever and her kidneys had shut down. “Ivy,” Camille said, taking my hand. “I need to warn you. The doctors are not hopeful.”
“How not hopeful?”
She sighed. “Geneva has simply been demanding that Bree stay alive until you get here.”