Sixty-One—Ivy
T
hat night, we were sitting on Geneva’s front porch swing, just her and me. Mia was in the parlor looking through a stack of my grandmother’s old photo albums, and Bo had gone with Camille to pick up some ice cream. Ice cream seemed a bit of a sacrilege, somehow, after the day we’d had, but Geneva said it was just what we needed. Of course, the fridge and the freezer were stuffed full of neighbor offerings, and Sylvia Turner from over on Parkersburg had just dropped off bread fresh from her oven. Geneva took my hand. “Nothing says you’re well thought of better than hot bread baked on a hot night. That’s saying something.”
I smiled and laid my head on her shoulder. “They love you.”
“They love us ,” she corrected.
“Yes, they do.” I thought of the pure kindness and worry that had been extended to me over these past few days. Love in its cleanest form. I don’t know what I’d thought would happen when I came back here, because of course I had never planned to come back and find out. But I certainly had not expected that the collective embrace of these wonderful people would so fully cure my hurt and humiliation. The truth was, all that had happened at my wedding didn’t matter as much as I thought it would in light of everything that had happened since. I guess it’s true that the best painkiller is a worse pain.
“How are you holding up, sweetie?” my grandmother said.
“I’m…I don’t know… Depends on the minute,” I said. “How ’bout you? ”
She sighed. “Well, I’m tired enough to sleep. And I haven’t cried since the cemetery. That feels like progress.”
“Yes, it does.”
She turned to me and smiled sadly. “I want to say something to you, sug, before too much more time passes.”
“Okay,” I said, looking up at her.
“I do not want you to be mad at your mama. I’ve been worried since we talked about her in the hospital, and the last thing I want is for you to harbor ill feelings toward her. Lord knows you have every right, but I don’t want you wasting time on that. Won’t hurt her a lick, but the same cannot be said for you.”
“I’m not mad at her.”
“And I’m not old.” Geneva nudged me with her shoulder.
“I don’t think I’m mad at her,” I said again. “I mean, I will never understand her exactly, but it was her life. That she seemed to waste so much of it on Daniel…who has a whole other family…” I felt suddenly gut-punched all over again. “Maybe I am a little mad.”
Geneva patted my hand. “We just get one heart, sug. If we’re smart, we guard it, make sure we give it to someone worthy of it. But our Bree was not careful, and to make her feel better about not being careful, I think she told herself pretty lies until they sounded like truth.”
“I know.” I swallowed hard, thinking of Liz Proctor. I thought of my father professing his love to two women at the same time, making two daughters. Pretty lies… But hadn’t I fallen for the same exact lies with Tim as my mother had with Daniel? I couldn’t even imagine the shape I’d be in if my storybook day had actually panned out. I shuddered. “I’m not so different, Gran,” I said.
“Are you talking about Timothy?”
“I thought that was love,” I said.
“No, you didn’t. Not in your heart of hearts.”
That pinched. “He’s sorry, you know,” I said softly.
“Of course he is. Most fools have regrets.”
I tried to laugh. “Mom said I dodged a bullet. ”
Geneva nodded. “You did. But let’s not forget the Universe shot the gun. And She did it for a reason. Tim’s a nice enough boy—an idiot, but a nice one. And I think you can thank him for showing you your life.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, thanks to Tim Marsh, you know things now that you didn’t know before. Important things about what love is and what it isn’t. Your route to that realization was painful, and I’m sorry about that. But I think your destiny might be coming into view.”
“Oh, Gran…” I said, wondering if she’d been talking to Bo, wondering if all this was a just a ruse to get me chatting about him.
“What I mean, dear girl,” she said, “Is that your life’s possibilities are spread before you as far as your eyes can see. Happiness is out there, Ivy. So is love. And you are not your mama.”
“Thanks, Gran.”
She reached over and patted my face.
“Bo says he loves me,” I said after a long silence.
“I think that’s lovely.”
“But he says I don’t have to love him back. He came all this way to tell me he loved me, never expecting to hear me say it back to him. What kind of man does that?”
“It would seem one without pretense. Or agenda,” Geneva said.
No pretense. Yes, that described Bo perfectly. He was a man who lived in the raw , I thought, borrowing a term I’d heard from Adam Pembroke. It meant his focus was mostly inward on his creativity, controlling his world, being productive, meeting his raw needs, which sometimes meant simply surviving the day. He was complex and fascinating, and he certainly had his challenges. But the Bo Sutton I’d come to know over these past weeks did not strike me as a man capable of telling pretty lies for any reason. And in that light, what he’d said to me suddenly overwhelmed me. Thankfully, just when I thought I would cry, the screen door opened, and Mia walked onto the porch.
“Am I interrupting? ”
“Not at all,” my grandmother said, oblivious to my musings. “Come sit with us; enjoy the breeze off the river.”
I nodded because that was all I could muster at the moment.
Mia smiled. “Can I get you anything? A drink? Slice of hot bread?”
“Thank you, no, sweet girl,” said Geneva.
I shook my head and managed to say, “I’m never eating again.”
Mia laughed. She was still wearing her black flowy dress, but she’d let her hair down, and she wasn’t wearing any shoes. In her arms was a thick photo album, her index finger keeping her place.
“Did you find something?” I said.
She sat down next to me and opened the book. “Tell me about this picture of you.”
Geneva and I both leaned over. “Oh, that was taken right down there on the pier,” my grandmother said, pointing across the street. “But I can’t recall what made you so sad, Ivy girl.”
For me, the memory was instantaneous. It was my sixth birthday, and my mother was going away for the weekend. She was going with my father, and I wasn’t invited, so I’d been dropped off with Geneva, who was throwing me a cupcake party to make it all better. But I’d thrown a little fit and marched myself down to the pier to avoid the all-out rejection of my parents’ leaving. Daniel had followed me. He had his camera and kept trying to make me smile, promising he’d come back with a big old birthday present. He even promised that he’d teach me to swim before he flew back home. I didn’t believe him, and I wouldn’t smile, and he took the picture anyway. This picture. Taken at dusk, a little forlorn me, my hair blowing across my face, the sunset reflected in my sad eyes.
I made a laugh sound. “Oh, that was just me wanting to go on a trip with my parents,” I told Mia. “But I wasn’t invited. Daniel took it.”
“Really?” Mia looked at the photo again. “That explains the heartbreak on that little face. ”
I nodded. “Well, at least he promised to teach me to swim. He never did, but…he promised.”
“Another stellar reason to wish an incurable rash in unreachable places on your dad.”
Geneva laughed. I did too.
Mia went back to the picture again. “It’s amazing because all the elements are perfect, the lighting, the angle, the movement, the subject. And I’m betting your dorky dad had no idea what he was doing.”
“Oh, I don’t think he ever knew what he was doing,” I said, being snarky.
“Unintentional brilliance from Daniel Proctor,” Mia said shaking her head. “Can I borrow this?”
I shrugged. “Take whatever you want.”
“Really?” She eyed Geneva for confirmation. “There are a few I’d love to steal—but just for a couple of weeks. I’ll guard them with my life and send them back unscathed. I promise.”
“Then they’re yours,” I smiled.
Geneva arched a brow. “Unscathed.”
“I promise.”