Forty-Eight—Ivy
B
efore she started the car, Camille turned to me. “I have to ask, Ivy. Is your father coming?”
“No.” I looked down, ashamed of Daniel and wanting to call him terrible names.
Camille took my hand, and when I looked up, her eyes were warm and kind. “Your mom is heavily medicated, but she’s been asking about him. Your grandmother and I think you should lie,” she said softly.
I stared at her. “How…How much do you know about my parents?” I asked.
“I know… some ,” Camille said. “I know Bree adores him.”
“She does. She always has.”
“And you?”
“To be honest, I never had too much of a relationship with Daniel. I mean, he came around, of course, but I was pretty much supplemental to him seeing my mama, if that makes sense.”
“Bree didn’t tell me that part,” Camille said with sad eyes.
“I’m not surprised,” I told her. “She’s pretty blind where my dad is concerned.”
Camille scrunched up her pretty face. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too. And now he’s too busy to come be with her. That’s not love.”
“No.” Mia’s sister shook her head as she turned the key. “But that your mom loved so deeply and believed she was loved so deeply in return…” she shrugged. “When you get to the end, does anything else really matter? ”
“I guess not,” I said. I thought of my father and his family—his real family—his tidy little life in Monterey. His other life. And I thought of the almost-shame, the almost-regret that had found its way through his arrogance when I’d begged him to come home with me. That looked a little like something Mama could be fooled by and pretend was love.
“Bree told me that like any smarter-than-smart nineteen-year-old, she’d loved your dad from the moment she saw him.” Camille said this as she navigated the traffic merging onto the freeway.
I shrugged. “That’s what she says. He was in town for something, and he wandered into where she was working, and apparently the heavens shone on him,” I said with sarcasm.
“Well, if you believe her, he fell in love with her that fast, too. And he wanted to be with her,” Camille said.
“Yep,” I said. “That’s what he told her. And told her and told her.”
Camille frowned. “Sometimes, love makes us stupid, Ivy.”
Tim flashed through my psyche. “Yes, it does.” How could I begrudge my mother when love had made me just as stupid? Or, was that exactly why I should begrudge her? I sighed. Liz Proctor was almost twenty-two. I was twenty-one and change. Seemed my dad had been a busy little procreator the year of our conceptions. “Why did she tell you all of this?” I asked, feeling slightly betrayed; these were our darkest family shames, after all.
Camille glanced over at me. “On the night I got here—I was such a mess, Ivy. We were drinking Merlot and lamenting love and men and husbands and almost-husbands. I told her my very sad and ridiculous story, and she told me hers.”
I looked at Mia’s sister and smiled—of course, that made sense. She was so pretty, and she looked a hundred times better than when I’d seen her last. She looked a lot like Bo, and it made me miss him.
As Camille drove, she told me she and Mama had talked all night. “I actually think she saved me.” Camille said. “She made me look at my life, really look at it. And I think she looked at hers, too. Ivy, she knew things had not turned out the way she’d planned, the way she’d hoped. But in the end, it didn’t matter as much as she thought it would because of you . You were the prize.”
I tried to laugh. “I was one of the prizes.”
Camille smiled. “Ivy, sometimes we let men completely torture our lives. It’s stupid, unforgiveable, sometimes even indictable, and we’re idiots because we let them. But one day, you’re sitting on a big porch in Savannah, Georgia—the last place in the world you think you’ll ever find yourself—and you look around at the mess you think you are and you’re watching your angels run around—laughing—and you suddenly realize that a stinking dog of a man gave you everything that matters.” She looked over at me with sad eyes. “Everything. Your mom said that. About you…and your dad. I just borrowed it because I needed it.”
I tried to smile. “My mom called Daniel a stinking dog?”
“Oh, heavens no. That’s all me. But you get my drift.”
***
It was just after ten when Camille dropped me at the entrance of Memorial Hospital with directions to my mother’s room. She had to get back to her girls, so she didn’t come in with me. I took the elevator to the ICU and steeled myself, but when I got to room 216, I realized the sight before me had nothing whatsoever to do with me. It couldn’t. My mama did not even resemble herself. She was a supine arrangement of stillness, the broken parts of her propped by pillows and held together with gauze and tape and splints and compression bandages. She slept and was attached to things that beeped.
Geneva was at her side, and my grandmother had never looked so small and unequal to a task in her life. She was bent over, kissing Mama’s hand. As I watched this awful, gentle scene, something happened to me, something sudden and distinct: I felt myself shed who I’d been yesterday and become someone altered. It was an inescapable shift into certain adulthood, and it happened in a blink. Everything before that moment fell away diluted in significance. Tim. Not marrying Tim. My fight—my many fights—with Mama. Even Daniel. It all paled compared to the sight of my mother and her mother and what I knew was inevitable.
I walked over to my grandmother and touched her lightly on the shoulder. When her eyes met mine, I was shocked at how she had aged. Her little face crumpled.
“There’s my Ivy girl. C’mere, sug.” She stood up and pulled me into a long, weak hug and said, “You made it,” into my ear. “You made it.” Over her shoulder, I stared at my mama. Bree didn’t stir, but her eyes flittered open a slit. She tried to smile, and I saw her finger lift.
Geneva let go and looked hard into my eyes, then cupped my face in her gnarled hands. “You look exhausted, sweet pea. Have you had anything to eat?”
“I’m not hungry, Gran.”
She nodded knowingly, then bent to gently caress Mama’s head. “I told you she was coming,” she said softly, but falsely upbeat. “I told you, Bree.” Then she turned to me. “She just had a pain shot, so she’s kind of sleepy, but you sit down here. You sit with your mama now. I’m just going to grab a cracker from the nurse. I need to take my pills. You sit. I’ll be right back.”
I did as I was told and pulled the chair closer to the bed. As Geneva walked out, she turned and met my eyes with a telling sadness that took my breath away.
I sucked back my tears and reached over to touch my mother. But I pulled back—I didn’t want to hurt her. She was so terribly broken, looked so terribly fragile. She opened her eyes again, and as she stared at me, tears seeped and spilled into her hair.
“Mama…”
“You came,” she rasped.
“Of course I came.”
“I…baby…” she said haltingly. “Sssooo s…sorry ’bout thele…tter.”
“Mama, it doesn’t matter. ”
“Wwwas h…h…horrible.”
“Shhh,” I noised. Was that letter really the biggest worry of the moment? “That was my fault. Mama. I’m sorry I didn’t call you back.”
She tried to reach up, but the effort was too great, so I took her hand and placed it on my face. Her palm was unbelievably hot. “Sss…sweetheart…” she whispered.
“I love you, too, Mama.”
She started to cough then, and I could see it was killing her. “What do you need?” I asked, alarmed. “Should I get the nurse?”
“No,” she gasped. “N…nooo…” she coughed again, and I ached watching her. When she calmed, her voice was a wet whisper. “Baby, c’mere…”
I leaned closer.
“I n…need…to … are you o…over Tim?”
“What? Mama…” I sighed, surprised at how truly small he felt in light of what was happening.
More tears seeped from her eyes. “You…re…too…good,” she said, painstakingly. “For…him…”
I kissed her warm cheek. “I love you, for thinkin’ so, Mama.”
She squeezed my fingers lightly and shut her eyes, and for a moment I thought she’d fallen asleep.
“He’s n…not here?” she pushed out.
I knew she was referring to Daniel. “Not yet, Mama,” I lied. “But he’s coming…”
Bree looked at me through slits, smiled wanly, then started to cough again as her machinery pealed her distress. For a moment, she held on to my hand like she was falling, and I was about to run for the nurse when a blue-clad woman walked in with a vial of something she quickly shot into Bree’s IV. The nurse looked at me with naked pity that said I’m so sorry your mama is dying . “Can I get you anything, hon?” she asked.
I shook my head. All I wanted was to crawl in beside Bree and love her better . She used to say that to me when I was little and had had a bad dream, or the flu, or a bruised ego. She’d say I’m just gonna have to scoop you up and love you better, Ivy Lee. Or had that been Geneva?
Just before the medication pulled her under, my mother opened her eyes and slurred, “D…don’t hate him, baby girl. Hhhhe loves us.”
***
Bree’s fever continued to rage, and her lungs filled with fluid. I never left her side. The shift changed, and new people wandered in and out, tapping notations on the bedside computer. But she held on, which surprised everyone. More than once, Geneva wondered out loud what God was doing putting her baby through this. The doctor assured us that Mom was in no pain thanks to the morphine, but she was restless, and it was hard to watch. I was very worried about my grandmother, who aside from the crackers she’d had when I first arrived, had not left this room. At about a quarter to four that afternoon, like an answered prayer, Everett Moss showed up to take her home. His backyard butted up against Geneva’s on Isle of Hope, and ever since my grandfather died, he’d watched over her—going on thirty-five years. He was tall and thin like her, but with a pot belly, and he was unmoved by Geneva’s blustered objections. He simply took her hand. “C’mon, old gal,” he said. “You could use a nap and a change of clothes. Probably some eggs.”
It broke my heart when Geneva started to cry, defeated. For the moment.