Chapter Forty-Four. Ivy, 1964
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
“I don’t believe you’re trying hard enough, Ivy.
” Ivy looked up at Dr. Trimble towering over her.
They were alone at one end of the basement; he’d summoned her for a private conversation.
He told her to sit down on the single straight-back chair he’d brought into the space, but he remained standing with a bare light bulb dangling behind him that draped his face in shadows, deepening the grooves around his eyes and mouth and hollowing his cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, feeling a stab of shame.
Had they been in the basement for two days or three? She’d lost track. Maybe it was day three. An eternity.
“Kathleen and Betty did extremely well in the tests yesterday. The best results I’ve ever seen. Likely the best anyone has ever seen. But your results were … subpar.”
She bowed her head. She’d come up short, like she had all her life.
She wasn’t a good enough wife; David had pointed that out in ways big and small.
She was a failure as a mother, too. Whenever Sandra cried and Ivy picked her up, Sandra’s wailing increased.
But Kathleen and Betty had been able to effortlessly calm Sandra the night of the dinner party.
Ivy was nothing like the joyous woman in the advertisement for Ivory soap who pressed her cheek against her happy, plump baby’s, saying, “Cheek-to-cheek softness!” That was the kind of mother Sandra deserved.
Ivy couldn’t summon the strength to feel maternal toward the little girl who looked so much like her. Her natural buoyancy had been suffocated by something heavy and gray.
Dr. Trimble leaned down and looked her in the eye.
“I need to talk to the other girls,” he said. His breath smelled sour but she didn’t dare pull away. “They will be the ones to decide the consequences. After all, your inadequate performance will affect them, too, because they’ll need to stay here longer.”
He walked away and after a moment, she could hear the low timbre of his voice interspersed with the higher, crisper ones of her friends.
But she couldn’t make out any words. She felt a tear roll down her cheek, but her sadness felt removed, as if her emotions had been extracted and placed on the other side of a glass barrier.
“Ivy?” She started at the sound of Dr. Trimble’s voice. She hadn’t realized he’d come back.
“A decision has been made.”
She knew it was bad from his tone, but she deserved it. She’d let down her friends.
“You will stay alone until the girls vote to have you rejoin us.”
He held up her overnight bag and a folded sheet and towel. “I’ve brought your things.”
“What?” she asked.
“Pay attention! Come with me.”
Ivy stood up, her body feeling as heavy as if it had been filled with sand. The fabric of her white skirt rustled as she followed Dr. Trimble. He opened a door she hadn’t noticed before. It groaned loudly, sounding almost human. Inside the small room was a single cot.
“You’ll find a candle and matches in your bag. I’ll be back in the morning,” he told her, then he shut the door, leaving her in darkness.
Ivy didn’t have the energy to even light a candle. Her eyes had adjusted enough to allow her to see the shape of the room, so she wrapped the sheet around herself and curled up on the cot, too weary to even remove her shoes.