The Love Song of Ivy K. Harlowe

by Hannah Moskowitz

  Christ, dating? I try to picture Ivy’s face if I’d accidentally said that out loud and nearly burst out laughing. They’re sleeping together, not taking midnight walks along the river.

  “Her mom was asking about you,” Ivy says to her. At breakfast this morning. So, Ivy, how’s Dot? My mom thinks annoying me is a sport.

  “Oh my God, she was?”

  “Wants to know how your psych test went.”

  “Well, then I’ll have to give her all the exciting details. Are we going out tonight? I want to dance.”

  “I have homework,” Ivy says, pulling to a stop at a red light. “You have homework.” There’s this amazing blue convertible next to us. The top’s up, but I can picture myself in it anyway, hair down, beach-bound, Ivy riding shotgun. Singing to those same songs and this time not stopping.

  “There will be more homework tomorrow,” Dot says. “I’m not attached to this particular homework.” She pokes me.

  There is no Dot in the beach fantasy. “Ow.”

  “Let’s go out.”

  I briefly imagine a night out, just Dot and me. It sounds like a sitcom episode. Luckily, “I can’t,” I say. “I promised my parents I’d help them make this shrimp thing.”

  “Oh no,” Ivy groans.

  “Oh my God, what shrimp thing?” Dot says. “Where did they get the shrimp from? You have fresh, right?”

  “You can’t mention shrimp around her,” Ivy says. “She’s like Bubba Gump incarnate.”

  “Bubba Gump was two people,” Dot says.

  “Yeah, well, you would know.”

  “What are they making?” Dot says to me. “I can help. I’ve been cooking shrimp since I was three.”

  “Shrimp fra diavolo.”

  “Ah! Yes. Delicious. I know a trick! Let me help.”

  “I thought we were bringing you home,” I say with a sideways glance at Ivy, who just shrugs a little.

  “Nooooo thank you,” Dot says, collapsing back in her seat. “I cannot go home. I have this assignment that’s just…staring at me. I can’t.”

  “You still haven’t started that Bio thing?” Ivy says.

  “I don’t even understand what the assignment is, and I think if I send the teacher one more email asking him, he’s going to hire someone to murder me. My real AP Bio teacher is on maternity leave,” she says to me. “And they replaced her with this guy who I think is trying to get us to fail the AP. I think it’s like that guy in Willy Wonka who wanted the kids to take the jawbreaker thing.”

  “When is it due?” Ivy says.

  “Monday. And now we need to stop talking about it, because if I think about it for another second, I’m going to have a nervous breakdown.”

  “Hmm,” is all Ivy says.

  We get home, and Ivy settles down on the couch while Dot grabs a banana from the kitchen. “When does your mom get home?” Ivy asks me.

  “Eight. Why? It’s not like she cares if you fuck her while she’s in the house. I think proximity to queer shit is how she replenishes her energy.”

  “I was just wondering,” Ivy says. “Is there a rule against wondering?” Her eyes follow Dot as she comes back into the living room.

  “Wonder away,” I say, then I head up to my room before they start making out.

  …

  Ivy has school the next morning, and I have work, so I barely see her until the next evening, when she throws my keys at me when I get home and says it’s time to drink, so we head out to Mama’s. Diana, Melody, and Alyssa are already there, amped up for the weekend, and after a few drinks, Alyssa asks if we’re headed to Kinetic after this. “Is Dot meeting us?” she asks.

  Ivy doesn’t volunteer an answer, just picks up the drink menu like it might have changed sometime in the past two minutes, or in fact in the last three years, so I say, “I think she’s working on this thing for school.”

  “God,” Diana says. “You could not pay me to go back to high school.”

  “What subject?” Alyssa asks Ivy. She’s one of the freaks who liked high school.

  Ivy shrugs and says, “How the fuck should I know?” Which is weird, because I know that she knows. But she’s acting strange tonight, checking her phone all the time, playing the disinterested act even harder than she usually does. She puts down the drink menu and heads to the bar.

  The girls raise some eyebrows.

  “I told you,” Diana says to Melody. “Didn’t I say this? You ask her something casual about Dot and she acts like you’re trying to talk to her about china patterns for the wedding.”

  I roll my eyes. “They are so not in a relationship.”

  “Come on,” Diana says. “They’re not not in a relationship.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” I say.

  Melody jumps in all peacekeeper and says, “They have been spending a lot of time together. Dot’s here half the time we are, and half that time they go home together. Let’s at least admit that they’re friends, which is odd enough for Ivy.”

  I can’t remember the last time Ivy made a friend. She has me and the friends she’s met through me. She just doesn’t need people.

  “I don’t think they do much talking,” I say. “And why are we talking about Dot when we finally have a night without her? We could just sit and enjoy the quiet.”

  “Why are you so bitchy about her?” Diana says. “She’s sweet.”

  Melody gives her a look.

  “Ohhhh,” Diana says. “That.”

  “She’s annoying,” I say.

  “Yeah. Sure.” Diana chuckles and drinks. “It’s because she’s annoying. That’s definitely why you’ve got a bone to pick with Ivy’s sex partner of choice.”

  “She’s choosing plenty of other girls, too,” I say.

  “And I still think Ivy gives a shit about her,” Diana says. “As much as Ivy’s capable of giving a shit about anyone.”

  “Besides Andie,” Alyssa says, and my stomach flip-flops.

  “Well, of course,” Diana says, like it’s nothing. “Obviously besides Andie.”

  Ivy comes back with her drink, which she tosses back quickly before planting the glass upside down on the table. “Let’s get out of here. I want to dance.”

  Now that we’re done with the talking portion of the evening, we pay our tab and head over to Kinetic, where we dance as a writhing group for a while, pushing and pulling off a horde of giggly gay guys who can’t keep their hands off us, grinding on each other and screaming to the music and generally being us. Ivy gives me a short, sloppy kiss before she goes off with a Black girl in a gold dress, and we watch her hump her damn leg like no one named Dot has ever existed. So much for those feelings, hmm?

  Ivy Harlowe is not your girlfriend, and she is never, ever going to care more about you than she cares about herself.

  Unless, of course, you’re me.

  …

  I spend the next day with my dad, taking the car to the shop and then going over ideas for the club, trying not to panic right along with him about how we’re losing money like it’s our goal, and the evening working and Sunday with Elizabeth.

  We go to this little café we’ve been through a few times now that has this incredible pain au chocolat. She’s always introducing me to shit like that. It’s amazing. She kisses me under a lamppost and maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s the fact that my dad is visiting his brother and my mom has been in the basement the entire day working on some project with no sign of emerging, but I say, “Do you want to see my house?”

  Maybe it’s that it’s been nine thousand years since I’ve had sex, but let’s not be crude.

  It’s not until I have her up in my room, the muted music Ivy’s listening to beating faintly through the walls—she’s been quiet lately, holed up in there more often than not—that I remember all the fucking romance novels.

 
My room is sort of a shrine to them. I have two big bookshelves, and there are some textbooks and yearbooks and a bit of assigned reading from high school and framed photos and small stuffed animals and all the other random kind of shit that accumulates on bookshelves, but most of it is my meticulously organized romance novels, sorted by author and then by title. Nowadays I mostly do ebooks on my phone, but back in the day I used to love collecting the paperbacks, and I still love going over to the shelf and pulling out a favorite and curling up in bed. It makes me so, so happy.

  And right now, so, so embarrassed, and I am hoping to God that Elizabeth at least doesn’t remember me steadfastly denying reading them on our first date.

  Elizabeth walks past them slowly, like they’re a museum exhibit. “Wow,” she says with a small laugh.

  “Mmm. Yeah.”

  She smiles at me. “Romance fan?”

  “Yeah, you know.”

  “It’s a good guilty pleasure,” she says. “You should see how many true-crime shows I have on my Netflix queue. Yours is much more wholesome.”

  I don’t really know how I feel about calling my favorite thing in the world a guilty pleasure, but she’s smiling at me, so I’m not really caring all that much. She really has such a beautiful smile.

  And then she’s coming toward me, resting her lips on my neck, and it’s hard to think about anything else.

  “You’re sweet,” she says softly between kisses. “You feel things.”

  I can still hear Ivy’s music leaking through the walls. “Maybe too many,” I whisper.

  She shakes her head. “No such thing. I’ll show you.”

  Her fingers travel under the hem of my shirt, and she kisses me, backing me up until my legs hit my bed, and I lay down and bring her with me. I toe my shoes off and snake one foot up her back, and we move in a hurry, undoing bra clasps, squirming out of jeans.

  Her mouth finds my collarbone, and she blows cool air against my skin between bites, like she’s soothing me. I put one hand in my hair and cover my eyes with the other.

  Her fingers slip inside me.

  Finally. Finally. I close my eyes and move to the music.

  …

  Elizabeth and I are still lying in bed together and my legs are still shaking a little and I’m still feeling floaty and giggly when I hear my mom’s voice in the kitchen. Which is very much not the basement. I sit up. “Shit.”

  Elizabeth laughs a little. “Not ready for your mom to meet me?”

  Eek. “No, I’m not ready for you to meet her. She’s…a lot. I think you might like me. Let’s not ruin that in five minutes. How are you with climbing out windows?”

  She laughs like I’m joking, even though I’m not sure I am. “Not amazing, but I am good at sneaking away unnoticed. Come cover for me and I’ll slip out.”

  “Ugh, it’s no use; she’s seen your car. She’s probably waiting downstairs to ambush us.” I get up and start getting dressed, trying to mentally will my mom in advance to chill the hell out. My parents get way too excited when I bring someone home. They’ll wait at the door like puppies. “Are you feeling brave?”

  “Always,” she says.

  “Yeah, we’ll see. My mother will probably ask you some wildly inappropriate question about your income or your sexual history.”

  “Prepared to answer either.”

  “And my dad will just sit there and laugh, because after all these years, he still thinks she’s charming.”

  “That’s just cute.”

  “There might be cake.”

  “Oh, I can be very brave for cake.”

  So we get dressed and take a deep breath and I hope to God this isn’t the last moment I’ll be able to look Elizabeth in the eye, and we head downstairs, but…there’s no ambush. My mom doesn’t even come out of the kitchen. Elizabeth and I shrug at each other at the front door and she gives me a quick kiss, and then she’s gone, and I wander into the kitchen because I’m curious what body snatcher has replaced my mom. And if there’s cake.

  And there’s my mom, washing some kind of craft goo off her hands, chatting away with…Dot. They stop and look at me when I come in.

  “Uh, hi?” I say.

  “Hi!” Dot says brightly.

  “Hi…” I look at my mom. “Can I talk to you?”

  Mom and Dot exchange looks like they’re trying not to laugh, and yeah, that’s not how this is going to work.

  It’s suddenly very important that I go to the garage and get my laundry out of the dryer. I’ve barely started unloading it when my mom comes in, shutting the door behind her.

  “You know, I just spent the last three hours trying to convince her you’re not a monster,” she says. “You could try assisting me with that.”

  “What the fuck is she doing here!”

  “I’ve been helping her with her biology project,” Mom says.

  “You’ve been helping Ivy’s little fling. In my house?”

  “I’m sorry, do you pay the mortgage here?”

  “Mom.”

  “The girl needed help. And she’s sweet, Andrea.”

  “God! Why do you have to interfere in everything?”

  She laughs and puts her hands on her hips. “Oh, trust me, if I was interfering in everything, you’d know.”

  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I know exactly what you’re upset about and it’s not me interfering.”

  So I say, “You know, Ivy’s not going to love this, either. You being all buddy-buddy with this girl. She’s already pissed that people think she’s in some kind of relationship. You’re just causing drama she’s going to hate.”

  “Oh yes, Ivy is definitely very low-key. That adds up.”

  I finish with the laundry and head upstairs with the basket, steadfastly avoiding the kitchen. And Mom follows me.

  Ivy’s door is open, and she’s sitting on the edge of her bed, looking out into the hallway. She’s in a pair of silk pajamas, no makeup, brushing out her hair, and God, she’s like a princess. I can’t even look at her. I go into my room to put the laundry away, but Mom stays in the hall, halfway between our doorways.

  “The project’s going well, by the way,” my mother says. “We spent three hours making enzymes out of Model Magic. She’s going to be fine.”

  “Well, that’s great,” I say, and honestly, at this point even I can’t tell if I’m being sarcastic or not. It’s not like I want Dot to fail Biology. I would just like her to not fail Biology somewhere other than where I live. But I come out of my room to give Ivy a dress that got mixed in with my stuff, just in time to see her mouth thank you to my mother.

  And it all falls into place, and I feel simultaneously stupid and angry and…something else I can’t identify, but it doesn’t feel right.

  I shoot my mom a look to tell her she better fucking follow me and go into my room. Thank God she listens to me this time.

  “Ivy asked you to do it, didn’t she,” I say.

  My mom crosses her arms.

  I hate this, I hate this, I hate this. “Jesus Christ! She asked you to help Dot with her damn homework? She asked you? Why?”

  “She thought I was the best person for the job. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m a nurse.”

  “Not that,” I say. “Why did she ask anyone?”

  My mom shakes her head and says, “Andie,” like she feels sorry for me. And I feel it like a punch in the stomach.

  “God!” I say. “Fuck! Her?” This cannot be happening. “She’s the one who’s going to make Ivy feel something? Her?”

  “Honey,” my mother says gently. “Why not her?”

  “Because she’s annoying as hell! She’s this airheaded, intrusive kid; she has an ego that rivals Ivy’s, because…she’s irritating, she’s too young, she thinks she knows everything, b
ecause—”

  “Because she’s not you?” Mom says.

  I sit down on the edge of the bed where an hour ago I was having sex with a completely unrelated girl. I am maybe not a great person.

  But it’s not that I want Ivy and not Elizabeth. It’s just…

  This is not how the story is supposed to go.

  That’s that feeling I can’t sort out. It’s that something is inherently wrong here, that things aren’t happening the way they’re supposed to. That all of a sudden there are all these people complicating what was supposed to be me and Ivy’s story, and it doesn’t…it doesn’t feel right.

  Sex with Elizabeth felt great, but also like a transgression. Like a betrayal to a relationship that doesn’t even exist.

  And this, Ivy reaching out, this is like another level. Ivy might be convinced sex isn’t serious, but I don’t think even she could pretend this is meaningless.

  “Can I go back now?” my mother says.

  “Yeah, go.”

  She leaves, and I roll onto my back on my bed on top of my unsorted laundry. I have a text from Elizabeth telling me what a great time she had.

  And Ivy Harlowe gives a shit about someone. Who isn’t me.

  December

  I’m trying to be a good person.

  It’s a little early for a New Year’s resolution, but I figure it’s overdue. I apologize to my mom. I hug my dad. I put in extra hours and I’m super sweet to Catherine and I don’t slap Max for cheating on her, which is as close to a Christmas present as he’s getting from me this year. I go over to Alyssa’s house for Hanukkah and make nice with her parents who ship us really hard and it’s always awkward, and Elizabeth and I invite her and Diana and Melody (Ivy has to work) to a game night at her place, and everyone gets along and it’s really nice. Ivy’s still living with us and saving up for her own place. Her internship’s going well.

  So everything’s kind of chugging along okay, but I know things are going to get messy soon. They always do this time of year. Home is a careful dance of us all planning holiday events at the club and simultaneously avoiding mentioning Christmas in front of Ivy. We go all out at Dav’s, replacing the palm trees with Christmas trees and dressing the girls up like elves.