The Love Song of Ivy K. Harlowe

by Hannah Moskowitz

  Dot sits down. “I know, but I have to meet the page count limit.”

  Ivy shrugs. “Make the periods bigger.”

  “That’s a good trick,” I say. “That got me through senior English.”

  “That’s what this is for!” Dot says.

  I groan. “God, I’m old.”

  “Watch your mouth,” my mother says. She gets up and smacks a kiss on my cheek on her way upstairs.

  I think my dad’s up there lying down; he was there when I left, and he’s been going through a rough patch the past week or so. I don’t think anything happened to trigger it, besides continued stress about the strip club continuing to go downhill. Bipolar disorder’s just a bitch. My mom is so amazingly good at helping him deal with it after all these years. When I was a kid, I barely even noticed anything was up. Honestly, I rarely notice now. They’re a well-oiled machine, those two.

  “Well, I’m glad Elizabeth’s impressed with your exclusive diet of cunt,” Ivy says. After my mother’s upstairs, because even Ivy has her limits.

  “I live to please,” I say.

  Ivy hands the papers back to Dot. “Conclusion’s good. Just make the changes on the second support and you should be ready to go.”

  Dot slumps back in her chair. “I can’t do it. The ennui. It takes me.”

  “It takes you?” Ivy says.

  “Takes me,” she says miserably.

  “Hmm. I’ve got a touch of that myself,” Ivy says. “Ladies?”

  “I could stand to have a little less ennui, yeah,” I say.

  “I know where this is heading, and I don’t know if I feel like going out,” Alyssa says. “It sounds hard.”

  Ivy sighs. “It does sound hard.”

  “Come oooon,” Dot says. “Stop being old.” Dot always, always wants to go out.

  “Shut up, pip-squeak,” Ivy says idly.

  “I’d go out,” I say. I’m already dressed kind of cute for dinner with Alyssa, and I haven’t sat down yet, so I’m still in doing-shit-inertia mode.

  Ivy glances at all of us like she’s weighing her options, then finally turns to Dot for a long moment. She sighs. “I do have E.”

  Dot slaps her hands on the table. “I love you! I love you and I love E.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Ivy stands up.

  Ivy and Dot get changed—I think Dot brings club clothes with her every time she comes over here, just in case—and we head to Kinetic, where Alyssa abstains because E doesn’t agree with her, but Ivy feeds me and then Dot each a tab off her tongue.

  Half an hour later, Dot’s making out with Melody—I don’t even know when she got here—and with any boy in here who will have her, Ivy’s twirling up a storm on the dance floor, and I’m just mesmerized by how beautiful all the lights look. And Ivy, the glow bouncing off her skin, her eyes closed and her chin pointed toward the ceiling.

  Kinetic’s packed tonight, some bachelorette party or something—they couldn’t go to Dav’s?—and there are dancers on the platforms and someone spills a drink on me and the whole thing is amazing, like I’m part of the same living, breathing animal as everyone else in here. Parts of a whole.

  “Here.” Alyssa nudges me. “Drink some water.” Her eyes are sparkly. They’re a really nice shade of brown.

  “You’re pretty,” I say, and she blushes and looks away. I sip the water. “Elizabeth doesn’t do drugs.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “She doesn’t know I do. Do you think that’s bad? I don’t do them very much. I didn’t even hook up with anyone tonight even though I wanted to, so I don’t think I did anything wrong. Look at Ivy, wow.” She’s spinning so fast, I can’t even believe it, her arms out like a child, and I can’t stop watching the colorful squares of light from the disco balls dancing on her bare arms. Long and fragile like tree branches.

  “She really likes you, huh?” Alyssa says.

  “Ivy? I hope so.”

  “Elizabeth.”

  “Oh. I think so. But I don’t know why.”

  “Who wouldn’t like you?”

  Dot comes bouncing over and wraps her hand around my wrist. “Dance with me!”

  I almost say yes, because dancing, life, glitter, but then I remember everything and shake her off. “Ask Ivy.”

  “Dance with me and Ivy!” She throws her arms up in the air. “I love dancing. I love dancing so much. I want to die dancing.”

  “Or you could stay alive and keep dancing,” Alyssa says.

  Dot points at her. “Yes. Yes. Also an option. I guess we’ll see! Where’s Ivy?” she says, like she’s just noticing she isn’t with us.

  I roll my eyes and point toward her, and Dot’s off in a flash, running across the dance floor and leaping onto Ivy and wrapping her legs around her waist. Ivy staggers in her heels and says something to Dot, then chuckles at whatever Dot says back, and then they’re both laughing and Ivy’s spinning Dot around. Slowly now, like they’re on a turntable.

  “She’s like a missile,” I say.

  Alyssa shrugs. “She’s cute. Wish she’d make out with me instead of Melody.”

  “Yuck. She’s a baby.”

  “She’s not that much younger than we are. Two years.”

  “It’s not just the age, it’s… She’s a baby.” She’s never done anything or experienced anything. She wants to be a makeup vlogger, and she’s succeeding at it for God’s sake. She doesn’t have any responsibilities. Nothing’s hard. She’s in love with the first person she ever slept with. “She’s brand-new,” I say.

  “Well, whatever it is about her, Ivy looks happy.”

  “Ivy’s high.”

  “Yeah, so are you, grouchy. I’m just saying, whatever Dot has going on seems to work for Ivy. Are the two of them still sleeping with other people?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Then I guess it’s not that serious. Although Melody and Diana aren’t monogamous and they’re plenty serious.”

  I snort. “Ivy and Dot are not Melody and Diana. Melody and Diana are a couple. Try telling Ivy that she and Dot are a couple. She’d bite your head off.”

  “So they’re, what, Ivy and a patron?”

  “As usual.” I sling my arm around Alyssa’s neck. “Don’t worry. You’ll find a baby to fawn over you, too. The Alyssa…patron thing.”

  “Eh. I don’t want a baby.” She watches the happy couple on the dance floor, her head tilted to the side. “She is sort of exhausting.”

  I put my hands up. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Did we used to have that much energy?”

  “I don’t think anyone else in the world has ever had that much energy.”

  Ivy and Dot come back a few songs later, sweating and panting, and Alyssa fills them both up with water. Dot kisses her cheek, which makes me laugh, and then I can’t stop laughing. Ivy slaps me on the back like I’m coughing.

  “Why don’t we do E every day?” Dot asks.

  “Money,” Ivy says. “Brain integrity.”

  “Those sound very inconsequential,” Dot says.

  “To you they would, yes.”

  Dot spins around. “The world is so beautiful. I wish it were always this beautiful. Look at the sparkles in here!” She sits on a barstool. “The world is like Ivy.”

  “Maybe half a tab for you next time,” Ivy says.

  Dot points at her. “Don’t you dare.”

  “Your boobs are lighting up.”

  “My boobs are—you’re the one who needs half a tab—oh! My boobs are lighting up!” She reaches into her bra and pulls out her phone. “It’s Trang!”

  “Who the fuck is Trang?” Ivy says.

  “He works for my parents!”

  “Uh, maybe don’t answer that right now,” Alyssa says, but it’s too late. Dot’s already on
the phone, yelling over the music in rapid Vietnamese. Ivy shrugs and leans across the bar to order a drink. Dot doesn’t get off the phone until the glass is halfway drained.

  She stuffs her phone back into her bra. “We need to go now,” she says.

  “Go where?” I say.

  “Down to the docks.”

  “It’s one in the morning.”

  “Shrimp waits for no clock!” she says.

  Ivy rolls her eyes. “Spot, what’s going on?”

  “One of the nets is stuck and the boat can’t come in!” Dot says. “They want me to come cut it!” She makes scissors with her hand, like we won’t understand the concept of cutting without a visual.

  “Why you?” I say. “I thought this was your brothers’ and your parents’ thing.”

  “They’re out of town! Why do you think I’ve been at your house all the time?”

  “You’re always at my house all the time,” I say.

  Ivy says, “Okay, why can’t the guy calling you cut it?”

  “Because my parents will be mad! Those things are expensive. I’m not gonna cut it, I’m gonna save it! I have to go save the boat!”

  “Honey,” Alyssa says. “How are you going to save a boat?”

  “I can do it!” Dot says, while some drunk guy plows into her and nearly knocks her over. She looks around like she’s forgotten we’re still in the club. I kind of had, too.

  Alyssa says, “You’re high out of your mind and it’s forty degrees outside.”

  “I can do it,” Dot insists. “I have to do it or all these people are going to be in trouble. They might get fired!”

  “Maybe they should get fired,” Ivy says. “It sounds like they fucked up.”

  Dot smacks her. “Heartless.”

  “Not news.”

  “I will save the net and I will save the boat and I will save my family’s money and I will save the fishermen’s jobs!”

  Ivy finishes her drink and sets the glass down. “Okay, Oprah, fuck it. Let’s go save the world.”

  …

  Alyssa drives us down to the water while Dot rides shotgun and barks directions and Ivy and I exchange looks from the back seat. I used to come down here when I was a kid and watch the boats with my dad. It’s weird to think I might have seen one of Dot’s family’s.

  At half past one in the morning in January, there’s no one here except a bunch of rather intimidating fishermen, one of whom Dot marches right up to the second we’re out of the car. They start talking to each other in Vietnamese, and he points out into the water where there’s a dimly lit, rickety-looking boat maybe fifty yards away from the dock. We get out of the car and bounce up and down a little to keep warm, but the drugs do a lot to help with that.

  Dot comes back over to us, tottering a little in her heels.

  “Fucking idiots, going out this early. Can’t see for shit,” she says to us before she turns around and yells something in Vietnamese to a few nearby guys, who all jump to attention and start getting another boat ready. Being fourth in line to a shrimp boat business probably doesn’t impress much in the general world, but here she certainly seems to have some pull.

  “What are you doing?” Ivy says.

  “I told you, I’m saving the boat. Can I borrow your gloves?”

  Ivy tugs them off with her teeth. “Right, but how exactly are you saving this boat?” she says with her mouth full of cotton.

  “I don’t know yet.” Dot looks out onto the water. “I’ll figure it out once I’m there.”

  “You’re going to freeze to death,” Ivy says.

  “I have your gloves!” She kisses Ivy’s cheek and wobbles off, shouting more orders and swinging herself onto the rescue boat like it’s the most comfortable thing in the world.

  We go to the edge of the dock, shivering, and squint out after Dot as her boat takes her to the one stranded away from shore. They’re small from back here, but we can see Dot and the fishermen with her climb from boat to boat and give the shipwrecked fishermen some blankets. Dot’s voice cuts through the wind off the water, and she goes over to where the net’s slung and does some sort of net triage, I don’t know.

  “If she gets in that fucking water,” Ivy says.

  “She’s not going to get in the water,” I say. “That’s insane.”

  “Have you met her?” Ivy says.

  We can hear faint arguing on the boat from where we’re standing, and then the Dot-shaped blur on the deck steps out of her shoes and takes off her coat.

  “Goddamn it,” Ivy says. She takes her phone out and dials Dot and puts it on speaker. “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Her voice is tinny and shrill. “I’m gonna see if I can unstuck it. Stick it.”

  “In that freezing goddamn water.”

  “I’m putting on a wet suit right now.”

  “It’s polluted as shit. You’re gonna end up with a lung full of pneumonia.”

  “Do you honestly think I’ve never done this before?”

  “How do you even know how far down it is?” Ivy says.

  “I don’t. I’ll see when I get in.”

  “I’m not telling your parents you fucking died.”

  “Oh, but you’re the one they’d want to hear it from, darling,” Dot says, and Ivy snickers and hangs up the phone.

  “Stupid fucking kid,” she mutters.

  “This so isn’t safe,” Alyssa says.

  Ivy takes a long pull on her vape pen. “You can’t stop her,” she says when she lets her breath out. “She does what she wants.”

  I try to imagine diving into this water, picturing how it would freeze to your ribs, how pitch-black it would be while it throbbed all around you. Like an ice-cold Kinetic with the lights off, the bass beating in your ears. And without anyone there with you.

  It’s suddenly very, very important that this doesn’t happen, and I don’t know why. “She shouldn’t go,” I say. I feel like I’m too loud. “She shouldn’t do this.”

  “She’ll be okay,” Ivy says, her eyes fixed on the boat, just as we see Dot dive. Ivy takes a sharp breath in.

  “Jesus Christ,” Alyssa says. I think about taking Ivy’s hand, but she has her arms tightly crossed. She doesn’t look scared, anyway. Just focused, like if she stares at Dot hard enough, it’ll help.

  “I didn’t even know she knew how to do this kind of shit,” I say. I’ve never really pictured her doing much outside following Ivy around.

  “She was raised on these boats,” Ivy says.

  “I know, but—”

  Ivy shakes her head without looking away from the boat. “You think she’s a princess.”

  “I mean, she is an heiress.”

  It feels like forever, but it’s probably less than a minute before Dot comes up for air. I hear her shout something at the fishermen.

  “Is she giving up?” Alyssa says.

  “No,” Ivy says.

  Sure enough, a few seconds later Dot sinks back under the water. The fishermen are all leaning over the side of the boat, watching her. I’m guessing they’d be in a lot more trouble for letting the boss’s daughter die than for ripping the net. Or maybe, the uncynical part of me realizes, they’ve known Dot since she was a baby. Maybe these people care about her.

  I look at Ivy and her narrowed eyes.

  It’s getting to be not so hard to believe.

  The next time Dot comes up for air, the fishermen are immediately all over her, throwing something down to haul her back onto the boat, wrapping her up in blankets as soon as she’s on deck. At first I think she’s called it quits, but right after Dot, they’re pulling up the net. The boat starts toward us. She did it.

  Ivy takes off her coat and meets Dot at the end of the dock to put it around her shoulders. She says something to her that we can’t hear that makes Dot laugh.
Her mascara’s all over her face and her teeth are chattering. She looks proud.

  “Okay,” I say quietly. To Alyssa. To myself. “Okay, she’s kind of a badass.”

  …

  Alyssa drops us off at home, and Dot runs immediately into the shower, and I head up to my room to change and crawl under the covers to try to get warm. I settle back into the book I’ve been reading, this seriously awesome one about a woman who keeps a lighthouse and this guy who may or may not be a ghost.

  I’m planning just to read a little before I go to sleep, but I end up three chapters deep at quarter to three and really craving some hot chocolate, so I get up quietly and creep down the stairs. I’m almost at the entrance to the kitchen when I hear Dot and Ivy talking. It hadn’t even occurred to me that they might still be awake. Or be out of bed, at least.

  “I don’t know what it is you think I’m going to say,” Ivy says. She sounds serious, so I freeze, just out of sight.

  “Jesus, I’m not trying to trap you or something,” Dot says. “But is it seriously that ridiculous that I’m wondering about this? I’m a senior. Everywhere I turn it’s like, think about your future.”

  “They mean college. Not whether you’re going to keep fucking the girl you’re fucking.”

  Oh God. Is Dot trying to push Ivy into a relationship discussion? She couldn’t just take the win from the shrimp boat and run with it. She’s got to try to conquer Ivy, too.

  “I just want to know your plans,” Dot says. “Why is that so threatening to you? I’m not trying to tell you what they should be. I’m not even asking you for anything.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “I’m asking you to talk, that’s it. I’m not asking you to be sure or to make some kind of decision. I just want to know whether you…when you look into the future, next month, six months, a year, am I there?”

  I’m not even mad, honestly; I’m just embarrassed for her. I don’t really want to hear Ivy destroy this girl’s dreams, but I can’t get myself to move. It’s like one of those cringe-comedy TV shows. You have to watch between your fingers.

  “That’s not how I think about things,” Ivy says. “I can’t keep myself going by relying on other people. How do you think that would have worked out for me?”