I don’t know why I’m like this. I’ve always been the type to lose myself in a movie or a TV show at the exclusion of actual life. A book. A person.
I think this is how I participate in life. I watch.
Can that count?
Please?
Is it okay to just want to watch?
So needless to say, I’m having an existential crisis and I’m not the best date. I’m not entirely surprised when I ask Gretchen outside the café if I’m going to see her again and she hesitates.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
“Eek. Yes.”
“Are you in love with Dot?”
I laugh. I can’t help it. “With Dot? She’s a fetus.”
“Okay, Ivy, then.”
I stop laughing, but I still say, “No,” and it feels…not quite like the truth but something adjacent to it. That’s interesting.
She doesn’t buy it, and I don’t know how to tell her that I’m definitely obsessed with something, but I don’t think that it’s Ivy anymore. I don’t really know what it is.
So I say, “I just think they’re kind of fascinating.”
She nods a little.
“Maybe you have to have been there since the beginning to really get it,” I say.
“Maybe.”
“I just…I really want them to have some happily-ever-after.”
“But what about you?” she says.
What about me?
I say, “I don’t think I’m at the end yet.”
…
I’m still contemplating all of that when I get home, which is probably why I enter quietly enough that no one seems to notice me. My mom is on the couch, watching something with the volume on low, and my dad is at the kitchen table. With Ivy, who’s writing in a notebook while he talks.
Sue me, I’m curious. I get close enough to hear.
“I think when it comes down to it, it’s just about reassurance,” my dad says. They have two mugs on the table between them and an almost-empty plate of cookies. “That you’re not getting tired of her. That you’re not bothered. But don’t say it unless you mean it. We can tell.”
Oh.
“I don’t know why the fuck I would be bothered,” Ivy says. “She’s not even asking me to do anything for her.”
“When you’re sick all the time, just existing feels like a burden to other people,” he says. “That’s what you’re trained to believe. And especially since she’s just getting used to it, she’s just figuring out this new life right alongside you. It feels overwhelming to her, so she expects it to be overwhelming to you. And right now, she’s probably afraid of scaring you off. Once she gets more comfortable, she might start testing the waters. Asking more from you. Expecting more.”
She’s listening. She’s taking notes.
“Okay, so…” Ivy bites her lip. “What if I can’t do it? What happens if I do get overwhelmed?”
“Then you communicate that. It’s just about honesty. Trust. If she can’t trust you to tell her when it’s too much, she won’t trust you when you say that it’s not.”
“I just…” Ivy makes a frustrated line in her notebook. “I want her to feel better,” she says eventually, in a rush.
“She might not,” my dad says firmly. “And you need to somehow get to the point where you can live with that. Because she has to.”
“I get that, like, philosophically,” she says. “But she’s right in front of me and she’s having a panic attack because she feels so terrible. How do I not wish that that would go away?”
He shakes his head a little. “I don’t know.”
She sighs.
“I haven’t been on that side of it,” he says. “I know it’s hard for both people.”
“I’m not trying to, like, compare it. I know she’s got the short end of the stick here.”
“It’s not a contest.”
“Her heart’s failing, John.” She takes in a shaky breath. “I do not know how to get used to saying that.”
He gives her a second, then says, “What always helps me when I feel guilty…maybe this will help you. It’s remembering that other people do this, too. Someone has been sick before her. Someone has been healthy before you. This is not the first relationship where one person is healthy and one person is not. You don’t have to invent anything. It is possible.”
“Yeah,” she says softly.
“Other people are doing this as we speak. Other people are happy.”
Ivy sits back in her chair and thinks about this for a while, and she must see me out of the corner of her eye. I expect her to be pissed at me for eavesdropping, but she just says, “Hey.”
“Hi. How’s Dot?”
“Alive.”
“You know, I’m pretty sure he used the word ‘relationship,’” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Shut up.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
She sighs and checks her phone. “I should go. I’m supposed to break in and watch this hideous reality show about boat wives or something. I suppose I should be grateful for her interest in terrible white women.” She reaches across the table and gives my dad’s hand a squeeze. “Thank you.”
“You’re going to do fine,” he tells her. “Just be you.”
“Me is kind of an asshole.”
“Maybe,” he grants. “But it’s the asshole she wanted.”
“Kinky,” Ivy says. She stands and packs up her shit, and she’s just about to leave when there’s a knock on the door. “Christ, did she sneak out again?”
But it’s not Dot. It is, ironically, her mother.
“Oh, fuck,” Ivy says. “Oh God. Something’s wrong.”
My mother meets her at the door. “What’s the matter?” she says to her. “Is something wrong with Dot?”
Ivy grabs my hand.
“Dot is… She’s okay,” Hai says. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her speak English. She sits down on the couch with my mom and does a bit of a double take when she sees Ivy.
“I should go,” Ivy says, but then Hai starts crying, and Ivy freezes.
“I don’t know what to do,” Hai says. “She leaves the house. She cries all night. She is so upset. So many doctors…”
God, this is so awkward. I so should not be here. This has nothing to do with me.
My mom holds Hai’s hand between hers. “She’s still recovering.”
“She is going to get hurt again,” Hai says. “I have to work; I can’t see her all the time. She won’t…she won’t stay.”
Ivy pulls her lip into her mouth.
“I don’t know what to do,” Hai says. “I can’t help. I don’t know.”
And then I have the first good idea I’ve had in God knows how long.
“What if Dot moves in here?” I say.
Everyone looks at me, but no one immediately shuts me down and tells me I’m an idiot, so I keep going.
“She’d be living with a nurse,” I say. “Dad’s here most of the time to keep an eye on her. And she wouldn’t…I mean. She wouldn’t have to sneak out if she were here.” For obvious reasons.
Hai looks at my mom.
“Hai, of course Dot is more than welcome here,” she says. “You know that. I’ll take care of her like she’s mine.”
My dad puts his arm around my shoulders.
“I will need to talk to her father,” Hai says.
“Of course,” Mom says.
Ivy squeezes my hand so tight. And after they’ve worked out some details, just as Hai’s getting ready to go, she stops and puts her hand on Ivy’s shoulder.
I see Ivy holding her breath.
“Dot tells me that it was not your fault,” she says, and Ivy covers her face with her hands.
August
Dot moves int
o our house on August first.
Mom swears up and down to her parents that she’ll keep a close eye on her. After they’ve had their tearful goodbye, Mom pulls Ivy and me to the side while we’re bringing boxes upstairs. “This isn’t like when you were living here,” she says. “She’s sick and she needs her rest and her parents are trusting me. I’m not letting anything else happen to that girl.”
Ivy looks down and then up. “Me neither,” she says.
…
Dot spends most of her time in Max’s room, listening to music and watching YouTube videos. She emerges for meals and doctor’s appointments and to see Ivy, but that’s about it. She comes out with us sometimes if we go to Mama’s, but we take Kinetic trips without her. Ivy’s still fucking everything that moves. She seems happy.
But Dot withdraws more and more with each panic attack, even though they’re getting fewer and farther between. My mom notices, too.
“Take her to work with you today,” she tells me one morning, when we’re cleaning up after breakfast and Dot’s already retreated back to safety.
“You think?”
“She needs to get her sea legs back. The longer she keeps herself out of real life, the harder it’s going to be to get herself back in. Back on the horse.”
“I thought it was sea legs.”
“Seahorse, then.”
“I’ll see if she wants to,” I say. “I’m not gonna force her. That’s Ivy’s job.”
Dot’s back in bed, lying on her stomach on top of the covers with earbuds in, watching something on her laptop. She’s decorated some in here, put up a few posters over my brother’s hockey ones and taped up some pictures of her family and her and Ivy. Her bedside table is covered in orange prescription bottles. She looks up when I come in. “Hi.”
“Hey. I’m going to Dav’s now.”
“Okay.”
“Do you want to come? I can wait for you to get ready. You can see the fruits of your labor.”
“I just held a camera,” she says.
“You edited the whole thing together.”
She squirms a little, thinking. “Do I have to stay all day?”
“No. I can run you back here if you get tired.”
She hesitates, then nods. “Okay, yeah,” she says. “Let’s do it.”
Dot’s swarmed the second we get into the club, and Melody and I have to play bodyguard a little bit to keep her from getting overwhelmed. But she seems pretty okay, and I see one of the rare flashes of old Dot in the way she basks in the attention. She dodges their questions about her health but eats up compliments on her outfit.
Once the dressing room clears out a bit and things start to calm down, Madison says, “Dot, can you do my makeup?”
Dot nods and comes over to her to see what she has to work with. I keep half an eye on her—it only takes a few minutes before this is the longest I’ve seen her on her feet at one time—and the other on our DJ’s contract I’m going over.
“Your skin’s looking really good,” Dot says.
“I got that soap you told me about!”
Dot laughs a little. “Cleanser.”
“Right. Cleanser. Cost me a whole day’s tips.”
“It’s worth it.”
“It really is. I’m softer than my baby.”
They keep talking about skin-care stuff, and I zone out because my skin care routine consists of splashing my face with water, if it’s lucky, and I don’t pay much more attention to them until I hear something clatter to the ground.
“Fuck,” Dot says, and when I look over, she’s cleaning pink powder off the floor.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” Madison says.
“No, I broke it.”
“It doesn’t matter. Are you okay?”
I get up and put my hand on her shoulder. “I’ll get the broom; it’s fine. Sit.”
She makes a frustrated noise, but she listens. I sweep up the blush, and Madison finishes the rest of her makeup by herself. She gives Dot a kiss on the cheek before she goes out onstage, which, by the looks of her, Dot finds just as patronizing as I do.
“You okay?” I say to her.
“My arms go numb if I have them up for too long.”
I have no idea what to say. “Well, that sucks.”
“Yeah.” She sighs. “Yeah, it does.” She slumps in her chair. “It is just…it is so frustrating to not be able to do things. To see them right in front of you but then you can’t do them.”
“You need anything?”
“I’m just so tired.” She won’t look at me.
At least I can help with that. “Come on,” I say. “I’ll take you home.”
…
I run into Catherine in the office after I get back.
“Sorry,” I say. “I had to bring Dot home.”
“How’s our little underage mascot doing these days?” she asks me.
“Barely underage anymore. Her birthday’s coming up.”
“Speaking of things to celebrate.” She beckons me over to the computer and shows me a spreadsheet. “Broke even last month.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
“God. Thank God.” For the first time since I’ve been back from Italy—God, since before that—it feels like maybe something is going to be okay. Something really big.
“Yeah, you and the mascot did some damn good work.” She pushes back in her chair. “Hey, how are you doing?”
“Me? I’m fine.”
“Max told me you and Elizabeth broke up. I was sorry to hear that. She seemed nice.”
“Oh. Um…yeah. She was. I think.” There’s no non-awkward way to say that it turns out you haven’t really been thinking about your ex-girlfriend because you’re a little busy with someone else’s love life. And because obsessing over other people’s love lives is my specialty, I think back to her and Max in the club last fall and what I overheard. “Can I ask you something?” I say.
“Of course.”
“How do people stay in relationships with each other long-term without being miserable? Like, how does that happen? I mean, can it? Can it even happen?”
“Of course,” she says. “Look at your parents. Look at Max and me.”
I don’t say anything, but she tilts her head to the side as she reads my face.
“There are always going to be issues,” she says. “There’s always going to be shit about the other person that’s hard. Every relationship is going to have bullshit, whether that’s heart failure or your brother sleeping with a stripper.”
“Heh.” I guess it’s not really a secret after all.
“You just have to decide what bullshit is important to you and what isn’t,” Catherine says. “Everyone’s got their own opinions on what’s not actually a deal breaker for them. And sometimes you don’t know until it happens. You’d be really surprised what you can handle, when you’re with the right person.”
“So you don’t care about Max sleeping with Niya.”
“Not particularly. It’s a good trump card to pull out when someone has to do the dishes and I don’t feel like it.”
“I feel like I’m never going to find anyone,” I say. “Like there isn’t anyone who wants my particular brand of bullshit. And I don’t exactly blame them.”
“Of course you will,” Catherine says. “You’re twenty. You have plenty of time. And you have a big romance coming. I just know it.”
I used to know it, too. Now I’m not so sure. All my romance novels always made it seem like the hardest part was getting together, but my parents met at a strip club and that was that, and Ivy and Dot just crashed into each other and kept going. That wasn’t hard. But this part? Can I even do what all the people around me are doing?
Because I wouldn’t put up with my wife sleeping with a stripper. And
I wouldn’t want my girlfriend out sleeping with other girls at Kinetic while I was home sick. But I wouldn’t want a girlfriend who was too sick to go out, either, and I feel like a horrible person for that, but there it is.
It’s hard to believe I thought I could handle a relationship with Ivy, of all people. That I thought either of us would really be what the other one wanted.
But I think what I figured out that night on her sidewalk is true. It’s not her. Dot’s managing her just fine, heart failure and all. It’s me.
Maybe it all really is doable when you find the right person.
But what if I’m not the right person for anyone?
…
Ivy brings Dot home from the cardiologist a few days later and tacks a list up on the refrigerator while Dot wanders into the living room and turns on the TV.
“New med schedule,” Ivy says. “She needs to get it tattooed on her. Kid can’t remember shit.”
My dad comes down the stairs and says, “Dot home?” and Ivy and I point to the living room. He has a piece of paper in his hand, which he brings over to where she’s flopped on the couch. “See what you think of that,” he says.
My first thought is he’s taken up drawing again and he wants her opinion, but when Ivy and I come in to check what’s going on, I see it’s some kind of flyer. “A support group?” Dot says.
“At the community center, where I have my group,” Dad says. “They have all sorts of them, but this one’s for teenagers with chronic illnesses.”
Dot hands the flyer back. “I’m not really the group type,” she says.
“Tell that to your basketball team,” Ivy says. “Or that couple at Kinetic the night we—” she continues, until Dot throws a pillow at her.
“Just think about it,” Dad says. “I’ve found mine incredibly helpful.”
Ivy and Dot go up to Dot’s room for a while after that—I’m not sure what Dot is capable of sex-wise right now, and I’m slightly too tactful to ask, though I can’t say I’m not curious—and then Ivy leaves to go out and I go back to work for the late shift. The house is dark and quiet when I fall into bed and then dark and not quiet when Dot wakes me up screaming in the middle of the night.
The Love Song of Ivy K. Harlowe Page 20
