“Don’t be a dumbass,” Ivy said, snatching up the paddle and coming to Mary Ellen’s side. She ducked under Mary Ellen’s arm and took up some of her weight, pushing the car door shut with her free hand. “We’re going back in the house.”
“I can’t stay here. I need help.” Mary Ellen grabbed the canoe paddle and tried to pivot toward the driveway, but Ivy jerked her in the other direction.
“You can’t make it up that hill,” she hissed.
“Well, I can’t stay here and—”
“Can we not do this out here? It’s almost dark.”
Ivy took a step toward the house, and Mary Ellen sagged against her, emptied of courage, and allowed herself to be led inside.
Ivy deposited her on one of the living room sofas and piled some cushions under her leg. Then she lay down on the opposite sofa, an arm flung over her eyes, looking exhausted. A pang of guilt complicated Mary Ellen’s feeling of despair. The girl was so small, and she’d done so much already.
“You know,” Mary Ellen said. “It’s incredible, everything you’ve done. Getting me out from under that tree and all the rest.”
Ivy said nothing.
“You’re so strong. I never would’ve expected you to be able to do all that. Helping me up the hill. Digging the car out.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry if—”
“I’m not going out there.”
Mary Ellen squeezed her eyes shut. It was hard to think clearly; the pain in her leg was like deafening heavy-metal music. “If it’s money you want, I’ll give you my ATM card and my credit card. You can take as much as you want. Use them to buy a car—”
“I’ll go in the morning.”
“Tomorrow morning?” Mary Ellen stared at her in disbelief. “That’s, like, twelve hours from now. I’ll be dead of an infection by then, or I’ll bleed to death. Don’t you understand?”
The girl didn’t move. Was she asleep?
“Ivy?”
The girl sighed and turned her face to look at Mary Ellen.
“Is it the dark? Is that why you won’t go?”
Ivy turned her face away. Mary Ellen blinked away tears, wondering if she could make it through the night. The pain wasn’t getting any better; if anything, it was worse. Was that the infection setting in? She wished, for the first time ever, that she worked in a different division of Gallard—on something like surgical products, which required actual medical knowledge.
She felt a sudden stab of hunger. “Do you think you could bring me something to eat? Please?”
The girl sighed loudly and went to the kitchen, where Mary Ellen could hear the rattle of cereal hitting a bowl. She realized she was actually ravenous; the hunger was coming over her like a fast-moving storm. When Ivy brought her the bowl, she gulped down the sugary slurry as fast as she could in her semi-reclined position, milk streaming from the corners of her mouth. “Thank you,” she moaned, letting the bowl drop to the floor.
Ivy sat opposite her, eating her own cereal. “My signature dish,” she said, her mouth full.
“You know,” Mary Ellen said, “I think you’re actually going to do all right. Out there. In Wyoming.”
“Montana.”
“Montana. You’re tough.”
“Thanks.”
“You just have to work on things like impulse control.” Mary Ellen couldn’t help adding this.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you get really angry sometimes, and then you act…irrationally. Like throwing my camera out the window.” She let silence fall, then said quietly, “Why? Why would you do something like that?”
“I was pissed!”
“It’s a six-thousand-dollar camera!”
Ivy was silent for a moment. “That’s insane.”
“Throwing it was insane.”
“Six thousand? My ma’s car cost that much, and it can’t even take pictures.”
“Well.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
Mary Ellen turned her head to look at her.
“Does a six-thousand-dollar camera make you better at taking pictures?”
Ivy was trying to get a rise out of her, but Mary Ellen felt too tired to oblige. There was no point in arguing, no point in keeping up appearances. “No,” she said.
“’Cause, I mean, phones are so good at taking pictures these days, I can’t imagine what a six-thousand-dollar camera could do. Looking at those pictures must be like, I don’t know, going into another dimension or something.” Ivy laughed.
Mary Ellen felt a long sigh of pain wash up her leg. She groaned and pulled at the dressings Ivy had tied around the wound. Her skin was red and tight. “Oh my God, it’s getting infected,” she whimpered. “I can tell it’s starting; my skin is all hot.”
“What’s it like, anyway?” Ivy asked.
“It’s like there’s not enough room inside my leg for everything, like my bones and my muscles and my veins are going to burst through the skin.”
“No, I mean having all that money. How does it feel?”
“What?” Mary Ellen lay her head back against the sofa arm. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel so special.” She tried to ignore the pain in her leg and think about her money, her relationship with it. “It feels safe. Warm. Like a blanket.”
Ivy didn’t look impressed by this answer.
“Okay, no.” Mary Ellen closed her eyes. “It feels…slippery.”
“Like, in a sexy way?”
“No. I mean you never really know how much you have, whether you have enough. Some days you feel good about it, proud of it…those are the days you buy expensive cameras. Other days you freak out because you hear how much your friend paid for her stove, and you realize your perspective is all off. You don’t have anywhere near enough.”
“Oh.” Ivy thought about this for a minute. “My sister, Agnes, is like that, but with her body. One day she’s prancing around in short shorts like she’s a Victoria’s Secret model, and the next day she’s literally crying in front of the mirror about her cellulite. She always looks the same, but her opinion changes every five minutes.”
“I don’t know why we do that to ourselves, always comparing and worrying and feeling inadequate.”
“I don’t,” Ivy said.
“You don’t compare yourself to other people? Come on.”
“Well, yeah, of course I do. But it doesn’t make me feel worse about myself. It usually makes me feel better.”
Mary Ellen laughed a little at this, surprised by how happy she was to hear it. Then her burst of happiness abruptly tipped over into tears—as bursts of happiness always did when they were unexpected and sorely needed.
“What?”
“Nothing. I love that about you. It’s great.”
Ivy stared at her for a moment, her mouth open. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “About the camera. I didn’t know all this was going to happen.”
Mary Ellen wiped her cheeks and flapped a hand at her. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I do have a temper. I get it from my gran.”
“Yeah?”
“It feels good, you know? It’s such a rush, getting mad and doing something crazy. But then there’s the hangover afterward when I feel bad.”
“Hangovers are the worst.”
Ivy lay down and pulled her knees into her chest.
“You know, it actually wasn’t that bad, going into the ravine today,” Mary Ellen said. “Before the tree fell on me, I mean.” Remembering the ice formations on the creek filled her with wonderment all over again. “I had this moment of clarity, this moment when I finally had real perspective. And that felt like the beginning of something. Of being able to let go.” She sighed and pulled a throw blanket from the back of the sofa, covering herself.
“Le
t go of what?”
“Just, bad stuff that’s been weighing me down. Nothing.”
“Yeah, but I want to know. Like, you have everything you need, right? Nice car, nice camera, probably a really nice house full of nice stuff. I’m just curious what’s bad about your life.”
“Oh, come on, Ivy. You’re not that naive, are you? You know a car can’t make you happy, a camera won’t give you a reason to get up in the morning.”
“I guess.”
“You can still end up lonely. You can still feel like your life hasn’t added up to anything. And…things can still happen. Things you feel bad about.”
“Like what?”
Mary Ellen shook her head.
“No, come on. I’m not being nosy. Remember last night? You said I’ve never had to deal with real problems. I want to know what you think real problems are.”
Mary Ellen sighed. Would it help—putting her pain out there between them, on the coffee table, to be looked at and commented upon? Would it make her seem more human to the girl? Would it give Ivy a reason to care whether she lived or died? “Fine,” she said. “My father passed away last year. And it was my fault.”
Ivy rolled on her side and propped her head on her arm.
“I hadn’t been visiting him as often as I should have. He lived alone, about twenty minutes away from us, and I used to check in on him every few days. If I couldn’t go out there, I’d call. Just to, you know, make sure everything was okay.” Mary Ellen felt tears coming on, but she dammed them up. She just needed to get through the story. It was complicated, though, and she didn’t really know where it began. College, probably—wasn’t that when her father had pressed the lever that set her life rolling down a track that ended in emotional paralysis and a lethal separation?
So she told Ivy everything. She told her about her joyful, short-lived stint as an art major; about her sudden redirection; about her utter failure to rebel in any way, ever. She explained how her growing dissatisfaction with her job had built up inside her over the years, secretly, shamefully, until it all came to the surface in the form of resentment and blame as soon as her father died.
“I mean, who blames their father for something like that? It’s awful. I should have just taken charge of my own happiness.” Mary Ellen blinked furiously at the ceiling. “I don’t know why I’ve had this constant, obsessive need to put it all on him.” She covered her eyes with her hand, the pain in her leg all mixed up with the pain in her heart. “God, I’m just the worst,” she moaned.
“No you’re not.”
“I am, though.”
“Everybody does that shit to themselves. I do it.” Ivy folded a throw pillow in half and shoved it under her cheek. “I hate my ma for being sick. Okay? I am literally the worst.”
Mary Ellen tilted her head to the side. “She’s really sick?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sure you don’t hate—”
“Yes. That’s how I am. She feels awful and that makes me feel awful and that makes me mad. I know I’m going to be stuck at home taking care of her and my gran for the rest of my life, and that pisses me off worse than anything. For a long time, I hated myself for being that way, but now I just accept it. It’s who I am: a shitty person. A shitty person who does shitty shit.” Ivy sat up abruptly, grabbed their cereal bowls, and went to the kitchen. Mary Ellen heard the clatter of dishes being tossed in the sink, and it occurred to her that this was the first time she’d ever seen Ivy pick something up and put it away.
“Ivy,” she called toward the kitchen, “you’re not a shitty person. It’s normal to feel angry at people you love. It’s just the feelings you have… It’s not who you are.”
“Says you.” Ivy flopped back down on the sofa.
“Yes.” Mary Ellen felt confused. “Well, I told you I was going to start letting go of things. I’m trying.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“What happened to your dad? How did you kill him?”
“Oh. Lord, it wasn’t like that. It’s just…” Mary Ellen shifted her position on the sofa ever so slightly, which caused a jolt of pain to travel up her spine. She gasped and tried to focus her mind on the story, which was helpful in terms of taking her away from the situation at hand. “I started avoiding going out there. I kept coming up with excuses, because there was all this stuff building up inside me, and seeing my father just… I don’t know. It threatened to bring it out. Stuff I didn’t want to deal with.” An aftershock of pain made her wince.
“So how did he die?”
“In the bathtub,” Mary Ellen whispered. “He’d gotten so weak. I didn’t realize it; he never wanted to admit how frail he was. But he couldn’t… He couldn’t…” She pressed a hand over her eyes. “Oh!”
Ivy was quiet. Mary Ellen took some deep breaths, trying to get herself under control, but it was too much, she was too worn out, she was in too much pain. The image of her father, naked, alone, trembling, dying, was more than she could bear. And now—now! Her punishment!
“He couldn’t get himself out?”
Mary Ellen nodded. “The neighbor called the police, when the newspapers started piling up. He died of hypothermia.”
“That sucks,” Ivy said.
“Yeah.” Mary Ellen took a long, shaky breath. “It does.”
“But I mean, it’s not like you did it to him. It was an accident.”
“I should’ve checked in on him. I should’ve realized he was too weak to live on his own. I should’ve called.”
“Well.” Ivy twisted her fingers around themselves. “I guess we have something in common, huh.”
“Yeah.” Mary Ellen extended an arm toward Ivy, pointing a finger at her. “It doesn’t mean we don’t love them.” She let her hand fall to the floor beside the sofa. She felt so tired. “I wasn’t very good at taking care of him, but I never stopped loving him.” She closed her eyes.
“I’m no hero, you know,” Ivy said, sounding far away. “I get scared.”
“We all do,” Mary Ellen murmured, swiftly dropping off to sleep.
• • •
Mary Ellen felt herself melting into the earth like a dead leaf under the snow. Would Matt be able to see her, she wondered, if he came now? Or would he pull back the blanket to find her turned wet and black, smelling like rain, old lettuce, and ripening snowdrops, a few veins still visible, the rest sinking swiftly into her bed of soil? Matt. She pulled him close, tucking her nose under the nape of his neck, drawing her knees into the backs of his knees, slipping her ankle into the hollow just above his heel. There he was, solid and real, her companion under the snow, ready to fetch some water if she asked, ready to bring the shaky glass to her lips. Just as he’d wiped applesauce from the girls’ reddened cheeks, always able to find that last dry spot on the bib, he would dab at Mary Ellen’s thin skin too someday, and she would stir honey into his tea. He liked it that way.
The ice was still flowing. She could see its molten, sensual progress over the stones, and she gave herself to it. She flowed toward the bend in the creek, and it was so smooth and gradual and soft that she thought, What a lovely way to travel, and wondered why she didn’t do this more often.
• • •
When she awoke, the world was gone. The only thing that existed was the pain, like a black hole sucking everything into its insatiable depths. Mary Ellen realized she’d been moaning for a while; now, she began expelling long breaths with a louder aaahhh sound. She tried moving her leg, but it seemed to be glued to the sofa. It was hot, tight, pulsing. Mary Ellen’s aaahhh sound squeaked into a higher register as she awakened to what this might mean.
It was dark. “Ivy?” she called. “Are you there?” She was desperate for some water. How late was it? Was the girl asleep? “Ivy!” she shouted, the girl’s name surfing on a wave of pain. “Ivyyy!”
Mary Ellen twisted her neck and fumbled for the floor lamp, flicking it on. The coffee table and the floor next to the sofa were cluttered; she blinked rapidly, trying to sort out the mess. Towels. Incontinence pads. Scissors. Three or four water bottles. A loaf of bread. A bottle of orange juice. A jar of peanut butter. Her purse. Her camera. A pair of rain boots. A canoe paddle. A bottle of gin.
She stared blankly at it all, pain fizzing on the surface of her thoughts. She seized one of the water bottles and drank, furiously at first, then stopped herself and put it back on the floor. “Ivy!” she cried. “Ivy, please.” She choked on her tears. “Did you really go? Did you really leave me here?”
She peeled back the blanket and looked at her leg. Its entire length was swollen; her skin bulged around the makeshift bandage, shiny and red. She couldn’t see her foot—she still had her socks on—but it felt huge, tight, immobile. The wound had bled through the bottom of the bandage and soaked the towel underneath. Mary Ellen knew she had to re-dress her leg, to keep it clean and dry, but she felt so weak she wasn’t sure she’d be able to sit up enough to reach all the supplies Ivy had left beside the sofa. She let her hand drop down beside her, where her fingers found the gin bottle. She unscrewed the cap, hoisted herself up on one elbow, and brought the bottle to her lips. She drank, then immediately spat a mouthful of liquid onto the floor.
She sniffed the bottle just to be sure.
“Very funny,” she muttered under her breath, then shouted into the darkness, “Very fucking funny!” Something white stuck out from the bottom of the bottle, which was no longer a gin bottle; it was just a stupid water bottle. She yanked away the note that was taped there:
You drink too much.
Mary Ellen collapsed back onto the sofa and cried softly for a few minutes. She longed to tell someone about the pain, to seize their hand and look them in the eye and explain what it was like. But of course, even if someone were there to hold her hand, there was no way to really make them understand. “On a scale of one to ten,” she would weep, “it’s a ten,” and the very act of assigning a number to the pain would squeeze it into a package that was absurdly small and tidy.
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