The Love Song of Ivy K. Harlowe

by Hannah Moskowitz

  “I didn’t ask enough questions about Spain?”

  “Italy, and you didn’t ask any, but that’s not—”

  “I just need to change my clothes, okay?” she says. “Let me change my clothes and we’ll go out. I want to go dancing. There’s this new bartender I’ve been trying to fuck for a week now.” She bounces on her toes, her thumbnail in her mouth.

  And I say what I always say to Ivy. “Yeah, okay.”

  She claps me on the shoulder on the way to the bedroom. “Good, man.”

  …

  At least one thing’s established quickly in this whole grand mystery: Ivy Harlowe is not okay.

  She snorts something, drowns herself in alcohol, and shouts questions over the music, stuff like who did you fuck in Italy (no one) and did you go to any nude beaches (no) and why are you not drinking more, hurry up, hurry up. I mention Alyssa breaking up with her girlfriend and she sarcastically pretends to give a shit. I ask her what she’s been up to. She tells me same old, same old.

  “You don’t look good,” I tell her.

  “I look beautiful.”

  I don’t mention Dot. There’s this danger in her eyes, like she knows I’m thinking about it, like she’s daring me to try it. Like she’s waiting to see if I’ll make her completely fall to pieces. Or make her pretend not to care. Or both at the same time, somehow, because she’s Ivy.

  She isn’t dead, I want to say. You know she’s not dead, right? She’s ten minutes away.

  And I can’t stop wondering what Ivy would be doing if it were me in the hospital instead of Dot. In both directions: Would she fall apart like this? Would she abandon me?

  I think she’d be kind of fine.

  There’s always been something so exotic and intriguing about how damaged Ivy is, and I don’t really feel bad about saying that, because I know it’s what she wants people to think. Ivy wears her trauma like it’s a sexy dress. She puts up walls to make you desperate to break them down and turn her into that girl she was on the street around Christmas, and then she makes you feel like you’re special for noticing them when they were so goddamn obvious in the first place. The fact that Melody and Diana didn’t see what a mess she is, that’s part of it. Ivy can fake normal a lot better than she is right now if she wants to. But she was saving this mess for me. It’s a show. All of it is a show, when she could just fucking go visit her girlfriend and put everything to rest.

  I guess when I said I was getting over Ivy, I really meant I was getting over Ivy.

  Except for the fact that I’m standing right here, watching her shotgun whiskey, and I’m not saying Dot’s name. I’m letting her pull her same shit because I don’t know how else to deal with her.

  And that’s part of it, too. She knew she could self-destruct right in front of me and I’d be too chickenshit to say anything. I’d just let her burn up like a Roman candle and that’s exactly the way she wants it.

  I wonder if she’s even actually worried about Dot or if she just likes the attention of playing the bereaved non-widow.

  She puts down her glass and points across the room. “See that girl?”

  “I thought you were after the bartender.”

  “I’m flexible.” She stretches, one arm behind her head. “That girl’s going to come home with me tonight.”

  I think about the state of her living room, all empty bottles and dirty laundry. The streamers from Dot’s party ragged on the floor. “Cool.”

  She shoves her phone and her wallet at me, just like old times, before she charges across the dance floor in pursuit of whatever girl I pretended to see. I order another drink, then mumble, “Fuck it,” because we gave each other our passwords years ago, and unlock her phone.

  Because she must at least be talking to Dot, right?

  There are a bunch of unread texts from me, a few from Melody and Diana. A reminder from Duolingo that she hasn’t practiced her Vietnamese in seventeen days.

  But not a word to or from Dot.

  She cried in that hospital like she loved her.

  Or maybe like someone who’d temporarily lost the only thing she’s ever really loved: control.

  I look at Ivy across the room, already lip-locked with some tall blonde, and in that moment, I hate my best friend.

  …

  I spend the next day sleeping off my jet lag, working a half shift, and basically trying to adjust to the fact that my life isn’t an Italian fantasy anymore. God, it was so incredible. I would stay awake in the hostel for hours and write about what we’d done that day. I’d go to discussion groups with college kids and I could keep up, most of the time. Turns out reading as much as I have provided some damn good education, even if they weren’t the books Elizabeth would have me believe are important.

  But now we’re back to real life, and once I’m done with work, I figure it’s probably time for me to visit Dot.

  The hospital looks so different when you’re not there for an emergency. Everything’s quiet and echoey, and it reminds me of going to the museum for field trips when you’re a kid. I ask about Dot at the front desk, and they give me a visitor’s badge and a room number. I thought about stopping at CVS and getting her a stuffed animal or some candy or something, but I don’t know what she likes. I don’t really know much about her at all, really. Except that she loves makeup, and painting, and dancing, and shrimp, and Ivy.

  I take the elevator to the fifth floor, where there’s another front desk blocking off the waiting room from the rest of the floor. A nurse asks if she can help me.

  “Dot Nguyen?” I say. “Or Dorothy, I guess. She’s in 409.”

  I expect her to type something, but instead she just sighs heavily, like my being here is a very tedious thing for her. “Are you on the list?” she says.

  “I signed in downstairs.”

  “No,” she says. “There’s a list of people who can visit Dot; it’s…here.” She points to a piece of paper on a bulletin board behind her. “What’s your name?”

  “Uh…” This is super weird. “Andie DiStefano?”

  She shakes her head. “I have a Karen DiStefano.”

  “That’s my mom.”

  “Well, your mom is one of five people who are allowed to visit,” she says. “Dot’s parents were very clear. I’m sorry.”

  “They can do that?”

  She looks sad now, and I think about how many times Dot must have begged for her friends. How fucking convincing she is. “She’s under eighteen,” the nurse says. “They’re allowed to ban anyone they want.”

  Well, that’s fucked up.

  And then it all starts to come together in my head. I feel like I can’t stay standing. “Is Ivy Harlowe allowed to visit?” I say, already knowing the answer.

  She sighs again and says, “No. And you can tell her that no matter how many times she shows up here, that’s not going to change.”

  She’s tried.

  She tried.

  It’s me. I’m the heartless shit.

  Oh, Ivy.

  …

  “Jesus Christ,” Alyssa says. She’s finally home from college, and I’ve just filled her in on the whole situation while we’re rocking back and forth on my porch swing. It’s a gorgeous day outside, and there are bees buzzing around my dad’s rosebushes and venturing over here every so often to bother us. “Did you tell Melody and Diana?”

  “Yeah. And now we all feel like the worst people in the world. I swear to God, I thought she’d just abandoned Dot. Why did I think that?”

  “Because it kind of sounds like something Ivy would do?”

  “Not with Dot,” I say. “She’s never been mean to Dot. Not since the very beginning.” I’ve been thinking about this all day. Anytime I’ve ever tried to apply how Ivy is with other people to how she’ll be with Dot, I’ve been wrong. And yet I never stop trying. Never stop t
rying to rationalize this thing that won’t be rationalized.

  Alyssa gives the swing a push with her feet. “So what’s the plan?” she says. “You must have something.”

  I laugh. “Me?”

  She smiles at me. “You always have something.”

  Okay, well, I kind of do. “Dot’s got to be out of the hospital soon,” I say. “I looked up how long people usually stay after a pacemaker and she’s already been there longer than usual, and my mom said she was doing better last time she was there, walking around and stuff. So until then, I guess we just keep Ivy together. And we hope that Dot doesn’t hate her for not coming.”

  “She’ll understand when someone explains it to her.”

  “When has Dot ever given anyone a chance to explain anything?” I say. “Plus, I imagine if her parents have her on lockdown now, that’s not going to stop just because she’s out of the hospital. At least she’ll get her phone back, I assume.”

  Alyssa laughs a little. “Who would have thought you’d be the one trying to save Dot and Ivy’s relationship?”

  “Yeah, seriously. Not how I saw this one going,” I say.

  “So we’re taking Ivy out tonight?”

  “Or going over there, at least. I don’t think she should be alone. Even if she wants to be.”

  We decide I’ll head over there alone to take the pulse of the situation first, so I show up at Ivy’s unannounced at around six. She doesn’t really seem to care one way or the other that I’m there. The apartment looks the same as it has, and she’s drunk again.

  “I’m going out,” she tells me.

  “Let’s go to Mama’s,” I say, because at least we can talk a little better there than at Kinetic.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Come on, Kinetic’s getting stale.”

  “You just got back from your triumphant adventure. How can it be stale?” She hops into a pair of jeans.

  “You can dance at Mama’s.”

  She sighs. “Is the brigade coming?”

  I consider lying, but what good would that do when they show up? “I think so.”

  She rolls her eyes and peels off her T-shirt. “Fine.”

  I see everything about her with such different eyes now, and I hate myself for thinking this was a performance the other night. When really, it’s like I told Alyssa; Ivy’s never performed anything when it comes to Dot. She’s never pretended not to want her around. She’s never pretended they were going to get married. They’ve just been—like Dot said—in each other’s orbits, and it was natural and it was easy and it was unspoken and now it can’t be any of those. Now they can’t even see each other.

  Ivy’s not really orbiting anything at the moment.

  She’s a lot lower energy tonight. The girls fuss over her and hug her and I think she knows we’ve figured out the situation, because she kind of just gives up and slumps over her drink at our table. I give the girls a look to leave us alone and they get up to dance, and I nurse my beer and wait for Ivy to talk.

  “I think I’m going to get out of here,” she says.

  “We can go home. Watch movies or something. Talk.”

  “No, I mean here. Providence.”

  “Technically you don’t live in Providence anymore.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I do, probably more than she thinks I do. “Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t even care,” she says. “Somewhere new.” She rolls the edge of a coaster across the table.

  “Running away won’t fix anything.”

  “You did it.”

  “Yeah, for two weeks,” I say.

  “And what a two weeks they were.” It’s the closest she’s come to mentioning Dot since it happened.

  I chew on my lip.

  “I should have been here for you,” I say.

  “Whaaat for.”

  “Right, because you’re fine, right?”

  She shrugs and looks out onto the dance floor. Her eyes are focused straight ahead and narrowed slightly, and her eyeliner is smudged and uneven on one side. It’s maybe the least perfect I’ve ever seen her, because it’s not like when she was a mess in her apartment. She’s trying to look flawless here and she isn’t.

  She’s not the Hope Diamond.

  I love her so much.

  I take a minute to build up the courage, then say, “I went to see Dot.”

  She doesn’t react at all at first, and I think maybe she didn’t hear me over the music changing. But then she turns back around to the table, drains her drink, and says, “Well,” softly, almost to herself, and I just ache for her.

  “They didn’t let me see her,” I say gently.

  “Mm.” And I think that’s going to be all I get, and honestly, if she’s not getting up and walking away from me, I’m ready to call it a win, but then she says abruptly, “There’s a night nurse who will tell you how she’s doing,” without looking up from the table.

  “She doesn’t have her phone, I’m guessing?”

  “How should I know?” She gets up, wobbling a little. “I need another drink.”

  “I think you’ve had enough, baby.”

  “Let’s dance, then.” She looks at me with those big eyes. “Please.”

  What the fuck am I supposed to do? I’m here for her. “Yeah,” I say. “Come on.”

  She of course gets another drink on our way to the dance floor, and after two songs and another, and another, she’s a wild flurry of movement, grabbing whoever comes near her, boy or girl, and giving them a frantic touch of the Ivy magic before she moves on to someone else. She’s never still. She reminds me of a weather event. She reminds me of Dot.

  “Take her home,” Alyssa says to me. “She’s plastered.”

  As if on cue, Ivy stumbles and ends up on the floor. Diana and I get under her elbows and pull her up, and she wavers and clings to my shirt.

  “I want to go home,” she says in the direction of my face.

  “Great idea. Come on.”

  I help her out to the car, her arm over my shoulders. I start to load her into the passenger seat, but she says she wants to lie down, so I get her settled in the back seat, where she flails around half asleep the whole way back to her place. It reminds me of when we first started going out, our senior year of high school, and Ivy had no idea what her limits were. She’s been careful since then, methodical. Everything’s always so planned.

  “None of this was supposed to happen,” she slurs in the elevator.

  “I know.”

  “Why am I so sad?”

  “Because she’s sick. And you fell in love with her.”

  She pulls back like I stung her. “She fell in love,” she says. “Not me. She’s the one who did this.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  I help her unlock the door to her apartment, and she sits down heavily on the couch.

  “I didn’t do anything,” she says again.

  “I know.”

  She puts her head in her hands. “She sat right here and told me she couldn’t breathe and I didn’t do anything.”

  “No, I…” I feel my chin shaking. “You saved her life, Ives.”

  She flops down on her side and pulls a blanket on top of her. Red with black zigzags. Dot loved that blanket.

  “We should get you to bed,” I say.

  “No.”

  “Ivy.”

  “I want to sleep here,” she says, and before I can argue any more, she’s snoring.

  I straighten the blanket over her and get to work cleaning up this place, because I don’t think there’s any other way I can help her. I’m not who she needs.

  I rinse bottles and put them in the recycling and pick the streamers off the floor. I’m in the middle of
cleaning out the fridge when her buzzer goes off. I check the oven clock, mumble, “What the fuck,” and figure it’s one of her neighbors coming home drunk who forgot their key. I buzz them up and have just about forgotten about it by the time there’s a knock at the door.

  I open it, and there’s Dot.

  She’s lost weight, too. Her hair is loose and curly down her back, and she doesn’t have makeup on. She’s wearing a tank top, and there’s a small row of stitches peeking out of the neckline.

  “Hi,” she says.

  My stomach does this swooping thing, and I grab her and hug her so tight. She stiffens, but after a few seconds, she hugs me back.

  “I know I should have called first,” she says. Her voice sounds shaky, not like hers.

  “She’s asleep. It’s okay.” I let her go.

  Dot looks around the place, taking in what remains of the wreckage. I hear Ivy stir on the couch, and when I turn around, she’s staring at Dot.

  “Am I sleeping?” she says.

  Dot doesn’t say anything. She slowly toes off her shoes and goes to the couch and lays down next to Ivy. Ivy rolls toward her, pulling her carefully close like she’s worried she’s going to break her, and buries her nose in the back of her neck.

  Dot closes her eyes and I stay right where I am, afraid to breathe.

  July

  “I thought heart failure was, like, an emergency,” Melody says.

  We’re at our usual table at Mama’s. It’s the first time we’ve all been able to get together in a few weeks, between Melody and me working extra shifts at the club as the customer count picks up, Alyssa working a summer internship, and Ivy…well. Ivy’s had other stuff on her plate.

  It’s a Thursday night, but the place is surprisingly crowded considering most of the college kids are shuttled back to where they came from. They’re playing Top 40 and it’s mixing with the street noise outside, thrumming like a pulse.

  “My mom says you can be in it for years before you even need a new heart,” I say. “I didn’t know anything about it, either.”

  “So she’s just going to get sicker and sicker until they decide she’s ready for a transplant?” Melody says.