FIFTEEN | IVY

A POEM FROM SHAYE showed up in my inbox Sunday morning. I’d expected the accompanying snapshot to be the one featuring the rangy dog licking my cheek, but I should have known better; Shaye was subtler than that. In the photograph I had my arms folded loosely in front of my breasts as I stared thoughtfully out at the water, like an ancient mariner who could no longer go out to sea.

Hello

you said

and it was not a lie

but not the complete truth

which is forever in a state of evolution

Yes

I said

and now I know you

like I did not before.

We two are in a state of evolution.

I was intensely flattered by her words. I’d liked Shaye since she’d fired questions at me that day at the Side Door, but I’d never really had the chance to get to know her beyond the writing. That was one good thing that would definitely happen this summer. Maybe Lucan would be another, but our friendship was potentially more complicated. I liked him, yes, but that feeling was in a state of evolution too. Could you stop evolution in its tracks?

I believed you could, stopping it and starting it at will, like I had with Shaye. I pondered that when Lucan and I first began walking Nanook by his condo later in the day, thought about making a conscious effort to maintain the status quo, but soon we were engrossed in conversation, and then I wasn’t thinking about anything except what he was saying. Lucan was more philosophical than he’d been the night before, but I knew that he was still upset about his friend, whose staunch denial had only made things worse.

“I talked to his ex,” Lucan told me. “I phoned her last night after I spoke to you. It was the middle of the night, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the whole thing.”

“What did she say?” I asked.

Lucan pulled Nanook away from a crumpled beer can in the grass. “It was rough. She started crying and talking about how humiliating it was and that she should’ve stopped him or, I don’t know, done things differently somehow. I didn’t know what to say.

“And now I’m just wondering where it goes from here,” Lucan continued. “I can’t pretend the conversation never happened.”

Nanook stopped to relieve herself in the grass as we looked away. “Give me the bag,” I told him. “I’ll do it.” He handed me two plastic supermarket bags, which I doubled up before bending to scoop up Nanook’s mess.

“So when do you want to give her back?” Lucan asked. “It’s been nearly two days. Your ex’s family must be going nuts looking for her. Didn’t you say he had a little sister?”

“You’re giving me a guilt headache,” I told him. But Jeremy’s sister, Hannah, would only miss Nanook the way a spoiled child misses a favored toy. Of all his family, Jeremy loved that dog the most. He’d been old enough not to take her for granted when his parents had picked her out at the pound four years ago and had been angsting about leaving her behind for school since Christmas, which, incidentally, was probably how long he’d been considering leaving me.

“That’s the idea.” Lucan grinned widely, making me smile back. I wondered if he looked more like his mother or his father when he smiled. When Sheri used to come over it was usually just her and the boys. I couldn’t conjure a clear image of his dad.

We turned back towards the condo, and it didn’t seem as though Lucan needed to slow down to walk with me, like Jeremy had. We had the same natural pace.

When I got home Dad was eating a submarine sandwich over the counter. “So how’s the business world treating you these days?” he asked, as though I’d just come from a day at the office.

“It’s okay.” I stole Anwar’s line: “It beats picking up trash on the side of the highway.”

“That it does,” Dad agreed, a thin mushroom slice working its way free from his sub and landing on the counter. Odds were that he’d forget to wipe the counter down after he was done. He had a talent for forgetting tasks of a domestic nature.

A couple of hours later Mom arrived back from a co-worker’s baby shower and disposed of the offending mushroom herself. I was making myself a cup of noodles, and Mom gazed at me with her medically induced paralytic face and said, “I see you’re already back from Sheri Rossi’s. Don’t you see enough of her during work hours? I can’t understand why you’re doing all this socializing with them now.” She made the word them sound like an entire clan. I pictured family crests and men in kilts battling against a backdrop of lochs and rolling hills.

“It’s like Dad said, you two have nothing to do with it,” I declared. “I don’t have any problem with her. Anyway, it’s mostly Lucan I’ve been hanging out with. It’s summer, in case you hadn’t noticed. My last summer before university. I’m trying to make the best of it without …” I still hadn’t told my mother about Betina. I wished there was some way for her to find out that wouldn’t involve the awfulness of saying it out loud.

“Sweetie, I know,” Mom said, her voice turning as soft as three-ply tissue. “It must be very difficult for you without Jeremy. I’m trying to be open-minded, but I don’t think you should get too attached to the Rossis. You can’t rely on them, for one. And you know how your father can be about these things.”

Clan feuds? Not really. I knew that my father had refused to go to Grandma’s seventy-fifth birthday party, but beyond that he wasn’t very communicative; I seldom knew what he thought about things.

“How can I get too attached?” I said. “I’ll be gone at the end of August.”

My phone rang in my purse. I unzipped the middle compartment and glanced at the screen. Then I started to quake. My shoulders curved inward, my breath scattered like I’d had the wind knocked out of me.

“Can we talk about this later?” I gasped to my mother. “I need to take that.”

I darted for my bedroom, not caring what she had to say behind me.

“WHAT?” I barked into the phone. I closed the door behind me, a mix of blistering emotions rippling under my skin.

“Ivy,” Jeremy said. “I know I’ve been terrible to you. Can you please just talk to me for a few minutes?”

I stayed quiet. The rage turned hot in my mouth.

“Please, okay?” he tried again, with added feeling. Once upon a time I would’ve considered that proof of his sincerity. “Did you get my letter?”

“I think calling it a letter’s a stretch. Wasn’t it two lines?” If it were possible to kill someone with bitter emotion alone he would’ve been a dead man. Dead boy, let’s not offer him any compliments. “Funny, you didn’t mention Betina in it.”

“I didn’t mean for you to find out like that.”

“How did you mean for me to find out?” I asked, pacing back and forth in front of my bed.

“I didn’t. I thought after summer things would be different.” His voice was strained, and then he stopped talking altogether. I had no intention of picking up the slack. I couldn’t think with him on the other end of the phone like the ghost of summers past. If I wasn’t careful I’d begin weeping in frustration.

“Ivy, you still there?” he asked.

“I don’t have much to say to you.” Short, even words. They were easier to hold together.

“I know,” Jeremy said, his voice soaked in the same sympathetic tone I’d heard on a daily basis for at least three weeks after my grandmother had passed away. How did it still manage to sound like genuine sincerity to me? How is it that even when I knew the truth, he could still at least partially pull the wool over my eyes? “Maybe it’s selfish of me to call. I’m sorry.”

He’d gotten really good at being sorry. I suppose it was easier than being ethical in the first place.

“Listen, I know you don’t have any obligation to speak to me, but you know me, right? We know each other better than anyone, and I’ve been going through a few things here and I know you have too … I thought … well …”

“Jer, this is what your new girlfriend is for,” I said sarcastically. “You guys don’t have to stick to fucking all the time, you know? She can do other things with her mouth.”

Jeremy choked into the phone line. I’d been hurling around obscenities in relation to him so often lately that the words no longer seemed strong enough. They only sounded ridiculously hyperbolic coming out of other people’s mouths.

“I deserve that,” he said. “Obviously I shouldn’t have called. I am sorry, and I know there’s no turning back from certain things, but I can’t help thinking about you, wondering how you’ve been doing.” He said that last bit like a question he hoped I’d answer. The ensuing silence pounded in my eardrums. It’s terrible the aloneness you can feel with someone who used to be a part of you. There was a small bit of me that wanted to reach out to that question, grab on, and wrap it around me like a an old bathrobe.

“I thought you might want to know that Nanook is missing,” Jeremy murmured at last.

“Nanook is always missing,” I declared, feigning boredom.

“This time it’s been two days,” he told me. “You know she always comes back. She’s never been gone overnight before. We think she might have been hit by a car somewhere, or stolen.”

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

“And by the sound of it you don’t care much either way.”

“How do you expect me to act after all this, Jeremy? I have no idea how long this thing with you and Betina has been going on, and I don’t want to know now, but it didn’t have to be my best friend.”

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re right about all of it. There’s no doubt about you being the one who’s right in all of this. Don’t you understand that I couldn’t figure out the right way to do this? I didn’t plan it with her. That’s not how it went. I’d just broken it off with you — I thought it was over when we …” He let me fill in the blanks with my imagination. “If I’m being entirely honest, I’m not in love with her. It’s just sex, like you said yourself. That’s the stupid thing this all comes down to, but the only one I’ve ever been in love with is you.”

The phone shook in my right hand. My left dove into my hair, winding a strand snugly around two of my fingers until it pulled at my scalp. I wouldn’t cry for him. He’d tossed away what we’d had like it was garbage. If that was love he could keep it. There was nothing to cling on to here.

“I don’t think you know the meaning of the word.”

“You’re wrong there,” he insisted. “If there was a way I could’ve done this without hurting you, I would’ve. I hate myself right now. I really do.”

“You know what would have meant more than all this profound honesty?” I said. “If you’d at least had enough respect for me to break it off first. And what about using condoms, while we’re at it? I thought you were supposed to be one of the smart ones.”

I paused for several seconds, allowing Jeremy a chance to respond. My left hand worked its way into my pillowcase and tugged at the stitching. “I tested positive for chlamydia,” I continued. “And you’re the one who gave it to me, so however much you think you hate yourself, it’s not enough.”

I’d never be able to use this pillowcase again. No one in my family sewed. I turned over, nestling my head into the pillow while I waited for him to speak because I couldn’t. My throat was swollen raw. I still wanted Jeremy to be that guy who’d comforted me after New Year’s, but I wanted to damage him too. Life had moved on without me, but I hadn’t changed. I couldn’t start or stop evolution. All I could do was react to things outside my control in the same tired ways.

“Are you … are you trying to mess with my head, Ivy?”

Laughable, wasn’t it? I was no match for him when it came to saving the world or screwing with people’s heads. I let the phone drop onto my bedspread. Both my hands lunged behind my head and grabbed for the abused pillowcase. I tore into it without even looking. The ripping sound filled me with relief, giving me the strength to sweep the phone into my hand and press “end” once and for all.