“Why didn’t you come to my party last weekend?” a voice says.
I have been here before. In this exact place. This same voice in my ears. The same darkness opening up to a halo around Ivy’s face as I blink my eyes open, as I feel my waking body sway in this hammock. Why does she appear like this, in this space between sleep and awake?
“You didn’t invite me,” I say.
“I didn’t invite any of those people.” She laughs. “There were even a few that didn’t leave until Tuesday. My mom found one in the hallway closet. So will you come? To the next one? I don’t want to be there unless you are.”
“Okay.” I have a vague feeling like I’m supposed to be hurt, or mad at her, but it is just a small nagging compared to the warmth spreading through my body.
She wants me.
“We should go walking sometime,” Ivy says.
“There are trails all around the forest,” I say. “The nature preserve starts right behind my house.”
“Don’t you get scared in there?”
“In the forest? No.”
I don’t tell her I feel safer there than I feel anywhere. Because no one can see me.
“I guess I’m a city girl,” she says.
No, I think. You are someone who likes being seen.
“I went hiking in rehab. They had this whole thing about getting in touch with nature. They made us camp overnight once.”
“Did you like it?”
“I wanted to.”
“Did you get in touch with nature?”
“I got in touch with some mosquitos and poison oak.”
She smiles. I smile. I am her mirror.
“Is that a vegetable garden over there?” she says. “Can I see it?”
“Okay.” I manage to get out of the hammock without falling on my face. I try to match her footsteps as we walk over to Daddy’s garden together.
We stand at the edge of the garden, looking over the deer fence at the tidy rows, the perfectly spaced plantings, all the nurtured things growing.
“We had a garden at my treatment center,” Ivy says. “We all had chores taking care of it. We called it weeding therapy. I learned as much about plants there as I learned about recovery.”
“Sounds pretty cool,” I say.
“The guy in charge of the garden and all the grounds was this guy named Boots who was like this ex-junkie from Oakland who became a monk in Burma for a while before he came to work there. Rumor was he was dating this counselor named Bob, but they’d never deny or confirm because of professional boundaries or whatever, but we all knew.” She laughs. “Sorry, I talk a lot. I don’t have a lot of people to talk to, except my therapist.”
“It’s okay.”
“Boots would like this garden.”
I wonder if Ivy had to water their garden, if she had to distribute compost, if she had to weed and thin and tidy and pollinate by hand and worry over every little thing the way Daddy does. Sometimes I wonder if all his effort is really necessary, if it would grow just fine without anyone tending to it.
“Tell me about yourself,” Ivy says.
“There’s nothing to tell,” I say.
“So make something up.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. My therapist says the way we lie says a lot about us.”
“How do you lie?”
But she just smiles. “I have to go back,” she says. “I’m supposed to have a call.”
“What kind of call?”
“With my therapist.” She looks up from the garden into the wall of forest behind it. “I’d like to go hiking with you sometime.”
“Okay.”
“I’m supposed to be taking a break. From work. I’m supposed to be doing healthy things.”
“We could go hiking now.”
Am I a healthy thing?
“I should get back for my call.”
“Okay.”
“Will I see you this weekend?”
“Yes.”
“Bring your friends.”
Okay, okay, yes. I’ll do anything you ask.
And then she walks down the road, and I am left, once again, in this space between the garden and the forest.
Papa and Daddy are in the kitchen getting dinner ready, listening to the soothing voices of public radio talking about horrible things:
Members of a religious compound in North Dakota committed mass suicide, with fifty-seven deaths reported. This is the eighth major mass suicide of the year in a legally exempt independent community in one of the libertarian states.
The National Guard has been called in to the North Carolina city of Asheville to enforce a quarantine in the midst of an outbreak of a super-strain of measles that has so far claimed the lives of thirty-two children and three adults. Asheville has one of the highest unvaccinated populations in the country.
North African refugees are dying of heat stroke in immigrant detainment centers in Spain.
The separatist siege of Portland, Oregon, is entering its eighty-seventh day. Seattle officials are concerned about the possibility of similar violent uprisings in the city as protests continue to increase in number and intensity, though they are still mostly peaceful at this point.
Algae blooms in the Gulf of Mexico, the water a toxic sludge as thick as stew.
The usual hurricanes in Florida, Texas, Louisiana. The usual poor left behind to weather the storms while everyone who could already moved north and west.
Daddy chops carrots. Papa does a crossword puzzle. The bad news is so relentless they can’t even hear it anymore.
Stocks reached record highs today.
“I’m going to a party tomorrow night,” I say. “At Ivy Avila’s house.”
In tandem, they look up from what they’re doing and stare at me like I’m speaking a language they don’t understand.
“First of all,” Papa says. “You don’t tell us you’re going to a party. You ask us.”
“Can I go to a party tomorrow night?”
“I’m not sure after what happened last weekend,” Daddy says.
“But I’m not grounded, am I? I’ll be just down the road.”
“But those Hollywood types and their lifestyles,” Papa says.
“Their lifestyles? Do you have any idea how you sound?”
“Will there be drinking there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will there be drugs?”
“She’s sober, remember? She’s really nice. You’d like her.”
“We should meet her if you’re going to be spending time together. Maybe I should talk to her mother.”
“No one else’s parents worry this much.”
Papa and Daddy share a look that means “Well, maybe they should.” They’re not exactly quiet when it comes to their thoughts about the parenting styles of the families on the island.
“So what do we think is an appropriate curfew?” Daddy says. Papa likes to worry. Daddy likes to find solutions.
“How about one?” I say.
“Not going to happen,” Papa says.
Daddy and I both give him the “You’re being way too serious” look.
Daddy puts his hand on Papa’s shoulder. “She’s eighteen, love. She’s not in high school anymore.”
“But nothing good happens after midnight,” Papa says, his voice tight. “Nothing.”
“How about let’s work with twelve thirty?” Daddy says. Always the peacemaker.
Papa clenches his jaw and nods.