The red door opens onto darkness. Is Jamie sleeping? He’s usually up at night. A clean smell—fresh lumber, plaster dust, paint. Ivy finds the switch and turns it on. She braces herself, not knowing what chaos she may find, and steps around the little alcove wall.
The kitchen is clean. No sign of damage. The floor is clear, unstained—even the counters are clean, and the sink, clean and empty.
“God bless you, Dave, Ruth’s pal,” Ivy says, deep in her heart.
There’s a note propped on the island counter.
All fixed, ceiling downstairs needs a coat of paint, we’ll do it Tuesday. I got my cousin to come & clean while we were working. Took out your garburetor don’t get a new one they’re useless. That guy went to stay with his brother for a couple days, guess the noise was too much for him. I’ll give the bill to Ruth.
Dave C.
Clean. The kitchen is clean. It smells so good.
And the new order goes beyond the kitchen. The big windows are clean—Jamie’s protective foil taken down, glass shiny between interior light and exterior black. The floor, too. Boxes and cases, gone. The computer station denuded, the desk polished clean.
Everybody has trailed in behind her, and now Newell and Orion are at the door. It’s not till then, till she’s bringing them inside, that Ivy looks down at her feet. The beautiful shoes covered with roses: perfectly ruined from the sprinklers and the grass. All is vanity.
L catches Ivy’s cry of sadness, and says, “Oh, your shoes!”
Newell takes one shoe and feels it. “Ruined,” he agrees. And Jason, seeing the roses all muck, says, “That’s the saddest thing. I loved those.”
Their sympathy is enough to snap Ivy out of selfishness. She laughs. “They’re only shoes. Never mind, maybe I can get them cleaned. Okay,” she says, Hugh’s word. “L, take Savaya to the shower, through that door, and find towels for everyone in the bathroom cupboard. I’m going to make us something to eat.”
Maybe she shouldn’t have said that—what’s in the cupboards? Milk in the fridge, a Styrofoam pack of cheap white eggs, frozen garlic bread in the freezer. She’d forgotten Jamie’s thing about white food. Well. Teenagers won’t mind. A dusty can of maple syrup in the pantry that she was supposed to send to an old acting friend in England—that never goes bad. She has flour, salt, yes. Okay, perfect. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, garlic bread: there’s a comforting supper, or rather breakfast. It’s 3 a.m. A long time since Hugh’s trompe l’oeil.
Newell cracks eggs, she whisks pancake batter. The stove warms her. Ivy is happier than she’s been in this place for a long, long time. This is like Mole End, when she played Mole for Young People’s Theatre, bustling to give Rat tea when they stumble on Mole’s old home. Old Ratty. Donald’s dead now. He was so good—the antiretrovirals did not work for long enough. She bends into the fridge to hide her smarting eyes.
Orion is witty at table; Newell expands, talking to him, easy and loving. A relief after watching him always so careful with Burton—what a toxic little partnership that is, and always has been, Ivy thinks. Bugger the age difference, the problem is that Burton is cruel and jealous. Food gets everyone giddy, making jokes; even Savaya. She sings, only partly under her breath, “This bread is thick/just like my dick. Sorry, couldn’t pass up the rhyme there.”
She has cratered. Ivy leads her to the futon couch and flips it flat. Savaya crawls up and is asleep before Ivy finds a duvet to pull over her.
“I’m taking the last two pancakes. Arrest me,” Jason says. “FTP.” It takes Ivy a minute to translate that in her head. Fuck the police. How rude. She laughs, happy to have her counter stools filled with people she likes. When they’re fed and calm, and the dishes loaded into the gleaming, empty dishwasher, she puts them all to bed: L with Savaya on the futon, Jason on the long couch, and Ivy can sleep in her own (clean-sheeted!) bed, alone. Newell says he’ll return Gerald’s car and take Orion home. So Newell can get back to Burton, and Orion to his mother. Newell didn’t tell anyone where he was going, and still hasn’t, at least in Ivy’s sight, taken out a phone to text or check. Burton will be livid. But when, after all, is he not livid? Can’t live with him, can’t seem to ditch him.
“Wait,” she says, at the door. “I told Hugh I’d empty the buckets in his basement!”
“I’ll do it,” Newell says.
“I’ll bring these guys back out in the morning, and get your car back to you, somehow.”
“You’ll find me,” he says, smiling at her. His lovely sculpted arms envelop her. “I’ll be at Mimi’s apartment—we’re packing it up, she’s got to be moved out by five.”
“Oh perfect,” Ivy says. “Perfect. I’ll be there.”
Orion has himself collected, his jacket. “No master class, anyway.” He gives her a wicked look and a smart salute. “Thanks,” he says, and kisses her cheek as he goes past.
can I let it go? if I had he could never let it go
he sleeps I drive over rain-glossed pavement
my soul thirsts after knowledge
like moths fly into the headlights of my car
what they did when and for how long and how
and how he turned to her and what he said
what she did then and how they got undressed
what way he came inside what they spoke of later
and how his head turned on the pillow
looking for me perhaps in that cool room
go home
maybe I won’t come out of this all right
climb into bed beside him
how can he sleep
as if he never left it
his baseball bat abandoned by the bed would fit the hand vision of
the eye resists that vision but there he is asleep
I could hit him end all this
I am so full of fury I can see him
the fullness of his mouth the liquid motion
don’t think don’t
in the shower in my fucking helmet of purity hatred filling my mouth
washing the sin off me no sin at all but it is him
what is the thing that makes it possible to betray the other how could
he look at her taking off her clothes and think yes yes how could he