The Education of Ivy Blake (14 page)

The police
were waiting at the house when Ivy pedaled up, panting.

“We're going to take you down to the station,” the officers with the nicest eyes said. “Your mom's there, you can see her.”

“But what—”

“Try not to worry. We'll explain more at the station.”

• • •

Ivy sat in a meeting room with her mother. A woman the officers called Lieutenant sat across the table. She had calm eyes that looked as if they'd seen almost everything. For some reason, that comforted Ivy a little. Also, she'd asked if Ivy wanted anything to drink when she got here and had someone bring a cup of hot tea. Ivy cradled the cup in her hands.

“Ivy, your mom is here because her friend George is in the hospital getting his eye looked at,” the lieutenant said. “He might lose his sight in it, or maybe have spots drift across it for the rest of his life. He says your mom hit him with a rolled-up magazine. Hit him hard.”

Ivy glanced at her mom. Her mom looked down at her hands, which were clenched in her lap.

“She might have detached his retina. Also, his front window was shattered. He says your mom heaved a boom box through it, and that's a vandalism charge.”

Ivy looked at her mom again. Her mom sat stone-faced.

“So the next thing that's going to happen for you is that you'll be taken into protective custody.”

“Mom?” Ivy said in a wavery voice.

Her mom flashed her a brief sad glance. “I'm sorry, Ives,” she said. She stared down at her hands again.

“Mrs. Marsden from Family Services will be here soon,” the lieutenant told Ivy as she led her from the room.

“Okay,” Ivy answered in a tiny voice.

• • •

Ivy spent the night in a group home and half the next day in the offices of Family Services, either being asked questions or sitting in a hard plastic chair, waiting.

The next morning, Mrs. Marsden drove her to the house where she was going to live, at least for a while.

Ivy gaped as they pulled up to it. It was the house she always stopped to admire on her way to school, the one with the wrought-iron fence and glassed-in porch and turret and banks of flowers.

“So, welcome,”
the lady who owned the house said after Mrs. Marsden left. “I'm Beryl Green, like Mrs. Marsden said. You can call me Beryl.”

Ivy nodded.

“So I think maybe you walk this way to school?”

After a moment, Ivy nodded again. Her walks to school from the house on O'Reilly Street already belonged in the distant past, in a different lifetime.

The woman—
Beryl
—quirked her lips. She pointed her crutch—it was short and braced by a cuff on her forearm—down the hall. “I gave you the turret. Thought you might like it, but say if you don't. Say if it freaks you out or something. I've never been a foster parent before—you're my first stab at the job—so I don't exactly know what kids like.”

“It will be fine. Thank you.” In any other circumstances, it would have been fantastic.

“Go to the end of the hall, the door to the stairs is on the left. There's a light switch. On the right, kind of hard to find. Not where you're looking for it. I don't get up there myself much anymore, not since the accident.” Beryl waved a crutch in explanation.

Ivy pasted a sympathetic expression onto her face. “I'm sorry.”

“It's ten years ago now, I'm used to it more or less. Got T-boned in an intersection. A guy ran a light and
boom,
instant life changer. In the hospital for months, lost my big job at the investment firm—I do all right working from home now, though—and then the icing on the cake, my fiancé pulled the plug on our wedding.”

“That was a mean thing to do,” Ivy said softly.

Beryl laughed. “For the best in the long run. Who'd want to marry somebody who'd throw you under the bus like that? I'm better off without him, but yeah, it was no fun at the time. Any-hoo, the doc had to put pins in my hip and both legs, so I don't do stairs so well, but I used to love it up there. A friend of mine made the bed and took up towels. Someone you know, actually. She told me she was your teacher, when she heard who was coming to stay with me.”

Ivy's heart lurched. “Ms. Mackenzie?”

“Yep, Geena. My best friend since high school. I was at her birthday party back in May, and I think—well, I might've already sort of met you then.”

Ivy bit her lip. So it must have been Beryl's crutch she stumbled over when she was running out of the Really Fine Diner after her mom threw her sketchbook at the wall.

Beryl grimaced. “Anyway, never mind all that. You should check out your room. Say if there's something you need that you don't see.”

Ivy squeezed her suitcase handle. It had been Aunt Connie's. It was brown pleather and gigantic. Big enough to hold pretty much everything Ivy owned.

“You'll have to haul your stuff up yourself. I'm no help, sorry to say.”

“That's all right.”

“There's a phone in the den.” Beryl pointed in the opposite direction with her crutch. “Your friend—Prairie, right? such a cool name—called. She wants you to call her. I guess Mrs. Marsden called her parents because you stayed with them before.”

Ivy nodded.

“She said you didn't want to go back to them?”

“They're—really busy this time of year.” The fact was, Ivy hadn't wanted them to know. She hadn't wanted to be any more ashamed than she was already, she hadn't wanted them to realize how bad things really were, and most of all she didn't want to bother them. Mom Evers's due date was soon; they didn't need Ivy's problems piled on top of them.

Beryl's green eyes watched her closely. “Well, use the phone whenever you want. And come down to the kitchen when you're done unpacking, I'll get you something to eat. I made salmon for lunch, with wild rice and broccoli. Turned out well, if I do say so.”

“Okay. Thank you,” Ivy said, even though she didn't intend to use the phone and she wasn't hungry, either. She made herself smile before she trudged off with her suitcase because Beryl seemed nice enough. Different than she'd imagined when she saw her reading on the porch. More abrupt, less dreamy, but still nice. Ivy was lucky, there. As lucky as a Blake could get, anyway.

• • •

The room at the top of the turret was octagonal, so the furniture sat at angles. There was an antique bureau, a bed with a blue wool blanket, a braided rug, and a nightstand. The nightstand had claw feet, and for an instant Ivy was pleased about that.

She lifted her suitcase onto the bed and unzipped it. She took her clock from the T-shirt she'd wrapped around it and put it on the nightstand. She unpacked her socks and underwear into the top drawer of the bureau and put her dresses and shirts and shorts in the middle one. She zipped the suitcase back up—all that was left inside was her quilt, which she couldn't bear to have out reminding her of the Everses and happy times—and put it in the closet. Next was the camera. She knelt on the floor and pulled the bottom bureau drawer open and set the Life Savers box with the camera packed into it inside. She gazed down at it. Then she pushed the drawer shut.

She made sure the drawer fronts lined up with the bureau frame exactly, then put her book bag on a peg in the closet. It hung limp, with only a few pencils in it. Her sketchbook was missing again. The only thing Ivy could figure was that it must have dropped out of her bag as she ran from the snack bar at the pool.

She closed the closet door and looked around the room. The blanket was smooth on the bed and the top of the bureau was bare except for some towels. The only sign she was there was her boots. Ivy put them in the closet and closed the door again.

After that there was nothing left to do. She crossed the room and sat in the turret's window seat and looked down at the garden.

Beryl rustled
the newspaper, which got thrown onto the porch every morning at seven. “There's an art class up at the library you could take, if you wanted. Pencil sketching.”

Ivy bit into her toast. It was sourdough, from a bakery Beryl liked, the one with the blue door. Ivy steered her thoughts away from her door movie and considered the row of numbers in front of her. If she put a two in the fifth slot down, a three could go in the top left corner.

“Geena told me about your drawing. What do you think? Sound interesting?”

“No. Thank you, though.” Ivy bounced her pencil on her Sudoku book. She'd gotten addicted to Sudoku lately.

The old-fashioned clock ticked from its spot on the dining room's credenza and the fan Beryl kept running on the floor whirred. Ivy spooned another blob of strawberry jam onto her toast. Even though it was store-bought, it was nearly as good as what Mom Evers and Grammy made, almost like eating the berries fresh. The tag on the top of the jar said $12.99, which had made Ivy blink when she read it. She tried not to be a pig about it, but Beryl said there was plenty more where that came from, and some mornings Ivy splurged.

Today was so peaceful—it was sunny and the wind chimes that hung on the side porch were tinkling and Beryl's cat, Perkin, was dozing on the rug by the kitchen door—that the old Ivy might've chosen this moment as the best part of her day. For sure she would have been pretending she belonged here in this big old house with its wooden floors and pocket doors and stained glass windows.

The new Ivy did not pretend that. She didn't choose best parts—what was the point?—or pretend anything either. She did treat herself to an extra helping of jam, however. She lifted the toast and the smell of berries filled her nose. She studied the puzzle's rows and columns, double-checking her logic before she wrote the three in. She hated erasures.

“There's a watercolor class too—”

Ivy shook her head and wrote in the three in the top left square. “I don't think so.”

“Just thought you might get a kick out of it.”

Ivy skipped a glance at her like a stone skipped across water. “Thank you, anyway.”

The phone rang and Beryl clumped her leg down from the chair she had it up on and grabbed her crutch.

Ivy put her pencil down. “I can go.”

“No, I need to move. Stiffen up if I sit too long.”

Ivy nodded. Beryl was firm about being able to do things, almost prickly, and Ivy had learned in the week or so she'd been here not to argue.

In the den, Beryl said, “Patience! Yes, we're fine. Eating breakfast.”

A moment passed. Then Beryl exclaimed, “Oh, my! A little boy. Or a big boy, I should say—nine pounds! That's great, I'm so glad everything's all right. Here, hold on, I'll get Ivy—”

Ivy slid off her chair and slipped out the back door.

• • •

She headed for the swing that sat under a mammoth pine tree at the farthest edge of the yard, below a little dip the ground made on its way down to the goldfish pond. The seat had a thick layer of pine needles on it when Ivy found it. It'd taken half a day for the wood slats to dry out after she brushed them off.

She swept the needles off every day now. Sometimes she looked at the small quiet pond and the slowly swimming fish, but mostly she did Sudoku. She got two more done while she was there this time.

• • •

Beryl was back at the dining room table when Ivy went inside, working at her laptop. She wore half glasses with purple frames, and her eyes darted back and forth as she read. She didn't look up when Ivy came in. Her work was something to do with analyzing stocks and start-up ventures and it sounded complicated. Ivy always tried to be extra quiet when Beryl was busy with it. She slid back into her chair and pressed the Sudoku book open to a new page. The puzzle was labeled
Hard.
She began to examine it.

Beryl took off her glasses. “So, the phone was Mrs. Evers. The elder Mrs. Evers.”

Ivy almost said
I know.
“Oh?” She looked Beryl in the eye and made sure not to fidget.

“Imagine my surprise to find you gone when I got in here.”

“I went outside.”

“So you did,” Beryl said. “So you did.”

She put her glasses back on and went back to work. After a minute though, she broke her disapproving silence—Ivy knew Beryl was disappointed in her, maybe almost as much as Ivy was disappointed in herself—and said that Mom Evers had the baby at eight thirty-six that morning, a boy they'd named Daniel Walton. He weighed nine pounds, two ounces, and was in perfect health. Also, according to Grammy Evers, he was extremely handsome and obviously highly intelligent. “All of which you could've heard firsthand if you hadn't ducked out.”

Ivy rolled her lips in. Beryl frowned with her brows furrowed. Then she heaved a sigh that was like setting a heavy bag down and gave Ivy a rueful smile. “Dealing with life's a real pain sometimes, isn't it?” She pulled her glasses out of her hair and went back to work.

• • •

Ivy lingered at the table after dinner. She brushed crumbs off the tablecloth and straightened the candlesticks, which made her think of Mrs. Grizzby. She wondered how her daughter's visit had gone. Maybe Ivy would stop by one of these days. Say hello, drink soda from a tiny jelly glass. See if she could make Mrs. Grizzby flash out that radiant smile that hid inside her.

Beryl was headed for the porch with a book. “What's up?” she asked when she noticed Ivy lingering.

“I wondered if you have some pieces of paper. Blank pieces. And pencils. Colored pencils, maybe?”

Ivy expected Beryl's eyes would light up and she'd start asking questions, but Beryl only said, “Sure. In the den, in the desk, bottom drawer.”

Ivy came back with a pad of vellum paper, a metal tin containing thirty-six colored pencils, and an unopened package of sketching pencils with a white gum eraser included.

“Ordered it all online after the accident,” Beryl said when Ivy held the things up questioningly. “Had an idea I'd entertain myself while I recuperated, get creative, tap into the other side of my brain. Never did get around to it.”

“I never saw paper this expensive before.”

“Use it. I'm never going to.”

“I don't want to waste it.” The price tag was still on it: $39.99 for fifty pieces.

“Just sitting there, that's what I call wasted. Make paper airplanes out of it if you feel like it. Anything'd be better than its current use. Non-use, that is.”

Ivy sat down and gently opened the pad of paper. She gingerly pried the lid off the tin box to reveal the pencils. She held up the package of sketching pencils. “These too? It's okay? To open them?”

“I said so, didn't I?”

Ivy opened the bag and slid the contents out onto the table and gazed at them with a feeling of quiet joy.

“I know what it's like, you know.”

Ivy's hand stalled above the 6B.

“Getting stopped, sidelined. Derailed, however you want to put it.”

Ivy nodded.

“You ever want to talk about it, you can.”

Ivy curled her toes inside her boots, which she'd put on before supper. It had seemed like she needed the company. “Okay.” She didn't look at Beryl.

“
Do
you want to talk about it?”

“Not right now,” Ivy said softly.

Beryl picked up her book from the table where she'd set it. “Fair enough. Just remember, the offer stands.”

Three hours later, Ivy leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms out.

She'd drawn the Everses in their kitchen. She'd made Daniel the size of a bag of flour, the closest thing to nine pounds she could think of. He was wrapped in a blue blanket in Mom Evers's arms, and Mom Evers was smiling down at him. She looked beautiful, even though Ivy'd had to make her hair fall over most of her face to cover up how wrong her nose had come out. Prairie was grinning, dressed in her boots and jeans. Her shoulders were crooked and her chin was wrong, but it was obvious who it was meant to be. Ivy was proudest of Dad Evers. He looked almost exactly like himself: lanky and shy, with black hair that parted itself on one side. Grammy stirred sugar into a dimpled blue cup and Pup sat near the woodstove, licking his paw.

Ivy added one last hint of shading to the stove, then opened the card up and gazed at the blank inside.

After a minute she wrote
Congratulations!

She tried to think of what else to say. In the end she just wrote
Love, Ivy.