A week later, Daddy drove us to Colorado. He didn’t tell us it would be one way. He’d met a woman from Dallas who had a second house in Aspen. We could live in the guesthouse in exchange for Daddy doing maintenance and small repairs. (In the ’70s, Aspen was a funky former mining town with the best powder in the world, attracting mostly Texans. It was more cowboy hats and Wranglers than Mariah Carey and Gulfstream 550s.)
In New York, Daddy had installed sound systems for a living. His hope was to do that in Aspen, but something must have happened. I’ve since learned that many bookies started as gamblers who got in too deep and had to work off their debts.
The first time he left us alone was our first winter there. “You can take care of your sister?” Daddy had asked me. It was an odd question. He said we could sign for what we needed at Carl’s Pharmacy. (Everything with Daddy is still a puzzle with missing pieces. My best guess is that he drove to Vegas to lay off Super Bowl bets.)
He was gone nine days. Ivy and I lived by ourselves in the guesthouse. (“Come, let’s away to prison. We two alone will sing like birds i’ th’ cage.” That was the Lear speech Mom used to recite before bed.) It was January. When the school bus dropped us off, we’d hit Carl’s, then slip into the little gingerbread house like thieves, the sun already behind Shadow Mountain. We’d turn on all the lights, start a fire, watch TV, and eat our haul of pharmacy Jolly Ranchers, Pringles, and whatever random piece of fruit sometimes appeared on top of a barrel by the back register.
A few days in, Ivy got sick and sicker. A 102 fever, wet cough, and earache that had her moaning. We didn’t even have a pediatrician. If I called 911, the police would know we’d been left alone. We’d be taken away, most likely separated. I forged Daddy’s signature on notes to school and nursed Ivy with whatever beckoned from the shelves at Carl’s. Aspirin, VapoRub, Sucrets, throat spray, Benadryl, cough syrup—the what-might-have-beens still send shivers. I’d return home every day praying Ivy was alive.
She always was, and wanting to hear stories about what had happened at school. (Six she was. Being raised by a fourth-grader.) I didn’t dare tell her the truth. I was a fat kid with red hair and freckles. New to town, having moved midyear from New York, I was tempting prey for the tough kids. As I walked on the path between classes, they’d push me into the pond. I wouldn’t fight as they filled my backpack with heaps of fresh powder. Snowbaths, these wintry interludes were called.
But at home, in my afternoon reports to Ivy, I’d have the last word, mocking the bullies’ appearances, ridiculing their names, belittling their intellects. “You’re awful!” Ivy would say through her laughter, my audience of one.
But she knew I wasn’t awful.
Once, years later, when we were in our twenties and walking up Madison Avenue, Ivy took my hand, just to hold. Such was our ease.
Despite everything that’s happened between us, when I’m taken by surprise, the feeling I have of Ivy is one of tenderness: that day, taking my hand.
Now, with Ivy erased, I’ve become The Trick. I’m a grotesquerie going out into the world fetching observations and encounters to perform for someone who long ago left the building.
As I sat there at home, in Joe’s office, a toxic, roiling mass bloomed in my stomach. Guilt, longing, regret: name it, it was in me, black, corroding me from within.
I couldn’t help that being coldcocked with a reminder of Ivy triggered this wave of nausea and weakness. What I was feeling? It wasn’t me. It was an isolated sensation that appeared in my stomach. It had edges. My job was to recognize it as an entity separate from myself.
Smell the soup. Cool the soup.
I’d rather be me right now. Ivy was off living a life of idiotic facades, laughable values—
I stopped myself.
I wasn’t doing that. My business was my life. My life was an honorable one of self-generating abundance. I was healthy. Timby was healthy. Joe was healthy. I was loved. I’d made an impact as an artist. I had a graphic memoir to write. So what if I didn’t get along with my sister?
I stood up, still a bit trembly, and started to leave, then stopped.
On Joe’s desk. A telescope of some kind. Gray, the size of a demi-baguette, on crouching insect legs. It was aimed out the window.
How bizarre.
“I want to see!” It was Timby, followed by Spencer, his face covered in tiny flower stickers.
“Get away.” I hip-checked Timby before he could get his hand on it.
“You’re mean.”
“Out, out.” I herded them into the living room.
“Mom, can we use your computer to watch walking-stick videos?”
“I have to get going,” Spencer said.
“One second.” I shut the door.
I stepped behind Joe’s desk, tucked my hands behind my back in reverse prayer, and lowered my face to the eyepiece.
Between the putty blur of foreground condos, a distant yacht leaped brightly into view. Black-hulled and sleek, just the prow peeked through in sharp focus.
I walked to the window. There it was, at a random dock at an industrial waterfront I never thought about but did pass on my way to Costco.
Hmm. A ship.
I stepped back, knocking over a date-tree stalk that was propped against the wall. Waist-high and edged with triangular spikes, sharp like shark teeth, a hundred twiny fronds dangled from the top like a prehistoric pom-pom.