The afternoon of the nuptials, Ivy and Eleanor lolled in Richmond Inn robes, Joe having just returned from a day trip to Monticello. In two hours, the bridal shuttle would ferry them to Sherwood Forest.
Ivy, always the chameleon, spoke with a Southern lilt.
“I was lying in bed one morning. You know my favorite thing in creation is an after-breakfast nap…”
Ivy took center stage on the vast expanse of beige carpet. Her eyes danced with wicked amusement. Had she learned it from Eleanor, the ability to turn any event into a story?
“I swear to you, the wallpaper started moving. I got out of bed and put my hand on the spot and it was warm! I found a pucker in the seam and pulled. Underneath were mud tubes, like veins crawling up the wall. I screamed like the star of a teen horror movie. ‘Termites!’”
Ivy’s endless leg peeked through the high slit in her bathrobe, an effect so sexy it might have been staged; for Ivy, these alluring moments happened of themselves.
“Not a week later I went to mail a letter and the mailbox fell off its post. Right into the street! A group of tourists were standing around reading that old plaque and I just about died of embarrassment.”
Joe grabbed a video camera to capture this, Ivy at her best. There had been bad times but there were good ones too.
“The next day, the termites swarmed the carriage house, thousands of them in a cloud you couldn’t see through. That’s how they mate, in flight! Poor Taffy had to stand there with a vacuum sucking them out of the air. They got in her eyes and her ears and her nostrils! She was spitting them out of her mouth! You know what else? After termites mate, their wings drop off. So for the rest of the year, wings in my cereal, wings in my slippers. Once I squirted sunblock in my hand and there were wings in it! The craziest part? You mention termites to anyone in New Orleans and they’re in utter denial. ‘What termites?’ We had to call the Terminix guy because they’d gotten into the two-by-four things that hold up the roof. Bucky made him park around the corner. But when the neighbor came home and saw the Terminix truck in front of his house, he marched over, and he and Bucky had it out on the front lawn. Even after that, you mention termites and Bucky will say, ‘What termites?’”
Ivy sat on Joe’s lap and threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Joe.” They fell back on the bed. “You’ve always been there for me. I’ve been such a disaster. The good news is after tonight, I’ll be Bucky’s problem.”
Bucky had entered. It was unclear how much he’d heard.
He stiffly addressed Eleanor. “As you know, in keeping with Tyler tradition, my first dance with your sister will be the Virginia reel.” He set a piece of paper on a bureau near the door. “Here are your places for it.”
The door clicked shut. A choking silence filled the suite. Eleanor spoke first.
“Okay, Joe, your turn to bust out the hotel stationery.”
“That’s not funny.” Ivy sat up and swung her legs around the side of the bed, darkness rising.
Joe pointed to the suitcase. Eleanor nodded, went to it, took out a present.
“From me to you!” Eleanor said, and sat next to Ivy. She turned to Joe. “Honey, cover your ears.” She took Ivy’s hand. “Men will come and go. But we’ll always be sisters.”
From the weight of the box, Ivy’s face exploded into a smile.
“I know what this is!” Ivy sang. “John Tyler’s derringers! Bucky bet me a nickel!”
“Actually, no. It’s not the derringers.”
Eleanor had thought it right for the new couple to have at least one scrapbook devoted to Ivy’s family. As their father kept no photos from their childhood, Eleanor had hand-drawn some of her own, as well as a map of Aspen.
It had taken all her spare time for months. Eleanor was still feeling the physical toll: the frozen right shoulder, the aching eyes, the stomach lining eaten by coffee and ibuprofen.
As a final touch, Eleanor had ordered the leather scrapbook from a stationery shop in the French Quarter. For its spine she had a small silver plaque engraved, in Fanning-family font: THE FLOOD GIRLS.
“This is good too,” Ivy said.
“I have just the person you should meet!” said Quentin.
Eleanor was back in New Orleans, in Bucky and Ivy’s carriage house. They’d been married a year. Quentin was a rumpled gentleman with a full-on Southern drawl who took impish delight in every word Eleanor spoke. She’d just told him she was Ivy’s sister, an animator from New York.
Quentin scurried off to find a pen and paper, leaving Eleanor standing in the living room facing the window treatments. Valance, curtains, swag, Roman shade, and blackout roller. Five separate things. Six, if you counted the silk tassels.
Bucky came by sipping a screwdriver and joined Eleanor at the window.
“Maroon and ivory is my favorite color story,” he explained.
“Color story?” Eleanor said, snapping out of her trance.