When Eleanor had gotten back from the airport, after the nice cop let her drive herself home, she stripped the apartment of all things Ivy. (Kidney beans: when they lived in New York, they decided to throw a chili party, and because the kitchen was so tiny, they’d cooked the beans the night before but left them out, causing them to ferment, and they’d ended up having to order takeout from Empire Szechuan.) Eleanor cleansed her closet of all clothes reminding her of Ivy. A Fiorucci T-shirt washed a thousand times and soft as silk went to Goodwill. The Conran apron, it would have been bought on Astor Place during the Bank Street days. That went too.
Books. Jane Eyre went. The Drama of the Gifted Child with Ivy’s underlining. Lonesome Dove, torn in half on a camping trip so they could read it at the same time, then duct-taped back together. A Vanity Fair with Daryl Hannah on the cover and Ivy’s Dior ad inside. Shoe boxes of photos, ones Eleanor had been meaning to put into albums: any with Ivy went in the trash, and the trash went down the chute.
The Flood Girls kept looking back at her.
Years before, Joyce Primm, a young book editor, had expressed interest in Eleanor’s expanding the illustrations into a graphic memoir. Eleanor had demurred.
But what if she did get them published…?
What if she did flesh out the story of their childhood? The tale of losing her beloved mother and becoming a mother to Ivy at age nine. There were a thousand moments that called to her! The time she and Ivy told Matty they were going to explore the Midnight Mine and he’d barely looked up from the paper to say, “Nice knowing you.” Or when Tess, after her diagnosis, could be found sitting in her parked car, listening over and over to “Frank Mills” from the Hair eight-track.
Eleanor’s imagination lit up the sky with scenarios of Bucky wandering into a Garden District bookstore and seeing The Flood Girls as a graphic memoir. The injury! The humiliation! The panicked buying-up of all copies in New Orleans so nobody would see it! She could finally outflank him! People telling Ivy, “I had no idea what a terrible childhood you had. Thank God you and your sister have each other.” And Ivy would have to lie or admit that she’d thrown Eleanor away like trash. Either way, sweet vengeance!
Yes, Eleanor had drawn those twelve illustrations out of love. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t weaponize them.
Charming Joyce Primm into a book deal over drinks at the W Hotel made Eleanor feel both unhinged and exhilarated, like a woman throwing all her boyfriend’s clothes onto the front lawn.
But when it came time to sit down and write the memoir, the vindictive energy was gone. Eleanor tried to recapture it for art’s sake but couldn’t. She shoved The Flood Girls in the back of a closet to be dealt with later.
Eight years passed.
The reminders of Ivy would always be there. Depending on the day, they made Eleanor feel angry, wistful, devastated, or nothing at all. Eleanor couldn’t not be reminded of Ivy. But she could control the recovery time. After so many years of practice, it now took Eleanor no more than five minutes to bounce back.
Just last weekend, Eleanor, Joe, and Timby had gone to an inn on Lummi Island. It had a cool dark library with a treasure box of tea bags, and newspapers on wooden rods. Perfect for an early October afternoon while Timby and Joe kayaked. Eleanor would read the New York Times the way it was meant to be read, leisurely, from first page to last. She wouldn’t even skip the obituaries.
There was a woman who’d made one fortune importing bananas from the Caribbean and a second fortune growing cotton. It sounded vaguely familiar. Eleanor revisited the headline.
ARMANITO TRUMBO CHARBONNEAU
PILLAR OF NEW ORLEANS SOCIETY
DEAD AT 92
Before Eleanor could stop them, her eyes dropped to the last line.
“She is survived by grandson Barnaby Fanning, the historian, and his two children, John-Tyler and Delphine.”
Blur
“Put something under her head,” someone was saying.
I opened my eyes to a halo of concern. Spencer, Timby, a museum guard, and a stylish older woman knelt over me, the woman unspooling a long floral scarf from her neck. She folded the scarf in half and in half again and again until it was the size of a head. My head, it turned out. I dutifully raised it and she placed her scarf underneath. A downside of extremely fine cashmere? Despite how many times it’s folded, it has the cushioning capacity of typing paper.
From a secondary arc of standing people: “I called an ambulance.”
“For me?” I said. “I don’t need an ambulance.” Although I did feel a bit foggy…
“Just relax and breathe,” said the lady in charge… the museum director? She must have been eighty, with her pinched skin, density of crags, and white hair, curly and flying. Giant black-rimmed glasses dwarfed her small face, defiantly free of makeup.
“Do you see her pupils?” someone whispered.
“Mama!” Timby threw himself across me.
“Please!” I patted his back. “I’m fine.”
A person off to the side excitedly recounted the incident. “I’m just checking my stocks and I see this woman running, and wham, next thing I know, she’s on the ground.”
“Get up,” Timby said.
“Yeah,” someone said. “She’s not getting up.”
“If you’re talking about me,” I said to them around Timby’s head, “it’s because I’m choosing not to get up.”
“Do you need some water?” an installer asked.
“Nah.”
He turned to Timby. “Do you need some water?”
“Is it VitaminWater?”