“You’re full of surprises,” Joe said to me.
“I can see the wisdom in what you were saying.” I paused to think about it. “If you truly believed you had a benevolent bus driver, and you were certain he was taking you somewhere good, you could just settle in and appreciate the ride.”
“You make me sound a little like Yo-Yo,” Joe said. “But I’ll take it.”
First it was my eyes going wide; then it was Timby, gasping.
“Oh, Mom!”
Joe walked across the vast empty parking lot. A moonless night, the only sound the waves lapping in Elliott Bay. The slimmest light blue line traced the top of the Olympic Mountains across the black sound; the sun would set in seconds on the other side.
He stopped and waited. What a striking and chancy thing to witness, a mountain range being absorbed into the dark night sky.
Then Joe saw him, just outside a pool of orange light, sitting politely.
“That’s a good boy,” Joe said.
Yo-Yo, still tied to the cart rack, swept his tail across the asphalt. Seeing a familiar face, he stood up and wiggled his little behind. As Joe got closer, Yo-Yo pranced and reared. He was always delighted but never surprised that someone had come.
With my good hand, I moved aside the stacks of art books. The hardwood floor was so smooth, the towers glided without toppling. Behind them, a narrow and impractical closet, chockablock like the rest of my tiny workspace. I dug through the crazy quilt of crap. A carton of linen drawing pads I thought I liked but then didn’t. That meditation cushion, dusty and sun-bleached. A tangle of phone wire and ancient printer cables. A cache of Sears Wish Books (that’s where they were!), forty years’ worth, painstakingly collected for reference. A white leather case with Joe’s mother’s silver. Flashlights from Super Bowl XLVIII. Coconut water from forever ago. Tucked in the way back, the crumpled Neiman Marcus bag.
The Flood Girls.
I set the leather book on my drawing board and turned on the light. The endpaper split when I opened the cover.
Mom and Matty. Every drawing of her looks like a different person. All I had to work off of was my fading, shifting memory. Ivy, my intention was for her to glow. I captured it best in the one with Parsley. The background on the second page: That was from an actual book of nursery tales. Those crayon scribbles done by Ivy’s hand. The pillows on the rocking chair, embroidered by Mom, thrown away by the grieving, vengeful nine-year-old me. The guy who wrote the screenplay for King Kong, he and his wife used to have us over to watch the Broncos. Matty’s chicken scratches. When people die, their handwriting dies too. You don’t think about that.
I didn’t plan not to tell Timby about Ivy. When he was two, I was suffering through a particularly rough stretch of sleepless nights, emotions churned by another new shrink (this one Jungian, this one no help either). Joe and I were in Meridian Park, pushing Timby on a swing. I asked Joe if he hated Ivy and Bucky. He said, “That would make as much sense as hating a rattlesnake. You don’t hate rattlesnakes; you avoid them.”
When Joe declared on Highway 82 in Aspen that he was done with Ivy, he meant it. I honestly doubt if he’s thought about her more than a handful of times since that day. One thing I will say against Joe: He expects me to do the same. Joe can be done with Ivy. I will never be done with Ivy. I don’t want to be done with Ivy. She’s my sister.
The Aspen map! It took me a month to draw that damned thing. We used to love Richard Scarry and the Sunday Family Circus. For our birthdays, Matty would create treasure hunts. These were the only times he allowed us inside the lady’s big house. (The rest of the year, he pasted strips of S&H Green Stamps across the front and back doors. He told us he’d written down the serial numbers so we couldn’t sneak in.) Those birthday treasure hunts when Ivy and I could finally see the inside: wonders upon wonders.
And the bear. That’s a good bear.
“Mom!” Timby called. “Come here!”
I closed the scrapbook. And there it sat amid my jumble. Beautiful, every page of it, drawn by a person I used to be. The Flood Girls. Jinxed no more.
Timby was at the mirror on his step stool waiting for me with his toothbrush. If I’d ever had an excuse to skip our routine, it was then. But Timby and I had rarely missed a night standing shoulder to shoulder.
“Look at this!” he said, holding open an Archie Double Digest.
I didn’t know what I was supposed to be looking at.
“The last line!” Timby said impatiently.
In the panel, Archie and Jughead had just been busted by Mr. Weatherbee for something. Archie turns to Jughead and says, “Grab a rake.”
“That’s the first time in Archie history it doesn’t end with an exclamation point!” he said.
My little son. What a smarty. What a sweetie.
“Always ahead of me, you are.”
With my good hand, I held out my toothbrush. “Hit me with some of that.” Timby squeezed paste on it.
We began brushing.