“What!”
“They want me to stay home and work in the family business.” Ivy pulled a name out of a hat. “The Gardner Family Funeral Home.”
“Oh gosh. And you don’t want to do that, I guess.”
“No. But if you’re a Gardner, you go to work as soon as you get out of high school. My dad did it, and now he has this permanent smell of embalming fluid. No matter how many showers he takes, it never comes off. I think he might actually be embalmed.”
“Have you tried talking to them about it?” Mary Ellen got up to make another drink.
“Yeah, sure, of course. But they’re like ‘Nope, sorry, you’re gonna spend the rest of your life like the rest of us, making dead people look less dead.’ So here I am. On the road. Taking charge of my destiny.” She said this in an ironic announcer-y voice.
“Wow. Brave.” Mary Ellen dropped the cap of the gin bottle, and when she bent to pick it up, it skittered out of her fingers and rolled under the table. She sighed loudly and lowered herself to her knees, groping through the forest of bench and table legs.
“Yeah, well, I could never work for my family. Buncha crooks.”
Mary Ellen resurfaced. “Funeral home crooks? Oh boy.”
“Yeah. The worst kind. If you’re crazed with grief, they’ll talk you into the stupidest overpriced casket, plus the Eternal Life protective lining and Gold Standard Embalming.” Ivy’s friend Eleanna’s family ran the Good Hope Funeral Home, and Eleanna had told her everything. She’d even sneaked Ivy and Asa into the mortuary one night. No sooner had she pulled open the door of the refrigeration unit than Asa had screamed like a raccoon and dragged Ivy out of the basement with more urgency and sense of direction than she’d ever thought him capable of.
“So you want to go to college?”
“Yes! College unlocks a lot of doors.” This, Ivy was pretty sure, was a trademarked McFadden saying. “I’m going to live with my aunt in Pittsburgh. She promised to help me with the SATs and everything.”
“But how on earth did you end up here?”
“Well.” Ivy pressed her sticky finger to the table and gently pulled it away, feeling the skin stretch as it clung briefly to the wood. “I was hitchhiking, and this young couple picked me up. They seemed super friendly and nice, you know, smiley but not in a creepy way, just a couple of happy people out for a drive. They shared their snacks with me, gave me some soda.
“Then, about an hour into the ride, they started asking me if I had accepted Jesus into my life and stuff. The girl said she had these, like, sister wives that she thought I would really like, and she wanted me to meet them. I got kind of scared, so I asked them to stop so I could pee in the woods, and then I just ran away. They chased after me, and the guy actually grabbed my arm, but I kicked him where it counts and he let go.” Ivy chuckled a little at this detail. “I kept running until I found this house, and the key, and I decided to take a few days off before hitching another ride. I was feeling a little freaked out, to tell you the truth.”
“I can imagine.”
“But then I got sick. I guess one of the Jesus people had the flu or something. So I got stuck here for a little while, and then you came along. Thank goodness. You really…you really saved my life.”
“Yes, thank goodness,” Mary Ellen said with a little laugh. Then she got serious. “But, Rose, your parents must be so worried.”
Shit, Ivy thought. She wasn’t letting it go. “Well, see, my dad…” she said, then fell silent.
“Yes?”
Ivy shook her head, looking down at the table. She was happy she’d never even met her father; that, at least, made it easier to wade into this deeper, muddier swamp of lies. “I had to get away from him. I can’t let him find me.”
“You mean…”
Ivy turned her face away.
“Does he…”
Ivy nodded, then wiped a hand across her eyes and pretended to compose herself.
“Oh. No.” Mary Ellen looked troubled. “How awful. I-I don’t know what to say.” She spent a moment straightening out her face, then asked, “Does your aunt know you’re coming?”
“Yeah, yeah, she offered. She wants to help. But if you take me to the cops, they’ll just send me home.” Ivy took a deep, determined-sounding breath. “I can’t go back there.”
“Well.” Mary Ellen moved her head around, looking from the table to the windows to the sofas and back again. She took a brighter tone. “I think it’s great you want to go to college. College gives you so many options. How did you put it? It opens doors. I mean, it did for me anyway. I may not have walked through them all, necessarily, but at least I was exposed to things I could come back around to—” She stopped herself. “What do you want to major in?”
“Writing. I want to be a writer. Of, like, plays and stuff.”
Mary Ellen sat up straight. “Really!”
Ivy shrugged. “I like to make up stories.” Which was basically true.
“Well, you should just go for it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Mary Ellen drank deeply. “College is all about finding yourself.”
This, Ivy decided, was exactly what she would expect to hear from some rich lady who had completely lost touch with reality. “That’s what I always tell my parents,” Ivy said. “I
