“That’s what I’m doing! God damn.” Ivy snatched up the newspaper clipping and shoved it back into her wallet. She sat heavily on the bench opposite Mary Ellen, her back to the table. She could hear the lady slurping from her glass, and the sound plucked violently at her nerves. If they couldn’t get the car out in the morning, she was walking up to the road and hitchhiking. End of story.
“Do you even know anybody out there? In Montana?” Mary Ellen’s voice sounded all quavery.
“No.”
“Where were you planning to stay?”
“I’ll figure it out. I’ll get a place.”
“Do you have any money?”
“I’ll get a job, okay? Just…” Ivy flapped her hand. The last thing she felt like doing right now was finessing her Montana plan with some clueless rich lady.
“It’s hard to get a job when you’re homeless. I’m just saying. And the economy out west, well, it’s tough these days.” Slurp. “Have you thought about transportation? You’ll need a car. Missoula’s very spread out. Of course, you’ll need a credit history. Hard to get credit without a credit history. That’s another—”
“Would you please shut up?” Ivy jumped up and pushed the bench backward with one foot. It fell over with a loud bang. “I said I’d figure it out! Why can’t you stop lecturing for one second? It’s like a sickness with you. It’s like you think you don’t exist if you’re not telling someone else what to do. Jesus.”
“I saved your life!” Mary Ellen was raising her voice, but it sounded like she was out of practice. It came out all squeezed. “I took care of you. I fed you! You have no right to roll your eyes and ignore me and act like I’m just some kind of annoying gnat—”
“Stop yelling at me!”
“Well then, how else will you know I care?” Mary Ellen spit this out with so much sourness and sarcasm that Ivy did a double take.
“Jesus,” Ivy said, moving over to the living room window that overlooked the ravine, putting some distance between them. The wind was squealing around the corners of the house, scraping across her nerves like a cheese grater. Her heart was beating fast, and there was an old, familiar darkness creeping around the edges of her eyesight. Keep it cool, she told herself. Don’t lose hold—
“I should’ve known as soon as you started angling for money.” Mary Ellen went for the gin bottle. “You were conning me. ‘We artists have to stick together.’ Yeah, right. This whole time, you were just some homeless dropout. I can’t believe you would make all that stuff up about your father, and about your mom being sick. Lung disease! Oh my gosh. You got me with that one; I’ll admit it. But you’ve never had to deal with anything like that in real life, have you? You’re too young. You don’t know anything about real problems.”
Ivy screamed, attacking the nearest thing to her, which was the window. She pounded it with her fists and her forearms, but it was solid as a wall. It didn’t even shake. She whirled around, looking for something to crush, shatter, obliterate. Mary Ellen had stopped, midpour, and was staring at her wide-eyed, the green bottle sagging in her hand. Between them stood the coffee table, piled with Mary Ellen’s belongings.
Ivy lifted the thick canvas camera bag, which was surprisingly heavy, letting it swing from her hand as she glared at Mary Ellen. She could feel her heart folding in on itself over and over, growing blacker with every beat. She strode back to the window, flipped the latch, and heaved the plate glass down its track.
“Rose! Wait!” Mary Ellen shrieked. Ivy swung back her arm, then arced the camera bag up, over her head, and out into the night, feeling an intense rush of joy, like it was her inside the bag, flying through the air into the swirling darkness. She turned and grinned at Mary Ellen, snow dancing around her head and shoulders, the cold air like a first kiss.
“I’m not Rose,” she reminded the lady, a lilt of triumph in her voice. “I’m Ivy.”
18
Mary Ellen put a hand over her mouth. She set down the gin bottle, walked to the window, pulled it closed.
Her hands were shaking; she locked them together, willing herself to total stillness. Ivy was hopping from one foot to the other like a boxer, but Mary Ellen refused to look at her. She walled her off, set her aside, put her on her list of things to do. She took her coat from the hook on the wall and tried tugging on one of her boots, but standing on one foot was problematic. She brought the boots over to the bench and got them on, then went downstairs and turned on the deck lights.
She slid open the back door and waded through the snow to the point where the flat, white expanse dipped softly into the woods. She strained to see beyond the light’s edge, but the darkness was absolute. Somewhere down there, she told herself, her camera was nestled safely in a fluffy white mound, maybe on a bed of ferns or fallen pine boughs. The Tamrac Ultra Pro camera bag—it was a splurge, but she’d bought it for just this kind of situation. All right, maybe not this exact situation. But it was waterproof. Shock absorbent.
She looked back at the house and aligned herself with the upstairs window, then stepped off the edge of the deck, stumbling to one side when her foot landed on something hard and slippery under the snow. She caught herself and shuffled forward, squinting to see where the ground dropped off. Her foot cracked through a nest of branches, and as she yanked it out, she lost her balance and
