“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you get really angry sometimes, and then you act…irrationally. Like throwing my camera out the window.” She let silence fall, then said quietly, “Why? Why would you do something like that?”
“I was pissed!”
“It’s a six-thousand-dollar camera!”
Ivy was silent for a moment. “That’s insane.”
“Throwing it was insane.”
“Six thousand? My ma’s car cost that much, and it can’t even take pictures.”
“Well.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
Mary Ellen turned her head to look at her.
“Does a six-thousand-dollar camera make you better at taking pictures?”
Ivy was trying to get a rise out of her, but Mary Ellen felt too tired to oblige. There was no point in arguing, no point in keeping up appearances. “No,” she said.
“’Cause, I mean, phones are so good at taking pictures these days, I can’t imagine what a six-thousand-dollar camera could do. Looking at those pictures must be like, I don’t know, going into another dimension or something.” Ivy laughed.
Mary Ellen felt a long sigh of pain wash up her leg. She groaned and pulled at the dressings Ivy had tied around the wound. Her skin was red and tight. “Oh my God, it’s getting infected,” she whimpered. “I can tell it’s starting; my skin is all hot.”
“What’s it like, anyway?” Ivy asked.
“It’s like there’s not enough room inside my leg for everything, like my bones and my muscles and my veins are going to burst through the skin.”
“No, I mean having all that money. How does it feel?”
“What?” Mary Ellen lay her head back against the sofa arm. “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel so special.” She tried to ignore the pain in her leg and think about her money, her relationship with it. “It feels safe. Warm. Like a blanket.”
Ivy didn’t look impressed by this answer.
“Okay, no.” Mary Ellen closed her eyes. “It feels…slippery.”
“Like, in a sexy way?”
“No. I mean you never really know how much you have, whether you have enough. Some days you feel good about it, proud of it…those are the days you buy expensive cameras. Other days you freak out because you hear how much your friend paid for her stove, and you realize your perspective is all off. You don’t have anywhere near enough.”
“Oh.” Ivy thought about this for a minute. “My sister, Agnes, is like that, but with her body. One day she’s prancing around in short shorts like she’s a Victoria’s Secret model, and the next day she’s literally crying in front of the mirror about her cellulite. She always looks the same, but her opinion changes every five minutes.”
“I don’t know why we do that to ourselves, always comparing and worrying and feeling inadequate.”
“I don’t,” Ivy said.
“You don’t compare yourself to other people? Come on.”
“Well, yeah, of course I do. But it doesn’t make me feel worse about myself. It usually makes me feel better.”
Mary Ellen laughed a little at this, surprised by how happy she was to hear it. Then her burst of happiness abruptly tipped over into tears—as bursts of happiness always did when they were unexpected and sorely needed.
“What?”
“Nothing. I love that about you. It’s great.”
Ivy stared at her for a moment, her mouth open. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “About the camera. I didn’t know all this was going to happen.”
Mary Ellen wiped her cheeks and flapped a hand at her. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I do have a temper. I get it from my gran.”
“Yeah?”
“It feels good, you know? It’s such a rush, getting mad and doing something crazy. But then there’s the hangover afterward when I feel bad.”
“Hangovers are the worst.”
Ivy lay down and pulled her knees into her chest.
“You know, it actually wasn’t that bad, going into the ravine today,” Mary Ellen said. “Before the tree fell on me, I mean.” Remembering the ice formations on the creek filled her with wonderment all over again. “I had this moment of clarity, this moment when I finally had real perspective. And that felt like the beginning of something. Of being able to let go.” She sighed and pulled a throw blanket from the back of the sofa, covering herself.
“Let go of what?”
“Just, bad stuff that’s been weighing me down. Nothing.”
“Yeah, but I want to know. Like, you have everything you need, right? Nice car, nice camera, probably a really nice house full of nice stuff. I’m just curious what’s bad about your life.”
“Oh, come on, Ivy. You’re not that naive, are you? You know a car can’t make you happy, a camera won’t give you a reason to get up in the morning.”
“I guess.”
“You can still end up lonely. You can still feel like your life hasn’t added up to anything. And…things can still happen. Things you feel bad about.”
“Like what?”
Mary Ellen shook her head.
“No, come on. I’m not being nosy. Remember last night? You said I’ve never had to deal with real problems. I want to know what you think real problems are.”
Mary Ellen sighed. Would it help—putting her pain out there between them, on the coffee table, to be looked at and commented upon? Would it make her seem more human to the girl? Would it give Ivy a reason to care whether she lived or died? “Fine,” she said. “My father passed away last year. And it was my fault.”
Ivy rolled on her side and propped her head on her arm.
“I hadn’t been visiting him as often as I should have. He lived alone, about twenty minutes away from us, and I used to check in on him every few days. If I couldn’t go out there, I’d call. Just to, you know, make sure everything was okay.” Mary Ellen felt tears coming on, but she dammed them up. She just needed to get through the story. It was complicated, though, and she didn’t really know where it began. College, probably—wasn’t that when her father had pressed the lever that set her life rolling down a track that ended in emotional paralysis and
