The Education of Ivy Blake (11 page)

The Monday
after school let out, Ivy pushed her bike from under the carport at eight a.m. She swung a leg over her bike bar and coasted onto the street. It was sunny and birds were singing cheerfully, but Ivy was miserable. When a robin aimed a snippet of melody at her, she glowered at it. Then she reminded herself that her misery was not the robin's fault. It was her own doing.
She
had chosen not to go to North Carolina. Even her mom had tried to talk her into changing her mind last night.

She pictured Prairie and Grammy on the train as she turned onto Broadway. Their eyes would be bright, they'd be leaning forward in their seats. Prairie would have on her red cowboy shirt with the pearly buttons. Grammy, who didn't care about clothes at all, would have on the green velvet tracksuit she'd ordered out of a catalogue especially for the trip. She'd have a sack of peppermints in her purse; she'd take one and then offer one to Prairie as the sights flashed by their window and the train clattered south to the city.

Ivy leaned over the handlebars and pumped the pedals hard. Her expression was so forbidding that a dog who'd been thinking of darting out and snapping at her ankles decided to stay on his porch.

• • •

Half an hour later, Ivy coasted up to the address Mrs. Grizzby had given her: 401 Elderberry loomed over the street. It was built of red bricks that were crumbling at the corners and had a chimney with a chunk missing out of its top. The shutters needed paint, the porch had two broken columns, and a porch swing creaked lonesomely on its chains.

Ivy perched on her bike seat with her toes on the ground, staring. If she was smart, she'd turn right around and go home. She made a face and cruised up the driveway.

On the porch she stood before a dark green door with a brass handle that had a design of vines and leaves etched into it. A radio played from somewhere deep in the house. Ivy breathed in shallowly. There was a sour smell, an oldness that seemed to rise from the earth beneath the place. She tugged on her braid. Then she squared her shoulders and jabbed the doorbell button.

A clumping sound came slowly nearer. Eventually the door opened and Mrs. Grizzby appeared, propped on crutches.

Ivy smiled at her.

Mrs Grizzby frowned like Ivy was a stain on the carpet, except that Ivy could already tell there was no way you'd ever be able to see her carpets. The room the door opened into was filled with boxes and piles and mounds and stacks of stuff. A stairway led to the second floor, and every step had so much stuff on it so that you'd hardly be able to fit your foot on the tread.

Ivy smiled wider. “Hi! It's me. Ivy. Come to help you clean.”

“But why are you wearing
that
? I thought you'd come to
work.
”

Ivy had spent a long time choosing her outfit that morning: a denim jumper over a plain white T-shirt. Nice but not fancy. Practical but respectful. “I have, for sure, that's why—”

“You can't clean in that!”

The train had pulled out of the station not fifteen minutes ago. Staying for this job
had
to be worth it. “Yes, I can,” she said quickly. “It's just old stuff from the thrift shop. Or I can go home and change if you want—”

Mrs. Grizzby shook her head as if this was a showstopping problem and nothing Ivy said could fix it. Then she said peevishly, “Oh, come in, I guess.”

Two weeks later,
Ivy knelt on the stair runner with a bottle of upholstery cleaner. She scrubbed while Mrs. Grizzby watched from below.

“You missed a spot! Over there, to the right.”

Ivy scrubbed harder at what might've been a patch of ancient cat vomit.

“Not too hard! You'll rub the color out.”

Ivy kept scrubbing at the same rate as before. Mrs. Grizzby wasn't as aggravated as she sounded most of the time. She was just—nervous. She had a prickly, strange-looking outside and a sweet, tender center, like some exotic fruit from the bodega. A dragon fruit, maybe, or an African horned cucumber.

Ivy had learned that a few days after she started. She had taken a framed photo of a man down from the mantel to clean, and asked who it was. Mrs. Grizzby clapped her hands together; her eyes sparkled and her face glowed. Ivy gaped at her, she was so surprised by the change.

“Why, that's my husband. That's Charlie.” Mrs. Grizzby took the photo and wiped the glass off with her sweater sleeve. “We met in college. He was in my economics class. He was
very
good-looking.”

She winked at Ivy and Ivy couldn't help but grin in return. She had taken the photo of the ordinary-looking man out of Mrs. Grizzby's hands and cleared all the junk surrounding it, and filed away this new information about her employer: she wasn't just an odd, difficult old lady who wore too much makeup. She was a
person.
She was real.

It was hard to remember all the time, like when Mrs. Grizzby hovered over her insisting Ivy be careful with a box of old pickle jars that were never going to be used for anything.

“There's another spot, right under your hand,” Mrs. Grizzby cried now, like the spot was on fire. Ivy moved her hand and bore down on it.

• • •

“It really looks nice.” Mrs. Grizzby tapped the armrest of her wheelchair in a contented way late that afternoon. They were at the kitchen table with tiny quilted canning jars of soda in front of them. Mrs. Grizzby had insisted she had to keep the glasses because they'd come full of jelly in a fruit basket from Caroline at Christmas twelve years before. She said the flavors were strawberry, raspberry, and blackberry, and they had been good, except a little seedy. Also the oranges had been a little dry and the apples not so crisp, but the basket itself had been nice; she still had it somewhere—

Ivy had quit arguing and put the jars back in the cupboard instead of hauling them to the recycling bins out on the curb. The bins had never had anything in them before; Ivy'd had to run out to the street and flag the city truck down to get them emptied.

“It hasn't looked so nice in years. Caroline's going to like it so much. I'll bet she ends up staying a whole week.” Mrs. Grizzby hugged herself. “Oh, we'll have such a good time.”

“Mmm.” Ivy stirred her ice cubes with her finger so she'd have somewhere to look. The phone had never rung while she was there. No letters or postcards had dropped into the iron box by the door, and in all the stacks of old mail and newspapers that were piled on the table beside Mrs. Grizzby's chair, there had been only three things from Caroline: a Christmas card, an Easter card, and a Mother's Day greeting. All of them had just her name signed under the preprinted messages.

“Don't you think so?” Worry flowed back over Mrs. Grizzby's face.

“Oh! Yes! Of course. I'll bet she will. Maybe she'll even want to stay
two
weeks.”

“You really think so?”

Ivy nodded and lifted her jelly-jar glass in a toast and downed her four ounces of soda.

Ivy handed
the crumpled twenties Mrs. Grizzby had given her to the man behind the pawnshop's counter. Her heart banged hard as he counted the money. The job with Mrs. Grizzby was done; it'd be hard to get so much money at once again. What if she was spending it wrong? What if the whole idea was dumb? She opened her mouth to say
Wait,
but the man was already shoving the drawer shut. He swaddled the camera in bubble wrap and poked it into a box that had once held Wint O Green Life Savers. He pushed the box and her change across the counter. “It's all yours.”

Ivy drew the box close. The minute she wrapped her arms around it, her doubts evaporated.

She stood up straighter and waited for the man to congratulate her. This camera was something a film student in college might use. A guy who made TV commercials had raved about it online; an independent filmmaker said she'd shot her movie with a camera like this.

But the man just stabbed his copy of her receipt on a spindle by the register. “Enjoy.” He looked over her shoulder at the next customer, a skinny man in a sleeveless T-shirt cradling the kitchen blender.

• • •

Ivy began pedaling toward home, the camera box jammed into her book bag. It was heavy and bumped into her back every time she hit her left pedal, but she didn't mind that. She did mind that she'd coast in under the carport at home and jiggle the front door lock and set the box on the couch and open it, all alone, and that would be that.

She thought of Jacob saying,
Movies, yeah.
He'd have understood how momentous this was. Too bad there was no way to find him. There was no way to find anyone. Prairie and Grammy were on a train somewhere in Maryland, if Ivy'd been keeping track right, and Mom and Dad Evers were in New Paltz, and busy.

Ivy pumped her bike pedals around a few more times. Then, without planning it, she took a right turn rather than a left at the corner of Broadway and Elm and headed across town.

• • •

“But what'll you
do
with it?” Mrs. Grizzby's mouth was turned down in puzzlement.

The candles Ivy had put out on the dining room table in holders she found in the back of a cupboard were almost out of sight behind a mound of newspapers. Ivy had hauled all the newspapers to the recycling bin right before she left, but Mrs. Grizzby must've limped outside on her crutches and somehow hauled them back in. Mrs. Grizzby put one hand on top of them, like she could hide them that way. “What story will you tell? Who'll be the actors and all that?”

Ivy stared at her.

“Will you take a class, or get books from the library to figure it all out, or what?”

Ivy tugged her braid. Then she said, “Yes, I'll get books,” like she'd thought of that already. “And I know a boy who loves movies who might be able to tell me some stuff about making one.”

Mrs. Grizzby raised her penciled brows.

“Plus, my friend Tate from school wants to help.”

Mrs. Grizzby's face didn't lose its doubtful, waiting look.

“And I'll just, sort of, figure it out.”

“I see.” Mrs. Grizzby gnawed on her dark red lip. Ivy had a feeling she
did
see. She saw that Ivy didn't have a clue what she was doing. They gazed at the camera. Its label said
Canon GL1 MiniDV 3CCD Camcorder Pro Digital Video Camera.
Mrs. Grizzby tapped the words cautiously. “How do you even turn it on?”

Ivy didn't know. She rebundled the camera in the bubble wrap and set it back in the box. She smiled brightly. “I'm sure there are directions. I'll have to read them and find out. Anyway, I better get home now.”

Mrs. Grizzby's shoulders slumped.

Ivy stopped tucking the box's flaps under each other. “I guess I'll—see you sometime? If you ever need help with cleaning or anything, call me, okay?”

Mrs. Grizzby frowned. “Cleaning? I don't need help with cleaning. It's only because of Caroline coming that I had you help straighten things up a little. I could've done it all myself if it wasn't for this darned cast, and the crutches and chair and all.”

“Oh, sure.” Ivy froze her smile in place so it wouldn't look skeptical. “I know.” She picked up her camera box. “Well, good-bye, I guess, then.”

Mrs. Grizzby followed her to the door, her crutches thumping. She patted Ivy's shoulder before Ivy stepped out onto the porch. “Good luck with that fancy-pants camera. Call me if you ever need an old lady in one of your movies.” She smiled that sudden, real smile, and Ivy impulsively wrapped her arms around her waist before she ran down the steps.

• • •

At home, Ivy put her camera box on her desk. She listened to the sounds the house made: a fan her mom had left running in her bedroom whirred; water from the kitchen faucet plopped into the basin. Ivy sighed, then dug the instructions from the box and began to read.

A few hours later she'd filmed everything in the house. Another hour after that, she'd documented Mrs. Phillips pulling crabgrass from her petunia bed. Her feeling of excitement grew. When Mrs. Phillips said she was tired of weeding, Ivy ran back inside and found Tate's phone number. Ivy had asked her for it on the last day of school.

No one answered, but Ivy left a message. “So, um, hi. It's Ivy—Ivy Blake, from school—calling for Tate. I wanted to tell you, I got my camera today! Well—you didn't know about that, but I finally earned enough money for it. And now I'm figuring out how to use it and pretty soon I'm going to start working on a movie. I kind of hoped—you said if I ever made a movie—well, that you'd want to help. So I wanted to tell you. And see if you wanted to get together or something. Sometime. Yeah, so that's all. Bye!”

Ivy slammed the phone down, her face warm with shyness. Then she ran back outside and started filming her walk to school, past the tiny park and the tattoo parlor and the pizza place. She adjusted the focus to get a sharper view of a postal box. Everything in the world suddenly seemed interesting and beautiful and new, like she'd never seen any of it before.