riotheclown

Dr. Buzzard's Original Suvannah Band

It was Hunter’s funeral that had brought Ivy back, flying across two continents. Mouse was not sure why. Ivy had been very pointed in her rejection of the entire chapter of her life that had included Mouse and Hunter. What might have been a slow shifting away, as it became with so many other “friends”, had been a legal document of “non-disclosure”. Ivy thought her career was important enough at the time.

The funeral was days ago but Ivy was still staying in her guest room.

She watched Ivy moving down the aisle of the grocery store feeling something between amusement and annoyance.

Ivy was dressed dramatically in a long billowy dress covered with scarves. It might have been meant to look like a Sari but instead looked like a crude attempt to hide the thickening waist and sagging breasts of a woman of 60. Everything she had on was purple. “If you simply look foreign you can never look out of date.” was her fashion advice.

Purple was such a cloying color. Because of her synestesia, Mouse could hear color, Ivy knew this. It offended rather than compelled. Perhaps this was Ivy’s intent.

Mouse could not be sure of anything when it came to Ivy.

Did Ivy really know how beautiful she had been or the effect she had over every one she chose to invite into her circle? Now she was a bewildered butterfly whose season had passed and her mannerisms seemed silly rather than mesmerizing. Mouse was not as clueless or as brilliant as she had been. But she had a few good people in her life now and they were nothing like Ivy.

She still called her “Mouse”. No one had called her “Mouse” for years. Even Hunter had called her Marilyn during the months she cared for him. She called him Brian. It seemed both ends of life finds us in need of nurturing and to be called by a name a mother would whisper.

Ivy was grilling the boy behind the Deli counter as to the origins of the all the meat she was buying. She glanced over her shoulder at her. “I’m sorry Mouse but I MUST HAVE PROTEIN!!! I simply can’t abide vegetarianism PHYSICALLY!”

“That’s alright Ivy, I’m not a vegetarian.” Mouse smiled.

“Oh, I thought all Buddhist’s were vegetarians…”

“I’m not a Buddhist. Let me carry that for you.” Mouse took the basket from Ivy. Mouse was strong now.

During the last weeks of Hunter’s life she had lifted him in and out of the wheelchair; walked him in the garden, bathed him and put him to bed. She kept track of his medications, coaxed him to eat and was his nurse. His skin had thinned like tissue paper so delicate it looked as if it would tear on his jutting and predominant bones: A living skeleton until he rattled his bones no more.

Mouse had taken him in knowing he was going to die. She was, it seemed, moving through her life without a plan and yet those more purposeful where washing up on her shores.

Ivy reclaimed the basket. “I’m stronger than you! Perhaps we should arm wrestle so I can prove it!”

“Why would you want to?” Mouse asked.

“I don’t know you know. Funny huh?”

Perhaps for the first time, she could see Ivy was assessing her as an outsider and not as someone who had her kept her as a pet. Briefly Mouse imagined she saw fear in Ivy’s gaze but she could not be sure, she was so unaccustomed to the feeling herself.

“I guess I can’t call you Mouse anymore.”

Mouse didn’t answer bit looked at her calmly. They both were still holding on to the basket.

“You look good by the way...” Ivy said.

“So do you.” Mouse lied. She hated the caricature of her former self that Ivy had become with so much plastic surgery. Ivy let go of the basket as they approached the cash register. Mouse started laying out the groceries. It was clear she was going to pay for them.

“Why did you come back Ivy?”

“You might have slammed the door in my face except for it being a funeral. I guess I was feeling nostalgic. The three of us were divine together…”

Hunter was never divine. He was always broken we just didn’t know it. You were always frightened of being found out to be a talentless bitch. I was never more than the clueless misfit who worshipped you.

“…Divinely deviant!” Ivy said in a loud voice as she drifted out of the store in a purple haze.