Black and Blue Ivy

Dark Fate

Weeks passed, then months. I lived in a strange bubble at Providence House. Gardenia avoided me like the plague which suited me fine. I saw the children less and less and even stopped going to Sunday mass with the family. Gardenia must have realized I was holding on to a secret, a dangerous one that would destroy her reputation beyond measure, so she allowed me to wander freely, albeit on a long chain. It didn't take me long to realize that Bentley had become my only human contact. Even grouchy old Mrs. Roche gazed right through me when we happened to pass each other in one of the halls. Bentley suggested, for sanity's sake, that we stick to a regular routine. My schooling continued with Bentley as my tutor; I now ate my meals alone in the breakfast nook. We spent most days in the library, warmed by the fire. My writing skills improved and so did my mathematics, thanks to Bentley. He really was a patient teacher. It was in the music room where we would get lost and forget for a while that I was a prisoner and so was he.

One afternoon in early spring when a thunderstorm was raging outside so violently that the lighted wall sconces flickered, we found ourselves sitting so close together on the sofa, that the passion ignited again. This time, it wasn't two lovesick teenagers exploring each other bodies for the first time, but mature lovers. We comforted each other, held the other's pain in our hands, and when Bentley's skillful lovemaking brought me to a climax to match the thunder raging outside, I collapsed in his arms weeping and shamelessly declaring my love.

"I love you too, Ivy," he whispered into my damp hair, which now skimmed my shoulders.

After that, our afternoons were spent mostly in the library or in the music room where we'd play music and just as often make love. If Gardenia knew what was going on, she never let on or interrupted us. And when Bentley told me he couldn't teach me on certain afternoons, I knew he'd be with her. I pretended I didn't care, that he was only doing it until his birthday which by now was only weeks away. But the thought of him making love to her made me sick enough to push it from my mind. And for a while, it worked. I had no contact with the outside world accept for the few times a discarded newspaper would catch my eye. In one front page article I saw the obituary lauding the life of one the honorable Phillip Maxim, sixty-three years old who succumbed to his maker. I wondered with a pang of guilt if I'd anything to do with the "long illness" proceeding his death and shoved the newspaper to the bottom on the trash bin hoping to destroy the memory.

Life went on in a kind of suspended animation where I kept one eye on the ever-changing sky, anticipating the day when it would all come crashing down. The day finally came on a warm May afternoon where I could smell the sweet, freshly-cut grass wafting through the tiny breakfast nook window where I had scarfed down my lunch. Whether I was eating out of boredom or some other reason, I couldn't get enough to eat and often raided the kitchen late at night for a midnight snack. My hair had grown and so had my waistline.

"You need some exercise," Bentley announced and suggested we go riding. I wandered out to the barn with some trepidation. I hadn't been near the horses since that fateful day in the tack room. Bentley sensed my hesitation and laying a hand on my lower back said, "I'll saddle up Goldenrod and bring her out for you." I stood on the lower rail of the paddock fence and gazed up at the woods where the roof of Luther Black's house poked out of of lush green treetops. Bentley had told me he'd read in one of Gardenia's tabloid papers that Luther Black had an alcohol induced breakdown soon after the concert disaster where he was sued by several concert attendees who had been injured during the melee. That must have been around the time when I saw him in the woods. I was half out of my mind myself, but I wondered if he'd tried to kill himself and that's why he had a noose in his hand. I shuddered at the memory. If I was able to gain access to a computer inside my gilded cage I would try to learn more. All Bentley said when I asked was that he'd been carted off to a rehab center in California. The upside-down cross hadn't been lit in months. I guessed he was cleaning himself up. Good for him, I thought, envying his freedom.

Suddenly, a sharp stab of pain hit me deep in my pelvic region. My period was due. In fact, it was late. I never kept a calendar like some girls did because mine always came on the first or second day of the month and here it was May—

Bentley appeared from the barn leading Goldenrod.

"Bentley, what day is it?"

"Wednesday, why?"

I hopped off the fence and limped slightly from the pain, now radiating through my entire abdomen. "No, I mean what date is it."

"May 15. Hey, are you okay?" He dropped the reins and caught me before I hit the dirt.

I didn't know if it was the physical pain or the psychic realization, but I could barely speak.

"Ivy, what's wrong? You're pale as a ghost."

"Bentley, can you drive to the drugstore for me?"

* * *

He returned twenty minutes later clutching a brown paper bag, while I, still too sore to ride, walked Goldenrod around the paddock.

"I can't be pregnant. I can't be."

"Come on," he said, gripping my own a bit tightly. "There's a bathroom next to the tack room you can use." His face was as pale as mine. I guess he was so used to striking out with Gardenia that it never occurred to either of us that he'd hit a home run with me.

"I'll wait here," he said, depositing himself on the velvet loveseat, the same one where he and Gardenia—

The world had turned in to one sick joke all of a sudden. I knew it before I ran that white stick through my urine stream. And when I saw that pink cross appear in the window I was seized with a giddy joy. I opened the door.

"Well?" Bentley's voice was cold.

I handed him the stick.

He took one look, and shouting, "Fuck!" he rammed his fist into the rough timber wall.