Mary Grimm is the author of two books: Left to Themselves and Stealing Time. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, the Colorado Review, and the Mississippi Review, as well as in a number of journals that publish flash fiction. Currently, she is working on a series of creative nonfictions and a YA urban fantasy set in the industrial flats area of a near-future, dystopian Cleveland.
One day that summer they went to Sierraville, Ivy and Uli. They both had the day off from their somewhat temporary jobs in Tahoe City. Uli was an unlicensed massage therapist, which didn’t mean she wasn’t good at it, just that she hadn’t finished the training course. Ivy was a waitress at a restaurant on the lake. You could hear the water whispering and slapping under its outside deck. She got good tips, but she was always run off her feet. “I’m too old for this,” she liked to say, and then Uli would say that Ivy was only twenty-eight, and what did that make Uli, who was thirty-one.
They had decided to go to Sierraville the night before, when Uli had come to Ivy’s restaurant near closing. Ivy had brought her some half-price drinks, and she sat on the deck while Ivy did the closing stuff with the assistant manager, William Barley, a former musician who insisted that he was in love with Ivy but was otherwise not much trouble. He had come to sit with Uli while Ivy rang out the register, bringing her another drink. They sat looking at the lake, which was a deep dark blue, and the mountains, which were smoky purple. Uli had her back to the view.
“What are you going to do on your day off, you two?” he’d asked.
Uli said, “We’re going to Sierraville,” although they had had no such plan.
“There’s nothing there,” he said. “Just a valley with cows in it. Miles and miles of scrub and cows. Why don’t you go to the Nevada side of the lake, hit the casinos. I know people at some of them, from when I was playing out. I could show you two girls around.”
“We’ve got the plan for Sierraville,” Uli told him. “Why do you have that goatee? You know it doesn’t make you look younger.”
He fingered his chin, brushing solicitously over the scrabbly hair. “It’s a statement,” he said.
“I don’t like what it’s stating.”
“Shut up, you,” he said, “or I’ll give Ivy her walking papers.”
“Like you would,” Ivy said, coming up behind him. “I’m your best waitress.”
“You are,” he said. He put his arm around her waist. “You’re my best girl.”
Uli rolled her eyes.
“What are you going to do in Sierraville?”
Ivy didn’t hesitate. “We’ll do what we’ll do.”
“You can go and look at the migrating birds,” he said. “There’s a sanctuary or some such.”
“We’ll be sure to check that out,” Uli said.
They went back to Uli’s place, which she shared with a couple of yoga therapists. When she moved in, the therapists had been friends, and now were lovers. They were working for the week at a camp for overweight teenage girls, so Ivy could sleep in their room.
“Then we can get an early start.” Ivy was leafing through a lavishly illustrated book called Yoga Love/Love Yoga.
“So, you really want to go to Sierraville?”
“Why not?” Ivy said.
They stayed up another hour, drinking mint tea with rum in it, and then went to bed, Uli in her neat bare room, and Ivy in the lushly cushioned and draped yoga couple’s room. She wrapped herself in a sari that was hanging on the back of the door and waved to Uli from the bed, where she sprawled, a barbaric princess, her hair splayed around her head like the rays of a blonde sun.
. . .
In the morning while they were drinking coffee, there was a knock at the door. When Ivy opened it, William Barley was standing there, holding a bakery bag.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. She was still wearing the sari, the top of it tucked haphazardly into her bra straps.
“I thought I’d drive you girls to Sierraville.”
“We don’t need a chauffeur.” Uli poured him a cup of coffee.
“You don’t need me, but you want me.” William opened the bag with a flourish. “Bagels,” he said.
“We don’t want you either.” Uli chose a blueberry bagel and took a bite.
“You don’t want me, but Ivy might.”
Uli raised her eyebrows at Ivy, who shrugged. “His car is nicer than yours.”
. . .
It was forty-five minutes to Sierraville, mostly through pine trees growing up and downhill, close to the road. Ivy fell asleep within five minutes, and Uli watched William’s reflection in the rearview mirror. He needed a haircut—his brown hair was growing down the back of his neck in an unruly way. He had put the radio on with the volume turned low so as not to wake Ivy, who lay boneless in the front seat, slumped with her head against the window.
“How long have you known Ivy?” he asked.
“Since forever,” Uli said, although actually they’d met only last year, when Ivy had come to one of her roommates’ yoga therapy sessions. Uli had gone because she was in one of those times that happen when your past catches up with you, when you can’t help remembering the things you climbed out of your childhood to escape. She and Ivy had gotten the giggles when Uli’s female roommate had asked the group to pair off and sit with their bare feet pressed against their partner’s, and they had been asked to leave until they could participate in a respectful manner. In the outer room, they sat together on the rug that showed the phases of the moon until they could stop laughing and then had gone back. Ivy’s feet had been very smooth, Uli remembered. Her smaller toes curled under so that her feet looked like little paws.
“You know I like her,” William said.
Uli made a face at him in the mirror, although he wasn’t looking at her.
“You could tell me what she favors. In a man, you know.”
“Why should I?”
“I just want to make her happy. Don’t you want her to be happy?”
Uli had taken off her seatbelt so she could stretch her legs out sideways. She had brought her knitting with her, and she clicked the needles, pulling them through the wool, which was alpaca, dyed light green. A sweater for Ivy.
“Why should I care?”
“You don’t want her to be happy?”
“Stop talking,” Uli said, “or I’ll have to hate you even more than I already do.”
“You don’t hate me,” he said. “No one hates me.”
“They just don’t tell you,” Uli said. “They’re afraid it will make you crumble.”
He started to say something else, but she held up her hand. “No,” she said. “Just no.”
...
Gradually the pine trees thinned out and the road started to flatten. Ivy woke up. William Barley was whistling along with the radio, and Uli had added four inches to the sleeve she was working on.
“Are we here?” Ivy was stretching her legs out and flexing her ankles. The car swerved a bit and straightened out.
There were a few buildings, one that looked as if it might have been a hotel at one time, and another that housed a restaurant and a store that sold western gear. “It doesn’t look like much,” Uli said.
“We could try the restaurant,” William said.
“No,” Ivy said. “Let’s explore.”
“I think there’s supposed to be a spa. One of the guys in the band told me about it. They have some hot springs, supposedly.”
“I thought you’d been here before.” Uli put her knitting away in her bag.
“Not to the spa.”
“Too girlie for you?”
“Just didn’t get around to it is all.”
They were stopped in the middle of the road, but it didn’t matter, Uli supposed, since there was no traffic at all, not behind them, nor on the crossroad, the two arms of which curved toward the mountains on either side of the valley.
“Or there are the birds,” Uli said. “You promised there would be birds.” She wasn’t sure if she cared about seeing a lot of birds though, really.
“What do you want to do, Ivy?” William turned toward her with an earnest expression on his face.
Ivy stretched her arms over her head and twisted to one side and then another. “Let’s go to the spa. We could get a massage.”
“Sounds too much like work.” Uli didn’t like getting massages from other people. She couldn’t relax into it because she was always finding things to criticize in their technique. Not enough pressure or too much. Getting sloppy with the oil. Bad choice of music. She only let Kirk do her because he didn’t mind taking direction. Kirk, the only one allowed to see her naked, for the last little while anyway.
“I wasn’t thinking, sorry.”
“It’s okay, we can go.”
William wasn’t sure where the spa was and had to ask directions from a man standing outside the western gear store. “We should go there on our way home,” he said when he got back into the car. “They have some great shirts in there, and I think I saw some suede jackets with fringe.”
“You’re not in the country band anymore,” Uli said.
“It wasn’t country, it was country-jazz fusion.”
“Which means it was a mess.”
“Hey, we played some good gigs.”
“Where at?” Ivy was staring dreamily out of the window, where one field succeeded another, each of them with groups of cows contemplating the sparse grass.
“We played around in Tahoe City and Reno.” William missed the turn they’d been told about and had to back up. “We played in Vegas for a while.”
“On the strip?” Uli asked.
“One of the hotels that had a show. You probably wouldn’t know it.”
“So, not on the strip.”
“Cows are so calm,” Ivy said. “I always wonder what they’re thinking.”
“They don’t think.”
“They have brains, William, so obviously they think. Look at that one, he’s right up by the fence. Stop the car for a minute.”
“Seriously?” William said, but he stopped and Ivy got out. He looked at Uli, who shrugged.
“She loves animals. There, you know something about her now.”
“Shouldn’t we get her back in the car? That cow is like a monster.”
“Go on, be a man and rescue her.”
William got out, and Uli watched him tentatively approach Ivy and the cow. Ivy was petting the cow, who looked a little skittish.
Uli herself was not fond of cows or animals in general. It bothered her that they had feelings and thoughts of some sort, presumably, but that they couldn’t express themselves. If cats or dogs, or this cow, could talk, she’d be more comfortable with them. The only animal she’d liked had been her sister’s cat, in the way-back time of their childhood. She could remember crouching with her sister and the cat in their hideout under some bushes by the front porch. They’d felt invisible there, although looking back, it was obvious to Uli that anyone passing by on the sidewalk could have seen them.
When Ivy had finished petting the cow, they got going again on the bumpy road to the spa.
...
Half an hour later, they were walking up a path through some scrubby pines. Signs hand-painted on bits of wood reassured them at every bend that the hot springs pools were close. According to the woman in the main building, there were nine of them. The biggest was clothing optional, but there was a smaller one for nude bathers only. “The unclothed,” she called them. She had given them a brochure showing the locations of the pools, which William had taken charge of. The woman hadn’t looked like someone who worked at a rather seedy and bohemian spa, except maybe for her unruly and magnificent gray Afro. She’d tried to talk them into a tarot reading or some light box therapy, but they had resisted her.
The clothing optional pool was larger than Uli had expected, the size of a small community swimming pool. It was edged by rocks except at one end, where there was a sort of dirt beach. A ramshackle shed next to it had a sign on it: Change, in blue letters, decorated by scrolls and flowers.
“Okay, let’s get on with it,” she said. They hadn’t brought suits, so they were planning to go in in their underwear, which the woman at the desk said was perfectly okay. Uli went to the woman’s side and put her yoga pants and t-shirt into one of the cubes built into the wall, then went outside to wait for Ivy.
William was standing there, looking nervous.
“I knew you’d be a boxer-brief type,” she said to him.
He eyed her, and she let him. She’d gotten over worrying about how she looked long ago. Her body was serviceable and strong. It didn’t matter so much if some people thought her breasts were too small, or that her feet were big.
She turned away while he was still watching her to look at the pool. There was a bit of steam rising from it, and it was a somewhat unnatural color, a sort of milky blue. There were three people clustered close to the beach, two older women in bikinis and a bald man with a hairy chest, and at the other end, two youngish men. Any of the men could be clothing optional, it was hard to tell.
She knew that Ivy had come out because the heads of all the men in the pool swiveled toward her. Uli turned to see Ivy, bare of any scrap of clothing, standing in flip-flops on the little beach.
“Ivy, you’re…” William said. “I thought we were wearing…I mean…you…”
“It just seemed silly,” Ivy said. “And this way my underwear won’t be wet.”
Uli felt a little sorry for William. She had seen Ivy naked before, and had gotten used to the glorious unsettling sight of her, how everything in her surroundings seemed to curve toward her so that she was the center, the sun that everything circled.
Ivy walked to the edge of the water and stuck one foot in. “It’s warm,” she said. “Come on, you two.”
William watched as Ivy moved into the water, stretching her arms out to skim the surface with her palms. She heard him grunt a little when Ivy had gotten far enough in that her behind was underwater, a sound of loss and despair.
“Come on, cowboy,” she said. She followed Ivy, who was making toward the other side, where the spa woman had told them there was a sort of ledge to sit on. The water was warm, verging on hot but not quite. It felt heavy, and silky. Even in the shallows, Uli couldn’t see her feet.
“This is heaven,” Ivy said. “I wish we lived here so we could go every day.”
“There’s probably no jobs,” Uli said. “Unless you want to work on one of the ranches.”
“I could take care of cows. I think I’d like that.”
“You’d have to do a lot of shit shoveling.”
“Don’t we do that now?”
Uli laughed. William had gotten into the pool, but he hadn’t made it all the way across. He was standing in the middle where the water was deepest, a little over his waist, which was probably a good thing, Uli thought.
“Come on,” Ivy called. “Come and commune with us.” To Uli, she said, “He’s acting sort of weird, don’t you think?”
“No more than usual.”
It didn’t take more than a few minutes before Uli was bored. She rested her head on the rocky edge and watched the sky, which was pale blue and so featureless that it seemed intimidating, a lid fitted down over the mountains. She wasn’t at home in nature. She liked the comfort of walls and furniture, something solid to anchor her in the world. She sank down so that only her head was above water and closed her eyes.
Meanwhile, William was telling Ivy about the last band he was in. “I played bass guitar. I prefer lead, but the dude who put the group together wanted that. His wife was our manager and she kept getting us in these lame places in Reno where nobody could hear the band over the noise of the slots. We got free drinks though, most of the time.”
“Who taught you to play guitar?” Ivy asked.
“I taught myself mostly.” The water swirled as if William had moved. “I get together with some guys at the Stars Bar in Homewood, just jamming you know, but it’s a good time. You could come listen sometimes. You and Uli.”
“I’m not very musical,” Ivy said. “The notes all sound the same to me. A lot of times when I hear something on the radio it just seems like people yelling.”
“You’re probably tone deaf,” William said. “It’s possible to train your ears though, so you can distinguish things. Enjoy music more.”
“It doesn’t bother me. It’s not like I’m missing anything.”
For a few minutes, there was silence, then the water swirled again and lapped in little waves, pushing up against Uli’s mouth. It tasted of iron and salt. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Ivy had stood up. “I want to go to the Contemplation pool,” she said.
“That sounds good,” William said.
“I’d really rather go by myself. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course we don’t,” Uli said. “Take some alone time, sweetie.”
“Do you have the brochure with the map, William?”
“I left it in the changing place.”
“That’s all right. There are all those little signs. Or I can ask someone.”
Uli and William watched her cross the pool, the water rising around her and then receding until she got to the shore. She stopped to adjust her flipflops, and then disappeared behind a group of spiny shrubs.
“I think she’s going the wrong way,” William said. “Should I go and tell her?”
“She’ll be fine.”
The two young men at the other end waded out and disappeared, and a few minutes later the trio of oldsters. William stared after them glumly.
“You look pretty tense,” Uli said. “Relax a little.”
William shifted irritably. “I’m relaxed.”
“Your deltoids look tight.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just some massage talk. You’re not alone. Most people hold their stress in their neck and shoulders.”
“Whatever.”
“Let me show you.” Uli pushed William so he was facing away from her and began to work on the tendon that led from his skull to his shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m bored.” Uli dug her fingers into the hollow between the tendons and the clavicle.
“Jesus,” William said. “That hurt.”
“A little pain is good for you.” She pulled his shoulder back and applied an opposite pressure to the area just below his neck. His skin was firm and pale, with a few freckles. She tugged on the too-long hair on the back of his head. Life’s all about one pain after another, so learn to enjoy it, she remembered her mother saying. “Do you feel it working?”
“Jesus,” he said again, groaning a little. “That’s good, that’s better.”
Uli dug her thumbs in. The sun was hot and bright and there was a smell coming off the bushes around them that reminded her of ironing, her mother ironing her father’s shirts, the hiss of steam, the smell of the wet heated cloth, the bite of the iron if it touched you, how your skin reddened and blistered.
“You’re good at this,” William said, sighing. “Do you do massages for Ivy?”
“Sometimes. If she’s hurting from being on her feet all day.”
“She’s a good waitress. You wouldn’t believe the tips she gets.”
“I believe it.” Uli smoothed her hands down over his arms, squeezing and kneading his biceps.
“Do you know where she’s from?”
“Yes,” Uli said, “but I’m not going to tell you.”
“Hey, I’m just curious.”
“Everyone’s got a right to their secrets.” She was from Arkansas and Ivy was from Texas, but they were from the same place when you came down to it, the place that was supposed to be home, the place you had to leave, the place where they hurt you.
“I guess. How long do you think she’s been gone now? Maybe we should check on her.”
“She’s all right,” Uli said. “Ivy’s always all right.” She bent forward and slid her arms down his chest, her hands going underwater. “She’s probably made some new friends by now.”
William twitched when she said that, and she smoothed lightly over his chest, feeling the wet hair. “Stop thinking so much,” she said. She slid her hands lower, reaching around him, feeling the jut of his hip bones on the inside of her arms, reaching with her spread fingers.
“What are you doing?” he said, gasping.
She didn’t answer because he knew what she was doing, and she could tell that he liked it, so she kept doing it as he leaned against her, his head arched back on her shoulder. His body rose out of the water a little, and his mouth was open, his Adam’s apple jerking in his throat. All the while she worked on him, she kept an eye out, but no one came, and there were only the birds flying over across the hard blue sky.
. . .
When they went to look for Ivy, they found her, not in the Contemplation pool, but in one of the several cooling-off pools, three of them, hardly bigger than pool tables, in the shade of some cottonwood trees. She was submerged to her chin, talking to a man and a woman who were still wearing most of their clothes. He had a long stringy beard, and she was wearing a green eye shade and dangly earrings. They lived in the valley, Ivy said, and they had told her all sorts of interesting things about the people who lived there, out on the ranches.
“I could see myself living here,” Ivy said. “Ed and Clarice told me I’d fit right in.”
Clarice nodded. “If you decide to settle here, Ed and I will introduce you around. There are some good parties here in the winter, when people don’t have much to do. And Ed and I can set you up if you want to live it up a little.” She pretended to be smoking something.
“I don’t do that,” Ivy said. “I don’t like to lose track of what’s in my head, you know? But I’m fine if others do it. Right, Uli?”
Uli nodded. She was starting to get that itchy feeling that surfaced when something had gone on for too long, or too far. She had put on her clothes before they looked for Ivy and the damp was seeping from her underwear. William was still in his boxer briefs. He had got into the pool with Ivy and the other two, which made it look overcrowded.
“We probably ought to get going,” he said. He had a hangdog look to him, and Uli almost wanted to feel sorry for him. But feeling sorry never did anyone good.
“Oh, but the birds,” Ivy said. She rose out of the water a little, showing her shoulders. “Clarice has been telling me how amazing it is to go and see them.”
“I ought to get back,” William said. “I should be there for the dinner rush.”
“That’s not for hours,” Ivy said. “We’ve got time. And Clarice has told me just how to get there. There’s a dirt road that we have to find, and then you go over a metal bridge, and then you’re there. It’s a wetland, and the birds will be everywhere.”
“Didn’t you say you had to be back early, Uli?” William said.
Uli didn’t care about birds to speak of. It made her nervous that they had wings instead of arms. It would be great to fly, she could see that, but every time she saw a bird, she thought of how they couldn’t touch something or get hold of it, couldn’t pick anything up, couldn’t keep it safe. They were pretty, fluttering, useless things, is how it seemed to her.
“We can go,” Uli said. “I’m sure there’s time. So stop standing around in your underwear and let’s get a move on.”
. . .
When they met back at the car, Ed and Clarice were there. Ivy had promised them a ride home. They were staying in a cabin in the lee of one of the mountains that rimmed the valley. “It’s just a shack, really,” Clarice said. “We call it the cabin because it sounds more western, right, Ed? We’re squatting, but the rancher knows we’re there, so it’s all good.” She laughed and raised her arms. “It’s just a way station anyway. A stop on the long road.”
“Where are you going next?” Ivy asked.
“Portland, or maybe Vancouver?” Clarice pondered, one finger tapping her chin. “Or Mexico?”
Uli sighed. The back was uncomfortably crowded. Although she was skinny, Clarice seemed to take up a lot of room, nudging Uli with her hip or her knee when the car went around a curve. There didn’t seem to be any place to safely put her feet.
“You’ve got the look,” she said to Uli.
“What look is that?”
“Doesn’t she, Ed?”
Ed grunted.
“Someone who’s on the long road.” Clarice nodded, affirming herself.
“I live in Tahoe City.”
“A way station.” Clarice nodded some more. “Making your path through the storms of life. It leaves a mark on you, doesn’t it, Ed? Don’t let it get you down.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Uli’s a tough bitch,” William said from the front seat. “No marks on her.”
Uli jammed her knee into the back of his seat.
“The storms of life,” Clarice sang. “They mark you, they bring you down.” She poked Ed. “Write that down, honey, will you?” She sang it over again in a slightly more minor key.
“Are you a songwriter?” Ivy asked.
“When the mood strikes me,” Clarice said modestly.
When they got to their cabin, William stopped the car, and Clarice and Ed extricated themselves with all their bags and packages. The cabin, made of wood weathered to gray, stood in the middle of a dirt field, fenced off with barbed wire. A tarp gave some shade on the side, and there was a child’s swimming pool just visible around the back.
“Here we are,” Clarice said. “You have a good life, honey,” she said to Ivy. She leaned in and embraced her. “And to you, sir, the blessing of the goddess for your gift of transport.” She looked at Uli, who had drawn back from the window to avoid being hugged. “We’re fellow travelers,” Clarice said. “We’ll meet again, somewhere down the road, so I won’t say goodbye.”
“No, we won’t.” Uli rolled the window up with a snap.
. . .
Ivy held the hand-drawn map that Clarice had given them so that William could see it. “There’s a turnoff up ahead, by a pole barn. In four or five miles.”
“Are you sure you want to do this? It’s been a long day.”
“I’m sure,” Ivy said. “You want to, too, don’t you, Uli?”
Uli nodded. She had picked up her knitting, but she wasn’t working on it. She smoothed her fingers over the sleeve, feeling for a roughness or a dropped stitch.
Wiliam put the car in gear, but didn’t move forward.
“Are you tired?” Ivy asked him.
“He is tired,” Uli said. “That happens when you get old, I hear.”
“I’m not too tired.” The car jerked forward, back onto the road.
“When we get there and you see all the birds, you’ll be glad we came.”
Uli thought of making a joke about being glad he came, or maybe about a happy ending, but she didn’t. She laid her head back against the seat and watched the scenery, which wasn’t scenic, exactly. It was all red-brown dirt and brown-gray rock, with the sky hanging over it. The shrubby plants were gray-green and dusty. The cows moved slowly across the fields, little plumes of dust coming up from their hooves. She imagined standing on one of the mountains around them, an explorer, seeing it for the first time, the flatness of the valley, its desolation. The birds came every year, Ivy was saying, passing through on their way to somewhere else, which Uli could understand, because why would they stay. She marked each house they passed and imagined a woman living inside, trapped, mute, despairing. The birds came for the wetlands, Ivy said, and William said something Uli didn’t hear. It was hard to imagine the wetlands, for everything they passed was dry, flat, and dusty, but because Ivy was speaking of them, she tried. She always liked to hear Ivy talk, no matter about what.
. . .
When they came to the turnoff, William didn’t want to take it because it looked like a driveway that belonged to the nearest ranch house, a dirt track where some gravel had been laid down a long time ago and was now ground into the earth. But Ivy persuaded him, saying that Clarice had described it all so exactly that it must be the place—the dirt road, the barn, one of those metal windmills. The car bumped over the uneven ground, William going slowly because he said he was worried about the undercarriage, but Ivy wasn’t listening to him, Uli could tell. She was leaning forward to see through the windshield, looking for the birds.
It was so silent, Uli thought, except for the sound of the engine and William’s complaining, little scratchy sounds in the vast silence they had driven into. There were fields on either side, but they had become more green, which meant there must be water, and there were cows grouped under the sparse trees, far enough away so that they looked like the plastic animals you might get in a cheap toy farmyard. The car bumped along, and Uli thought of how soon they’d be on their way back to Tahoe City, where they’d be rid of William. They could get a pizza, and if Ivy wanted to go out to a bar, they could do that. Ivy liked to dance, and Uli didn’t mind that once in a while. Ivy might want some male company, and that was all right, too, she guessed.
They were leaving a trail of dust behind them, Uli noticed, so that anyone could tell they were out here, if anyone cared. The sun beat down but it seemed cooler. Up ahead there was a bridge, which seemed ridiculous, a bridge over what, in this dry flat country. But when they came up to it, there was water underneath, a thread of it, and Uli realized that there was water in the ditches alongside the road.
“This is it,” Ivy said, “Stop the car.”
“I thought there’d be a sign,” William said. “Aren’t we on private property?”
“I didn’t take you for a law-and-order type,” Uli said.
Ivy got out of the car and ran across the bridge, and Uli followed her while William pulled the car onto the narrow verge.
“There’s nothing here,” she said to Ivy. It was flat, so flat, with the mountains rising up all around them so that Uli felt as if she were at the bottom of the world. The pale brown dust was already coating her shoes. The cows, which could be seen both near and far away in their little groups, were caged, penned in by the wire fences. The muddy ditches were filled with water and plants greedy for the wet.
Ivy wasn’t paying attention to her though. She took one slow step along the road and then another, her head cocked, listening. When Uli started to speak again, she held her hand up to stop her. William had crossed the bridge to join them, and he was gazing at Ivy as if she were a goddess or an angel, which annoyed Uli more than she could say. Not that Ivy wasn’t something to look at. She always was, even now, with her hair a tangled mess because it had gotten wet at the spa and was only half-dry.
“Listen,” Ivy said.
Under the sound of the wind (did it blow all the time like this, Uli wondered) there was a muted harmony, not of birdsong but something more like chatter, the cheeps and chirps and fluttering of wings. Ivy went soft-footed toward the ditch, and Uli followed her. “Look,” she said, and Uli saw that there were very small birds, yellow-breasted and gray-winged, sitting in the dusty bushes along the edge of the road. They perched and flew up and perched again. “Oh, look,” Ivy said, pointing. In the scant water of the ditch some impossibly colored birds were swimming, blue at their throat, flame orange on their wings.
Were they ducks? Could ducks be that color?
Ivy stepped to the very edge of the ditch, and when she did a flock of birds flew up as if they’d been thrown, their flight making a pattern in the air. Ivy was smiling and her smile was like the sun, it seemed to Uli.
“Oh, thank you, William, for bringing us here. It’s so beautiful,” Ivy said, and for a minute, Uli could see that it was, that the sky was high and sweet, that the land they stood on was a secret protected by the mountains, that the air was full of song and flight. Uli stood watching Ivy wander down the road, stopping every now and again to examine a flower or to listen for birdsong. The beauty of it burst over Uli, filling the valley so that it lapped at the foothills of the mountains and rose up and up to the tops of them. There had been so many times that she had wished to feel what Ivy felt, to know what she knew, but it was so much, too much. She felt as if she were drowning.
William had come to stand by her, the both of them looking at Ivy.
“I read that once this was underwater,” he said. “An inland sea. Millions of years ago. It’s funny to think that, isn’t it?”
She turned to him, studying him. He was drowning, too. He wasn’t so bad, really, she thought. Just a man, but he tried, at least. No worse than many.
“You won’t tell her, will you? About before.” He was looking at the sky now, his hands stuck in his jeans pockets.
“Oh, won’t I?”
‘You can’t tell her.”
Uli hugged her elbows, humming a little.
“You won’t, right?”
Ivy was coming back toward them, drawing the beauty of the valley around her like a gown, trailing it behind her.
“She’ll never sleep with you now,” Uli said to him. “That’s something else to know about her.”
The little birds at the edge of the road soared up as Ivy came toward them, swirling into the air, shedding light and sound and the glittery dust. The wind blew across the flat land and picked up the ends of Ivy’s hair, swirling it around her head like a storm of gold.
