Ivy Takes Care

I
vy willed her legs to be like pistons.
She pedaled her way up Canyon Road, sweating and pushing her muscles to overcome the steep upward grade. In her fifth-grade science book, gleaming steel pistons were pictured under the heading “How an Engine Works,” but the pistons in the textbook engine felt no pain. Ivy’s legs and lungs burned with the effort of the uphill ride. Later, she thought,
If I’d been going along at twenty miles an hour, I never would have seen the turtle, and who knows how things would have worked out?

It lay on its back, still alive but having been hit by a car, covered with blood and road dirt. It was a big desert tortoise. Ivy righted it gently and examined the wound. “Nasty!” said Ivy. “But fixable. I’m going to have to take you up to Annie’s house and hose you off,” said Ivy. “Give you some water and let you rest. And maybe you’d like a raw egg to eat.”

Annie wouldn’t mind her bringing the turtle. Annie understood Ivy better than anyone in the world, and had since they had both been five. And Annie’s mother wouldn’t mind the filthy turtle nearly so much as Ivy’s own mother would.

Cheerfully, then, Ivy wedged the bleeding turtle into her bicycle basket and pumped the heavily laden bike up the next ten switchbacks to Canyon Ridge. Straddling Canyon Ridge, the mansions of the old silver-mining families looked out over western Nevada, valley on one side, the Washoe mountains on the other.

That Saturday afternoon’s visit to Annie was to be a good-bye visit. Annie was headed, the next day, two thousand miles away to summer camp in New Hampshire. For the last two summers, Annie went east in June, a few days after school was over, and stayed until just before Labor Day, when school began again. Annie’s mother and grandmother had all gone to Camp Allegro on Silver Lake when they were girls.

Allegro had its own mystique. Even though Annie had taught Ivy to sing every one of the Camp Allegro songs, the white-and-green – outfitted girls remained a puzzlement to Ivy. Annie did not explain the mystery because none of it was part of Ivy’s world or ever would be.

Ivy pulled into Annie’s driveway, crunching the gravel as she did. Annie’s mother stood with a hose, watering the delicate Russian sage and the small balloons of scarlet mallow that filled her garden. She raised a hand in greeting and smiled. “What have you got there, Ivy?” she called across the garden.

“A turtle, Mrs. Evans,” Ivy answered, lifting the injured creature, whose head and legs had retreated inside its shell, “He’s hurt. Can I use the hose to clean him off, please?”

“Of course,” said Annie’s mother. “Bring him over. Put him down right here. Poor thing. Hit by a car?”

“Yep, I think so, probably,” said Ivy. She ran the cold water over the dirty shell and gently into the wound, clearing it of gravel and sand. “What I could use,” said Ivy, now kneeling in the soft grass by the side of her patient, “is some duct tape.”

“Duct tape?” asked Annie’s mother.

“Duct tape will hold anything together pretty permanently and protect the wound. I figure if he lives and the shell grows back, the duct tape’ll just be shed off. I hope maybe if I put him in the woodshed and give him an egg, he might eat it.”

“Egg?” asked Annie’s mother.

“Raw egg. It’s in
The Home Vet,
” explained Annie. Ivy had studied up about what lots of creatures ate in the one book her father owned,
The Home Veterinarian.
Not that Ivy’s dad was an actual vet. He was stableman at the Red Star Ranch and he just looked up horse ailments.

“Good idea!” said Annie’s mother. Ivy adored Annie’s mother. She didn’t like to think she loved her more than her own mom, but Ivy’s mother worked so hard and got so bone tired every night after all the dishes were put away and the ranch kitchen cleaned for breakfast, she had no time to be easy-breezy like Annie’s mother. Annie’s mother got to water her flower garden and do good deeds all day if she wanted.

“Leave the turtle inside the petunia bed, honey. He can’t get out. Come in the kitchen way,” said Annie’s mother. “We’ll get an egg and maybe some celery for that poor creature. Let me get you a new shirt. That one’s covered in turtle blood. Annie has a friend from camp here for the night.”

“Friend?” asked Ivy. Ivy had never met anyone else in the world who went to Camp Allegro. Ivy didn’t want that friend, whoever she was, to be there and interrupt her and Annie’s last afternoon together before the Annie-empty eleven-week summer set in. The friend made Camp Allegro more real than Ivy wanted it to be. They entered the kitchen. Annie’s mother rested a bunch of her garden flowers on the counter.

“A California girl,” said Annie’s mother, removing an egg from the fridge and rustling in a drawer for the tape. “Annie!” she called out toward the porch. “Did you take that roll of silver tape we had in here?”

A muffled
“What?”
came from the porch five rooms away.

“I said, did you take that big roll of silvery tape out of the kitchen drawer for some reason?” her mother repeated loudly.

This question was not answered. Annie in person came into the kitchen with two empty glasses in her hand. “What, Mom?” she said.

“Not
What, Mom.
Say,
I can’t hear you, Mom,
” corrected her mother. “Where’s that silver tape in the big fat roll, honey?”

Annie was followed by another girl, with tawny eyes and stylishly bobbed hair, sleek as a mink.

“Hey! Ive!” said Annie, “Meet my tent mate for the summer. She stopped off in Reno and spent the night! We’re flying out in the morning together.”

Ivy forgot the tent mate’s name the moment it was said. Was it Emily? Or Milly? Or Molly? She was concentrating on the amber-colored eyes and the slight smile that tent-mate-to-be had offered and then suddenly withdrawn as she recoiled in horror at Ivy. “What happened to your . . . your shirt?” she said. “Did you have an accident or something?”

Ivy looked down. Smears of turtle blood and gravel had wrecked the front of her blouse. Not that it was a very good blouse to begin with.

“It’s . . . I’m fine,” Ivy struggled to explain. “It’s just — I found an injured desert tortoise by the side of the road and I was trying to save him, and I guess . . . I guess he bled all over me!”

Annie and the tent mate had put on the short-sleeved polo shirts that the camp required its girls to wear. The shirts were blinding white with the green Allegro crest on the breast pocket, and the shorts were green with a white
A
monogrammed on the hem.

Annie took Ivy by the hand and led her to the porch, although Ivy knew the way perfectly. In the hall Ivy nearly tripped over the two identical green duffel bags. They were labeled
CAMP ALLEGRO, CRAWFORD NOTCH, NEW HAMPSHIRE
, and strapped up with canvas web belts, ready for their trip east.

Ivy fixed her eyes again on the words under the Allegro crest on the two identical white shirts, still with their folds from the camp store’s supply packs:
FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY CAMP ALLEGRO 1909 – 1949
. The tent mate’s eyes raced down Ivy’s clothing twice. The eyes were now a little amused. Ivy felt like a snail.

Annie’s mother served lemonade to the three girls out on the porch. Down in the valley, Ivy’s family’s whole house — a trailer — could have fit into Annie’s screened-in porch twice over. Annie’s house looked out over the Washoe mountains, and on a clear day you might see Lake Tahoe from the attic.