Ivy and Chuck

The coffee hissed inside the styrofoam cup, as Ivy stirred the artificial sweetener, she wished it was a faster acting poison. A bent snowflake swayed behind her husband's shoulder, and beyond that the diner’s nativity scene perched precariously on a rotten shelf, threatening to toss the Baby Jesus into the grimy abyss. Perhaps canceling this Christianity movement before it began would have been better for common folks like her. She startled herself, where do thoughts like this come from?

Dementia, early stage dementia the social worker had hinted at. Ivy can remember the sixties when this woman would have been born, when she lived through the terror of Chuck being shipped off to ‘Nam. She can remember every decade since, the good years of living in public housing by the river, and the steady decline in their fortunes since they were forced to move into the trailer. She is also well aware of every line item in their monthly budget, especially the new expenses the park management has added, $69 for trash collection, $35 for Mouna the dog, $875 in total that exceeds their capacity. She knows common financial sense used to be that rent can only be a third of income and that many like her in 2023 pay more than half.

What did this woman with the clipboard actually study? Certainly not economics or history, what psychiatric label can be applied to her, does she have a cognitive disorder or compassion fatigue? “But I don’t mind living in the truck honey, it won’t bother me.” Ivy’s gaze moves from the sheriff to the social worker, not Chuck while she says this, she knows neither of them have the courage to actually look at her. 

“Well that was quick, I guess he had to be somewhere for dinner.” Chuck leans back into the booth and closes his eyes. Ivy drums her fingers on the formica table in an effort to keep watch over their belongings piled up in garbage bags beside them. The arthritis in her joints makes even this difficult. 

“Or the next eviction.” Their waitress is quietly placing the menus in front of them. While her movements are soft and considerate, Sonya herself is an explosion of color and vitality, the beads on her crimson braids chatter amongst themselves, a counsel of Devas. “Neither of them had the decency to buy you folks dinner, well we appreciate you around here, so we’d like to treat you.” Ivy knows the management is as tight as a tick on a hound and that Sonya is offering her tip money for the night.

“Open your eyes you old fool,” Ivy kicks Chuck under the table, “Sonya here is taking our order. I’ll have a reuben with extra sauerkraut, fries and a salad.”

“Tuna is good for your brain, the Melt is still very popular,” Chuck nods, while she scribbles on the pad. “Dessert? Something to go as well? The lentil soup is made with vegetable broth, it don’t need to be in the fridge, but if you guys have a cooler in there I can fix you up with some ice and we can fill her up.”

The weather report on the television is tracking a blizzard still a couple of days to the north in Canada. “Are you folks planning to hit the road?”

“You think we’re capable of driving on the freeway honey?”

“I don’t think you’ve got much choice, the shelters are dangerous and you’ll freeze in the truck if you stay. You gotta go south. The old roads will be prettier and less stressful”. She winks at Ivy and places a warm hand on her shoulder. “In my break I can help you map out a route to Dallas, you can do it in short bursts and make it easily in a day.” Ivy’s fingers resume drumming as she takes in Sonya’s kindness and the wisdom of what she is suggesting. “Although if you’re pregnant, we’ll have to rethink this, I don’t think a woman of your age should be having a baby.”

Snuggled together with a patchwork quilt that Ivy had made in her women’s circle, the cab of the Rodeo becomes Ivy and Chuck’s bedroom. “You wanna try again for a little one, Ivy my love?” Both elders retreat into what that means for themselves individually. Ivy sees the Eiffel Tower in the moon and the clouds, the rooftops of Paris, the cast of Moulin Rouge, Ewan MCgregor holding out his hand, Toulouse-LauTrec being crude and annoying, her face superimposed on Nicole Kidman’s body. 

Chuck communes with leaves of the poplar tree they are parked beneath. He sees himself as a younger man building a swing to hang from a similar branch in the park close to where they lived. He wishes they had had the strength to drive there tonight, how sweet it would be to say farewell to that old friend, a nod to someone who has known him these past fifty years.  

They exchange a weary smile, “you’re finally going to get a little of what you wanted, we’re going to travel,” he summons all of his courage, “we’re gypsies now my love. I am so sorry that I was so resistant, so scared.”

“And I’m sorry not sorry that my body wouldn’t grant us a child. I know that’s what you really wanted. It looks like a good idea from where we are now, perhaps Junior would be able to house his,”

“Or hers”

“Yes, or hers, old mom and dad.”

“It doesn’t matter, does it, we made each other happy, despite,” Chuck scans the darkened bark for the right word and decides upon one with great satisfaction, “despite the plot twists.”

Daybreak and they wake with the sparrows. There’s frost on the ground so Ivy fishes around for her rubber boots. “Getting a cold now could be the death of us.” She puts on a fresh pair of woolen socks that are soft and comforting and places the dirty ones in a plastic bag. “We can put our laundry with the bags in the flatbed, I’ll be damned if I wanna smell yesterday's feet all the way to Texas.”

“Mmm that’s right, we’re heading to Dallas,” Chuck is preening himself in the rear view mirror.” He picks at his teeth and smiles at himself, combs what is enviable hair at any age, “I’m still a good looking guy.”

“Oh you Leo’s are so ridiculous.” Her knuckles are stiff and it’s painful to pull on her boots. “It’s a myth you know Chucky that people can and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It’s a rotten lie. It’s not our fault that we’re unhoused, I hope you know that, what a world that turns seniors out onto the street.”

She slides onto the earth and stretches her crooked hands to the sky and stretches side to side. “That’s right Ivy Love, what a world.” They move in silence for a few minutes, moving whatever joints that are still willing and blowing fog rings with the effort. “Hey,” Chuck carefully counters, “did you keep that reporter’s card?” 

The road sign reads Washington DC. Chuck is behind the wheel driving at an almost reckless thirty-five miles an hour, “last chance for the South”. 

“I’m sure we’ll be dead long before we reach anywhere at this rate.” Now that they are staying north they are more in danger of dying from exposure in the truck, and not only from the approaching blizzard. DC is twenty four hours away from Kansas for a regular driver, and at their age and pace they will need at least a week. “Drive on, old fool.” She is enjoying Chuck taking the lead and also anxious about the inevitable burst of his energy bubble. Her fingers are already frozen making her being able to share the load, impossible.

“Has that reporter left a message?”

Ivy sighs, “No and it’s only fifteen minutes since you last asked me and you’re sitting right beside me.”

“Watch your mouth woman,” Chuck jokes, “she’s messing me up. Leave another message and tell her we are heading to the campgrounds at Wichita. She can meet us there later, or send another news crew.”

Ivy begins to shake with laughter, she laughs so hard she creates three new wrinkles on her cheeks, she tries several times to speak but every time collapses into convulsions. At last she manages, “You’re ordering news crews now.”

“This is our ride or die baby,” and with that the dashboard begins to beep and a red light begins flashing.

“I’ll call her back shall I and tell her to meet us on the US54 E, and look for us in the ditches?” Ivy’s cell phone also starts beeping.

“Answer it, answer it,” screams Chuck as they sputter into a truck stop and strains to hear the conversation, only getting “nods and ahas and mmmmmmms” from Ivy. The call is brief and Ivy soberly places her mobile back in her vinyl pocketbook. Looking straight ahead she reports in a soft monotone.

“I’m sorry darling but it seems our ratings were low.” 

“Ratings?” he echoes. “This isn’t dancing with the stars.”

“She explained it to me like this, ‘nobody cares’. People turned off at the eviction story and her bosses think it is highly unlikely that anyone will believe we can see the president, and even if we did, noone believes he will do anything, and that is ultimately bad and boring television.” She finally is able to turn to look him in the eye.

“No news crews Chucky.”

He arranges camping chairs next to the van, pours water and doggies pellets for Mouna, and coffee from a flask for himself and Ivy who busies herself with Sonya’s bagels and lox. While the thermometer is dropping they are still comfortable outside with beanies and scarves. They are facing a fallow flower field, beyond that are woodlands, the afternoon birdsong has grown to include wrens, woodpeckers and robins.

“Just fix for yourself love, I’m not hungry.

It snows during the night, the wet fluffy flakes are layered inside bright moonlight. Ivy says it is a portal and it’s time to step through to the other side. In the distance coyotes gather to socialize. Moana is torn between wanting to go to the canine ball and the knowledge that as a domesticated pooch, she’ll be on the buffet. She whimpers and jumps from one side of the truck to another.

“Christ Mouna, watch the boys,” says Chuck, protecting his groin.

“Seriously!” Around midnight the excited yipping culminates in a deafening chorus of barks and howls before all goes quiet. “They’ve just had a grand old time, socializing and deepening their kinship with one another.” She sighs, “I’m gonna miss the girls, we didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye.”

“Would you have wanted to?” 

She shakes her head “I can’t do good-byes.” He kisses her tenderly and she responds with passion.

Afterwards Ivy snuggles up to her husband. Mouna, now carefully, lies across both of them, and they all sleep peacefully till the sun is high and all the snow from the night before has melted away. 

Neither of them bothers to address their marooned status. They let Mouna out and take comfort in their morning stretches. The backroad traffic is light because of the storm warning, a few cars and trucks pass, but neither of them looks up or waves. Ironically their ice is melting and so they decide to eat everything in the icebox rather than have it spoiled.

“Tomorrow morning we’ll be able to fill it with ice and snow, but the food will be ruined by then. What time do you want to eat?”

Chuck considers this the most important question in the world. “I’m feeling for a late lunch, love. What do you think?”

“A late lunch it is, do you want to know the menu?” 

Again he puffs out his chest and considers his options. “I guess it's good to look forward to things, so yeh, go ahead and tell me.”

“For starters we have lentil soup and dumplings. We’ll use the camp cooker to heat them up.”

“Delicious.”

“Then we have the Cobb salad and Chicken Milanese, we’ll heat it up quickly in the pan with the lid on, it will be warm on the inside and just the right amount of crispy on the outside. We have key lime pie for dessert. And one last surprise, we each have a beer, which I propose we drink at midday, so if it makes us fall asleep, we’ll wake up just in time for lunch.

“Brilliant my dear, day drinking.”

Ivy applies lipstick, the same Scarlett glitter worn by her favorite character, Satine. She wraps a matching boa made of ostrich feathers around the creases of the very functional and extremely warm scarf she has been wearing for the past two days. “That’s better. Could we build a fire?”

The nerves ending around Chuck's knees are shredded, each time he needs to bend down to collect the kindling or branch he braces himself for the pain. “I could only find enough wood for a small fire that will last us through the day.” He staggers into the chair,  “The snow and the wind will start around five anyway.”

He takes the brass bottle opener that had belonged to his father and lovingly strokes the worn engraving on the handle. It’s an image of a vintage Harley Davidson. His breathing returns to baseline. “I like to think dad made this himself, but truthfully I have no idea. He was a wild guy though.” He laughs and pops the top of the first beer and hands it over to Ivy, and then pops the second for himself.

As they clink cheers, the shadow of the two bottles forms a cross in the gravel around the fire and points off to the left, to a path through the field. They both look at it and smile. “You know in the spring there are going to be purple poppies as far as the eye can see. They call it Buffalo Rose.”

“You’re going to blend in with your boa and lipstick.”

She laughs, “a coyote will be wearing it by then.”

“I’m worried about Mouna.”

“Don’t be, the trucker that finds her will take her in.”

By the time Ivy and Chuck reach the middle of the meadow they are dancing, twirling, phantasms of the howling wind. Satine and Christian singing beneath the neon sign of the Moulin Rouge: 

Come what may

Come what may

I will love you

Until my dying day

There is the poppy field, there is Paris, there is Peace.