WEDNESDAY CLUB - Chapter 1

(All Rights Reserved ©Kristine Jensen)

AUGUST 1963

Ivy

“My goddamn life is over.”

Using the word goddamn gives Ivy both guilty pleasure and a ping of despair. Pleasure that she’s using a forbidden swear word (even if it’s only in her head) and despair that she should find herself here, riding along in a worn Chevy convertible with the top down, row after row of corn fields the only landscape. It’s isolated here. Quiet. The roads long and straight, like an endless black ribbon. What is she doing here? She should be back in the brick buildings of her Omaha neighborhood, riding the city bus and shopping for school clothes with Val.

Ivy tests it under her breath. “Goddamn.” Then a little louder. “Goddamn.” She turns her head out the window and says the words in a normal tone of voice. “Goddamn it, my life is over.”

Her mother Vonda Marie doesn’t seem to notice. She’s caught up in her own world, staring at the lonely line of blacktop ahead. Every once in a while, she checks her reflection and smiles into the rearview mirror. Ivy imagines what her mother sees: freshly-Clairol-ed platinum curls held back by a red triangle scarf, deep blue eyes, perfectly straight teeth. Ivy looks at herself in the side mirror and stretches her lips to form a smile, exposing her slightly overlapping eye tooth. Crooked. 

She pulls a small blue notebook and pencil from the canvas book bag at her feet, glancing for a second to make sure the envelope is still securely taped to the back cover. She begins to write, crooking her left arm across the book to hide her words and keep the pages from flying.

Dear Diary,

I hate her! This is the worst! Nothing but corn, and more corn. 

I can’t wait to tell Val about this empty, nowhere place when I come home. Val says she’s afraid I’m going to drop off the face of the earth. Too bad she’s probably right. 

Still … it can’t last. Let Mom have her ridiculous dream. Soon enough she’ll be picking me up with her tail between her legs and we’ll be headed back to Omaha. I only hope Brad doesn’t forget about me in the …

Ivy’s mother snaps her fingers in front of Ivy’s face to get her attention.

“Ivy! Did you hear me, sweetie? Can you find my cigarettes? They must have slipped off the seat. These long roads sure do make you want to smoke.”

  Her mother pushes in the dashboard lighter and frowns. Bad enough the way the smoke blows straight back into Ivy’s face, but how she hates being at her mother’s beck and call. Ivy retrieves the pack of Pall Malls from the floorboard and slaps it into her mother’s open hand. Vonda Marie takes her foot off the gas and leans forward out of the convertible’s wind, veering into the oncoming lane. Ivy grabs the wheel and steers while Vonda Marie lights the cigarette. After three-and-a-half long hours in the car, Ivy knows the routine.

“I don’t know why you’ve been pouting so much, Ivy. I’ve told you as soon I get settled in with a studio contract, I’ll bring you right down to California. You’re gonna love it there and we’ll finally be living in style. Sandy beaches, big pink grapefruit that grow right in your front yard. Parties … with all sorts of movie stars.” She winks at Ivy. “Of course, you’ll have to pretend to be my sister.”

“Right, Mother.” Ivy stares off into the distance. More rows of green and corn, occasionally punctuated with a red barn, white two-story house, and a tall round bin with a metal top her mother has said are silos and hold corn and grains. Ivy wonders, are there really people  living out here in all this emptiness?

“Besides, it’ll be good for you to be around your grandparents for a while. They haven’t seen you since you were just a little girl. Your grandma is so excited.”

“Well, that makes one of us.” Ivy knows that will get her mother’s attention.

Her mother squints at Ivy through her heavily mascaraed and eye shadowed eyes. “Ivy! That’s no way to talk.”

“I wouldn’t mind so much if they lived somewhere fun. But a farm … in the middle of Nowheresville, South Dakota!”

“It’s not that bad.” Vonda Marie exhales a stream of smoke. 

“Well, you never wanted to go back there. I’ve heard you say it a million times.”

“That was different, I grew up there. Besides, you won’t be there that long. Just until I get settled, see where this Pearl Soap contest takes me. Maybe a month or two at the most.” 

“A month or two? That’s forever in a place like this.” Ivy stares at the fields on either side of the blacktop road, contemplating her bleak future. “I don’t see why you didn’t let me stay with Val’s family.” 

“We’ve been over this, Ivy. Val’s father might be perfectly nice, but I don’t trust that mother of hers. I can tell she doesn’t like me at all.” She glances at herself in the mirror. “Besides, I’m never going back to Omaha. Too many bad memories of bad jobs, and bad men. Now be a good sport and let me have my big break. You’ll see, it’ll be good for both of us.” She turns on the radio and tunes the dial until she finds a station with less static, then turns it up extra loud to hear Lesley Gore’s It’s My Party.

Ivy sighs deeply and slides down until she can lean her head back against the hot vinyl seat, watching a lone hawk soar across the immense blue sky. She is right, her goddamn life is over.