A Stubborn Vine

Ivy Wilson needed a plan.

She stood in the dark outside the Bremmer’s house in a deepening Autumn chill, wobbling on her new high-heel shoes, and she stared through the glass French doors into the warm, brightly lit kitchen. 

A large black-and-white cat lolled on the counter inside, regarding her with half-lidded eyes. He had a distinctly smug look on his patchwork face.

She tried the door handle again. Still locked. 

Ivy knew three things. 

First, she had opened, explored and rifled through every nook and cranny of every room of this house during the two weeks she’d been housesitting. It was wrong, she knew it, but it was a fact.
Ivy was the fourth of six Wilson children. She’d never been so gloriously alone in all the sixteen years of her life as she had in the past seven days. The pantries, cupboards and secret drawers of a family made up of only four persons were like Aladdin’s cave. Name brand pudding snacks. Name brand everything. The kinds of cereal that you saw in commercials on Saturday mornings. 24-packs of soda stacked like cordwood. Fruit-by-the-Foot. Hershey bars. Rice Krispy treats. Every flavor of potato chip known to Man. There was no-one to share it with, no-one to eat it all up before it was gone. She had sampled it all.

Worse, she’d left all the evidence out in plain sight. Even through the windows, it looked like a bear had gone through the house. A bear who left the heating on at full blast, someone else’s collector’s edition comic books open on the table and the TV and every light in the house blazing away; a bear who had foolishly believed she had time to cover her tracks before anyone was the wiser. 

She’d gone on a bender of bad manners, and now it was time to pay the piper. 

The second thing she knew was that the Bremmers were coming home early tomorrow morning.

Inside the locked house, the cat shifted himself just slightly on the countertop, revealing a ring of house keys tucked under his furred flank. His tail lashed. He blinked slowly at her. 

Your move.

The third thing, thought Ivy, filling herself with steel, she knew, she was certain, there was no doubt in her entire being that she was getting inside that house.

Ivy had a tidy, analytical mind. What she lacked in moral fortitude, she told herself over the noise of her hammering heart, she more than made up for with grit. This wasn’t going to be a catastrophe. She wouldn’t allow it.

She circled the house, starting to shiver in her little pleather jacket. Her heels sank, pitched and tottered in the treacherous pea gravel. She accepted this indignity as deserved under the circumstances. If she hadn’t been so preoccupied with dolling herself up for Shane’s party, maybe she would have remembered to make sure the keys were in her purse before she left the house. 

She reached the back door and jiggled the handle. Locked. She tried the window. Not budging. She continued her prowl.

Calling for help was not an option. Any exposure was disastrous. Ivy had a string of odd jobs lined up in the next few months, and she was counting on a reference from the Bremmers to help her land even more. The junior class trip this year was to Disneyland-- Disneyland-- and there was no way her parents could pay her way. A family the size of the Wilsons counted a trip to McDonald’s to be an extravagance. A theme park dwelt in the realm of fantasy. If Ivy was going to get there, she had to find the money herself. 

As for calling her siblings-- Ivy snorted. The idea of giving those jackals this kind of leverage over her! Suicide. Besides, the situation was too ripe with comic potential to reasonably expect them to keep it quiet for long.

No, she had to solve this on her own.

All the windows on the ground floor were securely locked, she concluded grimly, having completed her circuit of the house. She should have been grateful, since the house was on a dark, isolated stretch of highway six miles out of Port Hazel and she’d been up here alone like a disposable character in a horror movie, but instead she was annoyed. The Bremmer boys were fourteen and twelve. Really, did no-one ever have to sneak in or out of this place?

It was no good dwelling on what should have been. What were the alternatives?

She eyed the pickup truck sitting idle in the drive. Her dad usually kept a spare key under the floor mat of his vehicle. Was it too much to hope for? She tried the driver’s side door-- and it opened readily.  

Ivy felt a thrill of relief. Vindicated! But when she groped around under the rubber mat, she found no key. She pulled herself up into the cab, refusing to give up hope, and scoured the glovebox, the consoles, the cupholders. She pulled down the sun visors, scattering papers. She crawled into the rear seat and scrabbled in between the cushions. 

No joy.

Ivy clambered back into the front seat— not a graceful procedure in her party dress and heels— and gave herself a moment to chew her fingernails and regroup.

Finding the truck open still went in the ‘wins’ column. If worse came to worse, she could sleep in it more comfortably than in her own hand-me-down hatchback, parked askew on the other side of the gravel driveway. If all else failed, maybe she’d have a last minute stroke of genius once the sun came up.

There was still one more option.

Ivy turned her gaze reluctantly to the second-story window.

There was only one room on the second floor of the Bremmer’s house, a poky kind of attic-guest room hybrid. Mrs. Bremmer had suggested Ivy sleep in there while she was watching the house, but it had only taken about five seconds of staring into the blank faces of the dusty pair of wall-eyed Kewpie dolls reclining on the corner rocking chair for Ivy to decide she wasn’t going to be spending much time upstairs. Besides, Mr. and Mrs. Bremmer’s bed was bigger and faced a big-screen TV. 

Spookiness aside, the window itself was just a narrow dormer jutting out of the steep-pitched roof. She’d have to find a way to shimmy up the side of the house and then successfully cross the mossy shingles on all fours to access it, and there was no reason but wild hope to think that after all that, it would prove to be the only unlocked access to the house.

Besides, Ivy recalled with chagrin Mrs. Bremmer’s reassurance, spoken as the family loaded themselves into their minivan and left her in care of their home:

“Now don’t worry, Ivy. I’ve told the neighbors across the street to keep an eye on the house. If they see any funny business at any time, Jim’s got a rifle and he’s not afraid to use it.”

Funny business. Funny like a gangly teenage girl in green ruffles and high heeled shoes breaking into someone else’s house through the second story window. Ha, ha.

 Ivy let out a slow puff of air and thought of the Magic Kingdom.

She shoved the heavy truck door open and disembarked.

A quick survey for access points under the eaves didn’t boost her confidence. A flimsy vinyl downspout responded to a test tug with a dire warning crackle. Don’t even think about it. She jumped-- no idea was too stupid in this situation-- and her fingers didn’t even brush the gutters.

There was, she finally acknowledged with dread, a trellis running right up the height of the sidewall. Its top was almost parallel with the lowest edge of the roof. It seemed possible, if she could get even halfway up it without snapping the slats, if she could navigate the angle and haul herself up over the corner of the eave… 

Problem was, whatever vine Mrs. Bremmer had been trying to train up over the trellis in the summer had gone shriveled and crispy now Fall was in the air. The thin wooden slats were instead mobbed from top to bottom with pale, cottony spiderwebs, and in the blaring yellow moonlight, Ivy could see telltale arachnid shadows moving furtively within.

Ivy could not suppress a shudder. 

At any other time, in any other scenario, Ivy Wilson wouldn’t get within ten yards of an arthropod. And spiders were the undisputed kings of Disgusting Invertebrate Mountain. They were fat and slow this time of year, drowsy and bulging with eggs and everywhere, everywhere.

A cold flush of desperation seeped into her determined facade. It wasn’t too late-- she could call her older brothers and confess all. She could go across the street and plead her case to the rifle-toting neighbors. 

No.

Ivy looked hard at her own reflection in the living-room window. A thin, freckled face stared back at her, dark eyes ablaze under a fringe of wiry yellow hair. This was the face of a girl who was about to go straight up the side of this house. This girl was going to Disneyland, no matter what horrors she had to get through to do it. She was going to Disneyland, she was going to ride the Magic Teacups, she was going to buy a Mickey Mouse keychain and she was not-- repeat, she was not-- going to give up and let all her plans collapse around her because of one dumb mistake.

Without giving herself one more second to reconsider, she marched to the trellis, thrust her hands right through a screen of cobwebs, gripped the slats with clammy palms and started her ascent.

It held her weight-- barely-- but groaned as she gingerly hooked a heeled shoe into a lower rung of the lattice and pulled herself up. She stood still for a moment, only about a foot off the ground, and told herself she didn’t hear anything scuttling away from her against the siding. Another step up-- the trellis trembled, but held. She reached out an arm to test the distance to the edge of the roof. She could just about brush the eave with her fingertips

It’s going to be okay. This is going to work. 

As she lifted her other foot to climb up one more step, the wooden frame lurched and started to tilt outwards, away from the wall.  

Ivy flung out an arm and grabbed hold of the corner of the house. There was precious little to hold onto but siding, but somehow she gripped it with her fingertips, pulled her body and the frame back flush with the sidewall and held it there, heart pounding. 

The slat beneath her left foot creaked and then snapped. 

An enormous, woolly, visibly aggrieved spider emerged groggily from a veil of webbing, just at eye-level, to see what all the commotion was  about.

The next few moments seemed to accelerate. In fact, when she thought about it later, Ivy couldn’t actually parse out the details of exactly how it happened. It was as if a rocket lit underneath her, like a fiery plume of air blasted her up the last few feet and out and over the edge of the gutter.

The eave was at grabbing height and she grabbed, she hauled, she flung herself at it, somehow got one elbow over the lip of the roof, twisted herself, legs swinging now, a shoe flying out into the dark, got the other elbow up and over and with all her might, with all the fight in her soul, heaved herself up bodily onto the rooftop.

 She rolled onto her back on the shingles and clawed frantically at the streamers of cobwebs clinging to her hair and her face and her clothes, whimpering, every inch of her skin crawling with loathing. 

Out in the dark below her, across the road at the bottom of the drive, the neighbor’s front porch light flicked on.

Self pity was jettisoned.

Ivy got to her hands and knees and scrabbled up the roof toward the dark dormer. 

She wondered for half a second why, after all this, the dormer shouldn’t be locked, too?-- but she never really doubted. She knew. 

She crouched down on her haunches in front of it, wedged her fingernails underneath the wooden window frame and tugged upwards. It slid open without the slightest hesitation.

There was no screen to block the way-- she was in. She was in.

Ivy pushed herself halfway through the window and quickly found herself pawing at a dark void -- she was a lot further off the ground than she’d anticipated. She looked from side to side, but there was no dresser or chair handy to lessen the drop. Frankly, she didn’t care if she broke her neck at this point. She thrust herself forward and fell headfirst into the attic.

She landed, cackling, in an ungainly heap of skinny legs and tattered green ruffles, feeling elated despite the moss and dirt raining down after her from the window like confetti, despite the scrapes and bruises. Her dress was torn, she was filthy, it was probably almost one in the morning, but she was in. 

She was going to get away with everything.

It took a couple hours to clean the house. The cat watched with disgust as Ivy wiped down the kitchen tiles, carefully returned the comic books to their plastic sheaths and labelled binders, mopped and scrubbed and vacuumed up the evidence of her crimes. Crumbs were brushed out of the sheets in the master bedroom; snack drawers were carefully restaged to camouflage a lack of stock. The heating and the TV remote presets were returned to their original settings. 

She ventured back outside -- triple checking that she had the house keys in hand this time -- and swept up any evidence of her escapades. There wasn’t much, to her credit. A wisp of green fabric clinging to a nail in the trellis. A high-heeled shoe in a flowerbed. Easily sorted.

When she finally showered and laid down to sleep (on the living room sofa, since she’d made all the beds already), she felt a deep, cynical satisfaction with herself. Tomorrow she’d collect her first paycheck, along with a glowing reference which she would parlay into as many gigs as she could fit into her after-school schedule. 

Disneyland, here I come.

“Well, I see you forgot to water the flowers,” said Mrs. Bremmer the next day, “but Felix looks fat and happy and the house looks great, so I guess no harm done!”

The cat glowered balefully at her from the countertop, and Ivy gave him a sweet smile.

“He’s just a doll,” she said, and Felix whipped his tail furiously, but couldn’t testify. “Here are your keys.”

Mrs. Bremmer accepted them and said, “And I’ve got a little something for you. I’ll just get it from the other room.” 

How much would it be? Ivy greedily contemplated the possibilities. They hadn’t actually discussed a price, but was it too much to hope for triple digits?

“Ta-da!”

Mrs. Bremmer appeared in the doorway, proudly displaying an extra-large gray T-shirt pinched between thumbs and forefingers.

Ivy stared, uncomprehending.

“It says ‘Have you dug Wall Drug,’’” Mrs. Bremmer explained.

“Yes, it does,” said Ivy numbly.

“I know it’s a little big,” Mrs. Bremmer said, bringing it toward Ivy and holding it up against her shoulders to survey the fit, “but you can use it as pajamas, too. Have you heard of Wall Drug? It’s packed floor to ceiling with this kind of stuff. Everyone will think you’ve been to South Dakota!”

“Yes,” said Ivy again, taking the T-shirt reluctantly and employing every deceitful art she knew to keep her facial expression neutral despite the gulf of disappointment that was opening underneath her. 

Mrs. Bremmer smiled and seemed satisfied.

“Well, you’ve done a good job,” she said kindly. “You deserve it.”

Ivy and the black-and-white cat looked at each other.

Yes. Yes, she did.