White Ivy

by Susie Yang

Knowledge, like money, was foolish to give away for free. You could never get it back.

it occurred to Ivy that paying for something in the open with money that wasn’t hers was even better than taking something for free in secret—a

It was the oldest law in physics: the system itself can never change, it can only be rearranged.

She had long ago realized that the truth wasn’t important, it was the appearance of things that would serve her.

Be humble and grateful for what you have. Don’t expect too much from life. If you go looking, you’ll always find people who are better than you.”

All women, Ivy was beginning to understand, had a theme. The story they constantly told themselves. The innermost wound.

Just what was this cloak called privilege and how did it protect you? Was it visible to the wearer or just to onlookers on the outside?

Magic, she’d realized then, was not inherent to a place, it emanated from the person viewing it.

Maybe everyone reverted back to infantile habits around their family members.

Or innocence? But the innocent were often perverse, the perverse innocent.

Meaning comes from the importance we attach to the small things. If there are no standards, then there’s no culture or—even society!”

Sylvia said she no longer cared what people thought of her. It struck Ivy now this wasn’t true. Sylvia cared that people thought she didn’t care.

She saw clearly now that people could be divided into two categories: those who acted, and those who were acted upon.

Ivy suddenly saw that life could always be easy like this. A postcoital cigarette. Pillow plans. Honest duplicity, instead of the infinitely more exhausting duplicitous honesty.

How many of these corner-cutting things had she always done that she would now have to eradicate?

She was jealous, petty, vengeful; experience had taught her to hide these characteristics behind a veneer of sweetness and humility.

Though why a twelve-hour flight to Hawaii is better than an eight-hour one to Italy, I have no idea.”

Perhaps there was some unspoken code about matrimony, that it meant the separation of the sexes, like joining a social club whose sole existence was to take your spouse off your hands.

Silence did not mean peace.

That sheer repetition of superficial interactions could breed intimacy, in a different but no less meaningful way than did deep vulnerability, was a lesson the genteel had learned early.

She could never tell if Gideon’s mother was only being excessively kind or if she actually held these glowing opinions of her friends and acquaintances; if it was the latter, then the world was a very rosy place indeed for Poppy Speyer.

Anyway, when he kept on asking me out, I thought there must have been something special about me. So I decided to give him a chance. I’ve always wondered, though, why me? I guess I’m marrying him to find out.”

to understand how delicate silence and restraint, that careful distillation of one’s most unseemly thoughts, was the most loving and respectful gesture one could make toward one’s spouse. Once upon a time, she’d found his careful control unsettling; now she found it not only admirable but also heroic. Anyone can lash out from anger. But it takes a special kind of man to gently declare to his fiancée: “I like everything about you,” and devote his life to upholding the principle.

Like most men, he’d liked her passion when he was the cause of it, but her own passion, passion that had nothing to do with him, was dismissed as foolishness.

Home was a load you could never put down, once you were back in its orbit.

She would never be able to make this plain, undeviating man understand that the most fragile inner parts of a woman were compiled from a million subtle looks and careless statements from others; this was identity.

Maybe this. Maybe that. Who knew what made you you. Ivy wished she knew.

Lives are like rivers. Eventually they go where they must, not where we want them to go.”