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Ivy Lynn’s at another one of those endless pre-Tony get-togethers. She hesitates to call them parties, because they have fewer strip-lights than she’s used to and more impromptu karaoke. Tom has already roped Julia into singing again—which she only ever does when intoxicated or overly sentimental, but they’re both laughing raucously. Any observer could be mistaken for thinking they’re still together as a team. And Ivy knows they love each nevertheless, deep down, despite their mutual stubbornness.
Next to them, Derek is waving belligerently at another Bombeshell cast member. God, Ivy has to go talk to him. Fuck her. This isn’t the conversation she wants to be having, really, but if she doesn’t have it now it’ll never happen, at this rate. She hasn’t even decided what to do yet: if she’ll get an abortion or see it out like her mother did. (When did the incomparable Leigh Conroy discover her? When did she stop fitting into her dresses like she should—around when she decided to put a hold on her dreams to invent new ones for a child? Maybe she never did.)
Either way, Ivy’s tried to tell him about three different times now. There’s always an excuse. Someone else needs him, or he’s too tired to speak, or she’s too tired just having to bear to be around him without absolutely shattering into a million pieces.
The only thing keeping Ivy stable is the idea of the Tony awards. Obviously Karen Cartwright is going to win for best leading actress in a musical, because how could she not? Her success is evident even in the promotional images: a close-up on lowered sunglasses, red-lipsticked smirk. (Ivy wonders if Karen still thinks about her too. If she saw the Bombshell ad in the New York Times, shut the paper, and threw it away.) Her mother will also win for best supporting actress, since Liaisons was awful no matter how much she tried.
At any rate, Ivy doesn’t write a speech. She knows when she loses to Karen Cartwright, her mother will talk to the press about winning her own Tony while pregnant, and isn’t it a shame that Ivy didn’t? What an awful fate for a child, not even in proximity to success. A xerox of a xerox of a star.
Her secondary issue is alcohol. Before, Ivy didn’t notice how ubiquitous drinking was in the industry. Always normal to excuse a glass or three of wine a day, plus Manhattans with Eileen, and maybe also half of whatever Sam orders at the bar too, and an extra few vodka sodas when she’s feeling depressed. (The taste of it burns caustic in her throat at the sight of Karen’s face on a billboard in Times Square.) Sticking to water makes her feel antsy. Sicker than ever. At any moment, she’s sure, people will find out. Then it won’t just be “Ivy Lynn, Tony nominee”—it’ll be “Ivy Lynn, pregnant Tony nominee,” which means endless meetings with Eileen’s bloodhound PR manager, and many more consequences that she can’t think of at the moment.
God, Ivy doesn’t know Derek’s medical history. Doesn’t know his hometown, even, because everything he did before he was twenty-five seems to be undocumented online, apart from his degree. All his issues—the sex pestering, the lies, the inflexibility, the art—are divorced from their traumatic origin. He sprang from the streets of wherever-the-fuck, NY as a fully-grown foreign mess.
And then immediately got more messy with Tom. God, theatre is too small of a world. The thin water-surface tension between professional life and personal life dissolves when you’re in it. Your little pettinesses take on new meanings, instead representing something larger than yourself: a production, a persona, a legacy.
Derek’s human. You cut him, he bleeds. Isn’t that how it goes? Despite that, Ivy never seems to hurt him how she wants to. She can’t hurt anything how she wants to, reciprocally, where they both apologize and everything changes—and maybe they still find new ways to hurt each other again, but that’s alright. At least it wouldn’t be as goddamn boring as Derek. Ivy always knows what to expect from him. The genius is less cute, now that she knows he won’t do anything to apply it unless he can fuck a pretty woman before or afterwards (or during).
Unfortunately for everyone, New York is absolutely lousy with pretty women. She’s not special, like she thought she might have been before she realized that Karen was as cutthroat as anyone else, just better at hiding it. The only thing keeping her ahead in the workshop was her perfect hourglass figure and, she’d learned later, Tom’s advocacy. Thank God for Tom. And thank God for Eileen, too, and Julia and Sam and her mother and Karen…
Without even meaning to, Ivy’s written the beginnings of a Tony-winner speech in her head. She tries to ignore it again, not to mentally fill in the gaps with all the other speeches she’s ever listened to. (Would she thank her child after her next campaign? If there’s a child? If there’s a “next campaign”?) Instead she sets her shoulders back and straightens her spine. Plasters on a smile—she’s a star, too, sort of. The star. The bombshell.
By the time she reaches Derek, he’s begun to lose steam in whatever conversation he’d been having. “Never mind,” he tells his partner, waving them off. “Ivy, baby. Nice to see you.”
Maybe this isn’t the right conversation to have in public, but the fact of the matter is that Ivy’s pregnant. One day, there might be a little Derek-Ivy hybrid making problems for every other kid at theatre camp… or not, depending on his response. Supposing he dignifies her with one at all.
“I have a problem,” she says, twisting her fingers nervously. Is it right to call a child her problem? Even if it complicates everything beyond belief? If it means she can never really walk away from him? “Well, we have a problem, and I wanted to talk to you about—”
“Oh, God,” he drawls with a long-suffering sigh, then pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Are you on drugs again?”
The statement is so fucking offensive that for a moment Ivy’s stunned. He would say that—about her!—in public, in front of all these people who love her and only barely tolerate him. Tom stops playing Putting On The Ritz at the piano to glare pointedly in his direction.
Obviously she’s not on drugs. Ivy would be happier if she were, actually. Everyone else around her has already slipped into that relaxation of being whoever they are, steady—without awareness of the consequences, of the world around them pressing in. The smiles come easier when drunk or high. So does performance. But now she looks at Derek and is forced to notice the way he’s slurring his words as he spits them out.
Ivy knows he’s avoiding the conversation to prevent public shame, despite being appalled at himself in private. He might apologize later. And she’ll forgive him, because she always does eventually, no matter how hard she tries not to. She forgives everyone in the end: Derek, Tom, her mother, Karen. (Everyone except herself.)
“No,” Ivy chokes, then covers her mouth with the back of her hand. She’s going to vomit, she really is. She says quickly, before she starts gagging, “Never mind. It isn’t… I thought you could be a man about this.”
His eyes go soft. Derek says, “Ivy, baby,” and reaches for her, but she draws back.
“I’m—” she starts, then stops again. She can’t tell if it’s morning sickness or not, given that it’s about midnight, but that doesn’t matter. The association is made anyways: Ivy can’t handle this conversation because she’s pregnant. It’s making her weak. And what if telling him just provides him another excuse to dismiss her? What if he pretends he loves her again and then leaves her? (Ivy’s mother is proud and vivacious and still so small in the blur of ancient memory, crying into her pillows at night.)
Ivy can’t stand to look at him any longer. It only makes things worse to see him beg. Instead she whirls around and heads for the bathroom before she ruins her shoes from hurling. Behind her, Derek stays silent.
Ivy can barely remember the way to the bathroom, much less who’s actually hosting in the first place, but she makes it there anyways. There’s no door at the entrance—stupid. It’s one of those modern, expensive bathrooms that you find in high-end theaters, with automatic faucets and white marble everything. The floor is made of artfully-arranged tiles in a geometric design. The golden age of Art Deco.
Sitting on the edge of the sink is fucking Karen Cartwright, because of course she’s there too. She swings her legs and hums a pretty little pop tune to herself. Something from Hit List, Ivy recognizes, then hates herself for it.
Karen’s taste in jewelry is still poor. (A painful flash-image of the ring in Ivy’s mind.) Her earrings glitter in the harsh fluorescent lighting. Ivy’s gathered over time that this strange, new version of her drinks beer and swears and occasionally hangs on brick walls with a cigarette between her fingers. Beyond the bounds of the Hays Code. Even now she pulls a long sip from a bottle. A drop of frothy liquid slides past the corner of her mouth to meet the metal owl pendant attached to her necklace. Then, down, where her dress hemline begins.
Karen has nice tits, obviously. Before, she didn’t know how to dress to suit them, either wearing something frumpy or too sleek and polished. Unnatural. Ivy wants to pull her aside and give her a full makeover one day, because clearly whatever their friends did to her wardrobe way back when was not an improvement—but that’s her being a bitch again. She’s trying to work on it.
Karen’s eyes are the same as always: dark, doe-ish, and squinted when her head tips back to drink. She jumps a bit when she sees Ivy and nearly falls off her perch. “Ivy!” she says.
Ivy tries not to seem like she’s half a second away from passing out, but it doesn’t work. She runs to the sink and hangs her head low. Avoiding Karen’s attention. Acid in her throat. In the mirror, her face looks sullen and pale. Whoever said anything about pregnancy glow was a dirty fucking liar.
Then Karen’s scooting off the edge of the sink and coming up behind Ivy. Her hair falls down her shoulders in perfectly-styled waves. “Are you okay?” she says. (Because she’s kind and not a miserable, rotten person.)
Ivy presses her eyes shut and rocks back on a stilettoed heel. “No,” she says, like a warning.
“Oh. Well, I was just here to, um—”
“Avoid the crowd?” Ivy answers for her. She understands. The fact that Karen’s even been invited to this one is surprising, given that it’s overflowing with the Bombshell cast and crew. Then again, according to Tom, Julia’s half-committed to Hit List, and Derek’s there, so… It makes sense that Karen and her would occupy the same circles. (Except, if that’s the case, why don’t they run into each other more often?)
Karen tells her, “To wash my hands,” though it might be a joke. She has a funny twist of tongue that makes ‘wash’ sound like ‘warsh’. A Midland feature. Once during workshop practice, Ivy overheard her telling the other cast that she was from Clarinda. Hopelessly podunk, in Ivy’s Wikipedia-based opinion: just a place, but important enough to Karen that despite accent training, it slips out. How many girls in New York are from tiny Midwest towns with crazy dreams? How many of them make it?
Not many. It’s just that Karen is insanely talented and good at hustling. She deserves it all, Ivy thinks. God, please give her the Tony and the man and maybe even the child too. She’d know what to do with them better than Ivy does.
Karen slides right up behind Ivy. There’s only a narrow gap between their hips. In the mirror, Ivy can see Karen’s sharp face rising above her own. Isn’t that symbolic of something? Jesus. Fuck this.
“That was a lie,” Karen admits plainly. “I’m avoiding Jimmy.”
Ivy snorts. “Who the hell is Jimmy?” she asks.
“Jimmy—Jimmy Collins, songwriter for Hit List?”
Oh. Yeah, right. Because while Ivy’s been hung up on everything and everyone from the past year, Karen’s moved on to bigger, brighter things. Ivy chews her lip and tries not to notice the way that Karen sways gently from side to side.
“You know, Jimmy treats me like a secret,” Karen continues, like she’s supposed to care at all. (Except Ivy does.) The inflection of her voice is odd. Is she trying to imply something? “I don’t even know if we’re in a real relationship or just seeing each other, because he never wants to talk about it. And it sucks.”
Ivy laughs breathlessly. “Yeah, it does.”
“So, what’s your issue?” Karen asks, and it sort of feels like it used to, when they might have been actual friends. If Ivy wasn’t so herself that she destroyed everything, if she hadn’t pushed Karen away just another more time.
She’s in the mood for honesty. “Derek,” Ivy tells her. “I’m having his baby.”
Unfortunately she says it right as Karen takes another sip from her bottle. The woman chokes from shock for a second—two seconds—too long until Ivy’s hitting on her back. Karen lurches past her and sputters a dribble of beer out into the sink. It would be disgusting if Ivy weren’t grateful just for the chance to see her vulnerable. And the physicality of touching her: recognizing again that Karen’s a real flesh-and-blood person with a real throat and tongue and lips, whose body has weight and mass. Not just a girl in a picture.
Karen looks up, gaping at her for a second like she can’t tell what to say. “You’re… having his baby?” she repeats eventually.
“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know yet. I was going to ask him tonight, actually, but, um… He’s just so…” Ivy searches for a word and comes up short.
Karen hums like she understands anyways. “I sort of like him, though? Better than I used to.”
“All his muses say that,” Ivy replies, maybe a little sharply. Derek’s good at making a girl feel special. And then you realize, after re-organizing your life around his careful allotments of attention, that you aren’t very special at all. At least, not to him. It’s relatively normal for men to be that way, and artists, even more so. She’s an artist too: vindictive, cruel, and oftentimes obsessive about the wrong things.
Except now there’s another person involved—a child—who needs stability. Marilyn loved children. She used to linger by playgrounds, talk to the mothers about their routines and the hundred kaleidoscope ways one could grow up into themselves, to care for another… But goddamn it, she cannot be a fucking single mother in show business. She just can’t.
Ivy won’t say any of it to Karen now. They don’t know each other well enough to make that appropriate. (A little voice in the back of her head: ‘And who’s to blame for that?’) Instead she scoffs, rolling her eyes. But a giggle rises in her throat, and then she’s laughing hysterically, wiping away the start of tears. “I never thought I’d be having this conversation with you, Iowa,” Ivy says. But she’d give anything to simply talk to Karen whenever she wants to, not solely confined to chance meetings in bathrooms in other people’s houses.
At the nickname, Karen seems to relax. She puts her bottle down on the marble sink with a clink. Ivy can tell just by the sound that it’s empty. Then she says, “I’m sorry.” Just like that, simple and plain. Sincere.
“That’s my line,” Ivy protests. And still she hasn’t said it enough. What would happen if Ivy were to beg for Karen’s forgiveness again? To confess that she fucked Dev and it didn’t really matter at all. She shouldn’t have ruined Karen just because she’d been offered the chance of it. It was a stupid decision. (Followed by another. Chalk-dust coating her palm.)
Ivy was jealous. Spiteful. Sort of crazy, also, she still remembers vaguely, when she’s left alone for too long—when Derek abandons them for Hit List, or when Karen glances past her in the middle of the street and doesn’t turn back. (Doesn’t seem to notice her at all, anymore.) But then again, Ivy knows that word, and she knows Marilyn with that word. She isn't. And that’s all there is to it.
The act itself seemed completely rational at the time. Heat by extension of Karen’s breath on his lips, like slipping off her nightgown bare and slipping on persona again. Becoming Marilyn. Becoming Karen: the start of feeling out, through method acting and careful research, what exactly Dev or Derek saw in her, what particular sort of star power she held over them. They’d been together so long—Dev and Karen, that is—that Ivy almost swore she could sense in the man’s movements how the woman moved too.
Karen sighs, but she’s smiling. She says, “Look, I know you’ve screwed me over, like, a hundred times. But I don’t hate you.”
“What a compliment,” Ivy says flatly. Hate is closer to love than indifference, after all. When the moon rises and casts its light out through the gauze of her curtains, Karen sleeps without dreaming of her. Perhaps she’s better off for it; Ivy has disturbing, strange visions. Herself-as-Marilyn pressing Karen-as-Madonna’s head underwater in a river of liquid silver. Herself-as-Karen with a hand on her heart, her breast, cold, as cameras flash, and with every movement she’s transported to another city. The worst that she can remember clearly: smiling up at Karen from the other end of the dinner table, knowing that they’re having a family together. (Upon waking, inexplicable devastation.)
“No, I mean it,” Karen insists, like she doesn’t believe Ivy’s serious. “You’re pretty cool, you know, when you’re not trying to seem terrifying.”
“I’m not trying to seem like anything,” Ivy says. It’s a lie and she knows it; in fact, for a long while being terrifying was all she aspired to be. Every little sharpening of the eyes, all the harsh, false giggles sent Karen’s way… There was nothing left of self-identity for a while after Derek and Karen and all the dramatics of Bombshell broke her down. Then she found herself again in the role—through the role—through Marilyn. (What’ll be left when she loses the Tony?)
Karen’s eyes shine with unidentifiable emotion, and her lips hang slightly open as she stares at Ivy’s face. She says fiercely, “The first time we met I thought you were the most spectacular, fascinating, talented, terrifying person alive.”
The operative word being ‘were’. By now, Ivy knows Karen understands her better than that. She’s seen her sloppy and crude and drugged; she’s seen her when Ivy couldn’t bear to be seen at all, to be known in any real sense. But Karen forces honesty in every expression, even when she means to lie.
Ivy stares back at Karen and inches closer despite herself. Tension hangs in the air. “I thought,” she begins, without planning out the rest of the statement first, “that you were quaint. I was going to crush you under my heel.”
Karen raises her chin. Ivy can just about imagine how she’ll recite this moment to Jimmy Fallon in about a year. A fabulous joke. Instead, Karen places a hand on Ivy’s ill-advised lower back tattoo and whispers, right by the crest of her ear, “You haven’t destroyed me yet.”
Ivy’s abruptly aware—and now she doesn’t know why she hadn’t realized it before—that she’d rather be in bed with Karen than Derek. (And maybe that was always the goal, somewhere in the back of her mind.) Now that the idea is planted, it won’t leave. Karen’s hot breath on her shoulder, the side of her face. The sharp edge of chipped nails digging into her skin. Too-sheer chiffon fabric of her shirt, letting all the sensation bleed through. Bleed through—Ivy is bleeding, bleeding, down and defeated for just the merest edge of attention again.
Karen’s chosen her, Ivy realizes. It isn’t that she’s been pining—or whatever it is she’s been doing—desperately alone, because Karen is a grown woman who picks her own battles, and she’s chosen her. To battle, to hold… To do whatever else it is that she finds important.
Ivy isn’t one to give up an opportunity. She reaches back up to Karen’s face and places her own hand on the back of the woman’s long neck. Karen startles again, adorably, flushing red even through her foundation. So Ivy pushes her further in, and in, and then their lips finally touch.
All she can think: Thank fucking God. She feels the slight sweat on Karen’s skin, now, and Karen’s hand lowering to touch her ass. Most overwhelming of all, the sweet taste of beer and cinnamon chewing gum and lip gloss. The taste of Karen.
“I need you,” Ivy gasps as soon as they break apart, but then they get right back to kissing again. Karen topples forward as she leans, pressing Ivy against the wall of the bathroom. It occurs to her vaguely that someone else might walk in, but that’s not priority number one at the moment. Priority number one is that Karen wants her—and Karen likes her! She does! As a person, even.
Ivy’s mouth twists into a smile. Their teeth knock together painfully. God, the thrill. And she likes Karen back. Despite everything. She’s dizzy with it.
When they shudder apart again, Karen’s panting hard. She finally asks, “Do you want to go back to my place?” Her dark eyes look innocent, but Ivy knows she’s not.
Ivy nods. It doesn’t matter that Derek’s outside. It doesn’t matter that she’s pregnant, and that in a week she might not be, depending on her own decision… Her problems can wait for tomorrow, because there’s someone right in front of her waiting to have her, simply and nothing more.