It stormed hard last night, so Ivy wakes me up at half past four to rescue drowning worms. An unfortunate reality of worm life: they crawl up out of the dirt to escape the rain-soaked earth and end up stranded on the sidewalk, limp and water-logged. Our little sun is like a supernova to them, so they sizzle in place while they're trying to squirm back underground, and their pearly worm skins turn brittle and snap underfoot. It's really very morbid.

Ivy fishes a worm out of a puddle, and its skinny body-limb curls blindly around her thumb. Animals are more trusting when they're desperate. In any case, responsiveness is a good sign. There was a time when I didn't care much about worms, but once I started caring about Ivy, I was done for. It's easy for her to be kind. Not soft, but tender. She's smarter than me, which I think is why she suffers so much.

I'm crouched in the dirt, tucking two displaced worms into the safety of a bush. When the soil is dry enough, they'll find their way back underground, and until then, they can wait out the flooding without fear of sun-shriveling—a fate that Ivy believes is one of the worst that could befall a worm, not to mention the most undignified. Plus, she owes it to them. 

"I used to cut them in half when I was a kid," she says as we work. "I heard that the halves could regrow into two separate worms, and I didn't think it hurt them. But then I found out that it does."

She's told me this before and probably will again. She confesses these things not in absolution, but as self-punishment. In response, I tell her what I always tell her, which is something one of her more competent therapists told me to say: "We're all doing the best we can with what we know in this moment."

"What do you know in this moment?" Ivy asks.

The hood of her red windbreaker is pulled up to protect her warm, round face from the wind, and her hands are jammed into the pockets. Her nose and eyes are a red that match the jacket.

"I know I want to get pancakes from the diner," I say. "Preferably with you."

She turns away, swallowing half a smile.

I imagine, for a moment, that Ivy is indifferent to the suffering of worms. I imagine that her skin is thick enough to let me soften and wilt in her arms. That I am not the one who holds, but the one who is held. But then we would be something else entirely, and I only know what I know.


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