Other Words for Love (14 page)

“Don’t I get to meet your friend?” she said.

Go away go away go away, I thought. Blake is twenty years old and he drives this beautiful black Corvette convertible and you have no idea how much you’re embarrassing me. Then Blake was on the sidewalk and he shook Mom’s hand. Next he answered her probing questions with “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am” and “I go to NYU, ma’am.” She loved that
ma’am
business. She waved goodbye when I was in the car, and I watched her reflection in the rearview mirror as Blake drove away.

“I apologize,” I said. “For her, I mean.”

The Corvette had the scent of leather and plastic and other unknown substances that make a car smell new. It was a stick shift, and I marveled at how expertly Blake changed gears.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I don’t blame her. When I have a daughter, I plan to interrogate every guy who comes within a hundred yards. I’ll probably get a polygraph machine and stick bamboo shoots underneath their fingernails.”

I laughed. I wasn’t embarrassed anymore. And I decided that Blake was different. He was better than the guys Evelyn had dated before Patrick, the ones who honked their car horns impatiently and rolled their eyes behind Mom’s back and gave Dad weak handshakes. None of them ever said
ma’am
. I wondered if Blake’s good manners were a sweet Southern thing, like Rachel’s hummingbird cake.

He drove us to a movie theater in Manhattan, where he held every door for me, and the next thing I knew, we were eating dinner in a Little Italy restaurant with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths and a waiter who called me
Signorina
.

Blake seemed comfortable. So was I. The food was good and the atmosphere wasn’t formal or fancy, which was fine with me. Our table was near the front door and I felt the cool April air, heard it rustling a tree outside, and saw Blake’s Corvette parked across the street.

“You have a nice car,” I said.

He shrugged. The waiter had just brought two bowls of chocolate gelato and Blake lifted his spoon. “My father gave it to me for Christmas. Total waste of money.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer, so I didn’t. I lifted my own spoon and swirled it around the gelato, and Blake asked if I was seeing anybody else.

“No,” I said. “I was dating someone for a while. It’s over now.”

It was a massive lie but I had to say it. I couldn’t let Blake know the humiliating truth that this was my first real date. For some strange reason he didn’t doubt me.

“Same here,” he said.

I nodded and conjured up a vision of his bleached-blond girlfriend. I imagined her in a mobile home in Georgia, trying to make the place presentable by hanging up a wind chime and growing flowers in plastic containers out front. I saw Blake inside, having sex with her on a foldout couch while rain beat down on a metal roof, and I thought she was lucky even if she did live in a trailer.

“Who were you dating before?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.

“A girl in Georgia,” he said.

I acted all surprised. “Georgia,” I echoed. “Do you go to Georgia much?”

“I used to. My grandmother lives down there. She has a little house far away from everything, underneath these big oak trees that were planted before the Civil War.” He leaned his chair back and smiled at the ceiling. “I want a place like that someday.”

I laughed. “But you live in a penthouse.”

The check came. He tossed some cash on the table. “That’s my father’s taste,” he said, popping a Life Saver into his mouth. “And Del’s. I’d rather live in your neighborhood.”

We were back in my neighborhood an hour later. It was dark now, and Blake parked the Corvette in front of my house as butterflies fluttered in my stomach. I remembered when Evelyn was a teenager and she would sit in parked cars on our street with her boyfriend of the month, while Mom paced the living room saying things like
She’ll end up with trench mouth
and
I hope the neighbors don’t see
.

I was looking out the window, checking for neighbors and hoping to give them something to see, when I felt Blake’s hand on my chin. I looked at him, at his straight nose and his perfectly carved lips, feeling his finger move slowly back and forth on my skin. Don’t ask me, I thought. Just do it.

He lifted my mouth to his and it was so much better than that stupid Catskills kiss. It was nice and gentle and he squeezed my shoulder and smoothed my hair, and he didn’t get grabby with my off-limits-on-a-first-date areas or turn all critical when it was over.

“You want to sit over here?” he asked.

The only place to sit over there was on his lap. The invitation was so enticing and his voice was so soft that it made goose bumps pop all over me. I nodded and Blake smiled, hooking his arm around my waist, pulling me over the stick shift. Then I was on his thighs, and I loved it there, where I smelled aftershave and stayed wrapped up in his arms. He kissed me again, harder and deeper this time. I felt his tongue exploring my mouth and tasted a trace of his Wint-O-Green Life Saver. I wondered if he knew that they made tiny blue sparks if you crunched them in the dark.

“You’re too pretty,” he said when we were done.

I was? Those three words sent me floating over my lawn. The grass was growing in thick and green, and Saint Anne didn’t seem lonely and old and chipped. Her dress was bright blue, her shawl was sparkly gold. She and little Mary looked like they were having a good day.

fourteen

Mom
was waiting on the couch. She made sandwiches and she heated milk, but I didn’t want to tell her anything. The memory of tonight was as unblemished as new-fallen snow that I had to protect from careless footsteps. I just talked about the movie and the restaurant as Mom stared at me with her heavy-lidded eyes, waiting for something that never came.

“Don’t you even want a sandwich?” she asked.

I shook my head. I heard her in the kitchen while I was brushing my teeth upstairs; she was tearing a sheet of aluminum foil to cover the sandwiches. I might have felt a lot guiltier if I wasn’t so happy.

My happiness hindered my sleep. I stared at my bedroom ceiling later on, thinking about Blake, remembering the way he had touched me. He was careful and gentle, as if I was something fragile and important, like I was that soft spot on a baby’s head.

He called on Sunday night. I wished there was a phone in my room. Evelyn used to have one, a powder-pink princess model that Mom and Dad bought after she whined and cried and nagged for weeks. Its cord had been woefully tangled and the dial had nearly fallen off from constant use, but she had still lugged it to Queens along with her Pet Rocks and Peter Frampton poster.

I’d never asked for a phone, and that was a mistake. If I had one, I could get some privacy from Mom and Dad, who were watching
60 Minutes
in the living room while I leaned against the kitchen counter, surprised at what came out of my mouth—girlish giggles and a flirty voice that made me wonder if I’d been possessed by Summer.

“What are you so cheery about?” Summer asked the next day as we strolled by Frederick Smith Hollister. You have a very handsome grandson, I thought, giving the plaque a puckish sideways glance.

“I went out with Leigh’s cousin,” I said.

Summer stopped walking. She made a noise like she’d just found a hair in her soup
—blech
and
ick
and
ugh
all rolled into one. “You mean that hideous Indian-looking guy with the messed-up lip?”

That was mean. She seemed to have forgotten that she hadn’t always been flawless. Besides, Del wasn’t hideous, and he couldn’t do anything about his lip. I didn’t want to talk about Blake anymore, but Summer said “Tell me tell me tell me” until I gave in.

“Leigh has another cousin you haven’t met. He’s Del’s brother and he’s adorable,” I said.

She laughed. “Sounds like you’ve got quite a little crush brewing there, Ari.”

I’d suffered through so many crushes. There was Patrick, and boys at school, but none of them had amounted to anything except a painful ache. They’d never resulted in what happened the next Saturday night—a handsome guy at my front door who willingly came inside and gave Dad a firm handshake and chatted politely with Mom before taking me to another movie and a dinner that he paid for with an American Express card.

Later that night, Blake and I sat in the Corvette, which he’d parked a block from my house, this time next to a vacant lot where another house used to be. The owners had torn it down with plans to build a bigger place because they’d won Lotto or risen in the ranks of the Mafia. Our neighbors were gossiping, but nobody was sure of the truth.

“Why did you park here?” I asked.

“Because,” Blake said, “I can’t go on kissing you in front of your house. That isn’t nice, and I was brought up to be a gentleman. I want your parents to like me.”

I like you, Blake, I thought when his mouth was on mine and his arms hugged my waist and our fingers laced together as perfectly as the ones on my sketch pad.

“Ari,” Blake said, and I glanced at the clock on his dashboard, shocked at how late it suddenly was. “I should take you home now.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it wouldn’t be nice if I didn’t,” he said.

Nice
. It wasn’t nice to kiss in front of my house and it wasn’t nice to kiss for too long. I wondered where all this niceness came from. It definitely didn’t exist in Brooklyn guys or Connecticut boys who vacationed in the Catskills. I finally decided that it came from somewhere else—a faraway place where people ate collard greens and lived beneath pre–Civil War trees.

The next afternoon, a meteorologist on TV said the temperature was record-breaking. It was so warm that our obnoxious neighbors were sunbathing in their driveway and everybody else on the block was washing cars or mowing lawns.

I drew the lady next door as I watched her from the open window in my studio. She was spread out on a lounge chair, shiny from Coppertone, holding a foil collar beneath her double chin. Then I turned to a blank page in my sketch pad, but I wasn’t motivated. I didn’t even want to be here, with my pencils and my paper and my oil paints in their squashed tubes. I wanted to be outside soaking up the sunshine and the cut-grass smell, or on my driveway packing the car with Dad for a visit to Queens. But mostly I wanted Blake, who told me last night that he had an Intro to Business Law exam on Monday and planned to study for hours today.

“Ariadne,” Mom said after I dragged myself to the kitchen. “What are you going to do while we’re gone?”

I flopped into a chair, thinking that it was hot in here and why didn’t this house have central air? All we had were noisy old window units that Dad hadn’t taken out of the garage yet.

“Nothing,” I said, watching as she put a tray of cupcakes in a cardboard box. They had homemade icing and multicolored sprinkles, and I knew Patrick would enjoy them because he was a big fan of
jimmies
.

“You can study for the SAT,” she suggested.

I rolled my eyes. Studying for the SAT and sketching in my studio seemed like death compared to keeping my eyes shut while Blake’s tongue wandered inside my mouth.

Then my parents were gone. I watched television on the couch, listened to a group of kids play stickball on the street, and ignored my SAT book. Mom had left two cupcakes on a plate in the refrigerator, and as I bit into one, the phone rang. Blake was on the line.

“Leigh and my aunt Rachel convinced me to blow off studying today,” he said. “We’re driving out to the Hamptons.… I’m renting a car since we can’t all fit in the Corvette. We’ll pick you up in an hour if you want to come.”

Of course I did. I wanted to go to the Hamptons more than anything in the world, even though I’d never been there before. So I ran upstairs and showered and shaved my legs. Next I stood beside my dresser drawer and pulled out a bikini the color of a plum, which would have to be covered with a T-shirt because if Blake saw my uneven breasts, he might stop calling. The thought of that was too dismal for words.

He showed up right on time. Rachel jumped out of a black Toyota in a bikini top that wasn’t covered by anything and a sheer sarong that was wrapped around her hips. A big pair of sunglasses—the same kind that Jackie O wore around Manhattan—rested on the bridge of her nose. She ushered me into the front seat next to Blake.

A couple of hours later, we arrived at a massive white house that resembled something out of
Miami Vice
. The walls inside were white, and there were endless windows and a balcony over the first floor. The furniture was modern, and Leigh showed me the indirect lighting in the five bedrooms and four bathrooms before whispering in my ear that the house belonged to her uncle.

“He has parties here during the summer,” she said. “With his clients and stuff.”

I nodded and followed her outside to the pool. It was four feet deep at one end and nine at the other, and was covered on the inside with sea green tiles except at the bottom, where black and yellow tiles formed the image of a scorpion.

I teetered at the edge of the pool to see a curvy tail, and then Leigh was next to me.

“I guess my mother was right about me and you and Blake. We can all be friends. We can do stuff like this for the next few months until I go to California,” she said, glancing at the pool and the patio and the house. “I like to draw, but I can’t stand another spring alone in my apartment with my colored pencils.”

I knew what she meant—I couldn’t survive another spring locked in my studio, either.

“Sure, Leigh,” I said. “We’ll hang out together for the rest of the spring.”

She smiled, crouched down, and moved her hand back and forth in the water to check the temperature. “Del and Idalis will be here soon. I’d like some ice cream before then.”

So we went for a walk. Rachel sauntered down the road, waving at admiring male neighbors while Blake and Leigh and I trailed behind like baby chicks. We stopped at a quaint ice cream parlor near the beach that had a striped awning and smelled of roasted peanuts. Rachel ordered a cup of frozen yogurt, Leigh asked for vanilla ice cream in a waffle cone, and Blake and I both got a scoop of lemon sherbet. He paid for everything even though I took out my wallet. It didn’t seem right that Blake should pay every single time we were together; it was 1986—the whole equality thing was supposed to have been settled years ago.

“Put that away, honey,” Rachel said, jamming my wallet into my purse before Blake saw it. “A Southern man never lets a woman pay for anything. He wouldn’t be a gentleman otherwise.”

“But Blake isn’t really a Southern man,” I said.

She lifted a black eyebrow. “He was raised as one, and that’s what matters.”

Del and Idalis were at the house when we got back. She floated around the pool on an inflatable raft with a piña colada in her hand, and she talked to Del in a mixture of Spanish and English while he sat at a table on the patio with his adding machine and a stack of receipts.

“Hey,
latoso,
” she shouted. “You planning to sit there all day?”

He didn’t answer and she yelled the question again. “I’m working, goddamn it,” he said without looking up, and she got huffy and said a few things in Spanish that I didn’t understand and something in English that I did.

“You can just lick me, then,” she said, sticking out her tongue.

“Don’t you wish,” Del muttered over his receipts.

I laughed to myself. I knew they were talking about the thing that a lot of Catholic girls did instead of having sex because it was just bending the rules, not breaking them. It wouldn’t give them a fatal disease or get them knocked up; they wouldn’t become a disgrace to their rosary-carrying mothers. I didn’t blame them, but it seemed to me that skirting the rules was a dirty trick and possibly more sinful than everything else.

Del wasn’t dressed for the pool, he was dressed for work, and I got the impression that an afternoon in the Hamptons hadn’t been his idea. Rachel became a mother hen and said things like “Oh, now, now” and “Mind your manners,” and Leigh tried to help by dragging a volleyball net out of a shed and suggesting that we all play. Del ignored her and Rachel didn’t want to wreck her nails, so the game turned into Leigh and Idalis against me and Blake.

“Are you keeping that shirt on?” Leigh asked. “I’m wearing mine. I burn easily, in case you couldn’t tell from my gazillion freckles.”

“Same here,” I said, grateful that she’d come up with an excuse before I had to. Then we sat at the edge of the pool while Blake installed the net and Idalis smashed a ball across the water in a way that told me she was one of those competitive girls I avoided in gym class.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Ari can get on Blake’s shoulders and Leigh can get on mine and we’ll play that way. It’s more challenging.”

Leigh and Blake agreed, and I just nodded to go along. I waited while Blake finished setting up the net. His shirt was already off, and I saw that the silver chain I’d seen during Easter dinner had the same arrowhead charm that Leigh wore. The mysterious dark thing I’d seen was a tattoo on his left shoulder blade—a circle with a cross in the middle and three feathers dangling from the bottom.

“Hop on,” he said a few minutes later.

He was crouching in four feet of water. I slid my calves over his shoulders, and I was glad I hadn’t forgotten to shave my legs that morning. He gripped my ankles and I held on to his neck. His skin rubbed against my skin, and it was going to be hard to concentrate on this volleyball nonsense.

Leigh hit the ball with her fist and it came barreling toward my head. I ducked and Blake laughed, but Idalis didn’t seem happy because she was probably expecting a real game. I stayed on Blake’s shoulders while he retrieved the ball. That was the best part—just being close to him, clutching his strong shoulders with my bare thighs.

He gave me the ball and I tossed it back, but I had to do that four times before it cleared the net. Idalis was frustrated and she switched positions with Leigh, which made me nervous. She was just about to hit the ball when Blake called a time-out because his father was standing on the patio.

“What are you doing here?” Rachel asked.

She was on a lounge chair. There was a blazer draped over Mr. Ellis’s arm, and he loosened his tie. “I came to make sure the people I hired to clean this place were doing their job. I didn’t know there was a party going on.” He shaded his eyes and turned toward the pool. “Isn’t there a test tomorrow, Blake? You should have your nose in a book instead of a girl on your shoulders.”