The Fine Art of Truth or Dare (5 page)

“Hey, Romeo. I've been calling you for, like, five minutes. Did you lose your phone again?”

Amanda Alstead was catwalking down the hall, hips and hair swinging. A half step behind her were, as always, Anna and Hannah. They all glided to a swishy stop next to Alex. I could tell the instant Amanda saw me. Her smile wavered for a nanosecond, then went sharp.

“Oh. You. Did you fall down?” she asked, so sweet.

“I'm sitting.”

Someone, either Anna or Hannah, like it mattered, stifled a giggle.

“Sitting. Okaaay.” Hannah, angelic in a fuzzy white sweater, looked down her button nose at me. “Things a little . . . challenging for you these days?”

Alex's feet were still so close that I could have bumped his toes with mine. He didn't say anything. When I darted a glance up, I saw that he wasn't even looking at me. He was staring at the wall. He looked bored.

Amanda tossed her hair back, displaying a column of perfect pale skin. “You know, if you need to talk about . . . problems, I've worked on the school crisis line since freshman year.”

I could almost see the graphic bubble over her evil goddess head:
Knowledge is power, and I know everything.
I couldn't think of a single person I would be less likely to confide in. With the Hannandas of the world, it was no wonder I talked to Edward.

“It's all completely confidential.” Another hair toss, more perfect skin.

If I decide to use what I hear,
the bubble read
, believe me, I will, and I'll still come out smelling like a rose.

“I'm fine,” I managed, the two words coming painfully through my tight throat.

“Because mistakes like drugs and alcohol,” she went on, as if I hadn't spoken, “. . . whatever . . . can have even more damaging consequences than just loss of memory and motor functions. I mean, you can seriously screw up your whole life with a few bad choices.”

Like talking to my boyfriend.

I got it already.

“I'm fine,” I repeated.

“Whatever. I'm just trying to help.” She exchanged looks with her attendant duo.
What did I expect, trying to be nice to a loser?
“Come on. I hate this hallway. It's like something out of a bad horror movie.”

They went, Alex and the Hannandas.

Anna hadn't said a single word. That wasn't surprising. Anna hadn't talked to me in more than two years, since our first day at Willing. That wouldn't be surprising to anyone at the school, either, unless they learned that Annamaria Flavia Lombardi and I had known each other since infancy and had, through our Sacred Heart middle-school years, even been pretty good friends, part of a group of a half-dozen girls who moved as a happy, woolly pack. Even when her dad's building business started mushrooming and her mom arrived one day to pick her up from school in a huge, sparkling Escalade, we stayed friends. We took the Willing entrance tests together, joked about burning our Sacred Heart uniforms in the courtyard trash can.

Then, the July before freshman year, Annamaria disappeared. It turned out she was in Loveladies, at the Jersey Shore, in her new five-bedroom beach-block house, two streets down from the Alsteads' eight-bedroom beachfront house. In September, it was Anna Lombardi who arrived at Willing, tan and skinny, paying the full tuition, and dealing in gossip.

I suspect it was Anna who brought “Freddy” to Willing. Of course, I can't prove it, and I'll never ask, but it's the only explanation that makes sense. In a school where almost everyone has lots of money, gossip is killer currency. Anna shucked South Philly and her past as easily as her Sacred Heart plaid skirt. And burned it all, like bridges, without a single backward glance.

She didn't look back—none of them did—as they walked away, Amanda twining herself around Alex and her flunkies following behind. Why would they look? There was nothing to see.

7

THE HISTORY

From
Incomplete: The Life and Art of Edward Willing
, by Ash Anderson. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983:

 

September 7

Hotel Ritz

Paris

 

Dearest Spring
⁽¹²⁾
,

What biblical plagues shall I bring upon myself should I begin a letter cursing my parents? Shall we have cockroaches in our basement? Hurricanes lifting the tiles from our roof in August? Water that runs rusty-red from our pipes? But wait, we have those things already! You should well know, having picked beetle legs from your brushes. Aunt Edie, of course, beetles her brow and says nothing.
⁽¹³⁾
O Philadelphia, what domestic adversities lie beneath your stately edifices.

So, to hell with them, my love.

I am entirely serious. Why should you care that my parents think you beneath me?
⁽¹⁴⁾
We know better, you and I. We know that you are to me as champagne to beer—superior in every way. Yes, I know your soft heart would like all to be flowers and frolicking kittens, but my nature is such that I will think of the wasps and fleas. How perfect a pair we are, beloved Train,
⁽¹⁵⁾
completely unlike in such complementary ways.

So my father loathes your lack of fortune? How fortunate that generations of unhappy intermarriage have given my family more money than can possibly be good for it. There is irony, too, in my mother scorning your lack of domestic skills when she has not so much as arranged a flower in twenty years. There is a housekeeper, a maid, a poor relation or two to do everything for her, including, I would imagine, pore through a Roget's to find adequate words to express her disapproval. There are not words enough in heaven and earth to express my devotion.

Shall I try a few, darling Post?
⁽¹⁶⁾
Immeasurable, mythic, dizzying? Boundless, fierce, orange? Passionate? Occasionally quite painful?

I wake every morning, wishing you were beside me. I then pass the better part of the morning wishing you wished you were beside me when I awake. Yes, yes, I know, and I would beg your pardon if I felt any less impatient. December is far too far away.

My love, My Love, is eternally yours.

Edward

 

(From the private Willing Archive, courtesy of the Sheridan-Brown Museum of Modern Art, Philadelphia. Reprinted with permission.)

 

Notes

Chapter 11 (cont.)

(12) In his early letters to Diana, Edward addresses her by a variety of names, including “Spring,” “Penelope,” and “Cab.” There is no documented explanation or key, and most suggestions, including that in which the names were derived from newspaper stories of the day (Hearst, 1946), have been debunked. In her letters, both before and during their marriage, Diana most often addresses Edward as “Darling Clod.”

(13) (14) Diana Drummond was descended from a respectable Scottish family. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the family fortunes had been so depleted that her father, James, a third son, chose to emigrate. He landed in Philadelphia in 1864 and, in partnership with fellow Scot Gordon Gibson, became a grocer. By 1912, Drummond and Gibson's, under the management of the founders' sons, was the third largest grocery business on the East Coast (now, as D&G's, it has over twelve hundred stores, in eight countries), but in 1887 was still a small, if successful, local business. Diana Drummond, then eighteen, took a post as art teacher in the school founded by Edward's aunt Edith Willing Castor. It is assumed that she and Edward met that year during one of his visits home to Philadelphia from abroad. By January 1889, their engagement was official, much to the unconcealed distress of his parents. In a letter to her sister, Maude Pugh Willing referred to Diana's father as “that fishmonger.”

(15) See (12).

(16) See (12).

• • •

From the article “Diamonds on the Muse,” in
Jouel Magazine
, Issue 137, September 1999:

. . . In the spring and summer of 1889, Willing was in France. While the majority of the eleven weeks was spent in Aix-en-Provence, studying with Cézanne, he did stay for a period at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. It was during that time that he purchased a twenty-carat diamond-and-platinum bracelet from Cartier.

While Willing records show that Edward purchased many fine pieces for his wife during the course of their marriage, mostly from such purveyors as Tiffany in New York and J. E. Caldwell in Philadelphia, the bracelet was clearly a favorite piece. It figures prominently in six portraits of Diana Willing (including, perhaps most notably, the scandalous
Troie
) painted by her husband, as well as numerous photographs.

On the death of his wife in 1899, Edward gave the bracelet to her niece Julia Drummond Jones, who subsequently moved to California. In 1954, it was acquired in a private sale by baseball legend Joe DiMaggio as a gift for his wife, actress Marilyn Monroe. It appears in many photographs of the couple during their brief marriage, and occasionally on Marilyn thereafter, and remained in her possession until her death in 1962. As part of her estate, it was bequeathed to her friend Lee Strasberg, and is part of the collection to be sold at auction at Christie's, New York, next month. Bidding is expected to begin at $70,000.

“Marilyn would be horrified,” a close friend of the actress who wishes to remain unnamed insisted over the phone from her home in Beverly Hills. “She never intended for her things to be sold, especially not to benefit Lee's wife! Marilyn specifically asked that her belongings be distributed among her friends. She promised me a Cartier ring, from the diamond bee collection . . .”

• • •

“Is everything really about money?” I asked Edward later that night as I tried, yet again, to think of something to write about Paris for my homework assignment that wouldn't (a) show just how mediocre my French was and (b) make it glaringly obvious, yet again, that I was one of oh, maybe, four students at Willing who'd never been.

He gave a short laugh. “I rather think so. And passion, occasionally. All great acts in history, and all dastardly ones, seem to have been motivated by one or the other.”

“Oh, come on.
All?
”

“You're a student of history, Miss Marino.” He jerked his chin at the untidy pile of papers I'd shoved to the side of my desk in favor of Paris. “What does it say?”

“I am a student of
art
history,” I corrected him. “And this is my honors project, which, I feel compelled to remind you, is all about you.”

“Your choice,” he shot back. “With all that glorious oeuvre that is
le maître
Cézanne . . .
C'est dommage
.” He pretends to think I could have made better use of my time and options. But there's nothing modest about Edward. I'm convinced he is tickled black and white that I'm writing about him, even if his expression in the postcard doesn't show it. “Try anyway. Aunt Edie always found history of unnecessarily great importance, especially if there was a Willing involved in it somehow. I'm sure they feed it to you with a trowel at that school.”

“Fine. How about 1066. The Battle of Hastings.”

“Too easy, Ella. France wanted England, and all the wealth it would bring.”

“The Emancipation Proclamation?”

“Noble as Lincoln was, it all came down to the fact that the South couldn't survive without slave labor. The Proclamation only freed the slaves in the South, after all.”

I thought for a second. “The moon landing. Gotcha.”

“What? You believe there is ever exploration for the sake of anything other than money?”

“We're not exactly raking in the lunar bucks these days,” I said dryly.

“Ah, but NASA and the White House had no way of knowing that forty years ago. I expect they had visions of holiday resorts with private suites owned by Aristotle Onassis and Bill Gates.”

“Bill Gates was, like, my age then. He was an unknown quantity.”

“Your point?” Edward yawned.

“What do you know about 1969, anyway? It was after your time.”

“I know everything.” He gave me that sleepy-eyed smile of his. “Love or money, I'm afraid.”

“Great,” I sighed, unable
not
to think about Alex and trips to Europe and the Hannandas with their Prada bags. “The two things that show absolutely no hint of ever coming my way. Shoot me now.”

“I can't, darling girl. No arms. Besides, even if I had the ability, I would never do such a thing. It would be dastardly. And . . .”

“And?”

“Ah, Ella. Fond of you as I am, there is no passion in my feelings.”

“Love or money,” I droned.

“Love or money,” Edward agreed.

8

THE MENU

“My sister taught me the best trick. When the salesclerk isn't looking, you make Sharpie marks on the front of all the others so no one else will buy them. I mean, how embarrassing would it be to have someone else show up at the dance wearing the same dress! This way, I know I'll be the only one.”

“God, I wouldn't have the guts. What if you got caught!”

The Sharpie-wielding Phillite shrugged. “I would put them all on my dad's card. But then I wouldn't be able to buy the Manolos . . .”

She and her impressed friends headed down the hall. Frankie banged his locker closed with unnecessary force. “Mind-boggling,” he muttered. “All that money, and they can't buy a clue.”

Around us, there was a nearly tangible hum of excitement. The theme for the Fall Ball had been announced at assembly. Straight from the minds of the intrepid Bees who make up the dance committee, this year on Halloween, we would all officially be in “Davy Jones's Locker.”

For the next two weeks, there would be no rest for the weary. Many a Bee Girl and Boy, not to mention a few Stars and even a handful of Phillites, would be working like ants to get the school ready. As far as Sadie, Frankie, and I were concerned, the best part of it all was that, for the week leading up to the dance, there would be no gym class. Apparently, it would take the Decorating Committee that long to turn the gym into an underwater paradise.

“Correct me if I'm wrong,” Frankie told us, working on the principle that he is never wrong, “but isn't Davy Jones's Locker the
antithesis
of an underwater paradise: all drowned sailors and sea demons?”

It actually wasn't a bad theme for a Halloween dance. It was infinitely better than last year's “Sleepy Hollow,” also chosen by the Johnny Depp fan brigade, which turned out to be a tactical disaster, with too many headless freshmen banging into one another. This brought to mind ghost pirates, skeletons, monkfish. But so far, the chatter was all about smuggling rum into the school (senior Phillite boys) or mermaid costumes (no fewer than thirty girls across the social spectrum). Which meant, of course, that these girls would appear in the minuscule shimmery dresses that seemed to be in every shop window lately—or, more likely, tiny, embellished bikini tops with minuscule shimmery skirts. I wondered what lucky boutique would be most Sharpied, Willing's apparent alternative to toilet, papering trees on Halloween.

“Oh, God,” Sadie groaned. “Swimsuits!”

This would be the third year that she would try halfheartedly to keep her mother unaware that there even was a Fall Ball, let alone the theme. But there was no question that Mrs. Winslow would get the info somehow, probably within six hours of the announcement. It didn't matter that she was presently in the Caribbean. She was connected. By morning, she would be on the phone to someone in New York or Paris or Milan, finding the perfect costume for her daughter.

The last one was a historically accurate replica of an eighteenth-century dress, appropriate to rural New York State gentility, no less. It had possessed a wig, corset, and padded butt. Sadie, itchy and unable to breathe, let alone eat or drink or shake her extended booty, had spent the four hours of the dance sitting in a dark corner. I, dressed in a high-necked, tattered, and “blood”-splattered white dress and veil (Bride of the Headless Horseman), sat with her. Frankie'd had a date, a beautiful blond boy he'd met at PrideFest, who came dressed as Cupid, in little more than white boxers. (“What?” Frankie had defended him. “They put cherubs on everything in 1790!”)

“She'll find me a tail made of real fish scales,” Sadie predicted now, only half kidding, “with its own free-floating pond. Or an authentic Japanese pearl diver outfit from Okinawa. For once, one time, couldn't the theme just be ‘Halloween'? I could do witchy. Witchy is easy.”

“Witchy is not sufficiently sexy,” I said, watching as Amanda held two shell-shaped paper cutouts in front of her breasts, making every guy within twenty feet start panting, and laying her claim early on mermaid-dom. “Be a siren.”

Frankie pushed his tweed cap back on his head and actually gave a whistle. “Marino, you are brilliant. That is
exactly
what Sadie should be. A siren.”

“What do sirens look like?” she demanded, more than a tad suspicious.

“Mermaids,” Frankie and I said together. “No, no. No scowling!” he scolded her. “It's what they
do
that's important. Phone, please.” He held out his hand. Sadie gave a furtive glance around the hall. The three faculty members on dismissal duty were all busy stalking Bees for contraband electronics. We, as usual, were invisible. “Oh, please. It's three thirty-three. Phone!” Sadie passed over her iPhone. Seconds later, Frankie waved it in our faces with a flourish. “Voilà. Sirens.”

He'd Wiki'd. Some were beautiful women with Amanda Alstead boobs and mermaid tails. Some were beautiful women with feathered wings and no tails at all. Some, apparently, were manatees.

“Great. I'll be a manatee. I can wear my own clothes.” Sadie was wearing the gray sweater again. I'm not sure she was entirely kidding about the costume. “At least I'll be able to breathe.”

“Shut up.” Frankie waved her into silence and read out loud,
“‘A siren's sole purpose was to enchant. On hearing a siren's song, men would unquestioningly fling themselves into the sea, caring for nothing but the sound of the last notes as they drowned.'
You, madam, should be a siren.”

“No tail,” Sadie said firmly. “No singing.”

“What lame sort of siren is that?” Frankie demanded.

She gave him a humorless smile. “Asked and answered, counselor.”

Frankie rolled his eyes. “Mind-boggling.
Et tu
, Marino? Shall you also go the low and cowardly route? Or will you, for a second, consider showing off that hot little bod? Work that tail.”

“Ick.” The idea of baring any part of me was almost comical. I thought of a high-necked, tattered, blood-spattered dress and veil. “Bride of Davy Jones?”

“Why do I bother?”

Frankie was thwarted in his impulse to flounce off by a trio of effortlessly cool senior girls walking by. Like everyone else, they were talking about the dance. “As long as we keep the music out of Adam's hands . . . Hey, maybe we can get Genghis Khan's Marmot to play!”

“Or the Razor Apples. How sick would that be!”

“Edith would roll!”

I knew the middle girl, tall and pretty with metallic gold streaks in her hair, and band buttons all over her Union Jack messenger bag. I didn't recognize any of the band names. She, however, recognized me.

She paused. “Hey, Ella.”

“Hi, Cat.”

“How's life with Edward?”

“Complicated,” I answered. “JMW?”

“Sketchy. Thanks for asking.” She grinned and waved as they moved on.

Cat Vernon and I have AP art history together. She's doing her honors project on J. M. W. Turner portraits. “He didn't do nearly enough of them,” she told me cheerfully when I once suggested that she might be confusing one painter named Turner with another. Cat's the sort of person who is nice, even to people who say incredibly stupid things to her. She's also the kind of person who wouldn't find it necessary to mention that her boyfriend's family owns several Turner paintings, including two portraits. I knew only because I heard her explaining to Ms. Evers where the images came from.

I don't think she has conversations with Turner. She doesn't seem the type. And she has the English boyfriend.

“. . . I'm thinking maybe we should go as the Monkees,” she was announcing to her friends. “You know, Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz . . .
‘Oh, what can it mean, to a daydream believer and a homecoming queen . . .'”
she sang as they rounded the corner. She can't sing. Which clearly doesn't faze her in the least.

I envy Cat. I want to be Cat. Last year, she and her friends wore silk pajamas to the Sleepy Hollow dance. They looked a little sleepy and totally glamorous, like thirties movie stars.

I wouldn't have admitted it to either of my friends, but I'd sort of enjoyed the two Fall Balls I'd been to. It was a little like watching the Oscars pregame show: Hollywood royalty walking the red carpet in over-the-top gowns and tuxes. Only I was watching a strangely hypnotizing combination of kiddie dress-up and opening night at the Met.

Now the hall was filled with a combo TGIF/party-hearty cheer. As we made our way toward the front doors, I listened to sound bites of people's weekend plans.

“. . . party at Harrison's . . . parents are in Munich . . .”

“. . . watch Teigh Bowen on YouTube. Omigod, so cute!”

“The Razor Apples are playing at the Rotunda!”

“I gotta pick up some condoms.”

“. . . Rag & Bone trunk sale . . .”

Sadie, Frankie, and I would do what we did nearly every weekend: Java Company for coffee and bagels. Maybe Chloe's. Head House Books. Deconstructing Frankie's last date with him, when he had one. Sunday at the art museum if I could drag one or both of them with me. Otherwise, we'd just sklathe in front of one of the Winslows' numerous plasma screens.

“Have you even heard of the Razor Apples?” I asked.

Neither had. “Rag & Bone, however . . .” Frankie sighed. “Ah, what fabulous damage I could do with Rich and Clueless Daddy's platinum card.”

I tend not to think about it too much, the music we've never heard of, clothes we can't afford. Frankie likes the odd sarcastic aside, but I know it goes deeper than that. I know his dream castle includes a walk-in closet with floor-to-ceiling sweater shelves. Sadie keeps her mouth shut. She isn't overly concerned with either, but knows better than to say anything. There's little in life quite so obnoxious as hearing “God, I couldn't care less what I put on!” from a girl wearing four-hundred-dollar shoes and a Cartier watch.

“Anyone want to go to South Street?” she asked as we hit the pavement. “I would kill for a slice at Lorenzo's.”

Sadie's mother was in St. Bart's for another ten days. Sadie was staying with her dad, who, between work and an endless string of much younger girlfriends, rarely got home before eleven. His usual method of feeding his daughter during these visits is to leave twenty-dollar bills and take-out menus scattered over the otherwise unused kitchen counter. Her mother, after every trip, goes on a weeklong rant about how each time Sadie stays with her dad, she gains five pounds. This time, Mr. Winslow had persuaded whatever stick insect he was dating at the moment to stock the freezer.

“It was only one pound last time,” Sadie grumbled. “And I lost it in three days. I've been subsisting on Lean Cuisine grilled chicken for two weeks now. I need pizza.”

I would have gone, but I was broke. And as happy as Sadie always is to pay, I really really hate letting her do it.

Frankie answered before I could. “Can't. It's a family-dinner night. Mom's making
chap chae
, and she will go ballistic if I'm not there.”

Frankie's mom is big on family dinners, even if she can only get both her sons in one place once or twice a week. It's not that Frankie and Daniel don't like each other; they do. It's just that their lives are so completely different. Frankie has Willing and me and Sadie and his string of pretty boys. Daniel goes to a public high school, hangs out in parts of the city I've never even been to, and has . . . well, I'm never sure what he has beyond tattoos and some dodgy friends.

Sadie looked hopeful, but we all knew no invitation was forthcoming. Frankie's mom is a seriously private person; they're a private family. I've been to their apartment only once. It's really small, scarily clean, and the room that Frankie and Daniel share smelled like a taxi. “Disgusting, I know,” Frankie muttered, wrinkling his nose. I wouldn't have said anything. “Dan smokes; Mom yells. Then she sprays.” We left soon after and went to Chloe's.

Family dinners for us happen exactly twice a year: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Every other day, Marino's is open, and most of the family is there, together, serving dinner to other people's families. Our two holiday family get-togethers inevitably involve many assorted Marinos and Palladinettis eating way too much, and at least three good screaming matches, which aren't necessarily angry. With Thanksgiving approaching, I quietly hoped this would finally be the year I wouldn't find myself at the children's table.

Sadie spent last Christmas at an Ayurvedic spa with her mother, who gave her a gym membership and a diamond Om pendant.

“We had lentils for two” was all Sadie needed to say beyond that.

I took pity on her now. “Come with me. I'm sure Dad will make you a pizza.”

Not that I was in any great hurry to go home. Wedding plans had gone into overdrive in the past week, along with the drama. I'd taken to waving through the back door of the restaurant before fleeing home to PB&J and silence.

We stayed at school long enough for me to conjugate, excruciatingly slowly, many irregular French verbs and a few regular ones (
Elle a le cafard . . .
)
,
for Sadie to do her math homework, and for Frankie and me to copy most of it. By the time Saddie and I got to my street, the air was cold and pizza was very appealing.

For a change, everything at Marino's seemed remarkably peaceful. As always, the kitchen greeted Sadie with delight. “Serafina!” Dad shouted, his pet name for her that makes her giggle. He was chopping a huge pile of garlic with a careless speed that always makes my fingers tense up. I could see a row of dough balls resting on the counter behind him, one already flattened into a disk.

“You're in luck,” I told her. Then, to my father, “Sadie needs pizza. They're starving her at her place.”

“Criminal.” He scowled and chopped harder. “Gotta feed the young brain. So, what appeals, ladies? Sausage and mushroom? Meatballs? Peppers? The works?”