Who Do You Love (15 page)

“Andy,” I whispered. It was like his whole body was a fist, hard and unyielding. I pressed against him, pushing my chest against his chest, fitting my head beneath his chin, until I heard that same angry sigh, like he didn't want to be near me but he couldn't make me leave.

I kissed the spot underneath his ear, kissed the hollow at the base of his neck, kissed his cheek, and pressed my cheek against his. “Please,” I whispered, and he made a sound like a nail being pulled out of wood, and bent his head down and kissed me. His lips were cool at first, but I cradled the back of his head, holding him close, opening my mouth to let his tongue touch mine. He groaned again, this time more softly, squeezing me hard, pulling me up against him until my feet left the ground. “I wish,” he whispered in my ear, and I knew what he was wishing for—to turn back time, to have it be last night, to be in a room by ourselves, a room with a bed and a door that locked.

“I'll come see you,” I promised. “I'll write.”

I felt him nod as he held me.

“You have to write back,” I said. I was crying again, as overwhelmed with happiness and hope as I'd been with sorrow. “Real letters, okay? With your tiny little handwriting.”

He set me down on my feet. “You know that bear you gave me?” When I nodded, he said, “I've still got it. I kept it, every time we moved, everywhere we went.”

My heart felt like it was overflowing, like it would burst out of my chest.

“I love you,” I said, not caring that I'd said it first. He kissed my lips, kissed my cheek, and then, so low that I could barely hear it, said, “I love you too.”

PART II

Somebody's Baby

Rachel

1995

E
ven barefoot in her kitchen, in the loose-fitting clothes that she never wore out of the house, Nana looked stylish. Her fingernails were polished, her loose linen pants were crisp, and around her left wrist she wore a silver bracelet with a black pearl set in the center, a souvenir from a long-ago trip to Tahiti.

“I'm not saying no,” she told me from her perch on the step stool. “I'm saying that it's a big decision. Your first love is important. It's part of your story. The story you'll tell yourself, the one you'll tell about yourself, for the rest of your life.” Nana had just returned from her latest trip, a three-week sojourn on a slow-moving barge that took her from Bruges to Paris, with stops at castles and vineyards, tulip fields and the formal Keukenhof garden. She'd come back with painted wooden clogs and a snow-filled glass globe with a miniature windmill
inside
. I had a snow globe from every place she'd been, from every trip she'd taken since I was born.

“I know,” I said. My face felt hot and my throat was constricted. After two years of phone calls and letters, I couldn't believe that there was a chance that Andy and I would finally see each other . . . and I was pretty sure of what would happen when we did. “He's wonderful. I'll introduce you. You'll like him. I know you will.”

“Whether I like him isn't what matters.” Her feet were bare, her toenails, as always, neatly shaped and painted. She was vain about her tiny, narrow feet with their high arches.

“His name is Andy,” I began.

“I know his name,” said Nana as she stretched to hang one of the densely patterned blue-and-white Delft plates on the wall above her stove. While she was barging, she'd had her kitchen redone. The floors were squares of creamy white marble, with matching marble countertops and a stainless-steel stove and refrigerator. It had sounded sterile and chilly when she'd described it—the white paint on the cabinets, all that gleaming metal—but there were touches of color that warmed the space. A seaglass-green vase on the table held a bunch of bright daffodils. Hanging on the walls were plates from her travels to Portugal and Italy and Greece, inlaid ceramics and glazed pottery.

“And you know where I met him, and you know we've been talking for two years.” Nana also knew that I had begged my parents to let me see him. I'd told them I would take a plane or a train, or even a bus, that I would pay for the trip with my own money, that if I stayed with Andy his mother would be there and nothing bad would happen. Finally, in utter desperation, I'd told them that they could take me to Philly themselves and chaperone us around the city, watching as we dutifully inspected the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall. They'd turned me down every time, no matter how insistently I'd asked, no matter how good I'd been. No matter how hard I'd worked to bring my math grade from a B to an A-minus, or that I was volunteering at the Playtime Project, where homeless children came to the JCC once a week to swim and play.

Senior year, I'd started campaigning for Andy to be my prom date. He had enough money to come down by bus and even stay in a hotel, but my parents refused that, too.

“There are plenty of nice boys right here in Clearview,” my mother would say from her seat at the dinner table, and my father, from his place at the head, would nod and say, “
Helen's
right,” before reaching for the platter of chicken or grilled fish. Nana was my last chance, my only hope. Graduation was a month away and she was taking me on what she called the Grand Tour—Rome and Florence, Paris and London. It had been
Andy's
suggestion that I ask if we could stop in Philadelphia first.
It's a big airport,
he'd told me.
Lots of international flights leave from here.

“He's very mature,” I told Nana. “He's got two jobs—a paper route in the morning, and then he works in a bowling alley three nights a week. He's going to Oregon on a full athletic scholarship.” None of which impressed my parents. They cared about grades and SAT scores, not about sports. When I'd asked if I could apply to Oregon, they'd told me absolutely not on that front, too. “There are plenty of good schools on this side of the country,” said my mother, without adding that not only did she want me close to home, she also wanted me close to the doctors who'd been caring for me all my life. “Helen's right,” my fathe
r
would echo, from his spot at the card table in the corner, where he did crossword puzzles and Sudoku.

Just after my eighteenth birthday, I'd threatened to go to Philadelphia on my own. I had money, all of those birthday and bat mitzvah checks adding up to more than enough for plane tickets. I was legally an adult and there was nothing they could do to stop me.

My father had called my bluff. It was the first time I could ever remember him being angry at me, truly angry, not just annoyed. Annoyance made him raise his voice. Anger, I learned, made him speak quietly and deliberately.
If you want to be independent and make your own choices,
he had told me,
then you can pay your way through college, too.
Had he meant it? I wasn't sure. But after our talk, I'd overheard him with my mother in the kitchen. She'd asked him something—I couldn't hear the words, just her voice rising at the end of the sentence—and he'd said, in a maddeningly indulgent tone,
puppy love.
I'd been so angry that I'd had to dig my nails into the flesh of my palms.

Nimbly, Nana climbed off the stool, folded it up, put it away, then sat at the table, studying me. I held my breath, enduring her scrutiny, until she gave a single, brisk nod. “We can fly through Philadelphia.”

“Oh my God, thank you,” I said, and skipped around the table to hug her, excited and a little scared that, after all this time and all this trying, it was finally going to happen, and I was finally going to see him again.

•••

On the morning of our flight, I set my alarm for 4:00 a.m., so that I'd have an hour to do my hair and makeup before the car Nana had booked pulled into our driveway. The skies were a clear, cloudless blue, my suitcase was already waiting by the front door; all that was left was for me to pile my makeup and hot rollers and the Judy Blume novel that I'd bought for the plane—
Smart Women,
not one of he
r
kids' books—into my carry-on, the purple backpack I used for school. We were booked on an early-morning flight out of Miami International, which was full of people, mothers comforting crying babies, businessmen and flight attendants towing wheeled suitcases, and the slow-moving elderly, making their way tentatively through the security check. Dressed again in linen, black pants and a black jacket with a white top underneath, Nana moved through the airport with confidence, knowing exactly where to take our bags and who to tip, and how much. She had platinum and preferred status on all of the airlines, thanks to all the ­frequent-flier miles she'd amassed, so we'd be flying first class to Philadephia, then business class to London. In our seats at the front of the plane, Nana requested water and tomato juice, declined the flight attendant's offer of a cheese omelette or fruit plate, but asked if we could both have napkins, silverware, and a plate. I watched as she unzipped her carry-on tote and removed a baguette, a small jar of honey, a chunk of soft cheese, and a bunch of green grapes.

“Never trust airline food,” she said, dividing the cheese and the bread. We ate, then Nana closed her eyes while I reread the last letter I'd received from Andy, the one I'd already folded and unfolded so many times that the paper had softened to the consistency of cotton.

Dear Rachel,

I can't believe that I'm going to get to see you, after all this time. There's so much I want you to see. I hope my neighborhood doesn't scare you. I hope you get to meet my friend, Mr. Sills, who has heard so much about you that he says he feels like he knows you already.

I have missed you so much, for so long. All I want to do is hold you, but I think I should show you the city,
too.

I will see you soon.

Andy.

I always signed my letters
love.
He usually just wrote his name. He was as stinting with that word as he was with the rest of them. My letters were long and detailed, almost like diary entries. I'd tell him what I did all day, and who had said what in English or chemistry or calculus, about the fight my brother was having with my parents over the car that he wanted that they refused to buy, and how I knew he was sneaking girls into
the house when they were out and I was at school. I'd learned to expect just a handful of sentences from Andy, but I trusted that he loved me; that every Friday night he'd be on the phone to talk and to listen.

After we'd landed and collected our luggage, Nana led me to the cab line and directed the driver to the Rittenhouse Hotel, which overlooked a lush green park full of manicured shrubs and thickly leafed trees, fountains and sculptures and beds of flowers. The park was crisscrossed with stone paths, and the paths were lined with benches. Businessmen sat eating drippy sandwiches, with their ties tossed over their shoulders, and young mothers supervised their children as they dipped their hands in the water of a long, rectangular reflecting pool.

After we'd freshened up, Nana gave me a map of the city and told me her plans. She was meeting old friends for a late lunch, then accompanying them to see the Barnes collection, out on the Main Line. Then she'd return to the room for her afternoon siesta—a custom she strongly believed Americans should adopt—and at eight o'clock we'd have dinner in the hotel.

“I want you to be careful,” she told me, winding a scarf around her neck. “You're a beautiful young lady, and you're old enough to know your own mind, but you haven't seen this boy in years. You might find that you don't feel the same way about him that you did two summers ago.”

“I do,” I said . . . but the truth was, I'd wondered about that myself. What if he didn't look good or smell good, the way he had in Atlanta? What if I looked at him and just saw an ordinary guy?

Nana kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand. I checked myself in the mirror—the long white eyelet sundress with the tiered skirt that I'd bought, and my new boots, ankle high with a low heel, pale-blue leather with embroidered birds and flowers in turquoise and silver and pink. Cowgirl boots had been the fad at my school, and I'd asked for and received my pair for Chanukah. I glossed my lips, gave my hair a final spritz of spray, then took the elevator to the lobby and stepped out the door.

There was a fountain in front of the hotel. At its center was a bronze sculpture of a slender girl in an ankle-length dress, balanced on one foot like she was running. Andy was waiting in front of the fountain, in a plain blue T-shirt and jeans. His hair was still short, but he looked bigger, more solid and adult than I'd remembered, as he raised a hand in greeting and his lips formed my name.

I had imagined a scene where I'd throw myself into his arms, where he'd lift me up, holding me against him, raining kisses down on my face. The reality was more awkward, with the two of us looking but not touching, not quite meeting each other's eyes. Even with all the letters, all the calls, so much time had gone by. His shoulders had filled out; his back looked broader; his face looked even less like a boy's face, more like a man's. “You look pretty,” he said shyly. He started to reach for my hand, then stopped and reached up to tug gently at a curl. I was the one who took his hand and pulled him close, playfully bumping my hip against his, feeling something inside of me start to unclench as I thought,
This will be fine
.

“Are you hungry?” he asked. Up in the hotel room, I had been, but now the logistics of having a meal—finding a place, ordering the food, chewing, swallowing, paying the bill—seemed overwhelming and endless, fraught with dozens of possibilities for potential shame. What if I spilled something, or he made dumb jokes with the waitress, the way my great-uncle Si sometimes did? (“It's too bad a nice place like this doesn't allow tipping” was one of his favorites.)

“Are you? Hungry?” I asked Andy.

“I'm kind of always hungry,” he said, and I smiled, remembering the way my brother used to come home from school, take a mixing bowl, fill it with cereal, dump in a quart of milk, and eat the whole thing, and then follow it up with an enormous dinner an hour and a half later. “Come on,” he said.

We walked down Walnut Street, past blocks of fancy shops, and crossed Broad, which, Andy explained, was the city's major thoroughfare. “Every May they shut down the street and there's a race, the Broad Street Run. It's ten miles long.”

“Have you ever done it?”

He smiled at me. “I won the eighteen-and-under age division last year.”

“Of course that's only because I didn't enter.”

“Oh, you,” he said, the way he'd said it in Atlanta, before the horrible fight with Bethie. I pulled him close and stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, feeling beautiful as the wind swirled my dress around my ankles.

The Reading Terminal was filled with hundreds of people, dozens of stands, and all kinds of mouthwatering smells—cinnamon rolls and doughnuts, pork sandwiches and roast turkey, falafel and gyros and dumplings. Andy and I walked past the places that sold Greek food and Mexican food, deli and sushi. Then he found us a table and asked what I wanted. “I don't know,” I said. “It all looks so good.”

“I'll surprise you,” he said, and came back in ten minutes with a roast pork sandwich with greens and sharp provolone, two warm pretzels, glistening with butter, and a quart of soup filled with noodles and dumplings. “A little of everything,” he said, and even though I thought I would be nervous or feel awkward, the sandwich was so delicious that I devoured half of it, then wiped my mouth and daintily dipped a chunk of pretzel into the cup of honey mustard that had come with it. “Better than the Home Free stuff,” he said, and I said, “Oh, God, remember those sandwiches?”