Other Words for Love

by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  At that moment I wondered how other women spoke to their daughters. Did they refer to sex as a screw, and did they tell their future sons-in-law not to think with what was in their pants? This was one time I wished she could be more Catholic, that she could be one of those devout ladies who deluded themselves into thinking their daughters were going to save themselves for their wedding night. Those women would never initiate a conversation like this.

  Why did she have to spoil everything? This was the first time a guy had shown the slightest interest and she had to go and get practical. I didn’t want to hear about realistic things like ending up pregnant.

  “We’re not doing anything” was all I could say.

  Mom scrunched her mouth into a skeptical smirk. “Not at the moment. But a twenty-year-old who looks like that,” she said, pointing toward the dishwasher as if Blake was standing there, “isn’t exactly a virgin.”

  I made the same noise that Summer had when she thought I was dating Del—the blech and ick and ugh combination. “Really, Mom,” I said, amazed at how casually she used embarrassing words. But I couldn’t argue because she wasn’t wrong.

  “Ariadne,” she said. “I was young once too. I know what goes on. Now, if you want to go out with Blake, that’s fine with me as long as you keep your grades up and you don’t get serious. But remember, high school will be over before you know it and there are plenty of fish in the sea—you don’t want to get stuck with the first one.”

  She was so sensible, so cynical, it was really depressing. I wanted to say that I’d love to get stuck with Blake, that I didn’t care about the other fish in the sea, but there was no point. She’d just tell me that I was young and naive and that she knew best. Don’t be so pessimistic, Mom, I thought. Things don’t always turn out wrong.

  “Besides,” she went on, “you’ve taken Sex Ed—you know about AIDS. There’s no way to tell who’s got it. So you just make sure he keeps his jeans zipped and everything will be fine. He’ll respect you more that way, anyhow.”

  AIDS, respect … she really knew how to complicate things. I just nodded and Mom smiled, reaching across the table to rub my cheek. She did it sort of the way Blake did—like I was something special.

  fifteen

  The rest of April and half of May drifted along as innocently as the old Andy Hardy movies Dad watched on TV, starring Mickey Rooney as the boyfriend and Judy Garland as the girlfriend, holding hands in an all-American town with picket fences and cherry blossoms. Blake and I saw each other on Friday and Saturday nights but never during the week, because he had to stay on the dean’s list and I couldn’t fall off the honor roll. We went to the movies and to dinner, and the amount of time that Blake considered it nice to kiss kept growing.

  Then it was the middle of May. Finals were coming and Hollister cut the school day in half on Wednesdays so we’d have time to study, although it seemed that I was the only one who actually did.

  Leigh rarely showed her face at Hollister anymore—I figured she was busy getting ready for her move to California—but I saw her when she came to art class and when I went to Ellis family functions with Blake. Summer wasn’t around much either, because she always sped off in Casey’s BMW to activities that were more fun than studying.

  It was on one of those Wednesdays that Blake parked his Corvette outside Hollister’s iron gates. I didn’t even see him at first. I was carrying a heavy stack of books and chatting with Summer; she stopped and gazed out at the street.

  “Ooh,” she said. “Who is that?”

  I squinted from the sunshine and noticed she was looking at Blake like she wanted to tear off his clothes and slide underneath him. Or climb on top of him. Or let him get behind her, because she had told me she’d tried that position with Casey and it was strangely exciting.

  “That’s Blake,” I told her, smiling and fighting the urge to skip.

  “Oh my God you’re kidding me,” she said.

  I shot her a hurt glance. Oh my God you’re kidding me. She said it really fast, as if the six words were only one. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, even though I knew. She meant that Blake was filet mignon and I was Spam, and those two things couldn’t possibly go together.

  “Nothing,” she said, squeezing my arm like she was sorry. “That came out wrong. I just mean he’s really cute. You’re a lucky girl all of a sudden.”

  The sun was behind her head and it lit her hair into a golden halo. Her eye shadow sparkled, her lip gloss shimmered. She was gorgeous and it made me nervous. I didn’t want her anywhere near Blake; I was sure she could take him away if she wanted to.

  We walked toward the street, where Blake was leaning against his car in jeans and a Yankees T-shirt.

  “This is my friend Summer Simon,” I said, pretending I wasn’t the most insecure person alive. “She’s a big Yankees fan.”

  “Don Mattingly,” she said. “Love him.”

  They started talking about other Yankees—Rickey Henderson and Mike Pagliarulo and whoever else. I couldn’t join the conversation because I knew nothing about baseball.

  “Pleasure meeting you,” Blake said when Casey’s car showed up.

  Summer smiled. “You too. We’ll have to do a double date sometime.”

  Don’t count on it, I thought when Blake and I were in the Corvette. “What did you think of Summer?” I asked, trying to keep my voice free of envy, worry, and all the other pathetic emotions I loathed myself for feeling.

  He stopped at a red light. “She seemed nice.”

  I nodded. He hit the gas and I looked out the window, at the Metropolitan Museum with its giant columns and sweeping steps.

  “Do you think she’s pretty?” I asked. I used a casual voice, like I didn’t care about the answer.

  “Yeah,” he said. “She’s very pretty.”

  I stared through the windshield. “I know. Everyone thinks so.”

  I kept thinking about Blake and Summer, how they might get to know each other better at Ellis & Hummel while Summer and Tina catered Mr. Ellis’s business meetings and forget all about me. Then Blake reached over and turned my face toward his.

  “You’re much prettier,” he said. “Than she is, I mean.”

  I almost said You’re full of crap, but I didn’t think he was. And I had never thought I’d find someone who would tell me that I was prettier than Summer Simon. So I didn’t say anything—I just kept quiet and enjoyed it.

  “Where are we going?” I asked a few minutes later as we were leaving Manhattan.

  “You still haven’t shown me your drawings,” he said.

  So we went to my house. My empty house. Mom was at school and Dad was at the precinct or collecting evidence or whatever it was he did to nab murderers. I opened a few windows on the first floor since Dad still hadn’t installed those air-conditioning units, but Blake didn’t seem to mind that the place was stuffy or that we didn’t have our own elevator. He seemed comfortable. So I felt comfortable giving him a full tour of the living room and the dining room and the kitchen, where he saw Evelyn’s Polaroid. Mom had taken more pictures that day—Kieran riding his tricycle, Shane in his crib—and they were stuck to the refrigerator with Mom’s magnets that had corny sayings such as BLESS THIS NEST and SHOOT FOR THE STARS.

  “Those are my nephews,” I said.

  “They’re beautiful,” Blake answered, and he mentioned again that it was a good thing to be a young parent.

  “Evelyn was barely eighteen when she had Kieran,” I said, because I’d known Blake long enough to stop keeping my sister’s secrets. “That’s way too young.”

  He nodded. “Twenty isn’t, though. I’ll be twenty-one in November and I’m wasting my life at NYU while I could be enjoying all of this.” He waved his finger at the Polaroids.

  “You’re not wasting your life,” I said.

  He smiled at me. He smiled as if I made him feel good. He also cradled my face in his hands and asked again to see my drawings.

  Then we climbed th
e stairs. I opened the windows in my studio as the floor creaked beneath our feet and an ambulance siren wailed in the distance. I felt nervous and twitchy and afraid that Blake might think I had no talent. Or he might tease or criticize, and that would just pulverize me into dust.

  “I don’t want to bore you with this stuff,” I said, turning toward the door.

  He caught my arm. “You’re not boring me, Ari. Let me see.”

  I went slowly. Blake sat at my easel and I pulled things out of the closet—big sheets of paper and paint-splattered canvases. I showed him what had won me the second-place ribbon in the boroughwide art contest and even the hands on my sketch pad, because he was attentive and interested and that filled me with trust. He agreed with Mom that I could become a successful artist and I shook my head.

  “You have to be extremely talented for that,” I said, leaning against a wall.

  He tilted backward in his chair. “And what do you think you are?”

  I was flattered. Then we talked. I told him about my college plans and my career plans, and he said he just wanted to be a fireman with a comfortable little house and a bunch of unruly kids, and he hated the thought of working at Ellis & Hummel this summer. He’d rather quit college right now and take the FDNY entrance exam.

  “So why don’t you?” I asked.

  “Because certain things are expected of me. And family is important,” he said, which I completely understood. I nodded and we talked for a while longer, and then we were both startled by a deafening noise.

  It was those stickball-playing kids. They had broken a window. Blake and I rushed down the hall and saw shattered glass covering my bedroom floor. I looked outside and saw three boys scatter in different directions. Two of them were in Mom’s class and they were probably scared to death.

  “They’re in for it now,” I said, picturing them cowering in corners when Mrs. Mitchell called their parents tonight. Then I crouched down and examined a long, jagged shard.

  “Don’t touch that,” Blake said. “Where’s your vacuum?”

  I pointed to the hall closet. He used the vacuum to suck up the countless broken pieces, conscientiously checking the carpet for strays because he didn’t want me to get a nasty surprise while I was barefoot.

  He cared about me. I was sure of it. I thanked him and he said he should leave because Mom might be home soon and if she found us alone together, she’d think it wasn’t nice.

  “She won’t be back for another two hours,” I said, draping my arms around his neck. I kissed him and he kissed me and the next thing I knew, I was lying on my neatly made bed and Blake was lying on me. I wrapped my legs around his waist. I heard sparrows chirping outside and nothing felt wrong, not even when he unbuttoned my blouse. He slid his hand inside and everything still seemed nice until his fingers moved to the clasp on my bra. I remembered my defective breasts and my talk with Mom, and I pushed him away.

  “I can’t,” I said.

  Our eyes were open now. His cheeks were flushed and he spoke in a patient voice. “Why?” he asked.

  I held my shirt closed. “Because I’m kind of … uneven. Up here, I mean.”

  “No way. You’re perfect.”

  I was not. But he made me feel a little better. “I still can’t,” I said, and I told him about Evelyn and about Mom. I also mentioned the shadowy virus that hid in unknown places and dragged people six feet underground. “I want you to respect me,” I added, which was as true as everything else.

  He nodded and sat up, and I sat next to him. “What about your other boyfriend?” he asked, and I had to stop myself from saying “What other boyfriend?” I just shook my head and he assumed things. “So it wasn’t like that, then. Because most girls today …”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know. Unfortunately I’m different from most girls.”

  I fiddled with an embroidered rose on the new bedspread that Mom had bought for me at JCPenney last week. I was waiting for him to leave, to go out and find a girl like Summer—a girl who had experience with various positions. But he just pushed a wisp of hair from my eyes and smiled.

  “You’re better than most girls. And all of this,” he said, glancing at my bed, “it’s okay if you love somebody. So I can wait until you feel that way.”

  All of this. He knew how to talk about sex a lot more delicately than Mom did. What he didn’t know was that I loved him already.

  There was a murder on Memorial Day. An entire family in Hell’s Kitchen. The precinct called Dad at noon and he rushed off to work. Mom wasn’t happy about it. We were in the middle of loading her Honda with a Budweiser-filled cooler and she got surly. She cursed and mumbled under her breath while we drove alone to Queens, as if those six people had some nerve to get stabbed to death on a holiday.

  Blake was supposed to be here. The guest list for Patrick and Evelyn’s party included their neighbors and Patrick’s firefighter friends, and Blake had been invited too, but he had called last night and said he’d be a few hours late. Mr. Ellis was throwing his own party and Blake couldn’t get out of it.

  “That was a shitty thing to do,” Mom said. “Bail out at the last minute.”

  She was in a rotten mood. But I wasn’t the least bit upset about Blake. I couldn’t criticize a guy who looked like that and was willing to wait for what he could easily get from any number of girls every day of the week.

  I’d given in a little. I was sure that he cared about me and respected me, so it seemed okay to sneak him into my bedroom on Wednesday afternoons, where we talked and laughed and kissed on my bedspread, and I didn’t push his hands away when they went inside my shirt. But that was as far as I would go, and Blake never did anything that made me say I can’t.

  “He didn’t bail out, Mom,” I said. “He’s still coming. His father is having an important party in the Hamptons with clients and other lawyers from his firm.… Blake had to be there.”

  “Oh,” she said in her la-di-da tone. “The Hamptons. How hoity-toity.”

  I dropped it. I was happy and I wasn’t going to let her get me down. The week before, Mom had asked if the prescription for my migraine pills needed to be refilled and I had shown her the bottle, which was nowhere near empty because I hadn’t seen an aura for quite a while. It made me wonder if feeling cheerful and pretty and cared-for all the time was a downright miracle cure.

  “Hey there, little sistah,” Patrick said as I stood on his front steps twenty minutes later.

  He was so tall and tan, and I still felt something when he planted a peck on my cheek. But it was just a tiny tremor compared to the earthquake that came from Blake’s kisses. I almost laughed, remembering how I used to eavesdrop through the bedroom wall and sleep in Patrick’s shirt, and it was sort of like looking at an old toy and thinking: That doll sure is cute, but I’m way too grown up for it now.

  “Hi,” I said as Mom walked past us with the cooler. She opened the back door and went out to the yard, which was crowded with guests. I was heading in that direction when Patrick caught my elbow and spoke into my ear.

  “You ain’t mad at us, are you, Ari? I hated to keep you away.”

  I paused for a moment, studying the wave of hair that fell over his forehead. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I was mad. Who wouldn’t be?”

  He smiled sympathetically, draped his arm around my shoulders, and led me to a quiet corner. “I don’t blame you. But I have to put your sister first. Isn’t that what you want?” he asked, and I nodded because it really was what I wanted. I couldn’t stand it if Evelyn was married to some callous bum who put her last. “And you know I’m not big on saying thanks … but I appreciate what you’ve done for us, helping with the kids and everything. Please tell me you know that.”

  “Now I do, since you finally brought it up. But I’m not sure how much I can take … Patrick Cagney saying please and thanks all in one day … Somebody should call the New York Times.”

  “Wiseass.” He laughed, leaning in close. “Evelyn’s much better now, too—you’ll s
ee.”

  I saw her a minute later, standing at the kitchen counter, wrapping mini hot dogs in Pillsbury dough. She was thin and pretty and she was wearing a white sundress, white espadrilles, and a gold anklet with an engraved pacifier-shaped charm. MOMMY, it read.

  “Is that something new?” I asked, lurking awkwardly in the doorway.

  She looked away from a cookie sheet covered with pigs in blankets and down at her ankle. “Yeah … Patrick got it for me.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, noticing the care she’d taken with her eyeliner and her mascara, the polish on her nails. It was as if the old Evelyn had returned, and I was so happy to see her that I was willing to put everything behind us. “He really loves you,” I added, and it didn’t bother me to say it because now I had someone who might love me, too.

  She wasn’t angry anymore, I could tell. I wasn’t either. She smiled, putting her arms around me. Her hair was blow-dried smooth and felt soft against my cheek. It almost made me cry, and I thought that Evelyn was also on the verge. We both sniffed and laughed when we stepped away from each other, and I knew that everything was better now.

  “So,” she said. “Where’s this boyfriend of yours? I’m dying to see him.”

  She saw him later, when the sun cast an orangey gold hue over the house. Blake ate three hamburgers as if he hadn’t had a morsel in the Hamptons. He fed Shane his bottle, played catch with Kieran, and settled into a chair beside mine.

  “I saw your friend today,” he told me.

  “Summer?” I said.

  He nodded. “Her mother catered the party. She handled a few meetings at the firm and now she’ll be doing all my father’s parties. Personally, I thought the food was way too salty.”

  I knew he hadn’t eaten much at that party. And I felt nervous, panicky, the way I had the first time Blake and Summer met. I imagined her flirting and laughing and talking about Don Mattingly, literally charming the pants off my boyfriend. But I remembered what he’d said in his car that day—that I was prettier—and I convinced myself that worrying was stupid.

  “Do you want a beer?” I asked. It was a good subject-changer.