Other Words for Love (5 page)

When we came back, Patrick was gone. He was at a landscaping job in Manhasset with one of his firefighter friends. Kieran went to the backyard to play on his Slip ’n Slide, while Evelyn stood by the stove boiling noodles for a tuna casserole.

“Need some help?” I asked, lingering in the doorway.

“What are you
wearing
?” she said.

I was still in my knotted-up shirt and my shorts, and she stared at my bare stomach and legs like I was a stripper on a pole. She seemed to forget about the skimpy things she used to wear when she could fit into skimpy things. But she made me so uncomfortable that I untied the shirt and let it fall over my hips.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just …”

“What are you trying to do?” she asked, stirring noodles with a wooden spoon as steam rose into her face. “Get Patrick’s attention?”

She turned away and laughed to herself, as if I was incapable of getting Patrick’s attention. Or any man’s attention. It made me so angry and embarrassed that I couldn’t keep my mouth shut anymore.

“I don’t want Patrick’s attention,” I lied.

Evelyn laughed again. She kept her back to me as she lifted the pot from the stove and dumped noodles into a strainer in the sink. “Yeah, sure. You used to climb on his lap whenever you got the chance.”

Why did she have to bring that up? And it wasn’t whenever I got the chance, it was just once, and I was only ten years old. Patrick had been dating Evelyn then, and he’d been sitting in our living room while she and Mom cooked dinner and I read a comic book on the floor.

He was on the couch watching TV, and I kept glancing over my shoulder at his light hair and dark eyes. He didn’t notice me, but I wanted him to. I had such a crush on him, even back then. So I jumped up on his knee with the comic book as if my only intention was to read him a particularly funny page, and Evelyn got aggravated after she came out of the kitchen. She told me to get lost, to leave Patrick alone, but he said he didn’t mind, he had three younger sisters in Boston and they always sat on his lap. Then she charged into the kitchen and returned with Mom, who also told me to get lost.
Don’t hang on him, Ariadne
, she’d said.
You’re much too old for that
.

I didn’t want to get into this now, so I set the table while Evelyn diced an onion that made my eyes water. She didn’t say a word until I was finished, when I sat down with a magazine and she stuck the casserole into the oven.

“Mom is picking you up right after dinner … isn’t she, Ari?”

She just couldn’t wait. She acted like I was nothing but a pesky mosquito buzzing around her head. After a few seconds, she suggested that I go and watch TV. She was trying to cook for her family, if I didn’t mind.

Her family
. And what exactly was I? Who had taken care of her kids while she was gone? Was she ever planning to thank me? Oh, and by the way, Evelyn, those friends of yours at the pool aren’t really your friends. I defended you to that dingbat with the braces on her teeth.

But I didn’t want to tangle with Evelyn—she was too dangerous when she was like this—so I kept quiet in the living room until dinner, when Patrick came home. I sat across from Kieran, who spit a mouthful of casserole into his napkin and griped that the noodles were too soggy.

Evelyn went to the refrigerator. “What do you want? I’ll make a sandwich.”

“No,” Patrick said. He was sunburned and his eyes were bloodshot. “Kieran can eat what’s given to him or he can go to bed hungry tonight.”

She slammed a jar of mustard on the counter. “Just because you were raised that ignorant way doesn’t mean I’m doing the same thing to my son.”

A vein throbbed in Patrick’s neck and I knew why. He was tired, his muscles were sore from mowing lawns, and things had been a lot more pleasant around here before Evelyn came back.

She gave Kieran his sandwich and it kept him quiet until dessert was served. It was another no-bake cheesecake, and according to the box, it was supposed to be
delicious
and
delightful
. Kieran didn’t agree and he complained again.

“This is disgusting,” he said, singing the last word. “Disgusting, disgusting, disgusting …”

Evelyn stared at him from her seat, and I wished Kieran would cut it out. The cake was fine; he was acting like a brat. Maybe I had spoiled him when she was away. Maybe if I’d raised my voice once in a while, he wouldn’t be saying that same word over and over and Evelyn wouldn’t have tears in her eyes.

Patrick must have been thinking the same thing. His voice was stern when he told Kieran to eat his dessert and stop being a pest, but Kieran didn’t stop. He smashed his fork against the cake, turned it over, and left a mess on his plate.

“This is gross,” he said. “How about a Twinkie?”

Patrick made a fist. “How about this?”

I knew Patrick would never touch him, but Kieran didn’t, and he was stunned. Then he sat and sulked until he decided to hurt someone.

“What’s on your face, Mommy?” he asked.

She lifted her hand to her chin. “It’s eczema, Kieran. Just a rash.”

“It’s ugly,” he said. “Ugly like you.”

Evelyn’s skin reddened and Patrick got furious. He ordered Kieran to his room, it didn’t matter that another Red Sox game was on tonight, and was he planning to play on that Slip ’n Slide thing after dinner? Forget about it. It was going back into the garage until next summer.

Kieran slammed his bedroom door upstairs and the noise woke Shane. I heard him crying and Evelyn joined him. Tears spilled from her eyes, striping her cheeks with mascara. Patrick tried to talk to her but she wouldn’t listen, so he followed her to the counter, where she turned her back, cried into her hands, and shoved him away.

“Go fuck your mother,” she said.

Patrick just sighed because he knew what was going on. Her hormones were a mess and she couldn’t be blamed for anything that came out of her mouth. Then he reached out to touch her but she wasn’t done yet. She shoved him again, narrowing her eyes into an evil squint.

“That’s what your mother likes, right? Pushing out eight kids, getting knocked up at forty-four. Stupid Irish immigrant. Doesn’t believe in birth control. She can’t keep her scrawny legs shut.”

Evelyn’s hands were on her hips. Her body shook and this time she didn’t shove Patrick away. He put his arms around her, ran his fingers through her hair, and I just sat there.

I wasn’t angry with my sister anymore. Now she didn’t seem mean and dangerous—she just seemed young and overwhelmed. I’m sorry, Evelyn, I thought, listening to her cry into Patrick’s shirt. I’m sorry that you had a hard labor and you didn’t get a girl. And I know I shouldn’t feel the way I do about your husband, but I just can’t help it.

four

Right
before school started, Summer stepped on a rusty nail in her front yard. The cut required seven stitches and a tetanus shot. She could get around on crutches but she didn’t want to. She refused to be seen in public because she had a bandage on her foot and she couldn’t fit into her Gucci shoes.

She was excused from school for a week, which was bad luck for me because Summer was the only person I knew at Hollister. Before her accident, she’d assured me that she would show me around and sit with me at lunch. Now I had to go to a new school all alone.

“It’ll be okay,” Summer said over the phone.

It was the night before the first day of school. I leaned against my kitchen counter, wrapping the phone cord around my wrist, watching it make white crinkles in my skin. “I don’t think so, Summer. I don’t even want to go.”

“Of course you do. It’s one of the best schools in the city, and it’ll help get you into Parsons.”

“What if I can’t keep up with the work?” I asked, sighing and loosening the phone cord.

“Ari,” she said calmly, the way she often did when I was nervous. “You’ll do well, as usual. I know you’ll be fine.”

If Summer knew I’d be fine, I supposed I shouldn’t worry so much. I relaxed a little, but the next morning I still wished she was around. On top of everything else I needed from her, I also wanted her fashion advice, because I couldn’t count on Mom to validate my outfit. Mom said the teal shell looked fine under the black blazer and of course it was okay to wear white pants because it was still almost ninety degrees outside, but that didn’t help because what Mom knew about fashion couldn’t fill a thimble. And Hollister had a strict dress code. According to the student handbook, there were to be no sneakers and no jeans, not even a denim jacket.
Violators will be penalized
, I read. I didn’t want to be penalized, especially not on the first day.

“Your ride is here,” Mom said, and I saw a silver Mercedes parked outside our house. It belonged to Jeff Simon, who drove Summer to school every day because his office was just a few blocks from Hollister. Now he was my chauffeur too, even without Summer.

Jeff’s car smelled of cigars. He was a tall fiftyish man with hair a mix of blond and gray and eyes the color of weak tea. He always spoke to me and Summer like we were his intellectual equals.

“How’s Evelyn?” he asked as I sat beside him.

“She’s okay,” I said, although I wasn’t really sure. Some days she seemed fine and other days my parents talked about spending some of Uncle Eddie’s money to send her back to New York–Presbyterian Hospital.

Jeff nodded. “She’s not symptomatic?”

Symptomatic
. He had used that word five years earlier.
Is Evelyn symptomatic, is she displaying a flat affect
? I shrugged and he tuned the radio to a classical music station. Then we were on the bridge and I saw the skyline in the distance, below a smear of purple and orange across the early-morning sky.

“A new environment is always unsettling,” Jeff said after we reached Hollister Prep and I was wringing my hands while watching a swarm of smartly dressed students file into the building. “Your mood will level out after you get used to it.”

I was hoping Jeff was right when I reached homeroom, which was crowded, noisy, jammed with people who knew everyone but me. I sat in a chair against the wall, taking everybody in, sure that I wouldn’t talk to anyone but that I’d definitely draw them later. The guy with his arm in a cast, a girl whose sunburned skin was peeling from her cheeks.

I leaned my head back and squeezed my eyes shut. I hadn’t slept much the night before; the only thing that had helped was Patrick’s shirt. I kept it hidden in my closet beneath a stack of winter scarves, where Mom wouldn’t dust or snoop. I told myself that I hadn’t stolen it—I had just borrowed it for a while, and nobody would notice because Patrick owned so many of those shirts. I needed it more than he did, anyway. I wore it in bed whenever I had a headache or trouble sleeping, and the smell of it relaxed me like a long hot bath.

“Damn,” I heard somebody say, and I turned around to find a redhead searching through a handbag. She looked up and I saw hazel eyes, a small nose, lots of freckles, and no makeup. “Do you have any tampons?” she asked in a raspy voice. “Or some Stayfree? I’m a week early.”

There were some Stayfree in my purse from last month, but now the teacher was here and she was taking attendance and I couldn’t pull out a maxi pad in full view of the three guys sitting next to me. So I passed her my purse and said she could bring it to the bathroom, she would find what she needed in the left pocket.

She was Leigh Ellis. I found this out when she came back and the teacher called her name. Then the teacher said my full first name in a loud voice and I waited for stares, laughter, all the things I was used to, but nothing happened. There was just silence until I spoke up.

“It’s Ari,” I said.

“Why do you shorten it?” Leigh whispered in my ear, and I wondered if she had a sore throat. She sounded like she was on the verge of laryngitis.

I twisted around. She was leaning forward, resting her face on her hand. I noticed a widow’s peak, a pointy chin, and tiny gold flecks in her irises.

“Why do you shorten your name? It’s very pretty,” she said, smiling with straight teeth, and I decided that I liked her. There was no way I couldn’t. She was the first person besides Mom to say anything positive about my name in all my sixteen years. “It’s the title of a book, you know. By Chekhov.”

Now I liked her even better. Soon the bell rang and she was off, gliding solo down the hallway past rows of lockers. I walked past girls dressed in tailored pants, crisp blouses, antique earrings made of rubies and sapphires and pearls. Their eyelashes had only a little mascara; their lips, just a touch of gloss. There was nothing reminiscent of my school in Brooklyn—couples kissing against walls, big hair sprayed high and stiff with Aqua Net, Madonna wannabes. No fingerless gloves, no lace ribbon. Not one bustier.

I glanced down at my clothes as I walked into my next class. It was English literature, and I fit in. My light makeup, my straight hair—I was one of them, and that almost made me cry. I had never belonged at my other school, where I was ignored and dismissed as a dull, quiet girl who sat in the back of class and sketched faces in notebooks.

But I couldn’t transform into one of those confident types that easily. So on my first day at Hollister Prep, I sat in the rear of each class. I ate my salami sandwich in a bathroom stall while everyone else socialized in the cafeteria. In art class I watched from five seats behind Leigh Ellis as her colored pencils moved across a sketch pad. She was drawing something abstract. It wasn’t what the teacher had ordered us to do, but it was good, and more interesting than the bowl of fruit the rest of the class was copying.

I watched Leigh’s freckled fingers clutch her pencils, her silver bracelet skim the paper, her thick red hair swish across her collar whenever she shifted her head. She caught me looking at her and I pretended that I wasn’t, but I didn’t have to pretend. She smiled, waved, pointed to herself and mouthed the word
homeroom
, as if there was any way she could be forgotten.

Jeff was a one-way chauffeur. He drove Summer to school and then she took the subway home, which I did that first day. It wasn’t very crowded at four in the afternoon, but the station was warm and so was I. My skin was clammy underneath my blazer after I reached Brooklyn and walked up the steps into the sunshine and sticky air. There were people everywhere, going in and coming out of Asian food markets and Indian restaurants, speeding around on bicycles and honking horns at anyone who got in their way.

“Ariadne,” I heard Mom say.

She was standing in front of me. Her hair frizzed as badly as Evelyn’s in this weather, and there were dots of perspiration above her lip. She said something about waiting for me, she’d called my name three times, hadn’t I heard her, and was I getting delirious from this hot weather?

I hadn’t heard her. I’d been thinking that I’d chosen the right outfit that morning and my hair wasn’t wrong, and nobody at Hollister had said a single thing that made me want to lock myself in my bedroom and spend the rest of my life there.

“So how was it?” Mom asked, holding her breath. She was probably hoping for something good but expecting something bad. She was more familiar with something bad, like when Summer was voted Prettiest Girl in junior high and I wasn’t voted anything.

I heard Mom exhale as we were walking home and I finished telling her about Hollister. I mentioned how much I liked the fancy iron gates outside the school and the girl from my homeroom with artistic ability and knowledge of Chekhov.

Mom was happy. She smiled, put her arm around me, and gave me a squeeze as we stood at the curb and waited for a traffic light to change. She was wearing a tank top, but she shouldn’t have been because her upper arms were heavy.

She and Evelyn had the same build. Now I imagined my sister at thirty, aged beyond her years, her beautiful face distorted by too many no-bake cheesecakes the way Mom’s face was puffy from Hostess cupcakes. I saw Evelyn wearing a sleeveless housedress, flabby arms swaying as she washed dishes over her kitchen sink, but I didn’t mention that. My first day at Hollister had gone well and Mom was taking me out for Chinese food to celebrate. I didn’t need any gloomy thoughts banging around inside my head; they haunted me enough as it was. This time I refused to listen.

Leigh wasn’t in homeroom the next morning. I worried that she’d never come back, that she’d moved away or transferred to a different school, which would be just my luck.

And I wished Summer hadn’t stepped on that nail. I wished she’d come to school on crutches and sit with me in the cafeteria. Because if she did, I wouldn’t have to eat lunch in the bathroom while thinking that Hollister wasn’t so great after all. It seemed big and scary. Maybe I should have stayed in Brooklyn, where I’d spent my lunch breaks in the art room. The teacher had let me organize her supplies, and I wanted to be there, alone with brushes and paint, eating at a clean desk. Now I was eating on a dirty toilet. So I trudged through the rest of the day and barely noticed when a swish of red hair flew past at the beginning of art class.

“Hey,” Leigh said, taking a seat behind me. She was in violation of the rules, dressed in jeans, Converse high-tops, and a maroon T-shirt with the words
SUNY OSWEGO
printed across the front. “Did I miss anything in homeroom?”

I shook my head, noticing a silver chain and matching arrowhead charm around her neck.

“Colossal waste of time,” she said. “I never go.”

I didn’t know how she got away with breaking so many rules, but I couldn’t have asked if I wanted to. The teacher started talking, telling us that this was a free drawing period and we could do whatever we wanted, as long as it wasn’t potentially offensive.

“Censorship,” Leigh muttered. “Nothing in art is offensive.”

I agreed and she got inquisitive about where I was from and where I used to go to school. I answered her questions, adding that I was a friend of Summer Simon, and she gave me a blank stare.

“Never heard of her,” Leigh said, and I was sure that she was just confused, because everyone knew Summer. Leigh sounded like she was still nursing a cold, so I decided that her head was congested and it was clogging her memory. I also decided not to mention her when I called Summer that night. The idea that someone was oblivious to Summer’s existence would crush her, and I didn’t want to be responsible for that.