All You Need Is Love (12 page)

“Oh, well, I have good news,” Arabella says, and has her rushed excited voice on. “It turns out the whole business in Nevis was just a misunderstanding! Nothing happened. Lila Lawrence was just wasted or something and when I walked in on them it was — he was just trying to help her. So it’s really good news on this front.”

“But…” I start to say and then stop. Should I tell her about what I know? That I know for a fact that Toby did cheat on her in Nevis? That I have a saved IM from Lila Lawrence stating as much? Or is that getting in the way of things? “How can you be sure?”

Arabella clicks at me, annoyed. “When you’ve known someone as long as I have, the way I’ve been intimate with Toby, you can just tell. Besides, why would he bother lying?”

“Um, to get you back? Obviously. I mean, he knows he screwed up he’s just desperate to reclaim you as his.”

“Reclaim me? I’m not his luggage.”

I remember the way Tobias always had his hand on Arabella’s butt while checking out whomever passed by, the way he spoke about her in the third person like “Oh, she’ll do the dishes for you…” and want to say that I disagree, she could be his baggage. But I don’t. I try another approach. “Look, everyone likes to think they can trust but the truth of it is that once the lie is out there, once it’s uttered, you have to find out more.”

“I’ve worked all this through, Love. It doesn’t matter what happened on Nevis — well, it matters a bit I guess — what matters is that Toby still loves me.”

“No, what matters is do you still love him?”

Arabella uses a sigh as her response and then switches gears. “So, how was the walk?”

“Great, really good. We got so many donations and Mable was so so happy to be outside with people and sort of back to life.”

“How do you think she’s doing?”

I lie down on my floor, surrounded by cds and papers and editing notes — I have tons of footage of Mable and someday soon I’ll have to kiss up to the AV Crew and get some help trimming it down. “Oh, I don’t know. One day she’s okay and the next she has a fever and is fighting some infection.” I curl up into a ball and say the next words quietly. “She’s fought so hard, you know? But I…oh, I can’t even say this…”

“Try…you need to talk to someone,” Arabella says.

“I don’t know — somewhere, some part of me thinks she’s just too tired now. Or too sick. I overheard my dad talking about hospice — and that’s for people whose lives are ending, so I don’t know if that’s like a worst-case scenario or what.”

“Lots of people survive breast cancer, Love. Think of the crowd you walked with, how many survivors there are!”

“You’re right. You’re right. But still, there were a lot of people there who’d lost people, too.”

Arabella gives me a minute to recover and then says, “Hey, listen…speaking of lost people. I’ve been thinking about this summer, and the Vineyard and —”

“Don’t tell me you’re bailing out.”

“No — God, no. I just wanted to ask you again — I was talking with Mum about it, you know how Monti can get going on an idea… and well, have you ever come right out and asked Mable if she’s —”

“What?”

“If Mable
is
your mother.”

I get shivers just like I had when Fizzy and Keena suggested the same thing on one of our Pizza Express evenings in London. “Don’t you think that’s just a bit much? Like she and my dad were married — gross. You know what? I’m done with this train of thought.”

“Fine — the train has left the station. But consider this as the caboose: you once told me Mable’s middle initial is G, right?” I nod even though Arabella can’t see me. “So, your mother is Galadriel — maybe that’s what the G stands for!”

“Enough — goodbye, Bels — and say hi to Toby for me, I think.”

“I will, I think,” Arabella says and we hang up and go back to our different time zones.

“You’re going to be famous is what you’re basically saying,” Chris says.

“No, she’s saying she could be if she appears at the right moment,” Chili Pomroy corrects.

“You’re both just not even listening to the reality of the situation,” I protest. I’m still in my running gear after a morning jog with Louisa and feel like a fit but fugly stepsister around all the springy girls in their sundresses and skirts, their Nantucket red shorts worn a size too big so they rest on the hips. Chris, Chili, and I are sitting on the floor of the Art Dome, waiting for the Spring Sing to start. It’s a semi-sweet, semi-lame tradition Hadley has of getting everyone together to “be as one voice”. Too bad that voice is most often off-tune and a full beat behind. But I digress. “The point is, it’s just a casual offer that he made.”

“I’m sorry,” Chris says and checks his hair just in case the Hadley paparazzi show up to snap a candid of him, “but if Martin Bloody Eisenstein asks you to set up a meeting you’re in. If he asks you to go to his annual Malibu gala, you get there.”

I smile and bite my lower lip. “Maybe — God that’d be so amazing. But now I have to find a way to get to LA. It’s not exactly a quick ferry ride from the Vineyard.”

Our leg room is squeezed out by hoards of students so Chili, Chris and I are forced to scoot way up front near the raised platform stage, so we look like groupies. I mock holding a lighter up and Chili holds her cell phone up so it radiates. The Dean of Social Affairs, Lillian Frondwroth, appear son stage. She is spoken of often, though rarely seen in person, inspiring students to question her existence.

“Hey, she’s here!” Chris says, impressed with Lillian and her sense of late-seventies, Harvard-preppy style.

“Let’s start with He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” she says animatedly and claps her hands.

“It’s moments like this why you realize certain campus events are mandatory. Can you imagine those guys coming out of choice?” Chili points to the lacrosse set, jock-preps who clap half-heartedly, her brother Haverford included. Next to Haverford is Walter Bistin who checks out a girl’s cleavage by pretending he needs to fix his shoe while Maggie Puddingtop (an unfortunate name for anyone, let alone someone bestowed with her breasts) tries to heft her boobs into their bra-harness without her longstanding crush Alexander McGourty seeing. I scan the faces for friends, people I haven’t seen since coming back, and am relieved to find Jacob sitting not with a female but with a couple of his dorm mates. Dorms tend to cluster together at events like this, sort of like bunks at camp.

After a parade of school songs (not “Green though it Yet May Be”, our school hymn — that’s only for graduation and certain assemblies and chapel services, another unwritten but known rule) Lillian Frondworth adjusts her silk scarf restoring its jaunty position off to the side and announces, “We have a special treat!”

“We get to go?” Chris asks wearily. “I don’t know how much more forced cheer I can stand.”

“At least it’s air-conditioned in here,” I say.

“Your tuition dollars at work,” Chili says.

“She doesn’t pay tuition,” Chris says.

“Shut up, both of you,” I say and turn my attention to the stage which is a mere foot away.

“I’d like to introduce a couple of student musicians,” Frondworth says and we all watch as a freshman and her friends take the stage and sing a four-part harmony of Someone to Lean On.

“So very frosh,” Chris whispers.

“Shh,” I say. “It’s sweet — it takes guts to get up there.”

“Love’s right,” Chili says, “even though they suck.”

The next student is Claire Reading who plays the piano and sings in muffled Amos-fashion, with highs, lows and indistinguishable lyrics. Mrs. Frondworth is clearly unable to tell what the hell Claire is saying but claps enthusiastically and says, “Well done, Claire!”

Just when I think we’re done and ready to make a mass exodus toward the dining hall, I look up on the stage and see Jacob there, tuning a guitar.

“I didn’t know he played guitar,” Chris looks at me, his mouth its own question mark.

“Me, neither,” I say but can’t break my gaze from Jacob. “I thought he was just a piano player.”

Chili uses a breathy voice, “Maybe there’s a lot you don’t know about Mr. Coleman.”

I don’t answer her, I just listen to him play. The chords start, a little familiar, then as he gets going, I recognize the song completely.
Like a fool I went and stayed too long now I’m wondering if your love’s still strong…

“Hey, this is Signed, Sealed, Delivered,” Chris says.

I nod. It’s the Stevie Wonder song he put on my mix sophomore year before we were even a couple. It’s the one that always makes me think of him, even when I was in England and Asher played it for me. Does Jacob remember putting this song on my disk? Or was that just coincidence? His acoustic version is incredible — slow in the right parts, alive and insistent in others — the crowd loves it and when he’s done, everyone claps hard, whopping the cool, new, Euro-fied Jacob. And he — JC — as he’s affectionately known now, drinks it in. Gone is the shy funny person from sophomore year and from my recent run-in at the college counseling office — his public persona is decidedly hip. But maybe it’s just a stage thing.

“You look weird, Love,” Chris says. “You look the way I must have when I got a letter from Alistair saying he missed me. Like I’d seen a ghost.”

“That was kind of, um, our song he just played…” I say super-spacey and suddenly tired.

“Oh dear,” Chris says. We stop outside of the dining hall and he waits for me to emerge from my Jacob-induced haze. “Maybe it was a message? Or maybe it meant nothing?”

“You know what, it doesn’t matter,” I say immediately back in the moment. “I have a life — I have a boyfriend, I have friends, and I have a good shot at fun summer and…” I drift off. “I’m not up for public display of emotion — I’m going to go see Mable.”

Chris nods. “Tell her the final amount we raised.”

“I will — bye you guys.” I walk to my car as Chris and Chili walk inside.

I check voice messages, hoping there’ll be one from Asher but yet again I am left with no vocal rendering of his feelings, not even a trace. When I spoke to Arabella to get her pledge for the Avon Walk, I came right out and asked her what the fuck Asher’s deal was and her clear response was, “Love, I told you from the outset that I was not going to be put in the middle of your relationship with my brother. I made that completely clear to you — and to him — so please don’t start now. If you guys wind up getting married and having twelve kids, great. If you shag, fine. If you break up, I’ll comfort you. But I don’t want to play messenger nor do I want the responsibility of picking apart Asher’s actions.” Thus, she’s not shedding any light on the current situation. And I don’t blame her, not really — a little, because she might know something I don’t — but I just wish Asher would tell me his thoughts.

I have one phone message, though, from Clementine Highstreet, my famous London friend, saying she only just got my note asking for a donation for the Avon Walk — she’s “thrilled to make a contribution” she says and hopes we’ll “have the good fortune” to see each other again. Her voice makes me think of my time with her and of her song, “Like the London Rain” which I know Mable would love to hear. I search my side door and glove compartment but don’t find a disk with that song on it so I head to my room to locate it.

When I enter my room, I am hit on the head — literally — by
The Oliver P. Barley Guide to Colleges
. First I swear and then I crouch to pick it up. I play one of those games that make no sense but you do to feel like you have control over your world. Whatever page the book landed on is where I should go to college. I slide my finger underneath like a bookmark and turn it over to see where my fate will lead me — page ninety-eight, the beginning of Schools of the North East. Um, sure, but could you maybe be a little more specific? After all my meetings with the college counseling office to talk about planning my visits and writing my essays, I am at turns wracked with nerves and then way too mellow about where I’ll go. I just keep waiting for a sign. But aren’t signs just another way of trying to get out of making the decisions on your own?

I change out of my running clothes and into khaki shorts and my dad’s old Harvard tee-shirt. It makes me think of the Vineyard and wearing it there when I first met Charlie out at sea (after all he is so earthy and such a man of the ocean, as Arabella so aptly said). It’s funny how clothing can hold so many memories. Sometimes I look at all my sweaters or shirts and wonder about all the different days I’ve worn them, the regular afternoons when I did homework, days when I went to class, ate, slept and then the days that stick out for some reason or other: fought with dad about London (blue v-neck tee-shirt), played soccer by myself for hours wishing someone would join me (jeans with green paint stain on the thigh), got very close to sleeping with Asher (white bra with the clasp that sticks out a little and scratches my back but I can’t get rid of it because of aforementioned memory), sang Barry Manilow and laughed and then cried with Mable (ugly purple shirt she told me looked like a prune had vomited on me).

In light of this, I find a new tee-shirt, a soft pink one that makes me feel free and summery and toss the Harvard one back in my drawer. I pull the Gap tags off and check out the shirt in the mirror — yep, it’s pink, it’s clean, it’s fine. Then the phone rings.

“I need you,” says Mable into the phone and my heart leaps to my mouth.

“I’ll be right there,” I say, find a copy of “Like the London Rain” and slide it into my bag.

“Let me finish,” she says. “I need you to do me a favor.”

I breathe a sigh of relief — sort of. “What — anything.”

“I know it’s out of the way — and I know the lines are long right now, but if I get one of the nurses to call in an order, will you go to Bartley’s Burgers and pick me up some lunch?”

Suddenly, nothing in the world sounds better than getting take-out from the best burger place in Boston, and sitting eating fries and a frappe with Mable. “Of course,” I say. “But I’m getting sweet potato fries so you get regular.”

“That way we can each have some of both.” It’s what we’ve always done with food — like when you can’t decide and want two things, we always want the same two things so we swap. As I think this, look in the mirror at myself. My mouth, my green eyes, the cheekbones that appear to be more prominent than they were when I was younger. The freckles on my jaw and nose — just like Mable’s. Maybe she could be my mother. Or maybe I’m just in dire need of food.