All You Need Is Love (7 page)

“I’m a little bit Kravitz,” Chili says, trying to explain her cultural background as the second film cues up. We already saw an outdated Martha’s Vineyard when the film committee screened Jaws and now we’re all set for Grease. From what I’ve gathered (both from Chris and from watching Chili a little as she finds her footing before officially joining our body of learners next fall) Chili is a girl who manages to float from one crowd and class to another. “My Mom’s black, my Dad’s Jewish and I’m a happy mixture of both. We have bagels and lox at our African American ancestral house on the Vineyard. What can I say?”

“That you’re a spitfire of intellectualism and funk…” Chris suggests.

“With a face that could sink ships?” Chili adds. Then she throws up her hands. “Wait. I meant that in the good way — like I’m so pretty that they’d go off course.”

“Don’t worry, we got it,” I say. “And you don’t sound at all full of yourself…” We laugh and she displays her face on her hands so we can fake-fawn all over her.

“Here,” I say. “Popcorn for all.” More than half of the students at Hadley are spread out on the lawn in back of the science center. The tall, flat concrete side of the building is where the Spring Screenings are projected, and everyone takes their sleeping bags or sheets and submits to the dewy night. A couple of seniors have pulled their actual mattresses all the way from the dorms, and Jacob, apparently not one to blend in anymore, has thoughtfully erected (ahem) his entire bed, frame and all. He sits in the center of it with a few friends while I am on the damp earth between Chris and Harriet Walters, whose boyfriend Welsh is off trying not to get busted for chewing tobacco, which Harriet finds so repulsive that she refused to even walk with him while he dips.

“Question: how sad is it that we’re all buzzing at the thought of our curfew-extension?” Chris asks.

“Just think — another year from now and we’ll be heading to college, where there’s no lights out rule,” I say.

“Hey, do you have any pledges for the Avon Walk?” I make my fingers take a fake walk on my hand and Chris adds his to my little mime show.

“Some,” he says. “Not as many as I’d like. But I have a scheme to get a whopper of a donation.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Chris says and turns his attention back to the big screen. “But I’m keeping it under wraps for right now.”

“Okay — well, when you feel like letting me in on your big plans — both the Walk and your plans for your so not obviously hidden crush on the nameless one, let me know.” I don’t say Haverford because Chris hasn’t told Chili about his feelings for her brother in case it freaks her out. I think, too, that he’s afraid of her finding out and saying his crush is a lost cause.

Chili nods, “I feel your crush-vibe. Come on, what’s his name?”

“Never mind.”

“Fine — watch the movie,” I say, covering for Chris and wish for a second that life were as simple as singing about your summer boyfriend, flouncing in a poodle skirt, and sipping malteds in a diner. Then Chris pipes up.

“Okay — it’s “Summer Lovin’” — we all have to sing,” Chris says and even Harriet Walters agrees. The whole campus erupts in song and for one night, no one is ridiculed, our voices become one, and the world is filled with good old-fashioned harmony.

I lean back on the grass and look up at the muted stars, and feel anchored; to this moment, to this night, to this campus and my friends, to being on this side of the Atlantic.

The Saturday afternoon mail brings a card with foreign postage stamps. Even though email is easy, there’s something so exciting about real mail. I hold the oversized thick cream-colored envelope and wonder if Asher has penned a love missive to me. But the writing on the front is large and loopy and Asher’s is formal and small, so I doubt it.

“Anything good there?” Dad asks as he hangs up from his ritualistic phone call to Louisa. “I’m leaving in eight minutes — are you sure you don’t want to come?”

“I’m sure,” I answer. Dad’s thoughtful invite to see Louisa’s cottage in Vermont, goats and all was tempting, but I’ve decided to pass. It’s not that I don’t want to meet her or that I have any of those trite
please don’t date my daddy
feelings. It’s more that I don’t want to schlep all the way across New England for one night, hurrying back so Dad can make his faculty meeting on Sunday. Plus, I want to see Mable. “But have fun. Bring me back some cheese.”

“Will do,” Dad says. “And you know the rules, right?”

“Yep, no overnight guests, all school and dorm rules apply,” I say in handbook monotone. Dad gives an affinitive nod, then looks at me again.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing,” Dad says and then thinks better of it and adds, “Just stay you, okay?”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

Dad sighs, then smiles, like he’s trying to be upbeat. “I notice — it’s that you sometimes give the air of being a chameleon. That you want to fit in with everyone…”

I furrow my brow. “Isn’t that what teenagers do? Try to fit in?”

“But you’re not like that…”

“I know, I’m just so special. Look, Dad, I am not the image of conformity you might think I am. I’m kind of different, if you didn’t notice.”

Dad touches my hair and I recoil, instantly pissed off at him but also guilty for feeling that way. “You think I’m changing in a bad way — but the reality is I’m just growing up and you can’t deal with it.”

Dad grabs his keys, deposits a peck on my cheek and says softly, “I know you’re you’re getting older. I just want to see you making smart decisions about your life, the people you’re with…it does matter.”

“I know it matters,” I say. “And I’m trying.” I don’t add the part about needing the space in which to try and fail or try and succeed. It’s not that he wants me to be this clichéd little girl or anything, I just think he wants me to be living up to my full potential at all times. I can’t doodle, I have to make a piece of art. I can’t jot down ideas, I have to write a tome. I can’t hang out, because what does that achieve?

I just watch him leave and then look at what the mail brought in…a pretty paper envelope addressed to me.

When I open it, I’m surprised and psyched to find that Nick Adams Cooper has written a thoughtful, interesting and funny note. Nick Cooper was the only friend of the London titled and entitled set that I really liked
. I’m terribly sorry you had to leave so quickly
, I read and can hear his careful, deep voice
, we never got the chance to say goodbye. We never got the chance to really settle in, did we? Regardless, please know that you are in my thoughts as is your Aunt. Please accept this donation on behalf of me and my parents — you charmed them completely. Should you ever find yourself back on this side of the Atlantic, please look us up.

Yours,

Nick Cooper

Post Script: Enclosed also find Hemingway’s Nick Adams Stories. As you are the only other person aside from me who has a literary name, I hope you’ll enjoy them.

Nick Cooper’s letter is sweet and caring, and the check enclosed is sizeable without being tacky. I take the money and the card upstairs and feel funny as I read it again. The book I put on my shelf to read at some point, with Nick’s note tucked inside the front cover.

Nick Cooper is the only one of all of the people I met in London who responded to my mass email and Arabella’s phone calls about the Avon Walk. Why hasn’t Asher written to me? Probably because we’ve spoken on the phone. But why hasn’t he thought to send a card to Mable? Most likely because he’s never met her. But Arabella did — she even made a water color of her flat and sent it to Mass General (Mable asked one of the doctors to hang it up on the wall so she could dream about foreign travel).

I’m no shrink, but I know enough that maybe I’m not disappointed just in Asher’s lack of written words and mention of Mable. Being away from him isn’t something I ever have much thought to while we were together. It wasn’t like I walked around holding his hands contemplating what might or might not become of us as a couple after my program abroad ended. Maybe I was just too busy falling for him in the here and now. And I’m glad I did, it’s healthy to live for the moment sometimes. But the trouble is that when you’re past that moment, there’s not that much left.

I mean, at the end of
Grease
last night I got to thinking: if Danny Zuko and Sandy really had to be separated like during the plot scam at the beginning when Sandy says she might have to go back to Australia, would they really have lasted? If Danny had gone to visit her at Christmas (after, I don’t know, saving enough money for airfare by drag racing), would they have clicked again? Or was their love circumstantial?

The phone rings and I walk in my movie haze to answer. “Hello?”

“I thought you were coming to visit me!” Mable says.

“I am! I am — I got a slow start.” Instant guilt. Mable’s probably been waiting for me for ages and I’ve left my only aunt sitting alone in her hospital room.

“No prob, the coffee twins were here, delivering their most recent anal spread sheet from Slave. They’re really something.”

“They seem kind of mean,” I say, not editing myself. “At least Ula does.”

“Doug’s the good cop, she’s the bad.” I can imagine shaking her scarf-covered head. “But Ula’s just trying to set a good example.”

“For whom?”

“Oh, are we formal now? For whom is she setting an example? You, probably. They’re both going to be sort-of supervising Slave II this summer.”

“Oh,” my voice comes out small, disappointed.

“Love — you’re great and very responsible but let’s be real. You’re seventeen.”

“I’ll be eighteen in the fall,” I say, pathetically fighting for my maturity.

“Look — it’s all set. You and Arabella will be the primary people, okay? You’ll open and close in shifts and handle all the press. You can even come up with clever marketing campaigns and everything. I just need Ula to run the books and check in on things.” She doesn’t say chaperone, but I know that’s what she means.

“It’s not like I’m a raving party machine, Mable.”

“I know, believe me. But it’s protocol. I have to have someone of age there just in case.” Mable sighs. “Are you angry or will you still visit?”

My shoulders slump. “Of course I’ll visit. I just need to let the grumpiness shake off.”

“Like dandruff?”

“Yes — just like flaky scalp.”

“Gross.”

“You’re gross.”

“Bring me flowers?” Mable asks, hopeful.

“Sure.”

“From my favorite place?”

“For you, anything,” I say and mean it.

The Flower Market is where the flower dealers get their goods. In the morning, the place is a mad house with bursts of blooms everywhere. Daring pink dahlias, delicate day lilies, roses in all shades of the color spectrum and petals carpeting the ground. I park between
hell and gone
and
way far away
and carry a straw basket over to the stalls. Most of the crowds are gone, off to sell their wares to the weekend shoppers, but a few vendors remain. I search for lilies of the valley, small slender green stalks with tiny white blossoms hanging off; Mable’s favorite flower. They remind me of a story or a song from my childhood, but one I can’t remember. I make a mental note to ask Mable about that — sometimes she acts as my memory, retrieving facts I’ve lost or misplaced.

“Hey stranger,” Harriet Walters sidles up to me, carrying an armful of daisies. “Less than half-price.” She brags to me about her bargaining prowess and sticks a white daisy behind my ear. “You’re a vision of near-summer.”

“Thanks,” I say and put my basket down for a second to take off my sweater and tie it around my wait. “I’m so hot — I can’t believe it’s this late in the school year.”

“I know. Almost senior year.” Harriet doesn’t say anything else but I gather from her facial expression that she’s thinking what I am — where will I be at the start of senior year? What will have changed? Or will everything have stayed the same?

“Are you going to college?” Harriet asks. She managed to sound so focused all the time, not overly academic, just like she’s thoughtful and careful about her words.

“Of course I am, why?” I furrow my brow and try to block the sun by using my hand like a visor.

“I don’t mean it as an insult,” Harriet qualifies.

“No — I know. It’s just like that’s the ultimate sin or sign of prep dissention, right? Not going to college when prep school was created to prep-are you for the rigors of university life.” I take the flower out from behind my ear and absent-mindedly start plucking the petals.

“People are afraid to stray from their life plans — maybe they think if they take a step off the path they won’t find their way back, you know?”

I pause, considering what she said. “You’re a smart person, Harriet.”

She tilts her head, smiling. “Thanks. I’ll leave you to your wisteria wandering.”

“Not wisteria — lily of the valley.”

“Try five stalls back over to the left,” she says and walks away.

I mull over what she said — not that I won’t go to college. I have every intention of enrolling and enjoying myself and learning and all that. But what about pausing — or not so much pausing since that implies stagnating — but taking a break from all the crazy pressures and classes? Maybe I would benefit from a year off, like so many people do in England. They even have a term there — year out. She’s on her year out, they’d say about me. But you can’t just sit there on your year out, you have to travel or volunteer or get a job which leads me back to what do I
want
to do?

At the stall, I find just enough lilies to make a bouquet for Mable. I hold the flowers gently, like they are her bruised and cold hand, and head to the hospital.

Mable’s whole face lights up when she sees me. “You found them! My favorites!” She takes the flowers from me and sticks them in the pink plastic water pitcher that rests on the rolling cart near her bed.

“The last ones,” I say. Today is a special day since Mable is well enough to sit at the chair by the large window in her room. The view is the Boston skyline, and we sit admiring the sunny day, enjoying just being together until I remember my mental note. “Hey — what memory am I blanking on with lily of the valley?”