Other Words for Love (22 page)

“I don’t need anything, Mr. Ellis,” I said.

He turned in his seat and I got a clear view of his face. He was so handsome, better-looking than either of his sons, but I felt afraid of him suddenly, of what was behind that suave smile and those deep brown eyes. They were so dark that I couldn’t find the pupils.

“You know something, Ari,” he began. “Blake’s been acting very strangely these days. His grades are dropping and he’s preoccupied … and last week I found an application for a firefighter exam in his room. You don’t know anything about that, do you?”

I wanted to run home. Instead I shook my head and listened to him talk about how Blake had acted this way once before, when he was dating a girl in Georgia, and he had even considered quitting school and moving down there to marry her and work at some dead-end blue-collar job, and could I believe that?

I could believe it. I felt sick. I remembered the night at the penthouse when Del and Blake had talked about Jessica. Del had said that Blake was with her for two years and she lived in a trailer and she’d dumped him without so much as a phone call. She probably didn’t have a cent and hadn’t been able to resist when Mr. Ellis asked if there was anything he could do. He’d probably done a lot to get rid of her so that she wouldn’t spoil the plans he had for his prize racehorse.

But I wasn’t Jessica. I didn’t need anything except Blake. Mr. Ellis kept asking what I wanted, saying that he’d buy absolutely anything for me and my family.

“My family and I have everything we need,” I said.

He stared at me for a second, as if his eyes could melt my will. When that didn’t work, he turned away, started the car, and drove me home. He didn’t say another word until we were across the street from my house. Dad was on a ladder, twisting bulbs on a string of lights that lined the roof, trying to identify the one that had caused the rest of them to die.

“Is that your father?” Mr. Ellis asked. “The detective?”

I nodded and reached for the door, but he stopped me.

“Ari,” he said. “I’m sure you wouldn’t want him to know what you’ve been up to. I mean … spending time alone in a young man’s bedroom doing things that could cause a lot of trouble. You wouldn’t want your parents to know about that, would you? I’m sure they have a high opinion of you—you wouldn’t want anything to spoil it.”

He’d switched from bribery to blackmail, and my face flushed again because he was staring right through me like he could see everything that Blake and I had done in his bedroom. I sprang out of the car, raced past Dad, and ran upstairs, where it took me hours to fall asleep.

Blake called the next morning as if nothing had happened. Of course, he didn’t know what had happened. Mr. Ellis wasn’t going to mention our conversation, and I didn’t rat him out. I couldn’t shatter Blake’s illusions by informing him of the cold hard truth that his father was a snake.

Blake invited me back to the penthouse for Christmas Eve, and Rachel was standing in the foyer when I walked in. She looked as beautiful as ever, holding a glass of cider in her hand and saying goodnight to a man who was putting on his coat. She wore a black knit dress with a slit up the thigh, and I felt nervous when she glanced in my direction. I wondered if she thought I was as bad as Summer for hurting Leigh, and I worried that she’d tower over me in her high-heeled suede boots, pointing a skinny finger.

I dashed by her. I had almost made it to the living room when I felt someone touch my arm.

“Ari … aren’t you going to say hello to me, honey?” Rachel said in her faint Southern accent, and I turned around. I played it cool, pretending I hadn’t even seen her.

“Hi,” I said, clenching my fists and waiting for something awful to happen.

“Leigh is here,” Rachel said, nodding toward the living room.

I thought she was about to say that I was a selfish, scheming user and that I didn’t deserve a friend like Leigh. But she just put an arm around me and bent her head toward mine.

“I think you two should patch things up,” she whispered. “You didn’t know what you were doing. A girl can lose her head when she has feelings for a guy. I’ve been there, God knows. And like I’ve said before … all three of you can be friends. Isn’t that right?”

I let out a relieved sigh, nodded, and veered around wine-drinking guests in the living room until I found Leigh. She was standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, holding a red mug and staring at Manhattan. I tapped her shoulder and she turned around.

“Ari,” she said with a serious face that looked prettier than I’d ever seen it. Her hair was pulled back, and Rachel must have done her makeup. It was all the right colors—apricot-hued lipstick, sparkly gold eye shadow. She wore a green velvet dress with a silver belt cinched around her waist.

I was nervous. I tugged on one of my fingers, trying to crack the knuckle. “Merry Christmas,” I said, looking at the miniature marshmallows floating in her hot cocoa.

She leaned against the window. “Merry Christmas,” she said coldly.

That disappointed me, but I decided to give my apology a try. “Leigh,” I began. “You didn’t deserve what I did to you. I know that saying sorry doesn’t mean much, but it’s all I can do. I’d really like to be friends again.”

The city lights blinked behind her as she sipped from her mug. I thought she was ignoring me, that Rachel was wrong, that it was hopeless. So I turned away, but then she grabbed my elbow.

“Okay, Ari. I accept your apology. But don’t ever treat me like that again.”

“Promise,” I said, sticking out my hand to seal the deal. She hugged me instead.

I saw Mr. Ellis later on. What a phony. He was all smiles and charm and “Merry Christmas, Ari. So glad you could come.”

I smiled back, deciding that I’d be just as fake as he was and that I wouldn’t let him or anyone else take Blake away. I wouldn’t accept bribes and I wouldn’t be blackmailed, even if he’d been clever enough to place hidden cameras all over the Hamptons house and the apartment. I wondered if he had X-rated evidence that he planned to show my parents if I didn’t disappear, like videotape of me topless in the pool or of Blake’s head between my thighs or of the two of us going at it on those scratchy blankets.

That was paranoia, I told myself. Or maybe it was a storyline from
Days of Our Lives
. But after last night, I wouldn’t have put anything past Stanford Ellis. He could call Mom and Dad to expose me as a liar and their second letdown of a daughter, and even though I prayed that wouldn’t happen, I told myself it didn’t matter—because it was okay if you loved somebody.

“Want to see what I got for Christmas?” Blake asked.

We were sitting on the couch with Del and Rachel and Leigh. Leigh had told me that the guy from her building was her boyfriend now, and her face lit up every time she mentioned him, which made me think the California move had been a good idea.

“Blake got a stereo system from our father,” Del said. He’d been drinking and he was slumped on the couch with a cigarette in his hand. “And you know what I got, Ari? I got turned down on a loan for my club. Now I have to go to the bank and get raped on a fucking ten-percent interest rate.”

“Watch your mouth,” Blake said. “And don’t expect Daddy to bail you out every time you get in trouble. It’s not his fault that your business isn’t doing well. He warned you not to open that place.”

“He’d bail
you
out,” Del said. “He’d do anything for you.”

Blake didn’t answer. He must have known it was true. Then he took my hand and led me upstairs, where he showed me an expensive stereo system and looked disappointed when I wasn’t enthusiastic.

“What’s the matter?” he said.

“Nothing,” I answered, stepping closer to kiss him. I asked if he would come to my house for Christmas tomorrow but he said he couldn’t, one of his father’s partners had invited them for dinner and he couldn’t get out of it. “Oh, come on,” I whined. “Can’t you blow it off for me?”

And he did. He showed up at my house the next afternoon with gifts for the kids and a Lindy’s cheesecake for dessert. I had a gift for Blake. I gave him a bottle of his favorite aftershave. It wasn’t special and precious like what he’d given me, but he seemed to appreciate my Christmas present as much as I treasured his.

“It’s huge,” Evelyn said after dinner when she and I were washing dishes, Mom was playing with the boys, and Dad and Patrick and Blake were watching TV in the living room. Evelyn was looking at the ruby that hung over my shirt and she whispered into my ear, “Is
he
huge too?”

I nodded and held my finger to my lips when she let out a raunchy laugh. I had told her everything about me and Blake—about the Waldorf and the time we spent in his bedroom—and she’d promised to keep it a secret from Mom.

An hour later, we ate Mom’s butter cookies around the dining room table and Blake blended in like he was a member of the family. It made me think that Blake would learn to stand up to Mr. Ellis the way I was learning to stand up for myself. If he’d turn down Christmas with his father to spend it with me and my family, then he was definitely making progress.

“I love my gift,” I said, twirling the ruby between my fingers.

Everyone had moved to the living room and Blake and I sat together on the couch, where he took off his NYU sweatshirt and gave it to me because I was cold. It smelled of him and it was going to keep me warm in bed tonight. I was glad I didn’t have to hide it under the scarves in my closet.

twenty

Mr
. Ellis had his second heart attack at his partner’s Christmas dinner. Leigh called my house to tell Blake, and he and I rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan.

Leigh and Del and Rachel were waiting for us in the emergency room. Rachel’s cheeks were striped with tears, and when Blake saw her as we ran through the automatic doors, the frightened look on his face made me regret the moment in the car when I’d wished that this Christmas would be his father’s last.

The hospital allowed two people at a time into Mr. Ellis’s room.
Just family
, a nurse said. The only reason I wanted to go in was to be with Blake, who I saw through a window in the door. He was sitting in a chair next to the bed and Rachel was sitting next to him, rubbing his back. I wished I could rub his back. He looked so sad. His eyes were on Mr. Ellis, who had a tube in his arm and another up his nose and a ghostly pallor covering his skin.

I stood in the hallway as Rachel came out and Del went in and Del came out and Leigh went in. The only constant was Blake, who finally left the room when a doctor wanted to speak to everybody. Then I listened to the doctor tell us that Mr. Ellis had gotten to the hospital in time, that he had to stay at St. Vincent’s for a few days, but he’d be all right if he watched his diet and stopped working so hard and avoided stress.

Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. She put her arm around Leigh and they went back to the room, and then I was alone with Blake and Del. Del looked at his watch.

“This poor girl has been standing here for hours,” he said to Blake. “I’ll take her home.”

I thought that was very considerate but Blake didn’t. His face turned stormy and his voice was peevish when he told Del that nobody had asked him to take me home. Ten minutes later, Blake and I were back in the Corvette. I didn’t say a word as we drove from Manhattan to Brooklyn because Blake didn’t seem interested in talking.

“I should’ve been there” was the first thing he said.

We were parked in front of my house and he didn’t look at me. His eyes were fixed on the windshield, through which I saw piles of snow on the sidewalk and intoxicated people leaving Christmas parties.

“Your father will be fine, Blake. The doctor said so. You couldn’t have done anything if you’d been there.”

“But I would’ve been there, Ari.”

He never said he blamed me. He didn’t have to. I didn’t get a good-night kiss, and that said it all.

Blake didn’t want to welcome 1987 together. He called a few days after Christmas and said his father was home from the hospital and it wouldn’t be right to leave him alone on New Year’s Eve. He also said that Rachel was helping out, but she and Leigh were itching to go to Times Square and Del was working at his club, so the only one left to play nurse was him.

“You understand, don’t you?” he asked, and I pretended I did. I told myself that it didn’t matter, that Mr. Ellis would recover soon and Blake and I could pick up where we had left off on those scratchy blankets.

Then I went with Mom and Dad to spend New Year’s Eve in Queens, where my positive thinking evaporated. I sat on the couch in a funk while Kieran raced his Matchbox cars in the basement with Evelyn, and Dad and Patrick played poker in the dining room. Mom plopped down next to me. She tore open a pack of Pall Malls, turned on the television, and watched
It’s a Wonderful Life
as I stared into space and caressed my necklace.

“This isn’t a cheap gift,” I said.

Mom grabbed the remote control and lowered the volume. “What was that?”

“I said this isn’t a cheap gift. You accused Blake of giving me cheap gifts and this is an expensive gift.”

“Of course it is,” Mom said. She put her arm around me, pried my hand from the necklace, and squeezed my fingers in hers. “It’s a lovely gift. And I’m sure that Blake would’ve spent tonight with you if his father wasn’t sick. But he has his life to lead and you have yours. Believe me, this time next year you’ll be in college and you’ll look back on tonight and laugh.”

For a minute there I had thought she understood. I’d thought she was going to tell me that everything would be fine with Blake and that I had nothing to worry about … but instead she dismissed him as somebody I’d barely remember in twelve months.

And why did she have to bring up college? I was sure that I hadn’t exactly aced the SAT, and I hadn’t applied anywhere other than Parsons. If Mr. Ellis could get me in, he could probably keep me out. Our conversation in his car had made it crystal clear that he wouldn’t give me something for nothing. Now I understood why Mom was so anti-connections.

Leigh called on New Year’s Day and invited me to the penthouse, which was strange. It wasn’t her penthouse, and Blake should have done the inviting. I asked where he was and what he was doing, and there was a pause before she answered.

“He went to some deli on the other side of town to buy chicken noodle soup,” she said. “Uncle Stan is very picky about his chicken noodle soup.”

Her tone was sarcastic, and I imagined Blake shivering in the cold outside Katz’s or the Carnegie Deli and trying not to spill a container of scalding hot soup as he rushed home. This made me even angrier at Mr. Ellis than I already was, but my mood wasn’t too terrible, because I assumed that Blake had told Leigh to call and everything was fine.

So I fixed my hair and makeup and rode to Manhattan in a car that Leigh sent to Brooklyn. It left me at Blake’s building, where I took an elevator to the top floor. My heart sank when I reached the penthouse and he wasn’t there.

“He’ll be back soon,” Leigh said. “He had to pick up some deposition transcripts … Uncle Stan won’t stop working no matter what the doctors say.”

She told me that Mr. Ellis was resting upstairs and Rachel was asleep in the guest bedroom because she’d been out clubbing until six that morning. She led me to the living room, where Del was sitting on the couch smoking a cigarette and watching a football game. Leigh sat down next to him, so I sat next to her and stared at the television, thinking that the penthouse didn’t feel the same. It seemed empty and boring and grim without Blake.

He came home an hour later and I rushed to the foyer. There was a stack of spiral-bound documents in his hands and a dusting of snow on his coat, which I brushed off.

“Look,” I said, raising my index finger to show him a snowflake. “They say no two are alike. Isn’t it amazing?”

He didn’t say anything, just smiled a half smile, as if it wasn’t amazing and he pitied me for thinking it was. “I guess Leigh invited you,” he said, and this gave me a chill because I’d convinced myself that he wanted me there.

“Of course I did,” Leigh said from behind me. “I figured you forgot to do it yourself. A guy wants to spend New Year’s Day with his girlfriend unless he’s made a resolution to become a total bastard.”

So Blake hadn’t wanted me there. And Leigh had definitely forgiven me—she was looking out for me even though I’d pushed her aside. We sat back down on the couch, where Del and Leigh paid attention to the game and Blake didn’t pay attention to me.

“Let’s go upstairs,” I said into his ear, because I was sure he was in a bad mood from being an errand boy all morning and I could cheer him up.

“Upstairs?” he said. “But my whole family’s here. It wouldn’t look nice.”

Nice, nice, nice, I didn’t
care
about nice. And I doubted that anyone would notice. Rachel was still asleep and Mr. Ellis’s bedroom door was shut, and Leigh and Del were arguing about whether a penalty on the Jets was deserved. So I pouted and whined until Blake brought me to his room, where he acted like his old self again. He kissed me and I kissed him back, then he was on top of me on the bed and I started to undo his belt because I craved him so much that I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Don’t,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “We’ll be quiet. Nobody will know.”

He shook his head, sat up, and rubbed his temples as if he had one of my migraines. I sat next to him and asked if something was wrong, because he’d been acting so funny lately.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I think we should cool things off for a while.”

He wasn’t looking at me. He was touching his knee, scratching a bleach stain on his jeans as if scratching would do any good. What he said felt like a thousand bee stings all over my body. Then he said something about falling off the dean’s list last semester and about law school, and when I reminded him that he didn’t want to go to law school, he reminded me that his father needed him and he couldn’t let him down, especially now that he was sick and stress could make him sicker.

I wished that Mr. Ellis
would
get sicker. I wished that he’d have another heart attack and not make it to St. Vincent’s in time, and I didn’t care if that was a sinful thing to wish because he was ruining everything.

“I’m sorry,” Blake said, looking at me with a tired face. “I didn’t want to tell you until after the holidays. It’s just that I’m not sure what I’m going to end up doing, so it’s better for me to be alone for a while to figure things out. And I can’t keep lying to my father.”

“I lie,” I said. “I lie to my mother all the time. I’ve told her so many lies about us that I can’t even remember them anymore. And you shouldn’t be so eager to please your father—he’s not as perfect as you think.”

There was a flash of anger in his eyes and he broke his
Watch your language around a lady
rule again. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

It means that he threatened me, I thought. It means that he tried to bribe me and he did the same thing to Jessica. She didn’t disappear on her own, you know. Stanford Ellis made that happen so he could have you all to himself. But I didn’t say anything because I could barely talk. Blake had never raised his voice to me before, and his tone brought tears and an aura to my eyes.

“Nothing,” I answered, and my voice cracked.

He noticed and it softened him. He reached out and ran his knuckles across my cheek, and I gripped his wrist to keep his hand where it was. “Don’t be upset,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you, Ari. We’ll just see what happens, okay?”

I nodded, trying not to cry, wanting him to put his arms around me so I could bury my face in his chest, but he didn’t. He led me downstairs, where Leigh and Del were getting into their coats. They said that Leigh wanted to go back to her hotel and Del had work to do at the club, and a car was waiting for them outside.

“Take Ari with you,” Blake said. “She needs to go home.”

Now it was much harder to keep myself from crying, but I managed somehow. I stepped into the elevator with Leigh and Del while Blake stood in the foyer with his face as blank as a soldier’s. He didn’t kiss me goodbye. Then the doors slammed shut and he was gone.

Downstairs in the lobby, the doorman ushered us into a miserable day. The snow had turned to rain, and our driver must have had the flu because he kept sniffing and coughing. His cough was so deep I felt it in my chest.

“Are you all right?” Leigh asked in her raspy voice. She was sitting between me and Del, and I guessed she was asking because I hadn’t said a single word in the last fifteen minutes. She didn’t know it was because I was afraid I’d break into a fit of sobs if I dared to open my mouth. So I nodded and she kept looking at me, studying my face with her hazel eyes, and she said that Blake had been acting weird since Christmas. “He’s all mixed up in his head, Ari,” she said quietly, so Del couldn’t hear. “He’ll get over it.”

I nodded again, hoping she was right. The sedan parked at her hotel, and as she got out she said that she and Rachel would be back in New York next month. Del told the driver that the next stop was West Twenty-third and we were off again, riding over slick streets, past mountains of filthy gray snow that I wished would melt because they were depressingly ugly.

“I’m not contagious, you know,” Del said.

At first I thought he was referring to the syphilis. But of course he wasn’t. He’d been cured, and he didn’t even know that I knew about it. He just meant that I was sticking to the opposite side of the car. I was still afraid to talk, so I forced a smile and slid a few inches toward him on the seat. He asked if it would bother me if he had a cigarette. I shook my head and he rolled down the window to blow smoke into the rain. We were both quiet and I kept glancing at his hands because they came from the exact same mold as Blake’s.

When we reached Cielo, Del tossed his cigarette into the gutter. Then he leaned across the seat to put his hand on the curve in my back and to kiss my cheek, wishing me a happy new year. A raw gust of wind blew into my face as he opened the car door and I had a sinking feeling this wasn’t going to be a happy year.