Other Words for Love (8 page)

The next day Leigh gave me an invitation to her uncle’s party. Even though the party was going to be at his home, the invitation had been mailed from his office. It was made of thick red paper, tucked inside a gold foil envelope with printing on the back.
ELLIS & HUMMEL, P.A. EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. 350 FIFTH AVENUE. 98TH FLOOR
. Leigh’s uncle’s name was Stanford Ellis.

I’d never been inside the Empire State Building and neither had my parents or Evelyn, because Mom said that real New Yorkers never did those touristy things. But I imagined that a man who owned a law firm on Fifth Avenue and whose Christmas-party invitation ended with the words
Black tie optional
expected his guests to wear something special.

“Can I get a new dress in the city?” I asked Mom the weekend before the party. It was Saturday morning, and she and Dad were sitting at our kitchen table reading the newspaper over a coffee cake. Mom was already smoking a cigarette, and she gave me a look like I had suggested a trip to Mars.

“In the city?” she said, as if the city wasn’t only a few miles away. She looked at Dad and they let out a simultaneous laugh, went back to the newspaper, and left me standing on the tiles.

But I couldn’t go to Stanford Ellis’s party in some old clearance-rack rag from my closet. “The party is a semiformal, Mom. Black tie optional.”

“Well,” she said. “La-di-da.”

Dad laughed and I almost cried. Didn’t these people understand anything? Didn’t they notice that I never went anywhere interesting or did anything exciting? I wanted to tell Mom that I had to look decent at the party because someone who might be attracted to me was going to be there, but I was smarter than that.
Boys are irrelevant
, she’d probably say.

We compromised. We went to a local Loehmann’s, where she promised to buy me a dress that was practical and sensibly priced.

“This big-shot friend of yours,” Mom said as we browsed the racks. “She might invite you to some other parties, so pick out something you love. I’m not buying a new dress every time, Ariadne. You’re not Princess Diana.”

I knew I wasn’t Princess Diana. And Leigh wasn’t a big shot. But I also knew Mom would make me leave the store empty-handed if I argued, so I didn’t. An hour later we were back in the Honda, where I clutched a shopping bag, grateful for what was inside—a knee-length black velvet number that had been on sale for twenty percent off. A little black dress. Summer always said that every girl should have a little black dress.

I carefully packed it in a garment bag on the night of the party, and searched my dresser drawers for a pair of panty hose while Mom watched.

“Is your homework done?” she said.

“Yes,” I answered, trying not to sound snotty even though she’d asked me that same question three times already.

“And Leigh’s parents … they’ll be at home?”

I was going to Leigh’s apartment so we could get ready and take the car service to the party together, and I knew Rachel would be there, but the word
parents
threw me off. Leigh had never mentioned her father, and it would have been rude of me to ask. “Her mother will,” I said.

“Her mother,” Mom said. “What about her father?”

“I don’t know, Mom. They’re probably divorced. Just about everybody’s parents are divorced.”

She grunted. I didn’t want to look at her, so I kept rummaging through the drawer. Then Mom gripped my arm and I had to look. Her eyes were puffy, and I wished she would dye her hair soon. She was so negligent about her hair.

“Be back by midnight, Ariadne. Not a minute later.”

Midnight was fair. I agreed, and then I rode in the sedan that Leigh had ordered for me. The driver took me to Leigh’s apartment, where Rachel opened the door. She was dressed in another nightgown, and her long hair cascaded over her shoulders.

“Can I tell you something?” she said a few minutes later. I was sitting beside her on the couch and Leigh was in a chair across from me, shaking her head.

“Oh, Mama,” she said, which was weird. Everyone I knew called their mother Mom or Mommy or Ma. The way Leigh said it reminded me of an old Elvis Presley interview I’d seen on television once. Mama and Daddy, that was how Elvis referred to his parents, and I guessed it made sense, because he was from the South too.

Rachel’s accent was slight. I heard it after she ignored Leigh and spoke to me. “Ari,” she said. “You have beautiful eyes. But honey, you’re not tweezing those brows right. Let me fix them and I’ll make you gorgeous.”

Leigh seemed insulted. “Mama,” she groaned. “What’s wrong with you? Ari didn’t ask for a makeover.”

But I didn’t mind. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a professional makeup artist to make me gorgeous.

Rachel clicked her tongue. “
You’re
the one who needs a makeover. I haven’t seen you in lipstick for almost a year.”

I’d never seen Leigh in lipstick either. Or mascara or anything else. Leigh’s boyfriend had died almost a year ago, and I wondered if makeup didn’t matter to her anymore.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You’re not, but we’ll discuss it later,” Rachel said, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on the edge of a bathtub and she was crouched in front of me with a look of intense concentration, as if she was performing microsurgery instead of plucking my eyebrows. When she was finished, she turned to Leigh. “See?” she said. “Wasn’t I right?”

Leigh smiled and admitted that my arch was perfect. “You really opened up her eyes.”

“Just keep her away from Del,” Rachel said, then turned back to me. “He’s a runaround like my father was. I swear he wants that club so he can have a bar full of girls just a staircase below his bedroom.”

I guessed Leigh wasn’t kidding when she’d said that everybody talked badly about Del. She and Rachel left me alone to get dressed for the party, and I stared at myself in the mirror, thinking that I looked better. My eyebrows were artfully sculpted and they ended in tapered points at the outside corners of my eyes, which seemed bluer somehow. I stared for a while, zipped up my dress, and stepped into heels that made me much taller than Leigh.

She wore flat shoes. No makeup. Her dress was plain, the same color as a paper lunch bag and just as wrinkly. Rachel told her to find something else, she had a whole closet filled with more attractive things, but Leigh didn’t listen and Rachel didn’t argue. She was too busy working on her hair and her face and her dress, which was made of sequin-covered white satin that twinkled inside the sedan on our way to the party.

We weren’t in the car for long. Stanford Ellis’s apartment was only a few blocks away, in a tall building with a concierge and a granite floor in its lobby. We got into an elevator that played a symphony through invisible speakers; there was a leaf-shaped sconce on the wall made of frosted glass. Rachel pressed a button and we rode to the top floor, where the doors opened into what I thought was a shared hallway but was actually a private foyer.

We were standing on granite again. I felt heat from flames burning low in a fireplace and I smelled the greenery that covered a round table in the middle of the room. The walls around us were dark wood. We walked into a carpeted living room with floor-to-ceiling windows that boasted a breathtaking view of Manhattan.

I’d never seen the city from so high; I didn’t think this place was really an apartment. It was a penthouse. It had a big kitchen and a formal dining room and a wide staircase of creamy pearl marble with an intricate iron railing. There were people sitting on the stairs wearing expensive suits and classy dresses, holding wineglasses and scotch glasses and cocktail napkins, probably because there was nowhere else to sit. The couches and chairs were filled with other people who were drinking and talking and laughing, and I noticed a man weaving his way through the crowd, spending just a moment with each person, like a bee pollinating flowers.

“That’s Uncle Stan,” Leigh said, pointing a freckled finger in his direction.

We were eating mini-quiches that we’d snagged from a gloved waiter’s tray. We sipped Perrier and leaned against a wall and I watched Stanford Ellis, who wasn’t what I expected. He wasn’t as old as my parents and he wasn’t as young as Rachel. I decided that he was in his forties and as handsome as any actor.

Leigh introduced him a few minutes later. He was Rachel’s height and they had the same nose. His wheat blond hair was thick and his skin was tan. He didn’t spend any more time with us than he did with his other guests, but he filled every second with smiles and charm.

“What’s the matter with you, Leigh?” he said in a fading Southern accent, his dark eyes fixed on me. “Bringing such a pretty girl to the party. I’ll have to lock up my sons.”

He probably didn’t mean it. But when he was gone, I pretended he did and it got me all happy and excited and I kept sipping my Perrier, hoping Leigh wouldn’t see that I was desperate for a compliment. She didn’t seem to notice. She started talking about Del, who had just arrived and was working the crowd as expertly as his father.

We ran into him in the kitchen before dinner was served. The caterers were dropping sprigs of parsley on plates and Del was mixing his own drink.

He wasn’t wearing a tie. The top of his shirt was open underneath his blazer and he smelled of cologne and tobacco. He smiled at me and Leigh with his scarred lip.

His eyes were greener than the last time I’d seen him. I hadn’t realized until now how sharply his nose hooked downward at the tip, and I decided that he wasn’t nearly as handsome as his father, but he made me much more excited.

“You ladies want a drink?” he asked.

I shook my head. I’d never had more than a Budweiser, and tonight wasn’t the time to start experimenting. I needed to keep my wits about me so I wouldn’t do anything stupid or embarrassing or both.

Leigh folded her arms. “We’re underage. Not everybody breaks the law, Del,” she said teasingly, and I remembered the engineering student with the missing teeth.

“Funny,” he said.

She smiled, leaning against the counter. “Where’s your brother?”

Del’s drink was in his hand and he shook it to spin the rum inside. “Blake’s upstairs. He’s studying for finals like a good little boy.”

Blake didn’t join us for dinner, which was a buffet set up in chafing dishes on the dining room table. Everyone loaded their plates and Leigh found an empty spot on a soft leather couch, where I settled down between her and Del and barely touched my food because I had to avoid getting spinach stuck in my teeth and dribbling marinara sauce down my chin. I couldn’t humiliate myself, especially not with Del so close that his knee was touching mine.

His pants were smooth. He wore a gold bracelet and a diamond pinkie ring. He left twice to get more food and three times to refresh his drink, and I worried that I was boring and he wouldn’t come back, but he always did.

“I’m opening my club on New Year’s Eve,” he told me. “You should come.”

“I don’t think I could get in,” I said, because the minimum age for those clubs was twenty-one and I didn’t have a fake ID. Del laughed and I felt a trickle of sweat roll down my back.

“That was cute,” he said. “And don’t worry. I won’t let anyone keep you out.”

I smiled and sat there talking to Leigh and Del until Rachel told us it was time to leave. Del walked with us to the foyer and Rachel looked at him after pressing the elevator button on the wall.

“Give me and your cousin a kiss goodbye, delinquent,” she said.

He smirked and obeyed, then the elevator doors opened and he got close to me when Rachel’s and Leigh’s backs were turned. He whispered something in my ear, something that sounded like “Merry Christmas,” and I felt the stubble on his chin as he kissed my cheek.

It was just a regular kiss. It was the same kiss he gave his aunt and cousin, the same nothing kiss that all the guests were giving to each other as they filed out of the party. But he clutched my shoulder and rested his hand on the small of my back, and it made me breathe faster because nobody had touched me that way since the Catskills boy.

“Leigh,” Rachel said when we were in the car. “Did you see Blake tonight?”

Leigh shook her head. “Del told us he was studying.”

“Hiding, more likely. Stan tells me he’s still upset about that girl.”

What girl? I wondered, but only for a moment. Rachel and Leigh were quiet now and I pressed my forehead against the window, watching lights whiz by while Del’s kiss simmered on my skin.

When I walked into my house later that night, Dad was asleep and Mom was in the living room, smoking a Pall Mall and scribbling on a notepad.

“Are you working on a novel?” I asked.

“Aren’t I always?” She ripped three pages from the pad, crumpled them in her hand, and told me to sit down. “I’ll get a snack and you can tell me everything.”

She went to the kitchen, came back with a plate of sandwiches, and handed me a warm glass. It was filled to the rim with milk and I didn’t want it, but she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Mom always forced milk on me and Evelyn to make our bones strong or whatever.

“I heated it up,” she said. “It’ll help you sleep tonight.”

I was too excited to sleep. I kicked off my shoes and Mom and I sat cross-legged on the couch, where I told her about the fancy elevator and the penthouse. I mentioned Leigh’s uncle but not her cousin, because Stanford Ellis was safe—I could talk about him the way I would any unattainable older man, like Don Johnson or Tom Selleck. But Del was twenty-four, like Patrick when he got Evelyn in trouble, so I kept him to myself.

eight

I
slept late the next morning. I would have slept even later if Dad wasn’t so noisy when he climbed a ladder next to my window to line our roof with Christmas lights. I saw his feet on the rungs as I looked outside. I also saw a dusting of snow on Saint Anne’s tranquil face. Mom was next to her, searching through a box marked
Extension Cords
.

There were more boxes in the living room. They gave off the scent of candles and the aerosol stuff that Mom always sprayed on our artificial tree to make it smell like real pine. The house reeked of Christmas and it boosted my mood, which was good already because I still felt Del on my cheek. I felt him while Mom and Dad were shouting at each other about whether they should use white or colored lights on our hedges, while I toasted a Pop-Tart, and even after the phone rang and I heard Patrick’s voice.

“Evelyn has the flu,” he said. “And I gotta go to work.”

So we had to go to Queens, where I only got to see Patrick for a minute. He was waiting at the front door and he rushed past us without so much as a hello kiss because he was late for his shift.

This was the first depressing thing. There were many others, like the sound of Evelyn puking in the bathroom, the pile of dirty dishes in her kitchen sink, and the mountain of withered tissues that she hadn’t bothered to clear from her coffee table. And even worse was the obnoxious blue Muppet that Kieran was watching on TV in the living room. I felt a headache starting and I didn’t have my migraine pills, so I asked if he could watch something else, but he ignored me.

“Kieran,” I said. “Please change the channel.”

Dad was reading the newspaper in the kitchen, Mom was washing dishes, and Evelyn sneezed on the couch. She wiped her nose with a Kleenex but she didn’t do a very good job, because when she looked at me, there was a sickening shimmer of snot above her lip.

“That’s his favorite show,” she said.

“It’s giving me a migraine, Evelyn.”

Her throat was filled with phlegm and she sounded like an old woman dying of pneumonia. “Oh, poor you. Go back to Brooklyn if your ears are so damn delicate.”

She raised the volume on the TV and scratched her eczema, and I wanted to grab the tissues and use them to smother her. I wanted to tell her that she was nasty and rude and that I had come here to help even though I would rather be at home. I would rather be drawing or reading and not listening to some puppet sing a stupid song that was worse than nails drilling into my skull, but I didn’t say that. I just went to the kitchen, where I complained to Mom.

“I know,” she said. “But we have to be careful around her.”

We had to be careful. I couldn’t kill my sister. All I could do was set up a cot in the nursery and rest in the dark with Shane while Mom drove to the store to pick up some aspirin, Evelyn went to sleep in her bedroom, and Dad played with Kieran in the living room.

My blanket smelled of Patrick, which made me feel better. I stayed wrapped up in it until I heard a shrill noise and I went downstairs, where Kieran was rubbing his hair and crying.

“He hit his head on the table,” Dad said in the airy tone adults use to convince children that they’re not really in pain. But Kieran kept bawling and Dad put him on his lap on the couch while I watched from the bottom of the stairs.

That was what depressed me the most. More than the messy house and the puking and the snot. It depressed me because I only got that from Dad once, on a summer day when I was six years old. I accidentally slammed my finger in a drawer while Mom and Evelyn were at Pathmark. He came rushing into my bedroom, and after he checked that my finger was still attached, he scooped me up and told me in a soothing voice that everything was okay until I believed him.

That was the one and only time. There were other times I wanted that kind of attention again, lots and lots of times, like when I came home from junior high with a tear-stained face because Summer had been voted Prettiest Girl. But Dad was working on his car in the garage and he just stared at me from ten feet away like I was ridiculous and said that Mom would be home soon.

At that moment I decided that I really was ridiculous, because I was twelve and my breasts were growing and my hips were curving, and I figured that breasts and hips were the things that made you a grown-up and grown-ups weren’t supposed to cry to anyone. They weren’t really supposed to cry at all, but if they did, they had to do it alone, locked in a bathroom or in the car when nobody else was there, and if anyone noticed their bloodshot eyes, they had to shake it off and be all stoic and say
Oh, I’m just fine
.

I believed this for a few years. I believed it and bravely accepted it until the first time I saw Evelyn cry to Patrick and he held her and stroked her hair, and I thought it was the most hopeful thing I’d ever seen.

Summer rushed to my front door on Monday morning, carrying a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag. Her hair poked out of a fuzzy pink hat and there was a matching scarf around her neck with pom-poms that bounced against her black coat. She smiled, pulled a box out of the bag, and shoved the box at me as she stepped into my front hall.

“This is for Evelyn,” she said. “For the baby, I mean. It’s an outfit my mother and I bought at Bloomingdale’s yesterday.… It’s so precious that we just couldn’t resist.”

I considered telling Summer to bring the precious outfit back to Bloomingdale’s for a refund because Evelyn was on Santa’s bad list this year and she didn’t deserve a baby gift. But I just thanked her and put the box under our Christmas tree.

“And here’s something for
you,
” Summer said as I turned around. She dug into the bag, took out a cedar box, and handed it to me. I saw
EMPIRE STATE FINE ART SUPPLIES
engraved in the wood. “My mother and I passed by there on our way to Bloomie’s and I
had
to go in.”

I opened the box. “Summer,” I said with a gasp, running my finger across a row of pencils and charcoals, taking in their brand-new smell. “They’re beautiful. But that store is expensive … you didn’t have to spend so much money on me for Christmas.”

“Oh, this isn’t a
Christmas
present,” she said. “It’s just because you like to draw.”

I closed the box and gave her a hug. We went outside and Jeff drove us to school, where Leigh didn’t show up for homeroom or even art class. She must have gone to at least one of her classes, because I saw her in front of Hollister when Summer and I were leaving that afternoon.

She was walking across the street, heading toward a charcoal-colored Porsche with a young man leaning against it. He wore a long black coat and was smoking a cigarette, and it took me a second to figure out that he was Del.

Summer groaned. “There’s the weirdo and her ugly boyfriend. Doesn’t he look like an Indian? I heard somewhere that she’s an Indian, so it makes sense. Maybe she’s his squaw.”

She laughed but I didn’t. “Native American,” I said, thinking that she sounded like a racist and wondering how someone who had the patience to psychologically counsel her own stalker could turn into a completely different person in matters relating to Leigh Ellis. It was such a change from this morning. “
Native American
is the proper term.”

Summer seemed thoroughly insulted. “Whatever,” she said, but she pronounced it “what-ev-er,” breaking it into syllables as if the syllables were separate words.

“And she’s only part Native American,” I went on. “From way back.”

We headed toward the subway, and for some reason Summer kept talking about Del.

“I think he looks like an Indian,” she insisted. “His hair is so dark, and did you see his nose? And that hideous scar on his mouth? If Leigh marries him and has babies, they could get the same thing. I saw a picture in a medical book of a baby with a cleft lip—it was like a big wet gaping hole in the middle of the kid’s face. I almost puked. That’s a genetic birth defect, you know.”

“My hair is dark,” I said. “Lots of people have dark hair. And he has light skin and light eyes—and she’s not going to marry him, Summer. He’s her cousin.”

She stopped walking. “How would
you
know anything about his eyes?”

Because I saw them when I was at his apartment, I thought. I also saw them at a penthouse party in the city on Saturday and I spent an hour last night mixing paint to match his shade. But I can’t tell you that, Summer. I’ll conjure up something believable and considerate to answer your question. You think I was in Queens instead of Manhattan on Saturday night and I wouldn’t want to hurt your feelings, even though you’re becoming so shallow it scares me.

A few days before Christmas vacation, when Summer sat with me during lunch period and she was all cheery because she’d reconciled with her Columbia guy, I caught Leigh’s attention as she glanced up from
ARTnews
.

“Why did you have to do that?” Summer said after I waved across the cafeteria at Leigh, who closed her magazine and walked in our direction.

She settled down next to me; Summer was across from us. Leigh acted friendly and Summer sat stock-still in her chair like an absolute prig. Then Leigh started talking about Del and his club and the opening-night party on New Year’s Eve.

“He told you about it, didn’t he?” Leigh said, and I nodded and stiffened, feeling Summer’s eyes sear holes in my face. “You can come, Summer … if you want to.”

She did want to. I wasn’t sure if it was because she liked the idea of being the private guest of a Manhattan nightclub owner—even one with a birth defect—or if it was just spite. And during the subway ride home that afternoon, she didn’t ask where or how I had spoken to Del. She pretended that the entire issue was unimportant, which was even worse.

“I’ll bring Casey,” she said. “Leigh told me that I could bring a guest.”

Casey was the Columbia guy. He was blond and good-looking and the mention of him reminded me that I didn’t have a guest to bring, but I didn’t feel bad. Normally I would have—I would have felt inadequate and unattractive and I would have spent hours pondering my uneven breasts—but this time I decided to be positive. I was going to see Del next week and he had kissed me and touched the curve in my back, and any guy who did such a thing to a girl had to have at least a smidgen of interest in her, didn’t he?

But Mom couldn’t know about that. I only told her that I wanted to go to a nightclub on New Year’s Eve and that Leigh’s cousin owned the place, and it was all perfectly safe because Leigh’s mother would be there and I wouldn’t have a single drink.

She puffed on a cigarette while I argued my case and then she demanded to meet
This Leigh Person
, as if I was five years old. But I agreed and Leigh stopped by on Christmas Eve so we could exchange gifts.

I gave her a sweater and she gave me an Eighty-eight-Shade Pro Eye Shadow Palette. It came in a glazed black case with a built-in mirror. She told me that Rachel had chosen this particular set because it was the appropriate match for my skin tone.

“Leigh is very nice,” Mom said after she was gone. We were in the living room while Dad slept upstairs, and she handed me a plate of homemade butter cookies. “You can go to the club as long as you come home at a reasonable hour.”

What a relief. I smiled and selected a cookie in the shape of a star.

The next day, Evelyn came to Brooklyn with Patrick and the boys. She’d lost seven pounds from the flu; her face was thinner, her eczema was almost gone, and she wore a royal blue dress with a Christmas present from Patrick—eighteen amethysts that formed a teardrop and hung from a gold chain around her neck. She whispered in my ear that they couldn’t afford anything extra this year, but she’d been feeling so low lately that Patrick wanted to give her something special, so he just put it on their MasterCard.

I fawned over the necklace. I smiled after Mom whispered in a relieved voice that Patrick and Evelyn were getting along better. I snapped a Polaroid of them on the couch as Patrick’s hand squeezed Evelyn’s leg and Evelyn’s head rested on Patrick’s shoulder. And when they kissed under the mistletoe that hung from our kitchen doorway, I cheerfully agreed with Mom that they were a beautiful couple. Then I hid in the bathroom for a while. I was so jealous that I almost cried.