Other Words for Love

by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  “Summer called,” Mom went on, adding that Tina was catering a party tonight and she could use my help with the cooking if I was interested, which I wasn’t. I wanted to stay in my room and draw another tree, but Mom thought I had practiced enough for today.

  She drove me to Summer’s house, where she talked to Tina on the front steps and I went inside. Summer was sitting at the dining room table, cutting strips of dough with a pastry wheel. There was flour on her face, and she blew her bangs out of her eyes.

  “How’s your stud brother-in-law?” she asked.

  Gorgeous as always, I thought. I love it when he walks around the house without a shirt. That weight lifting he does in the basement must really work, because his shoulders are huge. But of course I can’t tell you that, Summer. He’s married to my only sister and it’s sinful for me to think these things.

  “He’s fine,” I said.

  Summer handed me a rolling pin and a bag of walnuts. I sat down and crushed the nuts, noticing that she wasn’t wearing any makeup and thinking she looked much younger this way, more like she did before she blossomed and cast a spell over everyone. Back then—before puberty and highlights and operations to fix her lazy left eye and to straighten her nose—she used to just blend in. Except during the holidays, when some kids picked on her because she had a Christmas wreath on her door and a Hanukkah menorah in her window. Make up your mind, they used to say, and I told them they were ignorant. I said that Summer’s mother was Episcopalian and her father was Jewish, and Summer was going to pick her religion someday but for now she was both.

  “Ari,” she said. “I’m sorry for drooling over Patrick, but I’m dying without a boyfriend.”

  “You’re dying?” I said.

  She knew what I meant—that I’d never had a boyfriend in my entire life. She reached over and squeezed my arm, leaving a smear of flour on my skin. “You’ll get one. Then you’ll see how nice it is to make love.”

  She smiled dreamily and I kept hearing those last two words even when she was quiet and cutting dough. She didn’t say screwing or banging, and she called a guy’s you-know-what a magic wand instead of the four-letter words that everybody tossed around at school. But Summer was mature and smart, and she’d read most of her father’s medical books in his library down the hall.

  She wanted to be a psychiatrist too, and she already acted the part. She’d explained to me years ago that schizophrenics hear voices and that kidnapping victims can develop Stockholm syndrome, and she once had a talk with a boy in our seventh-grade class who had a crush on her. He used to call her house just to hear her answer the phone, he wrote sappy poems, and we actually found him collecting strands of her hair from her jacket in the coatroom. So Summer sat him down and explained that he wasn’t in love with her, that he only thought he was in love because he was suffering from something else—a psychological word that I quickly forgot. Whatever it was, she said it was similar to lust but much worse because it could get you so stuck on somebody that you’d simply lose your mind.

  He didn’t bother her anymore after that. Summer considered him her first cured patient and started talking about UCLA, her father’s alma mater. But I didn’t want her to talk about any colleges that weren’t in New York. Summer had been my best friend since first grade, and the possibility that she would go so far away was depressing.

  “Ari,” Tina said later on, when Summer and I were chopping raw steak into cubes. She gave me a piece of paper with a name and telephone number on it and ran her hand across her forehead. Her hair was limp and she looked exhausted as usual. “Please give that to your mother. She needs the name of someone to contact at Hollister.”

  “Thanks, Tina,” I said, and I wasn’t being disrespectful. Summer’s parents didn’t want me to address them as Mrs. Simon and Dr. Simon. They’d told me years ago to call them Tina and Jeff. Mom rolled her eyes when she found out about it and mumbled that Tina and Jeff were progressive.

  I folded the paper and stuck it in my pocket. I felt Summer staring at me. I’d told her about our inheritance and the Parsons School of Design, but I had never mentioned Hollister Prep.

  “Are you going to Hollister?” Summer asked.

  She looked nervous. I guessed she was worried that I might accidentally mention embarrassing things to her Hollister friends, things like her eye surgery and her nose job. They must have believed that she was born perfect.

  “My mother wants me to,” I said. I was still secretly hoping that Mom would forget the whole thing and let me finish my last two years in Brooklyn. But I rarely got what I wanted.

  A month later, my parents and I went to Queens for a Saturday-afternoon lunch. Patrick was on duty and I was sleeping over, because Evelyn’s due date was getting close and he didn’t want her to be alone.

  I sat on the couch as Evelyn bent solicitously over Dad, offering him one of those mini hot dog things wrapped in a flaky biscuit. She was wearing a summery maternity dress with a neck that was too low and a hem that was too high. More weight had crept onto her recently and I could see the dimples above her knees.

  “Evelyn,” Mom said from her seat next to me. “Did Ariadne tell you that she’s going to Hollister Prep in September?”

  By this point, Mom and I had talked about Hollister Prep. Yesterday I’d admitted that I was afraid. I was afraid of new surroundings and new people, and I was sure I wouldn’t make any friends because I hardly had any friends now, but Mom insisted that this was completely irrelevant. In her opinion, I was an interesting, intelligent, fabulous person, and if people didn’t recognize that, then they could just go and screw themselves. Besides, it was only for two years, and I had to agree when she said that Hollister would help my college chances. So I was going.

  “No,” Evelyn said, lowering herself into a chair. Her stomach was gigantic and her feet were too swollen for shoes. “She didn’t. So how are you paying for that?”

  “Oh,” Mom said. “Uncle Eddie left us some money. Didn’t I mention it?”

  Mom knew that she hadn’t mentioned it. We all knew that she hadn’t mentioned it. And I could almost hear what my sister was thinking: Uncle Eddie left you some money, you’re sending Ari to an expensive school, how much will that cost, and where’s mine?

  That wasn’t fair. Mom and Dad had given Evelyn lots of things, like a wedding and a two-month stay at New York–Presbyterian. But she could be very selfish sometimes.

  “Well, that’s nice,” she said in the same bland voice she used lately whenever anything good happened to me, like when I entered a boroughwide art contest last year and won a second-place ribbon. I didn’t know why she had to be that way, because I was always happy when good things happened to her. I’d been happy when she married Patrick, even though I’d wished he would marry me.

  Evelyn changed the subject by bringing us upstairs to the guest bedroom. It was a nursery now, with walls painted a color called Valentine Rose.

  “Sort of loud, isn’t it?” Mom said.

  Evelyn shrugged. “It’s pink. Pink is nice for a girl.”

  “Yes,” Mom laughed. “But you don’t know if you’re having a girl, sweetheart.”

  Evelyn’s skin suddenly matched the walls and her expression was one I’d seen many times when she lived with us in Brooklyn. It was as if she was about to dissolve into tears or commit a fatal stabbing.

  “Evelyn,” Dad said. “Is lunch almost ready? I can’t wait to eat your tuna casserole.”

  Tuna casserole was one of her specialties—along with meat loaf and sloppy joes.

  Evelyn turned toward Dad. “It has potato chips on top,” she said, giving him a faint smile. “Just the way you like it.”

  We had her tuna casserole for lunch, with her no-bake cheesecake for dessert, and after my parents went home, I washed dishes in the kitchen. Evelyn fell asleep on the couch, and Kieran asked if he could play in the backyard.

  I nodded and changed into shorts and a bikini top. After that I sat on a folding chair while Kieran
ran across the grass and dove on his Slip ’n Slide as if it was the most fantastic thing ever. It made me wonder who had come up with that brilliant idea—convincing kids that it was fun to skid across a slimy sheet of plastic on the hard ground.

  The sun was fading when Evelyn joined us. She carried a bag of Doritos and dragged a chair next to mine.

  “Do you know how much weight I’ve gained from this baby?” she asked, and I shook my head. “Well, I won’t tell you because it’s too embarrassing. I’ve turned into a big fat cow.”

  “Don’t say that, Evelyn. You always look beautiful.”

  She snorted. “You’re such a fucking liar, Ari. I mean … if you asked what I thought … I’d tell you that you’ve got a good body but your boobs are small and uneven.”

  What had happened to the sweet Evelyn? I knew that my breasts were small, but they were uneven, too? I looked down at my bikini top and she nodded toward my right breast.

  “That one,” she said. “It’s a little smaller than the other side. I can’t see it much in normal clothes, but it’s obvious in a bathing suit. You should stuff your bra with tissues or whatever.”

  Later on, when Evelyn and Kieran were asleep, I stood at the bathroom mirror putting Kleenex in and pulling Kleenex out, and after an hour I decided that Evelyn was right. My right breast really was smaller than the left. This was especially upsetting because my list of flaws was long enough already.

  There wasn’t anything horribly wrong with me, like a receding chin or an oversized nose. My chin was strong and my nose was small and straight. I didn’t even have any acne problems. But my face was kind of gaunt and pale, and one of my front teeth slightly overlapped the other. I had thick eyebrows that I had to tweeze relentlessly. Standing in front of a mirror, examining my reflection and criticizing myself, was something I spent a lot of time doing. My latest torture session, however, was cut short by Evelyn’s voice outside the door. Her water had broken early and the contractions were starting.

  Sweet Evelyn emerged again on the way to the hospital. We’d had to wake up Kieran and leave him with one of Evelyn’s neighbor friends. We also had to take a cab because I didn’t drive yet and we couldn’t reach Patrick. I’d called the firehouse and was informed that he was out. Explosion in a high-rise, the guy on the phone had said.

  I left a message and lied to Evelyn. “It’s just a grease fire in somebody’s kitchen.” She worried about Patrick enough; she didn’t need to be worrying then, when she was in pain and clutching my hand.

  I also called Mom and Dad, who met us at the hospital. Evelyn was being wheeled from the emergency room when she started talking about Lamaze, saying she needed Patrick for that, and Mom offered to take his place.

  “No,” Evelyn said. “Ari can come but nobody else.”

  This made me happy and sad at the same time. It was nice to be needed, to be part of Evelyn’s inner circle—and I loved her for wanting me there—but I didn’t enjoy leaving our mother out. Mom and Evelyn were very skilled at leaving each other out. We have nothing in common, Mom often said. Evelyn has never finished a book in her entire life.

  Now Mom mumbled something that sounded like Don’t let me intrude, but I wasn’t sure. I was following behind Evelyn and a nurse, and we were getting too far away to hear.

  We went to a room on the fifth floor that reeked of Lysol. I looked the other way while Evelyn undressed and slipped into a flimsy gown. Next there was a doctor and a needle that went into Evelyn’s spine. That made me cringe and she got quiet. She drifted in and out of sleep while I watched television—a news reporter talking about the explosion in the high-rise—but Evelyn didn’t notice. She was too busy with the doctor, who kept snapping on latex gloves, sticking his hands underneath her gown, and talking about centimeters.

  I wished he wouldn’t. It was all so stark and mechanical. How could soft moans behind a bedroom wall possibly result in needles and stirrups and K-Y Jelly? Even though I was still flattered to be a member of Evelyn’s private club, I kept hoping that Patrick would show up before I had to help with that Lamaze business.

  Luckily, he did. He dragged the scent of ashes with him and I read his jacket as he leaned over Evelyn’s bed. CAGNEY. FDNY. ENGINE 258. He was kissing her cheek when he got yelled at by a nurse who ordered him to take a shower in an empty room next door and change into sanitary scrubs. I followed him to the hall and he laughed at me.

  “Gross enough for you?” he asked as I studied the smears of dirt on his face. His hair dangled over his forehead and his firefighter clothes made him huge. The big black jacket with the horizontal yellow stripes, the matching pants, the thick boots. “I told your parents I’d send you back downstairs. And I’m warning you … Nancy seems pissed off.”

  So did Evelyn the next day, when my parents and I stopped by in the late afternoon. We’d stayed at the hospital until Evelyn gave birth, and we were so exhausted afterward that we slept until noon. Evelyn was exhausted too. Her labor had been long, she’d lost a lot of blood, and she was in a cranky mood.

  “Here,” she said, shoving the baby at a nurse. “I’m tired.”

  The baby wasn’t a girl. He was a healthy boy with blond hair, a pink bedroom, and no name. Evelyn never even looked at the second half of the Name Your Baby book. Now she folded her arms across her chest, stared at Days of Our Lives, and didn’t say goodbye when our parents left to get some coffee.

  “Look, Evelyn,” I said, lifting an elaborately wrapped box from Summer. There was a pair of baby pajamas inside, but they didn’t make Evelyn feel better.

  “This is for a girl,” she said. “I didn’t get a girl.”

  “It’s yellow. Yellow is for a boy, too.”

  “Yellow is for faggots,” she said, tossing the pajamas toward her night table.

  They fell to the floor and I picked them up, thinking that she was being rude and ungrateful, because Summer had spent a lot of time wrapping that gift. I knew she was disappointed, that she’d wanted a daughter to dress in Easter bonnets, to sit side by side with at the beauty salon and share secrets. She probably wanted a do-over for all the fun things that didn’t happen between her and Mom. But I was worried, too. She hadn’t looked this miserable since Kieran was born.

  three

  When Evelyn had been at New York–Presbyterian Hospital five years earlier, Mom had moved into her house. She’d taken care of Kieran while Patrick was at work, and she’d taught me how to hold a baby’s head and how to change a diaper and the best type of formula to buy.

  Now I took Mom’s place, because she’d caught a stomach virus and Evelyn was still in the hospital. We weren’t sure if it was because of all the blood she’d lost or if the doctors thought she was getting crazy again, and Evelyn wouldn’t tell us. We only knew that there was a new baby in the family and Patrick couldn’t miss work. He had two children and a thirty-year mortgage with a ten percent interest rate, after all. And his family couldn’t help. They were in Boston and his mother had little kids at home. Patrick was the oldest; his youngest brother was in the third grade.

  So the baby was my responsibility. His name was Shane, only because he couldn’t leave the hospital until Evelyn came up with something to put on the birth certificate. She’d gotten the name from a soap opera and I wasn’t sure she even liked it.

  I held my nephew on a warm afternoon in his nursery, which wouldn’t be pink for long. Patrick had already bought two gallons of blue paint because we couldn’t let Evelyn come home to a reminder that she didn’t get a girl.

  Patrick joined me in the nursery that evening, freshly showered after a rough day at the firehouse. He settled into a rocking chair to feed Shane, while I stood there thinking that he was a good father. Not a distant one, either. Patrick changed diapers, and he knew to be careful of the soft spot on a baby’s head. He also spent tons of time teaching Kieran how to throw a football and watching televised Red Sox games with him, which Dad didn’t appreciate. He was horrified that his grandson was being raised to h
ate the Yankees and the Jets. It was blasphemy, in Dad’s opinion. Brainwashing, too.

  “You’re doing a good job, little sistah,” Patrick said. He also told me that I should take a break and go to the public pool with Kieran.

  “I’ll just stay for an hour,” I said. “Then I’ll make dinner.”

  Patrick rubbed Shane’s cheek with his thumb. “I can’t wait.”

  He loved my dinners. The night before, I’d made pork roast and broccoli with hollandaise sauce. The night before that it was stuffed peppers and zucchini in peppercorn vinaigrette. I took the recipes from a cookbook I’d found under the kitchen sink. Someone had given it to Evelyn as a Christmas gift and it was still wrapped in plastic.

  Tonight we were having southwestern burgers and twice-baked potatoes, but Patrick didn’t know that. I kept the menu a surprise. Then I changed into my bikini in the bathroom. I slipped a pair of denim cutoffs over it and stared at myself in the mirror, stuffing the right side of my top with tissues. But it didn’t look realistic and I could just imagine the humiliation of Kleenex floating in the crowded pool if I decided to swim. Kieran banged on the door after a few minutes, and I pulled a T-shirt over my head to hide my deformity.

  I kept the shirt on at the pool, where I sat on the edge and soaked my feet while Kieran played with his friends in the shallow end. I had only been here a few times before, but Evelyn was a fixture from Memorial Day to Labor Day. She and her friends spent each summer gossiping and chomping on the salty Goldfish crackers that were supposed to be for their children.

  “Are you Evelyn Cagney’s sister?” a voice asked.

  I looked up and nodded. A vaguely familiar woman was standing there; I recognized the excessive eye makeup and the clear braces on her teeth. Angie, Lisa, Jennifer, what was her name again? It had to be one of these, because almost every woman who lived in Queens and was between the ages of twenty and forty was named Angie, Lisa, or Jennifer.