Other Words for Love

by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  I looked away, around the room, because Leigh’s back was turned and she was still on the phone, and I had a chance to snoop. I slid open a bureau drawer, where I saw cigarettes and a pair of frilly panties that I was sure belonged to the Spanish girl. She probably had straight teeth and a cute accent and perfectly even breasts.

  “Our ride will be here soon,” Leigh called across the loft.

  I closed the drawer. “Okay,” I said, and felt Leigh’s hand on my arm a minute later.

  She sat on the bed and I sat with her. “Listen,” she began, and I was uncomfortable. I couldn’t stop imagining what had made the sheets so disheveled, and I wondered what it would feel like to lie down right here with Del next to me instead of Leigh. “You should know a few things,” Leigh was saying.

  Then she told me about her boyfriend. She said that he was a nineteen-year-old zoology major who had planned to become a veterinarian. She also said that whenever she had visited him in Oswego, he had let her drive his car for practice. She’d never so much as made an illegal turn until one Saturday last December. That night, they were driving back to his dorm after a movie when she skidded on an icy road. He hit his chest on the dashboard and was gone before the ambulance came.

  “He had internal injuries,” she said. “It was a freak accident. So people at school can tell all the stories they want … but that’s the entire truth.”

  I believed her. The gossip was probably one of the reasons why Leigh rarely came to class. She probably walked around in her boyfriend’s clothes because she felt him inside them. And I supposed there was no point in getting fixed up when the only guy you loved would never see your face again.

  “Summer has no idea what she’s talking about,” Leigh said. “I didn’t kill my boyfriend—it wasn’t my fault—and I never even slept with him. I made him wait because I was afraid of ending up pregnant. I was afraid he’d run off and disappear, because that’s what happened to my mother. He was so understanding and patient but I made him wait anyway and it was the worst decision ever. Now I’ll never get a second chance. And I’m not sure if I’ll ever want anyone else. Most guys are jerks and phonies.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know. They pay you compliments they don’t even mean.”

  Leigh stared at me for a moment. “Are you referring to Del?”

  I shrugged. I hadn’t meant to give myself away, but the words just fell out of my mouth.

  She leaned into the white ripples of the sheets. Then she told me that Del and his girlfriend had split up for a while and had gotten back together just a few days ago, and she shouldn’t keep criticizing him but she was going to because I should hear the facts.

  “He’s a pig, Ari. You don’t want him. Trust me.”

  “He’s …,” I started to say, not sure if I’d heard her right.

  “A pig,” she said. “He’s my cousin and I love him, but he really is a runaround. He cheats on his girlfriend constantly—he’s always got a different chick up here.” She patted the bed. “Putas, that’s what Idalis calls them. They’re just a bunch of skanky whores who get kicked out onto Twenty-third in the morning.”

  Who was Idalis? And I couldn’t believe that every one of the girls Del brought up here was a puta. Some of them had to be regular girls who thought Del cared about them. That idea brought a disturbing image into my head. I pictured a pretty girl in high heels and smeared makeup stumbling on the sooty sidewalk after a night on these temptingly soft sheets. I saw her as a Christmas tree that got left on the curb with garbage cans and ratty old rugs like it had never been any better than the rest of the trash.

  “Idalis?” I said.

  She nodded. “His girlfriend. And he doesn’t even protect himself. He caught an STD two years ago—I’m not sure which one—I heard my mother and Uncle Stan talking about it. It was cured with penicillin, but Del could end up with AIDS if he doesn’t watch out. It’s not just a gay disease, you know. A raging heterosexual like Del can get it too. I mean, when you sleep with one person, you’re sleeping with everybody that person has been with and … it’s like … endless.”

  “Yeah,” I said, because I’d heard it all before in Sex Ed. But I wasn’t sure if the rest was true. A part of me suspected that Leigh was sparing my feelings, like when a girl in junior high hadn’t invited me to her birthday party and Mom had said, You don’t need that uppity little snob and her goddamned party. Who does she think she is, anyway? Her father spent two years in prison for tax evasion, from what I hear.

  But another part of me believed everything. And that part felt relieved, as if Leigh had snatched my hand away from a dog that was really cute but had razor-sharp teeth that could disfigure me for life.

  ten

  When the holidays were over, I banished Del from my mind and focused on things that were supposed to be important, like grades and drawing and the practice SAT exams in a thick book Mom had picked up at Barnes & Noble.

  At Hollister I ate lunch with Summer and without Leigh, who stuck to the opposite end of the cafeteria. But I talked to Leigh in homeroom and art class. I gave each one of my friends special attention to make up for New Year’s Eve. I decided that Summer was oil and Leigh was water and they were both valuable in their own way, but they just couldn’t mix.

  I spent the first Saturday in January browsing at Bloomingdale’s with Summer and the second at the Guggenheim with Leigh. The next day I accompanied Leigh to a Sunday-matinee performance of Cats at the Winter Garden Theater because Rachel got tickets for free. I warned Mom to keep my whereabouts a secret if Summer called while I was gone.

  “Oh, Ariadne,” she said with a laugh. “Is that really necessary?”

  “Definitely, Mom,” I told her. “Summer would be upset.”

  “Jealous, probably. She isn’t used to sharing you.”

  That was a keen observation on Mom’s part. I kept it in mind when January sixteenth came and Evelyn wanted to host a family dinner at her house for my seventeenth birthday. I invited Summer and not Leigh. Summer had been a fixture at my birthday dinners for years and Leigh knew nothing about them, so I wasn’t snubbing anybody. At least, that was what I kept telling myself.

  “I hope you like it,” Summer said.

  We were sitting on Evelyn’s couch amid a field of tattered wrapping paper, and Summer’s gift was my last. Mom and Dad had given me a garnet birthstone ring, and Patrick and Evelyn had bought me an imitation-angora sweater. Kieran’s present was hilarious—a necklace he’d created in kindergarten, made of uncooked pasta. I wore the necklace because it made him happy. The rigatoni hung around my neck while I opened Summer’s gift—a gold heart charm engraved with #1 FRIEND. She said I was her “best friend ever,” which was really sweet. She had also brought cookies from Tina. They were arranged in a fancy container with a big bow and her new business card, which said CATERING BY TINA. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.

  I filed the card in my wallet. Then we all sat around the kitchen table and ate the cookies and a cake that Evelyn had bought at Carvel. There were edible daisies on the outside and vanilla ice cream with those little chocolate crunchy thingies on the inside, and I thought that Summer wasn’t the only one who was being sweet today.

  Evelyn was in a good mood. She had lost more weight, she looked pretty, and she’d even served us dinner earlier—salad and garlic bread and lasagna. The lasagna was delicious, even though it was the kind that comes frozen in a box.

  “Don’t you want a cookie, Evelyn?” Summer asked.

  Sabotage. That was exactly what sprang into my mind. Evelyn was on a diet—what was Summer trying to do, keep my sister chubby? Maybe Summer was hoping for a chance with Patrick, who sat across from me looking gorgeous, with his blond hair and those big hands that I was sure matched other big body parts.

  “I can’t,” Evelyn said. “Weight Watchers, you know.”

  Summer nodded. “I can tell. You’ve lost a lot already.”

  That was nice. I was too suspicious. Summer excused herself to the bathroom,
and Dad and Patrick went into the living room to watch the Rangers play the Bruins. Evelyn ate an apple, and I was proud of her—she was sticking to her diet. I wanted her to get thin enough to fit into her old high school clothes that were buried in our basement. There were tube tops and a Diane von Furstenberg knockoff dress and Jordache jeans that Mom couldn’t stand. They’re so tight, I can see all your business, Mom used to say. You’ll end up with a yeast infection worthy of the medical journals, Evelyn.

  She never got an infection. And those jeans were a decade out of style now. But if Evelyn could fit into them, she might be inspired to get a new wardrobe that Mom and Dad could buy with some of Uncle Eddie’s money. That might boost Evelyn’s confidence enough for her to take some classes that would teach her to do more than ring up groceries at Pathmark.

  “Evelyn,” Mom said, finishing her second slice of cake. She grabbed a cigarette and I wanted to tell her to lay off those things, but I knew I’d be wasting my breath. “Did you know that your sister is on the honor roll again?”

  I cringed. Why why why why why did she have to bring that up? Evelyn shook her head and Mom flicked her Bic and talked behind a billowy, menacing fog. She talked about my A in calculus and my A in English, and I thought she might have an organism when she brought up my art teacher.

  “At the parent-teacher conference,” Mom said, waving her hands around dramatically, holding her Pall Mall between two fingers, “he told me that Ari is loaded with talent and that she’ll have no problem whatsoever getting into Parsons. No problem whatsoever.”

  No. Problem. Whatsoever. That was how she said it. And I was amazed that someone with a graduate degree could be so dense. Had she forgotten that we had to be careful around Evelyn and that talk of good grades and talent was the same as calling her a big fat stupid failure?

  “That’s nice,” Evelyn said with a stiff grin, the way people do when they meet an ugly baby. How cute. How adorable. That’s the most hideous thing in existence but I’ll just smile and tickle the unsightly creature because it’s the polite thing to do.

  I wanted to change the subject, and I was struggling to come up with one when Summer returned. She sat next to me, and Kieran started talking about his new racetrack set.

  “Come and play with my cars, Aunt Ari,” Kieran begged, tugging on my hand.

  “Not now. I’m visiting with everyone,” I said, but he didn’t understand. He clung to me. He whined. He yanked at the rigatoni around my neck.

  “Leave Aunt Ari alone, Kieran,” Evelyn said. “I’ll play with you later.”

  Then the worst thing happened. It was one of those if only moments—the kind of thing that makes you retrace your steps to pinpoint the exact second you could have averted the disaster. If only I hadn’t sat around in that wet bathing suit, I wouldn’t have this kidney infection. If only I hadn’t waxed the tiles, poor old Grandpa wouldn’t have slipped and broken his neck. If only I had played with Kieran and his cars, he wouldn’t have snapped at Evelyn like he was the spawn of Satan.

  “I don’t want you,” he said. “Aunt Ari is better than you.”

  Everyone was quiet. I heard Dad yelling at the television about a penalty, and Mom told Kieran to go and play in his bedroom. Her voice was low and husky and she wore the intimidating face she used with her students. It made Kieran skulk out of the room as she crushed her cigarette in an ashtray.

  He was so moody. Maybe he got it from his mother, but that didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was Evelyn. Last summer I had warned Kieran not to say I was better and I hadn’t been sure he’d understood, so I had just let him fall asleep on those blasphemous New England Patriots sheets.

  “He didn’t mean that, Evelyn,” Mom said. “Kids say the strangest things.”

  Evelyn’s fingers shook as she cleared dishes from the table. Mom pointed at me and at Summer and nodded toward the living room.

  Then Summer and I sat on the couch and watched the rest of the game with Dad and Patrick. Summer cheered and booed at the appropriate times, but it was just a blur to me. I had more important things on my mind, like the fact that Evelyn probably hated my guts and that an aura was floating around my left eye and my migraine pills were at home.

  I sat in my studio the next Saturday afternoon, drawing hands with a pencil from the cedar box Summer had given me. I drew a man’s hand and a woman’s hand, intertwined. The man’s was rugged, with veins that stretched from the wrist to the fingers like the pattern on a leaf, while the woman’s was delicate and smooth as ivory.

  “How beautiful,” Mom said from the doorway.

  She startled me. I’d been staring at my work, thinking that the hands were romantic. I imagined the feel of that strong hand against my palm, his fingers lacing into mine, fitting as perfectly as puzzle pieces.

  That was probably because I’d seen Summer holding hands with Casey, who had picked her up from school every day last week in his BMW. He locked his hands into hers while she kissed him, and she waved to me from the window as they drove away.

  It was sickening. But I couldn’t let her know that I was dying of envy, that I wished some handsome guy would whisk me away from school while my admiring classmates watched, and I couldn’t complain about riding home alone on the subway. It was one thing for Summer to gripe about Leigh, but placing a boyfriend above everyone else was expected. It was the female code or whatever.

  “I’m just practicing,” I told Mom. “I’m terrible at extremities.”

  She lingered behind me. “On the contrary. You’re very good.”

  I didn’t think so. I flipped to a blank page in my sketch pad and Mom started talking about Queens. She said that Evelyn was desperate for a break from the kids, Patrick wanted to take her out tonight, and someone had to watch the boys.

  “Oh,” I said, sure that my birthday dinner had been forgiven and forgotten and Evelyn needed me. “What time are we leaving?”

  “Well,” Mom started, sitting down on a chair. She looked like she was about to tell me something important and was searching for the right words. She’d done the same thing years ago when she’d explained my monthly visitor. Now her eyes scanned the room as if the best words were written on the curtains or the walls. “Here’s the thing …”

  Here’s the thing. That was the phrase Mom used to begin unpleasant conversations. It was what she’d said when Dad’s mother died. Now it was the first sentence Mom chose when she told me that she and Patrick had decided it would be best if I didn’t go to Queens for a while.

  I knew Mom didn’t mean Queens in general. She didn’t mean Shea Stadium or Flushing Meadows Park. She said Queens because she thought it sounded better than just coming right out and telling me that I wasn’t welcome at Patrick and Evelyn’s house.

  “You mean they don’t want me there?” I said. “Are you kidding? I’ve always tried so hard to help them.”

  “Of course you have,” Mom said in that You’re not really in pain tone. “But you know how Evelyn is. We want what’s best for her … don’t we, Ariadne?”

  She spoke like I was too much of a delicate flower to handle this and she had to pretend everything was fine so I wouldn’t start crying or get a migraine, and she was probably right. I almost did cry, and my head started to throb. We want what’s best for her, I thought. I knew that we was Mom and Patrick. Of course he would sacrifice me for Evelyn. I might have been an excellent cook and a very nice girl, but Evelyn was his wife and the mother of his children. I was expendable.

  eleven

  Hollister was stingy with its snow days. This I discovered two days later, after a Sunday-night blizzard that closed Mom’s school the next morning but not mine.

  Mom stood outside our house dropping rock salt on the front steps while I jammed my feet into a pair of boots in the foyer. I was zipping them up when Jeff’s Mercedes arrived, and as I knotted a scarf around my neck, I saw him heading toward Mom.

  What was he doing? Our storm door muffled their voices, and when I went outsid
e, they clammed up and stared at me until I got the message and walked to the car, where Summer sat in the front seat.

  She was wearing her fuzzy pink hat and she was happy, which was so obnoxious. She’d become one of those people who waltzed through life without so much as a split end, and I was still one of those people who changed diapers and babysat for free but still got treated like a rented mule.

  “Studying?” Summer said, looking at the SAT book on my lap after I climbed into the back.

  I nodded. “How about you? Did you get one of these books?”

  “I don’t need it,” she said, tapping her forehead. “It’s all up here.”

  That was obnoxious too. Of course she didn’t need an SAT book, because she wasn’t going to study. She never studied. I knew she planned to take the test without opening a book or enrolling in one of those tedious prep courses that met on Saturday mornings. Then the scores would arrive and hers would be stellar and she would go off to UCLA, where she’d fit in with blond surfer girls and glamorous Hollywood types and forget that I had ever existed.

  Fine, Summer, I thought. Go to California. Leave me here like poor lonely Saint Anne on my lawn. Look at her, all covered in snow. She’s getting so old and the paint on her face is cracking from the weather and I’m the only one who cares.

  “He’s giving your mother the names of a few psychiatrists in Queens,” Summer said, pointing to Jeff and Mom. “She called him yesterday. I guess Evelyn is having problems again?”

  I didn’t know that Mom had called Jeff yesterday. She’d probably done it from the laundry room, where she whispered with Patrick about things she couldn’t mention to me, especially since I’d been expelled from the inner sanctum.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She is.”

  Summer reached back and squeezed my hand. “You can’t help what your nephew said, Ari. It wasn’t your fault.”