Blake led me to a bench and we sat down. He pulled off his tie, took out his wallet, and showed me a yellowing picture of a young woman. She had big blue eyes and long blond hair that was parted straight down the middle, like a Wella Balsam ad from the seventies. Her skin was tan and her bone structure was regal, and she looked as if she was someone who never expected anything bad to happen to her.
“Is this your mother?” I asked.
He nodded and stared at the buildings in the distance before telling me that she had died while Del was playing Little League baseball. Blake and Del and Mr. Ellis had gone to the game and she’d stayed at home. Del had found her on the kitchen floor when they came back.
“Brain aneurysm,” Blake said. “The doctor who did the autopsy said there was nothing anybody could’ve done. But Del thought it was his fault … he said we could’ve saved her if we’d been there. He never wanted to play baseball anymore after that. He was good at it too.”
I wondered if anyone had ever told Del that it wasn’t his fault. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I bet she’d be proud if she could see you now.”
He smiled. Thunder crashed, lightning ripped across the sky, and we stayed on the bench with our arms around each other even though rain fell in heavy drops around us. I didn’t mind getting soaked because it felt as if Blake needed me, and I wanted him to.
It was a Friday in late August when my boss, Julian, admitted that most of his employees quit after less than a week. The place was a downer for them because of the people who went there. They were called students, even though they were in their twenties and thirties, but they were really just being babysat until their parents came to pick them up at night, and they were easily entertained with crayons and finger paints.
One of them was named Adam. He was twenty-two and had cute dimples, and I was sure that he’d been a popular boy in high school until he got rammed in the head during a football game five years ago. Now he was mildly brain-damaged and he stuttered sometimes, and the highlight of his day seemed to be the pictures I sketched for him—pencil drawings of lakes and mountains. That was what he wanted because he used to hike and fish upstate, and I didn’t mind drawing those things over and over if it made him happy.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, thinking that I’d answered the same question six times already, and if he hadn’t gotten into that accident he could have chosen any girlfriend he wanted.
“You’re pretty,” he said. “You look like Snow White.”
I almost cried. I convinced myself that helping Adam with his painting would stimulate his mind and he might get better someday if I just kept trying.
Blake thought that this was a nice thing to do. He told me so that night, when I met him at work. It was six o’clock and we were standing beside a mahogany reception desk with the words ELLIS & HUMMEL printed across it in shiny gold letters.
“Leaving already?” we heard a voice say.
We both turned our heads and saw Mr. Ellis, who was holding a stack of papers in his hands and walking toward us.
“I left copies of the cases you wanted on your desk, Daddy,” Blake said.
Mr. Ellis smiled and smacked Blake on the shoulder. A few minutes later, Blake and I were in the Corvette, where he said he wanted to stop at home to change before dinner. He went to his bedroom at the penthouse and I waited on the couch, admiring the skyline. As I was sitting there, I heard the elevator doors open. I looked toward the foyer and saw Del, who told me that he had come by to pick up an earring that Idalis lost the last time she’d been here.
“We broke up,” he said, taking a seat next to me. “I was sick of her shit, anyway.”
I wondered if that was true. I studied his eyes while he talked, thinking that they were much more green than gray tonight. “Oh, well,” I said. “You’re better off, I suppose.”
He smiled. The scar on his lip curled. Then Blake was on the stairs and Del mentioned Ellis & Hummel. “Do you know what your boyfriend does at work?” he asked, and I shook my head. “He helps our father and his partners raid companies so decent people can lose their jobs.”
I glanced over at Blake. He looked tired. “Cut it out, Del,” he said.
Del didn’t listen. “You know what else they do, Ari? They file frivolous medical-malpractice lawsuits. And they win. That’s why health insurance costs so much and people dying of cancer go bankrupt.”
“Enough already,” Blake said, grabbing my arm. The next thing I knew, we were in the Corvette and Blake was saying he didn’t want to stay in Manhattan. “Let’s go to the Hamptons and order in. I’ve had enough of this city.”
I didn’t argue. He was quiet for the entire drive and when we ate a pizza at the kitchen table. Blake drank a beer and stared into space, and I knew what was wrong.
“You don’t have to work there,” I told him.
“I do have to work there, Ari. I can’t let my father down.”
I knew how he felt and I wanted to cheer him up. So I suggested that we sit on the lounge chairs by the pool because it was a nice night, but Blake wanted to swim instead.
“I don’t have a bathing suit,” I said, and he told me that Rachel had left one upstairs.
It was a hot pink bikini with a bottom that tied in a bow on the left hip. I found it in a dresser drawer along with Tshirts and sarongs, in one of those bedrooms with the indirect lighting. Then I stood in front of a full-length mirror on the white carpet, examining my thin legs and my narrow waist and my chest. The bikini crowded my breasts together into a small semblance of cleavage, and I didn’t think they were perfect, like Blake said, but they weren’t all that horrible. So I decided to go to the pool wearing only the bikini and leave Rachel’s shirts in the drawer.
I held my breath all the way down the stairs and across the patio, and I didn’t exhale until Blake smiled at me. Then he picked me up and tossed me into the deep end.
“Jerk,” I said, even though I didn’t mean it. I rubbed chlorine out of my eyes as he dove into the pool, and everything was still blurry when he pulled me into a corner and I put my arms around his neck.
“You look much better in that bikini than Rachel does,” he said.
His hair was slicked back. The lights beneath the water were reflected in his eyes, and I remembered lifting my favorite marble to the sun.
“I can’t compete with Rachel. She’s beautiful.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
Beautiful sounded so much better than pretty. I smiled, fiddling with his arrowhead charm. “You and Leigh have the same necklace.”
“My grandmother gave one to all of us … me and Leigh and Del. He never wears his, though.”
“Have you spoken to Leigh lately?” I asked, thinking of the letter I had sent her at the end of June. I’d spent a half hour at Hallmark searching through I’m Sorry cards. The one I chose had a cartoon cat with forlorn-looking eyes and a daisy in its paw. I sat at my desk for a long time that night, writing I didn’t realize what I was doing and I hope you’ll forgive me and Please give me a call so we can talk. But Leigh had never called or written back, so I guessed she still hadn’t forgiven me. I really couldn’t blame her. Maybe she thought the card was stupid too. I’m Sorry cards were so sappy.
“Yeah,” Blake said. “She called me the other day. Haven’t you heard from her?”
“Not lately,” I said casually. Then I looked at the tattoo on Blake’s back and changed the subject. “What is this exactly?” I asked, tracing the circle and the cross and the three feathers with my index finger.
We treaded water while he explained. It was called a medicine wheel and it was a sacred Native American thing. It was also supposed to bring good luck. He’d gotten it from some old Shawnee man down in Georgia.
“Don’t mention it to my father,” Blake said. “He knows about the tattoo, but he wasn’t happy when he found out, so I don’t talk about it. He’s been running from Georgia his whole life … he wants t
o forget that we have any Shawnee blood in us at all.”
I wasn’t surprised. I thought of Ellis & Hummel and the penthouse and Blake’s mother with her aristocratic father. I imagined Mr. Ellis struggling through school and winning lawsuits so that he could afford to live on the Upper East Side and pretend he’d never eaten a collard green or a hummingbird cake.
“But he gave your brother a Native American name,” I said.
“He didn’t want to. That was his father’s name and it was expected. So he did it.” Blake leaned his head into the pool to soak his hair. He raked it back with his fingers and I watched water droplets collect on his cheeks. “Anyway … just don’t mention the tattoo. Jessica has the same one—he didn’t appreciate that very much, either.”
I’d never heard of Jessica before, but I knew who she was when Blake apologized and said that it isn’t nice for a guy to talk about an old girlfriend.
He was right. It wasn’t nice. It made a queasy lump of envy rise from my stomach to my face. I saw blond hair and a trailer with flowerpots and Blake sleeping with Jessica for two whole years.
“What happened with her?” I asked, as if I had no clue.
“I don’t know,” he said. “She stopped returning my calls. I even went down there to see her, but she was just gone. No explanation.”
That was a cruel thing to do and he didn’t deserve it. “Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged as if he didn’t care, but he was a bad actor. Then we kissed. The water in the pool was warm and so were Blake’s lips and tongue as they touched mine. He untied my top and slid it off, and then his mouth was on my chest in a way that made me worry about the neighbors. But Mr. Ellis had a lot of property, so I doubted that anyone could see from two acres away.
“We have to stop now,” Blake said suddenly. “Or I won’t be able to stop.”
I hated stopping. It was grating on my nerves. But I came to my senses when my top was back on and we were drying off on the patio. We rested on lounge chairs and Blake read the New York Post while I decided that he was smart to stop what we’d been doing in the pool. There were things to consider before I could have what he used to give to Jessica.
“Blake,” I said.
He was reading the sports section: YANKEES CRUSH KANSAS CITY. “Yeah?”
“How many girls have you been with?”
There. I did it. I’d been wondering ever since Evelyn had brought it up on Memorial Day and I needed to know, because terrible things could dwell in the most unlikely places.
He rested the newspaper on his lap. “It isn’t nice to talk about that.”
“We have to. These days, people have to talk about it.”
He nodded. Then he held up two fingers.
“Really?” I said. “Jessica and who else?”
“Somebody older. That was the first time.” He rolled his eyes. “I barely knew her … I met her at a bar in the city that Del dragged me to when I was sixteen and it felt like she was going to the bathroom on me. That’s how sex is if you don’t care about each other—it’s no good at all.” He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the lounge chair. “Listen, Ari. I don’t have AIDS or anything else. I’ll get a blood test so you don’t have to worry.”
I wasn’t worried anymore; he didn’t need a blood test. I shook my head but he insisted that he’d see his doctor, and then he checked his watch and said that we should head back to the city.
I went upstairs. The bikini was dry now and I stood in front of the mirror again, studying my body. The door was open, and when I saw Blake’s reflection pass by in the hall, I called his name. He joined me on the carpet and I waved my hand in front of my chest.
“Can you tell?” I asked. “I mean … that I’m uneven?”
He held his fist to my cheek. “You aren’t. If you say that one more time, I’ll make you sorry.”
I laughed and we kissed again, even though Blake warned me that it was close to nine and we had a long drive ahead.
So what? Mom wanted me home at a reasonable hour and there was still plenty of time before the reasonable hours were gone. I distracted him from the clock by lying on the bed and crooking my finger. Then it was Wednesday afternoon all over again, this time on a white comforter stuffed with feathers that felt as soft as a field of cotton puffs.
“Ari,” Blake said. He was lying on top of me and he still hadn’t put a shirt on. His naked chest, the muscles in his stomach, and the trail of hair that began at his navel and disappeared inside his shorts got me all shivery, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could worry about being nice. “I love you.”
I gasped. I wanted to say the same but he wouldn’t give me a chance. He told me not to say it until I was ready and that I shouldn’t say it unless I meant it, and I was about to ask him to shut up because I was ready and I did mean it. But I couldn’t say a word because he kissed me again, and his hands were on that bow on my hip.
It was loose now, and I was nervous as his hands moved to my waistband. I felt it sliding south and I thought of Idalis floating in the pool and Del saying Don’t you wish.
Blake was edging lower on the bed and I knew what he was about to do. It was the thing that people other than Idalis kept quiet or giggled about, the thing that was supposedly safe since it wouldn’t get me pregnant, the thing that supposedly bypassed all the Catholic rules.
“Don’t be scared, Ari,” he said. “It won’t hurt, I promise.”
Then the bottom half of my bikini was lying on the carpet. Blake was between my legs and it definitely didn’t hurt. I felt his lips and his tongue and his thick hair brushing against the soft inside of my thighs, and after a while there was a warm burst in the center of my body that flowed to my head and made noises come out of my mouth. They were like the sounds I heard through Evelyn and Patrick’s bedroom wall, but I buried my face in my arm so that they wouldn’t be as loud.
I kept my eyes shut against my arm, thinking that this was amazing and incredible, like devouring an entire box of chocolate all alone. It was sweet and delicious and I just couldn’t help myself. But if anybody found out, I’d have to pretend that I could never ever ever do such a sinful thing.
seventeen
One of the four bathrooms had a showerhead that looked like a mail slot in somebody’s front door. It was a metal square with a rectangular opening and I almost expected a Con Edison bill to fall out.
Water flowed over me in a steady stream as I listened to Blake banging around in the bathroom next door. I’d rushed in here from the bedroom, saying I was saturated in chlorine and I needed some shampoo immediately, even though that was just a lame excuse.
I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t speak. I was excited and elated and embarrassed all at once.
But I couldn’t hide forever. I lingered in the shower until my hands wrinkled, then I wrapped a towel around myself and tiptoed down the hall. I ran into Blake, who was wet from the shower too. A towel was tied around his waist and his necklace skimmed his bare chest. He was so handsome, but I still couldn’t look at him, even when he pressed his forehead against mine.
“You make such cute little noises,” he said.
My cheeks flushed. I could have died. “I have to get dressed,” I told him, but he caught my elbow as I walked away.
“Hey,” he said gently. “What’s wrong?”
He smelled of Irish Spring. I just stood there. “Nothing,” I said.
He lifted my chin. “You think we did something bad?”
Yes. No. Maybe. “I don’t know.”
“Ari,” he said with a laugh. “We didn’t. And I wouldn’t do it for just anybody. I don’t get involved with someone unless I see a future.”
A future. The idea that what happened tonight could lead to a Park Slope house and a hammock and kids with the bluest eyes made everything seem okay.
So I relaxed. I smiled. I danced alone around the bedroom while I changed into my clothes. Then we were in the car, where the top was down and my ha
ir flowed in the breeze and everything felt perfect.
I thought I came home at a reasonable hour. It wasn’t quite as reasonable as the time I usually came home, but it wasn’t all that late. I didn’t expect Mom to ambush me.
“Where were you?” she said.
I had just walked through the front door into the living room and I was startled at the sound of her deep voice in the pitch dark. I heard the click of a lamp and there she was, sitting on the couch with her arms folded and her legs crossed.
My eyes nervously searched the room. I saw the hole in the La-Z-Boy, a sealed pack of Pall Malls on the coffee table. “Where’s Dad?” I asked.
“Where do you think? They pulled a body out of the East River tonight and he had to go to Manhattan.” She reached for her cigarettes. “So where were you?”
I shrugged. I wondered if I was glowing and she’d figure everything out. “With Blake,” I said.
She peeled plastic from the Pall Malls, slid out a cigarette, and tossed the pack onto the table. “I know that. Where exactly were you with Blake?”
“In the Hamptons,” I said, and my voice sounded weak and small.
Mom flicked her lighter. “And what were you doing there all this time?”
“Nothing,” I said.
She dragged on her cigarette and patted the couch. I sat beside her even though I just wanted to go upstairs and think about Blake.
“You’re getting too serious,” she said.
Here we go, I thought. Then I got defensive. “Why don’t you like him?” I asked.
“I never said I didn’t like him,” Mom answered calmly. “He’s very nice. He’s respectful. I can see that he was brought up well. But you’re my daughter and my concern is for you. You’re too young to be serious about anyone.”
Too young. Too serious. Too everything. “He thinks we have a future together,” I said, and I thought I sounded mature and rational, but Mom didn’t—she laughed as if I was an idiot.
“Ariadne, he has no idea what he wants. He’s a young boy.”
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