Other Words for Love

by Lorraine Zago Rosenthal

  He sighed before whispering in my ear. “Syphilis,” he said.

  I gasped, remembering everything I’d learned in school about syphilis, like how it made people go blind. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being blind. “That’s a bad one, isn’t it?”

  “It’s only bad if it doesn’t get treated. Anyway … this isn’t a polite topic of conversation, so let’s drop it. My blabbermouth cousin never should’ve mentioned it to you. I talked to her last night, actually. She said you found her bracelet.”

  “Summer did,” I said. “Summer and I aren’t friends anymore, by the way.”

  “Really? I thought you two went way back.”

  An unexpected sadness rushed over me. We do go way back, I thought. But she’s not the person I thought she was, and now you’re my only friend. “These things happen,” I said, then changed the subject because I didn’t want to think about Summer. I just wanted to put my head on Blake’s shoulder and pretend that this was my very own Sears sofa in my Park Slope backyard and that the giggly kids on the Slip ’n Slide belonged to us.

  I felt strange the next morning. I was light-headed and warm, and even though my sore throat was gone and my empty stomach rumbled, I had no interest in Mom’s blueberry waffles or her fruit salad with the made-from-scratch whipped cream.

  “Eat something, Ariadne,” Mom said.

  She was standing beside the kitchen table, wearing her Kiss the Cook apron and a smile. Dad sat across from me with his eyes on Newsday and his fork moving from his waffle to his mouth, and I told Mom I wasn’t hungry but I shouldn’t have. She looked disappointed and I didn’t blame her—she had woken up at the crack of dawn to make this first-day-of-school, It’s the most important meal of the day breakfast for me.

  Then she got worried. “You’re not sick, are you? You’re very pale.”

  I was always very pale, but I was definitely sick. Still, I didn’t want to see a doctor who would poke me with needles and drain my blood into glass tubes.

  “I’m just excited,” I said. I had no idea where that had come from. It was as if my body had been inhabited by a clever spirit who knew the right thing to say.

  “Of course you are,” Mom said. “I’m excited too. I mean, it’s your last year of high school and college will be here before you know it.”

  I didn’t think about college that morning. I rode the subway alone, feeling really tired. And I thought about Blake, especially when I spotted Summer at the other end of the hall while I was walking to homeroom.

  She was chatting with a group of girls and she looked blurry. She laughed and I wondered if she was laughing at me, if she was telling her friends about that weird Ari Mitchell, who was suffering from a serious case of limerence and believed she was in love with a guy she hadn’t even slept with yet.

  But I wanted to sleep with him. I thought about Blake all day, through homeroom and Calculus II, and while I read meticulously typed syllabi that were hot from the copy machine. I thought about him on the subway that took me back to Brooklyn and when the walk from the train station to my house seemed so long that I wasn’t sure I’d make it.

  Then I conked out on my bed. Dad was at work and Mom was at a faculty meeting that would keep her away for hours. When I woke up, the house was so quiet I could hear the freezer making ice cubes.

  I stared at the ceiling, listening to ice fall into a plastic container. I didn’t feel tired anymore—I felt beyond tired, sort of spacey and giddy. I got up, went to the bathroom, and looked in the mirror at a reflection that wasn’t pale. My cheeks were ruddy and I probably had a fever, but I didn’t feel sick. I looked reasonably pretty, and that made me decide to freshen up and go to Manhattan so I could surprise Blake at Ellis & Hummel.

  I made my plans behind the shower curtain. I lathered my hair and watched water bead on a stomach that was disturbingly concave from lack of food. It didn’t matter; I would eat later, someplace in the city with Blake, and afterward we would go to a nice hotel or to the penthouse if Mr. Ellis wasn’t home. Then I would give Blake what he’d been so patient for, what I could do now because his tests were negative and he loved me and that made it okay.

  I left the house an hour later. It was cloudy and a scorching wind blew through my hair, and Saint Anne seemed immersed in a radiant peace. I walked past her, rode the subway to Manhattan, and reached the Empire State Building at five o’clock, when swarms of people were flooding out of the lobby. The Catering by Tina van was parked on the street.

  Tina didn’t notice me because she was busy loading the van with chafing dishes. But Summer noticed. She looked through me as if I was nobody, as if she’d forgotten elementary school and junior high and my birthday dinners, and I pretended it didn’t hurt. I turned away, rode the elevator to Ellis & Hummel, and filled my mind with Blake instead of Summer.

  I asked for him at the front desk, where a gum-chewing receptionist pointed toward a conference room with glass doors. I saw Blake inside, standing with Mr. Ellis and a few other men beside a long polished table. Mr. Ellis kept smacking Blake’s shoulder and jokingly grabbing him in a chokehold, as if Blake was a first-place trophy or a prize racehorse that he wanted to show off.

  Blake saw me. He waved me over and broke away from his father; then we stood by the doors inside the conference room while Mr. Ellis filled the other men’s glasses with liquor. I heard them talking, something about a “gentlemen’s club,” and the rest of the men laughed when Mr. Ellis said, “We’re all gentlemen, aren’t we?”

  “What are you doing here?” Blake asked.

  He was happy to see me. He smelled of aftershave. The darkness of his suit coaxed out the blue in his eyes, and just the sound of his voice gave me a warm shudder.

  “I thought we could …,” I began, not sure how to finish. I thought we could spend some time together. I thought we could have a romantic dinner. I thought we could go to your apartment and have passionate sex until the sun rises in the morning.

  But I didn’t say any of that because Mr. Ellis was suddenly beside us and so were the other men, and Mr. Ellis introduced me to them as “my boy’s little girlfriend.”

  “This is Ari …,” he started, and looked at Blake for help.

  “Mitchell, Daddy,” Blake said. “Ari Mitchell.”

  I knew it. I knew he didn’t remember my last name. And being called Blake’s little girlfriend didn’t exactly boost my self-esteem. A little girlfriend, a little crush—why did everybody have to take something that seemed so big and squash it into a tiny speck of nothing?

  “Of course,” Mr. Ellis said, summoning his charming smile. “Forgive me, Ari. I’m getting close to fifty and the memory’s the first thing to go.”

  Everybody laughed. Mr. Ellis put his son in another chokehold, rubbed his knuckles against Blake’s scalp, and told him not to take too long. He and the other men would be waiting in the lobby.

  I was so disappointed. “Where are you going?”

  Blake seemed uncomfortable, and not just from his suit. “Dinner at Delmonico’s. And some bar later on.”

  I folded my arms. “What kind of bar?” I asked, imagining a place where cheap, desperate girls in G-strings would grind on his lap for a twenty-dollar bill.

  “It’s just business, Ari. I’m not interested in those places. My father always takes his clients there. I have to go. You understand, right?”

  I didn’t want to understand. But I nodded and he hugged me. He said that I felt really warm, I should see a doctor, and I couldn’t ride the subway back home all alone. He told the receptionist to call the car service and then we took the elevator to the lobby, where I left him with Mr. Ellis and got into a car that whisked me away from all my beautiful plans.

  I fell asleep in homeroom the next day. My teacher tapped my shoulder and I lifted my head to find the entire class staring at me. Then I went to the school nurse and she asked if I was on drugs, which was hilarious. I’d never even smoked a cigarette or been drunk, and I wouldn’t have any idea
where to find drugs, unless Evelyn had left a stash of marijuana in the basement with her Jordache jeans.

  The nurse called Mom, who took me to my doctor’s office, where a phlebotomist tied a rubber tube above my elbow. I looked away as his needle pricked my arm seven times to find a vein. When I looked back, he had filled so many vials with blood I was surprised to still be alive.

  I only felt semi-alive. I was exhausted and my muscles ached, and the doctor said he couldn’t be sure until the tests came back but he was almost certain that I had mono-nucleosis.

  “You know where you got this,” Mom said.

  We were in her Honda, heading toward Flatbush. “Where?” I asked.

  “Where? From Blake, where else?”

  I should have known she’d say that. I had felt her eyes on me when the doctor was talking, explaining that mono was common in teenagers because adolescents are typically involved in intimate behavior.

  “Blake isn’t sick,” I said. “I didn’t get it from him.”

  “He doesn’t have to be sick, Ariadne. Didn’t you hear the doctor? He said that some people carry the virus but never show symptoms. It’s called the kissing disease. Didn’t you hear the doctor?”

  How many times was she going to ask me that? I was fed up with the sound of her voice, but I still had to listen to it when I was in bed later and she called my school from the phone in the kitchen. She told the principal that I had mono and I had to stay home for eight weeks, and that she was very concerned because I was planning to attend the Parsons School of Design next year, so I couldn’t veer off track.

  I didn’t want to veer off track. Blake and I had a future together that couldn’t be delayed. So I was glad when Mom came to my room and said that everything had been worked out. She was driving to Manhattan tomorrow to pick up my books. My teachers were going to write down my assignments every week and fax them to Mom at her school, and I could go back to Hollister in November as if nothing had ever happened.

  She left me alone after that. I rested in bed, listening to the end-of-summer sounds outside—the Good Humor truck making its final rounds, people setting off firecrackers left over from the Fourth of July. I was inhaling the smell of a neighbor’s barbecue when I decided that this mono thing might not be so terrible. My best friend was history, Leigh was in California, and I didn’t have anyone to sit with in the cafeteria anymore. Now I wouldn’t have to spend the next two months eating lunch in a bathroom stall.

  I did have mono. The doctor called a few days later to confirm his diagnosis. But Blake didn’t have it. I insisted he get another blood test to prove Mom wrong.

  He came to my house the next week while she was at school and Dad was at work. He surprised me, driving to Brooklyn after his last class on a Thursday afternoon.

  I let Blake in, and he followed me upstairs and settled into bed with me. I was on my side, his arm was around my shoulders, and I wanted to fall asleep with him. But Mom would be home in a few hours, so that just couldn’t happen.

  “I should teach you to drive,” he said.

  “You have to be eighteen to get a license in New York,” I answered.

  “You’ll be eighteen in four months, Ari. You can get a permit now. I can give you driving lessons.”

  I didn’t want driving lessons. Driving lessons were dangerous. I could skid on an icy road and Blake could hit his chest on the dashboard. I shrugged and he turned my face toward his, trying to kiss me. I pulled away and jammed my lips into my pillow. “You can’t, Blake. I’m diseased.”

  He laughed. “You are not.”

  “I am too. I don’t want you to get sick—you’ll miss school. Your father would be mad.”

  “Let him be mad, then,” Blake said. “So what?”

  So what? I smiled into my pillow, thinking I’d been right a few weeks ago when I decided it was okay for me and Blake to sleep together. If he was willing to risk catching mono and missing school and letting his father down, then he meant it when he said he loved me.

  But I still didn’t want him to get sick—I couldn’t be responsible for him feeling as tired and achy as I felt. “You can’t kiss me, Blake,” I said when he tried again, even though I was dying to kiss him. “I have germs in my mouth.”

  He laughed, moved my hair, and kissed my bare neck. He ran his tongue from the base of my skull to the tip of my spine. It sent waves of electricity through me. “You don’t have any germs right here, do you?”

  “No,” I said. But even if I did have germs, I couldn’t have told him to stop.

  He came back the next Thursday, and he brought gifts—books and magazines, so I wouldn’t go stir crazy. He came to visit me every Thursday, and each time he brought presents, like boxes of dark chocolate from a fancy candy store in the city.

  We’d stay in bed for hours. He’d put his arms around me and kiss the back of my neck, and sometimes I wondered if he’d try to do more than that. My parents weren’t home and I wouldn’t have objected, even though I was sick and contagious. I knew that most guys would see an empty house and a willing girl as an easy opportunity, but Blake didn’t. And that made me love him even more.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked one day. I was on my side in bed; he snuggled up next to me and draped his arm across my shoulders.

  “Not good,” I said, hearing early-October rain tap my window. “My whole body’s sore … especially my back. It feels better if I lie on my stomach.”

  “Then lie on your stomach.”

  I shifted on the bed and pressed my face into my pillow, listening to the rain. It was getting heavier now and sounded like rocks hitting the roof. I also heard Blake moving, and then he was straddling me, massaging my back through my shirt, gently kneading his fingers into my skin and my aching muscles. His thighs felt warm and strong as they squeezed my hips. I thought I might melt into the sheets.

  “Is that better?” he whispered into my ear as his cheek skimmed mine.

  “Much better,” I mumbled. I was falling asleep.

  Blake touched my face and spoke in a louder voice that snapped me out of my trance. “You’re really warm,” he said, reaching over to my night table. He picked up a bottle of Tylenol and shook it. “This is empty, Ari. Do you have any more?”

  I blinked and turned around. His eyebrows knitted together like he was worried.

  “I don’t know,” I said, stretching and yawning, flattered that he was worried.

  He went across the hall to the bathroom and I heard him riffling through the medicine cabinet. When he came back, he grabbed his leather jacket, which he’d chucked across my bed earlier.

  “Where are you going?” I asked, sitting up halfway.

  Now he was next to my desk, picking up his wallet. “To the drugstore to buy Tylenol. You need to get rid of that fever.”

  I looked outside. I saw water spilling down the window, and a tree across the street. Its leaves were deep orange and bright yellow, and they were sagging beneath the steady rain.

  “You can’t go out, Blake. It’s pouring.” I didn’t want him to go anywhere, not even just down the street. I wanted him to get under the covers with me and massage my back again. So I sat up all the way and moved to the end of the bed, kneeling on the mattress. “Stay here,” I said, feeling cold all of a sudden. I glanced at the mirror above my dresser; I saw pasty skin and dark circles around my eyes. I was so gory-looking lately. “My mother can pick up the Tylenol when she gets home from work.”

  He shook his head. “She shouldn’t have to go out again in this weather.”

  That was a considerate observation. He was more considerate of Mom than I was. Then my teeth started to chatter. Mono was crazy—broiling one minute, freezing the next.

  “I hate it when you leave,” I admitted.

  A smile spread across his lips. It was a lazy, sensual smile. “You hate it when I leave?” he said, like he wanted to hear it again. I nodded, and then he gathered up my bedspread and wrapped it around me as I looked into his eyes and absor
bed his smell—leather and aftershave and toothpaste.

  He gently pushed me back down to the pillows and kissed my entire face. He kissed me everywhere—my forehead, my cheeks, my mouth, my jaw, my chin, the space between my eyes. I was flattered again. I had thought I was too hideous and clammy to be kissed.

  “Get some rest,” he said afterward. “I’ll be back soon.”

  I couldn’t argue with him anymore, because I needed the Tylenol. The chills were the worst. So I put my head on my pillow and listened to his footsteps on the stairs, his car pulling away from the curb, and the rain beating against my house. It was so nice to be taken care of, especially by him.

  Mom wasn’t impressed by Blake’s presents. She saw me eating the chocolate and accused me of deliberately slowing my recovery. She wanted me to drink milk and eat meat so I’d regain my strength. She was particularly skeptical of my favorite gift—a pure white teddy bear covered with velvety soft fur. She shoved the bear aside one night when I was filling out an application for Parsons and she was dusting my dresser.

  “Blake gives you cheap gifts,” she said. “Especially for a rich boy.”

  I scoffed. “That bear isn’t cheap, Mom. It’s from FAO Schwarz. Besides, I thought you weren’t impressed by money.”

  Touché. I got her good on that one. She rolled her eyes and changed the subject, telling me for the tenth time to request applications from a few other schools.

  “You’ll get into Parsons,” she said. “But it’s smart to have some backups just in case.”

  I nodded and returned to my application, but I had no intention of requesting anything from other schools. I knew I didn’t need backups because I had something better: connections.

  It seemed to take forever for me to recover from mono. The truth was, I wasn’t sure I wanted to recover, because it was nice to do my schoolwork at home and to lie in bed with Blake’s arms around me every Thursday. It was Halloween when my doctor said that I was healed, that I should rest for another week and then get back into my normal routine.

  Mom was happy, but I wasn’t. I tried to think of pleasant things, like Blake’s twenty-first birthday party, which was scheduled for the following Friday at the Waldorf Astoria. Mr. Ellis had invited two hundred people and the party was black tie optional. I was excited, but Mom was worried because the party was the night before the SAT.