Blake’s face was red and he yelled and swore. He shoved his brother, who stumbled backward on the sidewalk. Then Del straightened up and punched Blake square in the face. Blood gushed from Blake’s nose and Del shouted at him.
“You had that coming,” he said. “You only dumped her because of Daddy. You didn’t have the guts to choose her over him.”
It was so quiet. Leigh and Rachel were staring at me from the curb. Blake didn’t answer, and I guessed he was surprised that Del wasn’t as dumb as everybody thought.
twenty-two
I dove into a cab, escaping the commotion, and watched Rachel through the window as she searched her coat pockets and then held a handkerchief to Blake’s face. A big part of me wanted to jump out of the car and help him, but the rest of me thought Del was right. Blake did have that coming.
When I got home, Saint Anne pierced me with her reproachful gaze. My parents weren’t back yet, the house and the front yard were dark, and I squinted across the lawn. Don’t look at me like that, I thought. Not everyone can be as perfect as your daughter.
I hurried past Saint Anne, locked myself in the house, and dry-heaved over the toilet. Mom and Dad came back and soon Mom was banging on the bathroom door. She wanted to know if I was sick. The stomach flu was going around, she said.
The knocking was like a hammer crushing my skull. She had no idea how sick I was—that I was just a sick excuse for a human being. I was sick for getting into bed with Del and I was sick for practically begging to go down on Blake in a public restroom, and now I might get morning sickness or syphilis or an incurable virus that could put me in a box that Mom and Dad would buy with Uncle Eddie’s money. At least poor Ariadne got to use that money for something, I imagined Mom saying.
The thought made me vomit. Mom knocked on the door as a half-digested dinner mixed with wine and beer and Kahlúa spewed from my mouth. I gripped the toilet, wishing she’d go away. She kept telling me to unlock the door, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t let her see me until I got rid of my outfit.
She finally gave up and I stripped off my clothes, burying my underwear in the trash can beneath crumpled tissues and frayed dental floss. Then I stepped into the shower, where I scrubbed every bit of myself in scalding hot water that I hoped would sterilize me. I wanted everything to disappear—the makeup, the Aqua Net, the smell of cigarettes in my hair.
I let my mouth fill with water and I spit into the drain, over and over, trying to purge the millions of microscopic germs that Del had probably left.
An hour later, I walked down the hall toward my bedroom wearing a bathrobe and clutching my clothes in a ball. I remembered rumors I’d heard about foiling a pregnancy with things like soda or vinegar and I considered trying both, but I quickly changed my mind. Those were ignorant myths; someone who had taken Sex Ed should know better.
“Ariadne,” Mom said. “Are you all right? You were in there for so long.”
She came out of nowhere with a pungent tuna sandwich and I stifled a gag.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just leave me the hell alone for once.”
She looked stunned. I couldn’t have cared less. I walked away, shut my door, and collapsed into bed, where I watched numbers change on my clock and stared at the teddy bear on my dresser.
Blake. I thought of him and of the past year. I thought about when colors had been outrageously bright and the air had smelled incredibly good and when I had forgotten how it felt to be sad. Now I remembered, and I thought Blake was no better than some street-thug heroin dealer. He had gotten me hooked on him and then he’d cut off my supply. I’d heard that addicts would do anything, would degrade themselves in every way to get another fix, and now I understood how that could happen, because it was happening to me.
I wished that tonight had been just a bad dream. I wished that Blake had some backbone. I wished he’d chosen me over his father, but he hadn’t, and now all I had left was a stuffed animal and an NYU sweatshirt. The sweatshirt was tucked inside my night table, and I took it out and wrapped it around myself. It was the only thing that could get me to sleep.
Leigh called at noon. Mom came in and shook my shoulder to wake me up.
“I don’t want to talk to her,” I said, because last night wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for Leigh. It was her fault that I had met Blake and Del. Of course, I could have been a good friend instead of chasing after her cousins. And I was going back on my word too. On Christmas Eve I’d told her that I would never treat her badly again. Maybe now I was getting what I deserved, but I couldn’t tolerate any more blame. It was too heavy for me to carry alone.
Mom just assumed I was too sick to talk on the phone. She walked away and I heard her telling Leigh that I had the flu or whatever was going around. I went along because it was convenient—sick people get to stay in bed all day, and I wanted to stay in bed all day. A minute later, Mom hung up the phone and yelled from the kitchen that Leigh said she’d call me the next time she was in New York. I didn’t care if she ever called me again.
I went back to sleep, and stayed in bed for most of the day and most of the next week, faking the flu so I could skip school. I didn’t change out of the NYU sweatshirt and I didn’t shower and I only left the house once. I went to the library, where I hid between bookshelves and shuddered as I skimmed the pages of a medical dictionary and worried that Del’s STD wasn’t really cured.
Untreated syphilis can cause damage in the brain, spinal cord, heart, and other organs, I read. Signs and symptoms of late-stage syphilis include paralysis, numbness, gradual blindness, and dementia. This damage may be serious enough to cause death.
Blindness scared me more than everything else, including death. I imagined seeing absolutely nothing and depending on Mom to dress me and brush my hair and she wouldn’t do any of it right. I’d get old and my hair would turn gray and she’d hardly ever dye it, and I’d probably end up doddering around Brooklyn with dark glasses, banging the sidewalk with a cane like some shriveled old witch who would frighten the neighborhood kids.
Then I decided I needed a pregnancy test and a blood test immediately, even if I had to get poked fifty times to find a vein.
“Do you have a faculty meeting tomorrow?” I asked Mom that night.
She nodded from her seat on the couch, where she was smoking a Pall Mall and trying to write a novel based on some idea that had come to her while she was scrubbing the kitchen sink. She smiled down at her notebook. She’d bought a spiral-bound one with a perky pink cover, like a student with high hopes for a new school year. “It would be nice if this novel works out. But I probably won’t finish.”
“Probably not,” I said, because I knew the odds were against anything working out. Mom’s smile dimmed, but it was the truth, so I didn’t feel bad.
She put the notebook aside. “Are you going to take a shower someday? Your hair is greasy. I don’t know why you cut those bangs … they’re always in your eyes. And you’ve been wearing that sweatshirt forever.”
Mom was right about the sweatshirt. I was turning into Leigh. But it was much easier for her, because M.G. hadn’t left her on purpose.
“So what?” I asked. “Nobody cares how I look.”
“I care,” Mom said.
That seemed irrelevant. So I didn’t change my clothes or do anything about my hair the next day. I had an appointment at the clinic at three. When I got there, I gave my name to a woman with coffee-colored skin and cornrows. She flipped through a book and asked if I was sure I hadn’t made the appointment somewhere else.
“No,” I said. “I called here.”
She figured out that I had called there, but when I’d asked for a Friday appointment, she had thought I meant next Friday. So I was turned out into the street for another week of paranoia.
That night I sat at the kitchen table with Mom and Dad. My plate was filled with mushy mashed potatoes swimming in thick brown gravy and meat loaf covered in a crispy ketchup glaze that reminded me of dried blood. Mom di
dn’t seem to think I had enough food, so she shoveled three spoonfuls of fried onions onto my plate and filled a glass with milk.
“Eat up,” she said. “You’re so thin, Ariadne. You really have to gain some weight back. You need your strength for school.”
I kept my eyes on my food, made tracks in the potatoes with a fork, and wondered if starvation could cause a miscarriage. A miscarriage would be better than the stirrups and the instruments and whatever else doctors used to fix a big mistake.
“I’m not going back to school,” I said.
“Of course you are. You’re not sick anymore.”
That was what she thought. I ignored her and hid a piece of meat loaf under my napkin when nobody was looking. Dad wasn’t looking because he was busy reading the newspaper. Mom accused him of having bad manners. She said that dinnertime was when people were supposed to talk to each other.
He paused for a moment, searching for something to talk about. “I ran into someone today,” he said.
“Who?” Mom asked.
“Summer Simon. I had to see a potential witness in the Empire State Building and Summer was walking out when I was walking in.”
Dinnertime conversation was so overrated. The mention of that name and the Empire State Building made me nauseous, so I headed to my room. I was on the staircase when I felt Mom’s hand on my elbow.
“Get off,” I snapped.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said in her stern teacher voice. “Why are you acting like this?”
I didn’t tell her. She’d warned me and I couldn’t stomach an “I told you so.”
Later, when Mom and Dad were watching TV downstairs, I took a bubble bath because I was nervous and restless and I couldn’t come up with anything else to do. TV didn’t interest me and schoolwork didn’t interest me and drawing was stupid. It was nothing but a useless hobby, I couldn’t do anything with it, I would never become an artist, and the idea of teaching had suddenly lost its luster.
I tried not to think about anything when I was in the bathtub, covered with suds up to my neck. I closed my eyes, listening to water swishing and the canned sitcom laughs coming from downstairs. Then there was a knock at the door and Mom walked in even though I didn’t give her permission.
“What are you doing?” I said. “I’m naked in here.”
“Oh, please. I can’t see anything.” She sat on the toilet-seat lid and her tone was much nicer than the one she’d used on the staircase. “What’s wrong, Ariadne? You’ve been acting so strangely.”
Just go away, I thought, closing my eyes again. “Nothing is wrong, Mom. I’m fine.”
She didn’t believe me. I listened to her say that I was sulky and irritable and that I never drew anymore. Then she mentioned Summer and I wanted to slide down the drain and into the sewer with the rest of the filth. That was where somebody who would get on her back for her boyfriend’s brother belonged, anyway.
“What exactly happened between the two of you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said again.
She was quiet for a moment and I heard her slipper tapping the tiles. “Did it have something to do with Blake?”
My eyes sprang open. “Of course not. It had nothing to do with him. Absolutely nothing.”
I should have stopped at Of course not. I had protested too much and she didn’t believe a word.
“You know what?” she said. “I should call that boy and tell him what I think about the shitty way he’s treated you.”
“Don’t you dare,” I said, but she didn’t pay any attention.
“Who does that little prick think he is? Just because his father is some big-shot lawyer and he lives on the fucking Upper East Side doesn’t mean he can get away with upsetting my daughter. Look at what he’s done to you, for God’s sake—you haven’t been yourself for weeks, and you’re getting worse. I really ought to go into the city and tell him off in person.”
“Don’t you dare!” I said, shouting this time, and I sounded as psychotic as I had in the men’s room at Cielo. “Don’t you dare call him or go anywhere near him. If you say one word to Blake … I swear I’ll kill myself.”
I was definitely turning into Leigh. Mom stared at me. She stared at me as if she could see everything I’d tried so hard to hide.
“What’s going on?” she said. “What happened? Something must have happened to make you act like this.”
“Nothing happened,” I said through my teeth. “Just go away.”
She stayed where she was. “Ariadne, was your relationship with Blake more serious than you let on? I can’t imagine you’d be this distraught if all the two of you did was hold hands. I mean … did he … did you let him …”
Did he? Did I let him? That sounded awful. Obscene. Sleazy and vile and foul. She kept asking, my head was pounding, and I didn’t care anymore if she knew.
“Yes, Mom,” I said, sarcastic and loud. “He did. I let him. I let him do anything he wanted whenever he wanted and you were right—he lied and he dumped me and I hope you’re happy now.”
I hope you’re happy now. I said it four times in increasing volume and shrillness while she begged me to calm down. Then I grabbed a towel, wrapped it around myself as I sprang from the tub, and ran down the hall, leaving soggy footprints on the carpet. I slammed my bedroom door so hard that it shook the walls and my bear tumbled from the dresser. I left it on the floor while I listened to Mom and Dad out in the hallway. Mom said I was hysterical and she didn’t know what to do, and Dad said I’d yelled loud enough for the whole neighborhood to hear and he had never expected something like that from someone like me.
Later that night, I heard my parents whispering and Mom talking on the phone to Evelyn, who’d surely broken her promise not to tell Mom anything. I guessed that Evelyn had to tell her everything now, since I was losing my mind and all. At that moment I thought that things couldn’t get worse, but they did the next day when our mailman delivered a tellingly thin envelope from the Parsons School of Design. I got rejected and had to admit to Mom that I hadn’t applied anywhere else.
I knew she wanted to yell and scream and tell me how disappointed she was and how idiotic I’d been to rely on connections, but she didn’t say anything. I guessed she thought a delicate flower whose petals were barely hanging on couldn’t withstand a harsh wind. Then she brought up Hollister, saying I could stay at home for another week and I should spend a few days in Queens because a change of scenery might do me good.
I didn’t think so. Queens was just as miserable as Brooklyn, and I couldn’t stop thinking that all my studying and drawing had come to absolutely nothing, that it was all just a colossal waste of life. And I was turning out even worse than Evelyn, because at least she was married. Marriage was a respectable place to hide from her failures, a place where she could organize playgroups and be admired for her beautiful children. I had nowhere to go and nothing to do, and that made me want to swallow my entire bottle of migraine pills, which I considered the next morning while I stood in the bathroom and scrutinized the label. ACETAMINOPHEN, it read. BUTALBITAL.
Butalbital sounded nice and lethal. But I didn’t have the nerve to do it, and the fact that I was a coward on top of everything else made me hate myself. I decided that I might try again later and I took two pills like I was supposed to, and then I sat in Mom’s Honda as she drove me to Queens in silence. I wondered if this was how my sister had felt when she left home with her pregnant stomach and her princess phone.
Soon we were at Evelyn’s house, and she rushed down the front steps with her auburn curls flowing behind her. She hugged me on the stairs as Mom drove away, and I held on a little longer than usual. It was a relief to be with someone who knew what it was like to be the object of Mom’s disappointment.
Evelyn set up the cot in Shane’s room and arranged two dozen Mrs. Fields cookies on a paper plate after lunch. She and Patrick and the boys and I were sitting around the kitchen table when she pushed the plate toward me.
/> “No thanks,” I said.
“You love these, Ari. I got them especially for you.”
“No thanks,” I said again, and I felt awful because I kept letting everybody down.
She sighed, turning her attention to Shane in his high chair, and tickled him. She laughed when he did and she kept saying “I love you I love you I love you.”
I watched them. They made me remember my imaginary Park Slope house and my imaginary husband and my imaginary kids, and knowing that all of it would never be anything but imaginary brought tears to my eyes.
Patrick noticed. “Come on,” he said. “Get up. I’m giving you a driving lesson.”
I didn’t want a driving lesson but I had no choice. He pulled my chair from the table while I was still sitting in it, took me by the arm, and told me to put on my coat. I followed him out to his truck even though I just wanted to sleep until the new millennium.
I sat in the driver’s seat and it felt uncomfortable and confusing there. “I don’t even have my learner’s permit,” I said. “It’s against the law to drive without a learner’s permit.”
Patrick snorted. “Who gives a shit? We won’t get pulled over. Now stick the damn key in the ignition and let’s go.”
“I can’t,” I said, and saw tears dropping onto my jeans. I didn’t want to cry, so I fought it by sniffing and wiping my nose, but nothing worked.
He handed me a tissue from his glove compartment. “You know something, Ari?” he said. “Most guys are assholes.”
I guessed we were talking about Blake. I wondered if Mom and Evelyn had told him everything. I couldn’t even imagine what Patrick would think of me if he ever found out about what happened with Del. And I wouldn’t blame him if he was disappointed, because I hadn’t taken his advice about staying a nice girl.
“You’re not,” I said.
He smiled, put on his sunglasses, and told me again to start the car. Then I had my first driving lesson, and I couldn’t have asked for a better teacher. We went back to the house an hour later, where I sat on the couch and nobody asked me to do anything, not even help with the boys or set the table for dinner.
Other Words for Love Page 24