“Isn’t that strange?” I asked. “I mean … the way I felt about Patrick?”
“Is normal,” she said.
She made me feel normal. I saw her the next Friday afternoon, and the one after that, and soon the leaves on the trees outside her office window turned from green to brown.
“I still think about Blake,” I told her on a crisp day in October.
“How much?” she asked. “On scale of one to ten.”
I shrugged. “Maybe a six.”
“Of course,” she said. “He was first boyfriend. First love. Not easy to forget so quick. But you have to remember, Ari … you have future ahead. Yesterday is gone.”
She stood up because our session was over. I stayed where I was, thinking that yesterday was gone and I couldn’t get it back and that was really sad. But then I thought that going back to yesterday might feel like visiting elementary school, where the desks were small and you couldn’t believe that you had ever fit in them, and you knew you didn’t belong there anymore.
I walked home afterward, my mind on Julian’s wedding and the fact that I had nothing to wear. That night, while Mom tapped away at her typewriter in the kitchen, I stood in my bedroom riffling through my clothes and trying to find something appropriate for a wedding cruise around Manhattan. I came across a black dress, the one I’d worn to Mr. Ellis’s Christmas party, the one that had ended up on the floor after Blake’s twenty-first birthday. I took it out, touched it and stared at it, and then Mom was beside me.
“I’ll buy you a new dress,” she said, gently detaching it from my hands. “Something that’s in fashion.”
That dress was still in fashion. A little black dress is always in fashion. But Mom didn’t know any better, so I didn’t correct her. Besides, I thought she might actually have a point. That dress was very yesterday.
We went to Loehmann’s the next morning and bought a purple skirt set that matched the bruise that still wasn’t completely gone from my forehead. It was small now, just a few speckles above my left eyebrow, but Julian noticed. He saw it after the ceremony, when he was officially married and I was standing alone, leaning on the yacht’s railing and staring over the water at the skyline.
“Did you get mugged or what?” he said.
I laughed and told him about the accident. It was a beautiful autumn night with a clear sky and a cool breeze, and Julian wanted to know what I’d been up to since the summer. I said that I hadn’t really been up to anything except planning to start college next year, and he asked where I wanted to go.
“Parsons, I hope. I have to retake the SAT next month. I really blew it last time.”
He laughed. “The SAT seems important now, but it won’t matter later on, especially for somebody with your talent. You know, I showed that portrait you drew of Adam to a friend of mine—a guy who owns an advertising agency in the city—and he was impressed. He said he might have a part-time opening next spring if you’re interested.”
“An opening,” I said, imagining myself answering phones or stuffing envelopes. “What kind of opening?”
“For an artist, Ari,” he said, like I was a total ditz. “Are you interested?”
There was a time when I would have said I wasn’t interested, when being an artist seemed big and scary, like something that would dissolve me into thin air. But now I didn’t say I wasn’t interested, because a lot of big and scary things had come my way lately and I was still here.
“What do you think?” Evelyn asked.
It was New Year’s Eve and I stood behind her as she examined herself in her full-length bedroom mirror. She’d just slipped into a beaded party dress with an Empire waist, and she nervously checked her reflection from different angles. She studied the embroidery on her skirt, the showgirl-type shoes on her feet. We’d bought everything together at one of those hole-in-the-wall shops where they sold vintage clothes at affordable prices, and I knew she was going to outshine everyone at the party she and Patrick were attending tonight. It was at a catering hall on Long Island, hosted by a neighbor who’d recently inherited some money and wanted to welcome 1988 in style.
“I think it’s beautiful,” I said. “And stop fidgeting.”
She smiled. “Will you be okay with the kids? They just can’t shake these colds.”
I adjusted her hair around her face and smiled back. The boys had been sick since Christmas, coughing and sneezing and fighting low-grade fevers, but I didn’t want Evelyn to worry. She and Patrick deserved a carefree night filled with shrimp cocktail and champagne.
“We’ll be fine,” I said, handing her the silver clutch purse that a saleslady had told us was made in 1928. “Just have a good time.”
She gripped the purse with one hand and unclumped her mascara in the mirror with the other. “Call Mom if you have any problems,” she said, and I nodded even though I had no intention of calling Mom. She and Dad were throwing their own New Year’s Eve party at home, with brandy-spiked eggnog and throngs of NYPD and their spouses, and they deserved a good time too.
I pushed her toward the living room, where Patrick sat on the couch with Kieran by his side and Shane on his lap. He rubbed Shane’s back and held a tissue for Kieran to blow his nose. He was dressed in a sleek black suit and a silky blue tie.
“You clean up nice,” I told him.
He tugged at his collar. “I’m suffocating in this thing.”
That comment reminded me of someone else who would have preferred a T-shirt and jeans to a fancy suit. It made me remember that I didn’t have anyone to kiss at midnight.
I took the kids away from Patrick to distract myself. Dr. Pavelka had told me to distract myself whenever I felt the slightest hint of depression. Don’t dwell, she said. Then Shane held my neck and coughed into my sweatshirt while Kieran used my sleeve to dry his nose, and the three of us stood in the front hall watching Patrick and Evelyn slip into their coats.
Patrick opened the door and held it for Evelyn. There was a Christmas wreath on the door and I heard its bells jingle. I also felt the cold air and Evelyn’s soft cheek on mine when she leaned over to say good night.
“Thanks for taking care of the boys,” she said.
It was something she said a lot more than she used to. “Enjoy the party,” I answered.
When they were gone, I supervised Kieran playing with his new train set after Shane went to bed. Kieran finally fell asleep on the couch, and I moved him to his room with the Jets sheets that Dad had given him for Christmas. I laughed to myself as I closed the door, thinking that Patrick was going to burn them to a crisp when Evelyn wasn’t around.
Then I plopped onto the couch with the remote control, but not for long. I heard Shane coughing in his room, so I raced upstairs and gave him a dose of medicine.
“Feel better?” I asked, pushing damp hair away from his warm forehead.
“I want to watch TV,” he said.
So we sat together on the couch, and I was flipping through the Daily News when the doorbell rang. I scooped up Shane, walked toward the front hall, and opened the door. I heard bells and saw a petite girl with straight blond hair cut into a chin-length bob. She wore a cream-colored coat and matching gloves, and she smelled of L’Air du Temps.
“Hi, Ari,” Summer said. “Happy New Year.”
She looked so different. Her clothes weren’t flashy. She’d lost six inches of hair. There was no shimmery lip gloss or indigo eye shadow. Her makeup was subdued except for the matte red lipstick on her mouth, and she was prettier than ever. She reminded me of photographs I’d seen of women in the 1920s, the ones who carried the sort of purse that Evelyn had brought to the party tonight.
“Hi” fell out of my mouth, in a weak voice that I could barely hear. I hadn’t seen Summer since last year, and I had never expected to see her again.
“I stopped by your parents’ house,” she said. “Your mother told me you were here. She was having a party.”
“I know,” I said, my voice louder. I wished Mom hadn’
t disclosed my location, but I couldn’t be angry with her. Even though Mom suspected various things, I had never told anyone but Dr. Pavelka about what had happened between me and Summer. It would sound too ugly outside her office.
Summer shifted her eyes from me to Shane. “Oh, you’ve gotten so big,” she said. She reached out to stroke his cheek but I jerked him away.
“Leave him alone,” I said.
Her smile disappeared and her arm fell limply to her side as if she knew she deserved that. It made me feel sorry for her, even though sorry was the last thing I wanted to feel. Is this a new look, Summer? I thought. Are you new and improved? I tried that once and it didn’t work.
“Well,” she said, her breath hitting the air and changing into steam. “Can I come in, Ari? I mean … I want to talk to you.”
I thought of slamming the door. I thought of kicking her down the stairs. But a nagging little part of me remembered Uncle Eddie’s wake and a sweet-sixteen party and a box of art supplies, and the rest of me was curious, so I let her in.
She glanced around the living room—at the blinking Christmas tree, the messy pile of torn-open gifts on the floor. The place hadn’t changed at all since the last time she’d been here, and I wondered if she was going to turn up her big-shot UCLA nose at everything, but she didn’t. She just yanked off her gloves and sat on the couch.
I sat across from her in the new plaid La-Z-Boy that was Patrick’s Christmas gift to himself. He said he planned to enjoy a lot of Red Sox games in it next season. Shane started rolling a toy fire engine on the kitchen floor while I stared blankly at Summer.
“I thought you’d be in California,” I said, folding my arms across my chest.
She unbuttoned her coat. “I’m visiting my parents for the holidays.”
Which holiday? I thought. Hanukkah or Christmas? Did you choose a religion yet, Summer? Make up your mind. “Oh,” I said.
She seemed nervous and I wasn’t going to do anything to put her at ease. I just watched as she leaned forward and selected a Hershey’s Kiss from a bowl on the coffee table.
“Ari,” she said, peeling silver foil. “Do you ever see Blake anymore?”
Blake. It seemed to echo against every wall in the house. I never said his name outside of Dr. Pavelka’s office, and it was unsettling to hear it now, especially from Summer.
“No,” I said, clutching Patrick’s chair, terrified of the question I was about to ask. “Do you?”
“Me?” she said with wide eyes and chocolate melting in her palm. “No. I haven’t seen him in a long time, and I don’t want to. My mother doesn’t even work for Ellis and Hummel anymore—she picked up a bigger account last spring, so she doesn’t have time for them. She’s expanded her business—she’s got a few people working for her now.”
“Oh,” I said again, releasing my grip on the chair. “That’s … good for your mother.”
Summer nodded, abandoning her chocolate on the table. “Ari,” she said. “I was wrong about everything. I thought Blake was a nice guy, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t a nice guy at all.”
“Blake was a nice guy,” I said, the same way and for the same reason that I’d protested when Patrick had said that Summer wasn’t a nice girl and when Del had called Summer a floozy. “He just wasn’t a strong guy.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “You’re right. His father really bossed him around. Honestly, I think Stan liked me more than Blake did. Anyway, Blake had the wrong idea about me. The whole thing was a huge mistake.”
Where had I heard that before? And lots of people had the wrong idea about Summer. It gave me a satisfied feeling to know that both she and Blake regretted what they did, but I also pitied her again. I knew that Mr. Ellis had used her, that Blake had used her, that she’d been searching for a guy who would look her in the eyes when they made love, and I doubted that Blake had, even if he’d been right on top of her.
“Yes,” I said. “It was a mistake.”
She nodded once more, stood up, and brushed foil fragments from her coat. “Ari,” she said. “I’m not better than you. And I don’t think you’re average.”
I guessed this was her idea of an apology. I accepted a tiny fraction of it and gave her a half smile. Then she quickly changed the subject as if my silence equaled forgiveness. She started talking about her new boyfriend and she pulled a wallet from her purse.
“This is him,” she said as I looked inside the wallet at a picture of an attractive young man. He stood beneath a palm tree with his arm around Summer. The picture was as perfect as the ones that always came with wallets—the photos of happy couples. I guessed that her new look was for him, for California, for starting over. “He’s a little older … he graduated from UCLA five years ago and now he’s working on his MBA. I think it’s good to go out with older guys—they’re more mature and they treat you better.”
I could tell that the guy in the picture treated Summer better than Casey had, better than Blake had, better than any of those names in her diary, and I was surprisingly glad. I also got the feeling she wasn’t seeking experience anymore.
“That’s great, Summer,” I said. “Really.”
She smiled and we walked to the front hall, where I opened the door and smelled burning wood in the air.
“Goodbye,” she said.
She walked down the stairs and I listened to her heels tap the sidewalk as she headed up the block. Shane ran out of the kitchen, I picked him up, and the two of us watched Summer’s bright coat disappear into the darkness.
“Bye-bye,” Shane said, waving a tiny hand.
Bye-bye, I thought, almost sure that I’d never see her again. But if I did—if we ran into each other someday—I knew we would smile and say polite things like How are you? and Give my regards to your parents, and we would secretly remember that we used to mean something to each other. And even if that never happened, if we never spoke again, I was grateful that we’d have tonight.
twenty-five
Parsons accepted me. In February, the mailman brought a thick envelope and then I had to take a portfolio of my work to the city and interview at the school, and soon they sent another letter that I tore open while Mom peered over my shoulder. Dear Ariadne, I read. Welcome to the Parsons School of Design, Class of 1992.
She was ecstatic and so was I, and we were both just as happy when I met with Julian’s friend in May. He offered me a part-time job at his agency in Midtown, where I worked as an entry-level illustrator under senior artists and art directors, and none of them ever said I didn’t have any talent. Sometimes people at the office would show me their work and ask, “What do you think of this, Ari?” and the idea that someone cared what I thought made me feel even more important than being given a ruby necklace for Christmas. The whole thing made Mom change her mind about the value of connections, just as long as there weren’t any strings attached.
So I kept working through my freshman year of college, and soon it was the summer again. I spent three days each week in the city and two at Creative Colors, and I found out that Adam still liked drawings of lakes and mountains.
“Do you have that same boyfriend?” he asked one Friday afternoon in August.
I was filling in a lake with a cobalt pencil and I shook my head.
“Oh,” he said. “That’s okay. You’ll find another one when you’re ready.”
I laughed because he was right.
The next day, my parents and I went to a citywide firefighters’ picnic at a park in Manhattan with Evelyn and Patrick and the boys. It was warm and sunny, and we sat on folding chairs around a table covered with food. I was drinking a glass of lemonade when Kieran came running across the grass, panting and saying he had to tell me something.
“I saw your old boyfriend, Aunt Ari.”
“Shhh,” Evelyn said, grabbing his arm and shoving him into a chair. Mom shushed him too and Patrick kept his eyes on his hamburger. I knew they meant well, as usual, but they didn’t have to protect me anymore. I didn’t want any
thing from Blake. I just needed to see him one last time so that I would never need to see him again.
“Where?” I asked.
“It was probably just someone who looked like him,” Mom said, lighting a Pall Mall. “Eat your lunch, Ariadne.”
“Where?” I said again, staring at Kieran.
“He’s over at the track,” Dad said.
We all looked at him. He was sitting at the head of the table and he glanced down at his plate as if he hadn’t just done the nicest thing ever.
I got out of my chair and dared to put my arms around him. “Thank you, Dad,” I said, and he actually hugged me back. It wasn’t for long—just a few seconds—but it was something.
I walked away, across the park, where I saw Blake. He was running laps on the track, dressed in black shorts and a gray T-shirt. I stood at the edge of the asphalt and called his name as he passed.
He stopped running. He turned around and walked toward me, and I saw his handsome face. Time had matured his features; he looked more like a man than a boy.
“Ari,” he said with a smile I didn’t expect. I wasn’t sure he would want to see me, especially since I’d refused to see him at Kings County Hospital. But I hadn’t been ready then. Now I was. “How are you?”
“Fine,” I answered, nervous and not sure what to say next.
His eyes moved around my face. “You look good.”
“I do?” I said, and he laughed as if I hadn’t changed at all, but he was wrong. Then he asked if I was at Parsons and I said I was. I also told him about my job, and nothing surprised him.
“I always knew you could be an artist,” he said.
I smiled because that was true. He had always believed in me. “What are you doing these days?” I asked, hoping he’d tell me he was planning to become a fireman and was running laps so he could ace the physical portion of the FDNY entrance exam.
He shrugged one shoulder and tugged at the bottom of his shirt. It was damp and clinging to his chest. “I’m in law school now.”
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