Because It Is My Blood

by Gabrielle Zevin

  “Scarlet, if you seriously marry Gable Arsley, you and I won’t be friends anymore.”

  “Don’t be dramatic, Annie. We’ll always be friends.”

  “We won’t,” I insisted. “I know Gable Arsley. If you marry him, your life will be ruined.”

  “Well, then it’s ruined. It was already ruined,” she said calmly.

  Gable came up to us. “I assume you’re here to congratulate us, Anya.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “I don’t know how you’ve fooled her, Gable. What you did to make her change her mind.”

  “This isn’t about Scarlet. It’s about you, Anya. Like it always has to be,” Gable said calmly.

  Not for the first time, I wanted to smack him across his face. Suddenly, I felt Natty’s hand in mine.

  “Let’s go,” she whispered.

  “Goodbye,” Scarlet called.

  My jaw wobbled like a three-legged stool, but I did not cry.

  “Anya, we aren’t children anymore!” Scarlet said.

  In that moment, I hated her—for implying that the reason I objected to her marrying that sociopath was because I was somehow stunted and pathetically suspended in childhood. As if I hadn’t been forced to do away with childish things years ago. “Do you mean because we graduated or because you’re knocked up?” Even as I said it, I knew it was cruel.

  “We didn’t graduate!” Scarlet yelled back. “I graduated. And for the record, my job title is not Professional Best Friend to Anya Balanchine!”

  “If it were, you’d be fired!”

  “Okay,” Natty said. “You two really need to stop now. You’re both being awful.” Natty went up to Scarlet and embraced her. “Congratulations, Scarlet for … um … making a decision that you’re happy with, I guess. Come on, Annie. We need to get going.”

  After graduation, Natty and I went to a celebratory brunch at Win’s parents’ place. I was still preoccupied from my argument with Scarlet, and I spent the whole meal brooding. Just before dessert, Win’s father tapped his knife against his glass and stood to make a speech. Charles Delacroix liked making speeches. I’d heard more than enough of them in my life so I didn’t feel the need to pay attention to this one. Finally, it seemed like we’d stayed long enough that it wouldn’t be rude to leave.

  “Don’t leave yet,” Win said to me. “You’ll just go home and brood over Scarlet and Arsley.”

  “I’m not brooding.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Don’t you think I know you a little bit?” He smoothed out the furrow that must have formed between my eyebrows.

  “That’s not the only thing I’m brooding about, you know,” I objected. “I’m very deep and my problems are vast.”

  “I know. At least one of them isn’t that your boyfriend is moving away to go to college.”

  I asked him what he meant.

  “Didn’t you pay any attention to my dad’s speech? I’ve decided to stay in New York for college. It means going to Dad’s alma mater, which pleases him. I’d rather not do anything to please him, but…” Win shrugged.

  I took a step back. “You can’t mean that you’re staying here on my account?”

  “Of course that’s what I mean. A school is a school.”

  I didn’t reply. Instead, I fidgeted with my necklace.

  “You seem less pleased than I’d hoped.”

  “But Win, I didn’t ask you to stay here. I just don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do. These past two years have taught me that it’s best not to make too many plans beyond the present moment.”

  “That’s crap, Anya. You don’t think that. You’re always thinking about your next move. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

  Of course he was right. The real reason I didn’t want him to stay was too hard to say aloud. Win was a decent guy—maybe the most decent one I’d ever known—and I didn’t want him to stay in New York because he felt sorry for me or out of some misplaced sense of obligation. If he did that, he’d only end up regretting it later.

  Since I’d learned about Simon Green, I’d done a bit of reflecting over my parents’ marriage. My mother and father had fought constantly the year before she died. One of the major points of contention between them was that she resented leaving her job at the NYPD and had wanted to go back to work—which obviously was impossible, considering what Daddy did for a living. My point was, I didn’t want Win to end up resenting me that way.

  “Win,” I said, “it’s been a good couple of months for us, but I can’t know what’s going to happen to me next week let alone a year from now. And neither can you.”

  “Guess I’ll have to take my chances.” Win studied my face. “You’re a funny sort of girl,” he said, and then he laughed. “I’m not asking you to marry me, Anya. I’m just trying to put myself in your neighborhood.”

  At the mention of marriage, I winced.

  “And I’d done so well distracting you from the news of Scarlet’s nuptials.”

  I rolled my eyes. “What is wrong with her?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. Except that life is hard. And complex.”

  I asked him if he was taking her side, and he said there were no sides. “The one thing I do know about Scarlet Barber is that she is your friend.”

  Scarlet Barber may have been my friend but soon she would be Scarlet Arsley.

  Win’s mother dragged him away to talk to some of the other guests at the brunch. He made me promise to stay a little longer. Natty seemed to be enjoying herself—she was talking to a cute cousin of Win’s—so I wandered up to the garden. The day was unseasonably hot so no one was out there. The last time I’d been in that garden was that long-ago spring day when I had ended things with Win.

  I sat down on the bench. Mrs. Delacroix was using a trellis to grow peas, and the plants made little white flowers, which reminded me of the blooms on the cacao plants in Mexico. I was glad to be in New York—not to be in hiding—but I also missed Mexico. Maybe not the place itself, but my friends there and the feeling that I was part of something worthwhile. Theo and I had both been raised in chocolate yet his life had been totally different from mine. Because chocolate wasn’t illegal in Mexico, he had lived his whole life in the open whereas I had always been hiding and ashamed. I suppose that was why I had been so drawn to the idea of medicinal cacao.

  I was about to leave when Charles Delacroix came out to the garden.

  “How do you stand the heat?” he asked me.

  “I like it,” I said.

  “I would have guessed that about you,” he replied. Mr. Delacroix sat next to me on the bench. “How goes the medicinal-cacao business?”

  I told him I’d run the idea by the powers that be at Balanchine Chocolate and that it had been roundly and unceremoniously rejected.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Charles Delacroix said. “I thought it was a good concept.”

  I looked at him. “You did?”

  “I did.”

  “I would have thought you’d think it was a cheat.”

  He shook his head. “You don’t understand much about lawyers. We live for the gray areas.” He nodded and stroked his beard. “We live in them actually.”

  “You ever gonna shave that thing off? It makes you look like one of those park people.”

  Charles Delacroix ignored me. “I imagine the idea was threatening to your cousin Sergei, or ‘Fats’—word on the street is that he’s the one running the semya now? I’m horribly out of touch, but I do try to keep up. And he probably said that the Balanchine business model was based on the idea of illegal supply which, of course, is true.”

  “Something like that.” I paused. “You always think you know everything, don’t you?”

  “I don’t, Anya. If I did, I’d be giving speeches downtown instead of at a graduation party. As for your cousin? I can predict his response because it’s thoroughly predictable. He’s a guy who was promoted through the ranks, a guy with his own speakeasy. Yes, I know about that. Of course I d
o. What you said would terrify a guy like that.”

  None of it mattered much now.

  “Do it anyway,” Charles Delacroix said.

  “What?” I stood up from the bench.

  “It’s a big idea, maybe even visionary, and those don’t come along every day. It’s a chance to really change things, and I believe it could make money, too. You’re young, which is a good thing. And thanks to me, you know a thing or two about chocolate. You’ll have to tell me all about that trip to Mexico someday.”

  He knew about Mexico? I tried to keep my face expressionless, but I must not have succeeded. Charles Delacroix smiled at me.

  “Anya, please. I practically put you on the boat, didn’t I?”

  “Mr. Delacroix, I…”

  “Make sure you hire a good security team—that wall of a woman is a fine start—and an even better lawyer. Mr. Kipling won’t do. You’ll need someone with an expertise in civil law and contracts and such—”

  At that moment, Win came out to the garden. “Is Dad boring you again?”

  “Anya was telling me about her plans for next year,” Charles Delacroix said.

  Win looked at me. “What plans exactly?”

  “Your dad’s kidding,” I said. “I don’t have any plans.”

  Charles Delacroix nodded. “Well, that is a shame.”

  Win defended me. “Not everyone goes to college right after high school, Dad. Some of the most interesting people don’t go to college at all.”

  Charles Delacroix said he was aware of that fact and that there were many ways in life to get an education. “International travel, for instance.”

  After Charles Delacroix went back inside, Win commented, “I’m amazed you can even be civil to him after everything he’d done to us last year.”

  “He was just doing his job,” I said.

  “You really think so? You’re more forgiving than I thought.”

  “I do.” I stood on my tiptoes and leaned in to kiss him. “Worst mistake I ever made, falling for the acting DA’s kid.” I pulled away. “But you were wrong to pursue me.”

  Win kissed me. “Very.”

  “Why did you anyway? Pursue me, I mean. I’m pretty sure I kept telling you to go away.”

  Win nodded. “Well, it’s simple really. The first time I saw you, you were dumping that tray of spaghetti—”

  “It was lasagna,” I interjected.

  “Lasagna. Over Gable Arsley’s head.”

  “Not my finest hour.”

  “From where I was sitting, I liked the looks of you. And I liked that you stood up for yourself.”

  “That simple?”

  “Yes, it was. These things usually are, Annie. It had become clear to me that you and your boyfriend had parted ways. I knew you’d be in Headmaster’s office at the end of the day so I contrived a reason to go there myself.”

  “Admirably duplicitous of you.”

  “I am my father’s son,” he said.

  “Was it worth it? You did end up shot.” I put my arms around his waist.

  “That was nothing. A flesh wound. Was it worth it for you? All the trouble I caused you. I feel almost”—he paused—“guilty sometimes.”

  I thought about this.

  Love.

  There were so many kinds of love. And some of them were forever like the kind I had for Natty and for Leo. And other kinds? Well, you’d be a fool if you tried to guess how long they’d last. But even the ones that weren’t necessarily everlasting were not without meaning.

  Because, when it came down to it, who and what and that you loved was your whole life. And when it came to love, it could not be denied that I’d received more than my portion: Nana, Daddy, my mother. Leo, Natty, Win, even Theo. Scarlet. Scarlet.

  I furrowed my brow.

  “You’re making a face,” Win said.

  “I just realized that I’m going to have to forgive Scarlet.”

  I looked at Win, and he looked at me.

  “What I mean to say is, I’m going to have to ask her to forgive me.”

  “I think that’s sensible.”

  “I liked your speech today,” I said.

  “I appreciate that,” he said. “You really don’t want me to stay in New York?”

  “Of course I want you to stay … I just don’t want you to end up hating me.”

  “I couldn’t end up hating you. It’s as impossible for me as slamming a revolving door. I’ll walk you and Natty home.” He picked a bloom from the trellis and then he tucked it into my hair. Summer was here.

  XX

  I PLAN FOR THE FUTURE

  MY FATHER HATED THE SUMMER because summer was the worst time of year for dealing chocolate. The heat made distribution like running a gauntlet. A train delay or a malfunctioning refrigerated truck could mean that entire shipments were spoiled, i.e., melted. Daddy always said that people lost their taste for chocolate in the summer anyway—that chocolate was a cold-weather food, that people would rather have ice cream or even watermelon in the heat. The cost of shipping, expensive at all times of the year, was even more exorbitant in the summer. According to my father, the one thing that could have significantly eased the summer months was if it had been legal to create chocolate stateside: “Sure, we can’t sell it here, but why do they care if we make it?” I knew that Daddy often fantasized about Balanchine Chocolate going on hiatus from May through September. But as soon as he’d said this, my father would shake his head: “Not to be, Annie. If we force people to go three months without chocolate, they might lose their taste for it altogether. The American buying public is as fickle as a teenager’s heart.” I was not yet a teenager, so I didn’t bother taking offense at this analogy.

  Though it was June, I was not thinking of any of this. My most immediate concern was helping Natty pack for her second summer at genius camp. I was in the middle of rolling a T-shirt when the phone rang.

  “Did you hear the news?” He didn’t bother to introduce himself but I was more practiced at recognizing Jacks’s voice than I had once been.

  “Phone calls are expensive, Jacks. You shouldn’t waste your weeklies on someone who doesn’t want to hear from you.”

  Jacks ignored me. “Word on the street is that Balanchine Chocolate isn’t going to supply chocolate in the summer anymore. Fats thinks it’s too costly. He’s saying that he thinks chocolate should be a seasonal business. The dealers are about ready to kill him.”

  I told him that Daddy had often said the same thing, and that seasonal or not, it wasn’t my business.

  “You can’t be serious. Fats is running the business into the ground, and you don’t think it’s your business. Let me tell you, you backed the wrong guy with Fats. The only thing that guy cares about is his speak—”

  “I’m finally out, Jacks. What do you want me to say?”

  “You know I got no one else to call, right? Now that Mickey’s unreachable and Yuri’s dead, no one else will even take my call. And I’d like to have a job to go back to when I’m out of here.”

  “Maybe you should consider a different line of work?”

  “You finding it real easy to move on, Annie? It’d be about a million times harder for me, you know.”

  “You’re not my problem,” I said, and then I hung up the phone.

  I went back into Natty’s room, where she was folding up a raincoat. She wanted to know who had been on the phone. “No one,” I said.

  “No one?” she repeated.

  “Jacks. He’s worried that Fats is…” I let my voice trail off. If Fats was running Balanchine Chocolate into the ground, it wasn’t necessarily my problem, but it could definitely be my opportunity. “Excuse me, Natty. I have to go make a call.”

  I went back out to the kitchen. If I were to make a go at this, I’d need a lawyer. I thought about calling Mr. Kipling, but we hadn’t been on the best of terms since Simon Green’s return. I thought about calling Simon Green, but I didn’t trust him. The greater problem with Mr. Kipling and Simon Green
was that both men had spent their whole careers defending people from the wrong side of the law and what I needed right now was someone who played for the angels.

  I thought about calling Charles Delacroix. In terms of drawbacks, he had thrown me in a reformatory twice, and also, Win would hate it.

  It really did make the most sense to call Mr. Kipling. Maybe we’d had some hard times, but he was a good man and he was always on my side. At the very least, Mr. Kipling would be able to point me in the direction of the kind of lawyer I thought I needed.

  I picked up the phone. I was about to dial Mr. Kipling when I found myself pressing the numbers for Win’s apartment instead. Win answered the phone. “Hello,” he said.

  I didn’t reply.

  “Hello,” Win repeated. “Is anyone there?”

  I could have abandoned the idea right then. I could have just asked Win if he wanted to come over. I could have at the very least told him what I was thinking. But I didn’t do any of these things.

  This might sound low to you, but I decided to disguise my voice. I made it deep and husky and a bit New York. “I’m calling for Charles Delacroix,” I purred. I was no vocal chameleon and part of me expected Win to burst out laughing and say, Annie, what are you playing at?

  “Dad!” I heard Win yell. “Telephone!”

  “I’ll take it in the office!” Charles Delacroix called back.

  A second later, Charles Delacroix picked up the phone, and I heard Win hang up. “Yes?”

  “It’s Anya Balanchine,” I said.

  “Well, this is a surprise,” Charles Delacroix replied.

  “I’m going to do it,” I said. “I’m going to open the medicinal cacao dispensary.”

  “Good for you, Anya. That’s terribly industrious,” he said. “What changed your mind?”

  “I saw a window—an opportunity that was too good to pass up,” I said. “I’m thinking that you should be my business lawyer.”

  Charles Delacroix cleared his throat. “Why would I ever do that?”

  “Because you have the expertise in city government and because you have nothing else to do and because I know you think it’s a good idea.”