Blue Rose In Chelsea Read online

  Evan smiles. “Is that how you feel? Do you want to see life?”

  “She won’t see much unless she gets a job,” Dylan interjects. He orders a round of Jax beer for everyone. “What do you want, Isabel?”

  The waiter delivers drinks to the adjoining table. One is blue as tropical water with a pink paper umbrella. I point to it. “And that blue thing,” Dylan motions to the drink and the waitress jots it down.

  “Haley dropped out of Princeton, a full scholarship,” Dylan enlightens Evan.

  “Why did you do that?” Evan asks, with genuine concern, and no hint of condemnation.

  “Because she wants to see life!” Dylan mocks.

  I try to articulate my reasons. I have a captive audience, and grow effusive under the influence of the jet fuel in the blue drink. Brandon—the Drexel Burnham defector—nods vigorously, as if he totally gets me.

  “She had one year left. My sister has a fear of finishing things.” Dylan slurps the foam off his lager.

  “My brother took Psych 101 in college, and now he moonlights as an unpaid analyst.”

  Brandon observes the repartee, like one long familiar with it. Evan’s head pivots from me to Dylan and back, as if auditing an intense tennis match.

  “Haley thinks she’s smarter than her professors. And she probably is, but that’s still no excuse to toss away an Ivy League scholarship.” I know this is a sore spot for Dylan, who had to work full-time to put himself through a state university.

  “Getting back to Isabel.” I rest my elbows on the table, jangling back the colorful plastic bracelets on my wrists so that I can illustrate with my hands. I tell them how Ralph—who is secretly in love with Isabel, but not long for this world—convinces his ailing father to leave half of Ralph’s inheritance to Isabel, so that Isabel won’t have to marry for financial reasons—which women had to do back then—and so she can ‘see life.’ Ralph wants to ‘put a little wind in her sails’ and so he does. Isabel travels the world, reading books, visiting cities and museums, and viewing all the great architectural wonders. She is given the means to develop herself without restraints, free of the societal pressure to marry, and beholden to no one.

  “I wish I had the means to do that. So many people at Princeton lived like that, and yet they took it for granted, almost bored by their good fortune. I always felt like the outsider, forever out of place, like I would never catch up, as if I was behind everyone else.”

  “You don’t seem so far behind to me.” Evan pops a peanut into his mouth and fishes another out of the bowl for me, placing it beside my drink.

  “The longer I was at that school, the more I became aware of just how much I don’t know. I don’t mean book knowledge; I have that in spades. I mean just how much of the world I haven’t seen, how little life experience I have.”

  “Well, you won’t see or do much now that you’ve sacked your scholarship,” Dylan taunts.

  I motion to the waitress for a second drink, as Dylan has driven me to it.

  “So, you want to be rich like Isabel?” Brandon asks.

  “’I call people rich when they are able to gratify their imagination.’ That’s what Ralph says,” I quote.

  “Ralph is not real.” Dylan waves his hand as if to awaken me from a trance. “He is a figment of some writer’s imagination.”

  “You’ve probably lived that life,” I address Evan, smacking down Dylan’s fingers which undulate like sea anemones.

  “I don’t have an inheritance,” Evan says, “but by Ralph’s definition, I would consider myself rich.”

  “See, he gets it!” I chide the others.

  “I’ve been able to gratify my imagination,” Evan muses, as if pleased to discover these hidden riches within him.

  “And a few babes along the way,” Brandon cracks, and the guys dissolve into laughter.

  “You’ve toured with the ballet company all over the world; you must have seen every European city and landmark and museum,” I persist, waiting for the laughter to die down.

  Evan looks as if I’ve just made an argument for the existence of Santa Claus. “Not many paintings,” he says, with a wink. “And even fewer landmarks. I slept a lot on tour.” He motions to try a taste of my blue drink, but recoils as if he’s tasted tin. “What’s in there, motor oil?” He seizes the opportunity of the shared drink to edge closer to me.

  “Well, no one’s going to leave you an inheritance, Sis. And I don’t see any English lords proposing marriage.” Dylan glances over his shoulder, as if the fabled nobleman may appear suddenly on bended knee. “Far be it from me to contradict the great sage, Ralph Touchy, but the great thing in life is to make it on your own, to become self-actualized through hard work and persistent effort, to be self-made. This is America, after all!”

  “It’s Touchett, Ralph Touchett, not Touchie!” I scold between sips.

  “Touch it,” Brandon repeats with a wiggle of eyebrows, and the guys collapse once more into laughter.

  “Don’t get so Touchie.” Dylan delights in his little pun.

  “I think the great thing is to do something creative, something that has never been done before, to leave something behind, something new and valuable, a great work of art, something that will endure,” Brandon offers when the laughter subsides. “Haley, did you ever finish that novel you were working on?”

  Dylan answers for me. “Finish something? Surely you jest!”

  “I never intended to finish it. It was just an exercise in learning how to structure a novel. It’s not anything I would ever attempt to publish.” I am hoping to put this subject to rest, as Evan appears on the brink of asking me the plot of my now-defunct Magnum Opus.

  “The great thing,” Evan says, as if the two words hung in the air in italics, “is to see the world as brand new, every day, the way a little kid does. I know plenty of people who live the life that Haley described. They’ve traveled all over, they’ve been to the best schools, they’ve done the whole cultural gambit, but they have this dullness to them, almost as if they’ve seen and done too much and there’s nothing left to see or do, nothing to excite them.”

  I am wondering how Evan knows such people, and if he is one of them. He has the slightest of accents, a hybrid of sorts that I can’t quite place.

  “They don’t have what Haley has,” he says, between bites of peanuts, and I’m on pins and needles to hear what I have that the privileged other half lacks. “An openness to new experience,” he says, after swallowing the nuts. “The ability to not just look at things, but to really see things, and people, and be moved by them.”

  “You just met her. How do you know she has that?” Dylan slouches in his chair, extending his long legs so they accidentally kick me under the table. I kick him back.

  “The blue drink,” Evan says. “She took a risk. She didn’t even ask what was in it; she looked at it and went with her instinct, and other things about her. I can just tell. I don’t read many books, but I can read people.”

  “Oh, the blue drink reveals all!” Dylan waves his hand like a magician.

  “I think the great thing is to commit yourself to something and stick with it, to see something through to its finish.” Dylan drums his fingers on the table. I feel a jolt of annoyance at the obvious dig to me, followed by a pang of tenderness for my brother when I see he wears the silver ring I bought for him with my Pennysaver paper route money when I was thirteen years old. It is inscribed in Gaelic, anum cara, which means, “soul friend.”

  “Oh, this, coming from the guy who has a new groupie on his arm every week.” I push back from the table, folding my arms across my fruity dress, because now I’ve got Dylan where I want him. I feel Evan’s arm around the back of the booth. As I lean back, his fingertips brush my shoulder.

  “I’m committed to the band, and I get up and go to work every day,” Dylan states matter-of-factly. This is true: Dylan has not missed a day of employment since he was of legal working age. At twelve, he clammed the Great South Bay every s
ummer with an older neighbor who owned a boat, saved his money until he was able to purchase his own clam boat at age sixteen, bought his first truck with cash, and put himself through college, never taking a penny from my parents, or a bank, for anything. He has always been scrupulously and irreproachably responsible.

  “Actually, after Isabel spends a year traveling and learning about the world, she comes to the same conclusion, that it’s now time to commit herself to something. Unfortunately, she marries the narrow Gilbert Osmond and nearly ruins her life. But Ralph had tried to warn her, when he said, ‘You seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue—to be sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men, you were not to come down so easily, and so soon.’” I lift my glass in celebration of Ralph’s eloquence.

  “And this is your favorite book? Some chick inherits a mass of dough, visits a bunch of museums, and marries a guy who wrecks her life?” Dylan motions for another round of beer, but Evan refuses a second.

  “How does the story end?” Evan is in earnest.

  I tell them the ending is not clear, but that I like to imagine that Isabel recovers from her mistake and finds happiness, that she, perhaps, goes home to America and marries the strong Caspar Goodwood. The book ends on a jarring note when Isabel’s friend (with the nebulous words, ‘just you wait’) offers hope to Caspar that Isabel will return.

  Evan watches me closely, long after my literary monologue has concluded.

  “You would like Caspar Goodwood, Dylan. He’s an American entrepreneur, a self-made man. Like you, he doesn’t understand the finer nuances of life—such as art and philosophy—but he is solid and good and strong.”

  “Caspar Goodwood?” The name sticks on Dylan’s tongue like Velcro. “What kind of a name is that?”

  I can feel Evan’s body shaking from silent laughter.

  “Okay, okay.” Blushing, I rise from the table for the ladies room. I glide around the tables, glancing back to see if Evan is watching me, but he’s listening to something Brandon is saying.

  “Don’t soar too high into the blue, over the heads of men!” Dylan calls attention to my collision with the waiter, a consequence of the mind-bending blue drink. I hear more laughter from the table. Is Evan laughing at me?

  In the ladies room, I blot the shine from my face with a paper towel, bite my lips and pinch my cheeks to give me color. I have no makeup; my trusty pot of red lip-gloss is empty. Two seriously overdressed ladies eye me. In my stupor it’s difficult not to gape at their flamboyant attire: peacock feather dresses and shoes the size of small boats. They discuss my coloring, determine that I’m a “winter,” and offer me a quick makeover when I reveal to them, in a flood of disjointed sentences, my desperate crush on Evan. Before I know it they’ve powdered away my shine, lined my eyes in kohl pencil, dusted gold glitter onto my lids, and blotted a raspberry color with a cue-tip onto my lips, before sending me off with Mary Kay samples, a card, and a promise of a full makeover should I come to see them soon on Christopher Street.

  Seated just outside the restroom, and applying nail polish to head off a nasty run in her fishnet stockings is one of my sequined cosmeticians, crooning a song from Funny Girl, “It doesn’t take more explanation than this. You are woman, I am man, let’s kiss.”

  When I look up, Evan is there. He lifts my face and leans in for a kiss, and it’s so sudden that I pull away, with a look of bewilderment. I’m unprepared, and it doesn’t seem the right moment, especially with Dylan in such close proximity. Plus I always like to pop a mint before a first kiss. A look of mortification crosses Evan’s perfect countenance, and he ducks into the men’s room.

  Suddenly we are all leaving. I don’t make it back to the table. Dylan and Brandon meet me somewhere in between. And then we are on the sidewalk waiting for Evan, who appears in my vision, as if a spotlight were trained on him, a radiant L.L. Bean sunbeam striking the dark street. But he brushes past me, as if unseeing, and walks ahead with Dylan and Brandon. My rejection of the kiss has altered everything; nothing will ever be the same again. I study the cracks in the sidewalk; clearing each by narrowing or lengthening my strides like a child, teetering in the black heels with the pink straps, trying to keep up.

  “Are you still seeing that German guy?” Brandon turns to ask, walking backwards so as to face me, perhaps in sympathy for my unexplained ostracism.

  “He’s married,” Dylan answers for me.

  “I was never seeing him! We went to one party together with friends. I wasn’t aware he was married. He’s a post doc who lived with a male friend of mine for two years, and even he didn’t know he had a wife stashed away back in Stromberg!” This torrent of words has the effect of a sudden sun shower; it is quickly forgotten.

  They aren’t listening. Evan’s face swims into view. I can see I’ve fallen seventeen stories in Evan’s estimation with this new evidence against me.

  “What’s that goop on your eyes?” Dylan strolls backwards to observe my glittery lids, courtesy of the Mary Kay amazons.

  “Some ladies in feather boas gave me some makeup samples.” I feel in the pockets of the cherry dress, to make sure the small tubes are still there.

  “Ladies?” Dylan is incredulous.

  “You are aware that they aren’t really ladies?” This question floats out of the ether, originating from Evan’s mouth.

  It’s official; he hates me. I’m so far removed from Evan’s good graces that I’d need a fleet of Greyhound buses to deliver me back.

  “They’re drag queens.” Dylan spells this out, as if I were five years old.

  I shrug, as I connect the dots to their deep voices, knobby knees and hairy hands. “I like them!” I shoot back.

  I halt, realizing I’ve forgotten the pink shopping bag with my jeans in it. It’s Evan who first notices that I’ve lost pace with the others, so perhaps he has not become utterly indifferent to me.

  “Forget it, Haley. We’ll miss the train if you go back,” Dylan orders.

  “No, I have to. My most treasured possession is in that bag.” I pivot, in a fog of panic.

  “I thought you said those jeans were split at the crotch.” Subtlety is not Dylan’s strong point. “I’ll buy you new jeans,” Dylan offers with the authority of someone with plenty of cash flow to easily replace lost items.

  “No, it’s not the jeans. It’s something in the pocket of the jeans. I have to go get it.” I’ve already turned on my heel and begun the blurry journey back. The blue drinks have worked their delirious magic on me. The city is like some wonderland of winking lights and molasses slow movement. Brandon has caught up with me, chaperoning my drunken sojourn back to the club. We find the bag in our booth; no one has been seated there since we left. I rummage through it and feel, with relief, for the holy relic.

  Brandon and I make our way back. I laugh over-enthusiastically at some story he is telling me, perhaps to make some point to Evan, to show him I’m not really affected by his withdrawal from me.

  “We missed the train, hopefully there’s another local to Kew Gardens,” Dylan groans. He prefers the train out of Penn, which stops closer to his apartment than the E train subway station. “So, what was the big life and death object? Where’s the Holy Grail?” Dylan makes a swipe for the pink bag, but I feint like a prizefighter. He turns away, but then swivels with a surprise attack, seizing the bag with his big bear paw.

  “Knock it off, Dylan, give it back!” Like some defective mechanical toy I toggle about him, trying to reach around his hulking frame.

  “There’s only this ratty bandanna.” He holds it at arm’s length over an open grate, as if it were hazardous waste.

  “Don’t!” I scream, and Dylan allows me to snatch it from his clutches. I wind it around my hair, like a cotton tiara, tying it at the crown of my curls.

  Dylan’s attempt to make me look foolish has somehow backfired. Evan suddenly looks at me in the old way again, as he discovers that my most prized possession is his blue bandanna. There’s no kiss on the ch
eek for me tonight when we part. He remains distant and cautious, but he reaches out and gives a gently affectionate tug to one of my curls, letting it spring back like a silky coil, then, turning a dark corner with Brandon, he is gone.

  ~ 5 ~

  Mr. Palmer Is Very Droll

  “I’d promise you anything, is the one thing you must never say to a man,” my cousin, Careen, scolds me, as she assumes the White Crane position.

  Careen is attempting to teach me Tai Chi. She has been studying with someone in Queens called Oz Chinmore, who her husband refers to as Is Chinless. We are in the small backyard of her brownstone in Brooklyn. She has erected a little table with chipped pale blue paint. The simplicity of it reminds me somehow of our Brooklyn childhoods, back when people didn’t fuss so much with appearances, when things didn’t have to be perfect. The table is set for tea.

  “You must keep a man on his toes,” she advises, rising onto her own, which are perfectly manicured.

  “I think he’s tired of being on his toes,” I say, in reference to Evan’s defunct ballet career.

  “Perhaps he needs some time on his back, then.” Careen winks.

  I lift my leg slowly, raising droopy wrists in imitation of Careen’s crane posture. My old Flashdance-inspired sweatshirt slips off my shoulder. I remember the summer I visited Careen in England; we desperately wanted to be Jennifer Beals and embarked on a quest for pencil-point jeans, cheap crimson pumps, and gray sweatshirts that we proceeded to snip to pieces. We worked out hard, to the strains of Maniac. We pedaled our bikes around London, pretending we were just as free and independent as the character, Alex, in the movie. My mop of unruly dark curls helped me pull off the look beautifully, something that still sticks in Careen’s craw.