The Fine Art of Truth or Dare (19 page)

“Of course you can. But why would you? I am here for youse, Marino, forevah and evah.”

Half an hour and a pair of Frye boots later, Sadie eyed the food court options. “I think I'll do sushi.”

Frankie and I had decided to split a meatball hoagie. It wouldn't be my dad's, but it was safe. There was something about the shopping mall/raw fish combo that just seemed wrong.

“Sadie,” I began, but didn't have the heart.

Frankie did. “A hoagie it is.” When she protested, he gave her the reptile eye. “Ever hear of salmonella? And I don't mean the dish Ella's uncle named in her honor.”

We think that might have been what killed Ricky's
Top Chef
chances last year. Too bad. Disastrous name aside, it had actually been pretty good.

Frankie bought us an extra order of french fries.

• • •

“Okay, three things, and one of them has to be in French.”

I was back in the weird squashy chair; Alex was flopped on the bed. This time, along with the lemon soda, there were two bags of Doritos on the floor between us. He'd had one waiting. I'd brought one.

“I don't think this is what Mademoiselle Winslow had in mind,” I told him.

Truth:
Despite all my good intentions to keep Frankie happy and my hopes down, I'd been looking forward to this all week, hoping Alex wouldn't forget. I'd thought up and rethought clever things I could say.

Further Truth:
I didn't want to sound like I'd been looking forward to it all week and thinking up what I wanted to say.

Home truth:
Yes, I am that pitiful.

“Winslow wants you to learn this”—he waved a few sheets of stapled pages—“and that.” He pointed to the book in my lap.
Fifty French Conversations
. It was one of our textbooks. I'd stopped at the seventeenth:
Mon hamster a mangé trop de fromage. Il a mal au ventre maintenant.
“The rest is the Bainbridge Method.”

“You have a method?”

“Patented and proven.”

I waved the book. “Does it include greedy, cheese-guzzling hamsters with stomachaches?”

He nodded. “Absolutely. French conversation is nothing without rodents and cheese. Is there something shameful in your past involving either?”

“Not that I can think of off the top of my head.”

“Tant pis.”

“And that means . . . ?”

“Fuhgeddaboudit,” he translated, grinning.

I sighed. “Do people make Russian jokes in your presence?”

“How do you get five Russians to agree on anything?”

“How?” I asked.

“Shoot four of them.”

I thought for a sec. “I'm not sure that's funny.”

“No,” Alex said. “People don't tell many Russian jokes in my presence.”

“I should start my three things list, huh?”

“Yeah. That would be good.”

I did some speedy translating in my head.
“Je n'ai jamais lu
Huckleberry Finn
,
Beloved
, ou
Moby-Dick
.”

“Ella, no one has read
Moby-Dick
. The French was passable, but as far as revelations go, that sucked.”

“Ah, but there's a part
deux
. All three of those books were required reading last year in my American lit class. I used SparkNotes.”

“You're kidding, right?”

“See?” I daintily brushed Dorito crumbs from my fingertips. “Changes your perception of me, doesn't it?”

“No, I meant, ‘
That's
a revelation?' You can do better that that.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, “but it's still early in the game.” His room had two dormer windows and a skylight. I must have been facing west, because he was haloed by the late-afternoon sun. It made his hair glow like real bronze and shadowed his features. That made everything easier somehow. “Two: Anna Lombardi and I used to be pretty good friends before we got to Willing and suddenly weren't.”

I said it quickly, evenly. Not a plea for sympathy, just an explanation, a truth.

“Nous avons été amies,”
I added. “There, that's two in French, and using past perfect, no less.”

I couldn't see his expression clearly. It felt like a long time before he said anything. “Ella . . .” He paused, then, “What happened? Between you and Anna?”

“Other than the fact that I'm a fashion-impaired poor kid who draws doorknobs? Haven't a clue.”

Alex leaned forward. Now I could see his face. He looked annoyed. “Why do you do that? Diminish yourself?”

“I don't—”

“Bullshit.”

I could feel my cheeks flaming, feel my shoulders curving inward. “I don't—”

“Right. Don't. Just don't, with me, anyway. I like you better feisty.”

I couldn't help it; that made me smile. “Did you really just say ‘feisty'?”

“I did. It's a good word.”

“It's an
old
word, favored by granddads and pirates.”

“Yar,” Alex sighed.

“Face it. You're just an old-fashioned guy.”

“Whatever. Three . . . ?”

“Three,” I said, and changed my mind midthought. “I haven't been able to decide if Willing is the second best thing that ever happened to me, or the second worst.”

“What are the firsts?”

“Nope. Uh-uh. It is not for you to ask, Alexander Bainbridge, but to reveal.”

He drained his glass and rolled it back and forth between his hands. “I had all these funny admissions planned, but you've screwed up my plans. Hey. Don't go all wounded-wide-eyed on me. It's cute, that Bambi thing you have going, but beside the point. Now I have to rethink.”

“You don't—”

“Quiet. One: My name isn't Alexander.” He sat up straight and gave his chest a resounding thump. “
Menya zavut
Alexei Pavlovich Dillwyn Bainbridge. Not Alexander. I don't think anyone outside my family knows that.”

“Not even Amanda?” It came out before I could stop it.

“Not even Amanda.” He reached for the soda. “Two,” he muttered as he poured, “I wish more people knew that Amanda and I are not a single unit and fewer people knew that she dumped me temporarily over the summer for a lifeguard in Loveladies named Biff.” While I processed that, he finished, “Three. I bombed the PSATs.”

“Oh. Well, isn't the point of preliminary tests to help you learn how to do well on the later ones?”

“Tell that to my dad. He has decided that I am now on the fast track toward a future digging ditches.”

“Come on. I'm sure he sees that it's just a prep test.”

“What he sees,” Alex corrected me, “is that the path of Yale, followed by Powel Law and the family firm, has gotten a little slippery.”

I had no idea what to say. In my family, whatever we want to do, as long as it involves getting out of bed every morning and satisfying our souls, is considered just splendid. And that coming from multiple generations who've struggled to pay the mortgage. I couldn't imagine being able to give my children everything, and then to demand that they follow the exact same path I did.

“So, twice a week I have my own tutor,” he said shortly. “Who, trust me, makes my father look like a marshmallow. And on that note . . .” He picked up the sheaf of French lessons again. “We'll start with the imperfect, used to express actions that are—”

“Incomplete, unfulfilled, or repeated over and over.” I slumped back in the weird chair. “
That
I know.”

At the end of the very imperfect session, Alex gave me a full ten minutes in the downstairs bathroom before showing up. All I'd figured out was that Edward's faceless girl had had wide feet, and the Bainbridge's decorator had a preference for green that might merit an intervention.

“I could probably give you the stupid thing”—Alex gestured to the picture when he came in—“and my folks would never notice.”

I winced inwardly. “I can't advocate theft,” I told him, “no matter how noble the intent.”

I knew I had to figure out what to do with the photograph and the letters. Beyond the fact that I didn't think I wanted anything to do with them, stealing them had probably been the worst thing I'd ever done.
Something I don't want anyone to know, Alex? I am a disillusioned former hopeless romantic with larcenous tendencies. But I did kill the verbal part of the PSATs.

The way I saw it, I had three options:

1. I could take the stuff to Maxine. “Hey, look what I found.” Confession of theft optional and probably not smart.
   
2. I could slip them back into the book and pretend they never existed.
   
3. I could destroy them.
   

Option two sounded just marvelous.

“So, I'm curious.” Alex dragged me from my pleasant contemplation of cowardice and back into the bathroom. He was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, his feet almost touching mine. “What is it you like so much about this guy? I looked up his stuff. It's good, but nothing out of the ordinary.”

What a difference a week and a shock to the ideals makes. I felt my defense of Edward sticking a little in my throat. “I like his portraits. He really saw people. It was his great strength, that intensity.”

Alex tilted his chin toward the picture. “Not to seem crude, but she could be any girl with a nice ass.” When I glared at him, he uncrossed his arms quickly and held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, all I mean is that if I were all about really seeing someone, that's not the angle I would choose.”

He was probably right. No matter how I looked at it, he was probably right. “You're probably right,” I told him.

He bowed. The small space suddenly got a lot smaller. “Stick with me, Grasshopper. I will never lead you wrong.”

• • •

At midnight, I was still at my desk. The drawing was still tacked over Edward's face. I hadn't heard any more of his faint protests recently.

I had my battered copy of
The Collected Works of Edward Willing
open in front of me. Of course, not every piece he ever did is in it, but it's a pretty comprehensive collection. The book itself has been out of print for twenty years. For most of freshman year, I read it in the school library, under Edward's portrait. Amazon and all of my fifteenth-birthday money finally made a copy mine. I've read it so many times that the spine is as yielding as linen.

This time, my search was very specific. Edward used dozens of models for his paintings: women, men, old, young, friends, students. I was looking for one particular blonde.

I found her first on page 279.
Woman #6
, 1906. It was a watercolor, just a seated figure, anonymous and amorphous. There was another watercolor on page 298:
Summer,
1907. She had her face buried in an armful of flowers. The same year, she was the central figure, on a bicycle, in a large oil painting called
Boathouse Row
. I found her as a shrouded
Eurydice,
1908, in a series called
Wissahickon,
1910–1912, where she sat in profile on a bunch of different rocks, and once more,
Marina, Marseilles,
1914. In that one, she was seated on the beach, looking toward the marina filled with fishing boats and beyond. It wasn't Edward's best work. Seascapes never were.

He'd painted her over at least eight years. She had traveled with him to France. Only Diana had ever been featured in as many paintings, in multiple locations.

I ripped the sketch from the wall.

“Liar.”

Edward looked more ravaged than usual. “That is a terrible word, coming from you.”

“Yup.”

“And not entirely fair.”

“You had an affair with this . . . Woman number 6 . . . Were there five others? Seven, eight, and onward?” When he didn't answer, I waved at the (admittedly small) stack of Edward Willing books on my desk. “She isn't mentioned anywhere. What did you do, keep her tucked away for your private entertainment?”

“Tsk, Ella.”

“Oh, no, don't you go all proper and disapproving on me. Was it that she wasn't posh enough for your social circle? Or did you just know it was a bad thing—bad—to follow Diana with . . . her? What's her name, anyway?”

He didn't answer, just stared at me with his pained expression.

“I looked up
dorogaya.
It isn't a name. It's a Russian endearment. There's no mention I can find anywhere that has anything to do with you and anyone Russian. So who was she, a model? Is this just one of those clichés?”

He didn't answer that, either.

“I believed in you,” I told him. “I have this stupid project all planned on your muse—how Diana made you the painter you are. How it was all about love.”

“Didn't we decide it's all about love or money? Everything.”

“Oh, shut up, Edward,” I snapped. “Now I don't know what to think of you.”

He sighed. “I'm a tad confused here. What is it that bothers you so much? That I might have had a deliberately clandestine relationship with this person who was socially beneath me, or that I didn't spend the last seventeen years of my life alone in desperate mourning for my wife?”

“I . . . I . . .” I discovered that I didn't have a quick answer. I didn't have any answer.

“You need to figure that out, darling girl. You were counting on this passionate, extensively researched, impeccably written paper to be your entrée into NYU.”

I had. I was.

“And,” the voice went on,” you really need to take the photo and letters back to the museum.”

“Oh, great. Thank you. Tell me something I don't already know!”

Edward looked at me sadly from his printed frame. “But I can't do that, Ella. That's the one thing I have never been able to do.”

And that little tidbit was the icing. Because I'd known from the beginning. Edward couldn't tell me anything I didn't already know. The real Edward Willing was dead. My Edward was a figment of my imagination. And while I have a very good imagination, I can't conjure up the truth. It either is or it isn't.