Drinking Closer to Home

by Jessica Anya Blau

  “Buddies left without me,” Tim said.

  “Yeah. Anyone got any coke?” Anna asked.

  “I know where we can get some.” Anna’s lover buttoned his jeans and reached a hand out for Anna.

  Anna drove, swerving on the road so much that the boy grabbed the wheel a few times. Portia was in the back seat with Tim. All the windows were open. Strings of Anna’s hair darted in front of her eyes, then away again. The boy directed them up the hills, to a Spanish-style house that had a wrought-iron security gate in front. It was four-thirty in the morning. Anna cranked down her window and the boy reached across her and finger-punched the buzzer.

  “Yeah,” a scratchy voice came over the speaker.

  “Joe, it’s me.”

  “Me who?”

  “It’s Roy, you fucker!” Roy gave the finger to the speaker box and the gate slowly swung open, bouncing a bit before stopping. Anna was glad he had said his name as, even in her current fucked-up state, she was aware that they were too deep into it for her to ask.

  Anna pulled the car up the driveway and parked with the front bumper resting against the bumper of a sturdy, low sports car. Joe came out in boxer shorts, black dress socks, and no shirt. His body was shadowed with muscles; there was no hair on his chest but his legs were nearly black with fur. He leaned in the station wagon window.

  “Nice car,” he said, and he grinned.

  “No one has any money,” Roy said, “but we need some coke.”

  “I’ll give you each a line,” Joe said, and he opened the door and held his arm out for Anna.

  “My brother,” Roy said.

  “My sister!” Anna said, and she pointed at Portia and lost her balance so that she went, knees down, onto the tiled driveway.

  “Fuck.” Joe chuckled and picked Anna up.

  Joe, Roy, and Anna were chattering like a bunch of mating birds. Blood dripped down one of Anna’s knees from where she had scraped it on the driveway; every few seconds she stopped talking, bent over, and licked her wound. In her peripheral vision she felt her sister sitting there, right beside her, with Tim, like two lumps on the couch.

  “Do you love this house?” Anna said to Portia, trying to pull her in from her spacey orbit. Anna looked around at the Mexican and African carved sculptures, the black-and-white poster-sized photos of children with dinner-plate-sized eyes and dirt on their faces, the furniture that smelled new but looked lived-in. The half-gallon bottle of tequila on the table.

  “What do you call this style?” Anna felt like she was shouting from inside a glass block. No one seemed to hear her.

  “Celebrate Poverty?” Portia said.

  “Celibate poverty?” Tim said.

  “Line?” Joe held a small silver straw out to Portia and nodded toward the two pencil-length thin lines spread on the polished rock coffee table. Portia passed the straw to Tim, who passed it back to Portia, then gathered her hair in the back. Anna thought of herself and her Italian roommate at Bennington each holding their own hair back while they barfed in the black plastic trash bag.

  Portia leaned down and took half a line in one nostril and the other half in the other. Then she handed the straw to Tim, who did the last line.

  “I hate this,” Portia whispered to Anna.

  “Why?” Anna thought her sister stupidly and ignorantly rejected some of the greatest pleasures in life: cocaine, runny cheeses, Dijon mustard.

  “It feels like my muscles are going to burst out of my jaw.” Portia turned to Tim. “Do you hate this?”

  Anna leaned down, licked up a drip of blood from her knee, then sat up and did a shot of tequila to wash it down. She shifted in her seat so her back was to her sister. Portia’s total lack of virility was pathetic and embarrassing. Luckily, Anna was so high she didn’t feel embarrassed for long; time had suddenly accelerated and she was instantly ten moments past her embarrassment.

  Anna opened her eyes and saw she was arm wrestling with shirtless Joe. She wasn’t sure how it started but she was certain that’s what she was doing. Her bony elbow was grinding into the stone table. Roy was the referee.

  “Winner gets another line!” Joe said, and he punched Anna’s arm to the coffee table.

  “Again!” she said, and she slid off the couch and propped herself up on her knees. She wasn’t sure if her sister was still in the room. After uncountable lines and many shots of tequila, her vision had closed in like a curtain and she could only see three feet directly in front of herself.

  “Yes,” Anna said, although she wasn’t sure what question had just been asked of her. She was fully plugged in. Anna had done enough coke to silence all the dithering, piddly, bullshitty little squeaks in her brain: the squeak about being inadequate, the squeak about not being pretty, the squeak about not being cool enough.

  She and Joe and Roy were in the master bedroom that had a bed as big a boat. And the bed was rocking like a boat, too, as she and Joe and Roy rolled from one end to the next. The brothers had arm-wrestled for her—a match that ended in a tie. Together, they were a mess of flesh and muscle; Anna could not find the outline of either brother. She looked at an arm, a hand, a knee, and didn’t know whose it was—it could be hers, even, as the lights were dim and everything was muted and gray. If she could roll like this forever she would, Anna thought. This was the highest form of living. It was an endless, glorious, body-charged freefall.

  And then Portia was there, standing in the doorway as stiff and hard as a broomstick.

  “I’m going home,” Portia shouted.

  “You’re going home now?” Anna sat up, fully naked, and stared at the upright line that was her sister. What was wrong with this girl? Did she not enjoy fun? Did she not think that these were the two hottest coke-holding guys she’d ever seen? Was she a moron?!

  “Join us!” Joe said.

  “Call me in the morning if you want a ride home!” Portia turned and vanished. Anna was glad—getting rid of Portia was like taking off her collar and leash. She was totally free now.

  Anna opened her eyes to the bright daylight. Her body was throbbing, as if she were a single, purple bruise. She looked to her right and saw the sinewy, naked body of . . . Roy. Yes, Roy. She was almost certain of it. On her left was Joe.

  Joe opened his eyes. He sat up and stuck a hand on Anna’s breast, which lay fallen to her side. “Coke?” Joe asked.

  Anna blinked. Yes, she thought. She felt exposed in the daylight, as if her skin were made of cellophane. “Yeah, sure,” she said.

  Anna followed him, naked, downstairs to the living room.

  “You doing any?” Anna bent over the line on the stone table, her bare ass raised toward Joe.

  “Nah,” Joe said, and he put his hands on her hips and motioned forward.

  Chapter 13

  Day Seven

  Every morning, before they leave for the hospital, Emery calls his office, Alejandro calls his office, Anna calls home, and Portia calls her three-year old daughter, Esmé, at her pending ex-husband Patrick’s apartment in New York City. It’s not really his apartment; it’s his girlfriend Daphne Frank’s. Esmé didn’t even know about Daphne Frank until the heart attack. Portia did not want Esmé to stay in Daphne Frank’s apartment with Patrick. She wanted Patrick to stay in Portia’s house (what used to be their house) with Esmé. But Esmé is in nursery school, nursery school ends at one-thirty, and Portia couldn’t find anyone in Greenwich to watch her while Patrick was at work. The search for childcare took place in the two hours after Buzzy told Portia that her mother had had a heart attack, after Portia had insisted on speaking to a doctor because Buzzy was being so evasive, after she finally spoke to a nurse who told her she needed to take the next flight possible, as every minute her mother was alive was a miracle. During this time Portia was also trying to find a plane ticket and a ride to the airport. Before she had come up with anything, Patrick found an old Filipina woman, Jo, the caretaker for an even older German woman in Daphne Frank’s building, who said she could watch Esmé
until Patrick got home from work. But she had to do it in the apartment in New York, so that she was only a floor away from her main charge. Portia had worried for a moment that Esmé would be ruined somehow by staying in Daphne Frank’s apartment. But then she remembered a Swedish study she had read that said the first three years are the most formative years in a child’s life—after that, everything’s more or less set. Since Esmé was a few months past her third birthday, Portia rationalized that Daphne Frank’s sixteenth floor cool-girl apartment at Seventy-second and Broadway couldn’t change who her daughter was, wouldn’t turn Esmé into a short-skirt-wearing knee-high-boot chick like Daphne.

  “Don’t make out or anything in front of her!” Portia whispered in Patrick’s ear, when he picked up Esmé to take her back to New York with him. “And don’t let her know that you’re sleeping in the same bed as Daphne!”

  “Come on!” Patrick said, and Portia realized she was wrong to worry about that. Patrick had never been very demonstrative, and was almost a prude when it came to the things Esmé was exposed to. Portia knew he’d sleep on the couch or the floor with Esmé.

  Every morning, Jo has answered the phone. Portia has asked the same questions each time: what is Esmé eating, are there are enough books in the apartment for her, is she getting outside every day, and have they been to any parks or museums? It is lunch there when they talk and Jo tells Portia what she has prepared, where they have been, where they plan to go and what books they have read. She was calling her “Miss Portia” and it made Portia feel guilty and uncomfortable, a reminder of the inequalities in the world and her place within them. When Portia told her not to call her “MISS Portia,” Jo corrected herself and said “Mrs. Portia.” Portia didn’t have the heart to correct her again.

  When Esmé gets on the phone, Portia asks the same questions over again and gets different versions of the day’s events. Yes, they went to Barnes and Noble for story hour, but the boy next to Esmé smelled like pee so it wasn’t that much fun.

  Today, on Day Seven, Daphne Frank answers the phone. Portia is startled into silence. Her stomach flops over, her face feels inflamed. She forgets where she is, then looks around the kitchen and places herself at Casa del Viento Fuerte.

  “Hello?” Daphne Frank says again. Her voice is as dull as a spoon.

  “Can I speak to Patrick?” Portia asks. Her own voice sounds odd to her, as if someone else were speaking for her.

  “Who’s this?” Daphne Frank asks.

  “His wife.” There is a drumbeat in Portia’s belly as she speaks.

  Patrick answers the phone.

  “What are you doing there?” Portia watches Maggie Bucks walk across the stone counter. She wants to push her off but finds herself unable to move.

  “The old woman Jo takes care of is sick today, so Jo has to stay with her.”

  “So you both are staying home?”

  “Daphne got last-minute tickets to a matinee of Stomp. We’re taking Esmé.”

  “You BOTH are taking off work to go to Stomp? You know you can’t afford to get fired! You have a lot of people to support and I don’t have a job. You really can’t fuck up your position right now.” This is not what Portia intends to say, and it is not even what she is thinking. She knows that Patrick won’t get fired, he is invaluable at the firm. And she doesn’t care if Daphne gets fired. These are simply words that fill in for what she is really feeling, for what she really thinks: I am lost. I’m afraid I’m not going to have a mother soon. I no longer have a husband. I am afraid that I won’t be able to manage myself without the people to whom I am attached.

  “The job’s fine,” Patrick says.

  “If Jo gets sick, don’t let her in the apartment.” I am afraid. I am afraid. I am alone.

  “She’ll be fine.” Patrick is short with Portia. It is like he doesn’t want her to exist, doesn’t want to take her, or anything she thinks or feels, into account. Portia imagines he is overloaded, like a bubbling chicken stock, and she is the grayish-white fat that floats to the top and gets skimmed off with a wooden spoon.

  “Make sure Esmé eats something before the show. Like string cheese or something with protein in it.” Everything is out of my control. I feel like I’m swimming in a rip tide. I want someone to swim out and save me because I don’t think I can do this alone.

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll give her string cheese. Do you want to talk to Esmé?”

  “Well, I want to hear everything from you first so I can have the adult version of what’s going on before I get her version.” We have a child together. We have known each other since college. Why do you treat me like I am your jailer?

  Emery walks into the kitchen. He is wearing an old, soft T-shirt and knit boxer shorts. Alejandro walks in behind him wearing something similar, only he has a beanie cap on his head. Portia waves at them. She is trying to make the moment seem normal and light, as if there isn’t a stew of rocks and bile churning through her empty body. Alejandro and Emery wave back.

  “I don’t have time for this,” Patrick says, to Portia. “Esmé can tell you everything.”

  “Don’t you want to know about my mother? Your mother-in-law.” Don’t you see that even when you eliminate me, I still am here? Portia stutters as she holds back tears. She looks over at Emery and Alejandro and sees that they are oblivious to the turmoil inside her. Emery is making café au lait for the two of them, pouring milk into cups and heating the milk in the microwave. He loves café au lait and he loves breakfast, he always has. Alejandro is rummaging through the fridge, pulling out different things and asking Emery what he wants. Emery looks at each thing and considers it.

  “Will you make me cinnamon toast with butter soaked through and an almost hardened layer of cinnamon and sugar?” he asks Alejandro. He’s so lucky to have someone who makes him breakfast, Portia thinks.

  Alejandro rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling. He starts making the toast. Emery picks up Maggie Bucks, kisses her on the nose, and places her on the ground. She runs to the open cupboard and jumps up and in.

  “How’s your mother?” Patrick asks after a long, empty pause.

  “I don’t know.” I am so afraid. Portia starts crying. Her nose is running. She picks up the paper napkin she had used this morning when she had toast and blows her nose in it. Toast crumbs rub against her nostrils like sand.

  Emery and Alejandro continue making breakfast, only they’re doing it slowly now. Portia can feel them each keeping an eye on her. She pulls in and tamps down her cry; she knows that the only thing her brother wants right now is to sit on the bench seat by the window, drink his café au lait, eat his cinnamon toast, and read the paper. Alejandro probably wants the same thing—who wants to deal with a crying woman?

  Patrick says nothing. There is absolute silence on the phone.

  “Hello?” Portia says. “Patrick?” This is what’s so awful about the breakup. This is what’s so painful: you were there. We were together. And now no one is there. It is just air on the other side of me, as if a scab has been picked off my entire body and nothing beneath is ready for exposure.

  When she hangs up the phone Portia looks at her brother. She feels like she is balancing on the edge of a cliff—if she falls forward she’ll splatter into a thousand drippy pieces. If she maintains her footing, Portia might survive this moment.

  “You okay?” Emery asks. He’s holding a piece of toast in front of his mouth but hasn’t bitten into it yet. Portia knows he wants to take that bite and move on.

  “I’m fine,” Portia says. She’s stepped back from the cliff. Portia ordinarily doesn’t like to expose her emotions like some open, runny sore, although she feels like she’s been doing exactly that with some frequency since her husband left. The crying-at-the-club scene tapped out her tolerance for her own public displays of grief.

  Emery bites into the gooey center of his triangle-cut cinnamon toast. It looks delicious. It is almost cracking in the center, exactly as Emery had asked. It is painful to watch her brother
eat his love toast. Emery has the very thing Portia had until the interference of Daphne Frank. And yet, when the toast is all gone and Alejandro gets up to make more for Emery (who gets up to make more café au lait for them both), Portia tries to remember what exactly in her marriage resembled this toast-making scene. It occurs to her that the thing she thought she had lost may have never really been there. Patrick never, ever, not even in the spoony beginnings of their relationship, even thought of making toast. She offered the love toast, she made the love toast, she served the love toast. Patrick merely ate it. And there was no café au lait.

  This thought is like dirt on Portia’s hands, fudgy grime stuck beneath her short, unpainted fingernails. She wants to take a shower and wash this grime away.

  “Well.” Portia stands and looks at her brother and Alejandro. They are side by side on the bench seat, each with a plate of toast, cup of coffee, and a section of newspaper folded beside the plate.

  “Well?” Emery says.

  “Well, I think I’m going to shower,” Portia says, and she walks away from the kitchen.

  “Have a great shower!” Alejandro calls out, in an upswing voice that actually makes Portia smile.

  Chapter 14

  1984

  Emery took his time driving from his Junior Statesmen meeting to his girlfriend Katie’s house. They were going to have sex for the first time, a decision they had reached together after dating for four months. He was a senior in high school, president of the class, president of the Santa Barbara Chapter of Junior Statesmen, and owned his own car (a used red Buick bought with bar mitzvah money and McDonald’s earnings).

  Emery looked out the window and watched the lemon orchard blur by. He pushed a button and the window went down. This act, using the power window, never failed to make Emery smile. He was the first person in his family to own a car with power windows, a luxury he quickly grew to think of as a right. The last time he rode in Buzzy’s car, after struggling with the sticky window crank, Emery snapped his hand away, turned to Buzzy and said, “I could never live like this!”