Buzzy’s shoulders shook as he laughed. “Yeah, and now she does a few little snivels of cocaine—”
“Snivels?” Portia said.
“Snorts. Whoofs. Whatever. She does some of it, sells her clothes, sells her high school graduation diamond—” A scrap of nut meat hung off Buzzy’s lip.
“She sold my grandmother’s ring?!” Louise sat up straight and stubbed out her joint. “I’m going to fucking kill her!”
“Well, if you’re patient enough, Mom, she’ll do the job herself,” Portia said.
Buzzy and Louise laughed so hard that Emery decided his fears about Anna were probably groundless. The phone rang and they quieted. Buzzy went to answer it. It was clear by the way he was talking that it was Anna.
“What’s going on in your life?” Portia tapped Emery’s shin with her toe, and Emery knew the questions had begun. Portia always wanted to know everything. But really, other than the fact that he had lost his virginity in his girlfriend’s brass bed only an hour ago, there wasn’t much to say.
Before Emery could start being evasive, Buzzy cupped his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and shushed them. Saved by the shush. Emery sat quietly and watched his mother smoke a cigarette while he listened to his father calmly tell his sister that everything was going to be fine.
Anna flew home the following day. She claimed she weighed a hundred pounds, but refused to get on a scale in front of her parents. Louise started calling her Anna Rexia, which made Emery wonder if all of her problems did stem from the family, as she claimed.
During meals, Anna sat at the counter or table staring without touching her own food. Emery imagined she was watching lips move, the viscous gunk of food churning through and behind teeth, stains on shirts, black specks and green leaves stuck in the crevices of receding gums. Eating really was disgusting when you focused on it the way Anna seemed to.
Anna claimed she couldn’t share a room with Portia and insisted that she be allowed to stay in Emery’s room, her old room, alone. So Emery was moved to the cot beside his sister in his old room—the cot that he could think of only as Bubbe and Zeyde’s bed. He thought it was interesting that the more messed up you were, the more you could demand. Emery figured that if Anna had asked for a brand-new car in exchange for quitting drugs, Buzzy would have bought her one.
Anna rarely came out of Emery’s room, and she always kept the door closed. The second day she was home, she called Emery into the room and insisted he eat everything on the tray of food Louise had brought up. There was a giant bowl of spaghetti with tomato sauce and lots of parmesan cheese. There was also a wedge of white garlic bread and four Lorna Doone butter cookies. Emery was starving and ate it all. No one had cooked dinner that night, as all his parents’ efforts were going into trying to feed Anna and arguing about which rehab center to send her to (Buzzy wanted her to go to the inexpensive place in Camarillo; Louise wanted to send her to a holistic rehab center in Phoenix where celebrities went and which Buzzy claimed was really an expensive spa and who the fuck wouldn’t get over their suicidal thoughts while lounging by a pool and getting massages for a month?!).
Her third day home, Anna called Emery into the room again.
“Yeah?” Emery leaned into the doorway, holding on to the doorknob. Anna was on the bed in shorts and a tank top. Her folded-up brown legs reminded Emery of broken matchsticks.
“Come in and shut the door!” Anna hissed.
Emery stepped in and shut the door behind himself. He looked down at the tray. It held meatloaf, potatoes, carrots, and another stack of Lorna Doones. It was Saturday, noon, seventy-eight degrees outside. Emery was about to go pick up Katie and take her to the beach. He didn’t want to fill up on meatloaf.
“I can’t eat that for you,” he said.
“Come on! I’m going to rehab tomorrow morning, so it’s not like you’re threatening my health or anything!”
“I’m going to the beach. It’s hot out. I can’t eat meatloaf!”
“I’ll give you some coke.” Anna opened her palm. She held a magazine-paper square with a small pile of glittery white coke on it.
“You’re still doing drugs?!” Emery wondered if there were no end to his sister’s ravenous appetite for everything that was bad for her.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Emery! I’m going to fucking REHAB tomorrow! This is it for me! This is the last day I can do this stuff! The final hurrah!” Anna scooped a little pile with her long pinky nail, lifted it to one nostril, and sniffed.
“I don’t do drugs,” Emery said.
“What do you do?”
“Homework,” Emery said. It sounded way more uptight and smarty-pants than he intended, but it was the truth.
“Jesus,” Anna said. “Have a little fun sometimes.”
“Okay. I gotta go.” Emery wanted to get the beach, put baby oil on his skin, and deepen his tan while finishing the book he was reading about the life of Walt Disney.
“Wait. You have to eat this meatloaf!” Anna’s eyes were huge circles on her face. She looked like a poster child from the Christian Children’s Fund.
“I can’t help you,” Emery said. He realized this was the first time in his life he didn’t feel that he had to do what his sister wanted. Everything was upside down.
“Seriously! Emery! Dad is going to come up here and force-feed me unless this plate is empty!” Anna took three rapid hits of coke off her fingernail.
“Go on the roof and dump it into the bushes or something.” Emery was half-kidding, but Anna’s panic subsided.
“Great idea. Help me.” Anna put the coke down on the nightstand, stood on the bed, and opened the window. She popped the screen out and laid it down on the wood-shake roof. Like a tree monkey, Anna climbed out to the roof, then turned around and faced inside the room. “Okay, hand me the meatloaf.”
Emery picked up the plate with the meatloaf and handed it to his sister. She stood, walked out of his line of view, and returned with an empty plate.
“Now hand me the Lorna Doones.” Anna passed the plate out to Emery.
“I’ll eat the cookies,” he said, and he snatched them up, dropped them into his shorts pocket, and left the room. The only good thing about Anna’s being a frantic drug-addicted anorexic was that she was so stuck in her downward-spiraling self that she didn’t have any interest in what Emery was doing or thinking about. As far as that stuff was concerned, he had to deal only with Portia.
Emery wanted to check out from all the emotion in his house, and he was uncomfortable on the cot, so he spent the next couple nights in the guest room at Katie’s house. Katie had told her parents about Anna, and they took pity on Emery, responding as if his sister’s addiction were a contagious cancer from which he needed to be protected. No one in Emery’s family called to check on him. Emery suspected they hadn’t noticed he was missing. On Monday, instead of going back to Katie’s after school, Emery finally went home. Portia was sitting at the kitchen counter reading a book.
“What are you reading?” Emery asked. He dropped his backpack on the floor at the base of the counter.
“I don’t know,” Portia said. “It was sitting here and I flipped it open and started reading and haven’t been able to stop.” Portia closed the book and looked at the title. “The Anatomy Lesson. Philip Roth.”
“Must be Dad’s. He loves Philip Roth.”
“I think dad thinks he is Philip Roth and this life with us is some dream he has every night when he goes to bed.” Portia slid the book down the counter. Emery sat on the stool next to her.
“Where’ve you been?” Portia leaned onto an elbow and stared at Emery.
“Nowhere,” Emery said. “Did Mom and Dad notice I was gone?”
“I don’t know. But I noticed you were gone. Where were you? You had to have been somewhere.”
“I was at my girlfriend’s house.” Emery both wanted and didn’t want this fact to be known. He knew it would elicit more questions. But he also thought his sister should know tha
t he was a guy with a girlfriend now. A sort of grown person who liked girls.
“You have a girlfriend?! Who is she? What does she look like?”
Emery tried not to groan, even though he knew he had started this. “I don’t know,” he said.
“You don’t know? You don’t know?! Come on!”
“She looks like a girl. I know her from school. She’s nice.” He had little hope this would work, but the urge to keep his private life private pushed ahead of logic.
“Oh, please! What are you, some undercover spy? What does she look like?” Portia peered into Emery’s face.
“People say she looks like me. Blond, tall, thin.” Emery slumped onto two elbows, his palms holding his face.
“Are you guys fooling around?” Portia was grinning now.
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Come on! I changed your diapers! I bathed you! I fed you! I have a right to know if you’re still a virgin!”
“I’m not going to say.” No, he wasn’t a virgin! Although, okay, yes, BARELY not a virgin. His penis had been between her legs, mostly. But it had been officially in her for two minutes or so, so he was officially NOT a virgin!
“Okay, fine. Then at least tell me what’s up with all that shit in your hair.” Portia got off the stool, went around the counter into the kitchen, and turned her attention to the refrigerator as if she hadn’t even asked about his hair. She began opening every tin-foiled wrapped bit of furry food to see if it was still any good. Watching her was like watching an assembly line: open, sniff, toss, open, sniff, toss. With the refrigerator door open, the kitchen smelled like dirty underpants.
“Will you make me something to eat?” Emery hoped that feeding him would be enough for Portia, that she wouldn’t have to probe into his mind like some sci-fi flea-sized robot that crawls in your ear, luge-runs through the folds of your brain, and reads your thoughts as they pop up. Emery tried to control his thoughts. He didn’t trust that his sister couldn’t read his mind anyway. But the more he tried to restrain certain phrases and words—I always feel vomity when my girlfriend wants to make out—the more they persisted. Yeah, I’m coloring and spiking up my hair! But don’t you think I look better like this, cooler, handsomer? I look like people in LA, people on soap operas, actors. And, no—all actors aren’t gay!
“Sure, I’ll make you something. Gruel?” Portia said. Gruel was dense, and sweet, and felt like a lump of sand in your belly. The lump-in-the-belly feeling lasted for hours, so it was a good thing to eat if you knew there wasn’t another meal coming soon.
“Yeah, gruel would be great,” Anything but questions about his hair, his girlfriend, his life! Emery pushed up his T-shirt sleeves as if preparing to eat.
“You’re as skinny as Gumby. Does Mom give you money for lunch at school?” Portia closed the refrigerator and went to the cupboard for the Grape-Nuts.
“I take money out of her wallet every day,” Emery said.
While making the gruel, Portia quizzed him with variations of the questions he had anticipated. It was like being interrogated by the KGB—just the asking of the questions made Emery feel like he had something to hide. He grunted, stuck his head in his gruel once it was served, and refused to answer.
“All right, have it your way.” Portia said. “You know, you used to be so connected to me. Now it’s like you’re some vestigial limb that just cracked off and floated away.”
“Vestigial limb!” Emery smiled. “Is that my new nickname?”
“Naw,” Portia said. Emery could tell she was genuinely distressed about not being able to enter his brain. He felt it coming out of her like a mother-sadness. “Your new name is Secret Agent Man.”
“Secret Agent Man,” Emery repeated. He sort of liked the sound of that.
“C’est toi,” Portia said.
Louise walked into the kitchen, an unlit cigarette stuck in her mouth. She turned on the stove burner, held her hair back with one hand, leaned over, and lit the cigarette. “I just got off the phone with the rehab people,” Louise said. “Anna should be out of detox in four more days, then they’ll put her in the sex addicts unit.” Smoke puffed from Louise’s mouth as she spoke.
“Why are they putting her with the sex addicts?” Emery asked. He set his spoon on the counter, picked up his bowl, and began licking up the last smears of gruel.
“Can you have styled hair like that and still lick the bottom of your bowl?” Portia asked.
“Yeah.” Emery kept licking. “I thought Anna was a drug addict and anorexic; I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a sex addict!”
“Well, there is,” Louise said. “And your sister is one.”
Anna was way too heterosexual, Emery thought. Carrying the hetero genes for the whole family and leaving him deficient and not hetero enough. Here she was flinging herself against everyone who didn’t have a vagina, while he had no desire to do things with the vagina that was coming at him.
“Hey, Mom,” Portia said, “if they put the sex addicts together, won’t they all sleep with each other?”
“I suppose, but they have more restrictions on them—”
“I still can’t believe that there’s such a thing as a sex addict!” Emery said. “Maybe all the guys at school should go to sex-addict rehab.” Why was he the only one who wasn’t trying to get laid by everything on campus? Jeremy Groning told him at lunch one day that if it was pink and it moved, he wanted to fuck it. If those weren’t the words of a sex addict, what were?!
“She’s got a lot going for her right now,” Portia said. “Suicidal, drug-addicted, anorexic, sex addict.”
“How come no one told me she was a sex addict?” If Russia were sending the nuclear bomb to Santa Barbara, Emery wondered, would his family remember to tell him to get out?
“You haven’t even been home.” Louise picked up the wooden spoon from the pot of gruel and nibbled at the bits hanging off it like semidry paste. Emery was glad she had noticed he was missing.
“So what kind of restrictions are there in the sex-addict wing?” Portia asked.
“They’re not allowed to wear anything revealing or clingy or fitted or short.”
“So what’s she wearing?” Portia asked.
“Baggy sweat pants and T-shirts. And she has to wear a one-piece bathing suit in the pool.”
“They have a pool?” Emery asked.
“Yeah,” Louise said, “and yoga classes and pottery classes and meditation and acupuncture—it’s sort of like going to Esalen.” So, Emery thought, Louise had won the argument about where to send Anna.
“What’s Esalen?” Portia asked.
“You know, that yogi-meditation-rebirthing place up near Big Sur.”
“Wow.” Emery sat up straight. “I have a sister who’s a sex addict.”
Buzzy walked into the kitchen. It was five. He was wearing his jacket and tie and carrying the soft, slouchy briefcase he’d had for at least ten years. There were two pockets on the outside of the briefcase, like back pockets on cargo pants, and they always bulged as if they’d been stuffed with rolled-up socks. Emery thought that if he ever carried a briefcase it would be a flat, slick, hard one. Maybe lizard-skin or snakeskin, even.
Buzzy leaned in and kissed Louise on the lips, then Portia on the cheek. He walked to the other side of the counter, put his hand on Emery’s head, and kissed him on his forehead.
“What kind of shit do you have in your hair?” Buzzy asked. He set his briefcase on the floor, then went to the sink and washed his hand.
“It’s gel,” Portia said.
“What’s the point of that shit?” Buzzy asked.
Emery shrugged. Portia said, “Secret Agent Man doesn’t tell his secrets, Dad.”
Emery and Katie decided that the only proper way to pay respect to Anna while she was in rehab for sex addiction was to abstain from sex until she came home again. The following month was, in Emery’s opinion, the best month of their relationship. They graduated from high school and
were free to spend days at the beach, where they debated politics and read the same books, taking turns reading aloud to each other. At night they went to the movies. Three times they saw The Killing Fields, which made Emery wonder if he should be a war reporter for the New York Times. Some days they organized each other’s rooms, sorting through old yearbooks and clothes as they tried to decide what they had to take with them to college (Katie was off to Smith, Emery to Haverford). Emery thought that without all that time wasted kissing and having sex, they were so much more productive. It was, by far, the best way to enjoy each other in their final days before college.
Four weeks went by too quickly. The night before Anna was due home, the ban on sex was lifted. Katie and Emery were lying together, face down on her bed, flipping through Interview magazine.
“So,” Katie said, and she hooked her foot around Emery’s. “I guess now that your sister is cured, the ban should be lifted.
“Oh, yeah,” Emery said. “It’s definitely time to lift the ban.” Emery felt a whorly convulsion in his stomach.
Katie leaned her head in for a kiss. Emery kissed her for as long as seemed possible, then pulled his head up and turned the page of the magazine.
“What do you think of Boy George?” he asked.
“He’s okay,” Katie said. “Should I put in a sponge?”
“We should wait until tomorrow,” Emery said, “when Anna’s officially home.” Emery wanted to flee the bed, the room, the house. He thought maybe this was a sign that he should break up with Katie. But he didn’t want to break up with her. She was his best friend, the only person he knew who could discuss both apartheid in South Africa and the latest episode of Dynasty.
Instead of breaking up with Katie, Emery called her the next morning and told her that his parents wanted him to stay home for a few days to help Anna acclimate. The whorly feeling returned during the phone conversation, making Emery think that maybe staying home with his incessantly interrogating sisters would be worse than trying to have sex with Katie again. As soon as Anna was home, however, Emery knew it wasn’t worse. Being home was way, way better than trying to have sex.
Drinking Closer to Home Page 19