Drinking Closer to Home

by Jessica Anya Blau

  It was like Anna was high those first few days back: nothing got to her—not Emery’s bare feet on her legs when they sat on the couch together, not the way Portia breathed when she watched TV, not the way their father internally scratched his throat so that it sounded like someone was frantically rubbing a spoon against a balloon, not the way their mother made a slight popping sound when she took a suck off her cigarette, or the way her knees cracked when she bent down, making the sound of walnuts being cracked open under a boot, not even the mess on the family room coffee table. And when Anna called Emery “Secret Agent Man,” she said it with a tenderness she’d never shown before—as if she’d formerly been too busy to notice what a kind, skinny, spiked-hair guy he was.

  With the twenty-five pounds she had gained at rehab, Anna looked like her own, more attractive twin. And Anna even talked slower during this time. She was like a battery-operated toy that was now running on the silent thrum of solar energy.

  In this same period, even Portia, who was already calm, seemed more peaceful to Emery. She was riding her bike to the beach every day, napping on the family room couch in the afternoons, staying in many nights and avoiding the mania of her old high school friendships. And Buzzy also seemed to have caught the contagion of peace. He was spending his free time farming marijuana, wearing a wide-brimmed bamboo hat that Emery thought made him look more Asian than Jewish. Louise passed her days at the nude beach and her evenings cooking dinner as if she had never quit being a housewife and had always been someone who fed her children. And, unlike any other time that Emery could remember, his parents had miraculously stopped fighting about the things they usually churned over and over again like a butter that would take a lifetime to make.

  In their nightly phone calls, Emery told Katie about the strange, calm joy that was floating in the household. Katie agreed that he should spend his last few weeks before college at home, now that everything was so harmonious. Emery was grateful to her for being so understanding. He made it clear to her that the shroud they were currently living under was totally unique in his life. For the first time ever, the sun was shining down on his family. Everyone was glowing in the beautiful yellow heat.

  Chapter 15

  Day Eight

  Anna runs each morning, usually starting off before everyone else has awoken. If she didn’t run she swears she would be doing drugs, or starving herself, or eating and then barfing. Portia believes her. She can tell that running keeps Anna’s itching at bay. She doesn’t even like talking to her sister (on the phone or in person) before Anna’s had her run, as she finds her much too steely and sharp.

  Emery and Alejandro go to a gym when they’re in New York, but neither of them feels the need to exercise during Louise’s heart attack. Portia wonders what it would be like to be a guy with immutable metabolism—go to the gym, don’t go to the gym, eat a whole pan of ziti, don’t eat ziti—no matter what, you come out looking the same.

  Portia used to go to the Greenwich Y with Patrick, but since he left her, Portia hasn’t even taken a walk. She never liked going to the Y; the drive was a pain in the ass and never seemed worth the time. Portia would rather do a bunch of sit-ups and some leg-lifts in front of the TV. But Patrick went to the Y every night after work and if Portia wanted to see him in the evenings before she was too exhausted to speak, she had to meet him at the Y. The childcare center was open until nine o’clock. Portia would drop off Esmé, then follow her husband around the machines, or try to place herself on a Stairmaster next to him so she could recount to him her day with Esmé: where they went, clever things Esmé said, what they ate. It is only now that Portia realizes he probably wasn’t even listening.

  Buzzy normally walks, or hikes, every day but hasn’t done so since the heart attack. Buzzy likes hiking. He considers it a form of meditation.

  Today, on Day Eight, Buzzy decides he’ll walk before going to see Louise, and Portia has agreed to go with him.

  Anna is out on her run, Alejandro is still sleeping, Emery is sitting beside Portia, reading the New York Times and eating a cinnamon roll. Portia has been scanning the Santa Barbara News-Press, looking for people she might know from high school. So far she hasn’t found any. Portia has noticed that every year she returns home she knows fewer and fewer people in town; she recognizes fewer and fewer names in the paper. She’s starting to feel like a stranger.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?” Buzzy asks Emery.

  “I’m going to wait for Alejandro to wake up,” Emery says, and he folds the paper over and picks up a pen so he can do the crossword. He stares at Portia, like he wants to tell her something. Portia remembers when he was a kid and used to stare at Ace, his bird, trying to send him thought messages.

  “Do you always do the crossword?” Portia asks.

  “If I can get to it before Alejandro,” he says.

  Emery leans in closer to Portia. She tries to read his mind. She knows he wants to say something. Then he looks down at the puzzle and she thinks, Fuck it, if he wants to tell her something he can tell her later.

  “Let’s go,” Portia says, and she puts down the newspaper. Her father could also have a heart attack. She should walk with him while they both can walk.

  “Okay,” Buzzy says. “I need to show you your inheritance.”

  “My inheritance forty years from now?” Portia asks.

  “You never know,” Buzzy says. “Louise made me get a portable phone so that when I’m out hiking alone I’ll be able to call her if I run into trouble. Can you believe that? Can you believe that the property you’re going to inherit is so vast that you need to take a portable phone with you on hikes?!”

  “Why not just get one of those boat horns that lets out one huge blast of sound?” Portia asks.

  “Yeah, why not get one of those?” Emery says, still staring at the puzzle.

  “I thought of that,” Buzzy says. “But Louise thought the phone would be better. It was her idea, the phone.”

  Step One of going for a hike is readying the backpack. Buzzy opens all the pockets and zippers and then inserts the portable phone (almost the size of a shoebox), a small box of raisins, and a thermos of water. He offers to take the scratched green aluminum canteen that he’d carried when they went for hikes as a young family, but Portia assures him the thermos is plenty.

  Step Two is choosing a walking stick. Buzzy has been collecting them on his daily hikes, picking out sticks that are, according to him, the right length and width, many with a knob on the end or small tilt that forms a handle. He has sanded down the ones that aren’t smooth and even made some primitive carvings along the handles of others: vertical rays, zigzags, his initials on the one he likes best. Portia is glad her sister isn’t around. The prewalk rigmarole would probably drive Anna to an apoplectic fit.

  The walking sticks are arranged by height against the head-high stucco wall that encloses the patio off the kitchen. Alejandro is up now. He and Emery are in the patio, watching Portia poke through the sticks trying to find the perfect one. There is one the size of Portia’s daughter, Esmé; Buzzy made if for her the first week he and Louise moved into the house.

  “Can I carve one?” Alejandro asks. He is holding up a stick and rotating it in his fist. This is what everyone likes about Alejandro: he’s a participator. Portia’s soon-to-be-former mother-in-law always comments on who’s a participator and who’s not. Her other daughters-in-law aren’t participators—they go off for walks on their own, won’t play Trivial Pursuit at Christmas, and never eat dessert. She would approve of Alejandro. He never acts like an outsider.

  “Yeah, you can carve one!” Buzzy seems excited by the idea. He flips the backpack off his shoulders, opens a pocket, and takes out his bone-handled whittling knife.

  Alejandro takes the knife, sits on the wooden chair at the patio table, and immediately starts scratching out a design. Emery fetches the unfinished crossword puzzle from the kitchen table, brings it out to the patio, and watches Alejandro carve w
hile he works on the puzzle.

  Every now and then he looks up at Portia. He still seems intent on sending her a mind-message. Normally Portia would scratch it out of Emery, but she doesn’t have the energy for that now—between her maybe-dying mother and her definitely divorcing husband, her curiosity about others is less pointed.

  Instead of going down into the canyon, along the river where the bear died, Buzzy decides they should hike up the road that runs along the property. He wants Portia to see the view, the lay of the land. Portia is happy to have the heat of the sunshine radiating off the black tar road.

  “So, sweetheart,” he says, as they walk, “are you okay?”

  “You mean about Mom? Or about my marriage?”

  “Your mother’s going to be fine,” Buzzy says.

  “So you’re asking me about my marriage?”

  “Yeah. Are you okay?”

  Portia focuses on the dog, Jasmine, rooting through the scrubby brush that covers the ground like a thorny, long-sticked briar patch. If she looks at her father, she’ll cry. She feels like Buzzy’s question has opened up some creaky attic door that is about to let loose a pack of flapping bats, or an undulating sea of running rats.

  “I guess,” Portia says, and the safety trigger on her throat unlatches, releasing a choking sob that is too thick for words to break through. They keep walking. Buzzy holds Portia’s hand, waiting for her to clear through the streaming mess of sadness. It seems like it won’t end; the crying comes from some infinite part of her that is being refilled as quickly as it empties.

  Just when Portia feels herself dog-paddling to breathe through her tears, Buzzy opens his backpack and answers his new portable phone, which Portia hadn’t even noticed was ringing.

  “Sweetheart,” Buzzy says, almost whispering into his cell phone. And Portia knows things aren’t right. She is shocked out of her own sadness, as if the phone call, the sweetheart, were a defibrillator paddle to her heart.

  Portia walks on, her crying now a silent, spastic vibrato. She looks out at the ocean, takes deep breaths, and tries to simply be in the midst of the beauty. It looks like a postcard—the craggy, sloped mountainside leading down to the sensuously curvy Santa Barbara foothills and then out to the ocean, a shimmering blue-green framed by the blue-brown dashes of the Channel Islands.

  I am here, Portia thinks. It is beautiful here. My mother is still alive. My daughter is healthy. Little else matters.

  “That was my friend,” Buzzy says, as he tucks the phone into his backpack.

  “Your friend?” Portia sniffs and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Her eyes sting from leaking mascara.

  “Before the heart attack,” Buzzy says, “things weren’t good with your mother and me.”

  Buzzy hands Portia a clean, folded handkerchief from his pocket. She opens it, shakes it out, and presses it into her eyes. The handkerchief comes away with black-mascara Rorschach blots on it.

  “Dad, do you have a Stinky?” Portia blows her nose and then hands the bunched-up handkerchief back to her father. Her entire life, Buzzy has always had a handkerchief in his pocket. Once, Portia had a fantasy of making a shroud of handkerchiefs and having her father mummified in them.

  Buzzy puts the wadded handkerchief in his pocket, no mind that it now has her snot all over it. He doesn’t answer the question.

  “Dad! Do you have a Stinky?” Portia asks, again. Since she discovered Patrick’s affair, everyone is a suspect. The only person she can be sure isn’t having an affair, is herself.

  “What do you mean, do I have a Stinky?! Who do you think I am? I’m not Otto or Jimmy-Don or Linus!” Buzzy pelts up the road, shaking his head as he goes. Portia keeps apace.

  “You called her sweetheart,” Portia says, quietly. It feels like there’s gravel churning in her gut. She’s a cement mixer.

  Buzzy stops and knocks his walking stick against the ground as if he is summoning someone from below the paved road.

  “She’s only a friend,” he says. “She’s a really close friend and we talk on the phone a lot and she’s wonderful. But there’s nothing sexual. I swear.”

  “Does Mom know about her?”

  “She’s met her before. Your Mom hates her. She’s the new attorney in my office.”

  “Oh, that’s great, Dad!” Small light explosions flash in front of Portia’s face as the sun hits the tears in her eyes. “Just like Patrick, some attorney from your office! I can’t believe I married a lawyer! What was I thinking? Why would I ever marry an attorney who works with attorneys! You all love to fuck each other!” She is all-out crying again. Buzzy reaches his hand to her and passes off the handkerchief again.

  “Sweetheart, come on! You’re not being fair.” Buzzy waits for Portia to blow her nose and wipe her eyes.

  “My husband left me for an attorney in his office, Dad, you know that! It’s sleazy! You’re all sleazy!”

  “Portia, just because your husband did it doesn’t mean I’m doing it! She’s only a friend.”

  “Dad! Mom is in the hospital with a heart attack! You shouldn’t be talking to anyone you call ‘sweetheart’!”

  Buzzy says nothing. Portia sniffs up her snot and they start walking again.

  “Your mother calls her ‘Miss Shit-for-Brains’ because Judy, at the office, told your mother that everyone has to help her write her briefs.”

  “And Mom has no reason to be suspicious of Miss Shit-for-Brains?” Portia sniffs.

  “Not at all. She decided she’s dumb and so she hates her. Don’t tell her that we talk on the phone.”

  It is horrible for Portia to think that her father might be lying to her. That he might be a liar. She stays right behind Buzzy as he turns off the road, following the dogs. They head down a dirt path toward giant, glacier-sized rocks that slant toward the ocean. The farther Portia and Buzzy go, the quicker they go, leaping onto rocks and trotting downhill, hurtling across fissures that look like they drop straight to the center of the earth.

  Portia stays in the hypnotic rhythm of the hike, her feet making a shuffling staccato, the dogs’ nails clicking in beat, the sun like a hot hand on her face, her breath going in and out and in and out until she is exactly where she is: high on a mountain, running down a rock, safe from the invasion of cheating husbands, Stinkys, and unfaithful fathers.

  Forty minutes later, Buzzy and Portia are alone in the kitchen. She is searching through the cupboards and the refrigerator, trying to find something to eat. Buzzy has his briefcase open on the dining room table and is looking over some papers.

  “Do you want some cinnamon roll?” Portia asks.

  “Sure,” Buzzy says. He sticks his thumb in the waist of his pants and pulls it out. “You know, I’ve lost about fifteen pounds.”

  “You always look skinny, Dad.” Portia doesn’t look at him. She is putting cinnamon rolls on a plate.

  “I’ve gotta make a doctor’s appointment to make sure there’s nothing wrong with me. I’m in a size thirty-two pants now!”

  “Maybe it’s old age.”

  “But it was so quick. And I don’t think I’ve been eating differently.”

  “I have.” Portia picks up the remnant of a chocolate-chip scone that has been sitting in a basket on the kitchen counter. She has picked from this same scone each time she passed it yesterday and this morning. By now it’s the size of a cherry tomato.

  When Portia brings her father his plate, she notices the edge of a photograph beneath the paper he’s looking at. Portia reaches down and slips it out. In the picture is a girl. A woman. A girl-woman. She is in a bed with a kitten on her chest. Her hair is short, red, splayed across the pillow. The sheet is pulled up to her smooth, glossy neck. This is not the picture of oneself that you give to a friend. Portia’s stomach drops, rises, shifts. There is a lava lamp inside her now.

  “Oh, that’s my friend I was telling you about,” Buzzy says. “She gave me that picture.”

  “Awfully young friend, Dad.” Portia feels sick.

>   Anna comes in the kitchen door. Her face is slick with sweat. Her hair is hanging in damp clumps. She has ropy legs that are no thicker at the calf than the thigh. They are like the slim trunks of the smooth-skinned manzanita trees that grow all over Buzzy and Louise’s property.

  “Dad’s friend,” Portia says, and she hands the photo to Anna.

  “You told her?” Anna says to Buzzy.

  Portia looks from Buzzy to Anna. She realizes that the affair is a fact, as true as her father’s standing before her. And at that moment, Buzzy shifts in Portia’s mind. It is like owning an expensive painting that you love and suddenly learning that it’s a reproduction. You still love the painting, but it isn’t the same painting you thought you’d had.

  “Mom is in the hospital!” Portia says.

  “This started months ago,” Buzzy said. “Almost a year ago.”

  “How old is she?!” Portia takes the picture from Anna and looks at it again.

  “She’s a grown-up,” Buzzy said. “A year or two younger than you.” Portia remembers the man she saw a few weeks ago when she and a friend were out to dinner in Greenwich. She thought he was with his daughter; their features were vaguely alike. But then he leaned over the table and kissed her, deeply, on the lips. Portia and her friend laughed. They thought he looked ridiculous: vain, shallow, pathetic. And now here was her father; he is one of those guys who thinks a younger woman is going to keep him young somehow, give him her temporary youth.

  “He didn’t know Mom would have a heart attack when he started it,” Anna says. She is busying herself with a glass of water and then a bag of frozen peas. She sits on the bench seat, stretches out her leg, and puts the peas on the knee that’s twice had arthroscopic surgery. Portia thinks she looks irritated that Portia is asking about their father’s Stinky and not irritated because of the Stinky herself.

  “I haven’t seen her since your mother went in the hospital,” Buzzy says.