There was a lightness, almost an excitement, at dinner that night, as if the foul, tense air had blown away and everything was fresh and pure again. Anna and Louise prepared the food together—steak, salad, slivers of potatoes pan-fried in almost a stick of butter—while Portia played with the baby (who was looking more and more Hispanic as the night wore on) and Emery set the table. Buzzy got on his bike and went to the market for a bottle of wine. He returned about an hour later, even though the market was at the end of the block. Louise didn’t seem to notice as he walked in right as supper was ready, seconds after Blue had fallen asleep in his stroller.
Emery opened the red wine, poured some in Anna’s glass, then tried to pour some in Portia’s glass.
“I can’t,” she said, and covered her glass with her hand.
“She throws up, remember?” Anna said.
“Well, yeah, and I’m pregnant. And, actually, I haven’t really had a drink since college.”
“I drank wine while I was pregnant,” Anna said.
Emery poured wine in his own glass, then Buzzy’s. Then he went for Louise’s glass.
“None for me,” Louise said, and she put her hand over her glass just as Portia had done. She turned to Anna. “I thought you stopped drinking after rehab.”
“Mom, I was a drug addict, not an alcoholic.” Anna lifted her glass and took a gulp.
“But I thought that you were supposed to stop everything. Even though you weren’t an alcoholic.”
“Mom!” Anna took another sip. “I’ve been drinking ever since I left rehab. You’ve had wine with me maybe three hundred times since then. Rehab was like ten years ago!”
“It wasn’t ten years ago, it was seven or eight years ago,” Louise said.
“Mom,” Emery said, “she’s been drinking ever since. I can’t believe you haven’t noticed.”
“I guess I never thought about it until now.” Louise sighed and then filled her plate with food. “Portia, what do you mean you haven’t had wine since college?”
“I just stopped,” Portia said.
“Did you have a problem?”
“Yeah, I had a problem,” Portia said. “I couldn’t drink!”
“Mom! It made her vomit, remember? She’s allergic or something.” Anna threw back a few more gulps of wine.
Emery chuckled. “I remember seeing you vomit!”
“There are few people who have not seen me vomit,” Portia said.
“I’ve got one who doesn’t have a problem and stops drinking anyway, and another one who has a problem yet continues to drink,” Louise said. She was looking down at her plate, clearly working something out in her mind.
“I told you, Mom,” Anna said. “I don’t have a problem with alcohol!”
“Do you want to tell them?” Buzzy had started eating. A piece of lettuce hung from his lip.
“I’m an alcoholic,” Louise said.
Portia looked at her mother, then started laughing. “No way.”
Anna and Emery laughed, too. Buzzy and Louise smirked, as if to acknowledge that nothing was more charming than seeing their three grown children laugh. Even if it was at Louise’s expense.
“You don’t believe me?” Louise asked.
“Mom, since when are you an alcoholic?” Anna said. “I’ve never even seen you drunk.”
“I’ve never seen you drunk either, Mom,” Emery said.
“For the past few years, I’ve been drinking every night. I’m an alcoholic.”
“You’re a fucking pot addict!” Anna said. “Forget the alcohol! If you want to quit an addiction, quit pot.”
“I did,” Louise said.
“She had me chop down the plants and everything,” Buzzy said. “And they had some of the most beautiful, pungent buds I’d ever grown. They’d actually stick to your hand, they were so fertile.”
“When did this happen?” Portia asked.
“A few weeks before we left Santa Barbara. I go to AA meetings every day. They even have AA on the island here.”
Anna, Portia, and Emery started laughing again.
“Why is this funny?” Buzzy asked.
“Because she’s NOT an alcoholic!” Anna said.
“It seemed a little kooky to me, too,” Buzzy said. “But who are we to decide? If she says she’s an alcoholic, she’s an alcoholic.”
“All right, Mama,” Emery said. “Whatever.”
“Cheers to Mom being an alcoholic and going to AA!” Portia said, and she picked up her plastic water glass and held it out toward the center of the table.
“Cheers!” the family responded, including Louise, who clinked her plastic water glass with each of them in turn.
“So everyone has some secret they’ve blown open today. Except Portia.” Anna turned to Portia. “What’s your secret?”
“There’s no baby in here,” Portia said. “It’s an hysterical pregnancy.”
In truth, she had originally thought she was having an hysterical pregnancy. She and Patrick had stopped using birth control in the middle of November and about two weeks later, around the day her period was due, Portia knew she was pregnant. Nothing had changed; she wasn’t nauseous and her breasts weren’t sore. But she knew she was pregnant in the same way that she knew she was alive and awake. At the doctor’s office the blood test came out negative and the doctor, a middle-aged Persian woman, insisted to Portia that she was not pregnant. At home that afternoon, Portia sobbed—not because she wasn’t pregnant, but because her sense of being pregnant was still so acute that she figured she was having an hysterical pregnancy. Twenty days later, she still hadn’t gotten her period. Portia returned to the doctor, ready to have herself admitted to the psych ward of Greenwich Hospital. It had been a relief to find out she was not insane.
“What’s your secret?” Louise asked Anna. She was swirling potato slices in the small pool of salad dressing on her plate.
“I’m having an affair,” Anna said, looking down at her plate.
“Jesus Christ,” Louise said. “You just had a baby! What are you thinking?!”
Emery stopped eating and stared at Anna with a half-smile on his face. Portia had forgotten that he hadn’t been with them when Anna confessed her affair and Buzzy confessed his desire to leave Louise.
“Don’t criticize me! You don’t know my marriage!” Anna pointed her fork at her mother.
“Are you in love with the other guy?” Emery asked.
“He’s Hispanic,” Anna said.
“What kind of Hispanic?” Emery asked.
“A Contra!” Portia was excited to say it.
“Did I tell you about that?” Anna looked surprised.
“I don’t want to hear about this!” Louise said. “You kids can discuss Anna’s affair when I’ve gone to bed—I really don’t want to know!”
“Is he really a Contra?” Emery asked Portia. She shrugged.
“Why can’t you know about her affair? She’s opening herself up to us!” Buzzy said.
“Jesus Christ, Buzzy!” Louise lifted her plate and walked it to the counter that looked from the kitchen into the dining room. She sat on one of the painted black stools. “You have no sense of decorum! You have no shame! An affair is an affair because it’s secret and WE should not know about it!”
“We’re her family! We should be able to know about her affairs!”
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore!” Anna said. “Please!”
Emery and Portia looked at each other across the table. He was five again and she was ten. Anna was thirteen, fighting with their parents—taking up all the noise and space and conflict.
“Okay,” Louise shook her head. “Whatever.”
“Don’t sit there. Come on back.” Buzzy talked with a cheekful of food in his mouth.
Louise looked at her family, stared down at her plate, and carried it back to the table.
“So we know Anna’s secret, Mom’s secret, my secret, and Portia’s secret,” Emery said. “But what’s Buzzy’s secre
t?”
“That he’s freaked out by gays,” Portia said, and her brother smiled.
“When your affair falls apart, don’t even tell me about it. I don’t want any details. None,” Louise said to Anna.
“I already said, I’m not going to tell you shit,” Anna said.
“Good, ’cause I don’t want to know shit.”
“Good, ’cause I’m not telling you shit.”
“Fine. I don’t want to know.”
“Alcoholic,” Anna mumbled, and Louise laughed.
“Mom, are you dying for a glass right now?” Emery asked. “Is it hard for you when we’re drinking?”
“Not really,” Louise said.
“You are SO not an alcoholic!” Anna said. “Alcoholics crave alcohol!”
“Did I ever tell you kids about Elbows Max?” Buzzy asked.
“I’m sure everyone knows the story but me,” Emery said. He poured some more wine in his glass and took a sip.
“He was our great-grandfather,” Anna said. “A professional boxer.”
“Yes, but what you might not already know is that Elbows Max was an alcoholic,” Buzzy said.
“Oh, please, Dad!” Anna reached across the table and took the wine bottle from in front of Emery. She emptied the bottle out into her glass. “Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a Jewish alcoholic.”
Portia found it funny that her addiction-prone sister appeared to be entirely serious.
“Look at your mother!” Buzzy held out his open palm directed toward Louise.
“I’m not a fucking Jew!” Louise said. “I quit being Jewish! So stop with your Jewish-wife fantasy!” She was almost-smiling.
“Yeah, Dad,” Anna said. “Listen to Sarah!” Everyone cracked up at the use of Louise’s Jewish name. Even Louise.
Portia let the chatter drift away. She rubbed her inflated belly as if her hand could communicate to the person floating in there. She wanted to tell the baby that everything would be okay. Yes, Portia was fat. And she had pimples, stretch marks, and gelatinous legs. But she wasn’t an alcoholic (although, who really knew if the baby’s grandmother was an alcoholic?); she couldn’t imagine that Patrick was planning to flee their marriage (and hopefully Portia’s father would stay put); and she wasn’t about to push her milky breasts into the bristly face of a Contra (that was strictly Anna’s domain). Additionally, if the baby turned out to be gay like its Uncle Emery, Portia wouldn’t even have the urge to cry. For now, Portia was sweetly, happily, blindly content.
Chapter 23
Day Thirteen
It is early morning on Day Thirteen, the day they leave. Emery and Alejandro are in the barn packing up their things. Emery feels that although his mother is coming home, this trip is still hanging open. His sisters both said they needed more time to think about their eggs. And they wanted to discuss it together, as if the decision about how he should make a baby were more theirs than his. He is trying not to be angry, he wants to accept whatever they each want, but it is hard for him. Emery reminds himself not to let his fantasies get in the way of reality. He needs to remember that even his sisters, who used to delve into his brain as if it were a pot of soup, are unaware of how large this fantasy has been looming.
When he goes to the kitchen, Emery finds Portia sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Grape-Nuts with one hand while fanning her wet toenails with the other hand. “Finally got your pedicure?” Emery asks.
“Did it myself,” Portia says. “I want to do Anna’s toes for her—they look so bald and ugly—but I think she’ll be offended if I suggest it.”
“She probably will be,” Emery says. He wishes his sister were thinking about her eggs and not Anna’s toenails.
Emery sits beside Portia and looks around the kitchen, at the things his mother has chosen to surround herself with. Along the wall above the stove is a procession of wrought-iron Pennsylvania Dutch trivets. One has an angry-looking woman molded on it; she wears a red apron and is raising a black frying pan in one hand. Above her are the words “Ach, don’t talk so dumb!”
“Ach, don’t talk so dumb!” Emery says. Portia laughs.
“That was my favorite trivet,” Portia says. “Whenever I was setting the table, if we needed a trivet I always got the ‘Ach’ one.”
“I don’t even remember those trivets,” Emery says. Sometimes he feels like he’s seen only an edited view of his own life, while his sisters got to see all the footage.
The phone rings and Portia reaches to answer it, knocking it off the receiver and onto speaker. Louise is on the line. Anna has answered from the extension in the bedroom.
“Don’t stop off to say good-bye,” Louise says. “I’m going to be busy all morning and you’ve gotta get to the airport early.”
“Mom,” Anna says, “you’re in a hospital bed—how busy can you be?”
“Busy,” Louise says, “busy. You know, the doctor checking out one thing, a nurse checking out another; and then I’ve gotta walk a lap around the cardio unit before they’ll even let me out.”
“We’re stopping by,” Anna says.
“Please,” Louise says, “I really don’t want you to come.”
“Mom?” Portia says. “You’re on speaker. Emery and I are here.”
“You’re on the phone?”
“Hey, Mama,” Emery says.
“Mom doesn’t want us stopping by,” Anna says. “She’s busy.”
“Mom,” Portia says. “I’m only going to tell you this once.”
“What?”
“ACH! Don’t talk so dumb!”
Louise laughs and so does Emery. Portia hangs up, leaving Anna to sort out the plans.
By eight a.m. they are in Buzzy’s car speeding down the mountain. Anna has claimed the front seat, just as she did when they were kids. Emery is beside Portia in the back; Alejandro is on the other side of Portia. She believes that with Buzzy at the wheel, the back is probably the safest place. Emery doesn’t disagree.
“Wouldn’t it be funny,” Portia says, breaking a silence, “if we all died right now in the car and Mom ended up being the one who lived longest.”
“We’re not going to die,” Buzzy groans. “No one is dying.” He takes an S-turn too quickly and Portia rocks against Emery and then away from him again.
At the bottom of the mountain Buzzy pauses, puts the car in neutral, and turns toward Anna.
“Well?” he asks. If he turns right, they go directly to the airport. Left and they’ll be on the way to the hospital.
“Left,” Anna says.
“She’ll be pissed,” Buzzy says.
“Fuck her. We’re her fucking kids.” Anna is obviously pissed.
“Don’t upset her,” Emery says. “Go to the airport.” He can’t understand why his sister won’t respect his mother’s wishes. If she doesn’t want to say good-bye, she doesn’t want to say good-bye. Let the woman be!
“I’m not sure what I’m more afraid of,” Portia says, “Mom being mad because we’ve stopped off to say good-bye, or Mom dying before I get a chance to visit her again.”
Emery wishes his sister would stop thinking about everyone dying all the time and start thinking about her eggs and how they can help him have a baby!
Emery looks over at Portia. As the car accelerates, she closes her eyes.
Louise looks up when the family appears in the doorway. She is genuinely surprised. She is definitely not busy.
“What? What the hell do you want?!” Louise is scowling.
“The kids want to say good-bye,” Buzzy says. His head nods like a spring-necked doll as if to say, “I knew you’d act like this.” They, the kids, are huddled behind him. Alejandro is half-smiling—his face reveals an appreciation one can have for cantankerous souls only when not related to them by blood.
“So good-bye!” Louise says. “Go.”
“Honey—” Buzzy says, and he goes to her bedside.
“They’re acting like I’m about to die! I’m fine. I’ll see them al
l this summer—they never stay away long.”
“Sweetheart,” Buzzy says, “say good-bye to them! I’ve gotta run back to the car—I parked illegally.” Buzzy kisses Louise on the lips, then inches past everyone, waving his hands as if to direct them in, before he rushes down the hall to the elevator.
Emery, Alejandro, Portia, and Anna are still hovering in the doorway. It’s as if no one has the nerve to enter.
“I cannot believe what a pile of spineless sea slugs this family is!” Anna whisper-hisses. She pushes in and goes to Louise’s bed.
“Fine, Mom.” Anna leans over and kisses Louise’s cheek. “Good-bye, I love you.”
“You too,” Louise says. The exchange is quick: words, kiss, words, kiss. Anna backs away from the bed and looks at Emery with her hands open and head shaking. He gets it.
Alejandro goes to Louise’s bed with Emery; they, too, have a quick exchange. The words sound like clucking, the kisses appear to be henpecks. Emery imagines they have been transformed into a herd of chickens.
Portia is waiting her turn to say good-bye. Emery steps back and makes room for his sister at the bed.
“Give me a kiss and get outta here,” Louise says. “You’re going to miss your flight.”
“I think Maggie Bucks hates me.” Portia perches on the edge of the bed as if they’re staying for a while. As if Buzzy isn’t waiting outside with the engine running.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, she sits on her fat ass and glares at me every time I open the cupboard.”
“She’s not fat!”
“Mom, she’s obese,” Anna says.
“She’s not obese!”
“She’s seriously overweight, Mom,” Emery says. “She’s the size of a raccoon.”
“She’s a delicate little thing!” Louise says.
“Fine. She’s zaftig,” Emery says.
Drinking Closer to Home Page 29