“Oy,” Buzzy says. “Of course they’re homosexuals! They live together, they’re in love!”
Billie has a sly smirk on her face and Otto is fully smiling. Emery thinks it’s like seeing a machine gun smile.
“What are you going to do?” Otto finally speaks. “Pull a chocolate kid out of your asses?!”
“No.” Emery grins. “We found a hospital in New York where they’ll implant an already fertilized embryo into this woman we met who will carry it for us. The sperm will be from Alejandro and the egg will be from Anna.”
Everyone turns and looks at Anna.
“Anna’s eggs?” Buzzy asks. “I thought you were using Portia’s.”
“No, Anna’s, Dad. I told you already that we’re using Anna’s.” Emery wonders if his father has had a stroke. He told him he was using Anna’s eggs about ninety minutes ago when they were alone in the kitchen getting out the sandwiches.
“You think Portia could handle having her body pumped up with chemicals that fuck you up for weeks?!” Anna asks. Emery hates when she puts it that way. Can’t she look at the gentle, sweet side of this process? The simple fact that she’s giving them eggs?
“Is there such thing as a Jewish Mexican?” Bubbe asks.
“He’s Cuban,” Emery says.
“They have Jews in Cuba!” Bubbe says, and she gets up from the couch and kisses Emery on the forehead. “Mazel tov!”
“You’re having a goddamned baby with a Jewish-Cuban homosexual!?” Otto says.
“Congratulations,” Billie says, and she nods her head as if to put an exclamation point on the end of the word.
“Alejandro’s not Jewish, is he?” Buzzy says.
Emery shoots him a shut-up look. Let Bubbe think he’s Jewish, it’ll make her happy! Let Otto think he’s Jewish, it will make his banter that much more interesting!
“He loves gefilte fish,” Anna says. “He’s the only one who will eat it with Dad.”
Bubbe has tiptoed over to sleeping Alejandro. She pushes the black hair off his forehead and gives it one of her wet suction-kisses. Alejandro opens his eyes, widens them comically. Emery laughs.
“Mazel tov!” Bubbe says, and she returns to the couch.
“So you’re going to have sex with your brother’s homosexual, Cuban, Jewish lover?” Otto says to Anna.
“Of course.” Anna winks at Alejandro, who’s smiling. Emery thinks for a second that his sister probably would have sex with Alejandro, but it’s way too creepy a thought—he shakes it away.
“They’re not having sex!” Buzzy says. “They’re going to take Anna’s egg and mix it with Alejandro’s sperm in a test tube. It’s a test-tube baby.”
“The miracles of modern science!” Zeyde says, and he lifts his pointer finger—his signature gesture.
“Jesus Christ,” Otto grumbles. “I’m going to have a homosexual, test-tube great-grandson from my homosexual grandson and his Cuban, Jewish, Mexican homosexual lover!”
“A part of you will be in the child,” Emery says. “My mother will be in the child.” He swallows a walnut of sadness in his throat.
“Well, let’s hope it’s not the tattooed hippie side of your mother,” Otto says. “The kid’ll be lucky if he just gets the normal goddamned heterosexual white American part of me!”
“Yup. Let’s hope he’s normal like you, Otto.” Emery shares a secretive smile with each of his sisters.
A few scotches later, Zeyde leans forward on the couch, his face pointing like a yardstick toward Otto and Billie. “Tell us,” Zeyde says. “Tell us about my beautiful daughter-in-law—”
“May she rest in peace,” Bubbe says.
“Tell us about Louise as a baby,” Zeyde says. “Where did it all begin?”
“It began with a fuck!” Otto says. “A couple of scotches and a fuck! Like all the other people crowding this planet!”
Anna wonders if her propensity toward drugs and fucking comes from her grandfather. It might be a tremendous relief to grow old and outgrow all those self-destructive urges. Anna’s looking forward to being abstinent when she’s readying her eggs for Alejandro and Emery. The risk of pregnancy is so high (and she absolutely does not want any more kids) that she’s been advised that even sex with a condom is too risky. It will feel good to force herself to be still, to stop running for a few weeks, to try to live in the most peaceful way she can find. She couldn’t slow down like this for herself, to save her own life. But for her baby brother, she’ll do whatever’s necessary to get the best, ripest eggs. It’s the biggest thing she’s ever given him, Anna thinks. And it will make up for all the times she kicked him in the shoulder or thigh when he sat too close to her on the couch watching television. Maybe it will even make up for the time she promised to take him to Magic Mountain if he stopped clearing his throat for one week. It was difficult for Emery to stop, but he did (he had allergies and was feeling the continuous light finger of phlegm). Then Anna decided she didn’t want to take him to Magic Mountain after all. Of course, she would have forgotten about this years ago (in the tome that held her crimes, this seemed like one of the smaller ones), but Portia and Louise wouldn’t let it go. The two of them flung her offense back and forth like a smelly old dishrag, as if it were Anna’s most heinous transgression.
“Seriously,” Emery says. “Tell us about Mom as a baby.”
“Well, I suppose she was normal,” Billie says.
“Normal,” Otto says. “Not a homosexual, Mexican, Jewish, Cuban, alien test-tube kid!”
“Normal, like you hope my kid will be!” Emery says. Anna watches her brother. It is obvious that he can’t wait for the birth of his homosexual, Mexican, Jewish, Cuban, alien test-tube kid.
It is well after midnight. Alejandro has squeezed onto the couch next to Emery, his arm carelessly around him as if the grandparents have been in on this relationship from the start. Buzzy, slouched in a chair, has fallen asleep and awoken again at least three times. Portia wonders how he can sleep—her brain is twirling and flying with her mother’s voice. She can feel Louise everywhere: beside her, across from her, in the kitchen, under her skin.
“I can’t believe Mom’s gone,” Portia says. “I keep expecting her to walk in the room looking for a pack of cigarettes and some matches.”
“She’s here, she’s here!” Bubbe says, and she claps her hands in some strange little applause. Portia actually glances around the room to see if her mother has wandered in.
“Yetta!” Zeyde says. “How is she here? She’s not here, she’s resting in peace.”
“She’s in the children,” Bubbe says, and she picks up Portia’s hand and covers it with her knobby, clawing fingers.
“Yeah,” Portia says. “I guess she is here.”
Portia is surprised that she has not faded and evaporated with the loss of her mother (or even with the less tragic loss of her husband). She understands suddenly that the stuff that fills her up is not the love or attention she might get from other people; it is the love she herself has for other people. We are, Portia decides, the people we love.
“You still haven’t told us the story of Mom’s life,” Anna says to Billie and Otto.
“Ask your sister, the nosy girl.” Otto points his cigar-sized finger toward Portia. “She asks so many questions she probably knows more about Louise’s life than I do!”
“Portia asks a lot of questions,” Bubbe says, and she bounces Portia’s hand on her lap.
“I’d love to tell Mom’s story,” Portia says. “But when I get to the part after I’m born, where I’m a kid, I’m leaving out those times Otto accused me of going to dummy school.”
“Ach, you can’t leave that out,” Otto says, waving his hand as if to eliminate some smell. “Dumb girl like you. Even if you don’t say it, everyone will know you went to dummy school.”
“No point in hiding it from us,” Anna says.
“In New Jersey,” Zeyde says, “there’s no such thing as dummy school.”
“Wait, did you
really go to dummy school?” Emery appears to be asking in earnest. Portia wonders if her family truly does think she’s dumb—or maybe they think she had a dumb period, something like Picasso’s Blue Period.
“No, she didn’t go to dummy school!” Buzzy says, awake again. “But the fact that Otto claimed she did is part of the story! That’s why she has to tell it—because he really did say that.”
“You’re right,” Portia says. “I’ll keep in the part about dummy school, but then I’m putting in your coming out, Emery. And all of Anna’s little—”
“Manias?” Anna says, and she lifts her wineglass to her mouth and empties it.
“Indiscretions?” Alejandro twirls his finger in Emery’s hair.
“All of it,” Portia says. “This has to be an honest story.”
“Honesty,” Zeyde says, with his finger in the air, “is the best policy!”
“Oy,” Buzzy groans. His eyes are melted red dimes.
“And I’ll also keep in the part about Mom as an infant in the snowstorm.” Portia surprises herself as she speaks. No one has ever before mentioned in front of Billie and Otto the time Louise was left for dead in the open convertible during an early spring squall.
Portia looks toward Billie and Otto. They appear shriveled and lax, as if the air has slipped out of them as from two partially deflated balloons. She doesn’t want to hurt them. She just wants to tell her mother’s story. Or perhaps it’s the family story—with Louise as the beating heart in the center of them—that she wants to tell. The living truth.
“We learned a goddammed good lesson that night,” Otto says.
“Always go drinking closer to home,” Anna says, and she pours a fresh glass of red wine for herself and Emery. The other drinkers are sticking to scotch. Portia is sipping at bubbly water.
“Amen,” Emery says, and he clinks his glass against Anna’s and then Portia’s.
“Amen,” Portia says, and that, she decides, is all that needs to be said.
Acknowledgments
I am forever grateful for the brilliant Katherine Nintzel of HarperCollins and the ebullient Joanne Brownstein of Brandt and Hochman. Thank you for the support and guidance of early draft readers: Geoff Becker, Kit Givan, Michael Kimball, Madeleine Mysko, Ron Tanner, and Tracy Wallace. I am in great debt to the people who cheered on and tirelessly promoted my last book: Phyllis Grossbach, Sally Beaton, Fran Brennan, Larry Doyle, Bruce Fleming, Lindsay Fleming, Boo Lunt, Kindall Rende, Lynda Riley, Claire Stancer, Satchel Summers, Shiloh Summers, and many others too numerous to list but not forgotten. Thank you to Rachel, Poppy, and David Piltch for lending their immense talents to the Naked Swim Parties video. This book would not be possible without the immeasurable hard work and boundless creativity of Carrie Kania, Cal Morgan, Amy Baker, Erica Barmash, Carl Lennertz, Mary Beth Constant, Robin Bilardello, Alberto Rojas, and Meredith Rusu. Maddie Tavis and Ella Grossbach are the two great loves of my life. And my heart belongs to David Grossbach.
The Trouble with Lexie Back Ad
If you enjoyed this book, continue reading for an excerpt from the latest novel from Jessica Anya Blau
THE TROUBLE WITH LEXIE
“The problem wasn’t so much that Lexie had taken the Klonopin. And it wasn’t even really that she had stolen them…The problem, as Lexie saw it, was that she had fallen asleep in the bed of the owner of the Klonopin. And the owner of the Klonopin was the wife of her lover. . . .”
Lexie James escaped: after being abandoned by her alcoholic father, and kicked out of the apartment to make room for her mother’s boyfriend, Lexie made it on her own. She earned a Masters degree, conquered terrifying panic attacks, got engaged to the nicest guy she’d ever met, and landed a counseling job at the prestigious Ruxton Academy, a New England prep school for the moneyed children of the elite.
But as her wedding date nears, Lexie has doubts. Yes, she’s created the stable life she craved as a child, but is stability really what she wants? In her moment of indecision, Lexie strikes up a friendship with a Ruxton alumnus, the father of her favorite student. It’s a relationship that blows open Lexie’s carefully constructed life, and then dunks her into shocking situations with headline-worthy trouble.
The perfect cocktail of naughtiness, heart, adventure and humor, The Trouble with Lexie is a wild and poignant story of the choices we make to outrun our childhoods—and the choices we have to make to outrun our entangled adult lives.
Excerpt from The Trouble with Lexie
THE PROBLEM WASN’T SO MUCH THAT LEXIE HAD TAKEN THE Klonopin. And it wasn’t even that she had stolen them. At thirty generic pills for ten dollars, the theft of a handful (two down the gullet, the rest down her bra) had to be less than . . . seven bucks? The problem, as Lexie saw it, was that she had fallen asleep in the bed of the owner of the Klonopin. And the owner of the Klonopin was the wife of her lover.
“Miss James?” Jen Waite said. Her dyed hair was blonder than Lexie’s and her pale face looked prettier than Lexie remembered from their single meeting at Parents’ Weekend—brow furrowed now, head tilted with concern.
Lexie looked down at herself. Her fitted red dress was scrunched up to her hips and she wasn’t wearing underwear. A shadow of hair trailed from crotch to mid-thigh. Lexie tried to yank the dress down but her brain-hand-body coordination was off and she couldn’t manage the required butt-lift.
“Miss James, do you know where you are?” Jen Waite said.
Lexie managed to sit up. Her eyes were wide open. She looked straight down at the tightly made bed (at thirty-three, she had yet to figure out how to make a bed this perfectly, this hotel- or military-like) and thought about the pill bottle. Yes, she remembered, she had put it back exactly where she had found it. Prescription label facing out, as it had been when she’d first spotted the drugs in the medicine cabinet.
“Miss James, are you okay?” Dear god, Daniel was in the room. And he was calling her Miss, as if they hadn’t spent an entire week together in this very house only last month. As if they hadn’t spent two nights together every week for the past eight months. As if he had never whispered I love you into her ear, her neck, and the usually hairless and opalescent insides of her thighs.
No. Daniel was calling her Miss as if their only relationship were through Ethan, the beloved Waite son, who earlier in the year had been one of Lexie’s student patients at The Ruxton Academy. Ethan’s condition had been nothing serious, nothing even half-serious: college-application-related stress, an exceedingly ho-hum and common ailment at the elite boarding school.
“Ambien!” Lexie finally said. She had read stories of people taking the sleeping pill and then eating all the dairy out of their refrigerator or driving to their ex-wife’s house and trying on her underwear.
“You need an Ambien?” Daniel was staring at her with a hard, distant look. There was no glint of recognition, no slyness of shared secrets, mixed fluids, merged scents. “You’re missing a shoe.” He pointed at Lexie’s bare right foot. On her left foot was the strappy high-heeled sandal she had originally bought for her planned wedding. Of course, she had intended to wear both shoes to the blessed event.
“I haven’t been sleeping lately and I took an Ambien tonight and I must have driven over here on it—wow!” Lexie tried to act as stunned as one might be if this had actually happened. “Wow. Can you believe it?!” She got off the bed and pulled down her dress. She brushed her hand across the bedspread as if fleas or crumbs had fallen off her. “Wow.”
“Wow,” Jen said. “That’s crazy! Was the door unlocked?” Jen looked at Daniel as if to accuse him of once again forgetting to lock the front door.
“I guess it was unlocked. I don’t even remember coming in!” “Don’t you live on campus?” Jen was openmouthed and wild-
eyed. This would be a story for her next dinner party. Lexie hoped it would be the only story Jen would tell involving Lexie. Until earlier in the night, Lexie hadn’t understood that she was that woman. The one who may have broken
up a twenty-year marriage by ruthlessly being the easy one in a man’s life: never asking him to stop at the drugstore and pick up vitamin C, never demanding that he not chew his cereal so loudly, never insisting that he refrain from making sexist jokes in front of company. Always interested in sex.
“I do live on campus, but I have a friend who lives nearby on Scarborough Road, so I’m familiar with the area . . .” Lexie pointed toward the window as if Scarborough Road were right there, although she wasn’t even sure if it was within thirty minutes of the Waite house. She had passed a street sign for Scarborough Road at some point during the drive over and only remembered because when she had read the sign, Simon and Garfunkel had started singing “Scarborough Fair” in some far away, echoey nook in her head.
“Oh, who do you know on Scarborough?” Jen smiled. She seemed happy to know they might have a mutual friend.
“What a lucky coincidence that of all the houses around here, yours was the one where I landed!” Lexie rolled right over the question. The muck in her brain couldn’t coalesce enough to come up with a name.
“I guess that is lucky,” Jen said.
“Well, I better get outta here.” Lexie looked back at the bed as if she had forgotten something.
“No! You have to stay tonight,” Jen said. “It’s not safe to drive with that stuff in your system, and we have plenty of bedrooms.”
“Short half-life”—Lexie waved her hand—“I’ll be fine.” She knew she was far from reaching the half-life of anything.
“Oh, please stay. I’ll blame myself if something happens to you on the road.” Jen extended a hand and placed it on Lexie’s forearm. How odd to be touched by the wife of your lover. It was such a gentle touch, so natural. And yet, Lexie hated it—it stirred up a soupy guilt for acts that had, in the past, felt wonderfully liberating. “She’ll be fine.” Daniel went to the bedroom door and stood
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