Drinking Closer to Home

by Jessica Anya Blau

there, stiffly, as if to escort Lexie out.

  “I’m sorry,” Jen said. She shot her eyes toward Daniel to scold him for his rudeness.

  “Oh, no, I’m sorry.” Lexie felt a sheen of shame growing on her flesh like a fish skin coat.

  “Should we look for your shoe?” Jen glanced around the room. “My shoe?” Lexie looked down at her leather sack-like purse that sat on the floor by the bed. The rubber edge of Jen’s vibrator peeked out the top of Lexie’s bag like a periscope. Lexie swooped down and hoisted the bag up onto her shoulder. She shook the bag a little, allowing the vibrator to burrow out of sight. “No, don’t bother. I’m pretty sure I left it at my apartment.” Lexie forced a smile and then shrugged her shoulders as if this were a comical, weekend mishap. Something that might happen in a sitcom or a romcom starring a sitcom star.

  For a few seconds, Lexie, Jen, and Daniel all stood motionless as if they were in a play and had each forgotten their blocking.

  “Well, walk her to the car, at least, Danny!” Jen said at last. Danny? Lexie had never heard that one before. “Thank you,

  Mr. Waite,” she said. The Mr. felt foreign now, like a tin coin in Lexie’s mouth, the edges beveled and sharp. Daniel once told Lexie that the instant he met her, he craved her body with the hunger of a starving man in a Turkish prison. Lexie had been meaning to look up Turkish prisons ever since, to see if they actually starved people in them. Her sense of Turkey was that it was a pretty cosmopolitan place as long as you stayed on the European side. But like so much else the past few months, looking up Turkey was something she’d never gotten around to.

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  Copyright (The Trouble with Lexie)

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE TROUBLE WITH LEXIE. Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Anya Blau. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.

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  FIRST EDITION

  Designed by Jamie Lynn Kerner

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  ISBN 978-0-06-241645-2 (pbk.)

  P.S.

  Insights, Interviews & More ...

  About the Author

  Meet Jessica Anya Blau

  JESSICA ANYA BLAU was born in Boston and raised in California. She studied French at the University of California, Berkeley, and didn’t start writing until she was stuck in Canada without a work permit or a study permit. Once she started writing, she found it hard to stop, and eventually she went to graduate school at The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins so she could be around other writers and learn from them. Jessica had twenty-five short stories published before her first novel, The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, was published. The Summer of Naked Swim Parties was chosen as a Best Summer Read by the Today show, the New York Post, and New York magazine. The San Francisco Chronicle, along with other newspapers, picked it as a Best Book of the Year.

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  About the book

  The Truth Inside the Lie

  Interview with the Real Family

  Although Drinking Closer to Home is a work of fiction, I used the members of my family and some of the things that actually happened to us as a launching pad for the novel, so it only seemed fair that I let the “real” family speak up about our past and the book.

  What did you think of the character who resembles you in the book?

  Mom (Louise): I like her. She’s me, and she’s great!

  Becca (Anna): I love Anna. Despite her craziness and her sharp, angry tongue, she is smart and good. I have a lot of compassion for her. I love her spirit and her fierce love for her family. She is very much like me in all of my many flaws and strengths.

  Dad (Buzzy): I think I got off easy.

  Josh (Emery): I don’t know what to think. It was interesting to see some events put into fictional form.

  Anything you want to clear up—anything you want people to know?

  Josh: Not necessarily. It’s fiction, based on me, but not me.

  Mom: I’m not dead. And I’m not Jewish.

  Becca: People who have read this book are shocked that I am not upset about the portrayal of my character, Anna. I, however, happen to love her. And while I am not a coke addict or a sex addict, I possess both the recklessness and compulsiveness that Anna does. Also, this is my sister’s story. I love it just as she tells it. Perhaps she remembers things that I don’t.

  “People who have read this book are shocked that I am not upset about the portrayal of my character, Anna.”

  —Becca

  Dad: Nobody in this book resembles any actual persons living or dead.

  Mom told me once, in all seriousness, that she thinks she looks like Bruce Springsteen. Do you agree?

  Becca: She does look like Bruce Springsteen, but also like Alice Cooper and Bob Dylan.

  Dad: She looks like Anne Bancroft.

  Josh: Yes, she looks like Anne Bancroft. Or Mia Farrow.

  Mom: I look like Bruce with a touch of George Jones.

  I think I look like Vincent Van Gogh. True or false?

  Josh: Not like Van Gogh. Maybe someone from a Munch painting?

  Mom: You look exactly like Vinnie. A dead ringer!

  Becca: I think the portrait that Mom did of you at age twelve looks very much like Van Gogh’s self-portraits.

  “I think the portrait that Mom did of you [Jessica] at age twelve looks very much like Van Gogh’s self-portraits.”

  —Becca

  Dad: You? (laughs) No, you don’t look like Vincent Van Gogh. What kind of crazy talk is that? That’s crazy talk. Maybe if you took off an ear!

  Josh looks like Matthew McConaughey and Ralph Fiennes mixed. True or false?

  Josh: False. I look more like Edward Norton.

  Mom: Josh looks like Bruce Springsteen and Mickey Rourke.

  Becca: True—but also like Liam Neeson.

  Dad: I agree with Becca. No, I think— Yes, I agree with Becca. He looks more like Ralph Fiennes than anybody. Who’s the other one? Oh, I don’t know what Matthew McDonaughey [sic] looks like.

  “I don’t know what Matthew McDonaughey [sic] looks like.”

  —Dad

  And don’t you agree that Josh looked like a turtle when he was a little guy?

  Becca: Josh did look like a turtle though I can’t put my finger on exactly why. He looked like a cartoon turtle . . . like the character Franklin.

  Josh: I still have some resemblance to a turtle.

  Becca looks like either Batman, or Marlo Thomas back in the That Girl days. Or like that model Talisha Castro.

  Mom: She looks like Bruce Springsteen. Plain and simple.

  Dad: Marlo Thomas.

  Becca: Batman? If I’m Batman, you’re the Penguin. I think I look like Michael Jackson. I am serious. Check out my comparison below.

  Josh: Michael Jackson. But I suppose she did have a Marlo Thomas phase. Becca and Dad are the lovely dark ones. I remember when Becca was eighteen, someone came up to her on the street in NYC and asked her if she was black or white: “Yo, girl, you black or you white?”

  Alan Alda reminds me of Dad. You too?

  Mom: Nooo. More like that guy Larry David.

  Josh: No. But I did meet his doppelganger once in Sicily.

  Becca: I see what you are getting at with the Alan Alda comparison, but I would say you�
��d have to mix in Larry David and Woody Allen.

  Dad: I’d like it to be Alan Alda. I’m afraid it’s more Woody Allen and Larry David. And I also look like Joel Klein. He’s the chancellor of New York City schools. He’s in the paper.

  Mom and Dad clearly always thought that Josh was the smartest, I was the dumbest, and Becca was the most trouble. Does anyone see it differently?

  Mom: Nope. That’s how it was, and that’s why you went to Dummy School.

  Becca: I was the most demanding. You were the sweetest and easiest to love. Josh was adored but never really “seen.”

  Dad: No, I didn’t think Josh was the smartest. I think I thought Becca was the smartest. I thought Josh was the most like me in his thinking. And I thought you were most like Mom in your thinking. Which is just as smart but different.

  “I thought you were most like Mom in your thinking. Which is just as smart but different.”

  —Dad

  We had a downstairs bathroom that was wallpapered with New York Times articles about the Watergate scandal. Mom graffitied it in places before she shellacked it. Anyone remember any headlines or graffiti?

  Mom: I wrote on Nixon’s grinning face, “Why is this man smiling?”

  Becca: Headlines: “Agnew Resigns. Nixon Consults on Successor.” “Baseball Takes on Image of Ugly Japanese.”

  Josh: “Man Hit by Five Cars on Coast Freeway”—remember that one? What a great wall. We should have documented it!

  Dad: I just remember what it was about. I used to read it when I was in the bathroom. There was nothing else to read. I do remember the “Agnew Resigns” headline.

  What do you think Grandma and Poppop, were they alive, would say about the chapters where they show up as Bubbe and Zeyde?

  “I would never let them [Grandma and Poppop] read [Drinking Closer to Home].”

  —Dad

  Mom: I think Poppop would say, “In Trenton we don’t have Dummy School girls writing about their family.”

  Becca: Poppop would probably offer to rewrite it for you.

  Dad: I would never let them read it.

  Josh: They wouldn’t even realize it was based on them.

  Everyone has different versions of the past. In this novel, the family home has bird shit on the back of the couch and the kitchen floor is like hard black sidewalk gum (even though it’s a white floor). How messy do you think our house was?

  Mom: It wasn’t messy at all. I vacuumed and dusted and cleaned every day. I wore a doily on my head.

  Becca: It was messy. Floors were filthy. There were dust balls everywhere. The kitchen had crud and crumbs everywhere. The stove and oven were black. We had worms in our cupboards and in our cereal and rice. We also had the worst scratchy little towels. My room was neat as a pin. I made my bed, vacuumed regularly, and sprayed Lysol to freshen the air. I made sure that my throw rugs were exactly an inch from the wall before I went to bed. That might have had something to do with my OCD.

  Josh: It was very, very messy. When I was seventeen, some friends came over and cleaned the fridge ’cause it was so gross.

  “When I was seventeen, some friends came over and cleaned the fridge ’cause it was so gross.”

  —Josh

  Dad: I don’t remember it being nearly as messy as people tell me it was. But I think it was less messy than the house I grew up in.

  Mom, did you really back the car into and knock down the neighbors’ mailbox three times? Or am I remembering it wrong?

  Mom: Yes, of course you are remembering it wrong. It was your Dad who knocked down their mailbox twice, as I recall. Ask him.

  Dad: It’s true. It was me. At least twice. Maybe three times.

  When we first moved to California, we often gave the neighbors on our cul de sac the excess lemons from our trees. Once, the college-aged son of one of our neighbors had a party while his parents were out of town. The party included a big dog who shit on our lawn. Dad scooped up the dog shit, put it in a brown paper bag, and told Becca to deliver it to the boy. The boy thought it was lemons and put it on the kitchen counter with a note that said, “The Blaus sent these over for you.” Do you think this is why everyone on the cul de sac stopped talking to us?

  Dad: It is why those neighbors stopped talking to us. They’re the same neighbors whose mailbox I ran into three times. There is no connection between those two facts.

  Mom: Truth is, it was the doily on the head that did it.

  Josh: The neighbors could have hated us for many reasons. Apparently I called the family next door “fascist pigs” when I was, like, three. I didn’t really understand what that meant until I was much older, in my twenties. Strangely, it’s a word I use a lot now, mostly when speaking Spanish. Fascista or facha is current slang for anyone on the far right.

  Mom: Josh did call the neighbors “fascist pigs” at age three. I had forgotten that. He also said “fuck you” to Mrs. Christenson. I guess he was a bit of a hellion. But he was a good boy, an angel, nonetheless.

  “Josh did call the neighbors ‘fascist pigs’ at age three. I had forgotten that.”

  —Mom

  Josh: Maybe they hated us because they knew that Mom used to get stoned and play basketball down in Isla Vista behind her studio. [Isla Vista is the neighborhood where all the college students live.]

  Mom: I was forty-two then, Jesus Christ, give me a break! I’m seventy-one now. No comment. Well, okay, it was a one-time tournament, best of three, two four-person teams. My team played twice and won. I probably was stoned.

  Is there anything else you think I should ask in this interview?

  Mom: No, you’ve caused enough trouble. Go to bed.

  Read on

  Excerpt: The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

  Fourteen-year-old Jamie will never forget the summer of 1976. It’s the summer when she has her first boyfriend, cute surfer Flip Jenkins; it’s the summer when her two best friends get serious about sex, cigarettes, and tanning; it’s the summer when her parents throw, yes, naked swim parties, leaving Jamie flushed with embarrassment. And it’s the summer that forever changes the way Jamie sees the things that matter: family, friendship, love, and herself.

  After all, it was the seventies, so Allen and Betty thought nothing of leaving their younger daughter, Jamie, home alone for three nights while they went camping in Death Valley. And although most girls who had just turned fourteen would love a rambling Spanish-style house (with a rock formation pool, of course) to themselves for four days, Jamie, who erupted with bouts of fear with the here-now/gone-now pattern of a recurring nightmare, found the idea of her parents spending three nights in Death Valley terrifying. Jamie was not afraid for Allen and Betty—she did not fear their death by heat stroke, or scorpion sting, or dehydration (although each of these occurred to her in the days preceding their departure). She feared her own death—being murdered by one of the homeless men who slept between the roots of the giant fig tree near the train station; or being trapped on the first floor of the house, the second floor sitting on her like a fat giant, after having fallen in an earthquake.

  Jamie’s older sister, Renee, was also away that weekend, at a lake with the family of her best and only friend. But even if she had been home, Renee would have provided little comfort for Jamie, as her tolerance for the whims of her younger sister seemed to have vanished around the time Jamie began menstruating while Renee still hadn’t grown hips.

  “I invited Debbie and Tammy to stay with me while you’re gone,” Jamie told her mother.

  They were in the kitchen. Betty wore only cut-off shorts and an apron (no shoes, no shirt, no bra); it was her standard uniform while cooking. Betty’s large, buoyant breasts sat on either side of the bib—her long, gummy nipples matched the polka dots on the apron.

  “They were in the kitchen. Betty wore only cut-off shorts and an apron (no shoes, no shirt, no bra); it was her standard uniform while cooking.”

  “I know,” Betty said. “Their mothers called.”

  Jamie�
��s stomach thumped. Of course their mothers called. They each had a mother who considered her daughter the central showpiece of her life. “So what’d you say?” Jamie prayed that her mother had said nothing that would cause Tammy and Debbie’s mothers to keep them home.

  “I told them that I had left about a hundred dollars worth of TV dinners in the freezer, that there was spending money in the cookie jar, and that there was nothing to worry about.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “Tammy’s mother wanted to know what the house rules were.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “I told her there were no rules. We trust you.”

  Jamie knew her parents trusted her, and she knew they were right to do so—she couldn’t imagine herself doing something they would disapprove of. The problem, as she saw it, was that she didn’t trust them not to do something that she disapproved of. She had already prepared herself for the possibility that her parents would not return at the time they had promised, for anything—an artichoke festival, a nudists’ rights parade—could detain them for hours or even days. There was nothing internal in either of her parents, no alarms or bells or buzzing, that alerted them to the panic their younger daughter felt periodically, like she was an astronaut untethered from the mother ship—floating without any boundaries against which she could bounce back to home.

  “Jamie knew her parents trusted her, and she knew they were right to do so—she couldn’t imagine herself doing something they would disapprove of. The problem, as she saw it, was that she didn’t trust them not to do something that she disapproved of.”

  Allen walked into the kitchen. He’d been going in and out of the house, loading the Volvo with sleeping bags, a tent, lanterns, flashlights, food.

  “You know Debbie and Tammy are staying here with Jamie,” Betty said, and she flipped an omelet over—it was a perfect half-moon, and she, for a second, was like a perfect mother.