Drinking Closer to Home Read online

  Once Bubbe finished unpacking, she went into her purse to give her granddaughters even more gifts: silverware from the plane that had Pan Am engraved on the handle (she had wiped it clean with the cloth Pan Am napkin she had also taken from the plane), sugar packets that said Pan Am on them (she kept the pink Sweet ‘n’ Low packets for herself), and a folded soft copy of LIFE that had a subscription sticker on it addressed to Ralph Castle in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

  “Who’s Ralph Castle?” Portia asked Bubbe, while flipping through the magazine.

  “Who’s Ralph Castle?” Bubbe said.

  “Yeah,” Portia said. “Who’s Ralph Castle?”

  “I don’t know Ralph Castle,” Bubbe said. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  Anna tapped Portia’s shin with her toe.

  “Thanks for this stuff, Bubbe,” Anna said. “We love LIFE magazine.”

  “Your Aunt Rose,” Bubbe said, “may she rest in peace, also loved that magazine!”

  Once the presents were fully distributed, the girls followed Bubbe into the family room. Zeyde had already taken up his usual spot on the big green chair in front of the TV.

  “Sweethearts, come here, come here!” Zeyde slapped both his knees with his palms.

  Anna went to the couch and sat in the corner closest to Zeyde. Portia collapsed on his lap, and tucked her head under his neck. At twelve she was still a snuggler, somehow both aware and unaware that her body was no longer a potbelly-centered ball of flesh. She had slimmed out, flattened in the middle, widened at the hips, and had outgrown her training bra of sixth grade, yet she still moved through the world like a child.

  Zeyde shifted Portia onto his left knee as he dug into his right front trouser pocket. He slipped a twenty-dollar bill into her hand and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Use it in good health,” he said, then he leaned over, shot a glance at Emery, who was sitting on a stool at the kitchen/family room counter, and, through a fake handshake, passed off a twenty to Anna. It was a gesture Portia later recognized in the Godfather movies, and even later, in Goodfellas and The Sopranos. Bubbe had set out a plate of Tastykakes and a glass of milk for each of the children. Tastykakes weren’t sold in California, so she loaded her suitcase with them each year, doling out butterscotch to Anna, chocolate to Portia, and whatever there was an excess of to Emery.

  Buzzy and Louise came in through the garage. They looked guilty, Buzzy with his black curly hair looking like broken springs, Louise with a dark fan of sweat under each arm of her magenta silk shirt. Portia guessed they had been wrangling the marijuana plants in Louise’s studio, roping them upside down like bodies hanging from their ankles. That was how the marijuana plants had been stored all the previous years—it was one of the many reasons the kids weren’t allowed to bring their friends near their mother’s studio.

  “Sarah,” Bubbe said to Louise, “they love the Tastykakes! You want to try one?”

  Bubbe was the only person Portia knew who called her mother Sarah. Sarah had been the name Louise had adopted when she converted from atheism to Judaism. There had been a three-year period of Shabbat dinners, Yiddish bandied about, and regular attendance of services at the Hillel temple while Buzzy was in law school and Anna was a baby. Buzzy often spoke of that time with a yearning. By the time they moved to Ann Arbor for Buzzy’s first job and Portia’s birth, Louise had abandoned “Sarah” but maintained the dinners and services, even sending Anna to Hebrew school. When Portia was five and Emery was born, the only remaining Jewishness in Louise was her frequent use of Yiddish, mostly to crack herself up and to baffle Anna, Portia, and Emery. Hers was an Orthodox conversion, however, indelible in the eyes of Jewish law, a one-way street, rendering her permanently Jewish whether she liked it or not and making her children indisputably Jews.

  “It’s Louise,” Louise snapped, “L-O-U-I-S-E.”

  “Yes, yes.” Bubbe was still smiling, clapping her hands together, pacing behind the three kids who were all at the counter now devouring Tastykakes. “Sarah, sweetheart, you want to try a butterscotch one?”

  Louise ignored her and walked into the kitchen where she began pulling out food, knives, and a cutting board to prepare dinner. Anna, who normally cooked dinner, didn’t know the laws of keeping kosher, so Louise was reinstated as the cook each year during Bubbe and Zeyde’s three-week visit.

  “Yetta,” Louise said to Bubbe, “I put your fleishig dishes over here and your milchig dishes here—” Louise pointed to two sets of plates, bowls and silverware stacked up on the counter—one set for dairy foods and one for meats. Zeyde was willing to abandon his kosher diet when he ate outside of his home, but Bubbe stuck to it like a zealot, each year trapping the kids’ friends in the kitchen and explaining to them what Kosher meant, and holding hostage the non-Jewish waitstaff of Santa Barbara when she placed her orders in restaurants, describing the reason for the tin foil she carried in her purse and handing it to them for use when cooking her food. Of course, she never divulged to them the reason for the plastic sandwich bags in her purse, which by the end of a restaurant meal were always filled with sugar packets, sweeteners, and salt and pepper shakers if Buzzy wasn’t paying close enough attention.

  “I’m making fish tonight and baked potatoes—”

  “Half a potato for me, dear,” Bubbe said, wandering into the kitchen and clapping her hands, “and you can use butter with fish—”

  “I know,” Louise said, “I know, I know.” Louise was a good student. Portia thought that there wasn’t anything about being Jewish that her mother didn’t seem to know.

  Bubbe hovered over Louise and watched her cook, clapping her spindly, bejeweled hands as the tunes she hummed reached a rousing chorus. At one point she started singing Beso Me Mucho, and Zeyde leapt up from his chair in the family room, shuffled into the kitchen, and sang harmony with her, one arm around her miniscule shoulder, his long dark head pressed against her little white head as they held the last note, both mouths open—his a cavernous, sunken cave; hers a bed of gold jewels among ivory stones. Louise leaned against the counter and stared at them as she tapped out an unfiltered Camel, lit it, and exhaled slowly, releasing a cloud that settled over Bubbe and Zeyde.

  While Louise prepared dinner under Bubbe’s supervision, the kids gathered around Zeyde in the family room. He had a quarter in his hand that he was tugging out of their ears, finding in their pockets, pulling out from between Emery’s near-black-with-dirt toes.

  “Do the math for us!” Emery said, jumping around Zeyde’s knees.

  “Not yet . . . not yet.” Zeyde brushed off his trouser leg where Emery’s little hands had been.

  “Can you do the math, Zeyde?” Portia asked, and he laughed and pulled her onto his knee.

  “Okay, sock it to me!” Zeyde said.

  “A hundred!” Emery shouted.

  “To the third power,” Anna added.

  “That’s a million!” Zeyde was nose forward to Anna, waiting for the next step.

  “Divided by six,” she said.

  “Got it!”

  “Times eleven point five,” Anna’s voice got higher the more complex the directions.

  “Got it!”

  “Divided by two . . .” Anna’s voice slowed when she was ready for the answer.

  “Nine hundred and fifty-eight!” Zeyde’s finger pointed upward as he gave the answer. Portia and Anna cheered. Emery went to the middle of the family room, stood on his head, and fluttered his feet in applause.

  When they challenged his answer, which was rare but had been known to happen, Zeyde told the kids to get their calculators. Anna and Portia each had a book-sized Texas Instrument calculator that they used in school, but by the time they brought them out to double-check, everyone had forgotten the sequence of the problem. Sometimes Anna would punch numbers in the calculator while she shouted instructions at Zeyde. He took a lot longer on those problems but, invariably, he got them right. The kids had seen his routines many times before—they were identical every yea
r, each feat punctuated with his signature laugh at the end—but they loved them nonetheless. There was something about the ritualization of them, the fact that these acts seemed honed just for them, that made them happily soak up his shtick.

  The house blissfully remained clean during Bubbe and Zeyde’s visit, as Bubbe, who didn’t like to go outside, spent most of the day wiping up after the family and doing laundry that she would sort and fold on the couch in front of the TV. She watched soap operas that everyone, including Zeyde, called her shows, as if she had actually produced or written them. Zeyde would watch with her, but unlike Bubbe he was willing to miss her shows to go to the beach or for a walk on State Street.

  One morning, as Portia was eating a bowl of Grape-Nuts at the counter, Bubbe came downstairs carrying a laundry basket filled with the family’s dirty clothes. Zeyde came out of the bathroom carrying a Playboy magazine that he waved in the air behind himself. Buzzy and Louise didn’t have magazines like that in the house, although Denise’s dad had stacks the height and width of a coffee table beside his orange chair in the living room. Zeyde settled on a stool beside Portia and slapped his magazine onto the counter, cover down. There was an aged scotch ad on the back with a woman who looked like she could have been in the magazine holding the bottle. Portia looked down at the ad, blushed, and turned away.

  Louise walked into the kitchen wearing a red chenille bathrobe. She poured a cup of coffee and before even taking a sip pulled a cigarette out of her robe pocket and lit it.

  “Want some coffee?” Louise asked Portia over the counter. Louise’s eyes were always puffy in the morning, little fleshy life preservers that sat like glasses on her face.

  “I don’t drink coffee,” Portia said.

  Zeyde laughed. “In Europe,” he said, lifting his pointer finger, “children often drink coffee!”

  “I’ve been trying to get her to drink coffee,” Louise said, “but she refuses.”

  “It’s yucky,” Portia said.

  “Then how ’bout a cigarette?” Louise tilted her pack toward Portia and winked to let her know she was kidding.

  “In Europe it’s very fashionable to smoke cigarettes,” Zeyde said. “But not at age eleven!”

  “I’m twelve now,” Portia said, and Louise grinned, popped a cigarette out of the pack, and tossed it across the counter, where it rolled into the side of the bowl of Grape-Nuts. Zeyde looked down at it but he didn’t even smile.

  Bubbe was at the couch sorting the colors from the whites. Emery came into the room wearing cotton pajamas with red dump trucks on them. His blond hair stood up in choppy little tufts. He went to the TV, turned on Sesame Street, and sat on the floor, cross-legged, his face only inches from the tiny black-and-white screen. Anna and Buzzy came into the kitchen. Buzzy didn’t drink coffee but Anna did on occasion, so she poured herself a cup and stood beside Louise, cigarette smoke snaking across her face.

  “Where are the Grape-Nuts?” Buzzy asked.

  “Ask her.” Louise pointed at Portia with the cup of coffee she was balancing in her cigarette hand.

  “Here,” Portia said, and she handed her father the small box.

  “Harry!” Bubbe shouted to Zeyde from the couch. “Look!” Bubbe came to the counter where they were gathered: Portia, Zeyde, and Buzzy on the family room side of the counter; Louise and Anna on the kitchen side.

  Bubbe was holding a pair of Portia’s pink floral underpants, the crotch turned out and pulled taut.

  “Look at this!” Bubbe said. She held the underpants under Zeyde’s face and pointed at the white streak across the center of the crotch.

  Portia hoped that she was really pointing at the weave of the cotton, the color of the flowers, the thick bands of pink elastic around the leg holes. If anyone asked whose underpants they were, she decided, she would tell them they were Denise’s—left here the last time she had slept over.

  Buzzy stopped pouring his Grape-Nuts and leaned his head over to see what Bubbe was fussing about. Anna darted her eyes between Portia and Bubbe, then landed her stare on Portia as if she had done something wrong.

  Portia wanted Anna to stop looking at her, indicting her. She turned toward her cereal, spooned in a mouthful, then swallowed barely chewed Grape-Nuts that scraped against her throat like fish-tank gravel. Zeyde slowly pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket, put them on, and stared down at Portia’s underpants.

  “Those are Portia’s underpants,” Anna said sharply.

  “So!” Portia’s head was instantly clogged with a scorching fuzziness. She couldn’t think clearly enough to deny the fact.

  “She has discharge!” Bubbe said to Zeyde. “Portia’s maturing now, God bless. She’s in puberty!”

  Louise laughed so hard she had to lean over the sink and spit out a mouthful of coffee. Portia felt as though she were a tiny, burning fire ant, hanging from the ceiling, watching her mother from afar.

  “What?” Buzzy said. “You have to examine the laundry before you wash it?! You gonna show him the shit stains in Emery’s underpants?!”

  “Yetta!” Zeyde said, removing his glasses. “You don’t need to look at her underpants to see that she’s in puberty. Look at her breasts!”

  Portia remained suspended on the ceiling. She could see her body sitting at the counter: motionless, blank-faced, skin flushed from an internal fire that beat away at the outward calm.

  “Yes, yes!” Bubbe leaned in and grabbed Portia’s cheeks with the underpants still clutched in one hand. She kissed Portia once, smack on the lips. “She’s been blessed with breasts that, God willing, will grow bountiful like her grandmother’s!”

  Louise was still laughing over the sink. She stood up straight and poured herself another cup of coffee. Anna’s mouth was a thin, stern line, a knife-cut across her face. She put down her cup, went to the laundry basket, and began digging. Portia assumed she was removing her own underwear in case there was something that might implicate her in the public puberty fiasco.

  When Anna left the room, her underpants secured in her fists, Portia dropped back into her smoldering body and casually followed her sister out, as if she happened to have just finished breakfast and needed to go upstairs for a shower. Her pose fooled no one; she could hear her father scolding his mother as she headed up the stairs.

  In her dream that night, Zeyde called Portia to snuggle with him on the chair in the family room. She went to him, as usual, and sat on his lap, her head tucked under his chin. Bubbe’s shows were on and she was talking to the characters: “Don’t listen to him, he’s meshuggener!”

  Portia looked down at her grandfather’s lap and saw a crispy, blackened, coiled sausage whose starting point was somewhere in his pants. His fly was open. As soon as she realized that it was his penis and not a sausage, it began to uncoil, like a snake, undulating its way toward her.

  Portia startled awake, horrified and nauseous.

  The next morning when Zeyde called Portia to sit with him, she plopped herself down on the corner of the couch nearest his chair.

  “I’m too old for a lap,” Portia mumbled, but he didn’t seem to hear and continued to pat his knees, beckoning her.

  “ZEYDE! I’m too old to sit on laps!”

  Her grandfather cocked his head to one side, like Ace, the bird. He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his glasses.

  “Sock it to me,” he said, punching his fist in a gung-ho arc.

  “Nine hundred divided by seven . . .” Portia started, but her mind was elsewhere—on the beach, with her friends—and she wasn’t following the answers as he gave them.

  The whole family filed into the station wagon to escort Bubbe and Zeyde back to the airport. Bubbe and Zeyde sat in the back seat with Anna in between them; Emery and Portia were loose in the way-back, tumbling into one another each time Buzzy took a turn too quickly. At the airport, Emery climbed the wall again and Anna and Portia limply waved their arms in the air as Bubbe and Zeyde ascended the steps to the sleek Pan Am jet. When they rea
ched the top of the stairs, Zeyde put one arm around Bubbe, lifted his hat, and waved it. They looked sadly off-color in the blaring Santa Barbara sun, like a Polaroid picture that would eventually fade into a ghostly fog.

  Chapter 7

  Day Five

  On the morning of Day Five the doctor comes to speak to the family. Everyone stands encircling Louise’s bed as in a Christ scene from an Italian painting.

  “She should never smoke again, right?” Anna asks. She is saying this only so her mother will hear the words from the doctor.

  “No,” the doctor says.

  “No?” they all say, except Louise, who has her eyes shut and is wincing with nausea.

  “I mean yes.” Then, as if to explain the mix-up, the doctor says, “I was dyslexic as a kid. I sometimes get things backwards.”

  Anna envisions him opening up the wrong side of her mother’s body to get to her heart, or sending a Roto-Rootering tube up the wrong artery and hitting her brain.

  “Just a minute ago, a funny thing happened,” the doctor says.

  Louise begins to retch a little. Anna motions to Emery, who is standing closest to her head, and points at the kidney-shaped dish that is used as a vomiting receptacle.

  “There was this ninety-year-old woman in, and she seemed malnourished—”

  Emery doesn’t seem to know where to put the dish, under Louise’s chin or near her shoulder, so he waves it around a bit. Anna is about to snap at him to put it near her mouth (dumbass!) but the retching stops, nothing has surfaced. Alejandro takes the dish from Emery and parks it near Louise’s mouth. Anna is glad he has better sense about these things than her brother. How hard was it to figure out where to place a barf-dish?

  “I took her to the nurse who was standing near the scale,” the doctor says. “And I said, ‘Nurse, this woman needs to get laid.’ ”

  Everyone laughs, except Louise, who vaguely smiles.