“But is it a pickle?” Buzzy says.
“Dad,” Anna says, “didn’t you listen to the opening song? He’s a cucumber who lives in a cantaloupe in a saltwater pond.”
“Who wants purple plums?” Buzzy asks, and he gets up and goes into the kitchen.
“Do you ever wonder how Mom can take it day in and day out?” Anna whispers. She’s facing the TV. Emery isn’t sure whom she’s speaking to.
“Take what?” Portia asks.
“Dad!” Anna says, louder but still whispering. “His curiosity is endless—like three-year-olds when they go through that why phase: But why? Because. Because why? Because I said so. But why are you saying so? I mean, I fucking wanted to put Blue up for adoption when he started doing this.” Blue is Anna’s son; Emery now thinks of him as the cousin of his yet-to-be-conceived child.
“Buzzy’s funny,” Alejandro says. Emery is glad that Alejandro isn’t intolerant of questions. He thinks it will be fun answering endless questions from some curious kid.
Buzzy returns with a bowl of purple plums soaking in syrupy juice. “Does anyone want some purple plums?” he asks.
“Dad,” Anna says. “You’ve been offering us canned purple plums since we were born, and no one has ever wanted them. You are the only one who eats purple plums.”
“I’ll have some purple plums,” Alejandro says, and he gets up and goes into the kitchen for a bowl. Emery wants to call him back and tell him to sit so he can ask the question, but he does nothing. By the time Alejandro returns the show is back on.
Emery can’t concentrate on what he’s watching. Instead, he is gathering the courage to ask his sisters to risk their lives (very small chance, the doctor said), mess up their equilibrium (guaranteed), abstain from sex (might not be too hard for Portia—who’s she going to fuck, anyway?), cut out vigorous exercise (ditto Portia), stop drinking and smoking (ditto ditto Portia encore), so that he can have a baby that is biologically related to him. By the time the next commercial is on, Emery has decided that merging this question with these two women could be like steering a cruise ship into an iceberg. Maybe it would be safer to ask in the morning, in daylight, when everyone’s still dopey with sleep.
“So he’s under the water?” Buzzy asks.
“He lives in a cantaloupe deep in a pond,” Anna says. “He’s in a pond.”
“Ooooh,” Buzzy says, “so a moment ago when he was up in that alternate universe, that wasn’t an alternate universe at all, that was land above the pond, right?”
“Well, yeah,” Emery says. “What’d you think it was?” Emery wants to laugh but doesn’t. He senses his sister’s impatience and doesn’t want to gang up on Buzzy.
“I thought he was in heaven or something, because the colors were so bright.”
“But Dad,” Anna says, “how could you have missed the opening theme song? You were sitting right here. He lives in a cantaloupe deep in a pond.” She actually seems pissed. Downright angry.
“Why does he live in a cantaloupe?” Buzzy asks. “Is it a metaphor for something?” Now Emery laughs.
“Do you think they make mute buttons for people?” Anna asks. “You could put it on the remote control and mute either the TV or the people sitting near the TV.”
“Maybe he feels safe in a cantaloupe,” Portia says. “Protection from the murky pond.” She’s laughing, too.
“This dog is so fat she looks like she’s pregnant,” Alejandro says, peering down at Gumba. Emery gives him the shut-up head nod, but Alejandro won’t look up and acknowledge it.
“She looks fine,” Emery says. Maybe he should ask now and get it over with. What’s the difference between tonight and tomorrow morning?
“Did anyone feed these pregnant-looking dogs?” Alejandro asks. He’s rubbing both dogs’ bellies with his bare feet.
“I still don’t understand the cantaloupe,” Buzzy says.
“The cantaloupe’s his house,” Emery says. Just ask for the eggs now, he thinks. No, don’t. Do. Don’t. Do. Do it. Say it. Quick.
“Most people feel safe in their house,” Portia says. “Although I was a little spooked in this house when I first got here.”
“Somebody’s gotta feed the dogs,” Buzzy says. “They never eat this late.”
“So why don’t you feed them, Dad,” Anna says. Emery thinks she’s still pissed about the Pickle Man-Boy questions. It definitely wouldn’t be good to ask Anna while she’s angry.
“I’m watching Pickled Man,” Buzzy says.
“Pickle Man-Boy!” Anna says.
“I like Pickled Man better,” Portia says.
“I’m never feeding these dogs,” Anna says. “They’re obese.”
“Yeah,” Alejandro says. “They look like they’re having babies!” He glares at Emery.
“I’ll feed them when Pickle Man-Boy is over.” Emery refuses to meet Alejandro’s eyes. “It won’t kill them to wait.” It won’t kill him to wait, either. Besides, Alejandro’s pissing him off now, so there’s no way he’s going to ask tonight. Maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow will probably be a better day for things like shots, hormones, eggs.
“Your mother would die if she knew the animals weren’t fed in time,” Buzzy says.
“She’d die if she knew you were making fun of Maggie Bucks all the time,” Anna says to Portia. She’s smiling as she says this; everyone knows that Anna laughs the hardest when Portia makes fun of Maggie Bucks. Anna claims she hates all their mother’s animals.
“She’d die if she knew that you were using one of the antique quilts on the couch,” Portia says to Anna. Emery agrees. He thinks his sister is pretty nervy, taking the delicate antique quilt Louise was planning to hang somewhere instead of using one of the many comforters that are folded and heaped in the linen closet.
“She’d die if she knew that Little Carl White barfed on the stairs,” Emery says.
“What d’you mean?” Buzzy asks. “She doesn’t care about the carpet on the stairs.”
“No,” Emery says, “she wouldn’t die because of the carpet, she’d die because she’d be so upset that Little Carl White had actually barfed.” Emery feels bad for Little Carl White—he thinks LCW is a sweet, neurotically shy cat who needs to be pitied.
“She barfed?” Buzzy asks.
“I cleaned it up!” Anna says. “And I’m not cleaning up anymore! I’m sick of fucking cleaning up after this family!” Emery guesses by her smile that she’s no longer angry and is now pretending to be angry because she knows that’s what the family expects of her. So maybe he should ask now.
But the show is back on.
At the next commercial Portia asks Buzzy about Little Carl White. She claims she has only seen the cat as a streak, a shadow, something that flashes past when she goes up or down the stairs. Emery’s had more contact with her, but he agrees that catching sight of her is sort of like seeing a mouse or a cockroach when you step into your kitchen in the middle of the night. Turn on the light, and surprise!
“So is he a boy or a girl?” Portia says.
“He’s fucking Pickle Man-Boy!” Anna says. “Man-Boy! Boy! Boy!”
“No! Little Carl White. Dad called him a she. Relax. Freak,” Portia says.
“Yeah, he’s a she. He’s a girl. She’s a girl,” Buzzy says.
“Little Carl White is a girl?” Alejandro starts laughing.
“Louise named him after some man she met at a party. He was playing guitar or something and she hated him.”
“So she named the fucking cat after him?” Anna asks. Emery thinks it’s interesting that his sister, who named her son Blue, would criticize anyone for what they’ve named their animals.
“Was the man’s name Little Carl White?” Emery asks. Something about Little Carl White makes Emery crave a joint. For a second he wishes his mother still smoked pot so he could find a roach to kill.
“No, his name was Carl White. And then Louise got the cat and she was little so she named her Little Carl White.”
Emery watches
Alejandro crack up. People in Alejandro’s family don’t name animals after people they dislike. They don’t have animals as pets. His mother doesn’t speak English and likes to talk to him about food. Alejandro told Emery that he will never tell his mother he’s gay because he fears the grief might kill her. He did tell his brother and two sisters, however. They have never brought it up since and never ask about Emery. Emery thinks Alejandro’s siblings look at gayness as some embarrassing disease you can catch from being careless or from drinking too much at a naked swim party. Emery is not pushing Alejandro about telling his siblings about the baby. He figures Alejandro will deal with that when the baby is actually here.
“Has anyone called Otto and Billie?” Anna asks.
“Your mother insists that I don’t tell them.” Buzzy shifts in his seat and reaches for the bowl of walnuts in shells on the coffee table. Emery looks at the nuts and thinks that he has never been home and not had nuts within arm’s reach.
“What about Bubbe and Zeyde?” Portia asks.
“Absolutely not,” Buzzy says. “They’d want to come out here.”
“Can you imagine Portia trying to cook kosher?” Anna laughs.
“Shhh!” Emery shushes with his finger in front of his mouth as if he is blowing out a flame on the tip of his nail.
The show is on again.
Chapter 10
1981
When Anna was applying to colleges, Buzzy was happy to go through the process with her. In fact, after he and Anna ran into a father-daughter team at a USC open house and the father, whom Buzzy had met professionally before, claimed that his daughter would probably get into every place she applied and would simply have to pick a school in the end, Buzzy became competitive about it.
“If that asshole can get his kid into a good school, then Anna’s going to go to an even better school!” Buzzy had told the family at dinner that night. Portia felt relieved to know that she’d have Buzzy on her side when it came time for her to apply.
After Anna was accepted to Bennington College in Vermont (her first pick), Louise took her shopping at Robinsons, where they bought wool plaid skirts, cardigan sweaters, and a navy blue wool peacoat. Anna put on one of her new outfits for her flight to school. Portia thought her sister looked like she was playing the role of an East Coast private school girl in some high school production.
That Christmas, Anna came home thirty pounds heavier and with razor-chopped hair. She had traded her plaid skirts with a cross-dressing Asian boy for tickets to a David Bowie concert in New York. Her preppy sweaters had been cut into parts—the sleeves sewn into fingerless gloves by her Italian roommate, Giovanna, and the bodies resewn to make tiny miniskirts that Anna wore until she could no longer fit them.
When she was alone with Louise one day, Portia told her mother that she thought Anna looked like a thrift store hooker. Louise cracked up. And for the next few days she snickered every time Anna walked in the room. Portia hoped her sister didn’t know why her mother was behaving like this.
Three years later, Buzzy had lost his competitive interest in college. Portia mentioned application dates to her dad several times in the fall and he brushed her away each time, saying, “It will work out, don’t worry about it.” Finally, Portia forced the conversation at dinner one night.
“Dad,” she put down her fork and leaned toward Buzzy. “You need to help me find a college.”
“Sweetheart”—Buzzy had a wad of mashed potatoes in his mouth—“why don’t you go to junior college for a couple years, figure out what you want to do, and then go away to college if you’re up for it.”
“Yeah, okay,” Portia said, realizing she would never get Buzzy interested in her college application process. Secretly, she phoned for the application to the University of California, Berkeley. They had driven through Berkeley on a family road trip to San Francisco once and Portia had found what she saw through the car window fascinating: hordes of people who looked like they rarely bathed, coffee drinkers, clove cigarette smokers, readers.
Portia sent in the application without telling her family, friends, or boyfriend (of her two best friends, one thought she’d be joining her at the junior college and the other was going off to the East Coast because her mother, who filled out the applications for her, didn’t apply to any West Coast schools). The only people who knew of Portia’s plans were the three teachers who wrote her letters of recommendation. One was a philosophy teacher, an odd robotic man named Mr. Vasquez, whose lectures Portia found so interesting that she easily soaked them in and spat them back up in their entirety on every test. The other was the Health & Sexuality and English teacher, Mr. Gates, who showed the class how to use condoms by rolling one onto a banana (he later ate the banana). He also taught Carlos Castaneda and, by extension, everything anyone needed to know about peyote buttons. And the third recommendation came from Portia’s French teacher, Madame Dick, whose very name was the source of endless jokes, and whose sheer blouses managed to spotlight her magnificently cantilevered breasts. She was probably in her thirties, looked like she was in her twenties, was as skinny as a paper doll, and liked the prettiest girls best (Portia was not in that group) and those who received straight A’s in her class second (Portia’s group).
Around the time that she would be hearing from Berkeley, Portia confessed at the dinner table that she had applied.
“You applied to Berkeley?” Buzzy asked.
“Good for you!” Louise said, and she ladled out more lentil soup into her ceramic bowl. Buzzy had bought a kiln and was glazing and firing all his clay works; item by item, the painted blue china was being replaced with brown, gray, and beige ridged pottery. The soup bowl set was complete, however, and for that reason Buzzy frequently requested soup. Also, once Anna had left for school, Louise became the cook again and she often made soup whether Buzzy requested it or not, as she could prepare it in the morning and let it simmer all day while she was in her studio or at the nude beach.
“Sweetheart,” Buzzy said, and he laid his big hand on Portia’s, “you’ll never get in. It’s a very competitive school.” Because she was the least competitive child in the family, Portia was often taken as the least intelligent. Anna let all her feats be known and insisted that everyone witness her every achievement. Emery, who was known to be the smartest, was watched by everyone above him. But Portia was like wallpaper—it was easy to forget she was in the room. Easy not to see her.
“I know I won’t get in,” Portia said, although she didn’t know. She didn’t know anything about the place other than that there were a lot of interesting-looking people walking the streets and few of them appeared to be over the age of thirty. Her stomach felt rocky; she was embarrassed by how foolish she had been. She couldn’t eat any more soup.
“How do you know she won’t get in?!” Louise asked. Then she turned to her daughter and said, “Don’t listen to your father. He’s an asshole.”
Emery’s eyes went large as he ticked his head from side to side, following the conversation.
“She’s a beach bunny!” Buzzy said. “She’s not an academic!”
Buzzy was right. Portia had spent her high school years as what her parents called a beach bunny and what the kids at school called a surfer chick. She was the color of a nutshell. Her hair had streaks of gold in it. She and her friends dated only surfers, and she had a hardened layer of beach tar on the bottom of her feet like a surgically attached shoe sole. But she hadn’t blown off school. It hadn’t occurred to her that she could blow off school. Indeed, Portia did her work in a haphazard way—writing papers the morning they were due and finishing homework during lectures. But she turned everything in on time, received A’s and B’s, and didn’t seem to get penalized for things like writing an essay on a ripped-flat brown grocery bag when she was at the beach and couldn’t find any lined white paper in her boyfriend’s truck or anyone else’s car. Buzzy and Louise never asked for her report cards, so she never even thought to show them to them. Although, once, whe
n Portia got straight A’s, not even an A-minus, she stuck the report card on the refrigerator. The refrigerator was littered with scraps of paper, business cards, photographs, postcards. Portia’s report card remained uncovered for about three minutes; Louise came home from the grocery store immediately after Portia had gotten home from school, pulled out a postcard that she had bought, and said, “Look at this!”
She picked up the magnet that held her daughter’s report card, put the postcard on top of it, and replaced the magnet.
“This house is clean enough to be healthy and messy enough to be happy,” Portia read off the card.
Louise laughed, “That’s us, all right!”
“I’m not sure it’s clean enough to be healthy,” Portia said. “I mean, there’s animal poop all over the back of the family room couch.”
“Bird shit?” Louise had said, and she started unloading groceries. “Bird shit is sterile. The dumb thing only eats seeds—what could be unhealthy about shit from pure seeds?”
Louise seemed to have faith in Portia’s intelligence, in spite of her complete disinterest in her education. She paused while ladling more soup into Buzzy’s bowl and said, “Well, just ’cause she’s a beach bunny doesn’t mean she’s not smart!”
“She doesn’t even know who Agnew is!” Buzzy was referring to the dinner conversation the night before when Buzzy had compared someone in his firm to Spiro Agnew. It was the Spiro part that had tripped Portia up. She did know who Agnew was, as years earlier Louise had clipped out every New York Times article about Watergate and shellacked them on the downstairs bathroom walls. After several months, each wall was covered, the empty patches filled in with articles about Mark Spitz when he won seven gold medals and the Japanese playing baseball. Anna, Portia, and Emery had the headlines memorized.
“ ‘Agnew Quits Vice Presidency,’ ” Portia recited over her soup. “ ‘And Admits Tax Evasion in ’67. Nixon Consults on Successor.’ ”
Drinking Closer to Home Page 12
