“Isn't he …,” said Lola. “Isn't he … wonderful? Can you hold him just for a sec while I run to the bathroom?”
“Of course, dear,” said Sissy.
Lola's mother—her single mother, Nan—had been in Austin for Louis's birth. Nan had been invited for the big day, the naming, the happy homecoming, back when all the baby clothes were clean and the nursery did not yet smell like sour milk and diapers. And then, just as Lola began to go bonkers and Emmett had started to resent Lola and all of it, Nan flew back to her tennis pro life in New York and who was left to call? Sissy, and she'd come to town like a loyal mutt hungry for leftovers.
Sissy held her grandson on the sagging front porch, keeping an eye on her suitcase. A girl in a tank top wandered by, holding a poodle on a red leash. A man on a strange bicycle pedaled past. A boy parked an old Ford Fairlane in front of Emmett and Lola's house, got out of the car, and put on sunglasses. The baby kept screaming. Sissy supposed she should do something.
“Oh, thank you,” said Lola, coming back outside, still clad in a nightgown over sweatpants. “Do you want me to get your suitcase?” said Lola. “Or. …”
“You take Louis,” said Sissy. “And it looks like you have a visitor.” She pointed to the boy in sunglasses.
“That's just a student,” said Lola. “UT's ten blocks south.”
“So people park right in front of your house?” asked Sissy. That this did not happen in Midland (or nice neighborhoods, for that matter) went without saying.
Lola held the baby to her collarbone, patting him a bit roughly. “They do,” she said.
“Mmm,” said Sissy. “Well, let me get my bag.” She lugged her own suitcase up the walkway and into the front door, which opened on a living room. It appeared that someone had taken a bag of diapers and baby toys and dumped the bag on the floor.
“I wanted to clean up …,” said Lola.
“No matter,” said Sissy gaily. Perhaps they would give Emmett a cleaning girl for Christmas.
Lola had affixed the baby to her nipple, whoa, so Sissy busied herself looking at the bookshelves, at the weird artwork, at the sole souvenir from her eldest son's wedding day: a snapshot of the happy couple holding glasses of champagne in a cheapie Las Vegas chapel. Sissy had hired a photographer for the celebration in Midland, but the professional photographs were nowhere to be seen. Sissy and Preston's home was filled with them, ensconced in silver and cowhide frames.
The baby was blessedly quiet as he nursed, and Lola turned her sleepy gaze on Sissy. Emmett had called his mother the week before and told her he was worried about his wife. Actually, what he had said was, “How would you feel about a spring trip to Austin, Mom?” But Sissy was no dope—she could read between the lines.
“I can't believe you did this twice,” said Lola.
Sissy smiled distantly. She knew Lola wanted to bond with her, and she wasn't interested. The way people talked nowadays, all about bonding and disrespecting—Sissy didn't mind watching low-class people on television talk about their problems, but she was having none of it. “Oh, well,” she said now.
“Didn't you think it was hard?” Lola persisted. The poor girl had always been insecure, a fact she tried to mask with beer and bravado. Sissy didn't know who Lola was trying to impress with her exhaustive antics: river rafting, veterinary school. This girl had derailed Emmett's promising career with BP so she could learn how to spay and neuter pets. Honestly! It was a lucky thing UT had an open position in the Geology Department.
Sissy supposed it was some sort of reaction to Lola's parents' messy divorce, or maybe it was something feminist. When she thought of her daughter-in-law, Sissy hoped Lola would try to enjoy life's quiet pleasures—a simmering sauce, the hush that falls over a house when well-tended children are asleep.
“Sissy?” said Lola, her voice wavering with the threat of tears.
“Well,” said Sissy, “I think I'll find my room and freshen up!” Leaving Lola anchored to the (unattractive) couch, Sissy wandered past the kitchen and into the back rooms. The nursery featured the beautiful maple crib she had sent from Graham Krackers in Midland, and another room held a futon bed piled high with dirty laundry. Sissy was adaptable—though oil had been discovered on her grandpa's ranch before she was born, she had not been spoiled, like some girls in town—so she filled her arms with laundry and called out, “Lola, where's the washing machine?”
There was a muffled response. Sissy said, “Sorry?”
“We don't have one!” Lola cried.
Well, well. It was not Sissy's place to judge. She dumped the clothes back where she had found them and shouldered her Coach purse. In the living room, Lola was holding her sleeping son and crying. “I'm so tired,” she said when Sissy approached.
“Where do you keep the car keys?” asked Sissy.
“And the dishwasher is broken,” sobbed Lola. She would come out of this, Sissy was certain. In the meantime, Sissy would employ her second-favorite motto: When in doubt, spend. (Her favorite motto was: Raise kids in Midland, raise hell in Dallas.) In a bowl on the kitchen counter, she found the keys to the Ford Escape they had given Lola and Emmett for their anniversary.
“Where are you going?” said Lola, as Sissy walked past her, heading outside and to the car, her heels clicking on the pavement.
At the Hancock Shopping Center, which Sissy found after driving around for a bit, she bought a washing machine, dryer, dishwasher, queen-size bed, and ice-cream maker. She bought towels, sheets, a set of knives, and a few adorable baby outfits. (Who knew Sears had baby clothes?) The appliance salesman gave her the phone number of Merry Maids, and Sissy booked an appointment for a full cleaning that afternoon. Emmett had taken a pay cut when he left BP, Sissy knew, but everyone deserved a washing machine. Sissy remembered something about Lola being interested in movies (this was before she found her calling with animals) so Sissy bought a DVD player and plasma-screen television as well. And a DVD of Giant. Then she went next door to the H-E-B grocery store and filled a cart with groceries, beer, and wine. What on earth had Lola's mother been doing during her visit?
By the time Sissy returned, Lola was asleep on the couch, Louis still as a stone on her chest. A Mexican soap opera blared from the crummy little television. On top of the television were rabbit ears! Sissy hadn't seen those in years. She put down her grocery bags and stepped slowly toward her grandson, just to make sure he was breathing. When she was a few inches away, Louis opened his eyes. He took her in, gazing at Sissy, staring straight at her, unblinking.
Sissy sank to the (dirty) floor, not breaking her eye contact with the baby. Soon, Lola would wake, and her neediness and her chatter would resume. Lola wanted to connect to Sissy, but Sissy had made peace with only having sons long ago. Unfortunately, the saying had turned out to be true: A daughter's a daughter all your life, a son's your son till he takes a wife. Emmett called her once a month, maybe, and Preston Junior, now engaged to a hostess at Bikini's Bar and Grill, never called at all.
Sissy remembered when she was Lola's age and Preston had just moved them all to Libya in the search for more oil. After three excruciatingly sober weeks in Brega, Preston had arrived home one evening with an idea and a booklet called The Blue Flame. “We're going to make liquor ourselves,” he said. “If I don't have a cocktail in the evening, I'm going to impale myself on Emmett's jambiya.” (Preston had bought his son the dagger at the old market, and it was Emmett's most prized possession.)
“I completely agree,” said Sissy. “How are we going to do it?”
Preston, his long, thin nose in a book as usual, held up his palm in a distracted gesture that meant shut up. Sissy was just getting used to his lack of attention. Where once she had felt a flare of anger when he ignored her, now she felt a quiet resignation.
“Sorry,” she said, and went to see about the boys.
By the time Sissy was thirty-two, she had two children. Emmett, four, went to the Exxon Preschool and loved playing kickball and hanging around the
pool snack bar, angling for Popsicles. He was a cunning child, constantly thinking of ways to get more sugar and attention. When Preston snapped at him—or who was Sissy kidding: when Preston yelled at him, even striking him on occasion—Emmett seemed to zone out, as if he were elsewhere. If only, thought Sissy. It seemed a neat trick.
Preston Junior, only one, wanted to eat sand. Sissy could not rest for a minute. There was sand outside the door of their prefab house—the streets were made of sand. What did Sissy expect, Preston had said, they were in the darn desert. He had alluded to travel in their courting, but Sissy had thought he meant a hotel room in Venice, overlooking the canal. Even the golf course in Brega was made of oiled sand and a roll of Astroturf, which you laid out and wandered along, gamely tapping your ball toward the flag. Oil and sand. And Astroturf.
Sissy played with the boys for a while, helping them stack blocks while Emmett said, “And that one's the cave entrance and that one's for prisoners,” his voice escalating in volume. The baby strutted around, his belly stuck out, shrieking.
“What's all the racket?” demanded Preston, appearing at the door of the boys' room, wearing his beleaguered expression, holding The Blue Flame in his hand.
“The children are playing,” said Sissy.
Preston shook his head. “Okay,” he said, “we need yeast and sugar. I'm going to make a still.”
“Will this experiment result in a glass of chilled chardonnay?” asked Sissy.
“Fat chance,” said Preston. “We're making flash, but it'll take the edge off.”
Though Sissy agreed they could use a way to take the edge off, she resented his implication that their lives were so awful. Didn't he have what he wanted? He had married into an oil fortune, earned a nice engineering position, sired two healthy boys, and Sissy was a good homemaker besides. She hated the words “fat chance.” They made her think of a chubby boy with glasses, crying in an elementary school gymnasium.
“How about a cool gin and tonic?” said Sissy.
“I'll do what I can,” said Preston. He came closer, and surprised her by kissing her hair.
What Preston could do, it seemed, was add yeast to sugar water in a bucket, then leave the bucket to fester—or “ferment,” as he called it—in their garage for a month. Then he added more water, and began to assemble a still.
The Blue Flame showed three different types of home stills: the Home Pot Still, the Reflux or Fractional Distillation Still, and the Sneaky Home Still, which could be stored in a dresser drawer. As Preston was an engineer by trade, and liked to make everything as difficult as possible, he chose the Fractional Distillation Still. The boys watched, rapt, as he worked with copper tubing, thermometers, glass marbles, water flow valves, and all of the stainless steel wool he'd asked a colleague to pick up during a visit stateside. He explained to Sissy that once they had the flash, they could flavor it any which way and, with a little imagination, have a full bar to offer their guests.
What guests? Sissy didn't ask. She wasn't very friendly with the other wives, it was true. Sissy liked to read murder mysteries, but motherhood had made this—her favorite pastime—nearly impossible. So she sat at the Exxon pool, trying to be happy that Emmett had friends, trying to believe that Preston Junior's shouting did not portend a loudmouth buffoon. When Emmett was invited for a play date, Sissy idled uncomfortably in the Kaysens' entrance hallway, Preston Junior on her hip, unsure whether she was supposed to stay or go. The world of expat mothers was so confusing! In Midland, she would have known what was expected of her: cookies and some juicy gossip.
After ten minutes of awkward conversation with Brigit Kaysen, no offer of drink or cookies was forthcoming, so Sissy airily alluded to a busy afternoon and left, peeking through the hedges for a last glimpse of her eldest son, who did not seem to notice her departure.
Even the baby seemed sick of her, trying to escape at the community grocery store while she placed an order for a beef fillet. (“I will call you when the beef arrives,” the butcher told her. “It will be sometime in the future,” he added.) When she sat down on the floor with the baby, recognizing as she had not with Emmett the limited amount of time “peekaboo” would delight a child, he wanted only to waddle away from her, into the living room, where he would upend his father's collection of Yemeni artifacts or poke his finger into an electric socket.
Preston had almost finished the still when one of his trucks broke down and he had to go to Agedabia for some parts. They had been in Brega for four months now, but Preston had not learned a word of Arabic. Well, okay, he had learned two words: salaam alaykum, which meant “hello.” But repeating “hello” wasn't going to get Preston a good price on a muffler, so he needed to bring a translator. During Ramadan, Preston's translator could only travel at night, so they headed off as the sun set, unlikely cohorts on a road trip.
It was the first night Sissy had been alone since they arrived (via Europe—she had seen the inside of the Freiburg airport; apparently that was as close to glamour as she was going to get), so Sissy took out her cigarettes before Preston's taillights had disappeared from view. Her boys knew their father abhorred cigarettes—well, Emmett knew—but they would keep her little secret.
She gave them a bath, feeling tranquil as they splashed with frenetic joy and she smoked. Sometimes it was easier just not to have Preston around. He came home all worked up and grouchy and she had to appease him and deal with the boys. Not only did he not know how to change a diaper, he didn't even want to hear about dirty diapers or bottles or any bodily function. She had to be flirty and fascinated by his deadly-boring stories of plant calamities, and she had to keep the boys sweet and powder-scented. With him gone, she could let them run wild. She could join them, making goofy faces, singing songs, pretending a cottage cheese container filled with bathwater was a banana split. Or she could ignore them and read The Murder at the Vicarage.
In the bath, Emmett made up elaborate adventures, moving his plastic figures through the air, saying, “Aaaah! Don't worry, I'll save you!” He was lean like his father, his skin the color of uncooked chicken. The baby's dimpled bottom was pink and solid when he stood up, shouting, pounding the water with his fists.
Sissy could still feel the slow burn in her throat, still hear Preston Junior's happy sounds, though she had not had a cigarette in twenty years and Preston Junior was grown now, with a goatee and a smirk.
That night in Brega, after the boys were asleep, Sissy walked into the kitchen with a lit cigarette and rummaged in the refrigerator for soda water. When she stood, inches from the stove, she saw the Fractional Distillation Still bubbling away on the front burner. “Christ!” she yelled, throwing the cigarette into the sink and dousing it with water. A family from Houston had blown up their house the month before, trying to make booze. Sissy had seen the young daughter at the pool, her arms and legs in bandages, her skull bare where her hair had been burned off. The parents were still in the hospital, Sissy learned, and the girl was tended to by a grandmother, who fed the girl ice cream from a plastic spoon.
In the kitchen, Sissy put her hand to her chest. A slide show of horrific images played before her eyes: the explosion, ambulances, her beloved boys burned and in pain, or worse (losing either child was simply unimaginable). She took the wet cigarette and hid it in the trash can, underneath coffee grounds. Then she went and stared at Emmett and Preston, wondering how she had been so blessed.
• • •
Baby Louis began to cry, and Lola struggled to wake. Sissy picked up her grandson, remembering to support his wobbly head. “Go back to sleep,” she told Lola, who stood and shuffled toward her bedroom. But she couldn't stay quiet for long, of course, Emmett's Lola. “I'm exhausted,” she said.
“Oh, sweetheart,” said Sissy, almost touching Lola's sweaty hair but refraining. How could she explain the joy of that evening while Preston was away, the contentment she had felt sitting on the toilet seat, lighting one cigarette from another, oblivious? It hadn't mattered that they we
re in Libya. It could have been anywhere, this perfect bubble of contentment. Lola wouldn't understand that although Sissy had never passionately loved her husband, traveled to Venice, or gone river rafting, Sissy could hold the memory of that Brega evening like a secret diamond. Two naked boys in a bathtub—that, in the end, was everything.
“Will it always be so hard?” asked Lola. Louis and Lola were looking at her now, and Sissy felt an unfamiliar thrill.
“Go to sleep,” said Sissy. “I'm here.”
Grandpa Fred in Love
He had met her online, my father told me. Her name was Beverly. “This time it's different,” said my father. He was perspiring a bit, standing on the doorstep of my Austin, Texas, house.
“I'm happy,” I said, “I'm so happy for you.” Behind my father, a crew of illegal immigrants was unloading chain saws and ladders, about to go to work on my neighbor's tree. It was sick, my neighbor had told me, and so it had to go.
In his tight ROTC shirt and surf shorts, my neighbor's son, Bam, watched an immigrant scale the enormous pecan, gripping the trunk with his thighs. Bam wanted to graduate from high school and battle the insurgents. He and the immigrant were wearing the same wraparound sunglasses.
“Yeah,” my father said, “it's amazing.” He threw his hands open, then clasped them together. He rubbed his palms against each other like he was trying to warm them, though it was already unbearably hot and muggy. “How about a cup of joe for your old man?”
“Oh,” I said, “I'm just … I have to take Louis off to school. I'm sorry.” A bit late, my dog, Daisy, barked at my father twice, then wandered back into the living room.
“Wow,” he said, “Miss Off to School.” The steely meanness in his voice confirmed that he was drunk.
“Where did you find, urn,” I said. “Do you have a computer?”
My dad smiled condescendingly. “I have a computer,” he said. He wore a Brooks Brothers suit, but it was wrinkled and smelled bad.
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