Buzzy and Emery were both wearing blazers—Buzzy’s was navy blue and Emery’s was sky blue—because, as Buzzy told Emery, one should never board an airplane without looking respectable. The family was standing outside the white rental car at the Burlington, Vermont, airport. It was four in the afternoon, almost ninety degrees, and they were going to drive to Fulton Ranch to visit Billie and Otto.
“Take your blazer off and fold it over the seat like this,” Buzzy said, and he draped his blazer over the velvety console behind the back seat. Emery leaned into the open car door, did as he was told, then paused and stared at the two blazers, big and small. He liked getting dressed up. He enjoyed feeling like he was a grown up, maybe even important. Anna was standing outside the car waiting for Emery to sit down. He would be in the middle, as he always was; Portia and Anna both refused to sit in the middle seat.
“Get in!” Anna said, and she pushed Emery lightly on the shoulder.
“How long will it take to get there?” Emery asked. Buzzy was adjusting his seat, fixing the mirrors, looking for the blinker and lights.
“Not long.” Louise began rummaging through her shoulder sack; she was probably looking for cigarettes. She, and about a hundred other people, had made full use of the smoking section on the Pam Am flight. Anna, Portia, and Emery were the only children in the smoking section and, other than Buzzy, the only people who weren’t smoking. Emery’s lungs felt like they’d been roughed up with a nail file and his throat felt like it was wrapped in sandpaper.
“How long’s not long?” Portia asked.
“As long as a piece of string.” Louise lit her cigarette from the car lighter, then rolled down her window as Buzzy pulled out of the rental car lot.
Emery looked out the window and wished the people in his family could give a straight answer every now and then. He decided to try a new angle. “How many miles away is it?” he asked.
“Around seventy,” Buzzy said.
“Back roads or freeway?”
“Half and half.”
Emery guessed they’d be there in ninety minutes. He couldn’t wait to see if he had figured correctly.
About an hour into the ride Louise asked Buzzy to pull over so she could pee. Emery looked at his watch so he could deduct the minutes from his estimated travel time.
“Go far off into the bushes, Mom,” Anna said. “Make sure no one can see you.”
Emery was certain that no one peed as often as his mother. Louise had peed at the airport in Los Angeles before they took off, peed on the plane, peed at the airport in Burlington. And now, only an hour away from the last toilet, she had to pee again. Emery thought maybe his mother’s bladder was damaged from having had kids. Or venereal disease. A few years ago, when Portia fell asleep reading to him, Emery corralled Anna into telling him a story until he fell asleep. Anna had refused to read Portia’s book, but stood next to Emery’s bed and told him the story of syphilis: its symptoms, how it spreads, and the very real possibility that their parents would eventually die from it. The supposed pending death didn’t worry Emery; other than his parents’ outlaw behavior, he had never noticed insanity in either one of them, and insanity, according to Anna, was the final stage of the disease.
“Don’t worry,” Louise said, “no one will know I’m peeing.”
Louise stepped out of the car, her burning cigarette in hand. She stood no more than arm’s distance from Portia’s open window, lifted her gauzy skirt to her knees, and, with her legs stepped out into second position, she simply peed. It suddenly occurred to Emery that this might be the reason his mother often wore skirts and dresses.
Buzzy laughed and clapped his hands. Anna lifted her hand over her eyes as if she were shielding them from the sun, turned, and looked away out her window. Portia laughed along with her dad as she leaned out the window and watched. Emery crawled over his sister’s lap and looked out the window, too. The stream of urine trailed toward the car, then separated into two streams as it hit the front tire.
“Mom!” he yelled. “That’s probably against the law!” Emery had three chronic fears: 1. The law and what it would do to his family if they were caught for any of their numerous infractions. 2. His sisters’ moving out, running away, marrying early, or otherwise leaving him alone to fend for himself (wake himself up in the morning, pack his own lunch, etc.). 3. Not being the best and smartest kid in school. His father was convinced he was a genius and so far he seemed to be able to perform to the level expected of him. But what if he really weren’t that smart? What if his school happened to be the easy school, and what if they moved and he was suddenly in the smart school and what if, then, everyone found out that he was only average?
“Don’t worry, Noble Citizen!” Louise said, laughing. “We’re in Vermont! There’s only one cop in the state and he’s your second cousin Randy, so we’ll be fine.”
Louise wiggled her hips a little, as if she were trying to drip-dry, then let her skirt drop. She lifted her cigarette to her mouth and got back in the car.
“How do you know my second cousin Randy won’t arrest you?” Emery asked. Surely Randy had taken some kind of oath that would require him to stop any lawbreaker even if she were his cousin.
“Because I know everything.”
Anna rolled her eyes.
“If you know everything, then tell me what’s going to happen in the future,” Portia said. Emery thought that was a pretty good question.
“For one,” Louise turned in her seat to look at Portia, “your brother will outgrow this fucking pain-in-the-ass upstanding citizen phase he’s in!”
“Don’t say the F-word and don’t say A-S-S!” Emery knew you couldn’t be arrested for swearing. But swearing seemed like a Slip ’n Slide to him. One step on that slick platform and you couldn’t stop yourself from swooshing to the bone-breaking end.
“Ass!” Portia and Anna both said, then Anna leaned across Emery and tapped Portia’s knee to jinx her.
“Mom!” Emery said. He knew there was no one in the family who would help him bring the swearing under control, but sometimes his mother would take pity on him and spoil him in a way that she never spoiled the girls. Like when she’d make him cocoa and toast for a snack (his favorite), even though she wouldn’t pour a glass of water for his sisters or Buzzy.
“They’re just words, Emery! Besides, sometimes you have to say ass and fuck to get your point across. Sometimes people won’t listen to you unless you use those words,” Louise said.
“Fuck yeah,” Anna said.
“Listen to your fucking mother!” Buzzy said, in the screechy voice he used only when he was teasing the kids.
Anna, Louise, and Portia laughed and hooted. Emery crossed his arms and dropped his head, pretending not to look at them. There was no chance of winning against the force of all four.
“Oh, read your book!” Louise pulled James and the Giant Peach out of her sack-purse and tossed it over the back seat toward Emery. Then she stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray, reached for the radio dial, and cranked up the volume.
The last time the family had seen Louise’s parents was five years earlier, when Emery was four and Buzzy and Louise had taken the kids on a tour of the East Coast from Maine to Rhode Island. When Emery had asked his mother why Billie and Otto never came to California, Louise said, “Otto thinks there are too many weirdos and freaks in California and Billie does what Otto wants just to make him happy.” Emery thought that one day he’d like a wife who did what he wanted just to make him happy.
The rental car turned onto the long drive that led to the house. Emery closed his book and read the double-posted sign aloud: “Fulton Ranch. Private Property. Trespassers will be shot.” Emery gasped. He didn’t remember the sign from the last visit. Were they trespassing, he wondered? Or was it not trespassing when you were related to the person who posted the sign?
“Do they know we’re coming?” Emery asked. “Otto won’t shoot us, will he?”
Louise lit up another cigarette. “Not if you stay out of his way.”
No one spoke during the ten minutes it took to drive from the trespassing sign to the shingled house overlooking the lake. Buzzy pulled the plain, dull car up behind Otto’s convertible sports car. When he cranked up the emergency brake Emery checked his watch. He was thrilled that he’d correctly guessed how long it would take to get there, but knew better than to announce this feat for fear of being teased about his wonkish attraction to schedules, timing, promptness.
“Porsche,” Buzzy said, aloud.
“What?” Portia said.
“No, the car,” Buzzy said. “Otto’s got a Porsche.”
“He’s always had a Porsche,” Louise said, opening the door. “You know that.”
“Not when you were a baby. That convertible couldn’t have been a Porsche, they weren’t making them then.”
“Tell that story again!” Portia said.
“Yeah, tell it again!” Emery said, although his mother had never told it to him. Portia had told him one night, lying cozy in his bed, her voice slurring as she tried not to drift off to sleep.
“You guys are so rude!” Anna said. “How could you even bring that up right before we visit Otto and Billie?”
Louise appeared not to hear. She pushed her glowing cigarette into the ashtray, then stepped out of the car.
“Mom doesn’t have to tell it!” Emery said. “Portia will tell it!”
He was referring to the story of Louise’s infancy. When Louise was three months old, Otto and Billie drove thirty minutes out of town for a drink at a tavern owned by Otto’s cousin. Otto didn’t want his mother to watch baby Louise; he thought she spoiled her by holding her continually and coddling her when she cried. So, they tucked the baby into a basket that was placed on the opera seat of Otto’s convertible. The top was down, as usual, even though it was early spring and only about forty degrees outside. Louise’s parents went into the tavern, leaving baby Louise asleep in her basket, bundled like a worm in a cocoon. After many drinks, Otto and Billie seemed to forget that they had a baby, but they did remember that they were fairly far from home. They checked into one of the rooms upstairs, had what Otto called a rollicking good time, and passed out. In the morning, Billie woke up, looked out at the snow falling like miniature fairies outside the window, and suddenly remembered her child. She ran, barefooted and without a coat, to the car where she found Louise purple and frosted, like a sugarcoated plum.
Otto came out, dressed and carrying his wife’s extra clothes, which Billie put on in the car while they raced to the hospital. Of course Otto didn’t tell the hospital that they’d simply forgotten about the child—he claimed she’d been left by an open, screenless window where the snow blew in.
It was assumed that Louise would die from her night in the snow, making her a perfect test case for penicillin (It’s hard to further harm the imminently fading, one nurse had said). Penicillin was then a new drug that the government was stockpiling in case Americans were sent to the war overseas. The doctor claimed that Louise was one of the first humans, and the first infant, to receive it. At the time, her survival seemed like a true miracle.
At the story’s end, Portia had said to Emery: Otto always said that the lesson he learned from that calamity was always to go drinking closer to home. Emery loved when his sister said the word calamity. It reminded him of Western movies, shoot-’em-ups, order instilled through chaos. And, as usual, Portia had allowed for questions after the story. This was Emery’s favorite part of Portia’s stories because his sister would answer anything, no matter what, even if it were impossible for her to actually know the answer. When he asked Portia what their mother’s frozen skin felt like, she said, “Like a hot dog straight from the freezer.” And when he asked her what it felt like to be frozen, she said, “It feels like you’re moving in slow motion and the air is made of clay.” And when he asked if Otto and Billy were mean old people, Portia said, “They weren’t old then, they were forgetful.”
Louise forbade the kids ever to speak of the event with Billie and Otto. But Portia, Buzzy, Emery, and even Anna, at times, liked to bring it up to Louise—it was like a handicap she had overcome, something they could joke about simply because she’d survived.
Buzzy followed Louise out of the car. The three kids slid out of the back seat. They stood there, all five faces turned toward the solid, looming house. Emery checked for movement behind the windows, three stories up, but everything looked dark and still, as if there weren’t a single light on. It was dry and calm out—the lake as flat as a sheet of slate. The empty dock stuck straight into the water, an exclamation point without its dot. A giant gray bird appeared to plummet from the sky, then landed gracefully on the end of the dock.
“Where are they?” Emery asked. He couldn’t even remember what they looked like. The one picture in the house of Billie and Otto had been taken during World War Two. In it, Otto was wearing a cloth soldier’s hat not unlike the paper hats people wear in fast-food restaurants. He looked bulky and tough, which Emery knew to be true. Otto had been hit by lightening three times and, obviously, survived each strike.
“They probably forgot we were coming,” Louise said.
Buzzy laughed. “They tend to forget about your mother.”
“Don’t they want to see their grandchildren?” Emery asked. Because he was so adored and beloved by Portia, his parents, and even Anna at times, Emery expected all relatives to adore him. Even the ones who had accidentally left their baby in the snow.
Everyone looked down at Emery. Louise messed his hair with her hand and pulled him up against her hip.
Portia leaned over and whispered in her brother’s ear, “Otto believes that only the firstborn kid should be given any attention. Everyone else is a spare in case the first one dies.”
“A spare?” Emery was astounded that children could be thought of in the same way as tires. But he saw that it had worked out well for his grandparents, as his mother’s older brother, Rex, had been killed in the Vietnam War before Emery ever had a chance to meet him. It was funny to think of his mother as a spare.
“That’s why Anna’s the only one to get birthday cards—’cause she’s the firstborn.”
“They send birthday cards?” Instead of explaining, Portia took Emery’s slick, sweaty hand and pulled him to the front door behind Anna, who was leading the family. Louise came up beside them and took his other hand.
“I’m the firstborn son,” Emery said, and he tugged his mother’s hand. “Does that count?”
“In China,” Louise said, and she laughed. Emery couldn’t believe this; it seemed impossible to him that anyone would favor a firstborn. Maybe his parents would tell his grandparents that even though he was only in fourth grade, he had to go to the advanced sixth grade reading and math classes. Or maybe they’d tell them about the Corny Kids Variety Show that he and his best friend Josh had written and starred in. The principal at school was so impressed, he had Josh and Emery tour the school, giving performances to each grade. Emery was a celebrity at Fairview Elementary.
Anna knocked on the door, then Louise scooted in front her and opened it. “Billie? Otto?” she called. There was no answer.
Louise walked in and the family followed behind. The stone-floored foyer had bookshelves from the baseboard to the ceiling on two full walls.
“Your grandfather’s a great reader,” Louise said. Emery didn’t doubt this. He thought everyone in their family was a great reader.
“OTTO!” Buzzy shouted, his hands cupped around his mouth.
“Let’s go in the kitchen,” Louise said.
They shuffled into the kitchen, which looked out over the lake. There wasn’t a dish in the sink, or on the counter, or anything, really, on any flat surface.
“I wish our kitchen were like this,” Anna said.
“But there’s no food around.” Emery thought it was like the mausoleum the family had once visited in LA. Were there dead bodies behind the closed cupboard doors?
“If you put down your keys on the counter,” Anna said, “they’d be right there. On the counter. You’d see them.”
She had a point, although Emery sort of liked the Hidden Object feel of their own kitchen counter. Often when Louise was looking for something, Emery would race Portia to see who could be the first to find the missing thing in the piles and piles of stuff that littered every flat surface in the house. It was like finding the emerald among the heaps of jewels spilling out of a treasure chest.
“Look!” Emery pointed out the window. A rowboat was pulling up to the dock. Otto was rowing. Billie jumped out and tied up the boat. She was lean, short-haired, and moved like a girl and not an old woman. There were two large speckled dogs in the boat. Otto gave each dog a push on its backside to scoot it out and then hopped out himself. Even as an old man he was broad, muscled, and flat-stomached. He wore khaki pants rolled at the cuff, a white T-shirt, and boat shoes. Billie had on similar khaki pants and a short-sleeved blouse.
They walked the short dirt path up to the house, pausing when they noticed the rental car in the driveway.
“They’re here!” Emery said and he jumped up into Portia’s arms. “Let’s go outside and see them!” He had a plan. When Billie and Otto walked into the house, Emery would break out into the Corny Kids opening theme song. Surely they couldn’t resist him then! Emery practiced the song in his head: We’re the Corny Kids! I’m John-John (that was Emery), I’m Miller (that was Josh). . . .
“Wait here,” Louise said. His mother sounded angry. Emery wondered if he was squirming too much.
“Louise?” Otto’s voice shouted, seconds later, and then he and Billie were there, standing in the kitchen staring at the family.
“Heeeey,” Buzzy said. Emery noticed that his father’s voice was suddenly huskier.
Buzzy walked toward Billie and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. Billie patted Buzzy’s back stiffly with both hands and quickly pulled away from the hug. Emery jumped from Portia’s arms, ran to Billie, and gave her a hug.
“Emery,” Billie said, firmly, as if reminding herself who he was. Emery had never felt a woman who was so hard. Even Anna, as skinny as she was, felt cushier than his grandmother. There was something about her hug that made Emery think of the lice-check the school nurse had done a couple months earlier.
When Emery approached Otto with both arms extended, Otto said, “Boys don’t hug other boys, sissy. Give me your hand.” Emery dropped one hand and stared up at Otto. He couldn’t believe that a grandfather would call his own grandson a sissy. Wasn’t there a law against things like that? Emery watched as his fingers were fisted up and down a few times, forcefully, in a way that reminded him of Annie Sullivan pumping water onto an astounded Helen Keller. The idea of breaking out in the Corny Kids theme song fell through Emery’s stomach like a sinking stone.
“So,” Otto turned to Anna, “you graduated from high school, I hear.”
“Uh huh,” Anna said. “Did you get the invitation to the graduation ceremony?”
“Oh yeah, we got it,” Billie said, and she turned to the sink, turned on the tap, and poured herself a glass of water. “We got you a present.”
“Thank you!” Anna said. She had wanted presents for graduation. She had wanted someone to come to the ceremony. It was all she talked about in the days leading up to the event. The night before the ceremony, Emery had awoken when he heard crying. He wandered into the family room and found his sister sitting on the floor, sobbing at their mother’s feet. Anna turned to Emery and told him that Buzzy and Louise refused to go to her graduation and that she would be humiliated by being the only kid there without her parents. Emery offered to go, but Anna didn’t want him there. Emery didn’t count in these things, and neither did Portia—Anna claimed they both were an embarrassment. In the end, Buzzy went, dragging Emery along. Louise showed up about thirty minutes late, waved at Anna on stage so that she’d see that she was there, then snuck out again ten minutes later.
“You won’t ask me to go to yours, will you?” Louise had asked Portia and Emery, later that day.
“We won’t ask,” Portia had promised. Then she put her arm around Emery and whispered in his ear, “Don’t worry. I’ll go to yours.”
“What about you?” Otto nudged Portia’s cheek with his fist. “You still in Dummy School?”
Emery looked up at his sister curiously. Why, he wondered, was he always the last to find out the happenings in the family? Portia in Dummy School? No one had told him about this!
“I’m not in Dummy School,” Portia said, and she looked down at Emery, who felt a great surge of relief.
“Yeah you are. Dumb girl like you. You’re in Dummy School!” Otto laughed in quick, deep barks. Emery looked at Portia to see if she was hurt by this mean joke. She seemed unbothered, but still, Emery thought it was cruel to tease Portia about being dumb. He hoped Otto wouldn’t quiz his sister about politics, as even Emery was recently surprised to find that Portia didn’t know the names of the heads of state of any country other than the United States. Not even Canada!
“Let’s go get your present,” Billie said to Anna, and they left the room together.
“So, are you in second or third grade?” Otto asked Portia. Emery couldn’t believe he was carrying on like this. He was as bad as Ron Stinson at school who tormented wormy Doug-Doug Finney so ceaselessly that Emery felt it was his duty as a living, breathing fellow human to visit the principal, Mr. Devereaux, and inform him of Ron Stinson’s word-torture.
“I just finished ninth grade,” Portia said.
“Nah!” Otto laughed. “I don’t believe it. Dumb girl like you. You’re in fourth grade in Dummy School!” Emery wasn’t worried that Otto would pick on him in the way that he was picking on Portia—his sister often did things that could be seen as dumb. In fact, he couldn’t wait for his grandfather to ask about him—there was so much to tell. He could start with academics, move on to soccer, then end with Corny Kids. Maybe Otto would want to see a performance with Emery doing both his and Josh’s parts.
“How are the dogs?” Louise asked.
“Bentley, that big motherfucker, knocked up Belle and we had nine goddamned pups here last week.”
“Can I see the puppies?” Portia asked.
“Yeah, if you jump in the lake about three hundred yards out. I stuck them in a burlap bag with a bunch of rocks, rowed out and let them drop.”
Emery pushed in toward’s Portia’s leg to steady himself. He felt a little queasy.
“Oy!” Buzzy groaned.
“And if that’s not bad enough, the cat, who just lies on the porch like a fucking socialite in Palm Beach, had six kittens last week.”
“Are they in the lake?” Buzzy asked. He had his sturdy voice on again.
“Nah. I just let them run free. There’ve gotta be enough goddamned field mice out there to feed an army of cats.” Otto looked out the window. Emery followed his gaze to see if he could find any little kittens running around with mice hanging out of their mouths.
“Look!” Anna said, running into the kitchen. She extended her right hand to show off a glamorous diamond ring that looked odd on her short-nailed, boyish hand.
“Two fucking karats,” Otto said. “It was my mother’s.”
“That’s nice.” Louise didn’t seem impressed as she leaned over the ring.
“Lemme see it.” Emery put his hands up toward Anna.
“Don’t touch!” she said, batting him away. “Your hands are gross.”
“Look at those little hands!” Otto said, staring down at Emery. “He’s got sissy hands!”
Emery looked at his own hands. His fingers were squared at the tips, sort of large for his frame, flopping on the end of his arms like a puppy’s paws. They didn’t appear to be sissy hands to him, and he was fairly certain his sisters would agree.
“What are you going to do with a two-karat diamond ring?” Buzzy asked. He, too, seemed unimpressed.
“She can save it for her wedding,” Billie said. “When Mama gave it to Otto, she told him to give it to his firstborn daughter for her wedding.”
“So why didn’t you give it to Louise?” Buzzy asked.
“Louise!” Otto said. “She’s already got a wedding ring! The one you gave her! You want her to have two?!” Otto laughed, went to the cupboard, and got down a low, thick-bottomed glass. “Who wants scotch?”
At breakfast the next morning Louise announced that she had gifts for her parents.
“What is it?” Otto asked. “A seashell we can put to our ears to hear the California ocean?” He laughed and gave Emery a little punch in the shoulder. Emery took the punch the same way Portia took being called a dummy. He now understood that you had to steel yourself against Otto like a cement wall, hold yourself up against his constant butting.
They were at the oak, claw-footed kitchen table. Diagonally cut toast sat on one plate, a softened stick of butter sat on another. Louise had made scrambled eggs that lay wet and shiny in an orange plastic bowl. There were only six chairs at the table so Emery shared a chair with Portia, each of them on half the seat. Billie drank Sanka that she spooned out of a glass container into a thin, brown coffee cup. Otto, Louise, and Anna drank coffee.
“She brought you some of her etchings,” Buzzy said, and he spooned more eggs onto his plate.
“Etchings?” Otto said. “Etchings? Hippies do etchings! You a hippie now, Louise?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Louise stood from the table and adjusted the waist of her batik skirt. “I’m a hippie.”
Louise asked Anna and Portia to clear the table while she showed Billie and Otto the etchings she had brought for them. Emery’s sisters did as they were told, silently moving the dishes from the table to the sink while Louise untied the black portfolio she used to carry her work. Inside were three etchings, each precisely matted by Louise. Emery had been allowed in her studio that day. He had stood at the edge of her worktable watching as Louise, with a cigarette burning in her mouth, penciled out the interior cut using a long silver right angle. The exterior cut was done on a paper cutter. Louise worked so quickly that Emery imagined her snipping a fingertip off. It would tumble into the wire trash can that sat waiting below the edge of the paper cutter.
“This one was in a show.” Louise pulled out a magazine-sized etching with a moss green matte board. It was a picture of a fat naked woman whose entire being, cheeks, chin, breasts, and belly, drooped toward the ground where a sheet lay puddled at her feet.
“Oh my.” Billie pursed her lips and handed the etching to Otto.
“Who is this woman?!” Otto shouted like he was angry, although he was smiling.
“She was a model,” Louise said. Louise had been attending night classes at City College where they had live models she could draw.
“Why’d you use such an ugly model? Couldn’t you get a pretty girl or at least a sexy girl to model for you?!” Emery had to admit, it might be a nicer picture if the model were a prettier girl. Or a boy even.
“It’s not about being pretty.” Louise took the etching from her father, lay it on the spot on the table where Anna had cleared Buzzy’s plate, and pulled out another one.
“Ach, Louise!” Otto looked at the etching of a naked, bony woman standing on a stage. Her giant, arched big toe hung off the edge of the stage where a man in a baseball cap had his mouth open, poised to bite it.
Billie shook her head, stood up and cleared the coffee pot and the trivet it had sat on.
“Wait, there’s one more.” Louise pulled out the third one, then turned and watched her mother return from the sink. “There’s one more.” She was almost whispering.
“This one’s my favorite,” Buzzy said. “It won an award!”
“No, this isn’t the one that won the award,” Louise said, and she handed the etching to her mother.
“Yes it is!” Buzzy stood halfway from his chair and peered down at the etching in Louise’s hand. Emery stood and worked his way in front of his father so he could see. It was a picture of a dying, naked man, floating down a river with fish biting chunks out of his flesh.
“No it’s not,” Louise said firmly, glaring at Buzzy.
“Well, it’s still my favorite!” Buzzy said.
Billie said nothing and handed the etching to Otto.
“Jesus Christ, Louise!” Otto said. “What the hell is wrong with you?! Why would you make such ugly depressing shit?! Why don’t you paint flowers or something beautiful! Or if you’re going to do naked people, do a pretty girl, for God sakes! Who needs to look at this shit?! This is nothing but shit!”
Emery felt his mouth drop open. He was afraid to blink. Anna and Portia were poised beside the table. Buzzy dropped his head in his hands, then lifted his head for a second as if to say something, but said nothing and let it drop again.
“It’s art,” Louise said, firmly. She pulled her cigarettes and matches from her skirt pocket. When Louise held the lit match to the cigarette in her mouth, the flame quivered like a strobe light. Emery watched it, thought about strobe lights, thought about his mom, and decided that now was not the time to ask if he could have a strobe light in his room.
A passel of relatives showed up at the ranch on the final night of the family’s visit. Many of the men were similarly named, as if there were only four names in the world and each one had to make the name his own: Jimmy-Scott, Jimmy, Jim-Jim, James-Ray, Ray-Boy, Ray, and James. There were women who had names that Emery guessed were nicknames, none of them seeming to reference any given name: Sis, Lennie, Flossy, and Skipper. Anna claimed she remembered everyone. Portia remembered all the odd-named relatives from the last visit. Emery’s most acute memory was of the one aunt who was so fat Emery imagined her flesh layered like the wooden, colored stacking rings he’d had as an even smaller kid. Most of the relatives poked at or hugged the kids with genuine, enthusiastic affection of the sort Emery had expected from his grandparents.
On the basement floor of the house was a bar with two sets of double glass doors that opened up to a patio and a steep uphill of grass. This wasn’t a bar like neighbors and friends often had in the rumpus rooms of their California houses: a small stainless steel sink with a mini fridge tucked beside it; two or three barstools facing the mirror above the sink. This was a bar like the ones on TV where the sheriff hangs out with townspeople. Wood shavings were scattered across the flagstone floor. Neon beer signs hung over the glossed, wooden bar that ran long enough to hold ten stools. Three different beers poured from a tap, and there was a full glass-shelved wall of what looked like a hundred different liquors. The cash register sat at the end of the bar—Otto punched in random keys and let the drawer shoot out making a noise that sounded like coins hitting bells. Six high tables were arranged in two rows across the room. In the center of every table was a bowl of peanuts and a thick two-sided menu that listed drinks on one side and food on the other. There were no prices on the menu, but the bar’s name was written in bold black letters across the top: A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. There was even a neon Open and Closed sign in the window with a small off/on switch by each word.
Louise laughed uproariously with all her cousins and aunts and uncles. It was clear that even though Billie and Otto hadn’t had much use for their spare child, the rest of the family adored her. Buzzy nursed a beer and wandered from group to group. He gave people healthy back slaps and seemed to puff up a bit, like a pigeon, as he listened to stories of rifles backfiring, a golf ball nailing a bird and knocking it dead and, then, The Stinkies.
A Stinky was what all the married, male relatives in Vermont called their girlfriends. Of course, everyone at the party insisted that they were content with their wives and they themselves didn’t have Stinkies. The Stinkies who were mentioned were always those of whoever was missing from the party. Portia and Anna remembered hearing about Stinkies five years earlier. Portia leaned into Emery’s ear and explained that the last time they were here everyone was talking about Jimmy-Don’s Stinky, as Jimmy-Don and his wife Vicky had been vacationing in South Carolina at the time. Jimmy-Don’s Stinky was mad, Otto had told the crowd, because Jimmy-Don didn’t take her to South Carolina instead of his wife. And now, here was Jimmy-Don, regaling the crowd with a story of absentee Uncle Linus’s Stinky. Anna and Portia moved in closer to hear. Jimmy-Don was on a stool at a table and the crowd was two-deep in a circle around him.
“This girl must be six feet tall,” Jimmy-Don said, raising his hand so it was even with the top of his own head. “She’s got hair down to her ass and fingernails like a fucking eagle—” The crowd laughed. “So Linus comes home the other day with fucking bloody zebra stripes on his back—” Jimmy-Don shouted so even people at the table beside him could hear. “And Sharon says, ‘Linus, what the hell happened to your back?’ He told her he’d been golfing, see?”
“He WAS golfing,” Uncle James shouted from another table. “He was with me, I swear!” James put a bulky arm around his wife and a roaring laughter ensued. Emery was fairly certain that Uncle James was making this up. But he wasn’t worried about that—he was trying to figure out how the bloody zebra stripes got on Linus’ back.
“Of course he was with you!” Jimmy-Don said. “So Sharon asks what happened, and what does the fucker say?”
“I was hit in the back with a rake!” someone shouted from the bar.
“I was fucking a sewer grate!” Otto yelled from behind the bar. Emery flinched at the F-word. These people cussed as much as his parents!
The laughter was so thick, Jimmy-Don had to pause before finishing. “He says, ‘You did that to me!’ ” Laughter rang out like a sonic boom. Jimmy-Don continued, “And Sharon says, ‘What do you mean I did that to you?’ Sharon with her stubby fingers, says this. So he says, ‘Last night, after all that goddamned scotch, you did this to me when we were making love—” The term making love threw the crowd into hysterics. Emery knew what it meant, but he had no idea why it was funny. “And, guess what?” Jimmy-Don waited until everyone had silenced enough to hear him. “She had had so much fucking scotch the night before she didn’t even know that Linus had fallen asleep on the sofa watching TV that night and had never even come to bed! And now she thinks she’s some kind of tiger between the sheets!”
Jimmy-Don’s last lines brought a rousing round of applause. Then Uncle Jim-Jim started up with another story about Linus’s Stinky.
Emery could see that there were two types of people in this side of his family: the ones who told the stories and the ones who laughed at the stories. No one had a normal conversation where you might tell someone how you were, or discuss what you had been doing. And they teased, too. They teased abundantly, the way his parents and Portia kissed him (Anna refused to touch him), teasing as an endless source of affection. Emery decided that if you got teased, or if they told you a story, it meant you were a part of the family. He was glad that two different people had told him stories: one about the guy at Aunt Sis’s office who died on the toilet, and one about Uncle James’s nipple getting rubbed off on an innertube when he was nine years old.
Food was brought out on great big serving platters that were set on top of the bar. A stack of paper plates and plastic forks and knives were at one end and everyone lined up and went down the bar, like a buffet, gathering up all they could pile on a plate without it dipping down heavy and wet in the middle. The line moved slowly as most people ordered a drink from Otto or Uncle James, who tended bar together. When the girls and Emery finally made it to the food, Emery found it strangely comforting to see that everything that was on the menu had been brought out: chicken wings, tater tots, green salad, three-bean salad, coleslaw, hot dogs, and barbeque potato chips. There was something about his grandmother, her stringiness and upright posture, her empty white kitchen, and the way she had patted his back when they first arrived, that made Emery believe she had nothing to do with feeding the crowd.
“Who made all this?” Emery asked Louise, when she stopped by the table where her three kids sat eating.
“Your aunts,” Louise said. “Billie will only cook for Otto and Otto doesn’t cook.”
“And our aunts happened to make everything that’s on the menu?” Emery asked.
“No!” Louise laughed. “They make the same greasy food for every party—so Otto had that printed on the menu knowing that no one would ever bring anything different.”
“Wouldn’t it be fun to feed them California food,” Portia said. “We could make them tacos or falafels.” The most popular fast food in Santa Barbara was from the falafel stand where people lined up to pay a dollar for a fried chick-pea patty in pita bread. Emery loved falafels.
“You hate falafels,” Anna said, to Portia.
“Yeah, but wouldn’t it be fun to watch everyone eat them? They wouldn’t even know how to pick them up,” Portia said.
“You’re so nasty,” Anna said. “This is our family. Why would you want to shock them with falafels?”
“Do you think Otto told everyone that you’re in dummy school?” Emery asked. Portia shrugged.
“Probably,” Anna said. “But that’s what she deserves for wanting to feed them falafels just to freak them out.”
“I just want to show them how different we are,” Portia said.
“I’m not different,” Anna said. “I’m exactly like them.” And Emery thought that she was sort of right. Anna was the one who never told anyone she was Jewish. And she didn’t like to be touched and often paid Emery a quarter to sit at least one cushion away from her on the couch. She knew the exact acreage of Fulton Ranch (5,476) and at least three times Emery heard her say that she wished Buzzy were a little more like Otto: outdoorsy, sporty, not a complainer. And she was planning to go to college in Vermont, as she thought the whole state suited her better than New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut, where Buzzy had suggested she go to college. Even the boys Anna talked about seemed to be more like Otto than Buzzy: Johnny Brownstein, who played baseball and was a waiter at the Charter House steak house; Kirk Nintzel, whom Anna told Emery he should grow up to be. Kirk was president of the Key Club, had been voted Luscious Lester, and had a football scholarship to USC. Surely neither of those guys would go to the falafel stand.
The party had thinned out and calmed. A few people, including Buzzy and Louise, had gone out in the rowboats. In what Emery thought was one of the coolest things he’d ever seen, Uncle Ray-Boy had tried to do a wheelie on the lawn mower and flipped it, rolling down the hill toward the lake. Uncle Ray-Boy and the lawnmower both survived.
Anna and Portia were standing at an empty bar table eating peanuts. Emery was hovering nearby, hiding himself from Otto, who had publically called him Sissy Boy at least three times in the last hour. Emery thought that if only his grandfather could see the singing and dancing extravaganza of the Corny Kids Variety Show, he’d never call Emery a sissy again.
Otto was behind the bar. Uncle Jimmy-Don was holding court at a bar table nearby. In a moment of silence Otto lifted his scotch glass and shouted out across the room, “Jimmy-Don, did you see the tits on these girls?”
Portia looked from Emery, who was staring at her with his mouth in a hard O, to her grandfather, to her uncle. Anna turned away, as if she were examining the horizon out the glass door. Jimmy-Don lifted his drink and winked toward Anna and Portia.
“Can you believe the tits on these girls, Jimmy-Don!” Otto shouted, louder.
Jimmy-Don laughed. “Yeah, Otto, you got some pretty granddaughters with mighty big tits.”
Then Otto looked at Anna and Portia, pointed at them with his drink, and asked, “Do all the girls in California have tits like that?”
“Uh . . .” Anna said. Emery had never seen his sisters like this: silenced as if they’d had thick blankets thrown over their heads, their bodies as stiff and still as if they’d been left in a snowstorm while sleeping in the back of a convertible.
Emery put his hand on Portia’s leg and leaned out to face Otto. “Hey Otto!” he shouted. Everyone looked at him. “YOU’RE A FUCKER!”
Emery grabbed Portia’s hand, Portia grabbed Anna’s hand, and the three of them ran out of the bar and up the hill screaming with laughter. When they could no longer hear the roaring hysterics from the bar, they dropped hands and collapsed onto the grass looking down at the bar. Emery lay back and kicked his feet in the air. He was laughing so hard that he was losing sound. Every time Anna and Portia looked at him, they laughed harder. It was a spiraling laugh-chain that didn’t let up for minutes. Eventually they had to look away from each other so they could turn the laugh-motor off long enough to return to the party.
By the time the kids got back to the bar, most people had left and their parents had returned from the lake. Louise smiled when her children walked in. Buzzy looked up from the bowl of peanuts he was hunched over and grinned. Otto wasn’t around but Billie was washing glasses behind the bar.
“I hear you called your grandfather a fucker,” Buzzy said.
Emery looked over at Billie and saw that she was smiling. Her smile warmed him like drinking cocoa did—he could feel it in his belly, feel things changing inside him.
“Yeah.” Emery sidled next to Buzzy, who rubbed his hair and kissed him on the top of his head. Louise beamed down at Emery.
Emery had never before felt so proud.
The next day, as they were driving to Maine to visit Louise’s best friend from college, Portia retold the story of Emery’s calling Otto a fucker. Emery laughed so hard his eyes closed up into little slits of eyelashes. He loved hearing the story as if it were an episode of a TV show—he loved seeing himself as the mighty, brave, and fierce character Portia created.
“Tell it again,” Emery said, when he had finally stopped laughing.
“Don’t you dare tell it again,” Anna said. In spite of her joy at the moment of Emery’s rebellion, she seemed to be sticking to her fantasy of Otto as the guy Buzzy should try to be.
“Well, what if I only tell the part about Otto telling everyone to look at our tits?”
“Don’t say that word!” Anna said.
“You sound like your brother now!” Louise said.
“Tits is not such a bad word,” Buzzy said. “You just don’t want to hear it coming out of your grandfather’s mouth.”
“Tits!” Emery said, laughing. Now that the language hatch had been opened, Emery was flinging bad words hither and yon. He was batting them around like crumpled paper balls. Yes, indeed, it felt good to act out, to break free from the restraints of public order.
“Well, at least he didn’t call them oranges,” Louise said.
“Do we have to keep talking about this?” Anna asked.
“What do you mean, ‘oranges’?” Portia asked. Emery scooted up from the center of the seat so his head was leaning into the front seat between Buzzy and Louise.
“When I started puberty, Otto kept a running track of my breast size and that’s all he ever said to me. ‘Ach, you got little grapes there, Louise!’ Then, ‘Ach, look at her strawberries popping out!’ Then, ‘Ach, the girl’s got plums in her shirt!’ ”
“Wait!” Portia said. “Don’t tell me the next one, let me guess . . . nectarines?”
“Gross. Will you shut up?” Anna asked.
“I love nectarines,” Emery said.
“No, we didn’t eat nectarines,” Louise said. “I think it went from plums to oranges and then it was oranges until I left for college.” Louise laughed.
“I think Anna’s are more grapefruits than oranges,” Portia said. Emery turned around and looked at his sister.
“You people are sick.” Anna turned toward the window, her back to the family.
“We’re not sick,” Emery said. “We’re funny.”
“No, you’re sick!” Anna turned to Emery with wet eyes. “Sickness runs in this family, like freckles and wide feet. None of this is funny. It’s plain, pathetic sick.”
“Fucking sick,” Emery said, with a sly smile. And everyone but Anna, of course, laughed.