Small Bottles
Seattle, WA/Glendale, AZ 1996/2013
The mail is always delivered at eight o’clock. I’ve had to re-adjust how I anticipate the arrival of packages and other things I’m expecting. If the tracking information says to expect delivery on the 9th, what that means is that I’ll pick up whatever it is on the 10th. I could check the mail in the evenings, but Tim and I decided mail retrieval would be his responsibility, and he never remembers. It’s difficult not to be a little annoyed at him and his habit of forgetting when it’s disadvantaged me. The estate documents were mailed from Jackson Hole sometime last Thursday, which meant I didn’t have them until this week. I directed the lawyer to expedite at least my copies so they would be in hand before the weekend, but when has anyone ever paid attention to my opinion? Anyway, I have them now, the following Wednesday, almost seven days after the fact. No surprise. Also no surprise is that I’m getting the least out of the estate when you really break it down. There is no consideration for spousal income, number of children, age, or any of that. Everyone is supposed receive the same amount, no curve or handicapping. I’ve proposed we liquidate various properties and so forth, that if we really are to come away with an equal gross, that at least we could up the cash payout. My mother sides with me on this as does Kenneth. I’m not sure what’s going on with mother, but she’s not been herself. Though it suits me at the moment, so I haven’t pressed. No need to upset her. Kenneth wasn’t hard to persuade. He’s always had a weird sorta incestuous thing for me, which, to be honest, I’ve never exploited before. I guess the word exploited is a little harsh, but the point is that he’s quick to agree to whatever I request of him. He once asked me if I knew that relationships of the romantic persuasion between first cousins used to be totally normal. Those were his exact words too — of the romantic persuasion. I kinda egged him on a little bit. Whatever. He hasn’t cut the fingernails on his right hand for like six months. He says it’s for playing guitar. I don’t think he even owns one.
Summer in Arizona is rough. I don’t generally go out in the middle of the day. The distance from air conditioned car to air conditioned mall or grocery store is more than this Seattleite can take. I’m sitting here at my kitchen island with the documents from Grandpa’s trust spread out in front of me. The shades are drawn and the air conditioning unit hums contently on other side of the wall. It does a good job; I’m wearing leggings and a sweatshirt and my feet are clammy in my socks. Maybe it’s the amount of tile in here; the kitchen feels like it was built to be an ice box. My computer sits open on the table. We’re all supposed to join some video conference in an hour to discuss what to do about the estate. Chloe is down for her nap and Tim is at the bank. He’s been working there doing security. They gave him a gun, which I guess makes sense, but also seems absurd. I’m not sure he would know what end to point. He’s earnest enough, but I have real reservations about his ability to respond under stress. I wind up providing most of his motivation. He does well with direction.
*
I can see the back of Miriam’s head. Her short hair knotted in a little golden bun at the nape of her neck, a couple strands escaping, falling in front of her ears. She’s younger and taller than I am, though at fifteen almost everyone is. Anyone who saw us together would have pegged her as my older sister.
It’s April of 1996. My mom has this work thing, some research deal that she’s been going over and over and over and has to complete before summer. It will be the summer my grandma Maria dies. With Mom distracted and Dad being dad, I wind up with quite a bit of unsupervised time on my hands. Mom foresees this and signs me up for a few after-school activities, which feels a little like being put into day-care; like I’m a child or something.
On Thursdays, I take voice lessons. I’ve never said it out loud, but I’m a good singer so I’m kinda OK with it. My teacher is the daughter of one of Mom’s colleagues at the University. She’s a graduate student in the music program. She wears this black choker around her neck with a little silver charm dangling from the center. Her hair is dyed a funky plum color. I can see her roots at the part, brunette. She teaches in the front room of her apartment near campus. It’s on the second level of a taupe, rectangular building with a flat roof covered in gravel. The inside is balmy and lit by overhead fluorescent tubes. We warm up and do some breathing exercises, nothing out of the ordinary, then work through a few pieces. Miriam has the lesson after mine. That’s how I meet her. We notice each other after my lesson ends and before hers begins. We pass a few friendly greetings at first. Soon I begin waiting for her on the teacher’s sofa, watching her place a hand on Miriam’s back, trying to tease out the correct posture. Miriam shoots me a look, like, check her out, a little mocking smile, as if to say she was suffering the indignity of the lesson and the touch on someone else’s behalf. Her lesson ends, we both say goodbye to our teacher and leave hand in hand laughing about nothing other than being out in the afternoon with nothing to do.
“I have something for us.” Miriam whispers in my ear as we stand at a cross walk. Her breath is warm and I can feel it inside my ear canal.
“Something sounds exciting.”
“I think it will be.” She pulls a small, clear glass bottle from her bag. I’m watching traffic and don’t see it until she gives me a little nudge with her elbow. She shows me the thing, laid out in both hands, like she was about to release a ceremonial dove.
“Whiskey.” Miriam leans over and whispers again into my inner ear, her lips close enough for me to feel them, even though they don’t touch my skin. I look at the bottle for a moment before she claps her hands closed and stashes the thing back into her bag. The light turns and a few pedestrians shoulder past us onto the cross walk. She takes my hand again, leading me across the street. As we walk this urgency builds, like I’m stuck on one of those moving sidewalks at the airport, passing through and into something beyond my control to resist, that my consenting to go to voice lessons in the first place was a fated step that leads me to Miriam and this April afternoon.
We arrive at Miriam’s house. It’s two floors, with a shingled exterior and white trim along the eves. The driveway is empty. She pulls me by the hand, not hurried in any way, but with definite purpose. We enter the house by a side door that lets into the kitchen. The floor is polished wood of some kind; a light piney color that contrasts with the dark cabinets. She lets go of me and goes around the kitchen island. She reaches for two juice glasses from behind one of the cupboard doors.
“Upstairs.” She says as though it’s a foregone conclusion, nodding her head in the direction of the staircase, walking out in front of me without looking back. I see the definition in her legs as she goes up the stairs in front of me. I wonder at the degree of surety and confidence, so in excess of my own. The wash of the need to keep the moment encapsulated engulfs. I never pin whether the origin is admiration, or an unnamed jealousy for what Miriam becomes to me.
We’re in Miriam’s room, she on her bed and I in a window seat nestled into a bay window overlooking the backyard. She draws the bottle from her bag and opens it, pouring a few ounces into each juice glass. She leans up on her knees and offers one in my direction. The few strands of hair that are free of the little knot fall forward. I take the glass and retreat back into the window. She rests on her heels and raises her glass like for a toast without saying anything before tossing it back. I follow her example.
We repeat this ritual weekly; each Thursday until the death of my Grandmother. Miriam sends me to Wyoming with three travel sized bottles I hide in my bathroom bag. The drinking is more than the liquid or its effect. It becomes an ode to Miriam, to whatever we had that evinced itself in our secret Thursdays.
*
I walk across my kitchen into the living room. The white lounges I found at Restoration Hardware mirror each other across the space. I walk upstairs to my bedroom. I listen for noise at Chloe’s door. Near my sink, beneath my vanity, all the way on the bottom shelf in the back is a plastic bin where I keep nail polish, tampons, personal lube, that sort of thing — stuff that Tim wouldn’t dare venture past if he were to ever have a reason to poke his nose down there. Behind the bin, lying down on its side is a liter of Seagram's Extra Dry. It’s lukewarm. I stick my arm to the back of the bottom shelf and scrape the top of my arm along the melamine wood above. I find the neck of the bottle and pull it out. Its smooth and I cradle it in my hands the way Miriam had done when she first showed me her little bottle of booze a few decades previous. I thumb the cap a little, standing up and looking at the bottle. I freeze, thinking I may have heard my daughter stir. A little whimper emits from down the hall. There are dueling desires, one that she wakes, requiring me to return the bottle, and the opposite, that she remains asleep, that I can lay back into my memory of Miriam.
*
The first time I got properly drunk was the night before my grandmother’s funeral. Those Thursday afternoon meetings never moved through much volume. They were closer to séance than binge. I’m lying out in the field behind the house in Wyoming, out in the grass. My Discman is on my stomach, pushing Nevermind through the little foam pads of my headphones. Miriam gave me the CD for the trip. I kept it hidden along with the alcohol, only daring to partake once separate from my family. I’m not sure I like it that much, but, its a gift, and from her, so. My bag of contraband is next to me, hidden from view here on the ground. I pull the first bottle and drain it in two swallows. I only plan on drinking one, though as I do, I begin to regard the entire scene as homage to Miriam. That in doing this, listening to her music and drinking her gift to me that I was keeping her close. I continue into the second bottle, keeping the feeling alive — hoping she will somehow know. Something in the Way spins out its final moaning bars and I press the stop button on the Discman. I pull the headphones away from my ears as the plastic innards scrape against my skin through the ineffectual foam. I lay warm and thrumming beneath the stars, wind licking my flushed cheeks, as though cooling a burn.
I was horrid the rest of that week. I can’t deny it. I was wretchedly hungover, which sure didn’t help my attitude. Not that I would have been thrilled with the whole thing had I been sober.
*
Chloe is stirring. It’s confirmed. I put the gin back behind the tampons and slide the whole mess back where it came from.
*
I continued the Thursday ritual alone after Miriam moved to Portland that winter. At first it was something to remember her by. I think I could have substituted anything for the drink; it was the sacramental nature of it, the remembrance of the ambiguous friendship we enjoyed for most of that year. The actual nature of the relationship between us has suffered from the corruption and idealization of memory and time, but the concrete aspect of the drink was easy to maintain. It wasn’t long after her leaving that the ritual moved to two or three or four day per week. I always connected it with her, though, so it never seemed bad.
Mom and Dad aren’t and have never been big on alcohol, but I’m an industrious girl and was able to meet my own needs. I got pretty good at staying functional. Mom caught me a couple times and was on the verge of sending me off to some clinic, but then, bam, eighteenth b-day and I refused. I got creative in my methods of alcohol intake after that. Turns out your mouth isn’t the only place you can get it on board. Plus there is an element of debasement involved, which soothed me in a way. I don’t know if I would have called myself an addict really, as I’ve been able to have a glass of something gentle here and there without backsliding. Since moving to Arizona I haven’t felt anything nearing what I’d call compulsion. I also have a better tan, which I’ll admit isn’t saying much. I’m more irritable since going off booze as a pacifier, but Chloe deserves a mom who isn’t hammered all the time and I’m trying.
I bring Chloe downstairs, change her and set her up to the table with some crackers and apple sauce. Her hair escaped the braid I put in earlier, now standing crimped and frizzed around her head. The afternoon is wearing on and the light beyond the blinds soften at the edges. I sit down in front of my computer and bring it back to life with a jiggle of the mouse.
