I watched my mother get drunk. She was laughing uncharacteristically loudly with some of the musicians. Most of the time she stood beside a stone-faced beautiful woman with an ivory cigarette holder. I felt a hatred rise up in me that day, one that had always lurked. My mother locked me out of her bedroom many nights of our life and I cried and begged at the door, pushing my finger pads against the cheap pine, and where was my father? I couldn’t think, it had been so long ago, but I remembered the bitterness I felt, and it came back around now, seeing my mother laughing with new people in a somewhat wanton way. Wearing a necklace of bones around her neck. Ah. My mother’s bone necklace.
So that was when the boy, when Massimiliano, came around with his rich red hair and his confident saunter and his attempts at speaking my language—Wud going for a walk with me?—I took off with him. My father was distracted and he would always think I was his little girl—sexlessly beautiful—so we walked out of the sightline of the guests, down into the cool shade of a cypress grove. Massi picked up some figs and placed them in my hands. He’d hidden away a half bottle of grappa from one of the tables. It seemed the worst thing in the world if he were a cousin, but I didn’t ask, I only thought it, and my cheeks glowed like the stove burners we had in the Pocono house, the glass kind without iron that got hot and red behind your back.
You wait for me, he said, and left and came back with two juice glasses. He took the figs from my hands and put them in the cups and filled them with two inches of grappa. You say cheers? he said, and we sipped our grappa and I almost choked but first love like that inures you.
That was the year before the year my parents died and if only I had known. But I did know. I knew for the whole sunny day; when at night we went back to the fig and it was swollen with one of the strongest liquors, I knew. When the boy kissed me—the tongue and the lips, more sensual than I’d imagined—I was drunk in a way that was more mature than any drunk I would ever be in the future and I knew that this was the first and last perfect day of my life. I wanted to tell Alice about that day. I wanted to rub her face in the cow-trampled grass. I wanted her to know everything that she had taken from me.
9
THE NEXT DAY I WAS hired at the health food store. Nothing had ever come so easily. A man called. His name was Jim and I would never meet him. He burped on the other end of the line. The phone call was supposed to be an interview but it seemed I was hired before we even spoke.
—We need someone every day. Can you work the whole day those days?
I was frying an egg on my yellow range. Every time I accepted a job I felt terrorized, like I was about to be sent to jail. For most, it’s the opposite. The money is freeing, so they see the hours of work as a way out. I’ve had a strange relationship with money, as I’ve told you. I’ve been gifted things that are worth an entire year of steaming milk at a coffee shop.
—Yes, I said. When I flipped the egg, the yolk ran. I was so heartbroken that I stopped listening until Jim said the hourly rate. It was less than half a yoga class at the studio. In the news that week a lawmaker said that destitute Americans who complain about the price of health care should forgo buying the new phone they want and use the money on insurance instead.
—Sound good?
Out the window I saw River. He was loading heavy-looking panels into the back of his work truck. On the side it said SOLAR FORWARD. A sun was pushing a lawn mower. He wore a bandana and a white t-shirt. I watched his arms crank in the sunlight.
—Yes, I said. When should I start?
—Tomorrow.
—Perfect.
I figured I could always quit right away. Really I had just wanted to get off the phone. The previous night Leonard hadn’t left until I yawned three times, the final time very aggressively. I’d washed all the dishes. I’d banged around so many pans, but he either didn’t take the hint or didn’t want to. After he left I’d taken two pills and tried not to think of Vic’s boy.
I went outside. I walked by River while he was in the back of his truck, and I opened my car. Nothing made sense to grab. I picked up a pack of gum from the hairy console.
—Hey, he said. He was so awake. I smiled and shielded my eyes from the light and hated myself for waking up late almost every day of my life.
—So weird, I had a dream about you.
—Oh?
—Yeah. You were this wolf lady. Ha. Not in a bad way. Because of that song, I guess. You tore through the house looking for blankets, which is nuts because of how hot it’s been.
The kid in New York, Jack, had been just like this. Young boys make you feel wanted but also like they could take you or leave you. Jack had long balls that hung like Dalí’s clocks. He was unembarrassed about them. He would come to my apartment from the place he shared in Hoboken with two other boys. He would say my apartment was in violation of a fun code. It had not had enough fun for weeks. When I missed him, I wrote, all in lowercase, something about something I had to show him.
Are you trying to lure me into your city fort? he replied.
i don’t know, am i? it’s just that the city fort is buckling under the weight of its lack-of-fun-code violation. it needs to be violated…
Vic knew about Jack. He was the one who gave him the name the kid. He used to call me that until I started seeing someone so young. Are you going to get ravaged by the kid this weekend? Vic would ask. I told Vic about Jack’s long coral balls. He would ask if I served the kid cookies and milk after we fucked. If he sensed my anger he would say, Just joshing, kid. A woman like you will always be a girl. He’s the luckiest dope in the world until you’re through with him.
River was even more attractive than Jack had been. I laughed off his dream even though it had the power to make me feel gamy. I told him to have a good day at work and I walked back to my door in a way that would make him look at my backside. I was wearing small gray pajama shorts. The pills hit and my head went wavy.
Just inside the door, I pressed medium-hard with two fingers up between my thighs. I could have come like that, right then. I wanted to and then call Vic, say there was a new kid on the block. I felt sick to my stomach.
* * *
I DIDN’T KNOW HOW TO dress for my first day of work at the health café. I’d always wished I didn’t care so much. I have my mother’s clothes to give you and a few of my favorite pieces. You can throw it all away but I found it’s nice to have fabric. It stores memory in an accessible way.
I parked in the small lot. My Dodge looked old and sad next to two impudent convertibles. I walked by the studio but did not look inside. It was daunting to know she was in there. I imagined her sitting on the bench made of a single tree, my mother and my father flanking her. They would be talking about me as though I wouldn’t understand something. Picturing the three of them together was one of the most sordid things I had ever done.
When I walked in, Natalia was rinsing mugs in the immense silver sink.
—How are you? I said, looking into her big Bambi eyes.
—Uh, good, she said, and asked if I wanted a coffee, which was nice. It seemed we were going to pretend the accident we’d witnessed together had never happened. I could tell she was nervous to be training someone nearly two decades older than she was.
I half-listened about everything except the coffee machine and the cash register. Both things had so many parts and I was nervous to make a mistake. Natalia was not a good teacher. She spoke too quietly and too quickly and hurried over the important things. To help her relax, I asked where she was from. She was so stupid.