Always Happy Hour: Stories(60)

“You should come with us,” she says. “These girls are really nice—they could be your friends.”

“I know Leah.”

“Yeah, Leah likes you. Y’all could be friends.”

“I have friends.” I wonder why she’s here, why she’s come. If I asked her, though, she’d act confused. She’d say she missed me. She’d say she wanted to see my house, which is so lovely.

My sister lives in an apartment. She complains about the girls who live above her—they wear their high heels inside, their dogs cry every time they’re left alone. I’ve never been to her apartment, never seen these girls, but I can picture them. They’re blond, like her, a few years younger. Their voices can be heard from the parking lot. When she marries, she’ll break her lease and move into her husband’s house, same as I did, but no matter what happens she’ll stay married. She’ll get pregnant and won’t miscarry and the baby will look like them.

I look around the room, which is bright and large. The sun makes angles on the walls and I think, All of this is mine.


After my sister leaves, I take the bottle of vodka out of the freezer and pour some into a cup with lots of ice and a little bit of cranberry juice. My anxiety can usually be tamed with a cheeseburger and fries but I wasn’t able to enjoy my food like I normally do, not like I do when I’m alone. I take my drink outside to the picnic table. From here I can see everything—my house and driveway, my car and lawn mower and trash cans: one for recycling and one for garbage. I can never remember what days the trash comes so I have to watch my neighbors, wheel the cans out to the curb when they do. I’ve met a few of them but I’m bad with names so I write them down on the notepad next to the refrigerator: Nicole and Shane; Ellie and Bill Tucker; Mr. Gorrell. I like to hold up a hand as I call their names from a distance, as if we might be neighborly. Some guys I haven’t met live in the house on the corner. When they have band practice, I sit outside and listen. They’re the only ones I might want to know.

When my drink is gone, I go inside and make another, walk around looking at my things as if I’m seeing them through my sister’s eyes. When I drink, I can’t do anything but wander my house, wondering how people live. What they do with themselves. There are paintings on the walls, not just prints. The kitchen is full of wedding loot—nice dishes and Calphalon pots, an espresso machine, a KitchenAid mixer—everything a person might want. In the foyer, there are family photographs on the table spanning generations of people who aren’t mine. The earliest photograph I have of myself was taken the day I was adopted. I was three. My father is holding me and I look tired and rumpled in a lace dress and leather shoes—all white like I’m about to be baptized. My sister was adopted a year later, as a newborn. The nurse took her from her birth mother and placed her in my mother’s arms and my parents cried so hard I thought something was wrong with her but we were going to have to keep her anyway.

I used to tell people I was adopted from an orphanage, that I would save paper napkins from meals and make bows for my hair so that when the couples came on Sunday afternoons, I’d look like I wanted it more than the others. I’d tell them they lined us up like they do at whorehouses, and we’d put on different personas, try different tactics to make them choose us. The truth is I don’t remember my life before. My memories begin with my sister.

When my mother placed her in my arms, she was sleeping. This is your sister, Elizabeth, my father said. Now our family is complete, my mother said. And then it was Christmas.

I curl up on the couch and the cat situates herself on my legs. She closes her eyes and I close mine. When I open them and check my phone, two hours have passed. I wish my sister was here, or I’d gone with her, but then I hear the key in the lock and she comes in calling my name, followed by Leah and two girls I’ve never seen before.

“We were at a bar, like, three blocks from here,” my sister says, “and we decided you had to come with us.”

The pretty dark-haired girl is wearing a low-cut shirt; my eyes stop at her breasts.

“Come with us,” Leah says.

“You’re coming,” my sister says. “Get dressed, we’re going downtown.”

The air is full of perfume and energy and I don’t want to go but they act like I don’t have a choice and this is what I need in order to be motivated. Now there are five of us, and we could all be traipsing drunkenly down the alley, holding each other up, laughing.

In my room, the cat is curled on my pillow. I didn’t see her move from the couch. She looks up at me with her big eyes and meows.

“What do you want, kitty?” I ask. She continues meowing so I go through the list—food, water, litter box. I only know these three things. “I won’t be gone long. And I won’t get drunk, I promise.” She doesn’t like it when I’m drunk. Perhaps, if I were drunk more often, she wouldn’t like it if I were sober. She’s a nice cat, and even though she follows me around and lies on my legs at night, I still imagine her clawing my face in my sleep.

I put on the dress and sweater I wear when I need to put on something in a hurry. The dress makes my waist look small and my breasts look large and the sweater is soft and comfortable.

My sister finds me in the bathroom. “You look nice,” she says, touching a sleeve.

“Do I need blush?”