of things were far more exciting than any reality that either she or my mother ever lived. He’d add that Mom was lucky to find Dad, and Nana was lucky to find him, to keep them both from floating away into their fantasy lands.
“Well, think what you want, but I did, too, kiss him,” Nana would insist, swatting Pop-pop’s chest, before wrapping her arms around his neck. “You’re supposed to take my side. You’re supposed to make me sound at least as exciting as I am.”
“I miss Pop-pop; don’t you?” my mother asks, suddenly wistful, as if she and I were thinking about the same thing.
“More than ever,” Nana answers, softly. “We shouldn’t take them for granted. There’s something to be said for a practical man.” She flips another page, tapping a photo of Kerouac standing outside against a brick wall, a book under one arm, pulling a cigarette to or from his mouth with the other hand. “This one, though,” she says, sighing deeply, “that one time, what a thrill.”
And Mom tips her head back and says, “Go on, tell me again.”
SEPTEMBER 1961
(NANA TELLS IT LIKE THIS…)
It’s a Tuesday evening and Gunther’s Tap Room in Northport, Long Island, is dead. Maybe three tables in the whole place are occupied.
My parents have brought me here on a weeknight to celebrate in official fashion.
“A Bud, on tap, for me,” my father tells the waitress when she arrives, “and two old-fashioneds for the ladies.” The waitress requests my ID, and I hand her the license I pull from my purse. Until now, I’ve never been asked, but I’ve never ordered liquor before.
The room is quiet until someone mercifully puts some quarters in the jukebox. “It’s Now or Never” comes on, Elvis’ deep and syrupy voice and the click of the clave causing me to sway in my seat while we wait.
“Slainte!” my father says, when the waitress returns. He raises his mug into the air. I finger the highball glass the waitress has placed in front of me. Two cubes, a pretty orange-gold liquid the color of apricot, and a toothpick spearing two bright red cherries. Condensation slips like raindrops down the outside of the glass, and I move my finger up its side, drawing the initials “R.C. + B.M.” inside a heart, and wiping it away before anyone can notice.
Bobby Masters. He and I had gone steady all through high school, and last month, citing college in Massachusetts, he had unceremoniously dumped me. I would have gone with him if he had only asked. Instead, I’ve spent the weeks in tears and, until last week, could barely get out of bed.
My mother, on the other hand, has a hard time hiding how pleased she is, since he wasn’t Jewish, a fact she pointed out to me repeatedly during all four years of our romance. I don’t have the energy to point out that neither is Dad. It doesn’t much matter now.
“Happy birthday, sweetheart,” my father says.
“Go ahead, take a sip, Ruthie,” my mother chimes in. She must be desperate for me to stop playing the sad sack if she’s encouraging me to drink. “And you slow down, mister,” she aims at my father. “I don’t need you putting on a show.” My father is a loud and boisterous drunk, the polar opposite of my mother. As if to demonstrate, she puts her own glass down and dabs demurely at the corners of her lips. It will take her the whole night to finish one drink. Already Dad has finished his beer and is holding up a finger to order another.
My mother gives him a sideways glance.
I want to kill myself. This is my eighteenth birthday.
“Don’t be such a spoilsport, Miriam. We’re celebrating.”
I lift the glass and take a sip. The liquid is warm and sweet, and goes down easy enough, so I take a second, and third, and a few more. To slow myself down, I pull the toothpick from the glass and suck a whiskey-soaked cherry from it. An old-fashioned, then. My new favorite thing.
It’s not the first time I’ve had alcohol, but there is something different about drinking legally, aboveboard. Being of age. And this concoction tastes particularly delicious. I quickly find myself smiling, flushed with a rush that spreads from my chest to my stomach, and mixes with the undeniable pleasure of irking my mother.
This is better, this being a grown-up thing. To hell with high school. To hell with Bobby Masters.
I down the rest of the drink,