in the absence of devotion. Maybe such breaches are obligatory in the biological sense. Maybe it would not do for girls to evolve beyond pubescent attachments, to exceed basic constancy.
“Can you at least try to be friendly tonight?” Kate was saying.
I said yes, that I would try, though I was so convinced of the meaninglessness of my own will in relation to the night that I wasn’t even planning on participating actively. Free will is an illusion. People like to believe their choices are singular and circumspect, when in fact they are completely trifling. Despite the odds, we had all strayed into the night—Kate and me and Rourke and however many others—our fates assigned, our histories synchronized.
“Why don’t you go take some aspirin?” Kate said. “That will make you feel better.”
Alongside the oven there was a cabinet where the liquor was kept. I didn’t realize it was my destination until I found myself filling a coffee mug with brown stuff—Jim Beam, whatever, whatever. Bourbon, whiskey, rye. Label, proof. I didn’t comprehend any of it. All I knew for certain was that no one would notice the loss of alcohol, except Jack, and he wouldn’t be coming by so much anymore. It was amusing, actually, the idea of his visiting sometime in the distant future and right away going, “Hey, who polished off all the whiskey?” Jack was amusing, unlike most everyone else.
My arm reached to the shelf where the medicine and spices were kept. The unopened spices had been a wedding present to my parents, which made the jars and the contents older than me. I did not like to touch them: it was as if they measured me or my life. I plucked the aspirin bottle from a field of caps, popped the lid, and shook out two pills, thinking how medicine and spices are similar since both are concentrates. Savory, cumin, marjoram, and mace are totally weird substances that probably even the greatest chefs don’t know how to use.
When I passed back through the living room, Mom was talking on the telephone to Lowie. “Yeah, but then,” Mom said, “I had to rewrite the entire curriculum.”
I drank some whiskey and listened. My mother is talented on the phone. She always sounds connected. I never even feel that connected in person. I wondered if the connectedness she finds there is real or imaginary. There. People say “there” as though it means something. Where is There? Maybe There is where They live. I swallowed the aspirin with a giant gulp of liquor. Aspirin or aspirins. I wasn’t sure.
In my closet I had just one dress. I’d bought it at a thrift shop in the city on Greenwich Avenue near Charles Street. I grabbed the dress, refilled my mug with whiskey, and went back upstairs to get showered, this time avoiding Kate. I did not want to be influenced by her monstrous good cheer. Not monstrous. What was the word my mother had used? Infectious.
I locked the bathroom door and turned the radio loud, because I kept hearing Kate through the door, bouncing around like a loose balloon. Shuffle-shuffle-skid-shuffle. I sat on the sink edge, taking several swigs. Pieces were repositioning inside, jockeying about, here and there. I figured I might as well finish the mug of whiskey because, well, just because. The liquor started to move down easily, going into my throat instead of through my sinuses. I wiped my chin with the back of my hand, and I hiccupped, once, then twice. I said, “Shit!” since shit is the thing to say when you get the hiccups. To get rid of them, I employed a method invented by my aunt.
“Close your eyes,” Lowie would coach, “point at your forehead, and gradually move in to touch a pretend spot. Breathe.” Because she was a midwife, Lowie was always coaching you as though you were in the middle of giving birth, whether you were backing out of the driveway or making an omelet. “You can do it. Just focus. Breathe. Breathe.”
“The principle,” she would explain academically after she had rid you of the offending problem, “is to concentrate electrical energy above the neck, thereby depriving the diaphragm of the means required to spasm.”
I hiccupped again and closed my eyes. My finger journeyed to a hypothetical spot, which my mind made into a pinwheel, lightly spinning. My forehead sensed the erotic nearness of my finger. Erotic because there was fighting back. As soon as I thought to double-check, the hiccups were gone.