“I…I don’t want to impose…” I stammered, when I really did. I really wanted to impose.
“You’re not,” Tiffany said. “Honestly, we’ve got to drink all this green booze before my kids come home and think they’re slushies.”
“Well…” I smiled. “As long as I’m doing you a favor.”
“Oh,” Bebe said, nodding, her face all serious, “you are.”
“Let me just put my laundry in and I’ll come back.”
I practically threw my laundry into the machine with the soap and the coins and then walked back out to the picnic table. Tiffany was coming out of her trailer with one Spider-Man and two Barbie cups filled to the brim with icy green booze. She was licking the top of one like an ice-cream cone.
“You’re right,” she said. “It says Bucket-o-Margarita.”
“I told you,” Bebe said. “Who’d make that shit up?”
Tiffany handed out the cups and we all took a half-sip, half-bite from our drinks. It was shockingly sweet and really boozy and very cold.
Perfect.
“Where are your kids?” I asked.
“My dad’s away on business for the week, so my mom took them for two whole nights,” Tiffany said. She put her hands up in the air and did a little swaying dance move. “I’m gonna get drunk. And sleep in late. And then I’m going to mop the floors and go to the grocery store without anyone—”
“No,” Bebe cut in. “We’re going to get drunk, yes. Sleep in, yes. And then we’re going to flop out on that couch and watch bad TV all day.”
“I vote with Bebe,” I said and took another swig/bite of my drink. It was melting fast in the heat. “Bad TV, no mopping.”
Tiffany smiled affectionately at her sister. “Bebe does have all the good ideas.” She clapped her hands like she’d had a suddenly great idea. “Hey, I have chips.” She stood up, wobbled slightly, and then made a beeline for her trailer.
“Bring out a bucket!” Bebe yelled.
Without Tiffany, we both took another drink and the silence was thick. I’d never been good with small talk, especially with other women. “You don’t live here, do you?” I asked when the silence went on way too long. “I haven’t seen you around.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I live with my folks in Asheville.”
“Wow,” I said. Tiffany had a sister, a mom, and a dad who goes on business meetings, who all live in Asheville—an hour and a bit up the road—and she’s stuck out here in a trailer park with three kids and a fuckwit like Phil? Hardly seemed right. But then I was no great judge of family dynamics.
“When she got pregnant with Danny and married Phil, Dad disowned her,” Bebe said, like she knew what I was thinking. “Mom and I do what we can behind his back—”
“Like take the kids when he’s on business?”
She nodded. “I send her some money when I can. Stuff for the kids.”
“You know Phil hits her?”
Bebe jerked back, her face turned aside.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, putting down the drink. “I should—”
“She says he stopped.”
I shook my head.
“Goddamnit,” she whispered.
Tiffany arrived in the doorway of the trailer, holding a bucket aloft. She looked years younger. Radiant, even. And drunk as a skunk. “This one is Bucket-o-Daiquiri.”
“Bring it on,” Bebe said, waving her forward.
“Forgot the chips,” Tiffany said and darted back in.
Bebe grabbed my hand. “Stay,” she said. “Let’s have fun. A lot of fun. For Tiffany. She needs this.”
“Sure,” I said, because I needed it too. The proverbial rug had been yanked out from beneath me and I didn’t know how to process it. Processing Dylan while drunk seemed like a great idea. I had never in my life gotten drunk with girlfriends. I’d never really had girlfriends. This night seemed paramount to me. A matter, quite frankly, of survival.
The slush was now mostly liquid and I took another big swig. Alcohol burned down my throat.
Tiffany came back out with the bucket and the chips and an ice-cream scoop. “Hey, Annie,” she said, sitting down and pointing the ice-cream scoop in my face. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Yeah?” I asked, leaning out of the way. Bebe cracked open the daiquiri bucket and took the ice-cream scoop out of Tiffany’s hand, using it to dish out giant balls of yellow booze.
“What the fuck happened to your hair?”
—
And that is how I found myself in the kitchen of her trailer (really, those double-wides were so spacious!), a towel around my neck and Tiffany putting peroxide in my hair. She’d already trimmed up my ragged