Back in the Burbs by Tracy Wolff
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Mom sets down her now-empty shot glass. “After he finally came clean to me and told me about Sarah, I told him that he did you girls a great disservice.” She looks from me to Sarah. “To never let you know each other when you’re family. It was the last straw. I packed up and left while he sat there in his chair by the big front window doing his damn crossword puzzle.”
“This calls for a drink.” Nick gathers the shot glasses from in front of him, Mom, and me.
“Another one?” Sarah asks from her spot at the head of the kitchen table, the only sober one in a room full of adults having a much-needed medicinal moment.
“Yes,” Mom agrees. “Page sixteen.”
I thumb through Aunt Maggie’s My Drinking Buddy book that was tucked into the cabinet with the liquor. We’ve been playing this game for the past hour, ever since Mom apologized to Sarah for their initial meeting. One of us would call out a page number and someone else would pick a drink to try from that page.
“Banana Bombers.” I concentrate on the letters in the middle of the row of three in my immediate vision. “Triple sec, grenadine, and banana-flavored schnapps.”
Nick scoots his chair closer to mine and looks over my shoulder at the page. “Who has banana-flavored schnapps?”
Sarah gets up and goes to the built-in liquor cabinet, hunting around for a minute before crowing in triumph and turning, holding a bottle aloft. “Aunt Maggie!”
Mom throws both her arms up in the air and lets out a loud “wooooooo.” My mom is a woo girl; who would have thought.
“I might regret this later,” she says. “But I’m beginning to think that old bat was onto something with this hoarding thing.”
“Mom!”
“Come on,” she says. “Margaret would have laughed at that and you know it.”
It’s true. She would have. Aunt Maggie loved to laugh at herself and everyone else.
“Ready, bartender?” I ask Sarah.
She nods. “Ready.”
“One ounce of schnapps, three-fourths ounce triple sec, splash of grenadine. Shake it like a Polaroid picture and put it in a— Oh shit.”
“What?” Nick asks, his words a little slower than usual like the rest of us—well, except Sarah. “Do we have to put it in a pineapple or something?”
“Worse.” I look up from the page. “A chilled shot glass.”
Nick grabs the shot glasses, gets up, then puts them in the freezer and slings the door shut. “Give it a minute.”
“Booooo,” Mom says, obviously drunk.
Really, we all are, well, except for Sarah. It’s the only thing that can explain why we’re willing to try banana-flavored schnapps. There’s no way it’s going to taste good. We munch on chips and salsa delivered by a bored teenager from the world’s best Mexican restaurant this side of the Hudson.
“So you really think I could carry off longer hair?” Mom asks Sarah, picking up the conversation they’d had ten minutes ago as if no time had passed at all. “I thought once I hit forty, I had to cut it all off.”
“No way.” Sarah shakes her head. “With your bone structure, you could do anything you want with your hair. Have you ever considered going auburn?”
“Red?” Mom blushes. “Oh no, I couldn’t. That’s very…in your face.”
“Come on, Mom, live a little.” I cheer her on. “You’re sixty-three, not dead! You can do whatever you want.”
“I can’t believe I left,” she says as she fiddles with the bent corner of the Drinking Buddy book. “I wonder if he sat at the dining table expecting dinner to magically appear in front of him.”
I sigh. “That is how it’s worked for the past forever.” True story. I don’t even know if he knows where the kitchen is in their house, but he definitely doesn’t know where to find the pots and pans.
“I have to make a confession.” Mom looks around at us, her gaze hazy as she weaves a bit in her chair. “I tossed out all the leftovers before I left, and you know how he abhors delivery food. He’ll have to make something from scratch or break his own rules and go out to eat by himself.”
We all stare at her in an impressed silence.
“Mrs. Martin,” Sarah says. “You are an evil genius.”
“Thank you, Sarah. Call me Elizabeth or Liz or Bet; that’s what my friends growing up called me because I always won everyone’s milk money when we played Jacks.”
Who would have thought that my mom was a grade-school hustler?
“Bet it is,” Nick says as he opens up the freezer and gets out the shot glasses. “Ready?”
“You bet,” the rest of us call out in one voice and then break into laughter.
Sarah pours the Banana Bombers out of the shaker and hands us each a shot glass.
“To fresh starts,” I say, my glass held aloft.
Nick, Mom, and I clink our shot glasses and Sarah adds her water glass.
I close my eyes, gird my taste buds, and throw back the shot. That’s when I know I’m really past the point of no return—because it tastes delicious. Oh shit. I’m definitely going to regret this in the morning.