Thanksgiving 2003:
The One with Vermouth
My girl Vermouth.
She’s the first bottle I grab from my father’s liquor cabinet in his office, and I instantly regret it. Vermouth tastes as if cold medicine, window cleaner, and a stale bag of black licorice had an orgy. I hate her from the first sip, but that doesn’t stop me from taking another. And another.
“Pen, slow down.” Smith grabs the bottle from my hand, splashing a little on my Abercrombie hoodie. He takes a drink and makes a face. “This shit is awful.”
“Don’t talk about Vermouth like that.” I rest my head on his shoulder. “She’s poetic, if you think about it. She’s bold, but not necessarily in a good way. She’s memorable. Also not necessarily in a good way. OK, fine. She’s awful, but she’s all we’ve got up here.”
“Why exactly are we in your old tree house?” Smith takes another swig and shivers as it goes down. “My parents wouldn’t care if you came over.”
“Your parents don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. They call it Colonizer’s Day.”
“True. But they are having a séance. They’ve also got normal booze like beer and those little bottles of fruity wine.”
“Why are you so eager to abandon Vermouth?”
“Call me crazy, but I don’t think she’s going to help us get down from this tree if we keep partying with her.”
In hindsight, the tree house is a less than ideal place to escape to. I haven’t been up here since I was in middle school, and it’s now home to a large community of dust bunnies, cobwebs, and probably a venomous spider or rabid opossum. My father has talked about tearing the thing down for years, but he’s never gotten around to actually doing it. I bet if I started spending time in here again, he’d find the time to have it removed. He’d probably have someone here within a day to rip it out, along with the tree, just to make sure I didn’t get any wild ideas about putting another one up in its place.
God, I can just hear him right now.
Tree houses are a distraction, Penelope. People who spend time in tree houses aren’t the kind of people that get accepted into Princeton, and they’re definitely not the kind of people who work for my company.
“I can’t drink any more of this.” Smith holds out the green bottle in front of me. “One more sip and your girl Vermouth is going to push me right out of this death trap.”
“She would never.”
“She would, and if the fall didn’t kill me, your parents would.”
“That would be a good distraction.” I hold the bottle to my lips. “But I’m pretty sure once we cleared your body off the grass, my dad would still force me to sit down with Mr. Yates for my mock interview. Princeton waits for no one, not even death, you know.”
“I had no idea how anticlimactic my death would be for your family.”
“It’s true.” I force down another gulp of the putrid liquid. “But if it makes you feel any better, I’d really prefer you not to die. I’m pretty invested in us being together forever and having an epic honeymoon like Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy did in Just Married.”
“Their honeymoon was awful in that movie.” Smith kisses the top of my head. The smell of vermouth on his breath is overwhelming. “Nothing goes right. They fight the whole time.” He lowers his lips to my ear. “And they never have sex. How is that romantic?”
A warm smile takes shape over my slightly numb face. It won’t be long now until my head goes foggy. After that, the fight with my parents this morning will seem like a distant memory. Hell, as strong as this stuff is hitting me, maybe I won’t remember it at all.
“They see each other at their worst.” A boozy hiccup escapes my lips. “And it doesn’t scare them. At least not enough to stop loving each other.”
“You should write that down in your notebook of story ideas.” Smith chuckles. “Actually, you should write that down and give it to me. Fiona and Jasper could use some new material for their next album.”
The patio door slams, causing a glitch in my mental journey from buzzed to drunk. I crawl across the rickety floor, no doubt covering the knees of my flared jeans in spiderwebs, and peer through the peephole in the center of a wooden plank. Marie, our maid, is standing on the backyard patio. She grabs a cigarette from the secret stash she keeps in her apron and lights it.
“Ms. Penelope!” she shouts in her beautiful French accent. “Ms. Penelope, the table is being seated!”
Marie takes a few puffs before putting the cigarette out on the sole of her black work shoe. She tosses the butt into the firepit before returning to the house. At least she can tell my parents she tried to find me. Of course, that also means it’s only a matter of time before my mother comes tearing outside in one of her flowy caftans, looking for me.
“Last chance to run away to my mother’s séance,” Smith says.
“Who’s Fiona trying to get a hold of today? Janis? Freddie?”
“Cobain.” Smith shakes his head. “She’s convinced this blue Fender she found in our attic is his. Swears he left it at our house when he came over for my dad’s fiftieth birthday back in the nineties.”
“Can’t she just call Courtney and ask?”
“Where would be the fun in that?”
If I wasn’t completely in love with Smith Mackenzie, I would hate his guts. His family is so ridiculously cool and easy to get along with. They always have the best parties. His parents invite over the most amazing and interesting people, and they do it for the simple pleasure of enjoying their company, not as a way to negotiate a deal or further benefit some aspect of their lives. Once, they spent eight hours locked in a game of Dungeons and Dragons with the guys from U2. They got so caught up in the game that they didn’t have time to record a track for their next album together. But they didn’t care. Jasper and Fiona never care about business more than people or family or fun. They’re the polar opposite of my parents in every way imaginable. My parents never miss an opportunity for business.
Take today for example. Thanksgiving is supposed to be about family and friends and food. It’s supposed to be about enjoying each other’s company and being thankful for all that you have. It’s the one day a year where you don’t look at what your life is missing, because as long as you have the people that matter the most to you gathered around your table, you have everything you need. But that’s not true for Carter Banks. For my dad, every day is a business day. Every day is an opportunity for a deal to be made, and every person a pawn to be used to further his own goals.
“He knows I’m not smart enough to go to Princeton,” I mutter under my breath. “I’m not like Phoebe. I will never get grades like Phoebe.”
“Huh? Are we still talking about Cobain?”
Smith is crouched over on his hands and knees. A tiny bead of sweat paints a trail from his gelled hairline to his smooth jaw. He’s paler than I remember him being a few hours ago. Slightly green too, if I’m not mistaken, which I could be, seeing as how I’m pretty sure I’m drunk.
“I said my father knows I’m not smart. Phoebe is the smart one. I’m the creative one. Basically, Phoebe is the good daughter, and I’m the one that needs to be fixed.”
Smith covers his ears like I’ve just blown an air horn in his face. “Why are you screaming at me?”
“I’m not.”
“I can hear your voice in my eyeballs.”
“Stop being so dramatic. Oh god. I sound like him now.”
“Like who?”
“My father. I sound like my father.”
Smith moves his hands from covering his ears to covering his mouth instead. “Your girl Vermouth is not settling well.”
I pull myself up, grab a dusty plastic tub filled with a forgotten stash of CDs, and drop it next to Smith. “Puke in this.”