After my sister leaves, I take the bottle of vodka out of the freezer and pour some into a cup with lots of ice and a little bit of cranberry juice. My anxiety can usually be tamed with a cheeseburger and fries but I wasn’t able to enjoy my food like I normally do, not like I do when I’m alone. I take my drink outside to the picnic table. From here I can see everything—my house and driveway, my car and lawn mower and trash cans: one for recycling and one for garbage. I can never remember what days the trash comes so I have to watch my neighbors, wheel the cans out to the curb when they do. I’ve met a few of them but I’m bad with names so I write them down on the notepad next to the refrigerator: Nicole and Shane; Ellie and Bill Tucker; Mr. Gorrell. I like to hold up a hand as I call their names from a distance, as if we might be neighborly. Some guys I haven’t met live in the house on the corner. When they have band practice, I sit outside and listen. They’re the only ones I might want to know.
When my drink is gone, I go inside and make another, walk around looking at my things as if I’m seeing them through my sister’s eyes. When I drink, I can’t do anything but wander my house, wondering how people live. What they do with themselves. There are paintings on the walls, not just prints. The kitchen is full of wedding loot—nice dishes and Calphalon pots, an espresso machine, a KitchenAid mixer—everything a person might want. In the foyer, there are family photographs on the table spanning generations of people who aren’t mine. The earliest photograph I have of myself was taken the day I was adopted. I was three. My father is holding me and I look tired and rumpled in a lace dress and leather shoes—all white like I’m about to be baptized. My sister was adopted a year later, as a newborn. The nurse took her from her birth mother and placed her in my mother’s arms and my parents cried so hard I thought something was wrong with her but we were going to have to keep her anyway.
I used to tell people I was adopted from an orphanage, that I would save paper napkins from meals and make bows for my hair so that when the couples came on Sunday afternoons, I’d look like I wanted it more than the others. I’d tell them they lined us up like they do at whorehouses, and we’d put on different personas, try different tactics to make them choose us. The truth is I don’t remember my life before. My memories begin with my sister.
When my mother placed her in my arms, she was sleeping. This is your sister, Elizabeth, my father said. Now our family is complete, my mother said. And then it was Christmas.
I curl up on the couch and the cat situates herself on my legs. She closes her eyes and I close mine. When I open them and check my phone, two hours have passed. I wish my sister was here, or I’d gone with her, but then I hear the key in the lock and she comes in calling my name, followed by Leah and two girls I’ve never seen before.
“We were at a bar, like, three blocks from here,” my sister says, “and we decided you had to come with us.”
The pretty dark-haired girl is wearing a low-cut shirt; my eyes stop at her breasts.
“Come with us,” Leah says.
“You’re coming,” my sister says. “Get dressed, we’re going downtown.”
The air is full of perfume and energy and I don’t want to go but they act like I don’t have a choice and this is what I need in order to be motivated. Now there are five of us, and we could all be traipsing drunkenly down the alley, holding each other up, laughing.
In my room, the cat is curled on my pillow. I didn’t see her move from the couch. She looks up at me with her big eyes and meows.
“What do you want, kitty?” I ask. She continues meowing so I go through the list—food, water, litter box. I only know these three things. “I won’t be gone long. And I won’t get drunk, I promise.” She doesn’t like it when I’m drunk. Perhaps, if I were drunk more often, she wouldn’t like it if I were sober. She’s a nice cat, and even though she follows me around and lies on my legs at night, I still imagine her clawing my face in my sleep.
I put on the dress and sweater I wear when I need to put on something in a hurry. The dress makes my waist look small and my breasts look large and the sweater is soft and comfortable.
My sister finds me in the bathroom. “You look nice,” she says, touching a sleeve.
“Do I need blush?”
“Mascara.”
“I don’t like mascara. I can feel my eyelashes when I wear it.” I apply lipstick while she watches. I’ve only recently begun to wear makeup and a little bit of jewelry. They don’t feel ridiculous on me like they used to, like I was a girl trying to be a woman.
“What about these shoes?” I ask. “I just got them.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Gladiators are tough. I think they should only be worn by very thin, very tall people. I don’t know,” she says again. “What else do you have? Give me options.”
“I’ll wear my boots.”
“Wear them if you like them. Your cat isn’t very friendly.”
“She’s friendly with me.”
“I didn’t know you liked cats.”
“I don’t.”
“So why’d you get one?”
“I wanted a pet and a dog seemed like too big a commitment.”
“But dogs are so much better,” she says, turning off the light. “Dogs come when you call them.”
“That’s the allure of a cat,” I say, “they’re independent,” which is what I’ve heard cat people say. I still don’t understand how cats work. You can’t yell at them or punish them like you can with a dog.
I follow my sister into the kitchen where the girls are opening cabinets, peering out the windows into the dark.
Leah bends down to pet my cat, bracelets jangling. “I like him,” she says. “He’s nice.”
“She.”
“She’s a sweetie. Aren’t you a sweetie?”
“Let’s go,” my sister says.
I turn on the porch light, lock the door, and we pile into a small yellow car. Leah is on one side of me and a girl named Jenna is on the other. I can feel myself becoming more and more uncomfortable but my sister catches my eye in the mirror and I think, Everything is fine, everything is just fine. I try to convince myself this is fun, that this is what people do—they go out and drink with their girlfriends and have fun. They meet men. They take shots and lose themselves in the night. But then the cars on the interstate come to a standstill and my breathing becomes more and more labored and I can’t see whether it’s a wreck or what. I don’t know why I had to be in the middle, my arms and legs touching people.