Also, I loved saying the word fiancé. Which—whatever. Poor, poor me.
Back in the apartment, people are kissing at random and Bonnie is on the telephone, probably with Vince, the boyfriend she’s been meaning forever to dump, and Charles is still pink, and now also pantsless, cleaning up a champagne spill with paper towels. His pants are across the room, absorbing a different spill. A crowd is arguing about which make better pets, guinea pigs or gerbils, and Jared is halving a Valium.
I finally find my plastic cup, which I’ve starred with a Sharpie, in a stack of other cups. Originally it was champagne, and now it’s champagne swished with bourbon, because my thinking is always, if I’m going to poison myself, why not make it count?
Earlier Jared had said that we were young—youngish, he corrected—and that a year was a long time not to be doing what you wanted to be doing.
He was a sushi chef, he’d said, but somebody else I later talked to laughed and said meanly, “Chef is one way to put it.” This person had been to Jared’s restaurant. Jared filleted the fish and pulled pin bones out of salmon, and it was the real chefs who did all the slicing. Jared wore a hairnet on his beard.
And now, even later, back at Bonnie’s place, Bonnie and I sit on her balcony, eating peanuts and ranch dressing from a big bowl with a spoon, sharing her blanket. We can hear the parties all around us, picking up and losing steam. We watch the lights blink on and off over the hills across the city.
“You know what happened yesterday?” Bonnie says. “Yesterday we had someone walk into the salon and ask what the price was for a shampoo and blow job.”
“And you gave it to him?” I say.
“She was a paying customer,” Bonnie says.
I realize, horrified, that I am wearing Joel’s ring. I’d been carrying it in a pocket in my purse. I can’t remember putting it on. I jiggle the ring off and drop it back in the purse, where the sea of junk engulfs it immediately.
Bonnie is looking at me, it appears, with fondness.
“Are you,” it occurs to me, “admiring your haircut?”
And suddenly, somehow, it is three in the morning and we are back to the vodka and carrots.
“Here’s to the new year.” I raise my glass. “Here’s to new leaves.”
“I’m going to be nicer this year,” Bonnie says, “but meaner to Vincent.”
“I’m going to keep a clean purse.”
“You’re going to find it in yourself,” she says, sternly, “to be okay.”
“To being okay!” I cry.
“New year! New leaf!”
“New leaf,” I repeat, and we drink.
January 1
Sometimes I like a hangover because it’s something to do.
This morning’s is a rodent: pesky but manageable. The allergy to Ibuprofen, I get from my mother. From her I’ve also inherited the tendency to headaches and fevers that do not respond to one anything. First order of business, this morning, is two aspirins and a glass of water.
In last night’s dream I got caught in the rain. Joel had been holding our umbrella, but he left me. He wandered off to follow a dog that was wearing pants. Fortunately, I was wearing a coat of salami. The rainwater beaded on it and glided off.
I rifle through Bonnie’s paintings, propped up against her living-room wall. They’re collecting dust and cobwebs, which I brush off with a sleeve.
She drifts into the room, rubs her eyes.
“These are good,” I say.
“They’re garbage.”
“This is beautiful,” I say, holding one up: it might be a self-portrait; it’s not obviously so. The subject has the same color hair and same color skin and same color eyes as Bonnie.
“Take it,” she says, waving her hand, like it’s a pair of too-small shoes she has no use for.
Bonnie has funny indents on her face from where her glasses were; she fell asleep with them on. Noticing my hair, she immediately tries to smooth it out with her hands.
“Thanks for the haircut,” I say.
“Welcome home,” she says, and gives my hair one last admiring look.
At home, my parents are on the couch, clutching tall glasses of pink-orange something. The Rose Parade is on TV. Mom’s feet are inside the bottoms of Dad’s pants—her way of keeping them warm.
“That’s nice,” Mom says, about Bonnie’s painting.
The pink stuff, it is explained to me, is cantaloupe juice. “I call it ‘melonade,’?” Mom says.
Mom’s quit cooking, like a person might quit smoking or gambling. This is on account of Dad. What she’s figured is that it was the years of cooking in aluminum pots, cooking with canned goods, that led to the dementia. She’s thrown out the aluminum pots and pans and tossed the tin foil.
She’s been reading the online literature on dementia. What she’s read: the brain uses minerals to function, and when magnesium isn’t available, it uses the next available mineral, aluminum. In large quantities it can cause nervous tissue damage. Though the studies aren’t one hundred percent certain.
This is my mother, who once made all our meals from scratch: our sushi, our ketchup, our English muffins. She used to sneak her own popcorn into movie theaters because she objected to the butter from the pump.
This is my mother who cooked dinner every night and—even into high school—never missed an opportunity to pack a sack lunch.
This is my mother, now, who seems wary of everything—who seems to trust only juices and vitamins to do the least amount of harm.
Joel never did like California. He always talked about leaving. Out loud, I’d agree, but inwardly I held out hope he’d change his mind—that I’d win him over. We’ve been here forever—my dad’s side, I mean: from Ireland and Germany to New York and Pennsylvania, my father’s great-greats came to San Francisco and Santa Barbara and Pasadena and Palm Springs.
So why not be here, in this house where I grew up, and where my parents still live? I was born in Fontana, the next town over, on an afternoon in July, thirty years ago. My mom was twenty-five and newly parentless—parentless again—when she had me.
That same year her adoptive parents were in a car accident and died; her biological parents most likely continued living, in China—she had no information about them. Maybe they thought of her constantly. Maybe they thought of her never. Maybe they thought of her sometimes, or on special occasions, like when they became grandparents to children who were not me. In any case, my mother was without a family. Without a family but us, I mean.