— That’s not really a thing.
— Just try it for me.
Okay, we live on a houseboat and our parents are dead, they were much older parents who adopted us later in life, and they were wonderful, loving parents who encouraged us to do everything we wanted in life, and they died peacefully of old age in their sleep in their twin beds holding hands. Their last words were Life has been perfect and we love you girls more than all the world and there’s a key to our safe deposit box in the wall behind the life vests that has our will and plenty of money for you girls to get through high school and go to college.
— Well, that’s nicer, I guess, but now it’s just not believable.
— Yes, and it’s also not terribly interesting.
— I’ve had plenty of interesting for one lifetime. I could spit interesting.
— Mom, seriously, just let me tell the story how I want to tell it right now.
— Fine.
The funeral is a bleak affair. This is not one of those sad-beautiful celebrations of life with occasional chuckles, this is a let’s get this over with as quickly as possible in a small chapel in the basement of the Baptist church on Broadway and Seventy-Ninth. We’re not even Baptist. We don’t have a lot of relatives in New York, they’re mostly all back in Iowa or in other parts of the country. A couple of them make excuses about coming because it’s too far, too painful, too everything. So it’s about six friends of our parents’ from the boat basin and Nina, everyone sobbing, plus a minister who didn’t know either of them and calls our mother Louisa instead of Lois. Louisa and Fred were a remarkable couple.
— Hold up there, sister daughter. Lois and Fred, really?
— Well, I could have gone with Edna and Walter, but it was harder to imagine them ever moving to New York for any reason whatsoever.
— What if Daddy got a job with the New York Times?
— That’s a pretty liberal paper. Almost as unbelievable as you being your own mom.
— Good point.
The minister continues. When their young daughter Lois suggested they live on a houseboat, the first thing Fred and Louisa said was “All hands on deck!” They saw an opportunity for the experience of a lifetime, and they went for it. Louisa and Fred had left their small-town Iowa life behind for New York City as soon as they graduated college, but this was a whole new opportunity. Yes, it ended badly. Very badly. He shakes his head and takes a long pause.
Jesus, you lean over and say to me, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? I don’t know, I say, but I feel like throwing a tomato at him, like they do in old movies about a bad play. We both giggle. He glares at us. You glare back harder, with your neck extended in front of you. He doesn’t notice.
But they raised two beautiful girls, Lois and—he tries to glance down at his notes surreptitiously, fails—Betsy, and gave them a foundation and community in this quirky little riverside neighborhood. We pray that their souls are at eternal rest.
— Betsy, this is some weird, dark shit.
— Have you read my stuff before?
— Not since about 1993. But I remember thinking what I did read was really cute.
— Cute.
— I’m giving you a compliment.
— No, you know what, it probably was cute. My concern here is that this, too, is leaning to the cute side.
— It has murder and orphans. What is cute here?
— Black and white cookies, houseboats. I don’t know. It might be twee.
— I don’t know what that means.
The first thing you do after the funeral is raid the liquor cabinet. It’s time for cocktails! you say. I don’t want to drink, Lois. The kids who drink at my school are a bunch of assholes. That’s what drinking is! I like being in control of myself. Well, that’s not one of your choices today, Betsy. Pick your poison, you say, opening the door to the liquor cabinet. I say I’m not sure I want anything that’s in there. Unless you see something that tastes like a milkshake. You push some bottles around, say You might like this, hold up a bottle of something that says “coconut” on the label. I hate coconut, Lois, you know that. Oh, wah, I forgot something about you. Relax. I know! I say. I want a Martini and Rossi on the rocks, like Angie Dickinson. I don’t think we have that, Betsy. How about this? You hold up a bottle of Boone’s Farm apple wine. Oh, that looks good! I imagine it will taste like apple juice, take a big swig, almost spit it out. It tastes like if apple juice was made of gasoline. It tastes like what apple juice would taste like if it were made of gasoline. Oh, whatever, Lois. Do you want to be a writer or not? Yes. All right, then, straighten up that grammar and let’s get drinking. You have to start slow. Booze is an acquired taste. I don’t know what that means. It means you have to learn to like it. No, I mean, I understand the idea, I’m just saying it makes no sense to me. If you don’t like something, can’t you just not like it? Sure, Betsy. But there are some tastes that you realize are good once you get used to them. Like anchovies. Anchovies are the best! Right, but some people think they’re disgusting. Okay, but they don’t have to eat them. It’s just about trying new things more than once before you go saying you don’t like them. The reason it applies so well to booze versus other things is that booze gets you drunk. So it’s totally worth it. Sip it. You’ll see.
I take a small sip, let it slide down, nod. Better than the first big gulp, yes. Take another, another, another. Yeah, okay, I say. Okay. Yeah, okay. Another another. I slide down into the built-in bench sofa and everything slips away, my algebra test, the shaggy-haired boy who hasn’t noticed me, my bossy older sister, our dead parents. Kind of the greatest thing ever, am I right? So far it’s up there. But I haven’t been alive that long. I didn’t know you were a drinker, Lois. There’s a lot you don’t know. If I weren’t half-drunk I might comment on that, but the urn with Mom and Dad’s ashes has caught my eye and I’m distracted. I open the lid and look inside. It’s a little unsteady in my hands as I take it off the kitchen table. Christ, Betsy, be careful! I just want to see what it looks like. They. It. They. I have an urge to plunge my hand into it. I open the twist tie on the plastic bag inside to get a better look. My vision is blurry, and it’s dark in there, but it looks like sand. When you get up to go to the bathroom, I sink my hand in halfway up to my elbow. It seems like the exact right thing to do. It feels cool and satisfying. It feels like if Mom and Dad were the beach. Nothing about this seems weird to me.
You come back into the cabin and see me with my hand in the urn and my eyes closed. Oh my god, Betsy, are you fucking nuts? What the fuck is wrong with you? Give me that! I hold the urn to my body more closely, push you away with the other hand. We should scatter those in the river, you say. It’s morbid to keep an old urn around. No! I say. We’re keeping them. We’re keeping them. Okay, we’ll talk about this later. We’re keeping them! We’ll talk about it later. WE’RE KEEPING THEM. You roll your eyes, I’m clearly out of my mind with grief or with drink or possibly both, so you try to shift gears. I think we should take this thing for a ride. Oh my god, Lois, that’s an amazing idea. Where should we go? The beach, I say. I want to go live at the beach. I like the mountains, you say.