Chapter 15
WILLIAM
Many religions forbid alcohol. Buddhism believes that it clouds self-awareness.
Islam that it prevents the remembrance of God.
Mormonism that it makes you weary and robs you of knowledge.
These were not the reasons William swore off alcohol the morning after his sister’s engagement party last October, when he woke up in a laundromat with vomit crusting his shirt, but he sought them out afterward.
Even though he had not yet found a faith, abstaining felt purifying, the punishment almost sacred.
At Haven House, the bartender asked what he wanted, and doubt swept him. He struggled to order, and the man’s jaw shifted in annoyance. There were people behind William, sweaty and impatient, and that was all it took to make him stay the course. A sense of being an inconvenience.
“Just a Miller,” he said.
The first sip was a disappointment—the liquid was warm, the bottle mouth clinking metallically against his teeth.
The second was more familiar, and by the third, he’d begun to loosen.
He hadn’t eaten anything since they arrived.
Every platter offered fish, which he could never stomach, plagued by memories of the beach in Rogers Park they went to as children, thin silver alewives rotting on its shore.
On an empty stomach, after only half a beer, his spine softened like a lit candle. Why had he been standing so straight?
They were corralled onto the patio, lighting fresh cigarettes, and Oscar was telling a story about a man who wouldn’t purchase a stereo until he heard it play the entirety of Dark Side of the Moon.
The sale took him seven and a half hours.
Oscar performed the same outrage he’d felt under the store’s fluorescent lights, smacking his palm against his forehead, rolling his tongue against his cheek.
Since they were children, he’d been exaggerated, somehow a caricature of his own self, and in the drowsy warmth of the beer, William laughed at his every gesture.
“Do you want another?” Scott asked, and without a thought, William said yes.
When they returned, the patio had somehow become even fuller. “I want to see this house,” Vivian said, and they all agreed. It felt like a mission, the focused play of childhood.
The porch was just as crowded as the patio.
Every seat was taken, bodies perched on the arms of tan wicker chairs.
An olive tree hid in the corner. The living room was not much better.
All William could see was that the walls and floors were saturated with cream—cream paint, shaggy cream rugs.
Chinese vases lined the mantel like squat blue birds, the room’s only source of color.
A young man was leaning into a young woman by the doorway, his desire obvious, something William himself had never felt and could not understand.
That was all he could have told Lewis: it was not that he wanted men; it was that he wanted no one. He took another swig of his beer.
This would be his last bottle, he told himself, just enough to dull any thoughts of how skittish Shay had seemed, of Aunt Eleanor and his father.
Ahead of him, his cousins were picking up glass ashtrays and setting them back down on different surfaces, thumbing the edges of gold-framed paintings.
He followed them into the dining room, which was empty except for a couple in the corner, both of whom had plates of lemon chiffon cake.
“Where’d you get that?” William asked, startling them both. Oscar and Scott began to laugh, though he was not sure why.
“Indoor voices,” Vivian said in the singsong cadence of a kindergarten teacher.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just really want some cake.” This only made Oscar and Scott laugh harder.
“We got it out there,” the woman said, pointing the tines of her fork toward the living room.
“Thank you,” William whispered.
The couple gave him a wide berth as they passed with their plates, heading back into the party’s fray. Though he was starving, imagining the bright tang of lemon, the cloud of whipped cream, he did not want to leave his cousins.
“Wow, look at this masterpiece,” Oscar said.
He was pointing at a massive oil painting above the credenza.
It was a family portrait, a styleless sop of color.
There was Mr. Pruitt, expressionless in a three-piece suit, and his wife beside him, less diminutive than she appeared now, with arms thick enough to lift a carton of milk or a baby, though not strong enough for the child posed beside her.
“Holy shit,” Scott said, and laughed.
The child was Andrew, in a crisp white sailor suit, his cheeks rosy as crab apples.
He looked to be nearly twelve, too old for such a costume.
William was not sure which would be worse—if Andrew had chosen the outfit or if he had allowed himself to be buttoned into it, knowing this image would be preserved in oil for as long as his parents lived.
“Shay’s marrying quite the little sailor,” Oscar said, and though Vivian shushed him, she was laughing, and then William was as well.
The laughter escalated to breathlessness, too much even for the obvious hilarity of the painting, and that in itself made them laugh harder.
Tears dribbled from the corners of his eyes.
Vivian opened the credenza and removed a crystal decanter of amber liquor. It caught the light like a pistol.
“Upstairs?” she offered. They all nodded—yes.