High Spirits
A short story from the collection, Blue For Pints
Chris, a thirty-eight-year-old single parent with two chatty bratty girls under ten, talked out loud while wiping down the sink, rinsing out a fresh glass, mentally bitching about life as usual and muttering, – Orange juice is not alcoholic. No, but all that vodka is. But since the kids can’t smell it, it doesn’t count. Does it? It’s good for me, for breakfast, it’s healthy. And anyway, no one knows about the vodka. Do they?
Only the cashier at Walmart on the edge of town would notice and Chris was careful about changing up the times spent shopping there. More importantly, the kids don’t know about the vodka. They’d better not. There’d be in trouble for Chris if they did. For being a hypocrite after treating their grandmother shittily as an awful example of daytime drinking, cutting Grandma off like that.
Why does it taste so bad this morning, Chris wondered, thinking the juice was to blame, almost wanting to make some coffee instead. Or throw it away. What would the day look like though? Scary thought that, a whole day with no booze to soften the loneliness. Grandma Delia had said, quit. Delia had done just that and was all righteous about it. She’d quit cold turkey. Claiming to see how the alcohol wasn’t worth it after all, the toxic aches and pains, the depression, the dry skin, the bad sleeping patterns. Oh, Delia had understood how bad it was for her. Finally. And so at age 55, she’d stopped. Damn. It was, well, almost, impressive.
A few years ago that was, and Delia had been the one who’d drunk shots for lunch. Great role model she was. A fun mom though, thought Chris, a great parent really. Delia was not one of the mean drunks, no, they used to go to Elephant Butte Reservoir an hour or so away. They’d sit on a bench watching the sunset like they’d done all those years before, resting with the late afternoon sun on their faces, cooling after the heatwaves of summer. And when the kids, those boisterous red-headed twins, were at playschool, then Chris and Delia would spend their free days together. Delia would pick the ice cream, chocolate and strawberry usually, and they’d sit there making up stories and trying to make each other laugh until the ice cream snorted out their noses. Delia told Chris once a little gem about how she’d caught Reverend Rodney with the high school soccer coach on their knees in the supermarket, apparently praying, heads together, all pink and flustered at ten in the morning, and how she’d reached over their heads, saying forgive me father, for I have sinned and run out of Orange Juice for the wicked ones. The coach had never looked her in the eye again. The Reverend had invited her to join them, but she’d laughed so hard that she almost peed herself. That was the story.
But then Delia stopped.
Drinking that is.
Delia stopped eating ice cream too. Stopped those high spirits of all kinds. That’s what it felt like. But whose fault was it? Chris missed her. It’d been too long since they’d chatted. Chris stood in the kitchen, staring out onto a clear blue New Mexico sky. The memories faded. Mostly. A headache lingered, hangover probably. Caffeine would help. Vodka wouldn’t. Not really. It wasn’t worth it, was it? Chris sighed. Troubled.
– Maybe I’ll, maybe I’ll not drink this now. I’ll put it in the fridge, no sense wasting it. Yes, I’ll save it for later. Coffee and a chat with my mom sounds about right for now. I’ll put the kettle on and call her up, ask her to meet me at the lake, sit on a bench, treat ourselves. I’d like that. Maybe I can make her laugh so hard she snorts out ice cream onto the sandy beach.
