Jonathan Dee - The Privileges

“Hey now,” Adam said.

“You have lost a step, though,” Cynthia said in his ear. “I mean, these bottom-feeders bought me three drinks while I was waiting for you to come back with this one.” She took one glass out of his hand, took a sip from it, and then with drinks in both hands put her arms around his neck and started making out with him. He felt a little vodka splash on the back of his neck. He wasn’t sure whether or not this was hilarious. The circle of guys may not have been able to hear anything she’d been saying to them, but this kind of display they understood, and with no hard feelings they turned away to see what else was available.

Cyn stopped kissing him for a moment and screamed after them, “His dick is bigger than yours too!” That they heard. In fact, a number of people seemed to hear it. “Okay,” Adam said, putting his hand gently on the small of her back, “I’m thinking it’s time to call it a night.”

When they were out on the sidewalk she turned around toward the bar’s façade and made the sign of the cross. It was only about ten blocks home but under the circumstances he thought they’d be better off in a cab. He watched her as they rode, eyes closed, head against the window. He hadn’t seen her this drunk in years; or maybe he had, but the difference was that he’d been that drunk too. She held her liquor like a champion, so if she was this far gone — and without him — it could only be because she wanted it that way. They got off the elevator and she went straight to the bathroom; Adam waited by the front door while the sitter, Gina, a round girl from Barnard about whom he knew absolutely nothing other than that she was from Minnesota, found her jacket and her shoes and wedged her textbooks back into her backpack. He counted out her money, including a twenty for cab fare. “Is it okay if I don’t walk you out tonight?” he said.

“No problem,” she said. “It’s not like it’s a rough neighborhood.”

He waited until the elevator door closed. Walking back through the foyer he saw that Gina had written on a pad underneath the phone, “Cynthia — Your mother called,” and then underneath that, “2x.” He went to the bathroom to make sure she was okay, but the door was open again and she wasn’t in there. She wasn’t in their bedroom either. He found her in the kids’ room, sitting on the floor against the wall between their beds. Her eyes were wide open.

“We need a bigger apartment,” she whispered. “They can’t keep sharing a room forever.”

He nodded and reached out his hands to help her to her feet. When she was on the bed in their room he took her shoes off and brought her a couple of Advil and a glass of water. The room was lit only from outside but she lay back on the pillow with her forearm over her eyes.

“You okay?” Adam asked her. She nodded. Then, because her unguardedness was contagious, as drunk people’s often is, he said, “Hey, Cyn, can I ask you something?”

Without moving her arm from her eyes she gestured grandly with her hand, like, Knock yourself out.

“When you go to that shrink,” he said, “what do you talk about?”

She grinned. “Not supposed to ask that,” she said.

He nodded, though she couldn’t see him, and kept lightly stroking her hip with his fingertips. The radiator hissed softly.

“Now,” she said, lifting her arm from her face. “Time to show me what you’ve got. Come on, stud. I knew you’d be good when I saw you in that bar.”

She started struggling with her jeans. He stood up beside the bed to help her, and by the time he had them off, she was asleep.

The next morning he took the kids to school and let her stay in bed; he put the note about her mother’s phone calls next to the coffeemaker where she’d see it. She scowled; okay, two more Advil and something to eat before I start to deal with that, she thought, but no such luck, at about five minutes to eight the phone rang again. Ruth sounded tense and offended, though that was pretty much par for the course.

“I called three times last night,” she said.

“We were out late. Which is why a stranger answered the phone. We got home way past your bedtime.”

“Well, anyway, I’m calling because I have a favor to ask you, and as I thought you might have gathered, it’s urgent. It’s about your sister.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Your stepsister, Deborah.” Before Cynthia could even think of what to say, Ruth pressed on: “You know she’s living in New York—”

“No, I did not know that. I thought she lived in Boston. How would I know where she lives?”

Ruth made a sound of exasperation with which Cynthia was very familiar. “Well, I don’t know how you manage not to know these things. Yes, she’s been living right there in the same city as you for two years. She’s been getting her PhD in art history at NYU.”

“That’s super for her,” Cynthia said, holding the phone with her shoulder as she poured water into the coffeemaker. “So why—”

“She has been,” Ruth said, and here her voice slowed down a bit as if she’d hit an obstacle, “she has been having some difficulties. Apparently. I mean we just found out about it. Apparently it involves a man, or anyway that’s where it started. A professor of hers.”

“How original,” Cynthia said. She sat on the windowsill, feeling the metal safety guards against the small of her back.

“But it goes beyond that. She has — there have been — well, she ended up in the hospital, more or less against her will, there were some sort of pills involved, she says it was an accident but apparently some doctor there refuses to see it that way.”

“Some doctor where?”

“In Bellevue,” Ruth said.

“In Bellevue?”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. The way it was explained to me, it’s just a formality. Warren says it’s a liability issue for them. They need to release her to someone, a family member, and so I need you to go down there and get her. The admitting doctor’s name is—”

“Whoa,” Cynthia said. “Whoa. I am not a part of this. Bellevue? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“She’s your sister!” Ruth wailed.

“She is not my sister. Jesus. We are leaving for Costa Rica in less than a week. Why the hell don’t you and Warren come get her?”

“Warren is in San Francisco. He’ll come get her if he has to, but it would mean another night in that place for her. Who knows what goes on? Even the doctor said she obviously didn’t really belong in there. He seemed so nice.” The thought of institutional niceness in such circumstances undid Ruth, and she started crying. “Please, Cynthia. Please. It’s his only child. Maybe you don’t care about her but surely you won’t just let someone you know keep suffering if you can stop it. You’re not that kind of person.”

Her head was pounding. She really needed to eat something soon. An egg sandwich, maybe. “God damn it,” she said. “God damn it. All right. Where the fuck is Bellevue exactly, anyway?”

Ruth gave her the address. “Just a night or two with you,” she said, “and she’ll be better, maybe well enough to go back to her own place, though they told us she shouldn’t try—”

“No way is that happening. She’s your problem. And don’t hand me that family shit. This is not some sanitarium. I have children here.” In the cab down to 27th Street she called Delta and booked Deborah on a flight to Pittsburgh that night. Some two hours later, after she’d filled out every form and then waited in the lobby, which was lit like an autopsy room, for somebody to find somebody else who would sign off on the discharge, the steel door to the ward clicked open and her stepsister walked through. They hadn’t seen each other in eight years, but Cynthia, remembering the old hostility in Deborah’s eyes, was surprised to see it gone, and nothing else in its place. Probably just the drugs, Cynthia thought. They’ve got to have some designer shit up in here.