Page 83 of A Fabulously Unfabulous Summer for Henry Milch

“Of course, I do,” Jan said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Which kind of Christian?” Bev asked.

“All of them, I guess.”

“If we had a state religion, we’d have civil war within a year.”

“No, we wouldn’t.”

“Some Christians handle snakes, some talk in tongues. Do you want the government telling you that youhaveto do those things?”

“I do not,” Jan said, offended at the idea.

“Well, what if that’s the state religion?”

“That wouldneverhappen.”

“Okay, well, what if the state religion is Catholic?”

“But it wouldn’t be.”

“So, you’d get rid of the Catholics?”

“Of course not. My brother-in-law is Catholic.”

“Then you’d just get rid of the Jews?”

“Bev! What a thing to say.”

“Or the Muslims?”

That brought conversation to a halt. Jan was red-faced, obviously angry. Softly, she said, “I don’t understand this conversation. It doesn’t have anything to do with making perversion legal.”

That’s when I realized Nana Cole was staring a hole in me. Suddenly, a wave of nausea seeming to begin in my toes rose through my body. This happened sometimes with Oxy; any kind of morphine-ish pill, actually. No big deal. I just had to breathe in and out calmly. In and out. In and, oh God—

As I ran to the bathroom, I barely heard Sue Langtree saying, “We really should talk about something more pleasant. Bekah introduced me to this rock band, Newsboys. It’s Christian Rock from Australia—”

And then I was shutting the bathroom door, flipping the seat to the toilet and hurling into the bowl. I retched a few times and broke into a cold sweat. In the toilet bowl was a glass of red wine, a couple of chewed up pigs in a blanket and some of what might have been the waffles I’d had for breakfast. It might have been the wine that did it. Or the pigs.

Then I noticed, floating in the middle of the mess were the two Oxys I’d just taken ten minutes before. They looked fuzzy, partly dissolved.

I thought about plucking them out of my puke—but the thought of getting bile and chewed up food all over my fingers was disgusting. There was a water glass on the sink. I could use it to sort of scoop the pills up, then quickly swallow them—uck! I’d be swallowing toilet water along with bile and regurgitated food and Oxys. Well… the toilet was obviously clean. Sue had been expecting guests. Or at least it was clean until I barfed in it.I went back to the idea of plucking the pills out with my fingers and then maybe rinsing them under the faucet…

And then I had a horrible thought. Picking a couple of Oxys out of a puke-filled toilet and swallowing them again was something an addict would do. Since I was not, definitely not, an addict, I flushed the toilet.

With great regret.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I was on my way to find my grandmother and demand we leave, when Sue Langtree cornered me.

“You missed rehearsal this week. I was really hoping you’d come.”

“I don’t think singing is my thing.”

“I told you before that doesn’t really matter. I want you to come on Tuesday. Will you promise?”

“Uh. No.”