We left battlefields on our plates: corpses of drumsticks, collapsed potato dams where the gravy made rivers. I stood up and clapped my hands and said: “Dishes by the sink. Nobody touches the soap but me.”

Nobody touches the soap was Lucy’s phrase. I’d been waiting for a chance to say it all my life, could still remember Dora mocking, I’ll touch whatever I like, during one of her moods, though she’d always been happy to let our mother clean up everything.

I liked the warm water against my arms and the sound of voices from the next room. It was easy to fall into a kind of trance. The wine smell on my breath made a woozy bandage around my face. I rubbed my hands to make bubbles under the steady water.

I tucked another bottle under the bathroom sink—I’d finished the first one—and then I joined the others. I had to focus on both sides of the kitchen doorway to make sure I didn’t bump my shoulders. I drifted left when I was drunk. It had to do with balance, maybe handedness.

Everyone had broken into clusters. Abe and Omar hunched over one corner of the table. Omar’s sleeves were rolled, and he raised his clenched fist to knock it once, twice, three times in the air—like he was raging against the dark night beyond our skylight. Abe grinned. I heard him say, “Kay La Styma?” and Omar put his head in his hands, his whole body shaking with laughter. He raised his head and said, “Qué lá-stima!” This was a phrase he’d already taught me. They were talking about everything going wrong.

Ted was flirting with Stella on the couch and she was letting him. He pointed at his mouth and then the bottom of his foot. I heard him say, “For absolutely fucking real,” and then she laughed so loudly that I knew she’d forced it. I saw Abe turn to look at her. Stan and April sat at the other end of the table. Stan was holding his belly and April was taking small forkfuls of turkey and stuffing from his plate. So she was that kind of vegetarian. I watched without anyone watching me.

Ted got up from his seat and started to impersonate a mechanical bull he’d once ridden. “Patrick Swayze was there,” he said. “Cheering me on like crazy.” Stella sat with her legs crossed and a smirk on her face.

April took Omar’s rum back to the couch and set it down in front of Ted. “Looks like you might need this,” she said.

“I need it,” said Stella, reaching.

They took a round of shots, and then Ted said he would show us a magic trick. He fetched his pan of brownies and set them on the coffee table. I sat down slowly, careful not to lose my balance or show how hard I was trying not to lose it.

“For this particular trick,” Ted said, “I will need an assistant.”