The Wonder Bread Summer (26 page)

Authors: Jessica Anya Blau

BOOK: The Wonder Bread Summer

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“Really?!” Portia’s cheerful voice made Anna want to knock her off the stool.
Portia was such a wannabe mother, she coddled Emery as if she owned him. In fact the only
thing Portia had ever claimed she wanted to be when she grew up was a mother. She had a doll,
Peaches, with whom she slept every night. When the family traveled, Portia always packed
Peaches first in the bottom of her white, satin-lined suitcase. The current Peaches was
actually the second Peaches, as the first Peaches had devolved into a repellent floppy, dirty
thing with a body like a lumpy mattress and arms and legs that were four different colors from
dirt and stains. She’d gone bald from Portia’s carrying her by her hair, and she smelled like
spit. Anna didn’t even like being in the same room with old Peaches. When Portia was seven,
Louise had sewn Peaches a pink satin retirement gown with a matching satin-and-lace cap, and
gave Portia a new, fresh Peaches who smelled like plastic and who, Anna thought, wasn’t the
embarrassing rag that was old Peaches.

“Yeah, Emery’s yours,” Louise said.

“Can he be mine alone?” Portia asked Anna.

Anna couldn’t believe that her sister felt compelled to ask this question. It was
like asking if Anna wanted to share old Peaches.

“What do you say, Anna?” Louise asked.

“I don’t want him,” Anna said. “He’s dirty and he smells.”

“He’s adorable!” Portia said.

“Are we getting a maid?” Anna asked. Her friends’ mothers cleaned their houses,
but people on TV, characters with apartments and homes that seemed much smaller than theirs,
had maids.

“No!” Louise snorted. “There are enough people hanging around here between your
and your sister’s friends. Besides. We don’t have that kind of money.”

“So who’s going to cook dinner?” Portia asked.

“Anna will cook.”

“Fine.” Anna stood up and joined her sister at the counter. She could feel rage
inside her like a team of insects crawling through her veins.

“And what about everything else?” Portia asked, although to Anna she didn’t seem
particularly concerned. And why should she be concerned? Other than giving Emery an occasional
bath, Anna couldn’t really name the things Louise did as a housewife. By all appearances,
their mother did little other than swim naked in the pool and write poems or paint in her
studio. On the rare day when Anna’s friends came over (despite Louise’s claims of frequency,
Anna always tried to steer them to someone else’s house), she had them wait on the porch on
the pretense of having to ask her mother if it was okay if they came in when, really, she was
checking to see that Louise was dressed. Anna preferred to hang out at her friends’ houses, as
even when Louise was dressed, she was an embarrassment.

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Also by Jessica Anya Blau

Drinking Closer to Home

The Summer of Naked Swim Parties

Praise

P
RAISE FOR

Jessica Anya Blau and
The
Wonder Bread Summer

“This is as fast, fun, and outrageous a book as
I’ve read in a long time. But beneath all the antics is a poignant story about racial
identity, fathers and daughters, and coming-of-age in one totally messed-up decade.”

—Matthew Norman, author of
Domestic Violets

“I think this book is laced with something! I
swear I could not put it down. Jessica Anya Blau [is] like the naughty Southern
Californian soul mate of Nick Hornby.”

—Matthew Klam, author of
Sam the Cat and Other Stories

“No one writes like Jessica Anya Blau. Funny,
tender, and outrageous,
The Wonder Bread Summer
is more than a
road trip through 1980s California. It’s a caper about race and sex, cocaine and rock ’n’
roll, with unforgettable characters who will say or do anything and who find kindness in
the most unexpected places.”

—Michael Downs, author of
The Greatest Show

“Jessica Anya Blau’s
The
Wonder Bread Summer
is a lightning strike of a novel, sexy and dangerous and
aglow with adventure. Allie is a tenacious and deliciously complicated heroine, and it’s
impossible to resist the ride she takes you on.”

—Laura van den Berg, author of
What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us

“This novel is addictive! I was hooked the moment
straight-arrow Allie steals a bread bag full of blow, and I flipped the pages faster than
she could drive from one disaster to another. How many wrongs make a right? The author
poses that question as she sends Allie head-on into drug, family, and boy trouble. You
won’t be able to look away.”

—Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of
Man Alive!

“A rollicking, irreverent sweep of a novel. Blau
has written another shining, no-holds-barred California heartbreaker.”

—Deborah Reed, author of
Carry Yourself Back to Me

“Jessica Anya Blau is a fearless, hilarious writer
with a genius for pacing and a massive gift for creating fabulous characters. In
The Wonder Bread Summer
, through the adorable although not
completely innocent college student Allie, we get to live through a California summer in
1983 in all its glory: cocaine, Candie’s high heels, sexual misconduct, and even Billy
Idol! Blau has crafted a totally unique coming-of-age story, wrapped in a road trip with a
drug caper center. It’s a wild, exuberant novel, full of humor, heart, and a solid dose of
bad behavior. I loved it.”

—Paula Bomer, author of
Nine Months

“In
The Wonder Bread
Summer
, Jessica Anya Blau returns with all the comedic powers of a master
trickster. Her astonishing ability to stun and disarm, shock and smite the reader using
humor and a new kit of outrageous antics and 1980s characters, tosses us deep into
humanity’s darker waters of loss and abandonment while simultaneously yanking us back onto
the bows of our buoyant but fragile boats. Her heroine, Allie, a college coed, is enmeshed
in a cohort of petty cocaine thieves, aging rock stars, Billy Idol, and a porn producer in
a wheelchair who only Hunter S. Thompson would embrace. Add Allie’s pathetic absentee
mother and a peripatetic father to the mix and it’s a mad, mad car chase up and down
California’s sunny coasts. Urged on by the voice of her dead Chinese grandmother, Allie
flees for her life and lunges toward personal truths that promise to set her free.”

—Jessica Keener, author of the nationally
bestselling novel
Night Swim

“Jessica Anya Blau has taken the story of a young
woman’s search for self and rendered it into a hilarious, cocaine-fueled thrill ride. From
its Tarantino-esque opening scene to its twisty final pages,
The
Wonder Bread Summer
is an unrelenting delight.”

—Jon Michaud, author of
When Tito Loved Clara

“
The Wonder Bread
Summer
is the best ever! It even made me a little jealous, and that doesn’t
happen often.”

—Madison Smartt Bell

P
RAISE FOR

Jessica Anya Blau and
Drinking Closer to Home

“In
Drinking Closer to
Home
, Jessica Anya Blau has created an unforgettably unique family—Buzzy, Louise,
Anna, Portia, and Emery—and done them a great service by placing them in a compelling
story that is alternately funny and sad as hell. I don’t think I’d last twelve days in
this family, but I could read about them forever. With this novel, Blau announces herself
as a fearless writer, capable of anything and everything.”

—Kevin Wilson, author of
The Family Fang

“At the end of the day, the Stein family is
dysfunctional, foul-mouthed, appalling, loving and ridiculously endearing, thanks to
Blau’s hilarious rendition of their group dynamic. Soundtrack? Hotel California. Woody
Allen directs.”

—
Baltimore
Sun

“The domestic relationships . . . are
brilliantly rendered, a contemporary California version of Philip Roth.”

—
Austin
Chronicle

“If you think you’ve read enough novels about
mixed up families already, go ahead and read one more. Jessica Anya Blau’s
Drinking Closer to Home
is a phantasmagoric, hilarious carnival
ride.”

—Madison Smartt Bell

“An entertaining romp through one family’s
history.”

—
Boston Globe

“Imagine a home with a nudist mother, a bird that
perches on the living room curtain rod and shits on the couch, and an empty pool in the
backyard filled with bikes. Imagine growing up in this home and then returning as an adult
to the hospital bedside of this nudist mother.
Drinking Closer to
Home
is a gloriously rich portrait of three adult children who discover that the
tensions and hurts they still have between them are inextricably tied to their laughter
and their love.”

—Susan Henderson, author of
Up from the Blue

“A light-hearted, enthralling read that enables us
to laugh at our own less-than-perfect families.”

—
Bust

“The sharpness of Jessica Anya Blau’s voice and
wit never ceases to amaze me. From the first page this surprising novel takes a classic
tale—adult children going home again—and turns it on its head. An absorbing,
heart-wrenching read.”

—Katie Crouch, author of
Men and Dogs

“Reminiscent of Jeannette Wall’s
The Glass Castle
, Jessica Anya Blau’s sophomore effort is a raging
success. With incredible insight and endless imagination, Blau has created the
über-dysfunctional family that survives cringe-worthy encounters, yet manages to forge
ironclad bonds.”

—
New York Journal of
Books

“From painful humor to poignant scene-setting,
[Blau] takes no prisoners in her candid look at an unconventional clan.”

—
Booklist

“The hilariously irreverent sibling triad in
Drinking Closer to Home
had me laughing so hard at their gallows
humor that I didn’t realize how devastated I was until I was fully under their spell. This
unconventional joy ride of a novel is also an unexpectedly powerful and multilayered
exploration of unbreakable family bonds.”

—Gina Frangello, author of
Slut Lullabies

“Blau writes funny, often heartbreaking, and
always relatable anecdotes . . . [Her] lifelike characters are such a joy to get
to know that one feels sorry to leave them behind.”

—
Publishers
Weekly

“Drinking Closer to
Home
is as raw and heartbreaking as it is tender. Jessica Anya Blau has written
an honest, haunting portrayal of a beguiling yet maddening family who together come of age
amid the shifting morals of a country on the cusp of tremendous cultural change. With
humor, compassion, and a keen insight into the human psyche,
Drinking
Closer to Home
proves that despite the best of intentions, where we come from and
where we end up are even closer than we could ever imagine.”

—Robin Antalek, author of
The
Summer We Fell Apart

An incarnation of the first chapter originally appeared in New York Tyrant Magazine.

This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

P.S.™ is a trademark of HarperCollins Publishers.

Excerpt from
Drinking Closer to Home
copyright © 2010 by Jessica Anya Blau.

THE WONDER BREAD SUMMER
. Copyright © 2013 by Jessica Anya Blau. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

978-0-06-219955-3

EPub Edition June 2013 ISBN: 9780062199560

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

About the Publisher

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty.
Ltd.

Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

http://www.harpercollins.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Canada