Words By Whittall

  The clinking of the bottles sent Marnie to a different place and time. Unexpected. Like a malfunction with the transporter on the Starship Enterprise.   One minute she was enjoying a few laughs and drinks with her colleagues. The next she was eleven years old, standing at the trunk of her dad’s green Buick. It must have been a Saturday because she was helping him carefully pack and arrange all the empties for the weekly trip to the depot. The bottles gave off a sour yeasty stench that assaulted her nostrils and stayed to frolic for the rest of the week.   Oddly, this was a happy memory. Those Saturday mornings were among the few times Marnie could be sure that both parents were sober. By early afternoon, when all her friends were watching cartoons and being fed homemade cookies, Marnie was refilling glasses, emptying ashtrays, and keeping her parents amused – both unseen and entertaining. She read somewhere that children of alcoholics often grew up to be performers – not necess