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February 14, 2025
from “Old Fashioneds”
in Broken Open
by Martha Gies
“If you use Seagram’s 7, you’ll save some money, but that may not matter. Life runs out before the money does anyway.”—Martha Gies
Martha Gies began as a journalist writing profiles of musicians and filmmakers, but after studying with Raymond Carver turned to short fiction and essays. The Paragraph of the Week is from her second collection of essays, Broken Open, published by Trail to Table Press in 2024.
The Paragraph of the Week
For Old Fashioneds, my family always used Seagram's 7, an inexpensive blend that served as the house whiskey. Though they kept a fully stocked bar for their friends, from British gin to Grand Marnier, my parents regularly drank Seagram's, even after Father began making money in the law practice. Once, as an amusement, he calculated how much he had saved over the years by not drinking a good bonded bourbon. He sidled up to Mother at the stove, slipped his arm around her waist, and revealed the astonishing sum. Like much of what my father said, his announcement aimed to make her laugh, and she threw back her head and rewarded him a generous throaty yelp.
—Martha Gies
Commentary
Martha Gies uses this paragraph to set up her essay about the day she discovered her father was dying. Since the age of eight, she was in charge of making the Sunday Old Fashioneds using sugar, bitters, Seagram 7, and a maraschino cherry. One Sunday on a winter break from college her father came from the porch as she was making the drinks. She turned to him as he entered under the archway “handsome at forty-eight, with dark eyes, and a crew cut now turning gray” wearing a sports shirt and slacks. While they looked at each other, “his knees buckled. He sagged, then caught himself, recovering instantly,” and she knew he was dying. “A look of fury came momentarily into his face, and his eyes said, You didn’t see a thing.”
—THE
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The Beloved Republic Recognized
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The Beloved Republic has been selected for the Longlist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay.
PEN International is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous International PEN centres in more than 100 countries.
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