Whats for dinner, p.12
What's for Dinner?, page 12
“I don’t know,” Patrick said, “if I want to get into dope.”
“It’s not dope—it’s not addicting, I mean,” Nick said. “It’s a nice kick. The important thing is not to be scared of it, then you’ll get relaxed and enjoy it.”
“Somebody at school was smoking it in the can the other day,” Michael said. “You could even smell it in the hall.”
“How do you know how it smells?” Patrick said.
“I could guess. It’s a special smell. You’ll see.”
“It must have been that lunkhead Luke,” Nick said. “He’s bad news. He’ll take any crazy chances—and I’ve heard about the way he drives when he’s drunk or stoned. He’s going to wind up in the morgue or jail or out on his butt. I’m glad I’m not old enough to be in his crowd. And does he ever play dirty basketball!”
“Yeah,” Patrick said. “I’ve noticed.”
In front of the Candy Kitchen they joined Pete Petrosian and a couple of other youths.
“Got it?” Nick asked.
Pete touched the breast pocket of his shirt.
“Well?” Nick said. “Why don’t we amble over to the athletic field and set the world on fire?”
“What’s the rush?” Pete said. “I kind of like it here.”
“The twins have to go home real soon. You know how strict their Dad is,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” Patrick said, “he is pretty strict.”
“He wasn’t so bad tonight,” Michael said. “At any rate, we’re here.”
After some more palaver, the group set off for the athletic field, an open space between the park and the highschool, with bleachers and a track.
“I better explain to you guys how to smoke this,” Pete said. “Take a drag, pull some air in with it and suck it down into your lungs. Hold it there, then let it out slow through your head and nose. This is good stuff my brother gave me, so it won’t take much to turn you on.”
“I don’t know,” Patrick muttered. Pete took a joint out of his pocket, lit it and passed it around. When it came to Patrick, he took it and inhaled deeply, then had a coughing fit. Michael was more expert. On the second joint, Patrick did better, inhaling deeply and keeping the oddly scented smoke in his lungs a long time. He exhaled, feeling slightly lightheaded. After what seemed a very long or else a very short time, he looked up and saw the stars stagger in their courses.
“Jesus,” he said and sat down hard. Nick went off into spasms of silent laughter.
“You all right, brother buddy?” Michael asked. He extended his arms and said, “I’m a kite and I’m flying.”
“That’s the idea,” Pete said. “Groove with it. Look: it’s like you can see right around the high school, all four sides at once.”
“I’m going to lie here,” Patrick said. The stars slowed down and seemed individually to glitter and smile down on his young face. “I don’t know if I like it or not. I’m not sure. I just can’t tell. You ought to lie down and dig the stars. Did you know that infinity has no end? It just goes on and on and on and on.”
“He’s starting to rap,” Pete said.
“I’m on top of the world,” Michael said. “The whole world comes to a point in this athletic field, and I’m the one who’s on top of it.”
“I wish we had a transistor with us,” Nick said. “I’d like to hear some music.” He began to sing a pop song, off-key.
“Holy shit,” Patrick said. “It must be midnight. Dad will skin us alive.”
“We haven’t been here fifteen minutes,” Pete said. “Look.” He held out his wristwatch which had a luminous dial. It was indeed still early.
“I don’t know,” Patrick said. “I think we better get home.”
“First you better see if you can get off your back and walk.”
“A shooting star!” Patrick said. “I saw a shooting star.”
“Where?” Nick said.
“There,” Patrick said. “In the sky.”
“When you think about it,” Michael said, “it’s great, being a part of the universe.”
3
“Do you know what I miss?” Lottie asked. She and Norris were strolling down the corridor to the room where family group was held.
“I never was any good at mind reading,” Norris said, “and it gets worse as I get older.”
Lottie lifted her head to his ear and whispered, “B-e-d, bed.” Norris gave her arm a hard affectionate squeeze. “It won’t be so long now,” he said.
The others were already assembled around the table when the Taylors came in, closely followed by Dr Kearney. Mr Mulwin looked pale. Good-evenings were exchanged between the patients and the visitors. Behind Bertha sat a pleasant-looking couple, who were introduced as Mr and Mrs Hartz, her parents.
“I see, Bertha,” Dr Kearney said, “you finally took the giant step.”
“Sure,” Bertha said. “Why not?”
“No reason that I ever knew of,” Dr Kearney said.
“I was mad at them for putting me in here, among other things,” Bertha said. “I think that was it.”
“We’re glad to see you looking so well, dear,” Mrs Hartz said. “Your brother sent his love.”
“I’ll bet he did.”
“Perhaps what he actually said was, ‘Say hello to Bertha,’ but I knew what he meant. A boy his age isn’t apt to be demonstrative.”
“How are you feeling, Mr Mulwin?” Lottie asked.
“Sapped. Or maybe I mean zapped. It’s like I don’t know what hit me, although of course I do know. How do you feel?”
“Better,” Lottie said. “Not so shaky and driven. But I still get the craving. Not so often as before.”
“Did you send me a plant?” Mr Mulwin asked her.
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Mrs Mulwin frowned slightly.
“I figured as much. Nobody else would I could think of. Thanks.”
“You’re very welcome. The men’s bedrooms look so cheerless from the hall, while all the women’s have flowers in them.”
“What kind of a plant is it?” Mr Mulwin asked.
“An azalea,” Norris said.
“Oh, were you in on this too?”
“Just as an agent for my wife. She isn’t allowed off the grounds to go to a florist’s. You’d think they’d have a flower shop in the hospital: it would certainly show a profit.”
“That’s right,” Mr Mulwin said. “It would make somebody a nice little business.”
“Business, business,” Mrs Judson said. “I’m getting fed up, hearing about business. It’s all you men seem to think about.”
“Why Ethel,” Sam Judson said, “at home you always took a real interest in my work and how it was going.”
“That was different,” Mrs Judson said. “That was at home. Now I’m stuck here, making moccasins nobody needs.”
“You might make me a pair,” Sam said. “I could wear them around the house. Like slippers.”
“And when I’ve made those, then what? I want to go home.”
“And I want you at home. You’re beginning to open up,” Sam said. “Although I’ve never heard you talk in this cross way before.”
“Somebody went through my dresser drawers. I suspect you,” Ethel Judson said to Bertha.
“You’re full of baked beans,” Bertha said. “What could possibly be in your dresser that would faintly intrigue me? An elastic stocking?”
“Now you’re making fun of my varicose veins. You’re awful. None of my children were brats like you, heavens be thanked.”
“I’ve never met you before,” Mrs Hartz said, “but I’ll thank you not to call my daughter a brat. She’s had problems, as you yourself apparently have.”
“That’s right,” Mr Hartz backed up his wife, “Bertha isn’t a brat.”
“Oh blah,” Mrs Judson said, and fell silent.
“Go ahead,” Bertha said. “Let it out. I can take it. All you sweet old ladies, full of venom and bile.”
“Sincerely,” Mrs Brice said, “I don’t think I’m full of venom and vile. I mean, bile. I don’t think Mrs Judson is either: the hospital and not being in your own home and all can get on anybody’s nerves. It does mine sometimes. I look forward to going home.”
“And I look forward to having you home again, mother. It’s a lonely place without you.”
“I’m sorry you don’t want to hear about business, Mrs Judson,” Mr Mulwin said, “because that’s what I’m in here about: too much business, too many business worries, wondering if I could trust my managers all the way. Of course you can’t, it’s putting temptation in a man’s path.”
“Say,” Bertha said, “just what is your line of business.”
“I have a chain of drugstores.”
“How big a chain?” Bertha demanded.
“We have three branches, plus the main outlet down on State Street.”
“What’s it called? I never heard of any drugstore around here called Mulwin’s.”
“The Thrifty Drug Company.”
“Oh that,” Bertha said. “I’ve been in one of those. The doctor gave me a prescription for some kind of uppers when I had the downs. I got it filled in one of your stores. They weren’t any good. Too mild. No kick, no boost, no up.”
“We just fill the prescriptions as the doctors write them. He probably didn’t believe in anything too stimulating. Lots of doctors don’t. It depends on the patient. I used to help myself to a little benzedrine when I didn’t feel up to snuff.”
“Benzedrine,” Dr Kearney said, “can make a person touchy—in fact more than touchy, downright paranoid. That may have been a precipitant of the condition that brought you here.”
“I wasn’t hooked on the stuff,” Mr Mulwin said. “Just now and then. Mostly I’ve got more energy than I need. Nervous energy.”
“Do you need a prescription to get amyl nitrite?” Bertha asked.
“You do indeed,” Mr Mulwin said. “Nor have you any need for it unless you have a heart condition.”
“Poppers,” Bertha said. “They have their uses—at the right time.”
“I’m afraid,” Mrs Hartz said, “that at college Bertha was led to experiment with drugs.”
“Nobody had to lead me,” Bertha said. “Don’t blame me on others. Besides, I never got into the hard stuff. I’m too smart to wind up a junkie.”
“Of course you are, dear,” her mother said. “I didn’t mean to make any serious implications.”
“I thought you said you’d tried LSD,” Lottie asked. “Doesn’t that count as hard stuff?”
“Not like heroin or coke or morphine or like that,” Bertha said. “LSD and peyote are just mind extenders. Sunshine pills.”
“I beg to differ,” Dr Kearney said. “There are clinics chock-a-block with experiments with these so-called perception extenders. Some of them are sent so far out they never come back. They’ve been warned, but they won’t believe it.”
“I’m as much of a drug addict as Bertha ever was—not that she was really an addict. I suppose,” Lottie said to Mr Mulwin, “I’ll be going to one of your stores for my Antabuse tablets when I leave here. I couldn’t bear having the prescription filled at our local pharmacy. Not that everyone doesn’t know all about me already.”
“You exaggerate,” Norris said. “And those that do know only feel sympathy. You have had visitors, and flowers and letters. It will all soon be forgotten.”
“Antabuse?” Mrs Brice said. “What’s that?”
“It’s a pill,” Lottie said. “And after you take one, if you have a drink it makes you violently ill. Attractive thought. It will be my little invisible crutch.”
Mrs Brice now turned to Dr Kearney. “When I leave here and stop my medication, mayn’t I relapse. Sink back into my old depression.”
“First of all, we’ll hope you’ve become insightful enough that that won’t happen. Secondly, your medication will continue for a time after you leave. Thirdly, you’ll be coming in for consultations on a diminishing schedule. Does that reassure you?”
“It will be funny,” Mrs Brice said, “coming back as a visitor. Almost as funny as going home. I’ve gotten used to it here. To the routine, anyway.”
“I agree,” Lottie said. “I’ve kind of subsided into the routine here—no lists to make, no vacuum cleaner, no dishwasher to unload in the morning. I’m a scrupulous housekeeper—too scrupulous for some, I can’t bear to see a thing out of place—but I wonder how I’ll feel about it when I get home. It may merely seem a burden.”
“You’ll probably plunge into it like a seal into a pool,” Mr Mulwin said, with sudden poetry.
“That’s one thing my wife and I have always had in common,” Norris said. “We’re both fanatically tidy.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Mr Mulwin said. “I had to let one man go: his store just wasn’t orderly enough to meet my standards, which are high. A drugstore has to be kept scrupulously clean, or who would ever want to go into it?”
“I wouldn’t,” Mrs Brice said. “I like a nice clean shiny store. I stopped going to one shop because I could smell that they’d been using roach spray. ‘No thank you,’ I thought, and quietly went elsewhere. It was a handy delicatessen for little last minute purchases, but I’d rather walk a few more blocks and shop someplace you could see was kept clean.”
“You see?” Mr Mulwin said, as though someone had challenged Mrs Brice. “Christ, I’m sleepy. Pardon the language.”
“That will wear off,” Dr Kearney said. “Only yesterday you were out like a light.”
“I don’t want that again if I can help it,” Mr Mulwin said. “At the last minute I thought I was being murdered, or at least that I’d die and suffer terrible pain. It was a minute of pure terror. I never want to feel that again.”
“It seems to have helped, though,” Mrs Mulwin said.
“Oh, I’m no different than I ever was. Only I’m overcome with sleepiness. Could I be excused from this and go to bed?”
“Why don’t you stick it out?” Dr Kearney said. “It won’t be much longer, and you’ll have a feeling of accomplishment.”
“I’ve already got that. I built my business up from scratch with my own two hands. That’s accomplishment.”
“Yes,” Lottie said. “That’s real accomplishment. I’ve come to admire you.”
“Business, business,” Mrs Judson said. “There’s got to be more to life than dishes and business.”
“Hear, hear,” Bertha said.
“There, there,” Lottie said. “Different people have different objectives in life. What’s yours, Bertha?”
“To get out of here.”
“You can be more serious than that. I mean in a larger, life-scale sense.”
“Your own objectives don’t sound so hot to me,” Bertha said. “Get off the sauce and keep dusting. That’s not for me: I like dust. I might go to one of those free form colleges up in Vermont or New Hampshire, if my folks will give me an allowance. I can’t make life plans in a nut house: I’m disconnected from my peer group.”
“Of course,” Mr Hartz said, “we’d like you to continue your education. I, personally, would like to feel a little more secure about your attitude towards drugs, even the so-called mild ones. It seems plain they don’t agree with you.”
“I’m not hooked on anything. I told you that. I told everybody that, and it’s true.”
“I think what your father means,” Lottie said, “is more that you have experimented, and he’d like to feel that that period is behind you.”
“Not even a joint now and then, to relax and groove on the music?”
“Marijuana,” Dr Kearney said, “definitely does not agree with everyone, no matter how the popular legend goes.”
Lottie giggled. “I wonder how it would affect me? It might be a good substitute for alcohol.”
“Where are you planning to buy it?” Norris said. “I decline to meet some contact downtown and travel around with my briefcase full of contraband.”
“You needn’t worry, dear,” Lottie said. “I’m not planning to spend my time sitting around the house—stoned, do they call it?”
“That’s the word,” Bertha said.
“You’re an entire youthquake unto yourself, aren’t you Bertha,” Norris said.
“You wouldn’t expect me to have the problems of middle aged and elderly depressives, would you? Where would be the sense in that?”
“Obviously,” Norris said, “you’re much better than you were, yet your dominant attitude still seems one of defiance. You keep stepping on your own shoe laces, so to speak. Like your experiments with drugs: surely you see how much harm they did you?”
“Smoking grass isn’t an experiment, it’s a trip. It’s an experience. I don’t intend to drop any more acid—take LSD to you, that is—I’ve had that. Besides, I don’t believe in synthetics. Grass is organic.”
“So is opium,” Dr Kearney said, “from which the lethal heroin is derived.”
“I’ve never fooled with that, and I’m not going to. You sound like I can’t trust myself: I told you, I’m no junkie.”
“When it isn’t business, it’s drugs,” Mrs Judson said. “I never heard anything like it in my life. I’m that disgusted.”
“I’m not disgusted,” Lottie said. “I find this variety of human experience fascinating. And I’ve learned a lot of little things here that may add up to one big thing. I found out I could go without paraldehyde when I thought I couldn’t. And I may make painting a serious hobby. I’ll always be an amateur, but that’s all right. The time flies by when I’m at my easel.”
“I think your pictures are lovely,” Mrs Brice said.
“Would you like to have one? Pick out the one you like best, and I’ll make you a present of it.”
“How sweet! And I know just the one I’ll pick: that floral study you finished yesterday.”
“That one? All right. It’s yours.”
“So you think my sitting up and listening to this is doing me some kind of good, hunh?” Mr Mulwin said with a touch of his old ardor to Dr Kearney. “OK. I’ll go through with it.”
“Your willingness to stay,” Lottie said, “means you’re playing a part in our little community, even if you don’t feel up to participating this evening.”
