The Kitchen Shrink (17 page)

God bless you, Botox, how I have missed you, my old toxic friend. With a smile of welcome, I greeted the first injection that would paralyze the nerve impulses in my forehead to successfully prevent their jonesing to frown.

The grand finale was a spa manicure and pedicure, while lounging in a massage chair reading OK Magazine. I was just going for clear polish but Dustin talked me into hot pink for both my fingers and toes.

Sam nodded his head. “You’ll look even prettier for your big interview.”

 “Thanks for reminding me,” I said. They did a big, sit-down interview with me, at least once a week, for updates on how swell my life is going. Let’s see, I had an imaginary interview in my head: “I just discovered pot in my daughter’s room, had to bail my drunken son out of jail, screamed at my mother, on camera, who still isn’t speaking to me, hooked up with Phil-O, and don’t forget the Martinator. Thank goodness most of those escapades were off-camera. Oh, and did you happen to notice I ruined a pair of my best friend’s $400 shoes in the most repulsive way imaginable.” I had no idea what I was really going to say.

By the time I arrived back home, the crew was finishing up for the day, thank goodness, since I didn’t want to mar my hot pink fingertips so soon with some hands on renovation. I felt almost as if they were a badge of honor, bestowed for doing a good job. I even waved my hand around a few times during my interview. I felt like I looked pretty good, with my lightened new, never to be duplicated hairstyle, so I tried to be really upbeat. “I’m learning to take time to enjoy the little things,” I heard myself saying. Hardy har har.

As soon as the crew left, I called Daria, told her about finding the pot and told her to come over and see the new me. She arrived before I could stop staring at my hair in the mirror.

She gave me a hug and twirled me around. “You look like my friend used to,” she told me. “Happy.”

“Thanks,” I bowed my head, trying for once to just accept a compliment.

“Now, where’s the hootch? I brought a lighter.”

“What? Come on.”

“Yeah, Lisby. Let’s get high.”

“No way.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem like a good idea.”

“Pshaw,” Daria said heading into my kitchen. “Hey, looking good in here. Where’s your tinfoil?”

I pointed to the pantry door. “Why?”

“Well, unless one of your juvenile delinquents has a bong stashed in the hovels you call their bedrooms, how are we going to smoke it?”

“We’re not?”

She merely located my tinfoil and tore off a big sheet.

“What are you doing? I asked her.

“Live and learn, my friend.”

I watched her fold the tinfoil in half, stick her index finger on one end, and roll the tinfoil tightly together. “You don’t see this tinfoil quick tip on commercials,” she told me.

“No, you don’t.”

She finished and curved up the wider end, shaping it into a round bowl. “Voila. Tin foil pipe.”

“Daria,” I began, shaking my head.

“Hey, this could come in handy. If you’re ever on a deserted island…”

“With a roll of tin foil?” I asked her.

“You never know,” she wagged her finger at me. “Now, where is it? Let’s go upstairs.”

So I followed her up to my room and we smoked the pot I found in my daughter’s bedroom that morning. It was great.

“I have something to tell you,” Daria told me.

Great, she was finally going to admit she was dating Sam. It’s about time. We needed to get this out in the open. I really was happy for her. She deserved a great guy like Sam. I just never thought he was her type. I kind of thought he was more my type. There. I admitted it. I really liked Sam. Fat chance I had with him though, thanks to his capturing me in just about every humiliating situation you can think of. Besides, Daria was gorgeous. No baggage. No kids. Big boobs. Enough said.

“I found out something about the show that is super secret,” Daria said, putting her index finger to her lips.

“What?” Now I wanted to know about that, too.

“Yeah, Doug made me sign a confidentiality agreement and everything.”

“So why are you telling me this.”

“Because you’re my best friend. If you can’t tell your best friend what you signed in a confidentiality agreement, who can you tell?”

I nodded. “So what’s going on? Am I going to be fired? Voted off? Made to do the tango with Elgin?”

“No. Get this. They’re going to air the shows, and after the last show, they’re going to do a recap, and then viewers will vote on two things. Whose life is the most improved, and which designer did the best job. They’re going to have a live grand finale show to announce the winners.”

“Wow.”

“Don’t you want to know what the winners get?”

I nodded, staring at my pink tipped fingernails.

“Fifty-thousand beans!” she said.

“What? Wow.” My eyes grew wide with greed. I’d spend it in a nanosecond. Ryan’s varsity jacket cost $300. My car needed new brakes. The house needed new carpeting because I would probably have to sell it sooner rather than later. Fifty thousand dollars would buy a lot of community college credits, too. My heart beat faster and I didn’t like how badly I wanted that money. Just to have the piece of mind, a little security in the bank. To not waste time in the grocery store debating on generic laundry detergent vs. the stuff that smells good.

“Money may not buy happiness,” I told Daria, “but it would put a hefty down payment on some self-confidence.”

Daria bounced beside me on the bed. “I think you have a good chance. How could people not love you, your kitchen is looking great, and I think you’ve changed.”

“Oh, yeah? How?”

“Well, you’re high, for starters,” she said, giggling.

I rubbed my fingernails. “Daria, I think something’s wrong with my fingers.”

She took my hands in hers. “Nonsense, they’re gorg. And so are you.”

“No, seriously, I feel like my fingernails can’t breathe.”

“That’s because they can’t breathe.”

“No. I’ve got to get this nail polish off. It feels like my nails are suffocating.” I went into Nicole’s pig sty and began to search for the nail polish remover. Daria came in behind me to help.

“You are never going to find anything in here,” she stated. “Hurry up, I’m hungry.”

“Ha!” I said, reaching for the plastic bottle. “Oh, shoot! I think she spilled most of it on the carpet. There’s not much left.” By now the ends of my fingers felt like they were throbbing. I grabbed a tissue off of Nicole’s desk and started rubbing to remove the polish. “Uh oh. I don’t think I have enough.” I kept rubbing and rubbing until the tissue was in tattered pink streaked shreds.

“At least you got most of your left fingers done,” Daria said. “Can they breathe better now?” she asked.

“Shut up.”

“Come on. Let’s go get some good mood food.”

She pulled me by my polished hand and we headed downstairs.

As we hit the kitchen, I tried to get her to talk to me. “Tell me where you’ve been, Daria and why I hardly ever see you anymore. Tell me about your mystery man.”

“There’s nothing to tell and I don’t want to jinx it,” she said.

“Ha! I knew it.” She was dating Sam and just wasn’t ready to tell me about it yet. That’s OK. I didn’t much feel like hearing about it yet.

Daria unearthed my emergency stash of potato chips. She found a giant chip in the bag and began gnawing on it, taking tiny staccato bites until it disappeared.

“I hate the way you eat chips,” I complained, grabbing the bag from her and looking for smaller, quarter-sized chips, then stacking them three at a time before popping them neatly on my tongue.

Since both of our mouths were full and chomping, it took me a couple of rings before I could answer the phone. It was Brett. “Lisby. About that pot. Nicole said it’s her friend Tanya’s brother’s pot.”

“Oh, good one. Nice chain of denial.”

“Seriously, Lisby. Nicole doesn’t get high. I believe her. But, Tanya needs that pot back or Nicole says her brother is going to get beat up.”

“What?”

“Look, we’re going to swing by and pick it up and I’m just going to drop it off at Tanya’s house. She’s been calling and crying and freaking out. Her brother sounds like a head case. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“No, Brett. You can’t.”

“What?” Daria was dancing around me, trying to listen.

“Um. I don’t have the pot.”

“What’d you do with it?”

I head Nicole screaming in the background. I guess I was starting to believe the story that it wasn’t hers. That’s a relief.

“I threw it away,” I said.

“Get it back.”

“I flushed it down the toilet,” I thought fast.

“Why would you do that?” Brett asked, while trying to calm Nicole. “Shh, honey, it’s OK.”

“Tanya’s brother is going to get beat up,” I could hear Nicole in the background. “It was really expensive and he owed a lot of money on it so Tanya is going to be in so much trouble. I have to call Tanya.”

“I can’t believe you threw it out,” Brett said.

“What did you want me to do with it? Smoke it?” I bluffed.

“Ha ha.” I heard him talking to Nicole. “What, Nicole? Great. Tanya says her brother is on his way to your house. We’ll be right there. Don’t open the door for anyone.”

“Oh, no!” I looked at Daria and told her. “See? Drugs are bad. I knew we shouldn’t have smoked that. Quick. We have to hide that pipe and bag and get rid of the smell.” I tore upstairs. Daria was laughing hard.

“And put those potato chips away.” I ran into my room, stuffed the pipe into the plastic bag which only had a few green bits left, and sprayed Febreze all over my room. Think, think. Where can I get rid of this? I ran back downstairs and grabbed a cottage cheese from my refrigerator and stuffed the balled up plastic bag inside the container and then buried it deep in my trash. Just then, we heard loud knocking on the front door. Oh no. I didn’t brush my teeth.

I looked at Daria. Holy crap. “Do I look as stoned as you do?” I asked her. She laughed and ate another potato chip. I grabbed her and we went to the front door and leaned our ears against it. I heard more voices. I slowly slid my hand toward the lock to close the deadbolt, but it slid out of my fingers and went in the opposite direction. The door flung open.

I started screaming and Daria joined in.

“Shh, geeze, Lisby, it’s us,” Brett said, walking in followed by my kids, “and yeah, Tanya’s brother’s here, too. Get in here, you punk,” my ex said to the kid standing in the doorway.

“Look, man. I don’t want any problems here,” he said. “But I’m going to be in big trouble unless I get that weed back.”

Why was everyone looking at me? “Sorry,” I said, opening my hands as I pretended to be holier than thou. Themst. “I threw it away,” I tried to explain.

“Aw man,” Tanya’s brother grabbed fistfuls of his hair and bent over. “I am dead.” He straightened back up. “Are you sure? I’ll dig through your garbage, anything.”

I don’t know why but I felt the tickle of a most inappropriate giggle start deep in the back of my throat. There was nothing funny about the situation and I probably would have been alright if Daria hadn’t burst out laughing. I looked at her, potato chip crumbs clinging to the shelf of her black sweater like sequins, and I was gone, too. I could hardly catch my breath, and knowing my ex and my kids were staring at me only made it worse.

“You smoked it,” Tanya’s brother accused us. “You’re stoned, both of you. I can’t believe it. That stuff was chronic.”

Daria and I tee-heed some more, even though I had no idea why. This had to stop. I pressed my fist against my mouth and held my stomach tight. I took a deep breath through my nose and looked at Brett, and then saw my horrified-looking kids behind him staring at me.

“We didn’t smoke any pot,” I tried to say to them with a straight face. A couple more laughs coughed out between my fingers.

“Hey Mom, why do you only have nail polish on one hand?” Ryan asked. It was a fine time for him to start developing powers of observation. It just set me and Daria off again.

“You’re going to have to pay for that,” Tanya’s brother started yelling.

At that, Nicole took her back pack and swung it with all her might into Tanya’s brother. “Shut up. My mom doesn’t smoke pot. You get out of here before my dad calls the cops.”

Rubbing his arm, he told us what we could do with ourselves and took off. The look on Nicole’s face as she looked at me was enough to silence any laughs I may have had left.

“Nicole,” I held out my hand but she ran back to Brett’s car, followed by Ryan.

Brett leaned in, “Christ, Lisby.” He sniffed. “You got any of that stuff left?” The hand without any nail polish shut the door in his face.

I leaned against the door, glancing up to make sure we were out of the line of fire from the cameras. Even though the power lights weren’t on, you never knew what Elgin would try to pull.

“How could you Daria?”

“How could I what?”

“Where do you want me to start?” I was no longer stoned, just fuming. “If you hadn’t made us smoke that stuff...chronic? Isn’t that what that little twerp called it? What’s chronic anyway? It’s probably cancerous. Oh my gosh, I feel funny.” Paranoia kicked in, big time. I sunk down into a chair.

“Chronic is just good stuff. And it was, wasn’t it? Admit it.” Daria was looking at me funny.

“I admit nothing. It was the stupidest thing I could have done. Why do you look like you’re scared I’m going to hit you?”

“Because you look like you’re going to hit me.”

“No, I don’t. Why would you say that?” I kicked at a pillow and pulled on my hair, careful not to mess it up. “That makes me even angrier! I am so mad at you. I do feel like smacking you.”

“Go ahead.” She dared me. She got right up in my face. “Come on. You know you want to. Poor Little Miss Put-Upon. Boo hoo. Take your best shot.”

“Shut up. You take your best shot. Oh, excuse me. I mean I know you are ‘taking your best shot,’ and I know who you’re doing it with.”

A funny look crossed her face. “MYOB, you big baby.”

“Geeze, now who’s the baby?” OK, not my shining moment, I actually said that out loud, and basically opened the door for her to let me have it.