The Marijuana Chronicles (22 page)

“Well, unless your neighbor’s really unfriendly, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind allowing me to work there. It wouldn’t take long.”

B. looked at me and then glanced over at her neighbor’s backyard. “Are you feeling
any
buzz from that joint?” she asked. “That was supposed to be pretty good stuff.”

I replied that, unfortunately, I had not felt any notable effect. “Maybe next time,” I said, adding: “So, what do you think? I could go next door and ask your neighbor for permission to set up my things in her yard and set a date for—”

“No, no, no, dear, we’ll go together,” B. replied, taking my arm and pulling me up the stairs to the back porch and into the kitchen. “But first let’s get the lemonade—and we’ll also bring the brownies.”

4.

B. did not stand on ceremony when the time came to announce our arrival at her neighbor’s home, even though, during the few seconds it took us to walk across her front yard to the house next door, she admitted that she had never even spoken with this person before; she had never even met her.

“Hi! I’m Barbara, but you can call me Booba or maybe Babs or whatever the heck else you might come up with, and this is Eric, and we’re stopping by to say hello and ask if Eric might be allowed to stand in your backyard to paint a picture—of the back of my house, that is, not of your place; that would be an invasion of privacy, and I assure you that we’re decent people and not into snooping or anything like that.” B. managed to blurt out all of this before her neighbor, a woman who appeared to be a few years younger than myself, could even utter a word to welcome us. “Oh! And we brought a little snack. Very refreshing on a day like this. It’s so hot.”

“Well, hello. Nice to meet you,” the younger woman replied. “I’m Claire. You live next door? Come in. Come in. You’re right, it’s hot. Don’t stand there melting.”

We stepped into a cool living room—there was no air-conditioning, but dark curtains were pulled shut to keep out the sun—outfitted with a large, oval-shaped rug and very little furniture. Near the center of the room lay four cats in various positions of repose.

“Let’s go to the back porch,” Claire said. “Here, let me carry that pitcher. I’ll get some glasses.”

“Thanks, dear. I’m delighted to meet you and also very embarrassed that I haven’t made an effort to say hello before today.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I’ve been here awhile but mostly I’ve kept to myself,” Claire responded, piquing B.’s curiosity.

“Why’s that, dear? You’re on the lam? Running from the law?” B. chuckled and added: “Just kidding, of course.”

“No, nothing so dramatic,” Claire said. “I had been working as a schoolteacher a few towns over, closer to the river …”

“The community college?” B. asked.

“No, an elementary school. Let’s just say that I was getting tired of it, and I also had to undergo an operation …”

“Nothing serious?”

“Not really, just routine, but after that I wanted a change. So I looked around and I moved here. I wanted room for a vegetable garden.”

“What do you do now?” I asked, anticipating B.’s next question.

“I copy-edit material for medical journals. Work at home. I’m not a doctor or a scientist but I’m good with technical language. I’ve copy-edited users’ manuals for all kinds of appliances too. Really anonymous literary work, you could say.”

We all laughed, and I mentioned that I was illustrating a book about modern inventions.

“Is that what you do?” Claire asked. “Barbara said something about painting.”

“Yes, I’m an illustrator, and she has commissioned me to draw some pictures of her house …”

“For my husband, Bob, for our wedding anniversary; I thought it would be something different, you know,” B. explained.

“I think that’s a very original idea for an anniversary gift,” Claire said. “You must be very attached to your home.”

“Or to Bob,” B. said reflexively.

“What do you all do?” Claire asked.

“Oh, I used to do this and that; I used to be a secretary at Bob’s company, in fact. As for my husband, he’s in gravel.”

“Gravel?” Claire and I responded in unison.

“Yes. He owns a company that sells gravel for driveways, for private roads, for gardens.”

“I suppose most people don’t think much about gravel,” I said.

“No, dear, it’s not the sexiest subject. But hey, it bought us a house and all the junk that’s in it, and here we are!”

Claire’s screened-in back porch was smaller than B.’s. Because Claire’s house was also built into the side of the same hill, its top floor overlooked the backyard from what felt like a high perch. She disappeared into her kitchen to fetch some glasses, plates, and a tray, and soon returned.

“Even though it’s hot out there, would you like to see the garden?” she proposed. “In fact, there’s a part of the vegetable garden that’s covered. It’s shady, and I think it would be fun to enjoy this snack together down there.”

“Sounds good!” B. replied.

We placed the pitcher, brownies, and other items on the tray and left it on the lowest step of the staircase that led down to the backyard, then followed Claire as first she led us on a tour around the exterior of her house.

“Did you do all of the landscaping yourself?” I asked. “Did you make the flower bed walls?”

“Yes,” Claire said. “I saved the branches I had cut down off the trees at the lower end of the yard and just started stacking them; I liked the way they looked and I like the way they’ve aged.”

Around the house, everything looked as though it had very naturally sprung up on its own—flower beds, groups of flowering shrubs or young trees with very thin trunks—but Claire explained that she had carefully planned the layout of every inch of her garden.

“What’s this gang over here?” B. asked as we made our way around the far side of the house and returned to the backyard.

Claire told us that the shaded patch Barbara had noticed was filled with Christmas fern, maidenhair fern, lady fern, and Japanese painted fern.

“There really are so many kinds of fern? Who knew?” B. said, as she poked around in the pockets of her kaftan.

“Over there you have a butterfly bush, a beauty bush, and a spice bush,” Claire pointed out, “and besides the big oaks—you have some too, Barbara—among the trees, there are some dogwoods, a white pine, and a Stewartia, which the Japanese call the ‘summer camellia’; it’s native to Korea and southern Japan. They have a beautiful flower.”

“I think I noticed them earlier this summer,” B. said as she bent down to pick up our refreshments. We all headed over to Claire’s fenced-in vegetable and herb garden. As she had indicated, a light-colored tarp covered about a fourth of the large enclosure, casting shade over a patch of grass where nothing had been planted. We spread out there, on the ground. B. poured three glasses of lemonade, and Claire cut and served the brownies on small clear-glass plates.

“That’s where I’d like to set up my easel to paint my picture of Babs’s house,” I said, pointing to a spot a few feet away from the far end of the enclosed garden.

“That’s fine,” Claire replied. “Whenever you want, just come and set up your things.”

“Hey, everybody!” B. exclaimed. “Let’s smoke some pot!”

“Huh?” Claire responded. “Really? I’m growing some, you know.”

“What! Seriously?”

“Well, I decided to grow it just as a kind of experiment, just like I’m trying to grow tulsi, or holy basil—it’s from India and used for tea—and wild bergamot and lemon verbena and apple mint. They’re all used to make teas.”

B. had fished out a little plastic bag of marijuana and some rolling papers from the depths of her kaftan and was busy rolling a joint as Claire described her plantings. As she spoke, she nibbled a brownie, stood up, and walked over to a tiny wooden table within the enclosed garden. She pulled open a drawer and removed a pair of gardening gloves, some tools, and a neatly folded white handkerchief, which she brought back and handed to B.

“Barbara,” Claire asked, “what’s in these brownies? Why do they taste like freshly mown grass?”

“That’s because there’s pot in them, dear,” B. said. I choked on my own brownie as she divulged the secret of her recipe, which prompted B. to look at me and remark: “So, Eric, if smoking it doesn’t work for you, maybe eating it will.”

“Here, Barbara, you can have this,” Claire said, handing B. the folded cloth. “I removed the stems and dried the leaves myself. But I warn you, I know nothing about cultivating pot. That’s my lone plant right there.” We all glanced over at what appeared to be a healthy marijuana plant growing tall among the other vegetables and herbs. Then Claire looked at me and asked, “What does she mean, smoking pot doesn’t affect you? Have you tried many times?”

“No. I mean, I’m not a pothead or anything …”

“I am,” B. weighed in from the side as she unfolded Claire’s handkerchief, found a fluffy pile of dried leaves inside, and began to roll a second joint.

“It’s not as though I’m always trying to get high,” I added.

“I am,” B. chimed in as she labored.

“Well, I hardly ever smoke pot either,” Claire explained. “I really don’t know why I planted it this year. Like I said, it’s just an experiment.”

B. knocked back the last of her drink and poured herself a second glass. As I had expected, she had brought the spiked lemonade with us to Claire’s place. My head began to spin.

Holding up the two joints, B. declared: “Okay, kids. We’re going to do a taste test and we’re going to get Eric high.”

5.

There are times in life when the best thing to do, perhaps the only thing to do, is to throw dumb hesitation to the wind—to strike back hard at the underlying fear that fuels it—and peel off all your clothes and jump in the pool while everybody is watching, or hold your nose and take a bite of the escargots in garlic sauce that look like twice-boiled pencil erasers, or dare to place a kiss on a pair of lips that, until or unless you do, will never know the urgency of your desire. There are times when resistance to whatever may be calling is futile.

So it was that I allowed B. to place the first of her freshly prepared joints between my lips. Claire watched and reached for her drink. “Barbara, what’s in this lemonade?” she asked.

“Mama’s special recipe,” B. replied as she massaged my shoulders. I was sitting up, with my legs stretched out in front of me. “Now, Eric, I already lit that joint and got it started. I’m gonna light it again, and you’re gonna breathe in and hold it, then slowly release the smoke. That’s the idea.”

Mama slid forward to face me and lit the joint. I tried to follow her instructions. Claire observed me with a serious look. At that moment I assumed that, until recently, when she had worked as a schoolteacher in a nearby town, she must have been a science teacher—and probably a very good one.

I exhaled.

“Again!” B. commanded. I thought the taste of the just-smoked pot had been somewhat muted by the strong, lingering taste of the pot brownie I had just finished eating. “This time take a puff of Claire’s blend.”

“Claire’s blend?” Claire asked.

“Actually, it’s not a blend. It’s one hundred percent your pot,” B. said. “Here we go.”

I took the second joint and repeated the inhale-exhale routine. “May I have a sip of lemonade,” I asked my examiners.

“It’s like a taste test of the finest wines!” B. noted. “Now he wants to cleanse his palate.”

Claire handed me a glass. I took a gulp and managed to eliminate some of the strong, overlapping tastes in my mouth. I felt dizzy.

“Give him some time,” B. instructed. “Relax, Eric. Let me know when you’re ready for more.” Then she puffed on each joint, one after the other, performing a taste test of her own. Taking a break from her indulgence, she said, “Oh, Claire! I’m sorry, I completely forgot about
you
. Would you like … ?”

“No, that’s okay. You enjoy it. I’m fine.”

By now I had spread out and was lying on my back. The sun had begun its lazy descent. Claire lay on her back next to me, to my right. B. sat in a shapeless lump to Claire’s right, still savoring the first joint, then the second. Time passed. A gentle breeze rustled the deep green leaves of the Japanese Stewartia.

B. interrupted the silence. Softly, she said, “You know, Claire, if you ever need any gravel, just give us a shout. Bob would be glad to give you all you want—I mean free of charge.”

“Well, thank you. That’s very nice of you to offer—”

“With pleasure! It’s the least a good neighbor can do. And that goes for you too, Eric. Free gravel. As much as you want—although I guess you don’t have a big need for gravel where you live.”

I grunted. I was not sure if I was high from the pot or tipsy from B.’s spiked lemonade or simply enervated and even nauseous from the heat. The brownie had not helped. Would I ever know what it felt like to get high from smoking pot? Was
this
it, in some perverted, upside-down, Eric in Wonderland kind of way?

The kaftan at Claire’s side was spread out, with B. in it, flat on the ground, gazing up at the sky. One of Claire’s cats, a big tabby, entered the garden, knocked over a lemonade glass with its swinging tail, and brushed up against B.’s thigh before settling down there, in a thicket of polka dots. The moon had arrived in the early-evening sky.

I wondered how holy basil had earned its name. For the Indians, was it a sacred plant? I thought about how interesting it would be to make drawings of all of the plants in Claire’s garden. First I would have to do some serious research. I remembered that the best botanical illustrations always included each plant’s distinctive details. I wondered if watercolors, colored pencils, or my new set of colored felt-tip markers would be the best materials to use to capture the spirit of Claire’s garden and all that was in it. I thought that, with a few pounds of very small gravel neatly spread out in a shallow tray, I could create a miniature version of one of those Japanese Buddhist-temple gardens, the kind in which some dutiful monk, probably pulled away from his most profound meditations, must attentively rake the finely crushed stones that are symbols, in their smallness, silence, and durability, of the ocean’s countless waves or the timelessness of time or the notion that an entire universe can be found in even the tiniest grain of sand. I wondered if Bob was a good man and if, over the years, he had personally chosen all those chairs. Who had picked out the cuckoo clock? A second cat approached and snuggled in, between my feet.