to Jimi pretty loud.”
“Jon,” Bobby said, “I don’t know if—”
Jonathan touched the needle to vinyl, and the room exploded with electric guitars. They squealed and shrieked like tortured animals. A thumping bass line started, so loud and insistent I could feel it up my spine. I had the impression that my hair was being disarranged.
“Nice, huh?” Jonathan shouted. “Jimi was the greatest.”
Our eyes met through the storm of sound. Jonathan’s face was flushed, his eyes brilliant. I knew what he wanted. He wanted to blow me out of the room, to send me tumbling downstairs into the familiar sanctity of dirty dishes and vacuuming. On the record, a male voice sang, “You know you’re a cute little heartbreaker.”
“The greatest,” Jonathan hollered. “Much better than Van the Man.”
I made a decision. I stood up and said, “Bobby, let’s dance.”
He joined me immediately. We danced together in the chaos of the music. It wasn’t so bad, as long as you kept moving. It gave you the airy, buffeted sensation a sparrow must feel when caught in an updraft—a simultaneous sense of assault and liberation. You could scream into the face of this music. It all but lifted your arms into the air.
From the corner of my eye I could see that Jonathan was disappointed. His mother had not cowered before his hard-driving music. Once again, I could see the child contained in the burgeoning man—his expression at that moment recalled the times his checkers moves didn’t work out, or no one fell for his April Fool’s trick. If he’d permitted it, I would have reached over and pinched his cheek.
Presently, he started dancing, too. What else could he do? As we three swayed to the music, that small room seemed as densely packed as Times Square, and every bit as full of the weight of the moment. Jimi Hendrix growled “Foxy lady,” and it struck me as a fair appellation. A smart older woman who didn’t scare easily. Who wouldn’t just retreat to her domestic chores, and start getting fat.
After that, I paid more regular visits. I abandoned my old rule about waiting to be invited. We seemed to have passed beyond that. When my ordinary errands took me upstairs I’d tap on the door and go in for a song or two. I never stayed long.
One night when I knocked on the door I detected a shuffling on the other side. Neither of them answered my knock. I thought I could hear them whispering. Then Jonathan called, “Come in, Mom.”
I smelled it the moment I entered—that sweet smoky reek. The room was blue with it. Bobby stood in an attitude of frozen panic, and Jonathan sat in his accustomed place by the radiator. Bobby said, “Um, Mrs. Glover?”
Jonathan said, in a voice that was calm and almost suave, “Come on in, Mom. Have a hit.”
He extended a smoldering, hand-rolled cigarette in my direction.
I stood uncertainly in the doorway. For a long moment I lost track of my own character and simply floated, ghost-like, watching dispassionately as my son extended a pathetic-looking gnarled cigarette, its ember glowing orange in the dim light of a baseball-shaped lamp I’d bought for him when he was seven years old.
I knew what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to express my shock and outrage or, at the very least, to speak gently but firmly to him about the limits of my tolerance. Either way, it would be the end of our familiar relations—our impromptu dance parties—and the beginning of a sterner, more formal period.
After the silence had stretched to its breaking point, Jonathan repeated his offer. “Give it a try, Mom,” he said. “How else will you know what you’re missing?”
“Your father would have a heart attack,” I said evenly.
“He isn’t here,” Jonathan said.
“Mrs. Glover?” Bobby said helplessly.
It was his voice that decided me—his fearful intonation of my married name.
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “How else will I know what I’m missing?”
I took three steps into the room, and accepted the sad little cigarette.
“Atta girl, Mom,” Jonathan said. His voice was cheerful and opaque.
“How do you do this?” I asked. “I’ve never even smoked regular cigarettes, you know.”
Bobby said, “Um, just pull the smoke, like, straight into your lungs. And hold it as long as you can?”
As I put the cigarette to my lips, I was aware of myself standing in a pale blue blouse and wraparound skirt in my son’s bedroom, about to perform the first plainly illegal act of my life. I inhaled. The smoke was so harsh and bitter I nearly choked. My eyes teared, and I could not hold the smoke in my lungs as Bobby had told me to do. I immediately blew out a thick cloud that hung in the air, raggedly intact, for a full second before dissipating.
Nevertheless, the boys cheered. I handed the cigarette to Bobby.
“You did it,” he said. “You did it.”
“Now I can say I’ve lived,” I answered. My voice sounded cracked and strained.
Bobby pulled in a swift, effortless drag, pinching the cigarette between his thumb and first finger. The ember fired up. When he exhaled, only a thin translucent stream of smoke escaped into the air.
“See?” he said. “You have to, like, hold it in a little longer?”
He handed the cigarette back to me. “Again?” I asked.
He shrugged, grinning in his panicky, baffled way. “Yeah, Mom,” Jonathan said. “You smoke the whole joint. One hit doesn’t do much of anything.”
Joint. It was called a joint, not a cigarette.
“Well, one more,” I said. I tried again, and this time managed to hold the smoke in for a moment or two. Again, I dispelled a riot of smoke, very different from Bobby’s gray-white, elegant jet trail.
I returned the joint to him. Jonathan said, “Hey, I’m here, too.”
“Oops. Sorry.” I handed it over. He took it greedily, as he had once accepted the little treats I brought home from shopping trips.
“What will this do, exactly?” I asked. “What should I prepare myself for?”
“It’ll just make you laugh.” Bobby said. “It’ll just, you know, make you feel happy and a little foolish?”
“It’s no big deal, Mom,” Jonathan said. “The lamb chops won’t start talking to you, or anything like that.” He took a drag, with expert dispatch, and handed the joint along to Bobby. When Bobby passed it to me I shook my head.
“I think that’s enough,” I said. “Just do me one favor.”
“Uh-huh?” Bobby said.
“Play me a Laura Nyro song, and then I’ll get on about my business.”
“Sure,” he said.
He put the record on, and we three stood listening. I waited to start feeling whatever there was to feel. By the time the song was over, I realized that marijuana had no effect at all, beyond producing a dry scratchiness in the throat. I was both relieved and disappointed.
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for your hospitality, boys.”
“Any time, Mom,” Jonathan said. I could not read his voice. It might have been mocking, or swaggering, or simply friendly.
“Not a word to your father,” I said. “Do you promise? Do you swear?” For a moment I thought the marijuana had affected me after all. But it was just the flush of my own guilt.
“I promise,” he said. “I swear.”
Bobby said, “Mrs. Glover? This is really cool. You are…I don’t know. Really cool. Yow!”
“Oh, call me Alice, for God’s sake,” I told him. And then I left them alone.
A week or so later I tried dope again (it was called dope, not marijuana), and found that if you kept at it, it did have its effects. It made you giddy and pleasantly vague. It took the hard edge off your attention.
On a Wednesday afternoon in February, when a frigid white hush lay over the world, I sat with Jonathan and Bobby sharing a joint. It was the fourth of my career, and I had by then acquired a certain expertise. I held the smoke, feeling its heaviness and herbal warmth inside my lungs. On the stereo, Bob Dylan sang “Girl from the North Country.” The lamp was lit against the afternoon dusk, and the paneled walls had taken on a rich, dark-honey color.
“You know,” I said, “this should be legal. It’s just utterly sweet and harmless, isn’t it?”
“Uh-huh,” Jonathan said.
“Well, it should be legal,” I said. “If Nixon smoked a little, the world would be a better place.”
