A home at the end of the world - By Michael Cunningham Page 0,38

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.”

Bobby laughed, and then looked at me self-consciously, to be sure I’d intended to make a joke. His expression was so hesitant—he agonized so elaborately over the simplest social transactions—that I started to laugh. My laughter inspired more laughter in him, and Jonathan joined in, laughing over some private joke of his own. This was one of the herb’s best qualities: under its influence you could start laughing at any little thing and, once you’d started, feed it just by letting your eyes wander. Everything seemed absurd and funny—the Buddha-shaped incense burner standing next to a spring-driven hula girl on Jonathan’s desktop; the domesticated, dog-like quality of Bobby’s tan suede shoes.

Sometimes in those days I thought of Wendy from Peter Pan —an island mother to a troop of lost boys. I didn’t make an outright fool of myself. I didn’t buy gauzy skirts or Indian