up a joint, and we’d lie there on the musty brocade couch, smoking and talking.
I liked being stoned, the way it made my limbs heavy and my head light, the opposite of how I usually felt. I particularly liked being stoned with Benny, and how it seemed to blur the boundaries between us. Lying on opposite ends of the couch, our feet tangling in the middle, it felt like we were part of one continuous organism, the pulse of the blood in my veins matching his, an energy passing between us where our bodies touched. I wish I could remember what we talked about, because it felt at the time like what we were discussing was so vital, but really it was just the silly prattle of fucked-up teenage kids. Gossip about our classmates. Complaints about our teachers. Speculation about the existence of UFOs, of life after death, of bodies floating at the bottom of the lake.
I remember feeling something growing in that room, the relationship between us blurring in a confusing way. We were just friends, right? So, why, then, did I find myself looking at his face in the sideways afternoon light and wanting to press my tongue to the freckles along his jawline to see if they tasted like salt? Why did the pressure of his leg against mine feel like a question that he was expecting me to answer? Sometimes I would startle out of my stoned reverie and realize that we’d been quiet for a long minute, and when I looked over at him I would see him watching me through those long lashes of his, and he’d blush and look away.
Only once in those early weeks did we encounter his mother. One afternoon, as we slipped through the foyer on our way toward the kitchen, a voice came piercing through the leaden hush of the house. “Benny? You there?”
Benny stopped abruptly. He gazed blankly at some point on the wall next to the portrait of Elizabeth Liebling, a careful expression on his face. “Yeah, Mom.”
“Come in and say hello.” Her words seemed to be lodged in the back of her throat, as if the sounds had gotten trapped there and she wasn’t quite sure if she should swallow them back or just spit them out.
Benny tilted his head at me, in silent apology. I followed him as he trudged through a maze of rooms I’d never been in before until we landed in a room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A library, presumably, complete with uninviting, jacket-less tomes; it looked like they’d been glued into position decades earlier and not moved since. Hunting trophies hung across the wooden paneling—an elk’s head, a moose, and a stuffed bear standing erect in the corner, all of them with bereft expressions that suggested their resentment at this indignity. Benny’s mother sat on an overstuffed velvet couch in front of a fire, her legs tucked up under her, surrounded by an avalanche of interior design magazines. Her back was to us, and she didn’t bother to turn around when we came into the room, so that we were forced to navigate the couch and stand before her.
Like supplicants, I thought.
Up close, I could see that she was actually quite striking; her eyes, large and damp-looking, overwhelming a small, fox-like face. Benny’s red hair must have come from her, but hers was more of a russet color now, and smooth, like the mane of an expensively groomed horse. She was thin, so thin that I thought I might be able to pick her up and snap her in half over my knee. She wore a pale silk jumpsuit of some sort, with a scarf tied around her neck, and it looked like she’d just gotten back from a fancy lunch at a French restaurant. I wondered where one even had a fancy lunch up here.
“So.” She put a magazine down and peered up at me. “I take it you are the voice I’ve been hearing around the house. Benny, are you going to introduce us?”
Benny shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. “Mom, this is Nina Ross. Nina, this is my mother, Judith Liebling.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Liebling.” I held out a hand and she stared at it