“Sweetie? Please say something.”
With a breathy sound, almost a laugh, he sat up straight and looked around the room as if he didn’t see her at his feet. “What’s there to say? It’s not like this is any great surprise.”
“How so?”
He was smiling. “I already knew I was damned. Right?”
“No, no, no.”
“I’m not saying it’s your fault. It’s just a fact. There’s something bad in my head.”
“No, sweetie. You’re just intelligent and sensitive. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It can be a very good thing, too.”
“Not true. Here, you want to see?”
He stood up with surprising energy and stepped onto the cedar chest. From the top of the wardrobe, he took down a shoe box. He wasn’t reacting at all the way she’d expected. There was no distress on her behalf, no fear on his own. It was as if a switch had been flipped and he wasn’t reacting at all. And she knew that switch. It was the worst sort of punishment to see her son flipping it.
He removed the lid of the shoe box and held up a clear plastic bag that appeared to be filled with plant matter. “These,” he said, “are the seeds and stems from what I’ve smoked up here. They correspond to maybe ten percent of my total intake, counting other locations.” He rooted in the box. “Here we have my papers. Here’s the pipe I thought would be great but didn’t quite work for me. Trusty Bic lighter, of course. Roach clip. Miniature mouthwash bottle. And this—” He held up a gleaming apparatus. “You might as well know about this, too. This is a more or less serviceable hand scale. Useful if you’re in the business of selling pot.”
“Holy Mary.”
“You asked me to be honest with you.”
He put the lid back on the box. All business, no emotion. It occurred to her that the Perry in her head had been nothing but a sentimental projection, extrapolated from the little boy he’d been. She didn’t know the real Perry any more than Russ knew the real her.
“How did this all happen so quickly?” she said, meaning his becoming a stranger.
“Three years isn’t quick.”
“Oh my. Three years? I must be very stupid and very blind.”
“Not necessarily. It isn’t hard to hide a drug habit if you’re sedulous about the protocols.”
“I thought we had a close relationship.”
“We do, in a way. It’s not like I thought I knew everything about you. As, indeed, I’m now learning, I didn’t.”
“If you’re selling drugs, though. That is not at all the same kind of thing.”
“I’m not proud of it.”
“You mustn’t sell drugs.”
“For the record, I no longer do. I’ve been trying to turn over a new leaf. You can thank Becky for that.”
“Becky? Becky knows about this?”
“Not the selling part, I don’t think. But otherwise, yes, she’s pretty well apprised.”
At the vista that was opening, the image of her children conspiring to exclude her, Marion felt a dizzying resurgence of her disturbance. Evidently, she was anything but the indispensable, confided-in mother she’d imagined herself to be. She’d fooled Russ, but she hadn’t fooled her kids, and her feral intelligence was quick to recognize a kind of permission in this: if she ever managed to walk away, she might not be so missed.
“I’m going to have one more cigarette,” she said.
“Permission granted.”
She went back to the window and lit up. There was still some juice in her; the old organs of longing still functioned. Either-or, either-or. It was almost comical to watch her mind flip back and forth between irreconcilable contraries, God-fearing mother, unregretting sinner. She leaned as far as she dared out the window, trying to escape the house’s leaking warmth and feel the winter air on her skin. She leaned out even farther and caught a little gust of wind. Snowflakes were melting on her cheeks. Everything was a mess, and it was wonderful.
“Whoa, Mom, careful,” Perry said.
The amplified harmonies of “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” stripped of reverb by the density of the crowd inside the function hall, came through the open doors. Two girls in mittens and pom-pommed stocking caps were at a table in the vestibule. They wanted three dollars.
“I’m not here for the concert,” Clem said. “I’m looking for Becky Hildebrandt.”
“She’s here. But we’re not supposed to—”