Betty's (Little Basement) Garden

by Laurel Dewey

  “Ronnie?” she said, fear lacing her voice. “What did you do, sweetheart?” She gently picked the leaf particles out of his mouth. But as she drew one of the larger leaves out, Ronald corralled it with his paw and started chewing it again. “No, no, no, no!” A tug of war ensued between the old cat and his concerned mother with the old cat winning the battle. He wasn’t dead but he didn’t look fabulous. Then again, Betty thought, Ronald hadn’t looked dashing for quite some time.

  Her head spun with what she should do. She could take him to the Paradox twenty-four hour emergency vet center, but what was she supposed to tell them? She couldn’t be open about what he ate, because there was no way to know if somebody there would talk to someone else. That could unleash the news that Betty Craven, stalwart Republican, wife of an honored war veteran and impeccable hostess was growing the “devil weed.” She’d have to lie or they’d know what she was doing. But if she lied, what would she say he ate? Pacing back and forth, Betty’s heart rate increased by the second. She carefully lifted Ronald off the floor, placed him on the bed and then dashed to her computer in a frantic search for information on cats and cannabis. The first article, “Cats Love Cannabis,” explained that felines have an attraction to the aromatic plant in all its stages of growth. She then watched a video of a Burmese who had just eaten an entire branch of an outdoor cannabis plant in Hawaii. While she couldn’t be certain, it appeared the cat was attempting to hula.

  Betty was so focused on the video, she didn’t see her stubborn pussycat jump off the bed and head back into the closet. That is until she heard the T5 light swinging back and forth on the stand. Quickly going back to the closet, she found Ronald standing on top of the warm, flat light as if he were surfing. Drool cascaded out of the space where he was missing a tooth as he deliriously hunkered down and rode the cannabis wave. She’d never seen her familial feline acting so uninhibited. So kitten-like. So happy. And yet, she still worried.

  Betty dialed Petyon’s cell number but got his voicemail. She hung up and paced a little more before she went back to her computer and searched the local telephone directory. She found his name and hesitated briefly before dialing the number.

  Chapter 18

  “I couldn’t take my ears off you.”

  “Hi, Betty!” Jeff’s voice was warm and friendly.

  She was taken back. “Hello…How did you know it was me?”

  “I’m psychic.” He waited and when he heard nothing on the other end. “Caller ID?”

  Betty felt stupid for not realizing the simple explanation. “Oh, yes, of course.” Suddenly she felt very dizzy. Her mouth went dry.

  “So, what’s up?”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed in an attempt to steady herself. Perhaps, she thought, she was coming down with the stomach flu since her gut kept churning. “What’s up…ah…well, Ronald, my cat –”

  “You mean Ronald the third.”

  Betty momentarily lost her momentum. “Yes…the third.” As she watched Ronald continue to inelegantly surf the T5 light fixture, she diplomatically explained her predicament, how she and Peyton were going to install the “accoutrements” in the basement the following day and her concern about Ronald’s further ingestion and destruction of her new “girls” that evening. After about three minutes, she realized she was rambling. Rambling was not something Betty Craven sponsored. Ever. The more she talked with Jeff, the more her stomach felt like an amusement park with the roller coaster and Ferris wheel intersecting around her navel. “I guess I’m just calling you for advice as to what I might do to prevent Ronald from succumbing to his cannabis proclivity.”

  Jeff chuckled. “God, Betty. You really do enjoy verbose explanations.”

  “I…well…” Suddenly, she was lost for words.

  “Would you like me to come over and see if I can rig up something to keep Mr. Reagan out of the weed?”

  Her stomach lurched. “Sure…I’ll fix you dinner!”

  “I’ve already eaten. See you in half an hour.”

  Betty hung up. A strange giddiness briefly overtook her, followed by a drier mouth, more churning in her gut and finally, a sense she was losing control. This was not acceptable. Above all else, she needed to stay in control to maintain the well-worn structure she depended upon. If she didn’t, chaos would ensue. And as she’d been lectured many times, structure was essential. Chaos, she believed, bred confusion and unexpected consequences. Taking several deep breaths, she regained her composure. Then she realized Jeff would have to come into her bedroom in order to attend to the girls in the closet. That’s when her stomach began churning again, this time with several sharp pangs. What in the hell was going on? She’d never felt this way before. It had to be some sort of…sickness.

  The next half hour was a blur, as Betty hurriedly cleaned the room, dusted already dust-free objects and propped pillows on the bed. Then she wondered why she was propping pillows. She was just about to analyze that action further when the doorbell rang.

  She greeted Jeff at the front door and welcomed him inside. He was dressed in a weathered, denim shirt that was frayed on the sleeves and neck. His denim jeans looked worse for wear and he wore leather clogs on his feet. He carried a box full of old screens, wood and a few tools.

  “So, how’s little Doobie doing?” he asked with a grin.

  “Please don’t call him that,” she replied, maintaining a somewhat formal stance. “He’s upstairs on the bed sleeping.”

  “Sleeping the sleep of the innocent?”

  Betty felt that damned lightheadedness overtake her again.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I seem to be getting asked that question a lot lately. I’ll take you upstairs.” She turned as those four words echoed in her head. “What I mean is that I’ll take you up to the bedroom. No…wait…let, let, let me be more precise –”

  Jeff smiled, as his blue eyes danced. “Betty, I’m here to put a screen around the plants so little Doobie will stay out of them.”

  “Please…please stop calling him little Doobie.”

  She led Jeff upstairs and into the bedroom. He set down the box of screening and tools and knelt by the bed, petting Ronald.

  “How you doing, ol boy?” Jeff said.

  Betty fumbled with her sleeve. “He seems to be quite…relaxed,” she whispered.

  “Well, instead of Ronald just saying no, he said why the hell not?” He leaned closer and whispered in the cat’s ear. “It’s okay, Ronnie. Time is slowing down. Your paws are going to feel heavier than normal. You might have a little short-term memory loss, but at your advanced age, you’re probably used to that. Sounds are going to be louder, and lights are going to be brighter. But there’s nothing to worry about. Just sleep it off, and you’ll be back to normal tomorrow.”

  Betty couldn’t help but smile. She directed Jeff to the closet, where he quickly sized up the situation and began to build a temporary screened enclosure. She looked at her clones and realized they really did look like weeds she’d pluck out of her yard in favor of something more beautiful. “Why this weed?” she said out loud.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, focused on setting up the frame.

  “There are lots of weeds that have been growing for thousands of years. Amaranth, lamb’s quarters, bindweed, thistle, the prodigious dandelion…Cannabis can grow in a ditch and isn’t exactly stunning.”

  He stopped what he was doing momentarily. “Well, I guess someone ate it or smoked it, and their consciousness was altered in some way that gave them some sort of…I don’t know…understanding they didn’t have before.” He resumed working. “I know when I used to smoke it, time was held captive; everything that came before and all that was to be were not as important as the present moment.” He looked at her. “And in that moment, lies the mystery. One can delve into the now, and occupy that space and become one with all the minutia our waking eyes never see.”

  Betty was in awe. “That’s so beautifully said.” She turned away, h
oping she hadn’t lingered too long.

  “Maybe the whole point of cannabis is to let us know it’s really possible to be present in the now. Once you know what that feels like, you can reproduce it without even using the herb.” He nonchalantly went back to work. “That’s the problem today. Everybody’s trapped in their past or terrified of their future. When the truth is, all we have is right now but everyone is betraying it.”

  Betraying it. Betty was never able to explain the way her son behaved before the drugs took him hostage. But right then, it suddenly became clear. He was always living in the moment and fully engaged in that place with heartfelt abandon. But the tremors of judgment, frustration and rage directed at him by his father tended to make it nearly impossible for him to sustain himself in that space. Worms of self-doubt and self-hatred penetrated his psyche, transforming those moments into sheer pain.

  “I like to think I can live in the moment,” she declared, “while I’m focusing on the future.”

  He laughed hard. “Did you hear what you just said? And you said it with such authority! I’ll have to remember that one.”

  Betty joined in the chuckles, even though she wasn’t quite sure what was so funny about her statement. She didn’t wander far from the closet. While Jeff continued to work, Betty stood close by, effusively discussing her newest Kushberry “girls.” She also told him that she was going to meet a new patient who was interested in her chocolates. “Her name’s Dottie. That’s all I know. Except that she’s a bit older than I am.” Betty nervously played with her sleeve again as she observed Jeff. He listened to her without interrupting and she wasn’t used to that, so she kept talking. “I imagine Dottie and I will have some things in common, given our age.” She waited but Jeff didn’t respond. “Graduating from high school in the late sixties like we did.” And still he said nothing, except acknowledging her with a nod. Finally, she just blurted it out. “When did you graduate from high school?”

  He looked at her with his piercing eyes. “Now why on earth would you want to know that?”

  “No reason. Just chit-chat.” She leaned against the open closet door. “When’s your birthday?”

  Jeff focused on the temporary frame. “In about a month. You planning on baking me a cake?”

  “Sure. How many candles should I put on it?”

  “You want to know how old I am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Old enough to not care what other people think. Why do I feel like this is a job interview?” He measured the screen. “You want to know about me? Okay. As Phil Ochs sung, ‘I’m just a typical American boy from a typical American town. I believe in God and Senator Dodd and keepin’ old Castro down.’” He pounded a nail into the frame and continued in an off-hand cadence. “I was raised an Ecopalian. That’s an Episcopal with the piss scared out of him. My mother, she was a pistol,” he looked at Betty, “so you know what that makes me?”

  “A son of a gun?”

  He smiled. “You got it. I was a life long Democrat until the day I wasn’t anymore. Now I’m a Libertarian. I don’t buy into divide and conquer or the us against them mentality. I don’t smoke or drink, but I’ve dated girls who do. I don’t believe in organized religion, because I don’t want to be told I’m not good enough, pious enough or decent enough to get into that place they call heaven. I think youth is overrated and far too over-worshipped, but I’d give anything to still have the knees I had when I was eighteen.” He stood up to unroll the screen. “I love bluegrass in moderation, but I don’t like the blues. I don’t trust skinny cooks or sleepy baristas. I don’t suffer fools, but I sometimes suffer from seasonal allergies. I never had kids but that doesn’t mean I didn’t give it the ol’ college try. I don’t have regrets about my past, and I’m not obsessed with my future. I no longer have high expectations or attempt to repeat the same experience twice, but I have learned that the same magic can happen again in the most ordinary places. I believe if people really saw a sausage being made they’d never eat another sausage again. I think you’re never too old to fall in love, and if I knew the world was going to get hit with a meteor that would wipe out all life that wasn’t hiding in an underground bunker, you know what I’d do? I’d pull up a lawn chair, pour myself a hot cup of coffee and face that ball of fire with a shit-eating grin on my face.” He looked at Betty. “Does that cover it?”

  Betty felt herself blushing and turned away. “Everything except your age.”

  He returned to work. “Why does it matter? Are you planning my birthday or something else?”

  He obviously wasn’t falling for her Texas-style subtlety. “I’m not planning anything.” It was pointless to press him further. As she’d heard her father say many times back in Texas, “If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.”

  There was an awkward slice of silence between them until Jeff spoke up.

  “Do you have to name your business when you’re a caregiver?” he asked, returning to the screen.

  Betty leaned back against the doorframe. “I don’t think so. But maybe I should. I don’t want to call it The White Violet, because I wouldn’t want there to be any connection between my failed chocolate store and this venture.”

  “Why The White Violet?”

  Betty gave Jeff the condensed version, telling him about Frankie and the white violet watercolor he had given her during their last visit.

  He stopped working, obviously deeply struck by Frankie’s tragic story. “Wow. That makes all this even more of a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree shift for you, doesn’t it?” He considered it further. “Good for you. I’m not sure many other women with your experience would ever consider growing pot.”

  “Cannabis,” she corrected him. “I’m not really sure why I’m doing it. Except that I can, so why in the hell not?” She wrestled with what she was feeling. “I think it comes down to the fact that when you’ve spent your life parroting the words and values of others, you tend to easily ignore the voice inside of you that counters what you’re hearing. When you aren’t encouraged to have a mind of your own, you readily ride the values of other people and never stop to think whether you actually believe any of it.”

  Now it was Jeff’s turn to gaze a little too long at Betty. “That’s a huge realization for you, isn’t it?”

  She nodded. “Yes. I seem to be having more of those lately.” She turned to the clones. “You know, maybe I need to come up with a clever name for my new business.”

  “Choose carefully,” he offered, pounding the first nail into the wooden frame. “I had a friend name a restaurant Harold’s Hideaway. Nobody could find it. Another buddy called his B&B, The Secret Garden. Nobody knew it existed.”

  She chuckled at his humor. “How about ‘Compassionate Cacao.’ They use the word ‘compassion’ in a lot of medical cannabis literature. And here’s my slogan: ‘We make chocolate you can feel!’”

  “I like ‘chocolate you can feel’ as a slogan. But Compassionate Cacao is kind of boring. Loosen up. Have some fun with the name. I mean, let’s get real. I’m the owner of the ‘Hippie Dippie Health Food Store.’ If you want to keep the sophisticated vibe, call yourself ‘Elegant Edibles’ or ‘Gorgeous Ganja.’ How about ‘Refined Reefer?’”

  “Good Lord, no! This can’t be a joke!”

  “I know that. But it can sure as hell be fun.” He stopped what he was doing and looked at her. “You know what ‘fun’ is, right? When was the last time you had fun?”

  Betty thought hard. “Are we talking random fun or planned activities that include certain fun aspects?”

  He let out a howl of laughter. “God, Betty, if anybody needs to smoke a joint, you do.”

  A twinge of ire ran up her spine. “Well, no thank you. I prefer to ingest it.”

  “Then you need to ingest a little bit more.” A thought crossed his mind. “Hey, I got it. You’re a classy woman. You want to operate a classy business. How about ‘The Classy Joint?’”

  “Right. A play on w
ords.”

  “When you say it like that, Betty, you suck the fun right out of it.” He drove another nail into the wood frame.

  She was quiet for several minutes while she watched him work. He seemed so confident. And yet, he didn’t take himself too seriously. Such an atypical combination. “Do you think I’m quite foolish for doing all this?”

  “No,” he said nonchalantly. “I think it’s cool.” He focused on attaching the screen to a nail. “When I used to see you get up and speak at the town council meetings, I sensed something different about you. You were always prepared and spoke with such measured modulation, but –”

  “I won several awards in college for my presentational abilities.”

  “I bet you did,” he replied with a mischievous grin. “But even though I didn’t agree with most of what you said at those meetings, you still captured my attention. I couldn’t take my ears off you.”

  Betty felt unpredictably vulnerable. “What exactly did you not agree with?”

  He stood up, testing the strength of the improvised barrier. “It doesn’t matter, Betty.” He moved from the closet and replaced his tools in the box.

  “Well,” she stressed, following him, “it’s just that I’d like to know –”

  “Why? So we can dissect it? And then analyze it. And then debate it further? That sounds exhausting.” He glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “Is that one of your guiding principles?”

  She turned. There was the bold statement from Marilyn Monroe. “All a girl really wants is for one guy to prove to her that they are not all the same.” Shit, she thought. Her gut churned. “It was an impulse buy from The Gilded Rose. I don’t know why I purchased it. I’m not even a fan of Miss Monroe’s –”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, Betty. You don’t need to keep explaining yourself. I hope you figure that out one day.”

  When he moved his hand off her shoulder, Betty felt strangely empty. “I know you said you already ate dinner, but I can still make you something.”