Betty's (Little Basement) Garden

by Laurel Dewey

  “Why in the hell are they even asking that idiot for his opinion?” Peyton said, a spark of indignation becoming lit. “Asking him about cannabis is like asking him about forgiveness. He doesn’t know shit about either one!”

  “He does have a point about children,” Betty interrupted. “I never considered how children might glom onto their parents’ medical cannabis stash.”

  “You mean the same way they might glom onto their parents’ booze, prescription drugs or cigarettes?” Jeff countered.

  “Well yes, I realize that. But their brains are still developing. And I heard once from my son’s school counselor that cannabis triggers the brain’s reward system, giving the user instant gratification. She made quite a point of telling me that when this happens, the child doesn’t learn the necessity of delayed gratification.”

  “You mean ‘fun?’” Jeff asked.

  “Hang on,” Betty interjected. “There is something to be said for working hard for what you want and realizing it’s not going to happen overnight. No pain, no gain.”

  Peyton shuddered. “God, I hate that mantra. Isn’t there enough pain in this messed up world? Do we seriously need to conjure it in order to succeed?”

  “Betty, I get what you’re saying,” Jeff stressed. “But there’s got to be a middle ground between suffering and success. If all you do is dwell on the suffering, how in the hell can you enjoy the rewards when they show up?”

  Somehow, his comment hit her hard. “Be that as it may, one can’t ignore how this cannabis revolution will affect children and their moral compass.”

  “Betty,” Jeff said, “you can’t legislate morality or personal behavior. No matter how much you believe it’s possible, it’s never going to happen. If people want to escape by getting high or drunk or whatever, they’re going to do it. Period. The question shouldn’t be what they’re using. The question should be why they need to escape. But the good Reverend Lynch isn’t exploring that part of the issue. He’s just focused a little too hard on saving the children, enough to make you question his agenda.”

  Betty was intrigued. “What do you mean?”

  Jeff punched a staple into the black plastic covering on the floor. “Anyone who digs in and rants like that is overcompensating for something.”

  “Like what?” Betty asked.

  “Maybe he likes to roll a fat one before bed every night,” Jeff joked.

  “No, really,” Betty pressed, “what are you saying?”

  “When one doth protest too much about an issue, one doth often have something to hide.”

  Peyton unrolled the reflective wall covering as he considered Jeff’s statement. “Yeah. I know what you mean. When a guy doth drive a jacked-up truck with wheels that are too big and lights flashing all over, he usually has a small –”

  “Brain?” Betty interjected.

  Peyton smiled and stapled the silver covering to the wall. “I, on the other hand, drive a small car.”

  Jeff drove another staple into the plastic on the floor. “And I drive a motorcycle.”

  The three of them continued working away in the basement and made tremendous progress by three o’clock. They took a break under the large canopy elm in the backyard. Betty offered them their choice of tea or coffee, along with a few treats she purchased at the farmers’ market that morning. A gentle breeze blew through the yard, as the tree shaded them from the piercing sun.

  “Just think, Betty,” Peyton said, between bites of an apricot muffin Betty had topped with quince paste, “how far you’ve come in just one week! I mean, think about where you were on this issue just seven days ago!”

  Betty realized that exactly seven days prior, she was seated in her living room, listening to Renée declare her war on the dispensaries. “I’d rather not think about that.”

  Jeff threw her a knowing look.

  Peyton finished the muffin and grabbed another one. “Now, if we can just get more people like you to change their minds, we won’t have to deal with the jerk offs who wrote that shitty letter to the editor.”

  “Wait a second,” Jeff intervened. “You’re not aware –”

  “That what this movement needs is a good ol’ Republican to stand up and speak out!” Betty quickly said, shoving a plate full of cookies in Jeff’s direction. “Cookie, Jeff?” She turned to Peyton. “I’m talking a moderate Republican, of course.”

  Jeff eyed Betty. “Okay. Well, why don’t you become that voice?”

  Betty stiffened. “I wasn’t referring to myself.”

  “Why not?” Jeff pressed. “You come to this from an interesting point of view.”

  “I prefer to work more quietly.”

  “But that’s the problem, isn’t it?” Jeff added. “There have got to be lots of people like you who are involved but are afraid to come forward because of the stigma.”

  “Stigma,” Peyton interjected. “Dude, you hit the nail on the head right there.”

  Jeff turned to Betty. “Maybe when you stop worrying about what other people think, you’ll come out of the cannabis closet.”

  She got up. “Maybe I’ll just bring my six plants out for now. Peyton, would you help me bring the light fixture and plants down from upstairs?”

  “You need another hand?” Jeff asked.

  “No, no, we can handle it.” Betty hustled Peyton forward. There was no way she was going upstairs alone and risking Jeff revealing to Peyton that she was one of the “jerk offs” who signed that damned letter.

  After corralling the plants and light upstairs, work resumed in the basement for another two hours. Betty was able to slap a good thick coat of glossy paint on the entire bloom room by the time Peyton and Jeff had everything installed. They showed her how to operate the intake and outtake fans, explained how to change the carbon filters and how to adjust the T5 light fixture over the six young plants. Peyton set the timer on the veg light to go on at three in the morning and shut off at nine at night. He advised her to always close the drapes across the sliding glass door at night, so as not to attract too much neighborhood attention from the streaming light. It was closing in on dinnertime by the time they finished cleaning up.

  “I have a rotisserie chicken. Would you both please stay for dinner?”

  Peyton checked his cell phone. “No can do, Betty. I promised Pops I’d watch the documentary on Tesla: The Man & His Magic.”

  God help him, Betty mused. This boy really did need a girlfriend. There was an awkward moment when Betty realized the invitation was announced, and now it would just be she and Jeff. Part of her froze but the other part of her melted.

  “Guess it’s just you and me, Betty,” Jeff stated.

  She felt dizzy and turned to Peyton. “I’ll show you to your car.”

  When they walked out the front door, Betty noted two things. First, the fountain had subsided to a dwindling Las Vegas squirt, and Jack’s motorhome and faithful drug dog were gone. Jerry, however, was across the street, watering his yard and clutching a beer can. If Betty didn’t know any better, she’d think those damn cans were soldered to his palm, and he simply refilled them as needed.

  “It was fun today,” Peyton offered.

  “Thank you, Peyton.” She lifted her front door flag out of its holder and carefully wrapped it up. “I do appreciate your help.”

  “How’d you and Jeff hook up?”

  Betty was taken back. “Hook up? There’s been no hooking up.”

  “No, how’d you meet him?”

  “Oh. Right. At The Gilded Rose. He was checking out my Biedermeier.”

  “I bet he was.” He smiled and playfully punched her shoulder. “I like him. I thought he’d be a vegan since he owned a health food store but I’m glad he’s not. I’m not fond of vegans anymore than I am of Canadians. I find vegans a strange mix of passive-aggressive frustration that could ironically be remedied by a grass-fed hamburger.”

  “You have to work through your distrust of Canadians. You can’t let one bad Canuck ruin the whole stew
.”

  He looked at her intensely. “Have you actually met a Canadian?”

  “Yes. Quite a few of them.”

  “Then you’re stronger than I am.” He turned to his Prius. “Hey, remind Dottie about how to dose effectively with your candies. I made a cannabis cookie once for a patient who didn’t understand she only needed one bite and not an entire cookie to kill her pain. She called me from Wal-Mart freakin’ out, because she ate two cookies and couldn’t figure out how to get out of the automotive department.” He opened the car door and got inside. “And remember tomorrow, you’re seeing her about a horse.”

  “I’m seeing her about a horse. Gotcha. Any more advice?”

  Peyton settled in his car, pulling his seatbelt across his lap. He considered her question with deep intent. “Yeah. Don’t baby your plants. Obviously, you can’t ignore them but don’t coddle them. The first two months when they’re in veg determines how strong and resilient the blooming plant will be. These ladies are hardy by their own nature. You’re not dealin’ with hothouse orchids. They need love but tough love. You gotta feed them the high nitrogen guanos and fish fertilizers during their veg state, but you also have to allow them to just be and grow. The mistake a lot of newbies make is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at their ladies. It’s amazing what can happen if you just allow it, you know? Give them plenty of space, great light and air, warm their feet and they’ll dance for you.”

  “Dance?”

  “Yeah. I swear they dance. When the fans flutter their leaves, they move like they’re dancing. But even when the wind isn’t moving, I’ve caught them unaware in a fit of glee, shaking their hips to music only they can hear.”

  “Don’t you think personifying them is a little dicey?

  “I don’t know. Ask them.”

  She smiled and then remembered a question. “One more thing. I know that changes in light trigger the bud to start blooming, but what triggers the resin?”

  “In the wild, the resin forms to allow the pollen from the male plants to stick to the females. But in a controlled environment – like the way you and I are growing them inside – the females keep producing more and more resin while they wait for the male plant that never shows up. But the ladies never figure that out. And out of their sexual frustration, eventually they turn into spectacular, frosty beauties.”

  “All dressed up and sparkling with nowhere to go?”

  “Well…yeah…until you kill them. Then they hang on a rack in the dark until they’re dried up, shoved into a jar and stored away.”

  “Yes…I can relate.” She waved goodbye to Peyton and thought about what he said. How long had she been hanging in the dark and drying up? Well, a light bulb can’t change itself, she mused, because it needs the twist of another hand that’s willing to help it change. Yes, she thought, with careful preparation, she could launch the exploration of a deeper friendship with Jeff in the future.

  And with that idea firmly in hand, she strode with purpose into the house. But she wasn’t prepared for what she saw when she returned to the basement. There was Jeff, sitting on Frank’s old desk, with his feet resting on Frank’s chair, and looking through the box of medals and awards Betty had unceremoniously packed up.

  “How did Frank die?” he asked in a sober tone. “Did he have a heart problem?”

  This wasn’t the genre of conversation requisite to enact her strategy. “No. In order to have a heart problem, first you have to have a heart.”

  “Okay. So he wasn’t a charmer.”

  She moved toward the box and began putting back the miscellaneous items Jeff had removed. “Frank was only charming if you’re partial to an evening with Hitler. Please, I put these away for a reason. I don’t want to see them anymore. They mean nothing to me. They never did.”

  “I get it. He was a tough son-of-a-bitch.”

  Betty filled the box and carried it back to the corner. “Texas women are not inspired by weak men.”

  “I can see he wasn’t a shrinking violet,” Jeff stated, bringing out a photo.

  “Where’d you find that?”

  “In the desk drawer.” He handed it to Betty.

  It was a Polaroid photo of Betty and Frank from 1991, taken at a barbeque right after Frank returned home from his year-long deployment during Operation Desert Storm. The ice of contempt was palpable between them. There he was with his regulation haircut, and there she was, leaning away from him and forcing an excruciating smile. She stared at the photo a little too long as the acrid memories washed over her. That day everything changed. That day shaped the rest of her son’s tortured life. “I despise this photo.” Betty ripped up the Polaroid and threw it in the trash. “Let’s go up to the kitchen and I’ll fix us some dinner.” She started off.

  “Why didn’t you leave?” he asked, not moving.

  “Leave? You act as if options were handed out like Chiclets.”

  “We all have options. You decided to stay. Why?”

  Dammit. This was not part of her plan. “I had no choice! We had a son who needed structure. Come on, let’s –”

  “How long were you married to Frank before your son was born?”

  “Six years. Why?”

  “Six years? You can’t tell me, during all that time, you didn’t know things were sour with Frank. You’re a smart woman, Betty. Leaving early on in the game was an option. That’s why there are hinges on doors.”

  “Why are you asking all this?”

  “I want to know why you do what you do.”

  She let out a hard sigh. “Leaving Frank was never an option. He was the only ticket I was offered.”

  “And you were afraid if you left him, there wouldn’t be any more tickets handed out?”

  “You make a commitment. You figure out how to strategize your life and you stick it out, for better or worse. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how many times you want to kill him, you stick it out.” She centered herself. “Please, let’s go upstairs and I’ll fix you –”

  “Stick it out? Interesting way of looking at life. Do you think suffering is noble?”

  Betty was taken back. “Excuse me? You have no goddamned idea!”

  “Suffering isn’t noble, Betty,” he tenderly offered. “Voluntary suffering creates pointless victims. Do you believe if you suffer enough and stick it out, you’ll get rewarded down the road?”

  Betty gathered herself. “It was expected of me,” she said, punctuating each word. “Failure wasn’t allowed! I was held to a higher standard. My parents, Frank, my friends, society, they all expect a lot from me.”

  “Well, pardon my language, but fuck society. As far as your friends, if they were really true friends, they wouldn’t expect you to suck it up in a loveless marriage. And as far as your parents, I bet their relationship was just as manipulated, and what’s that word you used? Strategized?”

  Betty began to slightly shake. He was correct. His assumption precisely defined her parents’ marital tenure – cold, indifferent bodies of matter, floating from room to room. But she was damned if she was going to admit it. “Look, I was never friends with my husband. Our relationship was more of an agreed-upon tactic of two people coming together, in order to have children and create financial security.”

  “Wow. When you say it that way, it sounds so scandalous.”

  She wasn’t about to back down. “My adult life revolved around two people; one who couldn’t feel and one who felt far too much. It fell on my shoulders to somehow make that work.”

  “Why on God’s earth did you think all that responsibility fell on you?” he gently asked. “Your marriage was doomed from the start.”

  “Yes, well, someone forgot to tell me that. I was always under the impression that it was my job.” Resentment colored each word. “I was raised to live the perfect life. You marry the perfect man, you have the perfect child and you live in a perfect house where everyone gets along perfectly. Anything less than that and you’re doing something wrong.”

>   He regarded her with compassion. “My God, Betty. They lied to you. Perfection is impossible. Striving toward something impossible is the definition of insanity. I’ve never met a perfect person in my life or had a perfect meal in a perfect house. I’ve seen a perfect sunset…at least it was perfect to me. I think perfection is in the eye of the beholder.”

  Of course, he was right. She knew all that now. But dammit, something inside of her didn’t want to back down. “I settled for what I had and saw it through to the bitter of bitter ends. I didn’t know that settling was so bad.”

  “Maybe because it’s got the word, ‘settle,’ in it?” He leaned forward, resting his arms on his thighs. “Why is it more important to you to be right than happy? What has that gotten you?”

  She turned away. This sure as hell wasn’t going well. That familiar sense of being cornered encroached. But this time, she was the one cornering herself. Turning back, she stood straight as an arrow. “When I was a child, I was taught that one wasn’t allowed to have fun or relax until all the work was finished. The problem is that the work is never done. So you can never quite unwind. The ‘doing’ is always on the table…waiting and demanding your attention, like a colicky baby where no amount of walking around or rocking appeases their needs. Those of us who were raised a certain way all carry the cross at the ubiquitous church of hard work. That mandatory toiling ethic hangs the bait of ‘fun’ out there, but we don’t bite, because we don’t believe we’ve earned it. And goddammit, you don’t take something you haven’t earned.”

  “So how is that delayed gratification working out for you?” Jeff waited. “Have you had enough pain yet, or do you still think you haven’t earned a good life?”

  She stiffened. A pulse of anger welled up. “I resent that.”

  “Good. That’s a start.”

  Betty felt like her boat had lost its mooring. Everything had been perfect and now it was ruined. “Why are you talking to me like this?”

  He swung his long legs off the desk and pondered for a moment. “Maybe some of us don’t want to end up being the next target in your scope. Frank was an asshole. I get that, loud and clear. But you’re still spending a lot of time shooting him down, and that doesn’t bode well for future relationships.”