I start to roll up the window. “Some other time,” I say. “Tell them it’s bad form to keep a lady waiting. You hear me? Now let’s go or I’ll change my mind.”
Late that night, I go to Vance and cop to the truth. He grew up in Brooklyn, too.
“Shit,” he says, scratching his cheek. “You gotta be more careful.” He counts what money I have and shakes his head. “You’ll never catch up to what you owe dealing piddly. You might as well get a job.”
“Never mind that,” I say. “What do we do?”
“Look, we’re friends, right? I take care of my friends. I’m not gonna be hard with you girls. I’ll advance you another quarter. Step on it, turn it over, and we’ll be even.”
I have to acquiesce; he’s got me. He pulls a video off the shelf. Marcy’s mulling cider. If only I could be in the movies: I wouldn’t have to do drugs.
It’s six a.m. when we get home, and the world is powdered white. White inside, white outside. White. “From now on things will be different,” I say. “No more dealing from the living room.”
“The bedroom, either,” says Kit.
I’ll move the business to our spare room next to the kitchen. The junk room, we’ve been calling it. So be it. It’s been housing Betty’s storage since the day I moved in. She’ll never come back for it, I don’t think so. She went hooking on Third Avenue, we heard. She didn’t have a place to put her things. Still doesn’t.
Some of Betty’s things are useful. There’s a nice table among them—her mother deals Early American. It’ll make a good desk. I go to a headshop and acquire a brass counterweight scale—no more plastic minijob for me. I need something accurate. At a housewares store in the Village, I buy a small table to rest the scale on, a white aluminum folding number that attaches to the wall. Ridley installs it. Mr. Leather brings a black Formica sheet to place on the desktop and I get a sleek black lamp to sit on that. Next I acquire a sifter to grind the mannitol into the dope. Vance has given me a recipe. I taste it. It’s slower to come on, but nothing can stop the power of this baby. I’m ready to go to work.
I work all day and into the night, when Dean comes by unannounced. “I thought I’d see if anything’s happening,” he says, and I use the money for Vance’s stuff to buy a gram from him. I haven’t got time to go and sit through another movie; Dean’s here. To break even, I’ll have to cut the dope even more. Instead, I raise the price. Isn’t this the best dope money can buy?
Okay, then. Let money buy it.
NICE GUYS
I’ll say one thing for Dick: he’s persistent. I can’t get him out of my mind. Someday you’ll thank me for this. It bugs me. What is he—a fortune-teller, or a cop? I hate that my fate has taken his shape. It’s demeaning. Dick isn’t the one I’ll ever have to thank–it’s heroin. Heroin brought me this. It put me under its spell. When the D.E.A. knocked, the spell was broken, and my world came crashing down. I sit here and watch it fall. Is this better than a cell with a bare bulb and a bench? I can’t even tell.
That Dick. He wants to be a nice guy. He wants to understand. He’s asked a thousand questions and still he keeps calling. Has anyone threatened me? Tried to shake me down? Any of Angelo’s buddies? “I don’t know about his friends,” I say. I don’t even know about mine.
It’s tough getting along in this city. Opposing forces don’t always act like the enemy—most of the time they’re your friends and neighbors, people of similar sympathies whom you wouldn’t begrudge a thing. You don’t want to believe they’d turn you in. But alliances huddle and break apart, stars rise and fall. To stay alive, you have to keep a few secrets. Half the population has gone underground just to pay the rent.
Who set me up? Dick refuses to say. I know he’s just looking out for me, the way all dicks like to do. It’s pathetic. Oh, Dick … Dick … Dick. He’s waiting for me to tire, to slip, to give someone else away. It’s bad enough one guy’s gone down for me; I’m not about to send in a second string. Dick thinks I’ll cave in if I have to, but I don’t. I’ve been to a lawyer and I know.
“You decide if you want to cooperate,” the lawyer said. Cooperate—the very word made me wince. “Frankly,” he said, forcing a smile, “I think you’ve done enough. But I can tell you this,” he added quickly. “If you can stay away from your drug buddies, you’ll have a much better chance at getting off.”
He looked at Kit. He looked at me. “I don’t need to see them again,” I said. Kit looked over at the door.
“The less you know, the less you can tell the cops,” the lawyer explained, as if everyone knew this but me. “You want the cops off your back and the D.E.A. wants information. As long as they think you can give them what they want, they’ll keep coming back for more.”
“I wouldn’t want that,” I said.
“Then,” he said, “you don’t have to worry.”
This advice cost me every penny I had. “This isn’t drug money,” I said, when I handed him the cash.
“I don’t want to know where it came from,” he replied.
“Well, I earned it,” I said.
“That’s good,” he said, and slipped it in a pocket.
He didn’t wear a suit, this lawyer. He dressed in a beige cashmere sweater, a pair of pressed chinos, and tasseled loafers. He’d helped a friend of Kit’s escape a smuggling charge two years before. He was a deal-maker, rich and relaxed. Judges knew him well; politicians too. He’d never lost a case. Like Dick, he didn’t make any promises, except for a day in court. “Until then,” he said, “just stay honest.”
“I’m honest,” I told him. I believed it.
“You did break a law.”
“Look at me,” I said. I was dressed up and sweating. “Do I seem like a criminal? What good would it do to put me in jail?”
He folded his hands across his chest. “You’ve been lucky so far.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Lucky.”
I once knew a guy who went to prison for a murder he didn’t commit. He was given a life sentence with no chance of parole. He kept himself apart from the other prisoners, refused to be lumped in with convicts. “I’m not a killer,” he always said, “so I can’t be a convict.” He was in jail fifteen years before a judge finally agreed. I got caught red-handed and here I am walking away. There can only be one explanation: I am not a criminal.
“I talked to those detectives on the phone,” the lawyer related. “They seem like unusually nice guys.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Too nice.”
Kit twisted in her seat. “Can we go now?” Her voice betrayed nothing.
The lawyer stood up and extended his hand. He had very long fingers that brushed a hair from his sweater. The sweater was the same camel color as his hair, which receded high above his pug-like brow, and every time he ran those fingers through his hair he lost a little more of it. “You’ll be okay,” he promised, and forced another smile. “Especially if you can clean up your act.”
“That’s all I want in the world,” I said. The one thing I couldn’t get.
At the elevator I said to Kit, “That was the last of our money.”
“Not all of it!”
“Yes, all.”
“I don’t understand you,” she said. “First you give the cops all our dope, then you give the lawyer all our money. What are we supposed to do now?”
“We have to get clean,” I said. “Now we have to.”
“No, we don’t. I know we can’t sell drugs anymore, but I don’t see why we should have to stop doing them.”
“It’s illegal.”
“It’s a stupid law.”
“So, it’s a stupid law. Are we gonna change it? Come on. Cal Tutweiler knows a doctor we can call.”
“What kind of doctor?”
“A shrink who makes house calls. He’ll give us pills. We can kick.”
“You kick,” she said. “I’m going home without you.”
PART FOUR
THE FAMILY OF JUNK
New York 1983
DAD
Kit isn’t too excited when I tell her my father’s coming to visit. He called. Dad doesn’t call often; my stepmother and I are at odds. All we have in common is the content of her medicine chest. Every time I go to their house, I cop some of her painkillers, sleeping pills, and ups. That’s why I go to their house.
“Do they have to come here?” Kit complains. She’s standing before the mirror over the kitchen sink, snipping at her hair.
“Why are you doing that?”
“These ends,” she says. “This hair. I don’t know about this hair.” She lays the scissors on the sink and comes in the office, where I’m weighing what’s left of the day’s dope. When I start to get low, I make packages ahead, mostly to track our own doses. Also, it’s something to do.
“Really,” she says. “Can’t you take them someplace else? I mean, this is 1983. No one stays home anymore.”
“It’ll make more trouble if I tell them not to come,” I say. 1983? It is?
The phone rings. She glances at the scale. “What about the business?”
“I’ll have to tell the day shift to come later on.”
I answer the phone and make my own calls and then we clean the apartment. We’re careful to close the bedroom and office doors. We’ve never discussed our living arrangement with our families. Kit’s parents know her brother was gay but they aren’t pleased with the information. When he died, he left all his money to his lover. They didn’t understand.
“Parents,” Kit says as we sweep up the dust. “If you marry a man, they give you money and a big wedding and all that furniture, those gifts—they give you the moon. But if you want to live with a woman, they only give you shit.”
Kit thinks her parents would disown her if they knew about us. They already have suspicions. My father probably does too, but he’s a different case. He refuses to believe any child of his would go “wrong.” He lives by a set of unwritten rules that make anything outside of his experience unacceptable. We only connected when we cooked.
Everyone cooked in my family. I knew how to scramble an egg before I learned how to lace my shoes. My father was our breakfast chef, the grill man at our summer barbecues; my mother oversaw the rest. When company was coming, I made the soup, stuffed the chicken. My brother baked muffins and bread. He could turn out a respectable peach pie at a very tender age. Every now and then we’d go out for Italian or Chinese. Otherwise, we cooked.
What drove a stake through the heart of my family was God. My parents were strong believers, but I found religion restrictive and synagogue services uninspired and obscure. I didn’t like praying in groups in language no one could feel. I didn’t want anyone putting words in my mouth; I wanted to write my own. “That’s not how it works,” Dad would tell me. “Not in this world.” I didn’t listen. This upset my mother; she didn’t want me to lose my faith. She didn’t want to lose me. I liked that but I also resented it. That’s how we got along. I wanted to know the world and she wanted me closer to home. “Stick with your own kind,” she always said. “We’re the ones who love you.”
I wasn’t sure what my kind was back then, and she never said. She never said much about anything important. Like Belle, she played it close to the chest. I resented this as a child because it left me out. It did teach me one thing, though: you never get to know a person if all you do is love them. You never get to know yourself. Affection may make you feel safe and secure but it’s enmity that wins you respect. That enmity was what kept our family together—it worked better than religion. Faith doesn’t need visibility to exist, but you can never let the enemy out of sight.
One of the last times I saw my mother alive was a Sunday afternoon in spring. There were a lot of people in the hospital, visiting. My mother was in a room with an older woman who was a member of a Bible-study group, all female, all dressed in black. The group was there that day, gathered around the woman’s bed with their Bibles open in their laps. They spoke in murmurs—I guess they were praying. We were quiet, too. My mother’s brain wasn’t getting enough blood and her blood wasn’t getting enough oxygen. It was difficult for her to speak. My father gave her some insurance papers to sign but she had trouble writing her name. “Stupid!” she cried. “There’s no ink in this pen!” and she threw it across the room. My father and brother and I exchanged glances. We did our best not to sob. The Bible sisters were staring.
“We know you’re not Catholic,” said a woman with a wizened face. “But would you mind if we said a prayer to Jesus for you?”
My mother turned her head. “I believe in a God for everyone,” she said, a weak smile parting her lips. “Thank you. I don’t mind a bit.”
She looked back at me then. I must have seemed surprised. “I don’t mind if they pray to their Jesus for me,” she said. “I need all the help I can get.”
At that, I had to turn away. I knew nothing was going to save her. I looked out the window and listened to the women on the other side of the room. Those poor sisters, I thought, those misguided fools. I said a prayer for them.
“We didn’t have any religion,” Kit says. “I don’t even know what that’s like. And I don’t like hearing you talk this way. It’s depressing.”
“Sorry, it’s the way I am.”
“It doesn’t matter to me if you believe in God. I want you to believe in yourself.”
I see a bird at the window.
“Are you going to cry?”
“I don’t know.” I pick up my dust rag and go back to work.
“I wish I could tell my parents we’re together,” she says. “I wish we could have kids.”
I look up. “Wait a minute.”
“Well, I do,” she says. “I’d really like to have a kid and I’d like to raise it with you.”
I take out the dope. “Let’s do this now,” I say. “Before they get here.” I need it to clear my head.
The doorbell rings around three, Dad and my stepmother. It takes them several minutes to get up the stairs.
“Whew!” says Dad. “I couldn’t do this every day.”
“You get used to it.”
“I never want to do this again,” says his wife. She has back pain and a heart condition. She’s not in shape.
“It’s good cardiovascular exercise,” I tell her.
She lights a cigarette, king-size. “I’ve never exercised in my life.”
“My daughter was a great swimmer in school,” Dad informs her. Is he trying to embarrass me? I’m a businesswoman, after all, but I can hardly tell him that.
We sit in the living room. They don’t want tea, or coffee, or a drink. They don’t want anything. They just want to sit.
“I don’t understand how you’re living,” Dad says, resting his elbows on the table. He rubs his palms back and forth, slowly. “What are you doing for money?”
“I freelance.” It’s an effort to keep my voice bright. “I don’t have to work every day, so I have time for my own writing—it’s okay. We don’t have many expenses.” Oops. I said we.
“Where do you sleep?” he says, looking around the room.
“Here,” I say without expression. Oh God, the phone! I meant to turn it off. Kit answers it from the bedroom. A moment later, it rings again.
I stand up. “Why don’t we decide where we want to have dinner?”
“We only just got here,” says my stepmother with a loud exhale.
“I may have to reserve a table,” I explain.
“Oh,” she says. “We can’t stay that long. We’re having dinner at your brother’s. Maybe you want to come.”
Kit walks in with her guitar case slung over her shoulder. “Hullo,” she says. “I’m sorry I can’t be here for your visit, but I have a rehearsal with my band.”
“That’s okay,” says the wife. “Nice to see you.”
The phone again, damn it. “You certainly are popular!” says Dad.
“People call here for your daughter all day long,” Kit explains. “They tell her all their
problems. She’s like the village shrink.”
“Really,” says the wife on a puff of smoke. “How interesting.”
It happens to be true. So many of my customers seem to be living lives of tragedy: couples with recalcitrant children; sons and daughters whose parents or brothers are dying; people with jobs getting harassed at work; junkies losing their apartments, or their teeth, or their lovers. I don’t know when I became such an expert on human relations, but all I seem to do besides drugs is give people counsel. Even more amazing, they follow my advice.
“You always were a good listener,” Dad says. “You were a quiet little kid.”
I never thought he noticed. Dad always seemed to take more pride in household acquisitions than he did in us kids—the new dishwasher, the stereo, the fiberglass roof over the porch—but he was a child of the Depression. I grew up in a different world. I shut myself in my room. I listened to records. I read books. Lots and lots of books. I dreamed. I had fantasies. One was about writing books. In another, I was being raped, not by a single man or woman but a circle of molesting shapes, faceless figures who stroked me and stretched me and opened me wide. They pored over my flesh, lifted and puckered me. I watched, horrified, electrified, as they tunneled within. I thought they could see inside. I tried to fight them off, but the more I struggled, the more alive I felt. I wasn’t afraid they would hurt me; I just didn’t want them to see inside.
While Kit says her hellos and goodbyes, I slip into the office and turn down the volume on the answering machine. “What’s in there?” says Dad when I return.
“Oh,” I say. “My workroom. I’d show you, but I’ve been kind of busy and it’s a mess.”
“Next time, then.”
“Why don’t we go for a walk?” I say. “Let me show you around the neighborhood.”
They like that idea. They’re ready to get up. My stepmother wants to use the bathroom. She’s horrified when I show her where it is. She takes a long, glum look at the peeling walls, the gaping toilet at the end of the hall. “This is a bathroom?” she whispers. I guess it’s embarrassing; the neighbors might hear.
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