Now Is the Hour

by Tom Spanbauer

  Hello? Mrs. Cody said.

  The conductor of a symphony, the cigarette and Mrs. Cody.

  He’s looking for the cunt of the house, Mr. Cody said loud from back somewhere inside the house.

  So I called for you, he said.

  Mrs. Cody took a long drag on her cigarette. She was looking at me and back behind at her asshole husband at the same time. There on that day was the first time she looked at me the way Mrs. Cody did sometimes. Not like I was something of her daughter’s. Her blue eyes right close in at me like she knew something about me I didn’t know yet and when I knew, it was going to break my heart.

  You’re Rigby John, she said.

  Her blue eyes more gray than Billie’s. The reason I know is because it was such a long time since I looked into them. Pain in those eyes too, same way as my mom’s.

  Then out of the blue, Mrs. Cody said: Billie was right.

  I said: Mrs. Cody?

  You are lovely, she said. Never seen anything like it.

  Mrs. Cody smiled big, so much like Billie when she smiled. She bowed a little and rolled the cigarette starting at me, then out, like she was introducing me to an audience.

  Dramatic.

  Come on in, then, she said. Wait in the living room. I’ll tell Billie you’re here.

  I stepped one foot inside the house. Four empty Budweiser cans on the counter. Two more on the kitchen table. Suddenly the house got real hot.

  I said: I don’t think Mr. Cody wants me in here.

  The quick puff on her cigarette.

  Neither does Billie, she said. But you’re in here, aren’t you, at least halfway.

  I stepped my other foot inside.

  Mrs. Cody put her hand on my shoulder, then let her hand roll down my arm. It was nice the way she touched me, soft. In all my years, my mother had never touched me like that.

  Her voice went low. She was telling me a secret.

  I’m glad you’ve come, Mrs. Cody said. It’s the right thing.

  Her hand went up to my shoulder again.

  It shows Billie that you care, she said.

  Then the cigarette the way you play with sparklers on the Fourth of July.

  And don’t mind Billie’s dad, she said, her voice still low.

  He’s a damn drunken fool, she said. So don’t pay him any attention.

  Billie! she yelled. Someone here to see you!

  In the living room, I quick sat down in the beige armchair. Outside, through the aluminum picture window, Mr. Cody was zipping up his bomber jacket that said UNITED STATES MARINES on the back. He was flipping the bird at the house, flipping the bird at me. The way he walked down the steps was like a soldier.

  Billie came around the corner into the living room pulling a black sweater over her head. I quick stood up. I thought it was weird that when she said, Hi, Rig, I couldn’t see her face. Now, as I look back on it, I understand why Billie was doing that. But that day, I just wanted to look into Billie’s eyes and see myself inside them looking back.

  When I spoke, my voice wouldn’t come out at first. But I had to speak. I wasn’t going to end up like Mom and Dad.

  Where have you been? I said. I’ve been calling and calling.

  Billie’s eyes got red, not from tear duct cancer, and they were full of tears. Her face was in the buttons of my shirt in no time.

  Oh, Rig! she said. I’ve been feeling a little weird.

  The palm of my hand on the back of her head. Billie’s smell clean, something French. Her body up next to mine like that in somebody’s very warm beige living room with the lights on. I started to sweat.

  I said, Let’s go park in the cemetery next to Russell and listen to the radio and smoke and kiss.

  Let’s smoke here, Billie said. Do you have cigarettes?

  Here? I said. You can smoke in your house?

  Dad’s gone, she said. That’s all that matters. I smoke with Mom all the time.

  In my shirt pocket were four Viceroys. I pulled out two cigarettes, gave one to Billie, lit hers, mine.

  Billie’s inhale was a gulp of air. Her blue eyes were looking up the way Mom looks up when there’s a migraine.

  Don’t you think the ceiling looks like paramecium? Billie said.

  Then she said: The plural I guess would be paramecia.

  I said: Billie.

  Billie kept her chin lifted up at the beige paramecia and took a long drag.

  When I looked down, Billie’s other hand was gripping the lip of a green glass ashtray. Something so sad right then the way her fingers and her little blue fingernails were shaking.

  Above us, the beige ceiling paramecia were moving slow.

  Very slow like what Billie said next.

  I’ve been seeing Chuck diPietro, she said.

  Everything very slow, slow and thick, the way my stomach feels when it’s full of mush.

  Seeing him? I said. You mean dates?

  No, Billie said. Just at the Snatch Out.

  So weird smoking inside somebody’s house where everyone can see.

  More than once? I said.

  Twice, Billie said.

  Two beige ceiling paramecia above the aluminum window slid down onto the wall.

  Seeing him, I said. What does seeing him mean?

  Paramecia down the wall around the aluminum window out onto the floor into the beige carpet.

  Driving around, she said. Having a Coke.

  Paramecia under my feet, under the beige carpet.

  He’s got a cool pickup, I said.

  The next thing I said I couldn’t think about very long. But I had to say it. Somebody in my family had to say things.

  Did you kiss him? I said.

  Paramecia, the whole damn beige room was crawling.

  Rig. Billie’s voice was low, an especially low Simone Signoret. She was still looking up at the ceiling.

  I looked up too.

  The paramecia that ate Pocatello.

  Do you remember that promise we made to each other? Billie said. That no matter what we would be friends?

  My heart was slamming in my chest, in my ears. Sweat rolling down my sides. I crushed my cigarette into the ashtray.

  Well, Billie said, this is one of those times.

  Seems like I sat on the hearth forever, the paramecia that ate Pocatello eating at my heart. Sat and smoked. Everything all at once going around in my head, and that everything was loud.

  How long did he kiss her, where were they when he kissed her? What kind of girl would go around kissing two boys at the same time? Was I doing homework, doing the chores, having supper, watching I Love Lucy, when Chuck diPietro was kissing Billie? Beige paramecia crawling inside my pants like hay dust. We sat on the hearth for an hour, maybe longer. A couple of times, Billie went to touch me, but I wouldn’t let her. Each time I scooted away, Billie scooted over to me. It went that way, Billie going to touch me, me scooting, for the whole length of the hearth.

  When I finally let her touch me, my butt was hanging off the end.

  We promised, Rig, Billie said. We promised to be friends no matter what.

  My mom and dad had made a promise too. Look where it got them. But Billie and I were differnt. We could talk to each other. We weren’t trying to hide.

  I reached down and took a hold of Billie’s hand, pulled her hand up next to my heart.

  I’m still your friend, I said.

  Billie closed her eyes and kissed me, two lips against two lips, soft with a kind of suck, tobacco, and the taste of pink.

  Promise? Billie said.

  All the tea in China. An audience with the Pope. The moon.

  My voice was low. Yves Montand, we called my voice when it was low.

  I promise, I said.

  Back home, same as ever, breakfast was served at eight o’clock, dinner at noon, and supper at six. Mom still cooked, and Dad and I ate. After supper, Dad had his hot tea with two sugars and his Viceroy and read the paper. Everything was back to the way it had always been, except Sis wasn’
t there to help with the dishes. Like to drive you crazy. Same as with Russell, Dad’s threat to divorce was something scary that was going on, and everybody knew it was going on, but nobody had the courage to talk about it.

  Things were differnt this time, though. All that was beneath the surface of things and not talked about was gaining velocity. All you had to do was scratch a little bit, and there was pandemonium.

  The little things. Mom burning the cookies, Dad running out of gas in the field, me riding the fucking bus to school, weren’t just the miserable things they were, but misery itself. The whole world was against us except we weren’t even an us.

  That whole spring, Mom and Dad stuck to the script so close I started to believe it myself. Divorce seemed to be off the table anyway, which was a strange kind of relief to me. I’d considered the idea that divorce might be a good thing for Mom, but finally I just couldn’t imagine anything that differnt. Their papered-over stalemate was awful to be around. But I understood stalemate. Billie and I had patched things up our own way too, and we were back to our routine of Wednesday and Friday nights at Mount Moriah. Things were the same and weren’t the same, but parked under the elm tree, spring outside, the bushes and trees and flowers blooming, everything coming back to life again, all around us so much hope, Billie and I looked into each other’s eyes and talked as best we could about what was inside.

  Then Billie and I got some unexpected help.

  We discovered something new, something differnt.

  Actually it was Billie’s mother who discovered it, in fact she bought it, for herself and for Billie and me.

  A lid of marijuana.

  My mom would never go out and buy a lid of marijuana.

  As soon as Billie told me about the marijuana, I got a fear inside me that damn near stopped my heart. I didn’t know it then, it took me awhile, but I came to see my fear as the same fear as my mother and father’s. My mom and dad were afraid of anything new. Marijuana was new, that’s for sure. But after I let the fear settle down and took a good look at it, I decided it might be just the thing. After the fiasco of Sis’s wedding, my parents, and Billie and me, I was ready to try something new, really new. Not something outside me like trying out for sports or buying a car, but something inside. Marijuana held the promise of breaking down your inhibitions, a promise of actually changing your consciousness. Like Huxley’s Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, marijuana was going to crack my world open, and at last I was going to face the fear in me. Scardino, the sex-shame-guilt thing, the fear that made my arms weak. Really, I was so tired of being a wimp.

  Looking back on it now, it was the marijuana all right, but even more than the marijuana, it was my determination to change things. Some famous guy that Billie knows the name of said, Be careful what you wish for. Better said, I think, is, Be careful of what you decide to go after.

  Whoever that guy is, he’s right. Look at me out here on the highway alone in this silver desert with just the moon. And it’s not the universe that’s to blame. When you go after something you want, and you end up fucked up, nobody’s to blame but yourself.

  And you know what — fucked up is just a part of it. As a matter of fact, things have to get fucked up if you plan to go anywhere new that your parents haven’t. Maybe that’s why the universe conspires.

  And that’s what we did one night in late spring in Billie’s house with Billie’s mother while her father was off at a plumbing convention in Boise.

  We got fucked up.

  There’s a beer in the fridge! Mrs. Cody yelled from the bathroom. Make yourself at home!

  It was weird just pulling a can of beer out of a refrigerator. I popped the tab and sat down at the kitchen table as if I walked in the house, opened the fridge, got out a can of beer every day. Billie and her mom in the back rooms, mother and daughter more like sisters, laughing and talking, the water in the bathroom sink, the hair dryer, one of them brushing her teeth. From the back rooms, the clean smell, something French. Females, how they always sound and smell like they know they are a comfort.

  Onto the green Formica kitchen table, Mrs. Cody’s hands, her tiny fingernails, set down a rolled-up plastic bag that was full of something dark green.

  Mrs. Cody, Billie, and I all sat there staring at the plastic bag, trying to find our breath. Mrs. Cody lit a cigarette first, then Billie, then me.

  Nobody touched the plastic bag. It just lay there next to a cut-glass ashtray like some strange new British movie you wouldn’t understand.

  We didn’t know yet, what it was, how it would make us feel.

  Weird, how a plastic bag could be all I’d never done and was afraid to do. And more. What was in me, I didn’t know and was afraid to know. Who it was, I wasn’t and was afraid to be. All that in a plastic bag on a green Formica tabletop.

  The smell. Something pungent. Dead weeds in a pile by the fence.

  Moldy hay. Just my luck if marijuana turned out to be moldy hay.

  Billie laid a pipe on the green Formica next to the plastic bag and the cut-glass ashtray. She’d bought the pipe from Incense Peppermints, a head shop that opened up in downtown Pocatello. The pipe was made from blown glass with blue and green swirls.

  I pinched bits of moldy hay out of the plastic bag and filled the pipe, careful not to spill any on the green Formica. None of us knew how much it would take for all of us to get high, so I tamped the moldy hay down into the pipe bowl with my thumb, then laid in more moldy hay.

  When the pipe was filled, I set the filled pipe in the middle of the green Formica.

  Mrs. Cody reached out her hands, palms up. With her left hand, she took hold of Billie’s hand, with her right, she took hold of mine. Billie put her hand in mine, and the three of us were a circle.

  On the table, in a blue vase, lilacs. The smell of lilacs, the smell of moldy hay, something French, and the smell of chocolate chip cookies. Mrs. Cody was baking chocolate chip cookies.

  Mrs. Cody cleared her throat and bowed her head.

  Dear God, she said. Her voice was just like Billie’s Simone Signoret.

  My daughter, Billie, and her friend Rigby John, and I have come here and formed a circle. We think it is good to know the ways of the world, so we’ve decided to turn on with this marijuana. Please know we wish no harm upon ourselves or others. And we approach this experience with the utmost respect.

  Mrs. Cody squeezed my hand and opened her blue eyes on me.

  Do you have anything you want to add? she said.

  Weird. A Jew praying to God about marijuana. My mom would have to pray a rosary and a fucking litany. But then it never could be my mom.

  Billie? Mrs. Cody said.

  Billie didn’t look at me. If she did, she’d start laughing, so Billie looked down at her hands and shook her head no.

  Well then, Mrs. Cody said, dear God, we ask that you grant each one of us a good trip. Please watch over us so that we don’t freak out.

  I lit the pipe while Mrs. Cody sucked on it.

  You’re supposed to hold it in as long as you can, Billie said.

  Mrs. Cody’s blue-gray eyes lit up, and she inhaled and kept the smoke inside her until she couldn’t stand it any longer, then blew the smoke out.

  Billie and I stared at Mrs. Cody. She still had a bubble of brown hair, blue-gray eyes. Nothing about her had changed.

  Then it was Billie’s turn. I lit the match again and held the match to the moldy hay. Billie sucked in deep, then pulled the pipe away, then talked like you do when you’re holding in the smoke: Thanks, Billie said.

  Then it was me. Billie held the match. While she was holding the match, she exhaled a bunch of smoke just as I inhaled a huge toke.

  I held my breath. Some part of me started spying on everything I was thinking and doing. What I could see, hear, what I could feel. I was playing I Spy, watching everything I did and every bodily function up close.

  Nothing differnt. Everything normal.

  So we finished off the first pipe. Just a
s we finished, a bell went off. We all jumped. Mrs. Cody got up, walked to the oven, and pulled the chocolate chip cookies out.

  Right then, Billie looked over at me. Her eyes opened wider, and she seemed to take me in, all of me in for a moment, and in that moment while she was taking me in, she was thinking of just the right way to say what she wanted to say.

  It felt good to be looked at so full on like that again. Then I wondered if Billie was doing that because she was stoned.

  Billie got up, walked into the front room, and pretty soon some music started. When she came back in the kitchen, Billie was smiling her big smile.

  It’s Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Billie said.

  You bought the album? I said.

  What a world in that album cover. I touched the album cover all over with my fingers. Sergeant Pepper so full of color and shiny things, hats and folds of cloth and jewelry, gold tassels and all sorts of weird new things. Things I’d never known.

  Mrs. Cody set a blue plate of cookies on the green Formica tabletop.

  We all said, What the hell, and loaded up the pipe again, smoked the pipe empty, set the pipe down, and waited for the Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell to open up. But nothing opened up.

  Nothing differnt. My dream of a new consciousness was only moldy hay.

  Mrs. Cody took the pipe, loaded the pipe, lit a match, and sucked in more smoke. She passed the pipe to Billie. Billie sucked on the pipe, then handed the pipe to me. I sucked in a big heap of smoke. We passed that pipe around until it was empty.

  We were just going along, just Ho-hum, when is this marijuana going to work? Billie’s mom brought in a red candle, lit it, and turned the lights down. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band playing loud over and over. Billie and her mom laughing and smoking and jabbering away, the whole world just going along, going along.

  That’s when I looked down at my hands.

  Almost seventeen years I’d had these hands.

  Just beyond my hands on the table, the flame of the red candle flickered. Across the smooth green plains of Formica, the flame reflected in the blue vase was the color of blood before blood touches air. Up out of the top of the red-blue blood vase, a volcano of lilac flowers billows and billows. And just at that moment, the cut-glass ashtray caught the flame and cast whanged-out angles of light. At the base of the ashtray, the angles of light were the letters of a secret alphabet. Beyond the secret alphabet of light, the blue plate. Upon the blue plate, a mountain of chocolate chip cookies.