The Kitchen Shrink

by Dee Detarsio

  “You are never going to find anything in here,” she stated. “Hurry up, I’m hungry.”

  “Ha!” I said, reaching for the plastic bottle. “Oh, shoot! I think she spilled most of it on the carpet. There’s not much left.” By now the ends of my fingers felt like they were throbbing. I grabbed a tissue off of Nicole’s desk and started rubbing to remove the polish. “Uh oh. I don’t think I have enough.” I kept rubbing and rubbing until the tissue was in tattered pink streaked shreds.

  “At least you got most of your left fingers done,” Daria said. “Can they breathe better now?” she asked.

  “Shut up.”

  “Come on. Let’s go get some good mood food.”

  She pulled me by my polished hand and we headed downstairs.

  As we hit the kitchen, I tried to get her to talk to me. “Tell me where you’ve been, Daria and why I hardly ever see you anymore. Tell me about your mystery man.”

  “There’s nothing to tell and I don’t want to jinx it,” she said.

  “Ha! I knew it.” She was dating Sam and just wasn’t ready to tell me about it yet. That’s OK. I didn’t much feel like hearing about it yet.

  Daria unearthed my emergency stash of potato chips. She found a giant chip in the bag and began gnawing on it, taking tiny staccato bites until it disappeared.

  “I hate the way you eat chips,” I complained, grabbing the bag from her and looking for smaller, quarter-sized chips, then stacking them three at a time before popping them neatly on my tongue.

  Since both of our mouths were full and chomping, it took me a couple of rings before I could answer the phone. It was Brett. “Lisby. About that pot. Nicole said it’s her friend Tanya’s brother’s pot.”

  “Oh, good one. Nice chain of denial.”

  “Seriously, Lisby. Nicole doesn’t get high. I believe her. But, Tanya needs that pot back or Nicole says her brother is going to get beat up.”

  “What?”

  “Look, we’re going to swing by and pick it up and I’m just going to drop it off at Tanya’s house. She’s been calling and crying and freaking out. Her brother sounds like a head case. We’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  “No, Brett. You can’t.”

  “What?” Daria was dancing around me, trying to listen.

  “Um. I don’t have the pot.”

  “What’d you do with it?”

  I head Nicole screaming in the background. I guess I was starting to believe the story that it wasn’t hers. That’s a relief.

  “I threw it away,” I said.

  “Get it back.”

  “I flushed it down the toilet,” I thought fast.

  “Why would you do that?” Brett asked, while trying to calm Nicole. “Shh, honey, it’s OK.”

  “Tanya’s brother is going to get beat up,” I could hear Nicole in the background. “It was really expensive and he owed a lot of money on it so Tanya is going to be in so much trouble. I have to call Tanya.”

  “I can’t believe you threw it out,” Brett said.

  “What did you want me to do with it? Smoke it?” I bluffed.

  “Ha ha.” I heard him talking to Nicole. “What, Nicole? Great. Tanya says her brother is on his way to your house. We’ll be right there. Don’t open the door for anyone.”

  “Oh, no!” I looked at Daria and told her. “See? Drugs are bad. I knew we shouldn’t have smoked that. Quick. We have to hide that pipe and bag and get rid of the smell.” I tore upstairs. Daria was laughing hard.

  “And put those potato chips away.” I ran into my room, stuffed the pipe into the plastic bag which only had a few green bits left, and sprayed Febreze all over my room. Think, think. Where can I get rid of this? I ran back downstairs and grabbed a cottage cheese from my refrigerator and stuffed the balled up plastic bag inside the container and then buried it deep in my trash. Just then, we heard loud knocking on the front door. Oh no. I didn’t brush my teeth.

  I looked at Daria. Holy crap. “Do I look as stoned as you do?” I asked her. She laughed and ate another potato chip. I grabbed her and we went to the front door and leaned our ears against it. I heard more voices. I slowly slid my hand toward the lock to close the deadbolt, but it slid out of my fingers and went in the opposite direction. The door flung open.

  I started screaming and Daria joined in.

  “Shh, geeze, Lisby, it’s us,” Brett said, walking in followed by my kids, “and yeah, Tanya’s brother’s here, too. Get in here, you punk,” my ex said to the kid standing in the doorway.

  “Look, man. I don’t want any problems here,” he said. “But I’m going to be in big trouble unless I get that weed back.”

  Why was everyone looking at me? “Sorry,” I said, opening my hands as I pretended to be holier than thou. Themst. “I threw it away,” I tried to explain.

  “Aw man,” Tanya’s brother grabbed fistfuls of his hair and bent over. “I am dead.” He straightened back up. “Are you sure? I’ll dig through your garbage, anything.”

  I don’t know why but I felt the tickle of a most inappropriate giggle start deep in the back of my throat. There was nothing funny about the situation and I probably would have been alright if Daria hadn’t burst out laughing. I looked at her, potato chip crumbs clinging to the shelf of her black sweater like sequins, and I was gone, too. I could hardly catch my breath, and knowing my ex and my kids were staring at me only made it worse.

  “You smoked it,” Tanya’s brother accused us. “You’re stoned, both of you. I can’t believe it. That stuff was chronic.”

  Daria and I tee-heed some more, even though I had no idea why. This had to stop. I pressed my fist against my mouth and held my stomach tight. I took a deep breath through my nose and looked at Brett, and then saw my horrified-looking kids behind him staring at me.

  “We didn’t smoke any pot,” I tried to say to them with a straight face. A couple more laughs coughed out between my fingers.

  “Hey Mom, why do you only have nail polish on one hand?” Ryan asked. It was a fine time for him to start developing powers of observation. It just set me and Daria off again.

  “You’re going to have to pay for that,” Tanya’s brother started yelling.

  At that, Nicole took her back pack and swung it with all her might into Tanya’s brother. “Shut up. My mom doesn’t smoke pot. You get out of here before my dad calls the cops.”

  Rubbing his arm, he told us what we could do with ourselves and took off. The look on Nicole’s face as she looked at me was enough to silence any laughs I may have had left.

  “Nicole,” I held out my hand but she ran back to Brett’s car, followed by Ryan.

  Brett leaned in, “Christ, Lisby.” He sniffed. “You got any of that stuff left?” The hand without any nail polish shut the door in his face.

  I leaned against the door, glancing up to make sure we were out of the line of fire from the cameras. Even though the power lights weren’t on, you never knew what Elgin would try to pull.

  “How could you Daria?”

  “How could I what?”

  “Where do you want me to start?” I was no longer stoned, just fuming. “If you hadn’t made us smoke that stuff...chronic? Isn’t that what that little twerp called it? What’s chronic anyway? It’s probably cancerous. Oh my gosh, I feel funny.” Paranoia kicked in, big time. I sunk down into a chair.

  “Chronic is just good stuff. And it was, wasn’t it? Admit it.” Daria was looking at me funny.

  “I admit nothing. It was the stupidest thing I could have done. Why do you look like you’re scared I’m going to hit you?”

  “Because you look like you’re going to hit me.”

  “No, I don’t. Why would you say that?” I kicked at a pillow and pulled on my hair, careful not to mess it up. “That makes me even angrier! I am so mad at you. I do feel like smacking you.”

  “Go ahead.” She dared me. She got right up in my face. “Come on. You know you want to. Poor Little Miss Put-Upon. Boo hoo. Take your best shot.”
r />   “Shut up. You take your best shot. Oh, excuse me. I mean I know you are ‘taking your best shot,’ and I know who you’re doing it with.”

  A funny look crossed her face. “MYOB, you big baby.”

  “Geeze, now who’s the baby?” OK, not my shining moment, I actually said that out loud, and basically opened the door for her to let me have it.

  “You are such a whiner,” she screamed. “You are getting a killer kitchen, for free, thanks to me, and now you are even up for a chance to win a ton of money.”

  “Well, if I do win I’ll replace your shitty shoes and buy you a new personality,” I yelled at her. OK. Maybe it was the pot talking. I did feel bad, but she started it. “You need to calm down, Daria, and just stop it. You were here. Didn’t you see what just happened with my family? My kids busted me. And it’s all your fault!”

  “So hit me. Go on.” She leaned in closer. Her nose was maybe two inches from mine. I didn’t hit her, I just pushed her to get her out of my face. It wasn’t my fault she put her cheek right where my hand was aiming.

  We were both stunned.

  Daria stood up, placing her hand on the side of her face; her mouth a perfect O, her eyebrows semaphoring an SOS, like she had been shot or something.

  My apology took the long way; meandering through a “Knock it off you big drama queen...” My front door slammed yet again, before she could even hear my “...I’m sorry. It was your fault. You shouldn’t have moved. You know I didn’t mean it. It was an accident.”

  Chapter 21

  Polished to Perfection

  The next morning, that same hand without any nail polish signaled Elgin that something was up. He was all over me like the red hideousness covering my poor kitchen walls. I clenched my hands to try to offset any comments until I could slip out to get some more polish remover. No such luck. Now that I knew fifty thousand dollars was at stake here, to say nothing of my pride, I needed to perform.

  “Tsk tsk,” Elgin tsked. “What the hell happened here?” He said, grabbing my hands. “Pretty,” he said, taking my right hand closer to his face before dropping it and taking my left hand. “Stupid. Don’t tell me, let me guess. Half-price sale at the spa? No. I saw you yesterday. What happened last night?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So, you’re trying to make a fashion statement?”

  “No.” I grabbed my hands back. “I chipped a couple of nails last night and they looked really bad and then I ran out of polish remover.”

  He gave me a heavy duty stare down, knowing I wasn’t telling the truth and trying to make me spill. I yawned in his face. I had bigger problems.

  My daughter, Nicole, wasn’t talking to me, and neither was my best friend, Daria. Begging for mercy was apparently not working.

  “Look,” I had tried to explain to Nicole when Brett brought them by this morning. “I’m not proud of myself, it just happened, I’ll never do it again, and that’s why you should never smoke dope.” She pretended she didn’t hear me and put in her ear buds to listen to her iPod. She’ll get over it, Ryan told me. Smirking. As if he had the upper hand or something. “So, did you ever do cocaine or ecstasy?” he had asked me.

  “No, of course not! There wasn’t ecstasy back then,” I said, thinking I had neatly dodged that bullet.

  “So you did coke,” he persisted. “Come on, you went to college in the 80s. Ohio State was a rager.”

  I shook my head. “Can you see me ragin’?” I asked him, my nose twitching, either because I wasn’t being quite truthful or because I was remembering the numbing feel of the frosted flakes from long ago and far away. Cocaine was making a comeback at the local high school. Brett and I tried to put the fear of death, long-term health problems, and jail into our kids’ heads. While ecstasy must be a fun drug since so many people were doing it, it scared me to death. I feared it was creating a whole new generation of permanently depressed people who were using up their allotted quota of happiness.

  Ryan tried to hide a smile at the idea of his mom ‘ragin.’ “Yeah, right. You’re not exactly what anyone would call a party animal.” He laughed out loud.

  I was so relieved with my blanket pass, that I was not even offended one iota. In fact, I played holier-than-thou pretty convincingly. Pursed lips, flared nostrils, tilted chin; check, check and check.

  “Did dad ever do coke?” Ryan asked.

  I shrugged. My lips sagged, nose whistled a deflating pfft; chin resumed jowly position.

  “He did,” Ryan said. “He told me he tried a couple lines before.”

  Oh honey, I thought, Daddy had a big problem with marching powder. Instead I said, “But, he was smart enough not to do it again.” Tricky business. If my kids ever thought I had tried that stuff, I could only imagine the short leap to them wanting to experiment themselves.

  Why are drugs so tempting? Why couldn’t Ryan still be in the first grade, thinking the DARE program was all about staying off of rugs? (Oh, how I missed the year of cold, tile floors.) And why can’t I be like the wise dad on Seventh Heaven and say just the right thing in the right way? Every time I got too preachy, Nicole said I was acting like the mom on that show. Fortunately, Ryan had used up all of his conversing-with-his-mother minutes and headed out the door for school.

  I went into the kitchen, looking forward to being put to work to escape my thoughts. I got busy painting the crown molding; very therapeutic. Although with all the work I was doing and skills I was learning, why did it feel as if my life was getting worse?

  I couldn’t believe my fight with Daria. She acted like I actually hit her. It was an accident and I knew she knew it. It was like she and I had just been looking for an excuse to argue with each other or something. I did blame her, because it was her idea to get stoned, and because she kept making me laugh in front of my family. Not very mature of me, but there you have it.

  Daria was furious with me, I knew. And I didn’t know when this would blow over. She always accused me of sometimes acting like like her mother instead of her friend. Not true. I think she’s mad because she suspects I have the hots for her boyfriend, Sam, who she still won’t tell me about. I’ve even tried to get Sam to spill—I sometimes drop Daria’s name in conversations with him throughout the day—but he’s not playing along either. I was angry, but I missed her already.

  Daria and I have been friends for about ten years. In lady years that’s a long time—long enough to get to know someone inside and out. Daria never cut me slack but always did it with such fun, showing me that I’d laugh at my sorry self, too—if it was someone else. She could always made me feel better and be better. So that’s why in the middle of my so-called ultimate life make over it really hurt my feelings that she dumped me.

  Aside from our cage match last night, in the past week or so she was always too busy to come over, and wouldn’t even really take time to talk to me on the phone. We used to have some world-class world problem-solving harangues—the kind where everyone else was wrong. We loved our talks that, if overheard by anyone else, would seem mean, obnoxious and deliciously petty. I missed complaining like that. I know Daria’s work schedule is crazy. I know she has a lot going on in her own life. But I know what the problem is. She is dating Sam. Every time she has a new man in her life she doesn’t have time for me. I understand. I really do. Her time is filled with getting ready to go on a date, being on a date or recovering from the date.

  “Just tell me about you and Sam,” I had told her the other day, and the fact that she wouldn’t tell me meant this could be serious. But it was even more than that. I think her spot on friend radar picked up that I had a crush on Sam. I would never admit that to anyone, and I was sure once he left in less that two weeks, I’d get over it.

  I can daydream and whip up fantasies of a relationship with Sam that don’t involve ice cream treats or dry wall or shoes dunked in the toilet, but Daria didn’t know that, and didn’t need to. If she suspected, she didn’t have to hold it against me. I’m happy for her. Honest. />
  I think the fumes from the nail polish remover must have peeled off a couple layers of my manners, or at least my filters. So last night after all the drama maybe I tried to poke my finger in Daria’s cage to get a response.

  Normally, if I knew someone who was having a huge blowout with their mother, daughter, and best friend, I’d be pointing the finger right back at that person suggesting they have some issues that need to be worked out. My case was different. I was changing. I was standing up for myself. I was done being a doormat. That makes for good TV, right?

  Chapter 22

  Cut It Out

  “We have nothing to eat,” my son yelled as I heard the refrigerator door slam shut. My nice new shiny stainless steel 22 cubic foot side-by-side energy efficient frigid friend, complete with water and ice dispenser.

  The kid could be on YouTube with his tired song and dance routine. I sniggered, thinking about the cameras picking up his theatrics. Oh, wait. They’d also pick up me not making him anything to eat and probably make me look even worse. I ran into the kitchen. “Hey, sweetie. I have spaghetti in there, I can make you a salad, I barbecued chicken breasts last night…” Take that America, there is, too, food in my refrigerator. “Does anything sound good?”

  “Nah,” he grumped, heading upstairs.

  My phone beeped. ‘Mom?‘ My daughter was texting me. Talking to me at last. She had finally gotten over being mad at me about the whole pot debacle. My kids always told me ‘everyone does weed,’ I guess they just never expected me to be part of that collective. Well, neither did I.

  ‘What?’ I quickly wrote back.

  ‘Come here,’ she texted. I jumped up and ran upstairs. I tapped on her door and poked my head in. “Hey, I’m the mom, you know, you’re supposed to come here,” I said as I usually always mentioned when answering my kids beck and call.

  Nicole was on her bed, knees drawn up to her chest, crying.