Steadily the coke becomes the center of our world, and when John has to go to work it is rarely on a set—he is only out to score the drugs. Camping, day trips, or dinners out cease to exist anymore. He can’t be away from a private spot to do a line. He is ever careful of how much of the coke I take in, but his own personal stash is growing in leaps and bounds and his personal doses are getting larger. I sit and watch without question as he snorts extra amounts over and above what we share together, and the shots of Scotch and doses of Valium he needs to come down with have increased dramatically.
Still, I try to manage the cottages well, maintaining the books and scheduling repairs. Even though I am keeping everything up-to-date, it is hard to cover up John’s unusual behavior, which the tenants notice and mention. John’s standoffishness and secretive paranoia, along with their sometimes incoherent encounters with him, make them all nervous, afraid to trust him to watch their property anymore.
“Is John all right?” an elderly tenant named Marian asks me one day after John rudely rushes past her mumbling obscenities. “He almost knocked me down.”
“Oh, he’s fine.” I cover for him with the first excuse that pops into mind. “He probably didn’t see you.”
Still they take the complaints to Sharon.
The phone rings. It is an evening with Sharon watching TV, lying on the couch, as I wait for John to come home. As on any other evening Sharon, knowing it is John, lets me answer.
“Hey, baby.” He sounds out of breath. “Meet me at David’s tonight. It’s important.”
“Okay. What time?”
“Go now…and tell David I got the ether. I love you.” He hangs up.
Sharon peers over in my direction, curious about the confused look on my face. “Something wrong?”
“I don’t think so. He wants me to give David a message. Right now!” I add with emphasis.
“Wonderful,” she says sarcastically, turning away as if to say she wants nothing to do with the subject.
Karen opens the door after the first knock. “Hi. Come on in.” She looks behind me as if she’s searching for someone. “Where’s John?”
“He’s coming. He said it was important to meet and tell David he’s got the ether.”
“Alllllllright!” David sits up against the wall.
“Ether. What’s that for?” I hate that I have to ask.
“You’ll see,” he says, smiling with a shit-eating grin.
John’s van pulls into the driveway only a few minutes later. He looks more paranoid than ever, pulling shades and peeking out the windows like a scared rabbit. He smells different. I register a whiff of medicinal perspiration coming off of his clothes.
Convinced the coast is clear, he settles down in the middle of the room delicately opening his briefcase. Gingerly he removes two glass bottles of liquid, a petri dish, single-edged razors, and a large bag of cocaine.
“Ladies and gentleman, I am about to show you how to do things right!” His eyes dart frantically at each of us, his grin robotic. Finally I get a good look at him; I see the red in his eyes and the sallow, sunken look of his face. “But first we’ll try this.” He whips off his jacket and dips into his briefcase, retrieving a glass water pipe. It has a round base for the water with a stem for smoking out of and a bowl with screens to place the drugs on. He opens one of the bottles and pours water into the pipe, replacing the stopper. Then, from the familiar glass vial with the ebony lid, he taps a pile of small white crystals onto the screen. John sets the pipe on the glass coffee table, rubbing his sweaty palms on his jeans in anticipation. Rummaging farther, he withdraws a pint bottle of Bacardi 151 Rum, a cotton ball, and paper clip. The wire clip is unwound on one end, bent like a metal tooth, and curled on the other. He hooks a piece of the cotton around the tooth into a ball and opens the Bacardi, pouring some of the liquid into the lid. Lifting his head to nod at us, his audience, he directs us to ready ourselves to join in at his signal. Dunking the cotton into the liquor, he squeezes off the excess and lights the tip. Wavy, blue, the flame silently purrs. Holding the pipe at his mouth and slightly tilting his head, he positions the flame underneath the bowl until the white of the crystals melts into the screens. John quickly dives in to pull the cloudy smoke through the water from the bowl and into his lungs. Holding in as much as he can, he lets go and holds the pipe up to David’s lips, keeping the flame beneath the bowl until it fades out.
John’s face is bright red and bursting. Unable to hold in his breath any longer, John wraps his hand around the back of my head and brings my lips onto his, exhaling the smoke from his lungs into mine. I see his face smile, as if to say, See? I told you this was good.
Then the tingling and ringing in my head begin. I close my eyes. Sensing my mouth, throat, and chest go numb, I feel dizzy and fold over to my knees. John’s delighted laughter echoes in my ears as I can hold the drugs in no longer and release a paler cloud of smoke. Head still spinning, I lie down on John’s lap.
Running his fingers through my hair, he takes me in hard and steady, then goes about the task of preparing the pipe for me to take a turn passing the exhale to him.
My mind has shifted to turbo mode. I sit up attentively, checking everyone else’s reaction. David and Karen are looking for a cigarette, and so am I. Lighting up almost simultaneously, we all look to John to lead the way. “Freebase,” he tells us, releasing a twitch in his neck. “Pure cocaine! No cut, no crap. None of that quinine shit that kills you. Doesn’t burn your lungs because you roll the smoke through water and the flame is pure. No lighter fluid to cough up.” John rambles on, “And it’s three times as expensive as a gram of powder.” John’s education is thorough, and our interest devoted. “Now it’s tricky to cook this shit up. You gotta use ether, and it’s been known to explode in your face if it’s not done right.”
He and the freebase coursing through our veins have our undivided interest. John is determined that we learn the process completely. Then he issues directions for how to prepare coke and ether for cooking in boiling water, releasing the pressure every few minutes until the cut is separated, then spreading it on the petri dishes to cool in the freezer. With the razors, in a process similar to the weight-and-scale method, we scrape the dried pure crystals off of the curved glass and arrange the oil-based powder in piles to package.
We are busy bees, and the freebase runs freely. With this stuff, the initial high is the best and it lasts only a few minutes. The more I take in, the more introverted and agitated I become when the first euphoric rush soon wears off. The same thing happens to everybody, especially John. We take the freebase hits so frequently that we have very little left to package as the sun rises on another sleepless night.
John sends me into the kitchen to check on the last dish cooling in the freezer. “Ahhhh! Shit! No way!” A round of curses come from the living room.
“What is it?” I run out to see what happened.
“Son of a bitch.” John is standing with his hands on his hips, looking down at his briefcase, very angry.
“What?”
Silence, then, “Shit!” He kicks the briefcase across the bed into a side table and against the wall.
“John! Stop!” David yells.
John stomps into the bathroom, leaving us to stare at the mess he created.
“What happened?” I ask for the third time.
“It melted,” David says, shrugging his shoulders. “We put it in tin foil, and it had a bad reaction to the metal and melted. Who knew?” “Oh.”
Karen, David, and I begin carefully picking up the broken pieces of an ashtray and placing John’s strewn things in a pile on the bed.
Twenty minutes pass by the time John comes out of the bathroom with his hair wet and face looking washed. He walks into the kitchen, opens the freezer, removes the petri dish, and dumps the contents in the dishwater. Without hesitation and with dogged determination, he gathers his things from the pile, dismantling the glass pipe and paraphernalia from his briefcase. I w
atch in quiet appreciation his moment of clarity. No one else says a word either. Then, taking the pieces of the pipe in one hand and my hand in the other, he leads me outside to the street.
Feeling the moisture of the early morning fog on my face, I feel better than I did in David’s claustrophobic box of a cottage. Mist glows in the streetlights as I hold his hand tightly and follow. It has been a long time since I have connected so intimately and warmly to John; the coke has been changing that between us. At least, I believe it’s the coke. We have each lost the child inside who promises to never leave, so often laughs, and loves.
John bends down on one knee with his head poised in thought for a moment. Then, stretching out to hold my cheek, he looks into my eyes. “I promise you, baby. I…I promise tonight was the last time you will ever see this glass dick in my mouth! Ever!”
I simply nod, awed at his apparent desire to make those words true.
“I love you, baby, and…and I’ll…I’ll lose you if this shit stays in our lives…and I don’t ever, ever want to lose you. You’re my baby.” A tear glistens in his eye as he strokes my face.
“I love you too, John,” I breathe. “Are you okay? Can you do it?” I feel sorry for him. His attraction to the coke is very strong.
Things will get better again, my heart wishes through the waning effects of the drugs. We’ll get the warmth back now. Memories of the chemistry between us rush back, and I realize how much I’ve missed him. We have become like mannequins, only remnants of “John and Dawn.”
He stands up. The sky is beginning to brighten into daylight. Then, with all his weight, John steps back and throws the pipe down with a crash. “Fuck you!“ he shouts defiantly at the shattered glass. “Fuck you!”
We hug one another desperately, John kissing me all over, as if to seal the promise and make it stick.
It is near Christmas and we are expecting a visit from John’s mother and niece from Ohio. David and Karen are excited. David, the baby of the family, is going to see his mother, and he has good news about his life. He has enrolled in a locksmith certification program and is scheduled to graduate next spring. John, on the other hand, is somber about the news of her visit.
John’s mother, Mary, is a strict Baptist woman who has seen a lot of heartache in her life. Religion has given her solace in her suffering over bad husbands. I picture her, a habitual rocking chair occupant, the Good Book in her lap, praying feverishly over her family’s sins. A Bible thumper—that’s what Sharon calls her. John and David agree. They have a nickname for her—“Mother Moses”—and they’re serious.
Things are going to be uncomfortable for us while they are here; neither John nor Sharon is partial to religion. “If there’s a God, he’s a sadist,” Sharon has said, passionate in her anger toward God, and John agrees wholeheartedly. It is the first time I have ever heard that word, sadist, and I believe them, especially after Gena’s death and the others I’ve witnessed at Royal Oaks.
Mary favors David and puts a lot of pressure on John to take care of him. John doesn’t talk about it with me much. Mostly he hides out in his office moping and, I know, getting high on coke. It is arranged that their mother will stay with David. Julie, their sister Anne’s girl, will stay with John and Sharon—in my room! I am depressed.
I wake up on the day of John’s family’s arrival with John L’s, Pokie’s, and Thor’s faces inches from my mine. “What is it, you guys? What’s the matter?” They wag their tails excitedly as I roll out of bed.
Sharon is up flipping through the channels, smoking a cigarette.
“Did you know that these guys were all staring at me in my sleep?” I ask her, rubbing the grogginess from my eyes and yawning.
“Uh-huh. They do that all the time. Didn’t you notice?”
“No. How come?”
“You mean you don’t know? You grind your teeth in your sleep. And it’s loud!”
“I do?”
“All the time.” She says it like it’s old news.
“I must be restless about something.”
“It wouldn’t have anything to do with certain visitors, now, would it?” She clears her throat.
“Yeah, that must be it. I don’t want to spend Christmas in that old, dusty, empty apartment, Sharon. I want to be here, where I live.”
“I know. Well, you can fall asleep on the couch all you want and definitely on Christmas Eve, if that will make you feel any better. You’re still going to eat here anyway. It’s never good when we get a visit from Ohio. It upsets John every time, but we’ll get through it…as long as we don’t let them do any of the cooking.” She rolls her eyes in mock horror.
“What about presents? Aren’t they going to think it’s kinda weird that the three of us go all out with presents?”
“We’ll open ours when they are visiting David and Karen. That way they won’t have any questions to ask.”
John picks them up from the airport that afternoon, and the first place they head is David’s.
Sharon and I have been in the kitchen cooking all day. Wafting smells of macaroni and cheese, meat loaf, antipasto, and everything we can think of to stock the refrigerator keep the dogs tap dancing at our feet and, according to Sharon, give John’s family no reason to pull out a pot or a pan. No matter what, there is to be no backwoods, hillbilly cooking in her kitchen!
At dinnertime the visitors finally make their way to the house. John’s mother and niece walk in, scanning the assortment of skulls, sculptures, dragons, and odd antique wall décor. The dogs bellow their alert at the strangers, their nails scratching the wooden entryway. Julie puts her hands up in front of her legs, swatting and squealing in a goofy fright.
“Hieeeee,” Sharon’s doctor’s office voice shrills off-key. Mary walks up to hug her, and Sharon pales and freezes, stiff as a board. “Mary, this is Dawn. She’s, well, a part of the family.”
John’s head looms behind his mother’s. With Julie’s suitcase in hand, he closes the door, and we lock eyes.
Mary takes a step back at the rush of information. She has small, pinpoint brown eyes, graying brown hair severely pulled into a ponytail, and some kind of drooping palsy that makes one side of her face look like it’s melting. She burns a single lopsided look my way, without a flinch dismisses me and, stone-faced, turns to introduce Julie, a mousy, brown-haired, brown-eyed, bottom-heavy teenager. Julie is eighteen, my age.
I fall back on the couch and shrug my shoulders at John. From across the room, I can see his jaw tightly clench as the tension mounts.
Everyone in the house is on edge, and I am happy to get away. Did David tell his mom about me? Probably. He would do something like that to get John in trouble with his strict Baptist mom. I sleep the first night at my old apartment, and thankfully John checks on me before bed. Although I don’t like being alone, it is better than enduring the silent treatment I get from his mother and niece.
“I’d rather stay here, with you,” John tells me, trying to get under the covers with me and not go back home.
“Come on. She’s come all the way from Ohio to see you. You can spend some time with her, John,” I coax insincerely.
“She’s here to see David,” he blurts. “I’m not her favorite, you know. She thinks I’m a freak.”
“A freak? No, she doesn’t, John. She’s your mother.”
“I’ve always been one. She never knew what to do with me when I skipped school. She wanted me to play sports, but the kids called me a freak. Fuck them. Fuck them all. Those low-life backwoods idiots are in that small town doing their sisters, and I’m here. I can have any woman I want at the snap of my fingers.” He raises his hand and gestures a snap at the wall, then looks over and holds me. “But I got you, baby.” He rocks me in his arms. “I’m sorry you’re over here. Come first thing in the morning for breakfast. Okay? I love you.” He reaches down, pets Thor’s pink upturned belly, and kisses me good night.
I understand his pain. Being an outcast as a kid, I can relate. Walking him to
the door, I watch through the window as he climbs the steps to his house. Then, as his front door shuts, I see the light to my room at the house go out.
The next morning, John is missing from breakfast. I can’t blame him; the meal is a miserable experience. The air reeks with so much bitter hatred that even the smell of food can’t entice the dogs into the kitchen. Mary insists on making eggs in lard, and as much as I know it bothers Sharon, she begrudgingly concedes. Mary doesn’t make any for me.
I find John instead, in his back office. He is high on coke and won’t look at me. “Damn it, John. You’re not supposed to be getting high anymore. You promised! Not with your mom here. And besides…it’s Christmas.” I am furious. I need his support.
“Not the pipe, baby. Just a few lines…till they’re gone.” He rambles the excuses, fidgeting from side to side. “Now you go on and visit.” To assure me that everything is fine, he bends to give me one of his big bear hugs that he knows I love so much and sends me to keep his family entertained. I hear a muffle and a tap at the other side of the door. Julie is listening from the next room.
Mary hardly speaks to me the entire time I am there, deliberately looking the other way when she needs to walk past me. Like a bungling informant, Julie scuttles and bumps behind entryways and doors a few feet behind me, watching everything I do. Jeez. Is she trying to catch me and John together or something? What for? To my relief, they prefer to spend most of their time at David and Karen’s cottage. I don’t understand right away that it is because Mary is disgusted by me, but I start to get the message because of some sharp quip David makes that his mom prefers him over John on this visit. I try to be polite and offer her a chair or a drink, but I am constantly ignored.
“What is it with her, Sharon? Why is she so mad at me?” I ask after Mary has iced past me one more time.
“Nothing. She just doesn’t understand our relationship. She feels you should have no place in this family, that you make yourself at home and it is disrupting our house.”
The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes Page 24