White Elephant

by Julie Langsdorf

  “Nope. It’s for the play,” he affirmed, nodding, and went downstairs to watch TV.

  Amazingly, blessedly, she hadn’t followed him. If they’d been in their own house, she would have interrogated him; there were some advantages to living in someone else’s house after all.

  To be fair, he wasn’t being entirely honest with her, either, but it was for a good reason. He wasn’t even really wearing makeup—not like mascara and eye shadow! Just a little cover-up. There was a good story behind it, one he’d shared with his friends in Richmond, who’d found it hilarious.

  It went like this: A few nights ago, bored with no rehearsal to go to, he’d Googled “Where to buy weed Maryland,” and came up with the expected information about dispensaries and medical marijuana cards—but he didn’t want to wait for a doctor’s note. He wanted it now. Then he looked up “Where to buy weed D.C.” and bingo!

  In D.C. the laws were looser. You could possess it and smoke it, but you could not buy it. There was a loophole though: You could “gift” it, and certain businesses were doing just that. It was brilliant, and apparently legal. All you had to do was buy their wildly expensive product, and you’d get a little cannabis “gift” in return. Grant reviewed the offerings online—T-shirts, mugs, pizza, blown glass, cookies, rolling papers, and brownies, among others—and chose the brownies. He walked the cold quarter mile to the D.C. line lest someone notice the car was missing. He found a random address on Stephenson Place and placed his order: six brownies for seventy-five dollars. The wait time was anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. An hour? Hatless, scarfless, gloveless, he walked up the street and back again several times; then he jogged it, then skipped. He ran in place and did jumping jacks, boxed the cold air, anything to warm up, and an hour and a half later, a little car pulled up. Grant had grape-vined halfway up the block by then, but he sprinted back down, catching the guy with the apron over his coat before he rang the doorbell at that address.

  He was handed a little brown bag that contained six very small brownies, and three little edibles shaped like gummy bears.

  “Hey, man. Are you kidding me? For seventy-five dollars?”

  “It’s a gift. Take it or leave it,” the guy said, but when Grant said he wanted to leave it, the guy told him all sales were final.

  So Grant, understandably angry, reached into the brownie mobile to grab what he felt was his due, and the brownie guy grabbed him by his jacket and punched him in the face. He was going to have a black eye. Crap!

  “I’m a lawyer. You didn’t know I was a lawyer, did you? Well, I am, and I am going to sue you!” Grant said.

  “You’re the one who tried to steal my wares, man,” the guy sneered. Then he got into the car and drove away, leaving Grant alone on the sidewalk with his little goody bag.

  Feeling defeated, he ate the three edibles on the way home, and texted all of the tech guys on the Annie Get Your Gun contact list to see who had weed to sell. One guy came through. Carl, who did lights, told him to stop by in the morning. It turned out Carl’s weed was organic, grown in his basement right there in Willard Park. Locally sourced! They smoked together so Grant could see what he was getting. He should have started with the techies.

  Instead of heading straight to work, Grant went to a coffee shop in Georgetown to get a second breakfast and play Candy Crush until he felt less stoned—who said he couldn’t learn from his mistakes? He meant to go over the bridge and into work in the afternoon, but ended up having a couple more hits and going to the movies instead.

  This had been his pattern for three days running. He woke up meaning to go to work, then ended up getting high and playing Candy Crush instead. Today he was finally going to break the pattern. He smoked a little now, in the parking lot—anyone would feel stressed after last night—but he was going back to the Millers’ instead of to the coffee shop. It was a start.

  He turned on the car, then called Marie, who answered after the first ring.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Stable. They’re stable.”

  “Thank God.”

  “I’m a wreck though.”

  “I’m coming up there,” she said. “Don’t try to stop me.”

  But it never occurred to him to stop her. It wasn’t until he hung up that he noticed he was breathing normally again.

  GRANT IMAGINED WALKING UPSTAIRS AT THE MILLERS’, FALLING ONTO that lumpy futon and into the deepest sleep of his life. But Terrance was sitting in the living room watching a morning news program on TV. The crowd was waving to the cameras.

  “Howdy, cowboy Frank,” Terrance said.

  “Howdy.” Grant sat down beside him. The camera had switched to the two commentators, a dimpled redhead and a man who looked like Mr. Clean.

  Terrance pointed at the screen. “She and I are going to New York City. We’re going to stay at a hotel.”

  “Lucky you,” Grant said.

  Terrance smiled. “Lucky me.”

  The house was a train station. Nothing less than a train station. Some passengers got off; others got on. Not that he had any right to complain, as one of its longest-riding passengers. They were just supposed to have stayed there one night, but no one had said anything about their leaving. Wouldn’t Ted or Allison tell them if they were tired of hosting? They seemed to like the company. But it was a small house. There was no denying that it was small. It would feel even smaller when Suzanne was lying in the attic full time on bed rest. Or would it have to be the ground floor? She’d need to be on the same floor as the bathroom. Would she be able to get up to go to the bathroom?

  “Let’s make eggs,” Terrance said. “Want eggs?”

  Grant did. He hadn’t realized it, but yes, he absolutely did. “And bacon.”

  “And cheese,” Terrance said, and they got to cooking.

  Terrance plugged his phone into the dock by the sink. “What do you want to hear? I’m the DJ.”

  “Disco,” Grant said, out of nowhere.

  Terrance grinned. Soon the Bee Gees were filling the room with falsetto. Grant started to sing along, and Terrance, thrilled, joined in, too, his voice off-key, but his enthusiasm right on target.

  They danced around, chopping and sautéing everything they could find that might match with eggs, from onions to spinach to avocado. They even threw in some suspect things: apples, frozen peas. Grant brewed up a pot of coffee and poured them both big mugs. Terrance filled his with milk to the brim, then added a spoonful of sugar and another. And another.

  “How much sugar do you take, bud?” Grant said after a while.

  Terrance kept spooning it in. He took a sip of what must have been more sugar than coffee. “That much.” He tipped his head to the side, thinking, then added one more. Grant laughed.

  “Do you like recipes?” Terrance said.

  “No.”

  Terrance put up his hand for a high five. Grant’s hand met his.

  “Should we make French toast?” Grant said.

  “Too much food.”

  “So?”

  Terrance thought about that. “Let’s make French toast!”

  What was wrong with this guy? Nothing, it seemed to him. Nothing. This was a good guy. A guy who was more chill than anyone who was considered “normal” in Willard Park. There was such a range in the world, in the town alone. He lined up people in Willard Park on a spectrum from not chill to chill. Suzanne was at the top: serious and smart. Brilliant maybe. No sense of humor. Did she have a humor disability? Why wasn’t that a thing? Nina Strauss soon followed on his chart—or wait, she was worse than Suzanne. Dead serious. Calculating. He kept peopling his chart until he landed at the bottom, where he and Terrance sat side by side, as they did now, eating eggs.

  “What are you thinking about?” Terrance said.

  “How you and I are alike.”

  Terrance toasted Grant with his orange juice.

  Grant was eating a juicy piece of bacon when he saw the note from Ted. “I took
Adam to school. Call if you need anything.”

  Adam. He had forgotten about his son. Actually forgotten.

  “Are you taking a vacation day too?” Terrance said.

  “Not quite. But I am going to take a rest.”

  “Me too,” Terrance said. “Can I?”

  “That’s one of the benefits of being an adult. You get to do what you want.”

  Terrance lay down on the couch in front of the TV.

  Grant went upstairs and found a nice bud to put in his pipe. He blew the smoke out through the window screen. He’d nearly drifted off when his phone rang. He panicked. What if it was someone from work? Should he pick up? Should he ignore it? Maybe it would be worse to ignore it. He saw it was Nick and laughed.

  “Say, Davenport,” Nick said.

  Grant was too stoned to correct him.

  “How about moving out of the little shack and into our house for a while?”

  “Wow,” Grant said, when he understood what Nick was offering. “Wow.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say. It was uncanny how Nick called at that moment, that he was able to intuit his and Suzanne’s needs. Fate. Grant accepted on the spot. The Coxes’ would be an excellent change of pace. “I love you, dude,” he said, which made Nick laugh.

  He awoke to the ding of a text. Marie was there, her text said, out in front of the house. When had he fallen asleep?

  He crept outside—Terrance still on the couch, sleeping—and made his way to her red convertible.

  “Did you drive with the top down? You’re nuts.”

  “Just in the neighborhood. Cute neighborhood!” Her hair was tangled from the wind. She scooped it up, twirled it, and stuck a pen through the top of it, turning it into a loose bun. He loved how she did that. Presto change-o. “You okay, General?”

  When had she started calling him that? Junior year of high school, maybe. He smiled, remembering.

  She held up a white, redolent bag.

  “Turkey subs?”

  “Extra mayo, lettuce, cranberry, sweet and hot peppers, unless your tastes have changed.”

  “Not me,” he said.

  He got in the passenger seat. She hugged him, her hands tight around his neck, her face cold against his. He shut his eyes. He felt something drop within him, a thin but solid veneer. It slid down his neck and shoulders, through his legs and feet, and out through his toes. He wanted to sink against her, to let her absorb the weight of him. He pulled her closer, breathing in the turkey smell of her. He had a thought, and the thought was: home.

  JILLIAN WAS IN ENGLISH CLASS THINKING ABOUT RUNNING AWAY. She’d had enough of her parents, enough of the Davenport-Gardners—of Adam especially, who stared at her when she was doing homework and got into her candy stash. She was sick of waking up at six to get into the bathroom before everyone else, and the sound of the TV across the hall from her room was annoying when you weren’t allowed to watch it. Suzanne was pregnant and grumpy and Jillian’s father was even grumpier. She was sick of trees, and moratoriums, and houses, and all their stupid grown-up blah blah. Maybe she would run away to her grandparents’ assisted living place in New York state. She started writing a letter in her head. “Dear Mom Mom and Pop Pop, the situation at our house has become . . .” She tried to think of a good synonym for bad that wasn’t “sucks.” Terrible. Rotten. Miserable. Unbearable. That was it. It was unbearable.

  She glanced up at the clock, wondering how she would survive the fifteen minutes till the bell rang for lunch, when someone knocked on the classroom door. Mrs. Peters read the proffered note, then shook her head at Jillian as though she had purposely caused the disruption.

  Jillian scanned her brain for possible disasters. She came up with Suzanne, who had gone to the hospital in the middle of the night. She swallowed, braced to hear that something terrible had happened. Suzanne died, the baby is deformed.

  “Your mother is waiting to take you to the orthodontist,” Mrs. Peters said.

  Jillian had just had her braces tightened the week before. It must be a trick. Maybe a kidnapper was waiting at the office. Your mother’s had an accident, he’d say. She wouldn’t go with him. The attendance secretary would protect her. Or maybe she was supposed to go to the dentist and the attendance secretary just wrote “orthodontist” by mistake. Jillian gathered her books and made her way out of the classroom.

  Freedom, freedom, freedom, she thought as she walked down the quiet hallway, thinking about all the other kids, stuck behind desks. She opened her locker and got her coat.

  “Gotcha!” Lindy said, coming up behind her.

  “I’m going to the dentist.”

  “Thanks to me.”

  “What?”

  “Come on,” Lindy said, pulling Jillian down the hall and through the cafeteria doors, into the side parking lot. “We’re blowing off the rest of the day.”

  “I have a math test after lunch,” Jillian said.

  “You’re welcome,” Lindy said.

  Jillian, half afraid they would get caught before they left school property, half afraid they wouldn’t, let herself be led to the thin patch of woods next to the school. It wasn’t worth fighting back.

  “Mark’s sick. We’re going to get him on the way,” Lindy said when they were around the corner, out of sight of the school.

  “On the way where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “If he’s sick he might want to stay in bed.”

  “That’s what she said,” Lindy said.

  They’d never done this before, any of this. Ditching school. Going to round up Mark from home. The most they did was walk home with him sometimes, hanging out on the swings at the elementary school until he said he had to go. Jillian made excuses at that point, too, but Lindy inevitably forced Jillian to go with her to the market for candy before releasing her. It was turning out to be harder to drop Lindy than Jillian had thought—and she’d thought it would be pretty hard.

  It was a cold walk to Mark’s. It was cloudy and the air was damp. The wet remains of yesterday’s snow wormed its way through the sides of Jillian’s sneakers, soaking her socks. She had visions of going home and crawling into bed, telling her mother she was sick. Her mother would put her hand on Jillian’s forehead and bring her soup, a nicer scenario than the other one that came to mind: that her mother would catch her and Lindy walking through town in the middle of the school day.

  Her mother would kill her. She’d be mad about the skipping, but she’d be even madder that she was hanging out with Lindy. “Find some new friends, can’t you, Jill?” her mother had said after Mr. Cox destroyed the Davenport-Gardners’ house. Finally! It had taken her long enough to say something. Jillian yanked up the hood of her parka to disguise herself. Jillian Miller cuts school.

  They went up the walkway to Mark’s front door. No one answered when Lindy rang the bell. She picked up the brass knocker and tapped it over and over. The short rat-a-tat-tats sounded like gunfire. Still, no one came.

  “Let’s go,” Jillian said.

  Lindy went around back and rapped on the kitchen window until Mark came to the door in his sweatshirt and striped pajama pants. He looked like a little kid, his hair tousled, fuzzy blue slippers on his feet. Jillian had the urge to comb his hair with her fingers.

  “Get dressed,” Lindy said when he opened the door. “We’re kidnapping you.”

  “I’m sick.”

  “You’re faking,” Lindy said.

  “I have a sore throat.”

  “Uh-huh—and the math project was due today. Are you going to let us in?”

  It was warm to the point of stuffiness in Mark’s kitchen. Jillian imagined the bacteria multiplying, a thought that would have nauseated her if they hadn’t been Mark’s bacteria.

  “So get dressed,” Lindy said.

  “I’m sick. I told you.”

  “So?”

  He sighed and disappeared down the hall. Lindy sat on the couch and crossed her legs, striking the pose Mark’s mother had made in h
er Christmas card. Lindy obviously wanted Jillian to laugh, but she wouldn’t. Run while you still can, she wanted to tell Mark. But where would he run? They’d invaded his house. I’m not like her, she told him, through ESP.

  “So, you like horsies? Are you a girl?” Lindy said, when Mark reappeared in a T-shirt and jeans.

  “What?”

  She pointed to his shirt.

  Mark pulled out the front of it and looked at it, as though he hadn’t realized there was a horse on it.

  “I used to ride over at Meadowland,” Jillian said.

  “Yeah?” Mark lit up. “I want to live on a ranch, you know? Out west. This shirt is from a ranch in Montana. I’ve never been, but I will. I’m going to move there.”

  “You are?” Jillian said. He couldn’t move away!

  “Well, yeah. Maybe. I want a lot of horses. Like, like a dude ranch.”

  “But you live here.”

  “I know,” he said, and he kicked the chair. It wobbled. Jillian and he caught it at the same time. “I just have to convince my mom.”

  “She won’t move.”

  “I know,” he said, slouching.

  Lindy jumped in: “What’s this? The My Little Pony Club? How about lunch? A good host would offer us lunch.”

  “Want some fettucine Alfredo?” Mark said. “My mom was too tired to eat.”

  “Who cooked it if she was too tired?” Lindy opened the refrigerator and poked around.

  “Me,” Mark said.

  “Wow,” Jillian said.

  “Wow,” Lindy aped.

  They stuck the plastic container in the microwave. It came out lopsided and soft, the pasta steaming. They each dug a fork in and ate, the cream dripping off the long, thick noodles. Afterward, they stuck their mouths under the faucet to drink. Jillian thought with a thrill of the day a few days from now when she would wake up with Mark’s sore throat.

  “Let’s vamoose,” Lindy said, and they made their way down the street, Mark and Lindy walking in front as though they were the parents and she, Jillian, the child. They were laughing about something. “What?” she said, but they ignored her. Maybe he liked Lindy after all.