by Nick Pirog
She glares at me.
“Mommmm?”
“What?” she says. “It’s been legal for two years.”
I lean my head back, smash my eyelids together a couple of times, take a long breath, then say, “What, you and Dad are like potheads now?”
“We don’t smoke it. But we do like the edibles.”
Two years ago, Oregon legalized recreational marijuana, and while I knew plenty of baby-boomers were rushing to the nearest dispensary, I didn’t know my parents were among them.
“When did you start?” I ask. “How did you start?”
“Oh, friends had us over for dinner one night and they had brownies, and after a little debate, your father and I decided to give them a whirl.” She laughs. “We had so much fun!”
My mother sets the tray of brownies on a hot pad on the counter. This woman with a bowler hat, pink glasses, and pink-streaked hair, who now likes to get high, is hard to wrap my head around.
“Are you having a midlife crisis?” I ask.
“If I was having a crisis, it would be a three-quarter life crisis. But no, I’m not. Your father and I are just having fun. Living free.”
“Do you listen to reggae now?”
She shrugs. “A little.”
Well, there you have it. My parents have become late-stage hippies.
My mom cuts two squares of brownie and sets them on a small plate. “Do you want one?”
“Thanks, but I have enough paranoia as it is.” I haven’t smoked pot since New Year’s Eve my senior year in college. Whatever I smoked was laced with something and I spent the better part of the night praying to God I would make it to see the new year.
My mom covers the remaining tray of brownies with foil, then shoves it into the fridge.
A moment later, from outside, my dad shouts, “Steaks are ready.”
I grab the big bowl of salad, then follow my mother out to the stone patio table with a large orange umbrella in full bloom. The sky is clear and the sun is fading into the roof of the house behind us. It’s the twentieth of June, the first day of summer is officially tomorrow, and the temperature hovers in the mid-seventies.
My dad plops the plate of steaks in the middle of the table. Cassie comes over and rests her head on my lap. “Did you get some steak, girl?”
“Oh, yes, she did,” my father answers for her. “Probably got herself an entire steak by the end of it.”
I cut off a small piece of meat and feed it to her. She chomps it down, then I tell her to lie down. She does.
Once my father takes a seat, I ask, “So edibles, huh?”
He fights back a smile, then points his fork at my mother. “Blame her; she’s the one who went to the pot shop and came back with a big ol’ baggie of the stuff.”
I can’t help but laugh at the thought of my mother in a “pot shop.”
“But it’s fun,” my dad says. “I can see why everybody was always smoking it when I was growing up.”
“Yeah, you sure missed out,” I say.
“Well, we’re making up for it now,” he says, then shoves a piece of steak in his mouth.
My mother clears her throat, then says, “There’s actually something else we’ve been meaning to talk to you about.” The tone she uses is flat. It’s the tone you use when you tell someone you have six months to live or that you’re actually adopted.
“What?” I ask, my heartbeat doubling. “Is one of you sick?”
“No, nothing like that,” my mom says with a wave of her hand. “It’s, well—” she pauses, then says, “You tell him, Martin.”
My father chews, swallows, then says, “What your mother is trying to say is that we’ve decided to have an open marriage.”
I cock my head to the side. “Um, pardon me?”
“An open marriage,” my father repeats.
My lips purse and there’s an odd high humming resonating from my throat. “An open marriage?” I sputter. “An open marriage? People in their late sixties—people who have been married for forty years—do not just decide to have open marriages.”
My mother glances at my father. “We did.”
“So, what, you guys are gonna like, date other people?”
“Yes, honey, that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
This is too much. My head is going to explode.
I grab my beer and chug nearly the entire bottle. The taste doesn’t even register. I wipe my mouth on my shoulder, then shake the bottle at my mother, then my father. “This is crazy.”
“It’s what we both want,” my father says. “Your mother and I both love one another—that’s never gonna change—but we both want to see what’s out there.”
“What’s out there? What’s out there?” I’m saying this more to the darkening sky than to my parents. “What’s out there is a bunch of sad, pathetic people who want what you two have found.”
“I know this is a lot to take in,” the woman in the bowler hat, with pink glasses, with pink streaks in her hair, who now gets stoned and wants to date other people says. “But your father is the only man I’ve ever had sex with and I’m the only woman your father has ever had sex with.”
I put my hand up. If I hear the word sex again, I’m going to vomit.
My mother adds, “We just want to do a little exploration.”
“Freshmen in college do exploration,” I shout. “NOT women with osteoporosis and NOT bald men who wear compression socks.”
“We’ve discussed this quite a bit,” my father says. “And we’ve both decided it’s what we want. And to be honest, neither of us really cares what you think.”
I stand up.
“Come on, Cassie,” I shout. But looking down, Cassie is gone.
I storm into the kitchen. “Cassie!”
That’s when I see it.
The plate with the two brownies on it.
It’s empty.
Cassie
I know I shouldn’t have eaten the grassy brown squares, but I couldn’t resist. They just sat there on the counter beckoning to me. And if they didn’t want me to eat them, then why did they put them so close to the edge?
So I did. I ate the grassy brown squares. And they were delicious.
I can still taste them on the back of my tongue. My tongue feels heavy. But it feels smarter. But that doesn’t make sense. Tongues don’t have brains.
Or do they?
I stick my tongue out and glance down at it. It’s pink and long. I never noticed how long it is. It’s so long. What a long, smart tongue I have. I don’t know how long I stare at my tongue.
A long time.
Why am I so infatuated with my tongue?
I’ve had the same tongue for ten years and I don’t think I’ve ever taken the time to look at it. To really inspect it. Why now?
After another few minutes of staring at my tongue, I notice my nose. My nose was once big and black. Now it’s more pink. Why is my nose changing color?
I want my black nose back.
~
Bird.
There’s a bird in the street.
I bark.
Hey, bird.
The bird flies away.
I watch her wings (all birds are hers to me) flap, flap, flap, then she is gone.
How does she do that?
Fly?
I wish I had wings; I would fly everywhere.
Cassie, Queen of the Birds.
~
Dirt.
Where did all this dirt come from?
How did I get here?
I was watching that bird fly and now I’m digging in the dirt.
Dig.
Dig.
Dig.
~
I’m running.
I stop.
It’s a coyote.
He pitter-patters across the street. Coyotes are always pitter-pattering.
I bark.
Hey, coyote.
I howl. (Or try to.)
The coyote howls.
We both have our heads back howling.
When I stop howling, the coyote is gone.
~
When did I lie down?
When did I melt into the grass?
Why is grass green?
Frogs.
Tadpoles.
The Chosen Ones.
Cookies.
Peanut butter cookies.
Hugo.
Poor Hugo.
First Home.
Why was she so mean to me?
Did I deserve it?
Was I a bad dog?
Blueberries.
Blueberries as big as my head.
Super blueberries.
~
Ten.
Ten.
Ten.
I’m Ten.
Ten.
What is the number after ten?
What happens when we die?
Where do we go?
What will happen to Jerry when I’m gone?
Who will protect him?
~
Super blueberries.
Super blueberries.
Super blueberries.
Jerry
My phone rings.
I stop running and pull my phone out of my pocket. I’m guessing it’s my mom calling to ask if I found Cassie yet. But it’s not. It’s an unlisted number. I shake my head. I don’t have time for this. I have to find Cassie.
I have to.
I’m about to decline the call when logic strikes and I answer. “Please tell me you have my dog,” I shout.
“That I do,” a man replies.
Over the course of the last hour, my intestines have twisted into something resembling the knotted ball of Christmas lights Clark Griswold hands to Rusty.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Jerry, this is Pete.”
“Pete?”
“Pete, your neighbor, three houses down.”
“Oh, right.”
“Cassie is in my backyard.”
“Thank God.”
I tell him I’m a few blocks away and that I’ll be there in a couple of minutes. I sprint for a block, then slow down. I haven’t exercised in four months and my lungs ache.
“She’s safe,” I tell myself, sucking in a few breaths.
When I get to Pete’s, he’s standing on his front steps. He’s about my age and as a paddleboard shop owner—and a once professional paddleboarder—he’s lean and muscular. He’s wearing a white tank top, revealing an assortment of tattoos on his biceps and forearms. I’ve chatted with him a dozen times in the three years I’ve been living in town, mostly when we were both taking out the trash. (Every time I saw him, he invited me to join him for “a paddle,” and I always said, “Soon, for sure.”)
I expected Cassie to be with him, for her to see me and to come bounding down the street, but she isn’t. When I don’t see her, my stomach immediately clenches.
What if Pete was joking? What if he didn’t have her? Or what if he had, but then she ran off again?
“Where is she?” I call desperately.
“Relax,” he says calmly. “She’s in the backyard.”
He leads me around to the fence, opens a gate, and pushes through. I hesitate for a nanosecond before following behind him. I’ve been in this backyard hundreds of times before. But not in over twenty-five years.
Pete walks a few steps, then points and says, “Something tripped my floodlights and I came out back and found her like this.”
Cassie is sitting back on her hind legs. She’s between two bushes and is staring at the fence an inch in front of her. Her entire face is covered in dirt. Her tongue hangs out the side of her mouth like a dead fish.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“She ate two of my mom’s pot brownies,” I explain to Pete.
He lets out a light laugh and says, “Ahh.” If he has questions or concerns, he keeps them to himself.
I walk gingerly to Cassie, get down on my haunches, and pet her. “Hey, girl.”
She turns her head slightly. Her eyes are big and glassy. She’s completely and utterly stoned.
I pick her up with a groan, cradling her under my arms.
“You want me to carry her over?” Pete asks, evidently aware of the strain Cassie’s sixty pounds is causing me.
“No, I got her.”
He leads me out of the backyard.
When I pass him, he asks, “Any chance you can send a few of those brownies my way?”
~
According to PetMD, dogs can get seriously sick from ingesting too much THC, but they have to eat much more than two brownies. More like an entire tray. As for the chocolate in the brownies, I wasn’t worried. When I was living in San Francisco, Avery left out a dish of holiday Hershey Kisses. Cassie ate about twenty of them and I totally freaked out, knowing chocolate can be a death sentence for dogs. But after consulting the Chocolate Toxicity Calculator on the internet (yes, this is a thing), at sixty pounds and having consumed three ounces of chocolate, I was assured Cassie would be fine. And she was. (Well, aside from a very festive, green, red, and gold poop the next day.)
After carrying Cassie back to the house, I set her on my bed. I rubbed her head and within a couple of minutes, she was asleep and snoring. I watched Netflix for a few hours, checking on Cassie’s breathing every few minutes. She woke a few hours later, still groggy, but she was able to drink some water and eat a few blueberries before zonking back out.
At this point, I popped over to the Winston’s to tell my parents Cassie was okay. My mother, understandably, felt awful and was profusely apologetic. My father was asleep, but my mother insisted he felt terrible as well.
“Water under the bridge,” I told her, though in the future, I expected her to be more careful with her pot. I also told her, “And as far as you and dad having an open marriage, if seeing other people makes you happy, then go for it.”
My own words stuck with me during the walk back across the street, stuck with me as I stroked Cassie’s head and ears, stuck with me as I ate two bologna sandwiches, and stuck with me as I sat down to my computer to give Chapter 12b another go.
If seeing other people makes you happy, then go for it.
Why couldn’t I shake these words?
Then I had an epiphany. My parents’ relationship and my relationship with writing wasn’t all that different. The only thing I’d ever written were these Pluto books. I’d been married to these characters since I first came up with them when I was twenty-one-years-old. I’ve been in a committed relationship with these characters for going on fifteen years.
But I want to see other people.
I click Edit, then I click Select All.
I take a deep breath and click Delete.
It feels good.
It makes me happy.
Chapter 7
“ESCAPE”
Hugo
Sara and Mom are at “swim practice.” I’m not sure why you have to practice swimming. (You just paddle your legs. It’s super easy!) I was a good swimmer. No, I was a great swimmer. Jerry used to call me “Michael Phelps,” though I’m not sure what this means. But he would always be smiling when he said it, so I guess it’s a good thing.
I’m hiding under the couch. I can see the bottom of the front door. I’m waiting for it to open and for Sara and Mom to walk through. That’s when I’m going to go.
I wait.
I wait.
I wait.
Rattle, rattle, rattle.
Creak.
The door opens. I see two shoes and two little bare
feet.
It’s hard for me not to run to Sara, to lean into her little legs and purr, to let her pick me up and give me all sorts of kisses. (It took me a couple of weeks to realize it, but Sara isn’t too bad. She smells good, she plays with me a lot, she gives great belly rubs, and she lets me sleep on a pillow right next to her head.)
I force myself to stay put.
Jerry, Cassie, Outside, the Lake.
Jerry, Cassie, Outside, the Lake.
Jerry, Cassie, Outside, the Lake.
If I stay, I will never see these things again.
There’s a soft thud above me and Mom says, “Sara! Don’t throw your towel on the couch.”
“But I have to pee,” Sara shrieks, then pitter-patters up the stairs.
“That girl,” Mom says. Her shoes move around to the back of the couch.
The door is open and I can see part of a car, the top of a skinny house, and gray sky.
This is my chance.
I dart from under the couch. I run as fast as my stupid little baby cat legs will go and zip out the door.
Mom must have seen me and yells, “Cheese!”
I scamper to the sidewalk and start down the hill. When I glance back the first time, Mom is running down the hill after me. Her face is all red. When I glance back a second time, she’s stopped and bent over at the waist, breathing hard.
I continue to run. There are cars lining the sidewalk all the way down the hill. And on the other side of these cars, is a long line of moving cars. I run down a hill, up a hill, then down another hill. Finally, after what seems like forever, the steep hill evens out. The street meets another street, a much wider street full of honking cars and people—lots and lots of people. On the other side of the street are buildings that shoot up high into the sky and are covered in windows. I’ve never seen so many buildings and people in one place.
“Hey!”
I turn my head.
It’s a man. Actually, it’s three men.
“Dude, it’s a kitten,” one of them says.
I feel my whiskers twitch.
Jerry?
No, all three men have too much hair to be Jerry. And they are all wearing these things around their necks. I’ve never seen Jerry wear one of these things. And none of them have blue eyes.