Note to readers: This is a long snippet from a work-in-progress, combining failed entrepreneurship, failed romance, and mother-daughter competition into a too-weird-to-make-this-shit-up memoir.
Prolonged anxiety has a tendency to make me sleepy, and I was in the midst of a troubled nap when I heard the doorbell ring. I stumbled off my futon, which rested on the floor underneath a mound of blankets. I kicked all of the blankets aside, including my favorite quilt, a paisley down number riddled by small holes caused by flying, flaming pot seeds. I loved that quilt, which my father had given me only two years beforehand, when I still lived in Madison. Now it was 1983, and I was living in Chicago in one of those apartment buildings that sadistic urban planners had erected directly beside a busy el station. Because of this obvious disadvantage, and to facilitate the arrival of responsible renters, the building's owner had remodeled the apartment to within an inch of its life—including track lighting, two huge and fully functional fireplaces, and an island kitchen that faced the tracks. For the past two weeks, I had shared the apartment with two men, Dirk and Ken, neither of whom interested me even remotely. Dirk was a wood-worker, graphic artist and alcoholic who would have been more at home in the wilds of Arkansas—except for the fact that he had been raised by wealthy parents in Wilmette—and Ken was an alcoholic high school buddy of Dirk's. Although Ken seemed incredibly stupid, he had a surprising affinity for Miles Davis, and owned every commercially released recording that Miles had ever made. He often stayed up past the break of dawn in a stupor, drinking and intently listening to “Bitches Brew.”. Occasionally, his attention was diverted by a sudden urge to grope drunkenly at me or some friend of mine, but these efforts were always met with derision.
The most horrible thing about Ken was his treatment of his two stunted white German shepherd puppies, who had spent most of their young lives barricaded in the kitchen. Ken's drinking schedule kept him busy until at least 6 AM, after which he collapsed into bed until roughly 3 in the afternoon.. During this extended sleep period, his two dogs—imaginatively named “Whitey” and “Snow”--spent their time in the kitchen, with a limited amount of food and water, and no access to a yard. We didn't really have a yard—our back door opened directly underneath the el tracks. Dirk and I had tripped on mushrooms behind our building only two weeks beforehand, after Dirk had scored a fabulous rent deal on the apartment. We sat in the snow at two in the morning, and waved at people as they climbed the stairs to the platform, welcoming them to our yard. Most of them found it funny, or so it seemed through our psilocybin goggles. All three of us were in our early twenties; we had no need for a yard anyway.
The doorbell rang twice more before I reached the front door. I knew exactly who it was; the very source of my anxiety. The door had a couple of locks on it, and a curtained window—through that window, I could make out the gaunt form of my mother, a cigarette in one hand, and a dark, bulging garbage sack in the other. “Hurry UP!” she implored me through the glass. “It's fucking cold out here! How in the hell can you live in weather like this?!”
Polly was conveniently forgetting that she had spent her first forty-eight years in the Midwest, until a series of cataclysmic events—including the suicide of my stepfather—had caused her to flee for a warmer climate. Though her decision to move to Mexico after Gil's death had seemed insane on the surface, it actually made a certain amount of pragmatic good sense. With her monthly social security check and VA benefits, she was able to rent an attractive hacienda with maid service in San Miguel de Allende. Still, when the money was gone, it was gone until the first of the following month, and there could be a long stretch of time in between, when cash was scarce.
My mother sought to bridge that gap with the contents of her garbage sack, which she triumphantly hauled into my living room as soon as the door was open. She hurled the sack onto the floor as if it were a dead antelope. “This is a half pound”, she announced. “Extremely fresh—harvested just last week. Cured in crème de menthe.” She opened the sack, which had not been secured by so much as a twist tie. “Smell” she commanded me.
I took a quick, apprehensive sniff. Sure enough, I could detect an overpowering odor of mint, mixed with the trademark, herbal scent. “There's hardly any seeds” my mother announced proudly, as if she had just given birth to the contents of the sack. “And there are nine more sacks just like them, waiting outside in the spare gas tank.”
My mother had warned me a couple of months earlier that I should expect such a visit from her, but I honestly thought she was joking. Although her enterprenuerial drive was undeniably strong, her ability to act upon her schemes was spotty, at best. Even when she announced that she had purchased an old Chinook camper, with a handy spare gas tank, I felt certain that she intended to use it for camping. My mother was a terrible camper—she camped with the family out of a grim sense of maternal obligation, combined with a stubborn refusal to spend money on a motel—but I still did not believe that she truly intended to haul ten pounds of high-grade marijuana across the Mexican border.
Three days earlier, she had called me from a pay phone in Laredo, Texas, announcing that she had made it across the border, without so much as a second glance from the guards, and was headed in my direction. Could I call all of my friends, and let them know she was on her way? Did I know anyone who was interested in a few pounds of killer Mexican pot?
The question, of course, was not whether I knew anyone who was interested in a few pounds of pot—all of my friends would be extremely interested—but whether I knew anyone who could afford to buy more than a dime bag at one time. I stared at the garbage bag, and tried to mentally calculate how many months it would take us to sell even the contents of that container. There were sixteen ounces in a pound; I remembered this from grade school. Therefore, half a pound equalled eight ounces, and a dime bag was slightly less than a quarter of an ounce. My mind began to bend over backwards upon itself; I was too terrified to be able to calculate. Math has never been my forte anyway.
“Where's your roommates?” my mother demanded. “I'm gonna need some help bringing those bags inside.” As if on cue, Ken's bedroom door opened, slowly at first, then with increasing velocity as he took note of the new addition to the living room. It had been a late night for Ken; he had finally made it to bed around 8:00 AM, and, although it was already dark outside, he had just awakened. Ken tottered slightly on his knobby, oversized feet, and pushed a hunk of greasy hair out of his eyes with his fists. He blinked, and then blinked again. “Is that what I think it is?' he asked, gaping at the open bag.
Ken was so astonished that he did not indulge in his usual waking ritual of staring into the kitchen at the numerous excretions left by his dogs. This ritual always made Ken profoundly unhappy, since the kitchen floor was literally coated with a layer of feces and urine. The dogs, upon hearing Ken's voice, ran to a corner of the kitchen and cowered there, anticipating their master's hangover-fueled rage. Ken was prone to discipling his dogs violently, while screaming such phrases as “I can't BELIEVE it! Piss and shit—every day!” This would have been hilarious if the scene weren't so hideous. The beatings would continue unabated until either Dirk and I put a stop to them by yelling, “Ken! That's ENOUGH, man!” Ken would then drop whatever dog he'd been working on, and stare at us with a sheepish expression on his face.
The dogs whimpered in the corner and then began to thrash their tails around wildly, amazed by the fact that they had miraculously escaped a beating. For once, Ken was focusing his early-evening attention on something other than retribution. “Jesus”, Ken said, still rubbing his eyes. “That's the most reefer I've seen in my entire life.” He did not look happy. “There's nine more bags”, my mother said, loudly. “You're a strong man, right?” Her eyes darted around the apartment for a frantic moment, then she asked, “You got an ashtray? I wouldn't want to get ash on the floor. Not that it would matter. It might actually be an improvement.” I easily located an ashtray, and shoved it in her direction. Relaxing slightly, my mother continued, “You've got another roommate, right? Where's he? The job will go faster with two guys.”
From long experience, I knew that when my mother ordered a person to do something, that individual would almost always comply. It was easier than listening to a long diatribe filled with a strange mixture of gutter-level profanities and bizarre literary allusions. My mother had never finished college, but she possessed an imperious certainty that she was intellectually superior to everyone—a trait I both loathed and admired.
“Dirk?” I called out, tentatively. “My mother is here. She wants to meet you.”
Dirk pushed open his door and entered the living room. I had warned him of my mother's imminent arrival, and he was neither pleased nor surprised. Dirk was also nursing a hangover, but unlike Ken, he possessed gainful employment, and usually arose at a reasonable hour. To facilitate his timely awakening, Dirk had requested the bedroom closest to the el tracks. Every morning, his alarm clock rang promptly at seven-thirty. It continued to ring, punctuated by the shrieking sounds of the el train rounding the curve outside his window, until I pounded on his door and screamed at him to get his ass out of bed. This process usually took no less than half an hour—I had a job in Evanston, working as an intern at a Montessori school, so I was always up early. Often, I functioned on less than three hours of sleep, but I possessed a grim, Germanic sense of responsibility, which made it possible for me to drink beer until four in the morning, and still be up by seven.
“You must be Polly”, Dirk said laconically, extending a filthy hand. Dirk had been enmeshed in his woodworking project, a bust of a rather demonic-looking troll. “Leah has told me so much about you.” He snickered slightly, and my mother stared at him, trying to gauge the reasons for his amusement. “I'm sure she has” she said, drily.
Polly paused for a moment, tossed her cigarette into the ashtray. “Gentlemen, I have a problem” she announced. “I have ten pounds of marijuana in my truck. It needs to be brought inside—now. The truck is parked underneath the el tracks; I'm not sure whether that is legal.”
What a strange grip upon reality my mother had—she had driven two thousand miles, across two nations, with more pot than most people see in a lifetime, and she was worried about having to pay a parking ticket. I waited for Dirk and Ken to snap into gear; they did not. It hadn't quite dawned on them that they were being recruited to haul garbage sacks out of my mother's truck, in full view of the evening's commuters, and house the bags in our apartment for an indefinite period of time.
Both of them wandered, in a daze, out the back door, towards the camper. Another couple of minutes later, the first four sacks arrived, and then four more, and finally, my mother herself entered the apartment again, carrying the last bag. The sight of ten garbage bags stuffed with buds in the middle of my living room floor filled me with a strange combination of glee and fear. “I can't believe you got all of those sacks inside the spare tank”, I said. I was being invaded by a growing horror. I knew no one who would have the faintest idea what to do with the contents of those sacks. It was preposterous, as far from the exact opposite as it could possibly be from my usual state of affairs, drug-wise. It was the first time in my life that I'd ever seen too much pot, accustomed as I was to scraping for dime bags of the cheap stuff. Chicago was a very financially-stratified city, and I was not in touch with anyone who made significantly more money than I did.
Off the top of my head, I was only able to think of about ten friends who were in imminent need of marijuana, a group whose combined worth was about two hundred dollars. Of those ten, two lived under the same roof as I, and the others were unlikely to be home at 6 PM on a Friday, even if it was the dead of winter. I ran to the phone and began dialing frantically.
The first person I called was Pablo, a friend from Artist in Residence, a building I had just vacated in favor of my current living arrangement. Often referred to lovingly as “Alcoholics in Retirement”, the AIR building housed some of the most interesting people I had ever met, including Professor Eddie from the Mighty Joe Young blues band, Bethany, a former Miss Chicago (who, close-up, had a severe acne problem), and a transvestite named Flash who performed in local clubs with chains and garbage can lids.
Pablo was a budding pianist, who would often play the theme from Snoopy when we were hosting parties in the downstairs performance space. This was appropriate, because his personality was quite similar to Schroeder's—he was melancholy and easily irritated, traits that never fail to attract my attention.
“She really did it” Pablo declared. “Well, I might be able to spring for a quarter—just to help you out. And to meet your mom. I think it might explain a lot of things about you.”
I did not care to delve too deeply into the similarities between Polly and me. Such a distinction had been made many times, although it was usually followed by the statement, “Well, you seem calmer and more reasonable.” The fact was that my mother had such an overpowering personality that it was impossible not to have it rub off on you. I had spent most of my early adulthood attempting to purge myself of my mother's influence, and I resented her for it. It didn't help matters any that she expected my idiot roommates and me to be accomplices in her drug trade.
Pablo assured me that he would be there in an hour. I furiously dialed my other friends, most of whom still lived at the Artist in Residence building. My old next-door neighbor, Brad, told me that it would take him a couple of hours, and he would only be able to spring for a dime bag. This was typical of him. We had had an affair the previous summer, which started one night when we drunkenly began to enact a scene from “Cat's Cradle”--a book neither of us had actually read. We were intrigued by the idea that people could make love by pressing the soles of their feet together, and finally, having lusted after each other every night for a week, we decided to see what would happen if we tried boko-maru for ourselves. The results were surprisingly positive, and I had hoped for much more, but Brad already had a girlfriend.
Brad also had a hot Camaro that I secretly admired, since I was more a Volkswagen van sort of gal. Dirk had a Volkswagen van, which he could barely drive, but this held no interest for me at all. I had ridden beside Brad in his Camaro only a couple of times, but it was a thrilling experience. Brad was accustomed to driving his own automobile, so the experience definitely had more meaning for me than it did for him. This precisely summed up the balance of power between the two of us—he had what I considered to be an unfair advantage. The last time I had seen Brad had been only a month beforehand, when he made a surprise appearance at my twenty-fifth birthday party. I asked him for a birthday ride in his Camaro, but he refused, saying that he had to get up early in the morning for work. I wasn't sure what had prompted him to show up in the first place, despite long, frustrating experience in trying to second-guess his motives.
