38. Thirty-eight
Thirty-eight
Veda is in the sunroom sitting in a wicker chair when I return from taking everyone else home.
She pulls her chin back, looking at me.
“Your friends are mostly insane, Birdie,” she says with a laugh-infused sigh. “That Mabel?” She shakes her head, as if trying to make sense of it. “What was her profession in life?”
I feign seriousness, explaining, “She was a nun until she left in her thirties.” As I say it, I realize I don’t know what she did after that. I can’t believe I’ve never thought to ask.
Veda almost smiles—like admiration. “Good for her.”
Then we’re quiet as we clean, because she’s right. Because, good for her. Mabel is Mabel, but she’s also who she wants to be. Unapologetically. It’s a gift, when I think about it. A sunflower growing in a field of daisies.
When we’re done cleaning, we sit in the two wicker chairs tucked in the corner of the studio .
She looks good today, strong. “How are you feeling?”
“I need your help with something,” she says, dodging my question. She digs into her pocket and pulls out a wad of paper.
No.
A rolled paper.
No.
A slender tube with a twist on the end.
“A joint ?” I ask, stunned.
“My doctor said it might help with some of the pain I’m feeling and with my appetite.” She fumbles to roll the joint between her fingertips. “I need you to show me how to do it.”
“What?! How would I know what to do?!” My voice raises in pitch. “I’ve never smoked anything in my life, how the hell would I know that?!”
Her eyes narrow at me as she waves the joint around. “You do all this healthy stuff, I figured you’d know!”
“Me?!” I laugh incredulously. “You’re the potter! Isn’t that, like, in the job requirement to do drugs?”
Her eyes widen, as if that’s a ridiculous stereotype, and she huffs out an annoyed breath. “Fine. You don’t know how to do drugs and I don’t know how to do drugs, but I want you to show me how to smoke this.” She catches my look of you’ve got to be kidding me before saying, “We can look it up on your fancy phone or something.”
My eyes slide from the joint in her hand to her face.
“Isn’t this bad for you? ”
She barks out a laugh. “Birdie, I’m dying of cancer, sweetheart. Who gives a damn?”
It’s a valid point.
I look at the joint again. Then her. Then the joint.
“You don’t have to do it, just help me light it and show me what to do.”
I groan. “Fine.” Then add, “But you can never tell Bo I helped you get stoned.”
She waves the joint around dismissively. “Bo smoked enough pot in high school to fuel the entire West Coast, but your secret is safe with me.”
My eyes widen, and my chin jerks back; again, she laughs.
With another sigh, I pull out my phone, searching how to smoke marijuana .
“Is it even in your mouth?”
Her pinched fingers tremble around it as she mumbles something I don’t understand through her joint-pursed lips.
“The video said you have to take a long inhale and it will light the end. Are you sucking?” I press the button on the lighter—again—so the flame burns at the end.
Veda makes some blowing motion around the joint before pulling it out of her mouth. “You have to start it Birdie, I can’t,” she says, shoving the joint toward me.
“Me?” I gasp. “Do you know how harmful that stuff is? ”
“Do you?” she demands.
I hate that it’s a legitimate question because I have no idea. Picking up my phone again, I type harmful side effects of marijuana .
If the government is monitoring me, they will have a field day with this.
“Aha!” I shout, scrolling down my phone as I read the response. “Marijuana is considered relatively safe when used appropriately,” I begin, frowning when she laughs and says, “See!”
“Wait—there’s more—short-term impaired memory and cognition can occur, slower reaction times, altered judgment.” I raise my eyebrows at her like See? before continuing, “And! And!” I point my finger into the air, raising my voice with excited conviction. “Prolonged use can irritate the lungs and lead to bronchitis!”
I smile proudly, as if I’ve said something damning.
Veda rolls her eyes. “Birdie, it’s one joint, it won’t give you bronchitis.” She pauses, narrows her eyes, then, “I’m dying, you can’t deny a dying woman her wish.”
My nostrils flare. Because of all the things to say, she seems to be forgetting the wish I am keeping.
I glare at her. The audacity of this woman. The damn nerve.
She opens her mouth to argue, but before she can, I snatch the joint out of her hand, pinch it between my lips, and flick the lighter on.
Flame to the end, I take a slow, deep inhale, like I watched on the video.
Instead of the controlled, easy exhale, it’s a jagged, fire-filled, hack .
“There,” I say, between coughs, holding the lit joint out to her. “And stop using your expiration date to bully me into things.”
She laughs, struggling to pinch her fingers around the joint.
“I’ll hold it.” I lift it to her mouth.
She takes a short, gentle inhale, followed by a cough, waving her hand through the smoke in front of her.
“How do we know if it’s working?” she asks.
“We get bronchitis,” I deadpan.
“The guy on your phone said we need to take a few hits.” She ignores me, looking at the joint in my hand. “Maybe we need to smoke the whole thing or something?”
I don’t know enough about it, nor do I have it in me to argue with her.
“Fine.”
I take another drag, which stings like poison ivy being shoved down my throat, before holding it up to her lips again.
“What will you do when Mandy comes back?” she asks through her next cough.
I nearly drop the joint from shock and my jaw goes slack at the mention of Bo’s wife.
“Well?” she demands, voice stern.
“I don’t know, I haven’t thought about it.” My vague I don’t want to talk about this response isn’t good enough because she raises her eyebrows at me, letting me know we are talking about it. “I guess I would let him figure it out. She is Lucy’s mom. His wife. I’m nothing, not really.” My mind wanders to everything we’ve done and how opposite of nothing it really feels. I know he loves me; I believe him every time he says it, but I don’t know if he loves me because he does or because Mandy isn’t here.
“And if you get cancer?” she asks while I take another drag.
My eyebrows pinch through my next smoke-filled cough. “Where is this coming from?”
“What are you going to do with Bo if you get cancer?” she repeats, this time punctuating each word.
In the skunk-scented haze, I’m quiet. Thinking. Imagining the likely scenario that I have a million times: me getting cancer. Dying. But now, there’s Bo. And Lucy. And hopefully Huck.
“I’d let him be there with me until I couldn’t,” I say. When I pause, she nods, just slightly. “Like you, I wouldn’t want him to see me at the worst—any of them. If he was with me, I’d figure out a way to go, I think. To force him to remember me differently.”
I expect to see a look of understanding on her face, but instead it’s something else. Annoyance, almost.
“You’d die alone?”
I scoff. “Aren’t you?” When I raise my eyebrows it earns me a withering glare that pulls a laugh out of me.
She huffs—frustrated—and waves her hand in the air, as if dismissing my words. “Well don’t take all day, Birdie,” she snaps. “Let me try smoking this thing again and see if I get it right this time.”
I shake my head in disbelief, like we weren’t just having the strangest conversation, and once again lift the joint to her lips.
Veda and I, two women who have never smoked pot, smoke nearly an entire joint while sitting in her sunroom pottery studio at three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon .
I know we don’t smoke an entire joint, because when Bo finds us, sitting in smoke and repeatedly asking each other if the other feels anything, he takes the remainder of the joint out of my hand, dumbfounded.
“Are you two high?” he asks, eyes wide.
“No!” I say, lying. I know I’m stoned. My teeth and fingertips tingle like they’ve fallen asleep while my eyelids cut through my line of sight.
He chuckles, takes one hit as his eyes stay hooked on mine, and says, “Wow,” tightly out of the side of his mouth. His exhale is smooth and controlled, like a villain on TV would do, with a slight cough that he makes look cool. Like I just watched his mouth make love to that joint.
As someone who never went through a bad-girl phase or did anything remotely considered dangerous, somehow, Bo smoking pot is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed.
“If I ever get cancer, I’m doing this every day,” I say dreamily, staring at him.
Veda takes a sharp inhale next to me, and Bo’s eyes narrow as he takes another smooth hit before smashing it out in a piece of Veda’s pottery.
I open my mouth, weed-lubricated enough to confess everything, but Veda intercepts with a clipped, “Don’t be so dramatic, Birdie!” She pins me with an angry stoned look. “You know all it takes is arthritis to get you high.”
“They gave you this for arthritis?” Bo asks incredulously with a small laugh .
My nervous eyes tunnel to her narrowed ones for a split second. Then, as if she doesn’t have secret cancer, a loud cackle steals the moment. Her cackle. She laughs so long and loud it turns quiet, wheezy, and tear-filled.
“Get it, Birdie?” she says, giggling.
I don’t get it at all, which is apparently hilarious, because whatever I start to say next comes out like a snort. I laugh so hard my stomach aches like I spent three hours doing crunches. I bend over in my chair, wheezing, tears dripping down my face.
“Bo, I—Bo, I—B—” I can’t complete a sentence through my cackle-filled gasps. What I want to say to him, I have no clue, but even his name is too funny to finish.
He shakes his head, amused look on his handsome face as his hair falls to the front of his ears.
I want to touch him.
My laughing turns abruptly to silent staring. He’s wearing a thick flannel today and he looks like a cozy fireplace on a chilly night that I’d like to jump inside of.
Then I wonder.
What if…
What if the reason that everything happened in my life, and all the Birdie Roses before me, was because I was meant to know Bo now? A plan that had been set into motion generations before. Maybe with the first people.
What if the universe did this in collusion with the moon and sun and sta—
“Birdie? ”
I shake my head, Bo kneeling in front of me with a smirk on his lips.
“Sorry.” I push my heavy eyes open wider. “I didn’t hear you.”
He chuckles, tucking loose strands of hair behind my ears. “How far away did you fly?”
I hum out a laugh. Because far.
He rubs a palm on the side of my face, and I lean into it. His hand is my favorite pillow.
“You okay?”
“I accidentally got high with Gran.” I close my eyes, rubbing my cheek against his callused palm.
His chest rumbles with a laugh as he leans forward, whispering, “I love you,” in my ear.
I don’t know if it’s the weed or his words, but my heart becomes a warm fountain spreading heat through my entire body.
His warmth is contagious.
I look at him, his lips, and lick my own.
He’s just so perf—
“Birdie, stop licking your chops over my grandson.” Veda’s sharp voice interrupts my thoughts as she pats my knee before standing up.
I forgot she was here.
Bo laughs, and I narrow my eyes. “I’m not licking my chops,” I say defensively.
Twisted hand in the air, “Whatever you want to call it then, stop doing it,” she says sharply. “We have a cock to get ready for the kiln.”
Then, like she wasn’t just being stern, she laughs again .
So do I.
And so does Bo.
An hour later, the three of us make chocolate chip cookies in Gran’s kitchen with organic flour that I snuck into her pantry.
For the rest of the day I forget—Veda has cancer.