Cleaning House

It’s mother-daughter showdown time. Brenda must confront her daughter. On two counts. Number one, she’s losing her. Number two, she’s lost her pot, and her daughter’s the only one who knows where it is.

But first things first. It’s no good to have your daughter looking at you all the time as if you’re a criminal, as if you’re exactly what you shouldn’t be, as if you’ve disappointed her. No good at all.

Even in the few short meals the family has time to take together, Sheba manages to get in her digs. “Oh, you’ll do all right. You know how to make people believe you, even if you don’t believe yourself.” “Ms. Marshall thinks you’re great because you’re going to fight against vouchers, and keep kids in the schools where they belong.” “I’m so glad we’re not going to Wal-mart anymore. It’s such a tacky place, and we used to spend so much time there. Remember when everything we bought came from Wal-mart?”

So here we are, the inevitable knock on the door, if the parent has a conscience and the child has pricked it. “May I come in?”

Sheba’s blue and yellow room is a shrine to daughterdom. There are no posters here, no wisecracks on the wall, no questionable objects on the dresser tops, and nothing hidden in the drawers. Sheba is perfectly happy having the maid clean her room.

The maid’s name is Cara, and she’s an old Irish woman. Wagman refused to allow Brenda to hire an African-American, or any other currently significant ethnic. Nobody will care if an ancient Irish lady named Cara is on her hands and knees in Brenda’s bathroom scrubbing tiles. That’s the way Cara works. No fancy gadgetry. A bucket and a brush. “Soap and water,” she says. “It was good enough in the old country, it’s good enough here.” Not that Cara ever saw the old country, but she learned her profession at her grandmother’s knee. Her mother was lost at sea. Ran off with a sailor.

Brenda is no longer so happy having what’s known in domestic circles as “a treasure.” She’s afraid the treasure might conscientiously get down to the level of hidden stashes in her determination to rid the Shapiro home of dirt.

She sits down on the plump chair across from the bed where Sheba’s is sprawled in her pajamas, doing homework, though it’s only seven, and still light out. Brenda is determined to be everything Wagman won’t allow her to be on the campaign trail. Honest, forthright, frank – high-sounding words that fall glibly from the tongues of politicians.

Sheba looks up with a bored expression. She’s perfected the art of silence. She waits, a giant trap for all who break their word.

Brenda is not going to waste time playing games. “You’re unhappy with me,” she says. Sheba is taken aback. She’s expecting her mother’s version of the “only a child” lecture her father delivered after the concert. She says not a word, but her face is full of interest.

“You think I’m a hypocrite.” Sheba’s not about to contradict this, so she still has nothing to say,

“Well, dear daughter, you’re worse. You’re a liar. ”

“I am not.” (Indignantly.)

“Oh, yes you are. You lied your way into that concert.”

“I never told a lie.”

“You said Phil was Rowena’s cousin.”

“He is.”

“What makes you think that?”

Sheba searches her memory. She’s young and still has one. The professor hadn’t said Phil was her cousin. The two girls hadn’t talked. Phoenix had arranged it all, and spoken to both of them. He told them to stay out of touch, so as not to confuse things, and they had obeyed.

“Who is he then?”

“I see you haven’t looked at the webpage.”

“Webpage? What Webpage?”

“Phoenix Rising,” I believe he calls it now, clever boy.

“You read his webpage?” Sheba is aghast. She feels like she’s been hiding naked in a cave and someone has been looking in a back window all along. You’re right, caves don’t have back windows. That’s how sure she was that no one from the adult world would penetrate the privacy of their kid communication system.

“We all do. It’s public property. Anybody can. Anybody does. A good thing to remember.”

Sheba’s excellent memory is making her blush, now that she reads over in her mind what her mother has been reading. Her mother has been spying on her. On them.

“Go ahead.” She nods towards Sheba’s laptop. “Take a look.”

Sheba doesn’t want to show any interest, but this goes beyond interest. She’s compelled. She squiggles down to the end of her bed, grabs her laptop from the bench at the bottom where it’s plugged in for the night, and calls up the site.

Scrolls down past the opening splash – a big, dark-red bird flying out of a fiery sun, and next up, a picture of Phil. But he looks different. He’s wearing a suit and tie and getting an award from the Free Marijuana Party, which is not an invitation to a dope-smoking gathering, but an organization dedicated to legalizing it.

Phil looks damned good, and a lot older, thinks Sheba. Wow! She went out with him. He wasn’t the professor’s cousin. He really was her date. Wow!

Wow! Wow! Wow! “Only a child”, huh? Would “only a child” be going to a concert with a man who won an award? Phil was a man. She thought about it. No, Phil was a kid, suit or no suit. A kid who got an award for promoting pot.

But her mother was still talking. “And I have another surprise for you. But first, answer me this: Do you really want me to be honest? Do you want to know the truth, no matter what it is?”

Sheba was repelled by the way it was put. It sounded threatening. It was threatening. But she had to say yes. It was the only answer.

“Yes.”

“That stash you found. It isn’t your father’s. It’s mine.”

A discombobulated daughter reassesses her mom.

There ensued a mother-daughter conversation in which mother did all the talking about her younger days and how everybody did it, it was no big deal, even the teachers did it, some of them before school – one of them in an abandoned janitorial supply closet, people drove down the street smoking, lit up at concerts, whole clouds of smoke would envelope the audience, you didn’t even have to take a toke, department stores sold bongs.

For once in the history of mother monologues, daughter was all ears, as her elder rolled out a world she could hardly imagine.

“But now,” Brenda said when she was through, “we have to get rid of it.”

“We?”

“Yes, ‘we’. I don’t remember where it is.”

For a second or so, Sheba stares at her mother. She bursts out laughing.

Then she whispers, “It’s in back of Dad’s closet.”

Brenda looks off into space, her mouth slightly agape.

“Oooh, yes. I remember!” Such a good hiding place. No one would think of looking behind all those old shoes. Not good enough, obviously. “Well, my partner in crime – it will be worse for me than for you if we get caught with it – we have to get rid of it.”

“We could flush it.”

“No, no. I don’t want to do anything like that. It will turn up someday. Maybe someday soon. The septic system could go… no. I want it out of here.”

“We could bury it.”

“For God sakes no. Dogs love the stuff. I knew someone who buried a pound of homegrown in his backyard. His dog dug it up and ate as much as he could, then he dragged the rest around to the front steps, and fell asleep on it. No. We have to get it off the property.”

The two ladies sit thinking.

“We could give it to Phoenix,” Sheba offers as a joke.

Brenda laughs. Then she says, “We can. He’s the only person I know who would burn it up, no questions asked. And if he were asked, he’d never tell the truth. You can count on that.”

Sheba thinks her mother has lost her mind, but it’s such a cool move.

Preparations for the potlatch begin. They open the door quietly and tiptoe into Brenda and Jason’s room, go to Jason’s closet, and Sheba, going way to the back of the wall-long construction, retrieves the little box.

They don’t open it. They scurry back to Sheba’s room. Sheba quickly throws on jeans and a sweatshirt. They breeze past the living room where their men are shouting at a sporting event. “Have to pick up some things,” Brenda says. “I’m taking Sheba with me.”

Jason doesn’t take his eyes off the TV, but an arm comes up and waves her away. He’s good at this. He doesn’t even say, “Be home by twelve.” He isn’t quite aware they’re leaving. He’s no problem.

They get into the Smart Car. On this ride together, they’re all jabber. Sheba is telling her mother about the concert. Brenda is telling killer stories of her own. They’re having fun. They’ve forgotten all about the pot Sheba has stashed – we won’t say where; that would be snooping.

Then “Ohmigod!” Our Brenda is back in the here and now. In her rear view mirror is a police car!

She automatically slows to precisely the 30 mile speed limit. The police car is definitely following her. It slows when she slows, speeds up when she speeds up. After what must be nearly a minute, the flashing lights go on and there’s one loud digital bark. She pulls over. The police car pulls in behind her.

The lights are still flashing. There’s a spotlight in her back window. In her mirror, she sees the officer get out. He’s coming toward her, gradually getting bigger in the mirror. With each step, there’s less of him there, and all of a sudden there’s nothing but a gun belt filling up the window.

Her heart is beating so hard she can’t hear. Her fingers are grasping the leather steering wheel.

A young, good-looking face replaces the gun belt in the window.

“Hey ma’am, I recognized you! You’re the Democratic candidate for congress. And that’s your daughter Sheba next to you. Pleased to meet you.

But mostly ma’am, I’ve got to admit, I wanted to see the inside of this cute little car. Never saw the inside of one before.” He bends way down to peer in. His face is so close to Brenda’s she could kiss it, or slap it. But he isn’t looking at her. He’s scanning the car. Then he stands up.

“Very nice, ma’am. Very nice. I’m thinking of getting one.”

Once again, only the gun belt is visible. Then a hand with a wallet appears, and the other hand takes out a fifty dollar bill and hands it to Brenda.

The head comes back down. “I’ll bet this is the first time money ever went in this direction on the highway,” he says. “Please take this. My contribution to the campaign. And thanks for the peek at your interior.”

“Ohmigod,” Brenda sighs when he leaves. “A human policeman.” She turns on the key.

Suddenly the officer is back. Is he going to search the car? Was he looking for something after all?

The head comes into the window. “Say, where are you two going, anyway?”

Brenda is speechless. Sheba leans across her mother and says, “I’m delivering something personal to a friend.” Phoenix has been alerted that something is coming – he doesn’t know what, but he’s meeting them down at the end of the semi-circular drive.

The police officer says, “Well, ladies, I just got an idea. How would you like a police escort?” He’s grinning ear to ear. He’s thrilled with the thought of escorting the candidate.

Brenda finds her voice. “Oh, no, thank you. Thank you very much, but we’ll be fine. We don’t need a police escort.”

“Come on, now,” the officer cajoles. He’s a pretty boy, used to getting his way with women. And he’s a cop. “Just tell me where you’re going, and I’ll have you there in a jiffy.”

The ladies are clams.

“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to tell me where you’re going?” He knows he’s scaring them now. They both blurt out the address.

“Well now, that’s better.” He’s back to the grin again. That always gets them. “Here we go now. Just follow me, as fast as you can in that little tub of yours.”

And now you know the true story of why the Democratic candidate and her daughter wailed up to the Wagman compound and how Phoenix Wagman received two ounces of weak, old-timey marijuana, not only in full view of, but aided and abetted by one of America’s finest.

And in case you’re interested in such things, I should report that when she got home, Sheba had a text message from the cop. We won’t read it; that too would be snooping.