“I AM A FAILURE as a wife and mother,” Mary Beth announced, not for the first time, as we lurched across Barrington Street. I grabbed her arm to keep her from stumbling on the curb, and winced as a bolt of pain shot through my shoulder.
“You are not a failure,” I said, leaning into her for balance and thinking of my sullen, beautiful Joey, home alone on his computer with a can of Pringles for company. I rubbed my shoulder and kept walking.
“In-need, in, indeed I am.” Mary Beth stood still, swaying slightly with her index finger pointed skyward as though to prove her slurred point. “My husband left me five years ago. My daughter is a foul-mouthed teenaged shit. Ergo, I am a failure.” She blinked twice behind wire-rimmed glasses, her green eyes dazed by drink.
“No, no,” I replied, with a passing thought to my own slowed tongue. The fourth Black Russian I had just drained off at Smithwick’s Pub had been perhaps one too many. “You are simply drunk, Mary Beth. Your husband left you be, because he is a shit. Your daughter is merely foul-mouthed.”
For a moment we looked at each other. Mary Beth’s upper lip was a darker hue than the lower, her lipstick having rubbed off earlier in the evening on a martini glass. I had the vague thought that I had just made an insensitive remark, until her dark upper lip twitched. We burst out laughing, loud guffaws of the sort we were capable of bringing about only in each other and which sent us both over to lean against the grey stone cathedral wall.
“Ouch,” I erupted, as the not-yet-familiar pain seized my collarbone. Soon I would have to learn my way around it, much the same as I had learned my way around other, bigger pains in my life. The shoulder sprain was still young, only a day old from my having walked into the door to the school gym while lecturing a student about back-talk. For now I was contented to drink this particular pain down the drain.
“You oughta be more careful, Donna.” Mary Beth’s eyebrows furrowed. I nodded, and we kept walking, our feet plodding one before the other.
“My feet are cold,” I commented, thinking that sandals hadn’t been the wisest choice on an October evening. “And you know it is I who is the failure.”
“Am the failure,” Mary Beth said helpfully.
“I are the failure. Ha!” I guffawed at my own joke. “Thank you for confirming my sush, my suspicions. It is I whose son has dropped out of school to follow his Internet ad, adit, addictions, and whose husband has left her for a chubby blonde. Let me be the failure tonight.”
“Well, all right. But first you need to learn some grammar, for chrissake.”
“Right, then, so go ahead and learn me some grammar, teacher-lady!” I was becoming breathless from walking on an incline. Bloody Halifax and its bloody hills. A Bloody Mary might help, but I was distracted from the thought by my frozen toes. “My feet are cold,” I added.
“What you need is another drink,” Mary Beth said. “And then your feet will not be cold. You know.”
We kept walking, and I considered her words. I had four dollars and fifty-three cents in my pocket. Not enough for another drink.
“Besides,” she continued, “we are celebrating, are we not?”
“Yes, we are, in fact, celebrating,” I agreed. “Wait, what are we celebrating?”
Mary Beth fixed me with a wild stare and held an imaginary glass aloft. “We are celebrating your indush – christ. Your induction to the club!”
“To my induction,” I cried, raising my own imaginary glass.
“You, Donna, are almost, almost inducted to the official teacher-ladies-dumped-by-shit-husbands club!”
“And for that,” I wheezed, “damn these hills. For that, we need a drink.”
“No!” Mary Beth stopped suddenly, standing ramrod straight. “What we need is something special. What we need is a joint.”
I stared at her, then giggled. “The last time I smoked up was, was twenty years ago, on the night Joey was conceived,” I said.
“And the last time I did it was on my wedding night. Fat lot of good it did,” Mary Beth spat the words.
We stopped by the library and sat on the concrete wall surrounding it. Yellow pools of light fell away from the streetlights, reflecting off the bronze back of Winston Churchill. His hands, clasped behind him, assumed greater proportions than usual in the weak light. Couples strolled past us, cars came and went, and on the lawn behind us a few clumps of teenagers hung around. Standing alone near the entrance to the library was a young guy in a black hoodie and torn jeans, tall and slight of build. His arms were crossed and his head moved to the beat of whatever was pounding through his ear buds.
“Think he’s a dealer?” Mary Beth whispered, giving a nod in his direction, her breath a boozy puff.
“Could be,” I said. I was not, however, going to be the one to start a conversation with some guy in a hoodie.
“Let’s go talk to him, see if he’s a dealer.”
“And say what?” I had no desire to approach a stranger about purchasing illicit substances. I’d have said as much if I could have trusted my drunken tongue to wrap itself around all those syllables, but I couldn’t, so stayed quiet.
“Ask if he’s got any grass, that’s what.” Mary Beth looked once again in the guy’s direction.
“You don’t just ask, do you?”
My dearest friend in the world looked at me as though I were a dolt.
“Well, how do you think you get it, then?” she asked.
“You, well, you wait until someone hands you a joint at a party,” I said. Mary Beth snorted and brought her hand to her mouth.
“I know. Me too,” she squealed from behind her hand. “I’ve never actually bought the stuff.”
We sat a few more minutes, watching people go by, until the creeping cold from the concrete wall got the better of us.
“He still there?” Mary Beth asked, rubbing her chilly behind.
“Yeah,” I said, filled with sudden resolve. “I’m gonna ask him.”
“You can’t!” I winced and groaned as Mary Beth grabbed, and then let go my sprained shoulder. “Oh, sorry,” she said, patting me on the arm. “But you just can’t.”
“Now who’s got cold feet?” I asked. She raised her hands in denial and turned away as though looking at something interesting down the street. I left her standing by the wall as I strode over to the guy in the hoodie. The sound of her rushing footsteps followed me, and I stopped before the guy.
“Excuse me,” I said in far too loud a voice, “would you happen to know where we can get some grass?”
He unfolded his arms and pulled out his earbuds, then looked around.
“You mean weed?” he asked, his eyes moving from my face to Mary Beth’s and then to several points beyond us. A stubble too faint to be a goatee surrounded his thin lips like mist.
“Uh, sorry, yeah. Weed,” I said, trying but failing to ignore the flush burning my cheeks. “Got any?”
“Jesus, Donna, keep your voice down,” Mary Beth said, her own voice high and giggly.
“I might know a guy,” he said quietly.
I reached in my purse and pulled out my four dollars and fifty-three cents.
“How much can I buy with this?” I asked in a much lower voice. The guy looked at my collection of loonies and change, frowned in disbelief, then raised an eyebrow and grinned.
“You serious? None. Half a joint, maybe.”
“Damned inflation,” I said, my face burning. “Listen, I have no idea what I’m doing, here. Help me out.”
“How much do you want?” the guy asked, still grinning. “How ’bout an eighth?”
“How much does an eighth cost? I’ll go to the bank machine.” I felt more foolish by the word. He told me how much, and I grabbed Mary Beth and we rushed toward the bank at the corner. She was laughing so hard she couldn’t speak.
“What the hell’s an eighth,” I muttered. By now I was tingling with nerves. “And what’s so funny?”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” she whisper-squealed, once again grabbing my arm and this time causing me to cry out in pain. I yanked the money from the ATM slot.
“What are you waiting for?” Mary Beth asked, her eyes bright with adventure. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“Should we be doing this?” I asked.
“Induction to the club,” Mary Beth said slowly, as though speaking to a six-year-old. “Let’s go.”
I looked at the money in my hand and back at Mary Beth, took a deep breath, and stuffed it in my purse as we hurried back toward the library.
“What if he’s gone?” Mary Beth asked.
But he wasn’t.
“Okay, then. We’d like an eighth, please.” I tried to ignore the pounding in my ears as I reached for the money.
“Of weed,” Mary Beth added in a stage whisper.
“Let me text my buddy.” He turned and walked across the lawn towards the pizza place, his thumb flying across the keypad of his cell phone. I fell into step with him, Mary Beth a few paces behind. He closed his phone with a snap.
“What’s a nice lady like you want to get high for?” he asked. I told him my sorry tale, about my failed marriage, my high school dropout son, my sprained shoulder. I even told him about my cold feet.
“Jesus, you do have a lot of shit going down,” he said. I nodded.
“What about you, why are you selling it?” I asked, emboldened by his sympathy.
He looked at me sideways, then back at Mary Beth. “You’re not social workers, are you?” he asked.
“No, nothing like that,” I laughed. But I couldn’t quite bring myself to tell him we were school teachers. Maybe one of us had taught him when he was a kid.
“I didn’t think so.” He stepped off the curb without looking and suddenly held up his hand, keeping me from charging in front of a passing taxi. “I’m just, you know, trying to raise some cash so I can go to college. I’ve got a kid, see, a three-year-old, and I need a steady job. I want to do something in IT, you know?”
Before I could respond, he said, “There’s my buddy. Wait here.” He nodded to a burly man in a bomber jacket with a ball cap pulled low over his face, and the two of them crossed the street.
The guy in the hoodie, now known to me as a father who wanted to support his child, wasn’t much older than my own son. Joey’s angry eyes floated before me for a moment as I considered this.
Our guy glanced over at us. He sniffed the contents of the bag, and handed over the cash. Buddy pocketed the entire amount, and walked away into the darkness.
“C’mon, ladies, let’s walk,” he said as he moved swiftly past us. Mary Beth and I struggled to keep up with his long stride.
Mary Beth finally spoke. “You’ve been awfully kind,” she said. “Come and share it with us. Only you’re going to have to roll it.”
The three of us found a quiet laneway behind the cathedral. In the half-light he started rolling the joint.
“Er, may I have the first puff?” Mary Beth asked, almost apologetically.
He lit the joint and handed it to her. Mary Beth hauled on it, coughed, and handed it to me. I held it to my mouth and breathed deeply. The sickly-sweet smoke invaded my throat, and I managed to stave off the urge to cough.
“It’s been awhile,” I whispered.
He nodded as though he’d figured as much.
“Sure has,” Mary Beth said, giggling.
The three of us puffed for a few minutes.
“What kind of music you got on your iPod?” I asked.
“Rush,” he told me. “Joel Plaskett. And The Beatles. Good music that makes you think about stuff.”
“Hmm,” I said. “I don’t even know what my son listens to.”
“Maybe you should ask him.”
“You’re right, I should,” I said, handing him the joint. I should ask Joey all sorts of things, I thought, but didn’t say. “When do you think you’ll be able to apply for college?”
“Ah, soon, I guess. Every time I get some cash together, something comes up,” he said, as he took a few quick tokes. “For now this helps pay the bills.”
He walked and Mary Beth and I wobbled back out to the street. The guy popped his earbuds in place and pulled up his hood.
“Gotta go,” he said. “Time to put my little guy to bed.” Before I could thank him, he hiked quickly up the hill and away from us. I stared after him a moment.
“That kid is a better mother than I am,” I muttered.
“No, Donna. You are the best mother to your son. Just like our dealer – there, I said it, just like our dealer is to his little boy.” Mary Beth’s mouth twitched. “Omigod, we have a dealer!”
“Father, not mother. You know,” I said. “Him, I mean. Our guy.”
“Dealer. Say it, Donna.”
“Okay, our dealer. Whatever.”
I looked at Mary Beth, who for the first time all evening was not on the brink of giddiness. Her eyes moved from mine to the ground and over to Winston Churchill.
“Welcome to the club,” she said, her voice rough with fatigue. Her eyes were bloodshot, the green irises brilliant, which may have been from the weed, or maybe she was tearing up behind her glasses. She gave me a shrug and a small smile, one I had trouble returning.
Mary Beth looked up the hill where our guy, our dealer, had headed off with quick strides, hands in his pockets and hood covering his head, enjoying the cooling autumn night, plugged into his iPod.
I wondered which Beatles tune he was listening to.