Words & Dreams (Book 1 of Smithers Family Saga)

Chapter 38

Yvette took a plastic bag from her purse, and even Eugene acknowledged his gratitude. It was full of buds of marijuana and Violet felt she could smell it through the bag.

"Oh no," Erica said. She'd smoked marijuana plenty of times, but she was afraid of it. It made her less ambitious; though by perhaps a fraction of a decimal point. But that fraction of a decimal point was enough to make her not touch it, except on the rare occasions when she was so stressed that she felt she needed it. As she was taking a sort of semi-hiatus by writing a book of dog poems, she felt offended that Yvette would arrive, to reenhance her own ambition by showing the very force, drug, that could negate it.

"You're a prude bitch," Yvette said, "and extraordinarily, obnoxiously American."

"There are plenty of Americans that don't want to live by getting high."

"Lame losers," Yvette said, "all of them," she said, with a smile on her face, as if she were already high.

Violet could see it in her husband, Eugene's face, the desire to get high. For a second, so intense was it, that she wondered if it was a desire to sleep with Yvette, but then it passed as he stared the bag down, like a gifted player on offense or defense in a given sport, looking at the ball in the opposition's gifted player's hands.

She assumed, suddenly, that it was his need to oppose the unwritten, unspoken betrayal of her few weeks in a lustful, cosmically cosmopolitan city.

No man, she thought, and then a pattern of wordless thought, translated: 'could truly let such things occur without resentment, hatred'.

But she was wrong, as she found out later...

Eugene took a short metal pipe out of his pants pocket.

"What the hell?" Violet said. She sooner would have believed she'd be dead than that her husband would be able to hide something so close to his genitals without her noticing it, regardless of whether they were intimate or not. She would have hoped he'd have recognized the same in her...

"What?" Eugene said turning to her.

"You've got a weed pipe!" she said.

"Is that a big deal?" Eugene said, and Violet could see one side of the Spouse-Look, which is so penetrating, offensive or defensive, that the defense thinks 'Oh no, I've done something wrong, haven't I?'

"No," Violet said, who felt guilty. "I just didn't know you had one on you. You weren't hiding it, were you?"

"Uh-" Eugene now said. "Something- like- I'll tell you later."

Violet got the sense- she didn't know why- that there was news. She assumed it was a matter of anxiety; though Eugene was not a particularly anxious man.

Must have something to do with the book, she thought, understanding that Eugene had never finished a book yet that he was sure was worthy of publication. She wondered if it had something to with his sister, Erica. But then the thought went away, as she couldn't see him feeling insecure in relation to his siblings without having the openness to acknowledge it; so that all parties involved could adapt away from the anxiety caused by envy, jealousy. Yet even so, Violet knew for most families, people, this rarely happened, as people would rather not admit their resentments, breaks in overall nature, refusing to acknowledge that to fix them, they'd need to tell the other parties involved.

"I think the next one requires something extra," Yvette said, referring to her next painting, "though I think your husband knows me too well."

"Believe it or not, there is one pleasant thing to your coming over," Eugene said. He was teasing her in his own way. Violet knew, in reality, that the only thing he truly couldn't stand was the fact that she was always trying to sleep with him. If Yvette were into women, and thus, Violet, it might have gotten somewhere, but Eugene had no desire to love someone he couldn't love with his wife.

A joint was rolled, and passed around.

Erica had her doubts, but she played along.

"Let's pretend it's been a long time," Violet said, taking the joint first, and inhaled, holding it in. It had only been days ago, at a concert in a basement bar.

She blew the smoke out and began to cough, which didn't surprise her, as she knew Yvette wouldn't go light on such things. Painters- and Violet had had and still had a lot of Bohemian friends- tended to do drugs more than they didn't.

Eugene put his pipe away.

"I guess I don't even need this. It was a reflex action, I guess," he said, "in taking it."

Violet passed him the joint, and he inhaled deep, and she was surprised by how long he held it.

Erica held out her hand.

"Hang on," Eugene said, and he took two more hits, each long, and passed the joint to his sister.
The next painting:

A parrot reciting inside of a library, a few lines of poetry: the text in Fraktur, the old font of Germany. You knew it was poetry by the way the text was laid out.

"Why'd we have to get high?" Erica said.

"Hmm," Yvette said, "maybe you didn't, now that I think about it."