Chapter 9
I arrive home thirty dollars poorer, but I feel like celebrating because it could have been so much worse. By the time Drew shows up once again, I’m finding the whole thing hilarious.
“So look at the picture,” I tell him. “What do you see?”
He says the same thing my kids said. And that Bobbie said. And that her kids said. “Marijuana plants.”
“You don’t see a lamp?” I ask, pointing at the focal point of the picture. “A mid-century teak Eames floor lamp? Right there?”
“Over the marijuana, sure,” Drew says. He pauses, looks at the photo, looks at me. “Don’t tell me. You went to buy the lamp.”
He says it matter-of-factly with a straight face, and it isn’t until my mother weighs in on how people “like us” don’t ordinarily associate with people “like Martin John Smithson,” that he cracks a smile.
“You knew,” I say, feeling my cheeks burn.
“Might have heard something down at the station,” he says with a shrug.
“Please tell me I’m not a laughing stock–”
“Again.” This from Dana, who gives me new insight into how Martin’s own mother could turn him in. She dishes out some ice cream for herself and Lys and the two of them watch with interest as my father tells Drew about how he advised me not to go running after someone I met on the internet. This doesn’t accurately describe the business transaction I was attempting, nor the one I nearly accomplished, but my kids love to see a finger wagged in their mother’s face.
“Look who’s talking,” my mother says to my father. “The king of internet porn himself. Who knows where you go?”
“I don’t go anywhere,” my father says. “I should go. You’re pushing me to go. But I don’t go anywhere, and you know it.”
At which point Dana leaves the room, trailing her hand on her grandfather’s shoulder in sympathy as she goes. Lys follows dramatically in her wake.
“In your mind, you’re going,” my mother says.
“In my mind, I’m coming,” my father says. “But it doesn’t count there.”
There’s dead silence in the kitchen. Jesse comes through, mumbling hellos, and heads downstairs.
“Everything okay?” I call after him.
“Fine, Mom,” he says.
And no one says anything more.
“Well,” I say finally.
“Well,” Drew says, too.
“Not so well,” my father says and he gestures with his head toward my mother, who is making Maggie beg for cigarettes and insisting she’s just fine.
“Anything new on the case?” I ask Drew, hoping to change the subject.
Jesse comes back upstairs and heads for the front door. I ask where he’s going because that’s what mothers do. He says “out,” because that’s what kids do.
“What’s in your pocket?” I ask, noticing a bulge in his jacket pocket.
“Nothing.”
I go to the door and very quietly ask to see what he’s got. He stares at me as though I’ve betrayed him.
“A screwdriver,” he says, pulling it out of his pocket. “You happy now?”
I ask what he needs a screwdriver for and he tells me Danny’s bike seat is loose. Drew is standing in the kitchen doorway, hands folded across his chest, watching.
“Okay,” I say. “Be home before dinner.”
Back in the kitchen Drew tells me that another figurine was found in the neighborhood. “Turns out they’re contraband ivory–new stuff imported illegally and sold for fortunes to private buyers.”
“Ivory isn’t illegal,” my mother says. “I have a necklace from Fortunoff’s, and Fortunoff’s wouldn’t sell anything illegal.”
“Old ivory is legal, Mom,” I tell her. “Not the new stuff.”
I ask Drew how they know it’s new.
“The figures represent dieties and demons from that Dungeons and Dragons stuff,” Drew says, and because we’ve got an eleven year old boy in the house, we all know what he’s talking about.
In fact, I may know too well. . .
