I wandered down to the train station and got a taxi, and told the guy my parents would pay him when we got there. Staring out at the Connecticut landscape on the way to the house, I decided I ought to relax a bit. I really wasn’t being fair to the parents. I mean, there was no sense in going out there to have a big fight, anybody could do that. I figured that I’d surprise them and be really nice and sympathetic to their trip, and then after things got rolling, and everything was cool, then maybe I could really start talking to them. What the hell, it was worth a try. And I had to be the guy to try, because they sure weren’t going to. I laughed when I realized that I was thinking the way a magazine article in Redbook would read. Christ, I could see it now. Noted Young Freak Says: Generation Gap the Kids’ Fault! Rock star Lucifer Harkness bemoans his lack of sympathy and understanding for his parents in his adolescence, and takes all the blame for his rupture with them himself! Amen.
“Which way now, bud?” said the driver.
“Right here, the last house on the left. You can’t miss it.”
“Pay the what?” my father said.
“Taxi,” I said.
“What the hell for?”
“He’s waiting outside,” I said.
“Pay him yourself.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“You never have any money,” my father said. “Rich son of poor parents.” That’s one of his favorite lines. I don’t know where he learned it.
“Well, Dad, someone has to pay him.”
“You go out and pay him.”
“I don’t have any money.”
We often have conversations like this. Merry-go-round conversations. You go around the circle once, and it doesn’t work, so you go around again.
“Well then,” he said, “go out and tell him you can’t pay him.”
“Shit, Dad.”
“I might have thought college would teach you more original expression—”
“Shit, Dad. Just pay the guy, will you?”
My father sucked on his pipe and snorted. “Wait here,” he said, and went out to pay the taxi driver. When he came back, his face was tight and creased at the corners of his mouth. He was chewing furiously on his pipe. “Your mother,” he said, “is very upset. You’ve made her very upset. So try and be civil when you talk to her, and remember that she loves you very much.”
Mother was in the living room, wedged between the two grand pianos. Nobody ever played them, but there they sat, giving the house class. Mother was looking frail and tearful, and it was obvious she had been looking forward to this scene for a while.
“Oh, Peter,” she sighed when she saw me.
“Hello, mother.”
“Oh, Peter,” she sighed again, shaking her head.
“What’s the matter, mother?”
“Oh, Peter,” she sighed. “Oh, Peter.”
My father came in behind. He fixed me with his piercing legal stare, as if I were a walking misbalanced ledger.
“Well now,” he said.
“Oh, Peter,” she said.
“Do you want your pill, dear?” my father said.
“No, dear,” she said, “I already took it.”
“What pill?” I said.
“Well now,” my father said, turning to me. “Sit down, Peter.” I sat down. They sat down. We were all very composed. “You have some explaining to do,” he said.
My mother chose that moment to begin crying. “Where did we go wrong, Peter?” she said. My mother cries quietly, no wracking sobs, just tears running down as she stares at you, and she won’t wipe them away. It can be very effective.
“Go wrong?” I said.
“Look here, Peter,” my father said, relighting his pipe and billowing up smoke screens, “your mother and I have heard some rumors.”
“They’re not rumors,” she said, sniffling, not brushing away the tears.
“All right then,” my father said, “let’s say we’ve been told—”
“By who?” I said, jumping right in. I might as well get the story straight.
“Whom,” my father said. “That’s not important. We’ve been told—”
“I want to know who,” I said. “Mmmmm.”
“That’s not important. We’ve been told you are selling marijuana at school. Is that true?”
“Just look at him,” my mother said, interrupting. “Look at the way he looks. Don’t you have any decent pants, Peter? Those blue jeans with the holes. And your shoes—do you need new shoes?” She looked at her watch. “The barbershops are open until six. We can get—”
“Is it true?” my father asked, fixing me with his legal eye again.
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh, Peter,” my mother sighed.
“You’ve upset your mother very much,” my father said. He turned to her. “Can I get you a Kleenex, dear?”
“No, dear, I’ll be fine. I’m fine.” Crying silently.
“You’re crying, mother,” I pointed out.
“Oh, Peter, Peter…”
“I’ll get you a Kleenex,” my father said, and bolted for the bathroom. He came back with a handful and sat down again. “So it is true,” he said, looking back at me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Well… don’t you know it’s against the law?”
“Yes.”
“Well, doesn’t that matter to you?”
“No,” I said.
“But it has to matter,” my father said. “It’s the law.”
Now what could I say to that? I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter, it just doesn’t.
“I don’t understand how you can grow up thinking this way, acting this way,” my father said.
“It’s the school,” my mother said. “We should never have sent you away to that school. I knew something like this would happen if we let you go there.”
“Now, mother—”
“Well, just look at you, sitting there like something the cat dragged in,” she said, letting teardrops spatter on her Villager dress.
“Look,” I said, “will everybody stop acting like it’s such a big deal?”
“It is a big deal,” my father said.
“Dad, look, everybody blows grass at school. Everybody.”
“Perhaps everybody that you know, Peter. But I hardly think that—”
“Between ten and twenty million people in this country blow grass.”
“I should think,” my father said, “that those figures would be very difficult to substantiate.”
At this point I sat back. There was no sense in an argument. I used to argue all the time with my parents but it never did any good. One time I’d had an argument with my mother over Vietnam, and she’d questioned some figures I’d used on war spending. “I don’t believe those,” she said. “Where’d you dig those figures up?” “Bernard Fall, mother.” At that, she’d looked irritated. “Well, who in God’s name is Bernard Fall?” she’d said. Oh well. I could tell from my father’s voice that it was Perry Mason time again, and I was in the witness box.
“I said,” my father said, “that those figures should be damn near impossible to substantiate.”
“Look,” I said, “do you know anyone who doesn’t drink?”