Michael Crichton - Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues

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?”

“That’s not the issue.”

“I’m just asking.”

“Yes. I know some people who don’t drink.”

“But not many,” I said.

“We also know some alcoholics,” my mother said, “for that matter we know several people—”

“Peter,” my father said, interrupting firmly, “there’s a difference. Alcohol is legal. Marijuana is not. You can go to jail, Peter. Now, you’ve lived a sheltered life, all your life. We’ve tried to see that you were protected against such things. But let me tell you now, Peter. Jail is not pleasant. You wouldn’t like it one bit, not one bit.”

I sighed. What could I say?

“Now look, Peter. There’s nothing we can do about you. There’s no way we can stop you or alter your course of action. Looking back, I don’t think that there’s ever been anything that we could do, as parents. You were always different from the others in the family, always… different. But as your parents, we have to tell you when we think you’re making a mistake. Can you understand that?”

“Yes,” I said.

“We only want what’s best for you,” my mother said. When she dies, I’m going to have that one engraved on her headstone. The Final Solution to the upper-middle-class children problem.

“Your mother is exactly right,” my father said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to say.”

I looked down at the coffee table. There was an old issue of Life, about the Grandeur That Was Egypt. There was an issue of the Ladies’ Home Terror on top of it, about Drugs in Our High Schools: A Growing Menace.

“Let’s be practical,” my father said, shifting around in his chair. “Now I know a little something about marijuana, and I’ve heard enough to convince me that it isn’t the dangerous and addicting drug that everybody says it is. So let’s accept that, and go on from there. The fact is, it’s still illegal. And it’s not a little illegal, it’s very illegal. Anyone who sells it runs a grave risk—a risk more serious than any potential benefits that might be gained from the drug itself. Do you follow me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Yes, what?”

That really ripped me. If I hadn’t been stoned, I probably would have slugged him in the mouth.

“Yes, sir.”

Up until then, up until that fucking sir, I had been planning to have a talk with him. I had planned to try, at least to try, to reason with them.

But that sir was the end, because it just made me remember what I had known all along in the back of my mind, that all this bullshit about parents and kids reasoning together and overcoming the generation gap is just that—bullshit. My parents wanted to make sure that I understood that their trip was the one that mattered. And at that point I just quit.

All I said was “Yeah, well, look, I don’t know who told you all that, but I quit dealing six months ago. I haven’t had anything to do with it for six months.” This was true.

“Is that true?” my father said. He seemed newly worried about something.

“Yes,” I said.

My mother said, “Are you hungry? Did you have lunch yet?” And she wiped victorious eyes.