Melanie Gideon - Wife 22

“I vote for salad,” I say, because if I am forced to eat another heavy meal I will strangozzi William. He’s found a new hobby, or should I say reignited an old passion-cooking. Every night for the past week, we’ve sat down to elaborate meals that William and his sous-chef, yet-to-be-employed Caroline, have dreamed up. I’m not sure what I feel about this. A part of me is relieved to not have to shop, plan meals, and cook, but another part of me feels uprooted at the sudden shift in William’s and my roles.

“I hope we have durum semolina,” says William.

“Lidia uses half durum, half white flour,” says Caroline.

Neither of them notices when I leave the kitchen to get ready for work.

There are only three weeks left before school ends, and these are the most stressful weeks of the year for me. I’m mounting six different plays-one for every grade. Yes, each play is only twenty minutes long, but believe me, that twenty-minute performance takes weeks of casting, staging, designing sets, and rehearsal.

When I walk into the classroom that morning, Carisa Norman is waiting for me. She begins crying as soon as she sees me. I know why she’s crying-it’s because I made her a goose. The third-grade play this semester is Charlotte’s Web . I look at her tear-stained face and wonder why didn’t I give her the role of Charlotte. She would have been perfect for it. Instead I made her one of three geese, and unfortunately geese have no lines. To make up for this, I told the geese they could honk whenever they wanted to. Trust themselves. They’d know when the honking moment was right. This was a mistake, because the honking moment turned out to be every moment of the play.

“Carisa, what’s wrong, sweetheart? Why aren’t you at recess?”

She hands me a plastic baggie. It looks like it’s filled with oregano. I open the bag and sniff-it’s marijuana.

“Carisa, where did you find this!”

Carisa shakes her head, distraught.

“Carisa, sweetheart, you have to tell me,” I say, trying to hide the fact that I’m horrified. Kids are smoking pot in elementary school? Are they dealing, too?

“You’re not going to get in trouble.”

“My parents,” she says.

“This belongs to your parents?” I ask.

I think her mother is on the board of the Parents’ Association. Oh, this is not good.

She nods. “Will you give it to the police? That’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re a kid and find drugs.”

“And how do you know that?”

“ CSI Miami ,” she says solemnly.

“Carisa, I want you to go enjoy recess and don’t give this another thought. I’ll take care of it.”

She throws her arms around me. Her barrette is about to fall off. I re-clip it, pulling the hair back from her eyes.

“Shut the worry switch off, okay?” This is something I used to say to my kids before they went to bed. When did I stop doing this? Maybe I should reinstitute the ritual. I wish somebody would switch off my worry.

In between classes I fight with myself over the proper course of action. I should take the pot directly to the principal and tell her exactly what happened-that sweet Carisa Norman narced on her parents. But if I do, there’s a possibility the principal might call the police. I don’t want that, of course, but doing nothing is not an option either, given Carisa’s emotionally labile state. If there’s one thing I know about third-graders, it’s that most of them are incapable of hiding anything-eventually they will confess. Carisa can’t take back what she knows.

At lunch, I lock the classroom door and Google “medical marijuana” on my laptop. Maybe the Normans have a medical marijuana card. But if they did, surely the marijuana would be dispensed in a prescription bottle-not a ziplock baggie. Maybe I could ask a professional how they typically dispense their wares. I click on Find a Dispensary Near You and am about to choose between Foggy Daze and the Green Cross when my cell rings.

“Can you do me a favor and pick Jude up from school today? This bloody deposition is running late,” says Nedra.

“Nedra-perfect timing. Remember you said that thing about not informing on kids to their parents when we went to How to Keep Your Kids from Turning into Meth Addicts night at school? That I should learn to keep my mouth shut?”

“It depends on the circumstances. Is it about sex?” says Nedra.

“Yes, I’ll pick up Jude and no, it’s not about sex.”

“STDs?”

“No.”

“General all-around sluttiness?”

“No.”

“Plagiarism?”

“No.”

“Drugs?”

“Yes.”

“Hard drugs?”

“Is pot classified as a hard drug?”

“What happened,” sighs Nedra. “Is it Zoe or Peter?”

“Neither-it’s a third-grader. She narced on her parents, and my question is should I narc on her narc back to her parents?”

Nedra pauses. “Well, my advice is still no, stay out of it. But trust your intuition, darling. You’ve got good instincts.”

Nedra’s wrong about that. My instincts are like my memory-they both started fizzling out after forty or so years.

Please go to voice mail, please go to voice mail, please go to voice mail .

“Hello.”

“Oh, hi. Hiiiiii. Is this Mrs. Norman?”

“This is she.”

I ramble. “How are you? Hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time. Sounds like you’re in the car. Hope the traffic isn’t bad. But jeez, it’s always bad. This is the Bay Area after all. But a small price to pay for all this abundance, right?”

“Who is this?”

“Oh-sorry! This is Alice Buckle, Carisa’s drama teacher?”

“Yes.”

I’ve been teaching drama long enough to know when I’m talking to a mother who’s nursing a grudge over me casting her child as a goose in the third-grade play.

“Ah, well, it seems we have a situation.”

“Oh-is Carisa having a problem learning her lines?”

See?

“So listen. Carisa came into school quite upset today.”

“Uh-huh.”

The brusqueness of her voice throws me off. “You allow her to watch CSI Miami ?” I ask.

Oh, God, Alice.

“Is that why you’re calling me? She has an older brother. I can’t possibly be expected to screen everything Carisa sees.”

“That’s not why I’m calling. Carisa brought in a baggie full of pot. Your pot.”

Silence. More silence. Did she hear what I said? Has she put me on mute? Is she crying?

“Mrs. Norman?”

“That’s simply out of the question. My daughter did not bring in a bag of pot.”

“Yes, well, I understand this is a delicate situation, but she did bring in a bag of pot because I’m holding it in my hands right now.”

“Impossible,” she says.

This is the grown woman’s version of putting her hands over her ears and humming so she doesn’t have to hear what you’re saying.

“Are you saying I’m lying?”

“I’m saying you must be mistaken.”

“You know, I’m doing you a favor. I could lose my job over this. I could have brought this to the principal. But I didn’t because of Carisa. And the fact that you might have some medical condition for which you have a medical marijuana card.”

“A medical condition?”

Doesn’t she understand I’m trying to give her an out?

“Yes-plenty of people use marijuana for medical reasons; it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Minor things, like anxiety or depression.”

“I am neither anxious nor depressed, Ms. Buckle, and I appreciate your concern-but if you insist on continuing to harass me I’ll have to do something about it.”

Mrs. Norman hangs up.

After work I drive to McDonald’s and throw the baggie full of pot into the Dumpster behind the restaurant. Then I drive away like a fugitive, by which I mean obsessively looking into my rearview mirror and driving twenty miles an hour in a forty-mile-an-hour zone, praying there wasn’t a video camera in the McDonald’s parking lot. Why is everybody so rude? Why won’t we help each other? And when was the last time I felt truly cared for by my husband?