Stephan Clark - Sweetness #9

“Patience, that’s all I’m saying. Just have a little patience.”

“And that’s it? That’s the full extent of your plan?” She stepped into her tracksuit. “Because if it is, can you tell me one thing? Just one thing. When does patience turn into doing nothing at all?”

I didn’t answer her, not even after she’d said it again.

“When, David? Tell me.”

When she saw that I wouldn’t speak, she moved out past me and went into the great room, from which I soon heard the militant cries of Cher’s personal trainer: “Jab, kick, knee punch! Body blow, body blow, body blow!”

Dinner that evening had the feeling of an intervention. It began normally enough, with our complimenting Priscilla on the pasta she’d cooked, but soon thereafter we’d exhausted this small talk and were looking round the table like poker players trying to intuit the bluff. Finally I set my knife down and wiped my mouth with my napkin and looked directly at our son, telling him that we needed to have a talk.

“Your mother and I are very worried,” I said. “We all are,” I added, taking in Priscilla with a look. “Obviously you know you’ve been assigned to a new classroom.”

He nodded. “Me and Jeremiah.”

“Is that right? Yes, well, what you may not understand is that the school is asking us to start giving you some medicine.”

“Like Jeremiah,” he said.

“Yes, like Jeremiah. But the thing is, while he may need it, I’m not sure you do.”

“It’s poison,” Priscilla said, before her mother could shush her.

“It’s certainly nothing to mess around with,” I agreed. “So if by chance you’ve been faking it all this time, the not using verbs, I mean, I need you to tell me now so we can tell the school, and you can go back to your old classroom. Do you understand?”

He nodded. I took in a slow breath.

“So what do you have to say, Ernest? There is something you’d like to tell me, isn’t there?”

He stared down at his mound of spaghetti so long I thought he might have forgotten the question. Everyone looked at him, and then me, and then him. Then at last Ernest looked up and shrugged, and he said to me, he said, “Salt.” Just like that, just the one word. “Salt.”

I picked up my fork and twirled some pasta on it, then just as quickly set the fork down and reached for my napkin. “ What salt?” I said.

The shaker was nearest my plate. Ernest sat across from me, looking between me and it.

“ That salt?” he said.

“ What what salt?” I said.

He looked to his mother. She looked no less nervously to me.

“What what salt?” I repeated.

“Please?”

“What what salt?”

He tried parroting me. “What what salt?”

I threw my napkin onto my plate. “ Pass the salt!” I stood from the table. “Pass it! I know you can say it! Now c’mon! Pass the salt! It’s not that hard!”

When I realized everyone was looking at me and not him, I knew I’d gone too far. “I’m sorry,” I said. I started for the stairs. “I’m sorry.”

Betty came into our room a few minutes later and sat down beside me on the foot of the bed.

“It’s been a stressful day,” she said.

She didn’t know the half of it, though, so I told her about what I’d received in the mail that morning and showed her a piece of paper I’d scribbled on minutes after opening that anonymous envelope.

“Is this an enemies list?” she said.

I hadn’t titled the page, but I understood how she could make that interpretation.

“You’ve got Priscilla listed here.”

“At number five,” I said in my defense. “I was trying to be exhaustive. And you have to admit, she is something of a fundamentalist when it comes to food.”

Beekley was at number four, if not because I feared he’d been turned by his knowledge of one of the conspiracies of the post — Cold War age, then because he’d brought a shotgun to work.

“And Hickey?” Betty said. “The man from Animal Testing?”

At number three, right behind the Albanians. “I thought I saw him that night of the Society meeting,” I told her. “I drank too much and fell asleep in the lobby—”

“David!”

“—we were fighting, I wasn’t at my best. Anyway, when I woke up, I had a packet of Sweetness #9 in my pocket.”

I could no more explain its meaning than I could provide a reason for placing “Mexicans” at the top of my list, above even the Albanians.

“I suppose it’s wrong to think it must be one or more Mexican nationals,” I said. “It occurs to me now that it could be someone who bought the packet off eBay. You know, to emphasize my connection to Sweetness #9’s early days. But for the time being”—I shrugged—“we’ll just leave it at that: Mexicans.”

Betty gave the list back to me, sighing loudly.

“Should we tell the kids?” I asked.

“ What? No! Why?”

“Transparency.”

“And what would you say? That you got a vaguely menacing letter in the mail this morning? That you’re not sure what’ll happen next, but if a man with a wooden leg isn’t involved, it could be a rogue Albanian or a group of radical Mexicans?”

I nodded. “You’re right. Not presidential.”

She reached for my leg, then, and gave it a little rub. “Are you feeling okay? Because you’ve looked a little jumpy today.”

I realized only then that I hadn’t told her about the anti-anxiety medication I’d begun that morning.

“When did you get a prescription for that?” she said.

“I should schedule a daily press briefing,” I told her. “Dr. White gave it to me, but I didn’t think to say anything before now because I didn’t think I’d ever use it. Anyway, apparently the first seven days you’re on it, you can feel increased anxiety.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t be taking it right now. Do you really think this is the best time?”

“It’s always going to be something, isn’t it? And besides”—I fished an orange medicine bottle out of my pants pocket—“I’ve got the lorazepam to even me out. Took another one just a few minutes ago, in fact. I feel great.”

Betty couldn’t help but smile.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.”

“No, what is it?” I said.

“It’s just you don’t want Ernest to take anything, and yet you seem to have a full pharmacy at your disposal.”

I suppose I could have answered her by speaking of Sweetness #9 and my experiences with it. If The Nine had been deemed safe for public consumption, after all, what did it matter if the medicine they wanted to give our son had also been approved for use? But none of that came to me in the moment. My answer was far simpler, even reflexive. “We always want better for our kids,” I said. “Don’t we?”

Now, I can’t help but wonder what might have happened if I had answered differently and agreed that the Ritalin or Prozac was something we should try. It wouldn’t have made the medicine any better or worse for our son, but it would have brought Betty and me together. It would have been a decision we’d both made as parents, placing the burden of its consequences between us, not only with her. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. For now, let it be enough to know that it’s yet another moment I wish I had back.

Even after everything I’d taken that day, I couldn’t sleep, so when the microwave beeped a little after midnight — just once, someone there to open it before it could make another sound — I popped up from bed and went downstairs, thinking I’d need to tell Ernest to get off the computer and remind him it was a school night.

The hallway was thick with the smell of cooked meat, but its trail didn’t end at my son’s bedroom door — it carried me on to Priscilla’s. The floor creaked beneath me as I stepped up to it. I heard a thump from inside, and then racing footsteps.