Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“It’s like she’s a survivor’s kid, my wife. It’s crazy, that education they give them. Her grandparents were all born in the Bronx, and here we are twenty minutes from downtown Miami but it’s like it’s 1937 and we live on the edge of Berlin.”

“That’s not it!” Deb says, openly defensive, her voice super high up in the register. “I’m not upset about that. It’s the alcohol. All this alcohol. It’s that and seeing Lauren. Seeing Shoshana, after all this time.”

“Oh, she was always like this in high school,” Shoshana says. “Sneak one drink, and she started to cry. You want to know what used to get her going, what would make her truly happy?” Shoshana says. “It was getting high. That’s what always did it. Smoking up. It would make her laugh for hours and hours.”

And, I tell you, I didn’t see it coming. I’m as blindsided as Deb was by that numbers story.

“Oh, my God,” Deb says, and she’s pointing at me. “Look at my big bad secular husband. He really can’t handle it. He can’t handle his wife’s having any history of naughtiness at all — Mr. Liberal Open-Minded.” To me she says, “How much more chaste a wife can you dream of than a modern-day yeshiva girl who stayed a virgin until twenty-one? Honestly. What did you think Shoshana was going to say was so much fun?”

“Honestly-honestly?” I say. “I don’t want to. It’s embarrassing.”

“Say it!” Deb says, positively glowing.

“Honestly, I thought you were going to say it was something like competing in the Passover Nut Roll, or making sponge cake. Something like that.” I hang my head. And Shoshana and Deb are laughing so hard they can’t breathe. They’re grabbing at each other so that I can’t tell if they’re holding each other up or pulling each other down.

“I can’t believe you told him about the nut roll,” Shoshana says.

“And I can’t believe,” Deb says, “you just told my husband of twenty-two years how much we used to get high. I haven’t touched a joint since before we were married,” she says. “Have we, honey? Have we smoked since we got married?”

“No,” I say. “It’s been a very long time.”

“So come on, Shosh. When was it? When was the last time you smoked?”

Now, I know I mentioned the beard on Mark. But I don’t know if I mentioned how hairy a guy he is. That thing grows right up to his eyeballs. Like having eyebrows on top and bottom both. So when Deb asks the question, the two of them, Shosh and Yuri, are basically giggling like children, and I can tell, in the little part that shows, in the bit of skin I can see, that Mark’s eyelids and earlobes are in full blush.

“When Shoshana said we drink to get through the days,” Mark says, “she was kidding about the drinking.”

“We don’t drink much,” Shoshana says.

“It’s smoking that she means,” he says.

“We still get high,” Shoshana says. “I mean, all the time.”

“Hasidim!” Deb screams. “You’re not allowed!”

“Everyone does in Israel. It’s like the sixties there,” Mark says. “It’s the highest country in the world. Worse than Holland and India and Thailand put together. Worse than anywhere, even Argentina — though they may have us tied.”

“Well, maybe that’s why the kids aren’t interested in alcohol,” I say.

“Do you want to get high now?” Deb says. And we all three look at her. Me, with surprise. And those two with straight longing.

“We didn’t bring,” Shoshana says. “Though it’s pretty rare anyone at customs peeks under the wig.”

“Maybe you guys can find your way into the glaucoma underground over at Carmel Lake,” I say. “I’m sure that place is rife with it.”

“That’s funny,” Mark says.

“I’m funny,” I say, now that we’re all getting on.

“We’ve got pot,” Deb says.

“We do?” I say. “I don’t think we do.”

Deb looks at me and bites at the cuticle on her pinkie.

“You’re not secretly getting high all these years?” I say. I really don’t feel well at all.

“Our son,” Deb says. “He has pot.”

“Our son?”

“Trevor,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “I know which one.”

It’s a lot for one day, that kind of news. And it feels to me a lot like betrayal. Like my wife’s old secret and my son’s new secret are bound up together, and I’ve somehow been wronged. Also, I’m not one to recover quickly from any kind of slight from Deb — not when there are people around. I really need to talk stuff out. Some time alone, even five minutes, would fix it. But it’s super apparent that Deb doesn’t need any time alone with me. She doesn’t seem troubled at all. What she seems is focused. She’s busy at the counter, using a paper tampon wrapper to roll a joint.

“It’s an emergency-preparedness method we came up with in high school,” Shoshana says. “The things teenage girls will do when they’re desperate.”

“Do you remember that nice boy that we used to smoke in front of?” Deb says. “He’d just watch us. There’d be six or seven of us in a circle, girls and boys not touching — we were so religious. Isn’t that crazy?” Deb is talking to me, as Shoshana and Mark don’t think it’s crazy at all. “The only place we touched was passing the joint, at the thumbs. And this boy, we had a nickname for him.”

“Passover!” Shoshana yells.

“Yes,” Deb says, “that’s it. All we ever called him was Passover. Because every time the joint got to him he’d just pass it over to the next one of us. Passover Rand.”

Shoshana takes the joint and lights it with a match, sucking deep. “It’s a miracle when I remember anything these days,” she says. “After my first was born, I forgot half of everything I knew. And then half again with each one after. Just last night, I woke up in a panic. I couldn’t remember if there were fifty-two cards in a deck or fifty-two weeks in a year. The recall errors — I’m up all night worrying over them, just waiting for the Alzheimer’s to kick in.”

“It’s not that bad,” Mark tells her. “It’s only everyone on one side of your family that has it.”

“That’s true,” she says, passing her husband the joint. “The other side is blessed only with dementia. Anyway, which is it? Weeks or cards?”

“Same, same,” Mark says, taking a hit.

When it’s Deb’s turn, she holds the joint and looks at me, like I’m supposed to nod or give her permission in some husbandly anxiety-absolving way. But instead of saying, “Go ahead,” I pretty much bark at Deb. “When were you going to tell me about our son?”

At that, Deb takes a long hit, holding it deep, like an old pro.

“Really, Deb. How could you not tell me you knew?”

Deb walks over and hands me the joint. She blows the smoke in my face, not aggressive, just blowing.

“I’ve only known five days,” she says. “I was going to tell you. I just wasn’t sure how, or if I should talk to Trevy first, maybe give him a chance,” she says.

“A chance to what?” I ask.

“To let him keep it as a secret between us. To let him know he could have my trust if he promised to stop.”

“But he’s the son,” I say. “I’m the father. Even if it’s a secret with him, it should be a double secret between me and you. I should always get to know — even if I pretend not to know — any secret with him.”

“Do that double part again,” Mark says. But I ignore him.

“That’s how it’s always been,” I say to Deb. And, because I’m desperate and unsure, I follow it up with “Hasn’t it?”

I mean, we really trust each other, Deb and I. And I can’t remember feeling like so much has hung on one question in a long time. I’m trying to read her face, and something complex is going on, some formulation. And then she sits right there on the floor, at my feet.