Marijuana Girl (15 page)

Jerry said, "You're really cool about this Jan. I dig that." Janice smiled, not really happily.

He went on. "After I left the Golden Horn I been working mostly out of town--so of course you haven't been seeing me around--and she hasn't been either, even if she wanted to.

"Anyway, this particular Friday night Don Wilson and I were both in on the session at the Stuyvesant Ballroom, and Joyce came up to see me. She was with a real drug cat--an ofay, the worst, the kind of guy who goes out with pros, but flips his wig when he sees the chick he's with talking to a colored cat. She didn't like this cat, much ... Sorry, Jan. This man she was with was like a real low type. The kind of guy who goes out with--well, prostitutes, but won't ..."

"Jerry" Jan said, "I dig you, man."

"Anyway, she said he wanted her to do things she just couldn't. I laid some gold on her. I only had fifty with me; and then I got her address. I know she doesn't dig going with men, but it seems the only way she can find the loot to buy the stuff ...

"Jerry," Frank said, "I've got to telephone somebody. Can you excuse me a minute."

"Solid, man."

He went to the telephone in the hall and thumbed through the little book on the stand, then dialed quickly, nervously pulling the dial back round after each numeral.

"Hello. May I speak to Tony, please? ... Thanks ... Tony? ... This is Frank--Frank Burdette. Get over here. Get over here quick ... We've found her, but I don't know how long we can keep her ... Good ... See you." He hung up and returned to the diningroom.

After Jerry had gone, Tony and Frank talked it out.

"It wouldn't do any real good if it was me," Frank said. "It's you who must go to her. I've got to explain to you about Joyce a little. Don't get the idea that Janice would interfere with my doing it--if it would help. But the trouble is, it wouldn't. It would work quicker, it's true. But it wouldn't get her off the heroin, and it wouldn't stick. So don't think I'm ducking out of what's really my job. I'm responsible for this. But the cure lies with you, not with me. So it's got to be up to you."

"I don't get it," Tony said. "You're older than I am. You know more than I do. Why can't you do it better than me."

"Look, Tony, before I got into the newspaper racket, I wanted to be a psychoanalyst. It was the big parlor kick in those days to be a psychoanalyst, and I was all for it. I was a psych major m college, and I was set to go on with it, too. Then I got into newspapers, and I liked it and I stayed. But there are certain things you learn about people that sort of stick with you. When you establish a certain habit as a kid--oh, like Junior's getting the habit of not eating--it somehow gets built into your personality, and without knowing it, you more or less keep repeating variations of the habit all through your life. Sometimes the habit can be broken while you're still a kid. Sometimes it can be diverted, or changed into another habit when you're older. That's the kind of habit Joyce has, and we've got to break it."

"I still don't understand," Tony said. "She has a drug habit. She never had that before."

"That's right. I forgot to mention something else. Sometimes people will substitute a worse habit for another kind they've had a long time. I'll try and show you what I mean. Joy's parents began leaving her alone and dumping her off on relatives when she was very small. They kept on like that, right up till now, going off and leaving her, putting her in schools where they wouldn't have to be bothered with her. It didn't take Joyce long to get the idea that they didn't want her. It made her feel that she wasn't good enough for them to want. So she got a habit of thinking of herself as not good enough to be wanted. That's one of her habits. Do you see it?"

"Yes," Tony said, dragging the word a little.

"It shows up in several ways. She had to give people things to make sure they would want her and value her. I don't know what she gave Ruth Scott. Probably brains, because Joyce has them, and from what she told me about Ruth, Ruth doesn't. The thing with you, that first time, was typical. She gave herself to you, because she thought that sex was something you could give that would make people value you. She tried to give the same thing to the whole senior class the time she did a strip-dance in the study class. When she did it, what she was saying to herself was, 'I've got something they want. I'm valuable.' And the person she was trying to convince of this was herself."

"But why couldn't she do that in other ways," Tony said, "like other people do?"

"Well, we know a couple of reasons. Joyce managed to get her parent's attention a few times in her life. And when she did, they acted for a while as though she were valuable. She ran away from school, and when they found her they made a big fuss about her. She told me about that. Did she tell you?"

"Un-hunh," Tony said. "She did."

"That, and other, similar experiences, started another habit in Joyce. If you got in trouble, the way this other habit ran in her mind, it made people pay attention to you. So, that's what she did. She went out of her way to get in trouble."

"She did that, all right," Tony said. "She was always doing things in school to put her in hot water."

"Yes. But always with the hope of getting attention from her parents--the people who couldn't be bothered with her. I've got habits like that, too. So have you. You could probably notice mine, and I could notice yours. But neither of us can see his own. Joyce too. She isn't aware of these habits. But she has them. In psychology these would be called insecurity conflicts. But there's something else, too. Part of the urge to get into trouble is to punish her parents, because she's really angry with them for rejecting her. And that's another habit that she's carried over into her life with other people besides her parents. You were angry with her one day because she missed a date with you. So she punished you. She went out with me. And, from her habit point of view, she managed to get in trouble with me. She smoked marijuana that night for the first time. She did what her mind and emotions thought of as 'wrong things'--getting in trouble. That was because she wanted you. She has still another habit. Her parents failed to love and protect her. So she developed a habit of looking for love and protection--looking even harder than anyone else does--because we all do that. When she found love, any kind of love, she habitually tried to make a parent, a father, for herself out of the person who loved her. And the better the role fitted, the better she liked it She tried it first with you. Then, when you were angry with her, she tried me. I was older. I actually was a father. That was good. She could fit the pattern that she wanted on me more easily than on you. I was free enough of my parents--because I didn't have any around--to make a father figure for her, better than you could. Do you get all this?"

"Yeah," Tony said, a shade of surprise in his voice. "It sort of makes sense."

"Didn't you expect it to?"

"Not at first. But now it does. It was like that with Jerry and Ginger? They sort of were parents for her, too? Right?"

"That's it. Now the narcotics come into the picture. When Jerry broke up with Ginger, the shock was suddenly more than she could take. She needed something to cushion it--the way people have a drink when they're upset. For Joyce, heroin was really no different than marijuana--but it was stronger. Marijuana won't let you forget your troubles, unless they're very minor ones. But heroin will. So it was easy for her to go along with Ginger. Ginger was protecting her. Ginger was a kind of mother. She would see that nothing bad happened. But when the police took Ginger away, then she had to lean on the heroin itself. The heroin made her able to forget how desperately she needed love. The heroin let her feel good enough for herself. In a way the final step, her turning to prostitution to get the money for the heroin, was the same sort of thing. Every time a man paid her for love, he convinced her that she was worth something. Do you understand that, too?"

"Yes. I get it. But a lot of these things go on at the same time. They kind of overlap. Several habits push her at once. Is that it?"

"That's right. Now I'm one of these bad habits with her. I fit her role of a father figure too well. Jan--my wife--wouldn't object to my seeing Joy if it would save her from heroin. But I can only supply a temporary remedy. The real remedy isn't there anyway. She's a grown girl. She doesn't really want a father. She really wants a lover--a man of her own. And that's where you fit in, and I don't. Dig?"

Tony grinned. "I dig. The normal-er it is, the better. And the thing I've got to do is convince her I really love her--no matter what, but more when she's good than when she's bad."

"That's right. And it's slow. It won't happen right away. There's one other thing, too. I don't think--I'm not sure of this--but I don't think that Joyce is a full-fledged heroin addict. Not yet. Not in the physiological sense. From what Jerry could find out from one of the men who sells her heroin, she isn't taking enough for that. It hasn't been long enough for her to need that much. But if it goes on longer, then she will need it." He stood up. "If you want anything from me, any time, I'll do what's necessary."

Tony got up to go. "I'll keep in touch," he said. He was suddenly very adult.

17 ~ Resolution

She was asleep when the telephone rang. Asleep, but not undressed. Her skirt had worked up around her waist, and her blouse was open and the bra unfastened at the back. Her shoes lay on the chenille coverlet beside her feet, and she had unhooked her nylons from their panty supporter so they had fallen around her slender ankles to give them an elephantine look. The lipstick had smeared about her mouth, and made a gory display on the rumpled pillow case. Her coat lay on the floor where it had fallen when she came in, and there deep grooves from the wrinkled cloth pressed into the soft flesh of her cheeks. She had a damaged soiled look as she dragged herself up from sleep and stumbled toward the clattering instrument.

She held the open blouse together as she bent to the phone, though there was no one to see.

"Hello?" Her voice was soggy and hoarse.

"Joy? Is that you Joy?"

"Who's this?" Her head ached and there was a fierce pressure in her chest.

"Tony, Joy. It's Tony. Tony Thrine."

Her mind refused to take in the words.

"Tony! Joy. Don't you know who I am? Honeybun, what's the matter?"

She didn't answer. Her nerves crawled under her skin, and there was a fierce itching.

"Can't you hear me?"

"I hear you."

"Joy, I've got to see you."

"Look," Joy said. "I can't talk now. Call me back in an hour." She dropped the phone into its cradle and dragged her wretched body to the bureau, yanking open the drawer. Her hands shook with a fierce ague as she spilled the capsule into the bent spoon, and then were so uncontrollable that the white powder fell to the floor.

Frantically, as though her very life depended upon it, she scraped it up with a torn fragment of paper, disregarding the dust and lint that clung to the precious particles.

Then, in an easy routine that was complicated by the unmanageability of her hands, she followed the ritual formula of the junkie, slipping the needle into the scarred vein, and sucking the blood up again and again to flush out the last vital drop.

Then, with a great sigh, she sank into the worn armchair, letting her body relax against the shabby fabric, feeling herself come alive in one great tidal wave of relief.

After a few minutes the phone call floated, like disembodied words without meaning, into her mind. She tried to attach meanings to them, with little hooks that slipped from the letters and slid away before the whole thing could be decoded. Then, by and by, the meanings began to stick. "Tony." "Honeybun." "I've got to see you."

And with the meanings came panic. Not Tony! Never Tony! He must never see this,

She couldn't remember what she had said, she couldn't recall what she had told him. It was so ordinary to say, "I'll meet you in the bar at Fifty-second and Sixth in half and hour." Was that what she had told Tony? How did he know where she was? Had he traced her? Was he outside the front door of the house, waiting in case she came out? Had she left such an easy trail? What if he came in, now, and found her like this?

Joyce got to her feet and went over to the mirror. The fabric wrinkles had gone from her face, but the thinness had given it an artificial maturity, shearing off the roundness of youth, molding the young skin to the bone structure.

Joyce saw nothing of that, only the wild hair, the mussed and gaping blouse, the slipped bra, the smeared cosmetics, the deep-shadowed eyes.

Got to get cut of here. Got to leave before Tony finds me. Hit the road, tart!

She pulled the blouse from her shoulders and dropped it on the floor, then reached behind her and hooked the band of the bra. She went to the washbowl and scrubbed frenziedly at her face with a damp cloth. An irritated color rose sullenly to her cheeks. Got to get out of here.

She went to the closet to look for a dress--and the phone rang again. For a long time--seven or eight rings--she stood it, and then she went and picked up the instrument. "Hello."

"Hiya, honeybun." Tony's voice was tense, as though the enthusiasm he injected into it was costly and hard gained.

"Hello, Tony. How are you?" That was the attitude. Friendly. Cool. Polite.

"I'm fine. How is everything with you?"

The conversation was becoming more strained. Already. Joyce said, "How is everybody in Paugwasset?"

"Look, baby," Tony said. "I didn't call to talk to you about everybody back home. I want to see you. I didn't want to bust in on you, or anything. But can't we meet somewhere?"

And suddenly she wanted nothing else. It would be, almost, like--she didn't know what it would be like. But it would be wonderful. "All right, Tony. Where shall we meet?"

"Down here. In the Village?"

No. It must be, now, on neutral ground. Somewhere she had not been. Under other circumstances. She was silent, thinking.

"Or anywhere else. It doesn't matter," Tony said.