We Are Sitting in Lawn Chairs

We are sitting in lawn chairs, and I can't get high. "Would you like to try another hit?"he asks. I nod and we both lean forward. This has become the standard operating procedure: I hold the cool glass pipe in front of my mouth, and I wiggle my finger over the little air hole while my boyfriend lights it. There is that smell and the crackle of fire. I breathe out and then in as deeply as I can through the pipe. I notice my lungs. And then there is the tickle and the burn. I cough and let out the air. My eyes tear and I am left, still half-choking, laughing in a cloud of smoke. I am an unsuccessful drug user.

He pats me on the back. "It's okay."I nod and laugh, my eyes still moist. We lean back. He lights up the pipe and takes a perfect hit, breathes out easy and cool.

Earlier was my grandfather's funeral. I had watched my mother, who was watching my father‹biting his lip, trying not to let the tears flow. He looked up at the ceiling and down at the carpet, but there was nothing to see in the wooden abyss of the chapel. I remember my grandfather as yellow cashmere, and golf courses, and tomatoes. I wonder what my father was thinking of just then, bad or good. My parents held hands but stood far away from each other. My mother kept looking at my father, curiously and with pity in her eyes, as if he were some strange man she had found on the street and wanted to help.

At the cemetery we all looked on as tanned and dirty men, muscular and sweaty in green work clothes, slowly lowered my grandfather into the ground. And then all of us, maybe 20, lined up silently to begin the actual burial. One at a time we all picked up a shovel and threw dirt on the coffin, listening as the pebbles went down and knocked against the wood.

Back at my grandmother's house, it was a busy scene of smiles and good memories and bubbling drinks in plastic cups. We ate cold cuts and potato salad off paper plates. My grandmother actually seemed happier than she had in months, lighter. She sat with her stockinged feet tucked under her rear, a girlish pose for such an old lady. She looked at her hands and touched her cheek and told me never to scrub my face too hard with soap and not to sleep on just one cheek. She asked if my boyfriend realizes what a pretty kid I am.

Where we are sitting on my lawn, we can see that, all the way down the hill, across the street, there is a birthday party. Kids are in the driveway looking up at a piñata, a papery neon rainbow, which has been hung from the basketball hoop. They are crowding around it, waiting with tension and hope for an adult to point at them and hand them the aluminum bat. A hush falls over the crowd as they are blindfolded and then placed in the proper spot, then the crowd erupts into screams, cheers, and boos. The children are small and unsuccessful, so finally dad comes in to save the day. Mayhem ensues. My boyfriend and I laugh. We are giving the play by play to each other, watching as Rachel's dress is lifted up over her head and Josh pushes Sarah down in order to get the last Sweet Tart. David is waiting it out on the sidelines to pick over whatever is left. "That's funny,"my boyfriend says, shaking the scene off as he picks up the pipe. "Want to try again?"

"It's all right."I put my feet on his knees and look away at the trees to our left as he takes another hit and then looks straight ahead. It is just before sundown and the sun is low. There is no wind and the leaves shine a golden green in the stillness. I look at him, but my gaze is not returned. I look at the trees again. "It looks kind of like a movie set, doesn't it? I feel like we are indoors. This is a room or something."

"Yeah, you know, it does. You're right,"he says slowly, concentrating very hard on this. Pot makes everything seem more important. He is lingering on this thought, perhaps imagining a horror movie being filmed here or men in Shakespearean-era dress. Maybe this is a movie.

A few weeks ago I sat with my grandmother on her indoor porch looking at the same sun, the way it looks for only about ten minutes every day now, just before seven. We were drinking diet Coke with bendy straws out of cans that had sat in the sun for too long when she said very simply, "These are the nothing times we have to remember."Old people sometimes abuse their powers of profundity, but she is always the first to admit that she just has no idea. "Who knows?"she always says, her voice trailing down on the question.

Right now I am bored of sitting and not getting high. I stand up; and for what I assume is the pure pleasure of mimicry, so does my boyfriend. I face him, my feet stepping on his, and hold his hands. I lean back and let my hair fall to the grass, look at everything upside down. I come up and am dizzy, so at least for a minute we are on the same plane, or at least neither of us on the usual one. I let out a deep throaty laugh without realizing it. He is stoned and smirking at me, still holding tightly onto my hands. I look at him out of the corners of my eyes, smiling skeptically because I am not quite sure what to make of him yet.