Come on, Arlene!

I made it out of junior high school unscathed. But, once I was in tenth grade, it wasn’t long until my grades started significantly slipping. My mother being a solution-oriented person decided to ask one of her friends to tutor me in math.

Arlene was someone we would call obese back in the day, but nowadays she would only be considered a “plus size” or a “large” woman. She often was invited to our house on the holidays because she was single. As we’d sit around the dinner table, my father would tell jokes and Arlene would zealously laugh while the rest of us thought, “God, it wasn’t that funny.” I later recall thinking she may have been flirting with him.

My sister and I liked her though as teens, we couldn’t help but make fun of her after she left. “Nice biker shorts,“ my sister would comment one afternoon after Arlene had been at our house, comfortably squeezed unattractively into tight shorts.

“Nice bra,” I’d say one day after she left. She had worn no bra and we were horrified to see her long droopy breasts lying flat against her chest beneath her thin t-shirt.

Arlene became my math tutor. My scores went up significantly; she was excellent at keeping my interest and at explaining things. After I got my driver’s license, she asked me if I’d be interested in cleaning her apartment and she would be pay me well. I was very excited to make some extra money and I was a very good house cleaner on top of it.

It turns out Arlene was a total slob. It took me over three hours to clean her one bedroom apartment and she lived alone. She had creepy sex toy catalogs lying around her apartment but I never mentioned this to anyone. I would pop in one of her U2 CDs and clean until that place shined. Then, for a final touch, I would use her fancy apple cinnamon room spray. I’d mist the place once over before exiting.

One day I opened her oven to find it full with drugs and paraphernalia: rolling papers, several roach clips, a metal scale and a jar of marijuana. I decided to take a little of her pot. It wasn’t as if she could tell my mom. I cleaned her oven and returned everything to its proper place.

One evening we were studying algebra at her place and she asked me if I’d be interested in going to the drive-in movies that night. My mother said it was fine. Arlene was her trusted friend after all. Before we went, she stopped off at the liquor store and let me pick out whatever I wanted. I chose peach schnapps. Once we were at the drive-in, we both started drinking and she pulled out a pipe and a strange stick of weed.

“This is Thai Weed," she explained. She filled the pipe and handed it to me. I felt so grown-up that this 30-something woman was going to get high with me, a 16 year-old. I must have been great company. Who knows? I took a couple hits and felt very relaxed, unlike my usual paranoid high self.

“What’s Thai weed?,” I finally asked.

“It’s weed dipped in opium,” she said with her eyes barely open.

Wow! Now I could tell people I'd done opium! It sounded so exotic. “What’s it do?,” I wanted to know.

“Oh, it just makes you mellow,” and she definitely looked mellow.

We watched a double feature and by the end of the two movies, we somehow managed to get back to her place. I don’t remember how or when I got home.

A couple weeks later, she asked me to come over in the evening for a movie. When I got there, she put on some music and sat down at her little glass table. “We’re going to a party later,” she said.

“Okay,” I said very excited. I’d be partying with adults! I sat down at the table and she started digging through her purse. She pulled out a little container and then carefully poured a white powdery pile onto the glass table top. She divided it up into lines. “I hardly ever do coke,” she said to me as she started to roll a dollar bill tightly into a little tube. She snorted one line and said, “I just bought a little today for fun.”

Cocaine? Holy shit! This is the stuff you get addicted to. The thing actors OD on! I didn’t want to die! How much is too much? I had no idea.

“Isn’t it addictive though?,” I asked

“No, I just do a little from time to time. Try it,” she said after rubbing her gums with her index finger.

“I don’t want to OD or anything.”

“You won’t OD. You’re not going to do enough to OD. Just do a couple lines,” she said as she snorted another line.

“How does it make you feel?,” I asked.

“You’ll see. You’ll just feel more awake,” she sniffed loudly and wiped her nose.

That didn’t sound very fun to me. What’s so fun about feeling awake? If it doesn’t make you laugh or do silly things or think bizarre thoughts, what’s the point?

“But what does it do?,” I asked not at all satisfied with her answers. I just didn’t get what was so great about it.

“Just try it. You’ll be fine,” and she acted like it was fine. She didn't seem any different at all.

I snorted one line, then two lines and then a third, complaining that I didn’t feel anything. In fact, it just made me want to go do something, anything.

We left her apartment and went to her friends’ party. I was surrounded by 30 and 40 year-olds. I was a sixteen years old, dressed like a punk, with dark coal circles for eyes and a shaved head save the bangs that came over one eye into a perfect point.

A man who looked like John Denver became my buddy. He brought me beer after beer in white plastic cups. We played foosball for what felt like hours. Flicking and flicking those little knobs and rods that hold the football men. I was so focused. That night, my wrists hurt so much I couldn’t sleep (of course the cocaine probably had something to do with it too). I felt normal in the morning but I had the incredible desire to snort, snort anything white and powdery. I crushed an aspirin and snorted it. Ouch! That burned. That was stupid. Screw this cocaine crap, not for me.

Arlene had to leave and visit her family back in New Jersey. I had the keys to her place. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened next. One night some friends from out of town joined me and Kayla. We had nowhere to hang out, so guess where we went? Yes. We went to Arlene’s where we drank and smoked massive amounts of cigarettes. My friends had no place to stay, so with much reluctance, I let them stay at her place.

I don’t know what they did that night but let’s just say they had no respect. I came in the morning and made them leave. Then I spent hours cleaning and arranging. It looked fine to me. I didn’t see anything broken so I left feeling confident that Arlene would not find out. But, you know she did, right? One clue might have been the ash tray we emptied several times onto the neighbor’s balcony below.

So, not too long after that, I was by myself in the kitchen and the phone rang. “Hello?”

“I can’t believe you did that,“ said Arlene

“Did what?,” I asked.

“I can’t believe you used my apartment when I was gone. I trusted you. Now I’m going to have to tell your mother.”

“Please don’t,” I started crying uncontrollably. “I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you.”

“I trusted you,” she repeated again. I think she was crying too.

“Just please don’t tell my mother. Why do you have to tell her?,” I begged.

“Because what you did is unforgivable. You don’t do that to friends. You don’t do that.”

After that, we weren’t friends anymore and I was grounded a very long time. What seemed so unfair was I had been a loyal friend in my mind. I didn’t tell my mother about all the drugs she did or what she did with me or about the parties.

One day, it must have been a year later, my mother and I were sitting at the food court eating crispy egg rolls and dipping them in bright red sauce. I told my mother I was going to quit drugs. She looked at me silently for a couple minutes and then said, “I didn’t know you were doing drugs. You mean pot?,” she sat patiently with her hands folded on the table.

This is when I told her everything. This is when I told my mother about her friend, Arlene. Until I spoke about it to my mother, I never realized how my mother would feel.

“I can’t believe she would do that to me. I can’t believe it,” she said utterly confused.

“What do you mean? Why are you so hurt about it? She didn’t do anything to you,” I said.

“How would you feel if one of your friends did drugs with your daughter?,” she stared intensely at me waiting for my response.

“I don’t know,” I confessed, “I guess I never thought about it like that.”

“Well, think about it, and tell me how you would feel,” she said.

My mother was so shocked and disgusted; she cut Arlene out of her life without a word, indefinitely, just like that. To this day, I think my mother still bears hurt and angry feelings about me and Arlene.

“Was I terrible mother?,” she sometimes asks me.

“No, you were the best mother ever,” I always say.

“Yeah, right. What about Arlene?,“ she’ll say, “And here I thought I was being such a good mother.”

“Mom!,” I say trying to get her to let it go, but her feelings of betrayal and disgust still lie there swaying ever so gently like seaweed in the undertow. Arlene, the epitome of what a friend is not.