I’m packing my toiletry bag for the weekend visit with my parents when I realize my pills are gone. How could I have run out and not noticed? When was the last time I took one? Weeks ago. I haven’t needed them, not since returning from our vacation. But now I miss them, not because I’m craving but because I want to be prepared. I want my line of defense, just in case.
I hold the plastic bottle and read the label: my name on it and Jane as the prescribing physician, and the instructions to take as needed, not to exceed two pills in any twenty-four-hour period. Then I notice something else on the label: this prescription can be refilled one time.
Bless you, love. She wasn’t even going to make me ask.
Jane is in the bedroom packing her bag. I call to her from the bathroom. “Got everything you need?”
“I think so. Cold weather, right?”
“Like the North Pole.” The temperature has finally become real winter, although we still haven’t gotten much snow.
She comes in the bathroom and looks through the medicine cabinet. I palm the prescription bottle and put the toilet lid down for a seat.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Watching you.”
“Well, shit or get off the pot,” she says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a joke, don’t you get it?”
She pulls out her travel toothbrush. The bristles have collapsed into a stiff dry mop. She hadn’t rinsed or capped it from our Caribbean trip.
“This is beat,” she says. “I’ll have to take my regular one.”
“I could run down to the drugstore and get you another.”
“No, it doesn’t matter.” She pulls her toothbrush from the holder on the sink.
“I don’t mind. When you take your regular toothbrush it always gets hair on it and stuff.”
“Don’t you want to leave by nine?”
“I have a couple other things to pick up.”
She puts her toothbrush back in its place, then tosses the travel one in the waste can.
“This is the last time,” she says.
The heat in my face betrays me. “Okay.”
“They were meant to be a temporary relief, not a permanent crutch.”
“I don’t really need them,” I say. “It’s just a precaution.”
—
At the drugstore I read the shampoo bottles while the pharmacist fills my prescription. I feel guilty as a shoplifter, and one of the stock boys senses this. He lingers the next aisle over, among the cold medicines, discreetly eyeing me and hoping for a collar.
I was a major kleptomaniac as a kid. I’d go into department stores and supermarkets and palm anything, whether I wanted it or not. Candy, boxes of cookies, nail files, combs, screwdrivers. I even stole a woman’s bra once and kept it under my bed. Sometimes I went with a friend, and one of us created a diversion while the other loaded up, but usually I worked alone. With others, you had to have this kind of celebration afterwards, out in the parking lot or in the back of the store by the dumpsters, holding up your goods like a fresh scalp and whooping it up. I never wanted to celebrate. I felt quiet afterwards, queasy in the stomach. Stealing was a silent, private thrill for me.
Once, just as I was about to leave a store, the manager grabbed my arm. “Just a minute, young man,” he said sternly. He led me back to the office and told me to put the loot on the desk. All I had was one lousy pack of Juicyfruit gum, not even my favorite. His eyes widened as if I’d piled a stack of gold on the table. He started in on me: “Shoplifting is a very serious crime, blah, blah, blah.” He said I had a choice between his calling the police so they could take me to jail, or his calling my parents. I had to think about my options for a while, which probably surprised him. Finally I said my parents. My mother was at work and my father drove down to get me. The manager made this big stink and had my father sign a release form. In the car he asked me why I did it.
“I don’t know.”
“If you tell me why you did it, then we won’t have to let your mother know. Think of how disappointed she’ll be. Think how her heart would hurt. Now, why did you take it—what was it, a pack of Juicyfruit?”
I said, “Because they didn’t have Doublemint?”
It was the first thing I thought of, and in fact I preferred Doublemint but didn’t see it on the shelves. My father laughed. He didn’t even get mad at me. That was the end of our discussion. But not of my shoplifting. Later, I used to steal paint and brushes when I was really broke, before I had Jane to buy them for me.
When my prescription is ready, I take two pills while still in the pharmacy, then walk halfway home before I remember Jane’s toothbrush. I turn around. Back in the drugstore, I study the toothbrush selection and spend fifteen minutes wavering between blue and green, unable to decide which she’d like better. They’re both so awesomely beautiful: translucent plastic, the bleached colors. Has anyone ever used travel toothbrushes as an artist’s medium, assembling them into patterns or sculptures? Maybe I’ll be the first. I finally choose the blue, and at the checkout counter, while the cashier is busy with the customer ahead of me, I pocket a Milky Way.
Walking home, the pills punch up my confidence and set sail to my mood. I laugh about what I just did. Okay, it was immature and a stupid risk, but at least it demonstrated my ability to lighten up. I feel tall and sturdy, as if I had a horse between my legs. In a rash act I pour the remaining pills in a storm sewer, even though I just laid out thirty bucks co-pay for them.
When I get home I give Jane her toothbrush and show her the empty medication container. “I decided I don’t need them after all,” I say.
She looks at me, surprised, as if I’d just given her a birthday cake, then studies my eyes. Her face contracts. “How many did you take before you reached this decision?”
I hold up my index finger. Jane waits.
I hold up two fingers.
Then I hand her a Milky Way.
Excerpt from my upcoming novel.
