The Candymen

Chet is such a prankster. While I was making pancakes this morning, he tiptoed up behind me and stuck his tongue in my ear. It was warm and slimy, but I didn’t flinch.

“Gotcha,” he laughed.

“You wish,” I shot back, wrapping my arms around his neck. He smelled spicy, like aftershave. I gave him a kiss, a good one, so he won’t be able to stop thinking about me later today.

He peeked over my shoulder. “Are you making pancakes?” Chet knows how I feel about carbs, but I ran out of turkey sausage yesterday.

“They’re for the boys. I’m having an egg white scramble.”

He grabbed my left butt cheek and gave it a squeeze. “That’s my girl. No excuses.”

“No excuses.” It’s just one of the affirmations Chet and I use to stay motivated. Sometimes we text them to each other during the day, like: “Stop wishing, start working.” Or “Be a warrior, not a worrier.” We have so many things in common. We both care about staying fit, we both believe in reaching for our dreams, and we both hate negativity. Not all couples have the kind of tight relationship we have, but we want it badly enough to put the work in.

Chet said goodbye to Kyle and Hudson before he left. I checked the clock as he pulled out of the driveway in his Range Rover. 8:27, right on schedule. That’s another thing we strive for: Predictability. Chet says we have to try harder than the average family. Make sure we don’t give the neighbors anything to wonder about.

That’s because there’s so much judgment in the world. It makes me feel sick when I think about it. I wish people could see that every human on the planet is in the same mess. Brown or white, rich or poor, chunky or skinny, we all want the same things: Happiness, good health, plenty of food. We all want someone to love us. We’re all afraid to die.

That’s one of the main teachings of Buddhism: We’re all the same, only most of us don’t know it yet. I got into Buddhism a few years ago, when I found some books at Barnes & Noble. It was like discovering things I already knew, on some deep level, but could never put into words. Things like: Suffering is optional, and the only way to find peace is to live in the moment. It’s simple, but yet again it’s not.

It throws people off when I tell them I’m a Buddhist. They don’t expect it from a petite brunette who loves life. A firecracker, that’s how they describe me. The few who know about Chet’s business, they get confused. I know what they’re thinking, though they would never say it out loud: How can you be married to a drug dealer and be a Buddhist? To which I would reply: If you’re going to be married to a drug dealer, you might as well be Zen about it.

Is that hilarious or what? I crack myself up.

Seriously, though: It’s not easy, living this life, but it’s our path. Everyone has one, and this is ours. Mainly we try to live out in the open, normal as anything. Like Chet says, we have nothing to be ashamed of. With his shiny pink cheeks and curly hair, I tell him he looks like a Kennedy. Handsome and dignified, that’s my guy.

We live on a quiet cul-de-sac in Bedford, about an hour from New York City. I love our red brick Colonial, but it doesn’t have a guest cottage, and our pool is itty-bitty. We don’t throw crazy parties. We don’t buy pimped-out cars. Kyle is on the swim team, and Hudson is in the band. Kyle is the youngest, he looks like Chet. Hudson takes after me, right down to his green eyes and the freckles on his nose. They’re great kids, and I’m not just saying that because I made them. I bring cookies to their soccer meets. We host sleepovers. I always tell the parents they’re welcome to drop by anytime.

What the boys and I never do is visit Chet’s office. It’s not even a conversation. In the early days, before we moved here, Chet used to bring his associates by for drinks or whatever, but he stopped as soon as I got pregnant. There’s family, and there’s business, and we don’t mix the two. End of story.

“Rich couples never fly in the same airplane,” Chet told me years ago. “That way, if one plane goes down, the family is still intact.” It touched me that Chet thought about us in that way. We didn’t even have kids yet, and he was already planning to build an empire for us.

I wish people could see that what Chet does is no different than any other job. He moves a product for a profit, same as every other business in America. I can’t even count the nights he spends hunched over his laptop, crunching numbers, worried about quality standards and shipping hassles.

And competition, don’t even get me started. Ever since Breaking Bad, every college kid and middle-aged loser wants to make meth. Rent an RV, buy some lab equipment. It can’t be that hard, right? Walter Fucking White. Excuse my language, but give me a big fat break.

Of course we watched the show. It was our Sunday night ritual, after the kids went to bed. How sad was it when Jesse’s girlfriend choked to death? And Skylar with her blank eyes, walking into the pool in her dress. I expected her to dissolve, like a paper flower.

“Don’t ever do me like that, baby,” Chet said, shaking his head, taking another sip of his Diet Coke. He drinks the stuff like water. Gets antsy if there are only a few bottles in the house.

Of course the boys want to drink it too, they adore their dad, but we only allow them to have one a day. Their dentist says more than that will harm their teeth. “Whiners never win,” I say when they complain.

We could have done without the entire world watching Walter and Jesse turn crystal into piles of money for five straight years. TV makes everything look easy. Chet says it’s like playing whack-a-mole to try and figure out who wants to be Heisenberg this week. I give so much credit to Chet, because he’s a businessman, but these wannabes? They’re delusional.

Two of the people who know about our business — it’s a very short list — are Chet’s brother Brad and his wife Karlee. They invited us over for a barbecue a couple of summers ago, and Karlee and I got to talking. Maybe she had downed one too many Chardonnays, because she was acting like we were best friends. Telling me about her last bikini wax, and bragging that she and Brad have sex four times a week.

Karlee was working a fresh bottle over with a corkscrew, the kind with plastic wings on the side. She was giggling. “Do you ever worry that Chet will try to bring your boys into his business?” Tipsy as she was, she caught the way my face tightened up and tried to backtrack. “I’m not saying — all I meant was, we were watching that show, and I got a little worried.”

Which was code for: Wouldn’t it be tragic if your boys grew up to be drug dealers, as if Chet was nothing more than a black hole, sucking innocent victims inside. “I’m proud of Chet,” I told her, and lasered her with my eyes.

What I should have said was: What really worries me? Is that Brad will try to convince my sons to play football. Because Chet’s brother is a high school football coach, thank god he’s not in our district, but still.

I wonder if Karlee ever thinks about the boys and men who get their brains scrambled on the football field. I saw the documentary, it slayed me. Players who are hit one too many times — and the number is different for every person, that’s the bad thing — lose control of their limbs, or stop being able to think straight. We pump millions of dollars into the game and treat the players like idols, and basically we’re ruining them for life.

I would never, in a hundred years, let Kyle or Hudson play football. But Karlee dares to condemn my husband for giving his family a comfortable lifestyle and being good at what he does? That’s what I mean about judgment. It seems righteous at first, but it’s toxic to the core.

Sometimes I have this conversation in my head, where I imagine someone saying: Yes, but meth turns people into addicts. And I say: Sure, and prescription drugs do the same thing, but are you trying to run your doctor out of town? Just wondering.

The hypocrisy, it blows my mind.

Of course the cops are wise to Chet. They know more about him than I do. What most people don’t realize is, tax money doesn’t even begin to cover their bases. Drug money pads their salaries, pays for more vehicles, buys better equipment. Don’t even kid yourself that they want to shut it all down. But they also need the PR that comes from taking so-called bad guys off the streets. All the stuff you see on the news.

It’s not as simple as scratch-mine-and-I’ll-scratch-yours, but Chet makes sure the police get the information they need. He keeps track of every move the competition makes. I don’t know how he knows, but he just knows.

The new ones, they don’t count on Chet being all up in their business. They’re focused so hard on the cops and the DEA and the FBI, they don’t pay enough attention to everyone else. It’s like the first time Chet took me to Hawaii, and I realized there was a whole world underneath the water. Every fish has a special place in the coral reef or whatever, and it’s the same in Chet’s world. The amateurs, they think they can be the shark, just for wanting to.

A couple of weeks ago, Chet let it slip that there was yet another interloper with a fancy trick: Meth that looks like candy. Call it beginner’s luck, but it was a big hit with the summer crowd. I started calling them the Candymen in my head.

Chet needed to take care of it, so he stayed in a hotel near Brooklyn for a few nights. We told the boys he was going on a business trip. I made a big show of packing his bag, and Kyle made him a card that said: “Thanks for working hard for us, Dad.”

I booked a trip to the day spa while he was gone. Part of this Buddhist thing is learning to be okay with not knowing, but it’s harder than it sounds. Breathing helps. So does a row of hot rocks lined up on your spine.

Chet rolled back into the garage a few nights later. 5:03, right on time. “Did you miss me?” he said. He took a box out of his pocket and lifted the cover. It was a diamond necklace. A solitaire, nothing flashy. I busted out crying, even though I was a tiny bit disappointed, because everyone wears cubic now, you can never tell what’s real. I’d rather have a different stone, but the way Chet spoils me, I can’t complain.

That was a week ago.

Last night, after the boys went to sleep, Chet called me into the den. “Watch this,” he said, pointing at the 10 o’clock news. He was mixing his Diet Coke with Jim Beam. A woman in a red suit was standing in front of a candy store out on Long Island, looking all breathless and pleased. She explained that a couple of guys had been arrested there earlier in the week. The police suspected they were buying meth that looked like candy. Now, she announced, test results showed the candy was clean. Plain old Jolly Ranchers, cherry and blue raspberry.

The scene switched to the police station, where a podium was set up. “Dope dealers will disguise their product in any way you can imagine,” the police spokesman said, shaking his head, playing the Good Guy card. “We have every reason to believe the tainted candy is out there, and we will find it.”

Chet sucked air through his teeth. He hates the word “dope,” and I can’t blame him, it’s what you call someone who is dim-witted or slow.

“Wrong guys,” he muttered, crunching on a piece of ice.

“Do you think they were in on it? Maybe they found out there was going to be a bust, and sent those guys in as a decoy?” It was a mistake, but I was excited.

“You know better than to ask questions like that,” Chet said, rough-like, and I shut my trap. “I keep warning you, don’t try to be too smart.”

He was right. Chet always tells me that if I’m ever in a situation where someone is threatening me, they‘ll be able to tell right away if I have something to hide. The less I know, the better.

I walked over to him and slid onto his lap, straddling him with my legs. “Sorry, baby. My bad.” His whole body was clenched tight. I could see his mind going, miles away from the den.

“They’re embarrassed,” he said a few minutes later, as if he didn’t notice what I was doing. “News made them look incompetent. They hate that.” And he twisted his lips, like he was in pain.

I sat up, looked him straight in the eye. “No excuses,” I said, while I kept working on him with my hands, and he grabbed me, hard. “No excuses,” I said again, and he finally got into the moment.

Success is a head game. The only way to win is to stay one step ahead, and never let them shake you. Like the Buddha says, the mind is everything. What you think, you will become. It’s on me to keep Chet in the right place mentally, and not let him slide. No one else understands him like I do. It’s my path.

Two young men were apprehended by the NYPD earlier this summer as they left a candy shop on Long Island. They were held in jail for over 24 hours on suspicion of drug possession after police mistakenly identified their Jolly Ranchers as methamphetamine. The suspects, now released on all charges, plan to sue the police department. — via The Smoking Gun

What this project is about: Every few weeks, Jennifer Jeffrey + Natalie Greenfield pick a news item and each write a fictional story around it. Read more details in Announcing Smells Like Make-Believe.