*This story originally appeared in If I Only Had Cocaine and Other Drug Stories (edited by Will Paoletta)
My grandmother Ruby was the biggest drug addict I knew. Some people see the elderly as stodgy and authoritarian – something to be rebelled against. But I saw my grandmother as something of the ultimate rebel. Much like an aging Keith Richards, she dazedly stumbled through her latter years. She had used the system created for her generation and now moved through her days free from time or financial restraint, her brain wrapped in a comforting fog provided by her collection of amber bottles. She even had kind of a rock star name. We called her Grube.
***
“You got any pot?” Todd asked.
He was in town from college. This was his first summer back since we’d both turned twenty-one and the only reason we weren’t going out to a bar was because neither one of us had any money. I worked part-time at a used bookstore and lived with my parents. My first marriage had already ended and most of my meager earnings went to pay child support.
When Todd asked this question we were actually sitting in my childhood/current bedroom and looking at the crib I’d had to sell my record collection to buy.
“Um … no,” I said.
“Know where we can get some?”
I wasn’t exactly sure how to answer this. I did know where we could get some. At least half my coworkers were chronic pot smokers and would have happily shared but then I would have felt like I owed them something. And probably the real reason was that I was now sort of embarrassed by Todd and actually would not willingly introduce him to anyone I’d met after graduating high school. He had dreadlocks, perpetually wore something that looked like pajama bottoms for pants, a shirt that looked like it could have been made from a rug, smelled like patchouli, and listened to the Grateful Dead, Phish, and Bob Marley. I wore a lot of black and was going through an experimental jazz phase. We didn’t really mesh anymore.
“I have no idea.”
He shook his hair back and ran a hand through his beard, inspecting his nails as though he’d snagged a nit or some old food crumbs.
I had to think of something. Todd was the type of person who wouldn’t leave unless you either asked him to or came up with some excuse like going to sleep. I was way too nice to ask anyone to leave, and since it was still relatively early evening, I didn’t think the going-to-sleep thing would work. That actually wasn’t guaranteed to work anyway. There were times in high school when I’d fallen asleep only to wake up to him playing my video games, rocking around in a chair and shouting at the TV like it was filled with real people. Now, of course, I didn’t have any of those games. It was pretty much just me, my bed, a highly distressed wardrobe filled with more distressed clothes, and the crib, currently minus one child.
If I didn’t think of something soon I imagined falling asleep out of sheer boredom and waking up in the harsh light of dawn to find Todd in exactly the same position.
Then I thought of Grube.
It was a long shot.
It could possibly work with Todd. He was the type of person who just needed to be drunk or high at all times but was too naïve to see himself that way. He still looked at everything as an experience. To me, most of the time, that experience seemed to consist of watching Star Trek reruns or going to Taco Bell and ordering disturbing amounts of food.
“Does it have to be pot?” I asked.
“Why? You got anything else?”
“I don’t have anything but I know someone who does.”
I would have gotten specific with him but it proved to be unnecessary. He stood up, pointed at my bedroom door, and said, “Let’s go.”
***
Being an adult child is way more humiliating than being an actual child. We ran into my mother as we tried to leave the house. She sat at the kitchen table eating a bag of chips and staring dazedly into the middle distance.
“Goin’ out,” I said.
“Don’t stay out too late.”
“Might stay over at Todd’s.” I had no intention of staying over at Todd’s but if I didn’t tell her this she would stay awake until I got home. It was more of a motherly anxiety thing than a controlling thing.
“Be careful on the roads. All those drunk drivers …”
My mother rarely left the house after dark. I have no idea what she imagined it was like, swarms of drunk drivers rampaging through our conservative rural town of fewer than 5000 people.
“Will do.”
“And you boys don’t do anything you’re not supposed to do.”
Now, I have no idea what my mom was like at my age. Okay, well, I guess I do. She was married and had already had my older brother but, before that, before responsibility, I had no idea what she was like. I knew she graduated high school in the late Sixties though. My knowledge of the Sixties came primarily from classic rock, Hunter S. Thompson, and Allen Ginsberg. I pretty much imagined everyone doing bong hits in between gangbangs with the Hell’s Angels. I wanted to tell her she didn’t really have anything to worry about. This was the mid-’90s. We grew up with U2, REM, Morrissey, and grunge. If we ever, for a second, felt like we were having a good time, we knew something was wrong. And while dance music did exist and I knew a few people who’d been to a rave, these were people with far fewer social anxieties and much less cynicism than me.
***
After a few minutes of riding in my trashed Pontiac, Todd finally asked, “Where we going, anyway?”
I didn’t want to tell him we were going to my grandmother’s house. Even though I was sure he would be excited about all the treasure contained therein. I needed to make it sound cool and desirable so I said, “Well, let’s just say I call it the pharmacy.” I’m not sure why I did that. I wasn’t and never had been a drug user but whenever interacting with them, I tried to sound like I used way more drugs than they did. I’m not sure how convincing it was. I looked and acted like a guy who read for fun. And I was.
“Cool,” he said.
Success?
***
“Dude, isn’t this your grandma’s house?”
We sat in Grube’s driveway. Grube slept whenever the hell she felt like it so I had to quickly scan her windows to make sure I could see a light or the television flickering, even though it wasn’t yet dark. I couldn’t remember Todd ever being here but then I recalled a summer where we were around each other all the time. So much so that I had grown so used to him being there I’d apparently just erased him from that time period. He just came over and never left.
“Trust me,” I said.
I was sure we’d be able to find something. I remember staying with Grube when I was something like twelve and, when I complained about a headache, she’d given me a Darvon and I’d blacked out. My older brother, who’d often gotten in fights with my parents about being drunk and high all the time, moved in with Grube briefly. He’d told my parents it was so he’d be closer to his job but I knew it was because of the never-ending supply of Xanax and also, because of Grube’s chemical oblivion and loose moral code, he could have his girlfriend there for sleepovers. Of course, Grube – my father’s mother – hated my mother so it’s possible she was rebelling against her milquetoast born againism by introducing my brother to the party lifestyle of the elderly.
***
The door swung open and I was met with the stark appearance of Grube. She was a tall, broad-shouldered woman with a large hatchet nose and ice blue eyes. She wore her gray hair in the typically fluffy old lady perm. My brother referred to this style as the ‘Vicious Poodle.’ Today she wore a powder blue blouse with ruffles down the front tucked into elasticated white cotton pants in a crazy jumbled fusion of elegance and leisure. Because of some blood pressure medicine that increased her sensitivity to light she was pale as a vampire.
“Grandma Rube!” I usually used this voice shortly before asking for money or coming to retrieve some moderately high-dollar piece of furniture or electronics I’d convinced them they didn’t need. I was hoping it was not announcing I was there for her to give my friend drugs.
“Hey there.” She pulled me into her cloying scent of perfume, cigarette smoke, instant coffee, Doublemint gum, and fabric softener.
It wasn’t until receiving cards for my graduation and failed marriage that I realized Grube didn’t know my name. I was one of four children, we were all boys, and that was too confusing and not worth her time. Plus she had a few other grandkids she liked way better. My name was relatively close to one of my uncles’ – give or take a few letters – so, if forced to address me by a name, she usually chose that one. I didn’t bother re-introducing her to Todd. I knew from her previous encounters she didn’t like his personality and, while he looked completely different now, I knew she wouldn’t understand why he looked like that. Any male who didn’t wear button-down shirts and creased polyester dress pants or a full suit was pretty much a hobo.
She also never seemed concerned or asked why you were there. She assumed you were there to hang out with her.
“Come on in. I was just folding laundry.”
Grube did few things. She cooked. She cleaned their small ranch house. She did laundry and dishes. She occasionally had to lie in bed for days with her back. And she did drugs and sat in a chair and smoked, sometimes while having languidly laconic conversations with a relative either over the phone or in person, sometimes with the ad section of the newspaper spread before her. I wasn’t sure she could read the actual paper.
She waved us in and said there was ice cream in the freezer. I had liked this in my fat youth and it was the one thing she remembered about me.
“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t really want any ice cream but knew she kept all her pills on the top of the refrigerator so I needed to draw Todd’s attention to them and then distract Grube while he helped himself. As I grabbed a bowl from a cabinet and glanced at Todd while moving toward the freezer I saw him looking at the pills with the same reverence an alcoholic stares at all those lighted, gleaming liquor bottles behind the bar. My plan was to get some ice cream and lure her out to the renovated garage where she did the bulk of her lounging and smoking.
I grabbed the container of ice cream from the freezer and sat it down on the faux wood counter. It was store-brand vanilla in the form of a half-gallon brick. Grube still stood in the kitchen, staring at me. Todd still gazed at the pill bottles and remained unacknowledged by Grube. Hopefully Todd was reading the prescription labels and deciding what he needed. I opened random drawers looking for a spoon or ice cream scoop. My incompetence would soon make Grube anxious and impatient and she would either do it for me or go calm down. Either one of those would provide the necessary distraction. I grabbed a spoon and, as soon as I started bending it in the tundra of the ice cream, she moved in.
“Maybe I should use the scoop,” I laughed.
I grabbed the scoop. She made an exhausted sound and slowly sauntered out to the finished garage.
I glanced at Todd and mumbled, “Just take the whole bottle.” I figured since Grube was a collector, she would have plenty of backup to last until her next pill run. He reached up and grabbed three bottles with a silence and dexterity I didn’t know he was capable of. Then he vanished back to the bathroom. Looking down at my current project, I realized I didn’t want any ice cream and deemed the sliver I had chiseled and transferred to the bowl enough. I put the box of ice cream back in the freezer and carried the bowl out to the garage.
Grube sat at the faux wood bar they’d had installed, a Viceroy 100 burning in her mannish right hand while her left clasped to forehead. The room smelled like cigarette smoke, new carpet, and newspaper.
“That all you got?” she asked.
“Yeah. It’s fine.”
“I coulda got it for you.” Grube had rightfully assumed I was too lazy to carve any more out.
“So how ya doing?” This was always a good question, leading her to rattle off a series of ailments or a list of grievances with particular family members.
“Back’s been killing me.”
“I thought you took stuff for that.” I wanted to tell her that most people her age would have back problems if they did twenty loads of laundry a day and rearranged furniture on a weekly basis.
“I took the last one this morning. I’ve got a prescription waiting at Meijers. Dad was supposed to take me but … I don’t know where he is.”
Grube called my grandfather Dad, which was creepy. To heighten her rock star image and because she was super stoned all the time, Grube did not drive. When he was younger, my grandfather had been an alcoholic and, since retiring, if he wasn’t at home Grube jumped to the conclusion he was on a bender. But it was Sunday so I was pretty sure he was at church, where the most nefarious thing he did was to sneak a cigarette on the way there and back. He’d already had one surgery for lung cancer and Grube wouldn’t let him smoke anymore.
She would never ask me to take her. It was possible she didn’t even realize I was old enough to drive and had just assumed me and my derelict friend had been transported there by sorcery to eat her ice cream and keep her company until my grandfather returned from his Dionysian revelry.
While Todd was all about the drugs, I was all about making my life as ridiculous and difficult as possible so I said, “I could take you. If you think they’re open.”
“It’s Meijers. They’re always open.”
I knew they were always open but I didn’t think the pharmacy was. Most of them had even more restrictive hours than bars.
“That’d be a big help. We could take the T-bird.”
“We can just take my car. I think I’m parking it in anyway.” Truthfully, the Thunderbird was just so huge I was terrified to drive it.
She crushed out her cigarette, stood slowly, and put her lighter in a red pleather case housing her pack of cigarettes before snapping its gold clasp shut.
Todd wandered into the garage, looking eager to leave.
“We gotta take Grube to pick up a prescription.”
Todd looked crazy paranoid.
***
I opened the passenger-side door for Grube, always the gentleman. Todd raked a bunch of stuff from the backseat onto the floorboard and dropped himself in. I got behind the wheel and looked over at Grube. Her eyes were so icy and expressionless they were virtually unreadable. The giant lenses of her transitional glasses were now so dark it was impossible to see her eyes anyway. But her disgust was plainly evident by the way her mouth was frozen in something like a silent scream. She had ground her feet down to find the floorboard, fast food wrappers and some old clothes covering her white orthopedic shoes. I had to get out of the driveway while she was still trapped.
“Is this your car?” she asked.
“Yeah. Sorry. It’s a little messy.”
“It’s disgusting.”
I would have had to agree with her but I didn’t know if it represented the irreparable and debilitating character flaw she would have seen it as. It was disgusting. What could I say? I was a young, poor single father who had a job and went to college and sometimes my sloppy girlfriend borrowed my car. I’d clean it when I had time. I wasn’t one of those self-delusional types who didn’t even know how filthy he was.
She continued looking around, moving only her neck.
“If I had knowed it was like this I woulda brought out a trash bag.”
It was no real secret to me how Grube spent entire days doing – in the grand scheme of things – not much of anything. Everything was turned into an Olympian sprawl of OCD.
She began fanning her face with her hand and I could feel some sort of impending meltdown. I had rolled down my window. Todd had rolled down both of the back windows. Still, this cacophony of wind didn’t tip her off that my car did not have any air conditioning.
“Phew,” she said. “Shoo boy. Hot. Why don’t you turn on some air conditioning?”
“I don’t have any.”
One of the reasons she was hesitant to roll down her window was that she didn’t want to mess up her hair.
“Agh. How do you stand it?”
“It’s tough. I have to take a lot of showers and sometimes I have to drive nude and put my clothes on before I get out of the car.”
This was another cool thing about Grube: Because she was usually so stoned and self-involved you could say anything and it wouldn’t get much of a reaction. When I was a few years younger, she and my grandfather had felt brave and let me and my two younger brothers ride with them on a family trip. After most of our conversational efforts and pleas were ignored, we just started saying things like: “I was diagnosed with Leukemia,” and “Mom’s pregnant again.” Nothing got a reaction.
“Shoo,” she said again. Beads of sweat stood out from beneath all the powder on her face. Her cheeks were redder than I’d ever seen them and much of the fluff had fallen out of her perm. “This is just terrible.”
She shuffled her feet around in the trash and searched the door for a lever or button that would automatically roll the window down. My car had neither. The knob was a pair of pliers held in place by a C-clamp and could only roll the window down manually.
“This is just jenky.” She cranked it down using a billion times more effort than was necessary and said, “Why don’t you get rid of some of this garbage?” She reached down and began chucking bags out the window. I laughed and turned the radio on. It was some mix tape I’d made and Aphex Twin’s “Ventolin” came grating out of the two working speakers. Grube chucked another bag out the window and I glanced in the rearview mirror to see if Todd was getting any of this but he’d fallen asleep. I suppose I should have asked her to stop but I hadn’t really learned to care about the environment yet and Grube probably didn’t even know what it was.
Once most of the trash was eliminated, her thin hair was plastered to her scalp and her face powder had separated into weird clumps. It took her way longer to notice the music than I thought it would. If you’re not familiar with the song, you should check it out. I used it to drive customers out of the store at closing time. For all I knew, it took her so long to notice it because it matched the sounds in her head all the time. When she did finally notice it, she looked in horror toward the stereo, her top lip drawing back from gleaming dentures.
“Is this what you kids listen to? It sounds evil.”
“You just have to give it a chance.”
“I like that Kenny Rogers. You ever listen to him? ‘Love Will Turn You Around.’”
“Oh yeah. That was in Six Pack. Good song. I don’t have it, though. This is all I have.”
But our discussion had ended once she stopped talking. I could have pretty much said anything.
“Is your prescription going to be ready?” This question involved her and would get a response.
“Should have been ready since yesterday.”
“I really need to get back so I can get my girlfriend to the abortion clinic.” This question did not involve her and would not get a response.
It didn’t.
We drove the rest of the way in silence.
***
Todd was still asleep or passed out or whatever by the time we got to Meijer. I asked if he needed anything.
Grube lit a cigarette and began ambling through the parking lot.
“Did you already take the pills?” I asked.
His dazed expression answered my question.
“Did you take all of them?”
“You told me to take the whole bottle,” he slurred.
“Fuck. Do you even know what they are? Are you going to be okay?”
“There weren’t that many. Leave me alone.”
I left him alone.
By the time we entered the air conditioning of the store, Grube looked like some kind of midnight monster. The break up of the make-up revealed the deep wrinkles in her rawboned face. Her hair now resembled a fright wig and she shambled along like something that wasn’t completely alive.
Large department stores are designed to waste the time of the very simple. Putting everything on display makes it all look like something you should probably own. The pharmacy was in the back of the store. Grube picked up every item on the way, looking at it, saying something about it that wasn’t really intended for anyone but her and then putting it down wherever she felt like. By the time we reached the pharmacy, I was starting to think the Unabomber had some really great ideas.
I was not incredibly surprised to find the pharmacy darkened, a blue and white ‘closed’ sign in the window next to the sign with the hours.
“It’s closed,” I said.
“Huh.” Now that the tint had gone from her lenses, I could see Grube’s casual blankness replaced by a cold and murderous rage. “Meijers is supposed to be open twenty-four hours. That’s what the commercial says. That’s what the sign out front says.”
“Well, the pharmacy’s closed.”
The particular look she gave me sent a shiver of fear through me. I’d never seen it before. I had heard epic tales of her rage but had never actually witnessed it. My dad’s excuse for Grube not having a license was not that she was permanently stoned or had delusions of grandeur. He said she would have certainly murdered someone by now if forced to deal with road rage. Grube descended to this relatively flat section of Ohio from the dark hollows of the Appalachian mountains of Kentucky and her family was the source of stories that made Flannery O’Connor seem like a gentle read. It also occurred to me that, because she couldn’t drive, she never really went anywhere unaccompanied.
Was I now Grube’s handler?
Could there be a more ill-equipped person for the task?
My philosophy regarding almost everything was to just stand back and observe.
Grube clutched the strap of her red vinyl purse so tightly I thought she was going to sever her arm at the shoulder.
I pointed at the sign like that would help and said, “Closed.”
“I ain’t leavin here till I get my prescriptions. Meijers is open twenty-four hours. I’m here. My prescription’s here. I just need to find the right person to get it.”
I probably should have offered some comforting advice or, hell, just a bit of wisdom from someone who left his house for reasons other than picking up prescriptions or exacting vengeance, but I really just kind of wanted to see how it played out.
“Where’s one of those little jackasses? They’re never around when you need them. I need to rest for a minute. My back is killing me.”
She sat down on one of the plastic chairs put there for people to wait for their prescriptions when the pharmacy was actually open. She fished her cigarette cozy from her purse, pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“You can’t smoke in here,” I laughed.
“Fuck it,” she said.
I moved a little farther away from her. I saw an employee coming down the aisle, probably to tell her to stop smoking. She had her forehead buried in her hand and didn’t see him right away. The man drew closer. He was darker skinned, possibly Indian, and I immediately knew this wasn’t going to go well. Grube was the only person I knew who used the word ‘nigger’ freely and without any apparent malice. Just complete and total ignorance.
Surprisingly, he didn’t even glance at Grube. Unfortunately, she caught sight of him just as he passed. She snapped her fingers at him and said, “Excuse me. Excuse me. Pedro?”
Dear God.
The man gave her a nervous smile, his eyes now finding the cigarette burning between her fingers. He opened his mouth and I was sure he was going to say something about it but Grube spoke before he could.
“I’m here to pick up a prescription.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I need to pick up a prescription. My doctor called it in. It’ll be under Ruby McGwire.”
“I’m sorry but you cannot smoke in here.”
Grube dismissively waved her cigarette at him and now she spoke loudly, as one would to a deaf or foreign person even though, judging by his English and complete lack of accent, I’d be willing to bet he was born here.
“Maybe you didn’t understand me. I said I’m here to pick up a prescription.” She angrily thumbed her hand at the darkened pharmacy behind her.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s closed.”
“Ain’t you all open twenty-four hours? You sure try to make people think you’re open all the time.”
“I’m very sorry. Not the pharmacy.”
“Then why don’t you say that in all your commercials?”
“The rest of the store is open for your convenience.”
“This ain’t convenient. My back has me almost paralyzed and I had to find a ride all the way down here. I ain’t leavin till I get my prescription.”
“I’m very sorry but it’s closed. There isn’t anything I can do about it.”
“Sure you can. You’ve got a key. You open that door, find my prescription, and give it to me. I have my insurance card. There ain’t even a charge.”
“I can’t do that.”
“I need to talk to Mr. Meijers.”
This stunned the man. I’m not sure he really knew what she was talking about.
“You know, the guy who runs this place? I’m sure he’s here somewhere.”
“I will go get my manager.”
“I think I’d like you to do that.”
As he walked away, Grube looked at me and said, “That guy’s drunk as a fucking Nazi,” before dropping her cigarette to the floor and crushing it out.
We waited for a really long time. Probably because the harried employee had to explain the bizarre situation to his manager.
A fat middle-age man in a blue Oxford and khaki pants came stalking up to Grube. He caught Grube somewhat off guard, not even addressing her prescription concern.
“Is this your cigarette butt?” He pointed to the floor.
The younger employee stood behind him and said, “Yes. She was smoking it.”
“I have to ask you to leave,” the manager said. “We don’t allow smoking in our stores.”
Grube stood up. She was taller than the manager.
“That doesn’t matter. Did the little sand nigger tell you I’m here to pick up a prescription?”
“Ma’am, you need to leave the store immediately.”
He looked at me like I was going to help. The situation quickly escalated.
“I’m not leaving here till I get my pills!”
Then the man made an even greater mistake than disagreeing with Grube. He tried to grab her arm.
She violently jerked it away, no sign of crippling back pain anywhere, and said, “Get your fucking hands off me. I’ll knock you back to college, you fucking robot.” Grube assumed anyone who worked in anything other than jeans or a uniform was a college graduate.
She grabbed a candle from an end display and threw it at the window of the pharmacy.
“Okay,” the manager said. “I’m calling the police.”
“Why don’t you just unlock that damn door and we all get what we want?”
The man was already walking to the phone.
I approached Grube and said, “I think we should go.”
“Fuck that.” She kicked over one of the chairs.
Sadly, I didn’t really care if Grube got arrested. I mean, it wasn’t something I wanted to see happen but it wouldn’t have had a great effect on me. However, if I were somehow drawn into it and forced to deal with any more hassles, I would feel pretty put out.
“Okay. Well, I’m leaving,” I said, walking back toward the entrance.
Grube followed behind me in a rage, knocking things off shelves and snarling profanities. I found the commotion reassuring. It meant she was keeping pace behind me. I was afraid to turn around and look. I imagined the goonish manager and his henchman were somewhere behind her, all of us with the singular goal to get her out of the store with as little property damage as possible. I doubted they had actually called the police.
We reached the front of the store and I saw Todd, wearing only his underwear, talking to the elderly door greeter. He was sweating profusely and it looked like he had a hard time standing up.
I grabbed his left arm and said, “This one’s mine too,” before roughly dragging him out into the parking lot.
“I got so hot,” Todd said. “And thirsty. I didn’t know where I was. I just came in for a drink of water. They wouldn’t give me a drink of water.”
Grube kicked over a trashcan, turned toward the employees gathered at the entrance, and shouted, “Rapists!”
When we got to the car both Todd and Grube sat in the back, having apparently forged some unknown connection on a mysteriously occluded chemical highway. I pulled out of the parking lot feeling like a chauffeur for the world’s most bizarre, worst two-person band.
I pulled up to Grube’s house, happy to see my grandfather’s car in the driveway. She got out of the car without saying bye or thanks and started back to her clean palace of order where the drugs, air conditioning, and chores waited to take her in their loving embrace.
I met Todd’s half-lidded eyes in the mirror and said, “Get the fuck up here. This isn’t a cab.”
Todd got out of the car and grabbed his bundle of clothes. Two of the empty pill bottles fell out and hit the ground. It was like Grube knew this sound as well as the opening chords to a favorite song. She turned toward the bottles. She moved toward Todd with surprising quickness. Normally I would have let Todd fight his own battles but he probably needed to go to the emergency room. Grube made a sound I’d never really heard before, something like a group of cats being sucked up into a tornado maybe. I panicked and moved in between her and Todd. I covered my head, expecting the worst.
I heard my grandpa say, “Come on now, Grube,” and looked up to see him gently wrangling her toward the house, a white waxy bag in one of his hands.
Grube still thrust herself toward Todd and shouted, “Don’t never bring that hobo around here again!”
Grandpa forced the bag into her hands and she visibly slackened.
“Them boys took me to a terrible place, Dad. Just … awful. I thought I was gonna die.”
