2. Errol

Chapter 2

Errol

I grabbed my keys and bolted toward my car.

It had been a long-ass day and I'd just gotten home from work a few minutes earlier. I was kicking myself for deciding that today was the day to play catch-up and to get all of the odds and ends finished up without the disruption of coworkers. I wouldn't have stayed if I had realized Grams was going to need me. She'd been needing me a lot lately; something was kind of off with her. I couldn't place just what, but it was getting progressively worse.

I thought about calling my parents, but they had long since retired to Arizona. Frankly, I suspected Grams was the reason they left when they did. My dad wanted his retirement to be all leisure and would get frustrated when she asked for any kind of help. My dad was kind of a dick.

Grams left not one, not two, but three messages on my landline answering machine, each one escalating in urgency. When I bought the house from my folks, I kept the landline going because, well, it was my childhood number, and it felt like too big of an end of an era to disconnect it, and it was easy to just add my name and take my parents off.

But now, I saw that phone was much more valuable than just nostalgia, because Grams would use it from time to time. It was the number she remembered—not that she had dementia, but sometimes, she was just off. I tried to get her to talk to the doctor about it, but she insisted she was fine. She was always fine and, quote, "not a fucking child." My Grams had taken to cursing at her 65th birthday and never looked back.

My parents used to be mortified when she cursed around me, even as an adult, but that was always just Grams. It wasn't like I'd never heard those words.

The first message she left today just mentioned needing to go to the pharmacy, and that was fine. I didn't mind driving her. The second one said I needed to quit ignoring her because it was important. Again, not typically my grandmother, but okay. The third was where it got weird and disconcerting. "It's an emergency!" She shouted it loud and clear, over and over and over again until the time limit was up.

I thought to call her first but realized it was best to just hightail it over there. I barely made it into the driveway, the end of my car sticking over the sidewalk, but I didn't care. If they wanted to give me a ticket for that, they could. I needed to get inside.

My heart was racing as I sprinted to the door, and when I got in, what was Grams doing? Sitting in her recliner, watching Matlock for the 47,000,000,000th time—and that estimate might've been on the low side.

"Grams, you okay?" She hadn't been when she called but nothing appeared out of the ordinary.

"Hello, dear. How are you? Did you come for some tea?"

"No, Grams, you called me."

"I did? Yeah, I probably did. You want some tea?"

This caught me off guard because, even though she hadn't quite been herself lately, this was the opposite of her screaming on the answering machine.

"You know what? I would like some tea." It would give me an excuse to stay and figure out what was going on with her. I had a feeling I was either going to need to move in with her or help her find an assisted living facility soon, and it broke my heart. She very much wouldn't do well there, but this erratic behavior was getting progressively more intense, and there might not be another way. "Let me go make us some."

I went into the kitchen, turned on the kettle, and grabbed the box of her favorite tea. When I opened it, it was empty. I turned around to see Grams in the doorway.

"That's why you come when I call you the first time." She had her fist on her hip.

"Are you kidding me, Grams? This is your emergency?" Gods. This day was getting progressively worse.

"It's Matlock time—I don't have tea. How can this be considered anything but?"

I didn't argue with her that Matlock was on all day long, every day, because she had a streaming service where she just picked it.

"Okay, Grams, I'll go out and get you tea."

"Nope, I'm coming with you, and on the way there, you can apologize to me for ignoring me."

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. "Is this the phone you called, Grams?"

She squinted and leaned forward. "You know I don't like that newfangled stuff."

"And you know what the problem with calling me at the house is?

"You never answer your phone?"

Which, fair, but no. "Grams, it's because I'm not always home. I was at work."

"Oh, sweetie." And just like that, her tone completely changed.

She walked over and hugged me. "You work too hard. You're like your father in that." She ruffled my hair. "You need to stop, or you're gonna be miserable. You'll never find someone to settle down with and have a family. You want a family, right?"

"Yes, Grams." If I thought I wouldn't get caught, I'd have rolled my eyes.

She was pinging all over the place, her mood just bouncing and bouncing, unsure where to land. I was going to need to push a little harder to get her to talk to a doctor about this. Had she not been a lifelong non-drinker, I'd have sworn she was drinking half the time.

"Let me go get you tea."

"I'm coming with you."

"Fine, let's go get tea." It was late, and it was easy enough for me to do it, but leaving her when she was like this seemed like a worse idea than bringing her with me.

I walked her out, making sure she locked her door, something she was getting pretty bad at lately, and we got in the car.

"Let's go to the big box store, and we can get you some groceries too."

I didn't have to look much beyond the counter to see that she was running low. It was an empty bread bag, an empty milk jug, and two tuna cans that were empty and rinsed. She said she liked to keep her recycling on the counter so that she knew what she needed to buy again. It was a choice but one that didn't hurt anyone, so I never argued with her. And it did help me because on days I came over, I made sure to replenish her stock without having to play the game of getting her to give me a list.

"No, they have the wrong tea." She buckled her belt.

"What do you mean, they have the wrong tea?" She didn't buy any particularly fancy variety; it was just tea, the kind you probably got at most diners. And if one was on sale, that was the way she went.

"Yeah, the wrong kind." Which explained nothing. "Let's go to the 24." That was what she called her favorite pharmacy—24. In theory, it was open 24 hours, but given that it was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, that wasn't really accurate.

"Okay, let's go."

There was always somebody at the pharmacy, it being one of the only places open late if you needed a prescription. We went inside, and she handed me a basket and said, "Carry this." So I did.

Then she started telling me all about her day, as if this hadn't been the weirdest night ever. She put things in the basket here and there, and then went to the food aisle where she found her tea and plopped it in. I didn't have the heart to tell her that she was probably paying triple the amount because it was the same exact tea everywhere had.

As we rounded the next corner, she ran straight into the security guard, nearly toppling him over.

"I thought you weren't coming back here." He straightened up. There was a story there, one I wasn't familiar with.

She looked up at him and tilted her head. "I don't know what you mean."

"Well, last time you were here, you yelled at me and told me you were never coming in here again because you thought I was?—"

She shook her head. "No, no, I don't think so."

And that's when everything went yikes. She grabbed the basket from me, threw it at him, and ran out the door. Only she grandma-ran , so it wasn't much more than a walk, and he followed behind her.

When I turned around, I saw the poor security guard was holding his nose. Apparently, she did get a good throw in. I hustled straight to the car, intending to get her inside of it before going back to apologize for what happened and beg him not to trespass her. Before I was able to unlock it, a police car pulled into the driveway. Their lights weren't on. From what I could tell it was simply bad timing.

Great, just what we needed.

Of all the times for them to come here.

"Come on, Grams, let's hurry up and get you inside." So I could fix this mess.

"Why? Are you saying I can't handle myself?"

Fantastic. I was making it worse.

"No. Of course not. I just figured that since?—"

She cut me off, screaming, "This is what I think about cops!"

And then I had to watch helplessly as she turned around and pulled her pants down.

"Are you mooning the officer?"

Fuck. She was.

Hours later, I was calling around trying to get enough money to bail her out and being told by multiple people that this wasn't her first time here and that she needed help, not enabling. I'd had no idea about the other arrests. Things were so much worse than I realized.

Please let me wake up from this nightmare and quick.