“Grandmothers are people, too,” Jo Ellen said, sitting up straighter, with the airy dignity of a drunk. Or a stoned person, whatever they were called—other than ridiculous.
“What if your kids walked in here right now? How would you feel if they saw you?”
She considered that as if it were a serious question. “Tessa would be proud. Kate would be…curious. How would Eli feel?”
Maggie huffed out a breath. “I hope to God I never have to find out.”
“Oh, please.” Jo Ellen wiggled the little smoldering thing at her. “Don’t you come in here and act scandalized, Magnolia. It is not as though we never did pot in college.”
Charlene made another choking sound. “Didpot? Is that what they said back…when?”
“Late sixties,” Jo Ellen said. “They heyday of ‘Mary Jane,’ as we called it.”
“No one called it that,” Maggie corrected her. “It never stuck.”
Jo Ellen flicked her wrist. “Whatever. We did it. And not just once, either.”
Not ever after she met Roger, Maggie thought, remembering his strong stance when they’d been at a party where people had smoked dope, whichwaswhat they’d called it. And Roger said there was a reason for that name—anyone who lit up a joint was a dope.
“We did it a few times,” Jo Ellen continued, her gaze on Maggie, her eyes soft and sentimental with memory.“Remember that spring of ’68? Everything in the world was about to change.” She turned and looked at Charlene. “Summer of ’68 was…well, the world was crazy with riots and politics and war. But we were blissfully unaware of all that, and we pooled our cash and Carol Ann Petrie’s boyfriend sold us a dime bag of Acapulco Gold. Remember, Maggie? We smoked it on the roof of our sorority house, and you tried so hard to catch a moth—you insisted it was a butterfly—that you almost fell down into the azaleas.”
Maggie wanted to deny that she ever did anything so uncouth, but…the azaleas. “They were white,” she recalled as the memory of the flowers and the night blasted her. “The brightest, whitest azaleas I’d ever seen. I’ve never been able to grow those with any success.”
“Wait, did you say a ‘dime bag’?” Charlene asked. “Does that mean…”
“Ten dollars,” Maggie supplied.
“No way.” Charlene smacked the ketchup shelf. “Inflationhashit.”
“And so has this.” Jo Ellen held up the no-longer-burning joint. “I like it.”
Maggie drew herself up to her full and considerable authority. “You know they put things in that now? Like…” She couldn’t think of the word for it so said the only thing she could remember. “Angel dust!”
There was a pause.
“Maggie.” Charlene’s voice was the very gentlest Maggie had heard it. “That is a different drug. That is an entirely different drug, from a different decade, and it is not in my storeroom. I promise you, the last time anyone in the state of Florida said the words ‘angel dust’ with a straight face, the cellphone hadn’t been invented. Actually, the whole internet. Maybe computers.”
With that, Charlene pushed off the ketchup shelf and gave them an amused smile. “As much as I would love to hang and relive the sixties with you, I have a barroom full of humanity trying their level best to ignore a hurricane.”
She paused in the doorway and looked back at the two of them, a tender expression crossing her sharp but not completely unattractive features. The pink hair had to go, though.
“Y’all take your time. Storm’s not going anywhere. And you two have some nice memories to relive.” She winked at Maggie. “From when you ‘did pot.’”
Laughing, she left. The door swung shut behind her, and the roar of the bar dropped to a hum. The storeroom was suddenly small and close and private, just Maggie and Jo Ellen and the rain and…the acrid smell of marijuana.
“Sit down,” Jo Ellen said, patting another crate next to her. “I hate when you loom all judgey and put upon. Relax, Mags.”
“I’m not looming, judgey, or put upon.”
“No, not at all.”
Huffing a breath, Maggie looked around but didn’t see anything remotely resembling a chair. So, she let go of her dignity and sat on the crate next to Jo.
“Only because my knees hurt.”
“My hips did, too,” Jo Ellen said. “Before this.” She held up the joint. “Now the pain is gone. It’smedical, Mags.”
“I’ve heard of that,” Maggie said. “But I’m not having any. I’m just keeping you company so you don’t get the munchies and start eating mustard and mayo.”
