13. Maggie #2
“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’s medical, 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.”
Jo Ellen cracked up. “Please tell me you remember the time we walked to 7-Eleven because we had to bake a cake. Please.”
Maggie closed her eyes. “It was chocolate and we put that canned frosting on it. My grandmother probably rolled over in her grave.”
“I’d eat that frosting now,” Jo Ellen said. “With a spoon.”
“Exactly how you ate it then.”
“And remember the kitten?” Jo continued, her mind in seventy different directions. “Crystal? The one you found right outside Jackson Street Cemetery? Oh, my God, how do I remember the name of that place?”
“How do you remember the cat’s name?”
“Crystal Blue Persuasion? We found it that summer right after the azalea thing. And we loved that song! The cat was pregnant and had kittens in the closet—do you remember? We were watching Laugh-In!”
Maggie dropped her head in her hands, recalling the night with a mix of horror and hilarity. “We heard the awful mewing from the closet and discovered…five kittens!”
They sat in the echo of their laughter for a while, then Jo looked at the homemade cigarette in her hands. The joint looked just like Maggie remembered them—good to know some things didn’t change.
She watched her friend’s face in the bare-bulb light. Loose and easy and every bit as young as that Jo from UGA.
“What does it feel like?” Maggie asked, genuinely curious.
Jo Ellen turned her head, slow and pleased.
“It feels,” she drawled, “like being eighteen on a roof in May with your best friend and your whole life ahead of you and a moth that was, at the time, as pretty as a butterfly.”
“And white azaleas,” Maggie whispered, back there on that roof again.
“It feels kind of young and free and like the girls we used to be. Especially you.”
“Me? I haven’t touched that thing.”
Jo held it out. “Lighter’s right here in front of the Heinz 57.”
Maggie eyed the joint again, as her heart beat a little faster. Then reached to take it out of Jo Ellen’s fingers.
“Don’t throw it away, Mags. It isn’t going to hurt us!”
She jutted her chin to the ketchup shelf. “Give me that lighter.”
Jo Ellen gasped. “Really?”
“Also, shut up.”
She did, biting her lip as she handed the lighter to Maggie. “It might make you cough, so—”
“I can handle it, Jo. Don’t make it a thing.” She flicked the lighter and put the joint to her lips.
“Magnolia Fredericks Lawson.”
“If you narrate this, I will put it out in that vat of ketchup,” she said around it.
“My lips are sealed.” Jo Ellen was practically vibrating with excitement on her milk crate. “I am a vault.”
Maggie drew in a small, cautious, experimental breath, and was immediately and thoroughly punished for it.
The cough came up from the soles of her feet. It bent her in half on the milk crate. It was loud and undignified and it went on for some time, and Jo Ellen—no help at all—was laughing too hard to even pat her back.
By the time Maggie sat up, eyes streaming and throat scorched, she was laughing, too.
“Oh,” she wheezed. “Oh, that’s dreadful.”
“Take another,” Jo Ellen said. “The first one’s just to get the door open.”
Oh, why not? She’d already burned her lungs out. Might as well go up in flames.
The second puff went down easier. It singed less. It actually tasted…well, better than that ten-dollar stuff from Acapulco.
Nothing happened at first. But in a few minutes, the storeroom went soft and golden at its edges. The ketchup bottles looked like decoration—like Andy Warhol had painted the room.
The roar of the storm stopped sounding like a threat and more like bad weather. And Jo Ellen, beaming like a loon from an overturned milk crate, became, abruptly, the funniest and dearest thing Maggie had seen in a decade.
“I am different,” Maggie said slowly, not exactly sure where the thought came from.
“Are you high?” Jo Ellen asked.
“I have no idea, but I mean I’m different this summer. I’ve felt it. I’m less…” She searched for the right description. “Less of a clenched fist. You know?”
“Oh, I know.”
Maggie gave a light punch to Jo’s thigh. “You don’t have to agree that much.”
“But it’s true.”
“Destin always did that for me,” Maggie continued as the world suddenly became less edgy and more…interesting. “Our summers here were like drinking spring water after nine months of being parched.”
Jo Ellen gave a happy moan. “How I loved for that calendar to say June so we could leave Ithaca behind and be with the Lawsons again.”
“And then Roger and Artie separated us,” Maggie said.
“For our protection.”
“It would have been nice to know,” Maggie replied dryly.
“I mean, would it have killed them to tell us rather than just order us apart?” She shook her head.
“Roger always ordered me to do everything. And I did it. A good, dutiful wife. Even after he died, I never reached out to you. And I…I am mad at him for that!”
“Easy, Mags. Pot’s supposed to make you mellow.”
“Well, it’s making me realize that thirty years is a long time to carry a man after he’s dead.”
“Let him go, Mags.”
“I am. I did. But…” Without thinking, she took another puff and handed it to Jo, who did the same. “We were always more fun together than apart.”
“Still are,” Jo agreed.
“It’s you who’s changed me,” Maggie said quietly. “It was always you.”
“Or,” Jo Ellen said, lifting the little glowing thing with a slow and radiant smile, “it could be the not Acapulco Gold you’re smoking.”
Maggie gave an undignified snort of laughter and Jo Ellen caught it like a cold, and the two of them sat on their milk crates in a storeroom full of ketchup and laughed until Maggie’s eyes ran.
Then they just dredged up the past like two little stoned grandmas hiding in a closet during a hurricane. Wait—that’s what they were.
“Whatever happened to Carol Ann Petrie?” Jo mused.
“I hope she got a nose job,” Maggie said. “That thing was a weapon.”
Jo giggled. “She thought she was going to be the next Barbra Streisand.”
“Well, she wasn’t. Don’t you remember she owned a leopard caftan?” Maggie grunted at the memory. “She wore it to a party.”
“You called her Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.”
“Heh.” Maggie grinned. “Oh, I was good in my day, wasn’t I?”
“Still are, Mags. One more?” She offered the now very small joint.
“Of course,” Maggie said. “This is better than wine and no calories.”
“Until we go in the bar and get french fries!” Jo said.
Maggie’s eyes widened as she exhaled a big puff. “Well, there’s certainly enough ketchup!”
They both howled at that like it was the funniest thing either of them had ever said, and Jo grabbed a bottle of industrial-sized ketchup to—
“That’s your phone ringing, Mags.”
“Is it?” She stood and patted her jeans pocket. “I thought it was my head.”
While they giggled extensively over that, Maggie managed to find her phone, tap the screen, and…
“Oh, boy.”
“What’s wrong?” Jo asked, up immediately to peer over her shoulder. “Eli! Tell him to come and join us!”
Maggie whipped around. “Are you out of your mind?”
“No, but you are.” Jo Ellen snorted. “You better not let him know.” She sang the warning. “You’ll be in big trouble with your son.”
“Shut it.” Maggie swallowed, willed her head to clear, and, goodness, would her face stop smiling?
“You have to answer or he’ll think you’re dead.”
She was right. Clearing her throat, she sat back on the crate and gave Jo Ellen a warning look. “Stay cool.”
“Who, me? Cool Hand…Jo?”
Maggie bit back a laugh—Jo Ellen howled—and answered the phone.
“Hello, Eli.” Oh, dear. That sounded…high. Like high-pitched, not high…as a kite.
“Mom? You okay?”
“Yes, of course, why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because we’re in the middle of a hurricane.”
They were? She’d actually forgot about Norman. “But I’m safe and sound.”
Jo Ellen leaned in and mouthed, “And high on pot!”
Maggie flipped her hand and scowled, inches from Jo’s face.
“What’s Gator Jack’s like?” Eli said after the awkward few seconds of silence.
“Very crowded and loud.”
“Really, I don’t hear anything.”
“Well, I’m…in the bathroom.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” He waited a beat. “You sure you’re okay, Mom? You sound kind of weird.”
She did? “I sound perfectly normal for a woman in the bathroom at a diver bar.” There, that sounded like Maggie.
“A diver bar?” he asked.
Dang it. “You know what I mean. A biker…dive bar.”
“Is everyone there a biker?” he asked.
“No, no. They’re just people.”
“Really nice people!” Jo Ellen added, getting closer and earning another glare.
“Is that Jo Ellen?” he asked. “She’s in the bathroom with you?”
Oh, dear. “Yes. We’re…just…having a private moment together.”
Jo’s eyes went to saucer size. “That sounds weird,” she mouthed.
“That sounds weird,” Maggie repeated into the phone, for reasons she would never understand but surely could blame Mary Jane. Jo Ellen started laughing so hard her eyes watered. “Do you mind?” Maggie asked, trying to stay serious.
Eli was quiet for a minute. “Are you…drinking?”
“Eli, what kind of accusation is that? I had a wine. Barely. Nothing else.”
Jo Ellen had the audacity to mime sucking in a joint.
“Well, as long as you’re having fun.”
“We are,” Maggie said. “I mean, not too much. You know me. I don’t like fun.”
Jo was literally doubled over, which only made this whole painful exchange worse.
Eli laughed softly. “Apparently, sometimes you do,” he said. “Tonight, for example.”
“How’s everyone at the safe house?” she asked, certain she sounded like any interested, caring mother and not one who was in a food storage closet doing pot.
“Safe and sound. All is well here. Storm is definitely landing east, so we’ll have some damage, but I’m feeling optimistic.”