-1-
“Hi,” I said when Anna-Lou finally answered the door. She looked like hell but that greatly improved when I showed her a thirty milligram bottle of Methadone. I had guessed her situation correctly and for the first time in ages I had the power to ease suffering.
“Sarah–what?” She said, confused, as she had a right to be. I imagine she experienced a moment similar to wishing for something utterly impossible and seeing it come true. In the forty years I had known her, not once had I directly addressed “her condition.”
“Let’s go in,” I said, with a smile, placing the bottle in her hand. “Maybe the neighbors shouldn’t see this.”
“Yes-um yeah, of course, you know you’re always welcome,” she turned the bottle over and over in her hand as though presented with a great fortune–which, in a sense, it was. “Thi-this is such a surprise…”
She was about to babble, as was her way, but I hushed her by placing my finger on her lips and gently pushed her into the house.
We sat at her little kitchen table.
“Go on, I know she shared. I know all about it–always have,” I said, nodding at the bottle, speaking quietly, friendly. “Take your medicine and we will talk about the future.” I knew she was hurting, but Anna-Lou was the sort of person who’d ask permission to put herself out if on fire, even in her own house. I never liked that about her; she had been born without an atom of fuck you in her attitude. It amazed me that she lived so long without it.
Thus Anna-Lou uncapped happiness. The container was about half the size of a standard aspirin bottle and made of a plastic clear enough to see the small amount of purple liquid that was just as dangerous as it was pleasurable. Methadone will kill you as surely as a gun if not taken seriously.
She knocked back a bit over half with a grimace. I knew it tasted rough, regardless of the cherry syrup the clinic added to it. “I like to save a little for later,” she said, like a child and replaced the cap.
“How long since your last?” I asked.
“Yesterday.”
“How long till your next fill?”
“Tuesday.”
Two days, I thought. One of those time spans that sounds easy to survive when it isn’t your dopesickness.
It doesn’t take long for liquid smack by whatever name to hit you–especially if you are running on fumes, and especially if you are seventy-eight years old, like Anna-Lou. Nothing improves faster than a dopesick junker, but unless it is by the needle there is a short lag.
“I’ll make coffee,” I said. That gave me an excuse to not watch Anna-Lou kick in, for I’d seen that sort of thing enough to last a lifetime–and although I was destined to see plenty more, I didn’t believe that I had to watch all of it.
We called her Anna-Lou–ostensibly for “Aunt Louise.” Although she was kin, Anna-Lou was an Aunt to nobody, but a first cousin of the dead father that my sister Tess and I never knew. She was much older than he was, so “Aunt” came about in that circumstantial, almost organic fashion peculiar to families, and morphed further into Anna-Lou.
She was what used to be referred to as a “Maiden Aunt” and what is still known as a Drug Addict. Anna-Lou wasn’t mentally retarded (euphemisms be damned), but she was what my generation called “slow.” She never married and took care of her parents until they died at the same house she spent her entire life. Anna-Lou got by on Disability, and there was a trust that paid the taxes on the house. Hers was a small life that took place entirely within a fifty mile radius. She had never ridden in a plane and not once had she ever been outside the state of Washington. If Anna-Lou ever thought that there were better or even different ways to live–it didn’t show.
Anna-Lou’s kitchen perpetually stank of Lilt. She gave herself home perms ever since I could remember, and dyed her hair the shade of black that reflects purple in the sun; after her eyes went bad you’d see little spots of the stuff on her ears.
There were several empty pill bottles on the kitchen counter. That stabbed a hole in my heart. I should have come yesterday. I examined the bottles and discovered that each one was wet inside. Tess once told me that Anna-Lou kept her empties and saved them for when she was especially hard up between refills, due to “chipping.” She’d fill them with warm water and drink the dust. That was what I must have interrupted–one of those small secret horrors in life too real for the imagination to create; but just another normal day in the life of yet another rootless refugee caused by the feckless War on Drugs. It was still betwixt and between whether I’d just come only this far or go all the way with Anna-Lou. When I saw the empties, I knew there was no choice.
-2-
A junker’s idea of coffee is disgusting. They are insects about sweets. The enamel on my teeth cringed as I watched Anna-Lou pour more Cremora and sugar in her cup after each sip–but I figured she was getting as happy as she got.
She tried to get sentimental on me. “Poor Tess, I miss her so–”
“All right,” I said–actually it was more of a soft hiss. Although definitely not Mensa material, Anna-Lou heard something in my voice and saw more in my eyes that told her don’t fuck with it. It’s a look I inherited from my mother. Anna-Lou knew all about it. Funny thing is Im not certain what happens if anyone ever does fuck with it anymore. It meant Fist City until I was about sixteen. Ever since it just sits there like a sleeping volcano; dormant, just waiting for the best time to explode. Regardless, Tess, as a direct subject of conversation, was off limits, and would be for a very long time.
“I’m going to help you with your habit, ” I said, after she had clearly kicked into gear. I wanted it all out in the open and no longer wanted to speak the secret tongue of the junker. It stunk of shame the same way her kitchen reeked of Lilt. A fairly severe arthritic condition in the spine had placed the monkey on Anna Lou about fifty years earlier. Although genuine, it was one of those conditions that gets worse when people are watching.
For a second her eyes darkened, I figured she thought I meant rehab. But I had learned from Tess that there’s nothing to recover for some people. So I just said it plainly. From this point on there would be no turning back.
“Got nine more jugs of that at home,” I said. “Tomorrow at six–A.M.– I will bring the next one and will do so everyday until I take you to the clinic next week to start your methadone program. You’d better get used to getting up at hell o’clock in the morning.”
I wish you could have seen the look on her face. It was enough to make Jesus believe in miracles.
-3-
Tess said heroin was “Knowing the sweetness of death without oblivion… the stupid stuff you were so worried about doesn’t mean shit.” True, I suppose–but junkers give other people plenty to worry about. They cause jailhouse phone calls, money missing from purses and force you to do something about pathetic shit like someone reduced to drinking pill water so you can stop thinking about it. Then they go and die on you and leave a hole that not even dope can fill.
Tess found lasting death on 29 May 2004, at forty-two–about three weeks before I visited Anna-Lou. Funny thing was Tess had quit heroin after Thanksgiving and for the first time she had yet to violate the terms of her treatment plan. She’d even graduated from having to go in daily to bringing home a week of carries every Saturday. But over a quarter century of challenging her heart to “beat through this” had caused the thing to finally throw up its ventricles and quit in her sleep on a Saturday night, just after she’d picked up a round of a dozen carries. Oddly, she died “clean” according to the drug gestapo. That made me laugh because Methadone is a strong dope. And although Tess hadn’t been clear for more than five consecutive goddam days since she was fifteen, and was gacked on enough of the juice to drop an Ox, her death, like the Methadone itself, was authorized. Thus her final “statistic” went in the “cured” column. Only in a world this fucked up can such a thing be true.
It wasn’t like her to die with bullets left in the clip; but when I found her remaining carries (she took two doses a day, which would probably killed Anna-Lou), it occurred to me that I might be able to do something for Anna-Lou without considering the potential enormity of the task–behavior indicative of the sap I can be.
Still, maybe the uncashed luck of the dead can gather into one strike that leads to a longshot standing in the winner’s circle. Tess dying with “whiskey in the jar” (her term), followed by me remembering that she “helped” Anna-Lou with a half dose toward the end of the month, due to anna-Lou’s chipping off her supply (which was one of those unspoken common knowledge things that I pretended to be ignorant of), and a quick series of phone calls landed Anna-Lou in the Clinic within days, when it should have taken weeks. These were a series of events as likely as getting a buzz off pill water.
Of course no chance is worth a damn if you are unwilling to do the work to secure it into reality. Anna-Lou, by owning a house, was too “rich” to be a junker, state insurance-wise (she had Medicare, but at the time it did not pay for drug treatment). And many people didn’t (still don’t) understand that you can as easily become a junker on pills as from the needle–which I know she never tried. Still, plainly, she didn’t have the four hundred dollars a month to lay out. But I had a good job in Seattle, and as much as I hate to say it, Tess’s death was a boon to my finances. All that was needed was a sucker to make the fairytale come true, which is usually my cue.
“You can knock off the agonizing pain routine,” I said (much more friendlier than it looks in print), on the morning of her first dose, as we got in my car. “You’re in high cotton now.”
Anna-Lou just smiled that dreampurple smile that I knew all too well from Tess. At the age of seventy-eight she had found the sweet joy of the meaningless in life.
Still, she automatically kept the pain act going for a few months. It too was a fifty year habit.
-4-
Even at seventy-eight, Anna-Lou was only the third oldest junker in the clinic. It’s not an especially old age anymore, but it is rarified air for dope addicts. In a sad and twisted way I must admire addicts who survive that long and refuse to kick. But her age (and my paying six months in advance) also put her on the easy street to weekly carries in half the normal time. Which was good news for me because the charm of taking her to the damn place six mornings a week wore off pretty fast. And yet after she had her swallow, she would change. The junk normally puts people on the nod–a sort of dreamy catatonia. “Vegetable serenity” as that famous old junker William S. Burroughs had put it (still doing till his end at eighty-three). Amazingly, the rewiring of her brain by stuff ten times more powerful than what she was addicted to uncovered a much stronger and funnier human being than I knew her to be. Mom and I always treated Anna-Lou like a pet at best and normally as a pest. Somehow we could afford to be superior. If you live long enough with both eyes open, you realize when you were wrong. And if you are very lucky there’s still time to do something about it.
-5-
Tess claimed that it’s always 1979 at Methadone Clinics and Pancake Houses. She was an artist and could be counted on to say that sort of thing. But she was right, or at least she was until a few years ago when progress finally razed for the lasting shadow of 1979. The clinic was remodeled for the first time in fifty years and the pancake house became a parking lot. By then, however, both Tess and Anna-Lou were too dead to care.
“They boosted my dose,” Anna-Lou said, on the final Saturday (unknown to us) we went to the pancake house after she had dosed and picked up her weekly carries. She was eighty-two, four years into treatment and absorbing enough juice per day to flatline a small family.
“Been chipping?”
“Of course.”
I shrugged. You can’t give a junker enough dope, unless it kills them, that is. Anna-Lou and Tess were born chippers, trying to better experience something that I could never know.
She excused herself to use the restroom. There was this little lock-box she had to bring to the clinic on Saturday, by law she had to have one or they couldn’t give out her dope (a child could have broken into the damn thing). She hung fast to it like an old movie secret agent handcuffed to a briefcase. She automatically handed it to me for safeguarding. Jesus could have been sitting at the table and she would not have trusted him with it.
I clearly remember the meaningless moments that precede the various Ends of the World in my life much more than I do the big events themselves. While she was gone I looked vacantly out the window at a reasonably well dressed young woman leaning against the wind of that April morning. I thought that she was clutching her youth vainly against the reach of time, much like Anna-Lou holding her lockbox, unwilling to relinquish what meant most to her.
And I recalled the question she had asked me the first time we ate at the pancake house.
“How come you never caught the habit?”
“Tess gave me a swallow once and it made me sick as hell. Turns out I’m allergic.”
I was feeling low so I took a swallow. And within minutes I had a shining vision until the shit banished me from its secret world. It was like one of those near death–go to the light experiences people talk about. Such warmth and security and joy–and I even caught a glimpse of the fabled dreampurple light. Then I got sick. Tess told me that happens often to first timers, but we both knew that I would never see it again; the dreampurple light was not for people like me–the shunned, the Designated Drivers of life–the shepherds who answer the phone at three in the morning, discover their purses have been looted and guide old junkers to the end.
Anna-Lou returned after an extra long time and brought an End of the World with her. She was pale and shaking.
“What’s up?”
“I’m bleeding, down there.”
-6-
If there is a God, then he is a sick and twisted bastard. I can see him driving on the highway of life with a Cash, Grass or Ass–No One is Saved For Free sticker on his chariot. I hear him laughing whenever he dispenses uterine cancer to women who never had children. Making sure that the device got used for something, I guess.
Anna-Lou no longer had to go to the clinic. She was on morphine for the last part of her life and finally left her house for keeps shortly after her eighty-third birthday.
And yet she was happy. Even dying in the hospice, as the disease ate every ounce it could find, there was something in her mind that the dope protected and nurtured better than any human could. Junkers often get this thing about pain, they see it as a friend, or at least as an enabler.
I’d always been lucky enough to be out of the room when Death came for my own. This time I made a special effort to stay handy. Fittingly, it came for Anna-Lou on a Saturday morning, on the dreampurple drip.
She opened her eyes for the last time and, I think, recognized me. There was no pain in them, just that dopey vegetable serenity. It ended like that. It was as though something rising in her was pushed upward and flattened all the little lines in her face created by endless hours of untold loneliness and the despair of withdrawal. Then she stopped and lay there as a yellow and used up object on hospital white sheets. Still, I had to smile. Her drip had reached its end at the very same moment. Tess’s ghost could go away happy. Anna-Lou refused to go until she had emptied the clip.
Image: Deep purple curtains from pixabay.com
literally stories 
Hi Leila,
Every time I write one of these for you I end up wittering on before I get to my initial notes.
The thing is I never mean to witter and never plan what I’m going to write but it just happens!
…Fuck! I’ve done it again!!
Anyhoo – Here are my notes:
This is excellent Leila.
The realism flies off the page.
The relationships are complex but simple as is any addiction.
– ‘Condition’ is an interesting word. As is ‘disease, weakness and even addiction. I’m not sure if any of them used singularly sums anything up correctly?
– Their ‘medicine’ is truly a poisoned chalice??
– Everyone needs some ‘Fuck you’ attitude!!
– It will be interesting to see if anyone questions how realistic the ages are. (Nothing really to do with age apart from being tragic, but the worst I knew of was a 47 year old guy who had been put on a script at 22. That is nothing special but here’s the thing, he was in a medical lock-down unit!! In Bar-L, the jail in Glasgow, I think if you are on a programme, you are weaned off after six months.)
– Drinking the dust reminded me of James story ‘Breaking Vials’ Now that is sad and brilliant all at the same time!!
– The sugar in the coffee is a brilliant observation. I met a wee addict I knew and took him into Greggs for something to eat.The customers watched in horror as he put around a dozen sachets of sugar into his Hot Chocolate.
– ‘She had found the sweet joy of meaningless in life’ – I know where that line is going!!!!!!!!!!
– It’s weird, 35 is the death trail age in Scotland for the addicted (Especially males) That may also be to do with other life-factors.
I think booze takes folks later, averaging around 60.
– I think all addicts are chippers. When you think on it, most smoke (I only knew one who didn’t) Not many would refuse anything if their drug of choice wasn’t available. Availability won most of the time.
– My sister and mother measured out my dad’s morphine to the lowest dosage. I went the other way. The way I looked at it, what was better, a drug induced sleep or lying in pain and in his reality???
– The last line is brilliant!!!!
…
The two main strings to your writing bow are these types of stories and of course, the FC’s and the realm.
For two subject matters to be so different and yet equally brilliant shows that amazing perceptive, imaginative and skilled writing brain of yours!!!
You are a lesson for us all!!
Hugh
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Hello Hugh
Thank you–your support is extremely well appreciated. As you know from being around that world, Neil Young is right–junkies are like setting suns; et it might surprise many people to see just who is at the clinic. Although they share the sun setting thing, the group is wildly diverse, though the stereotypical down and outer community is usually the strongest presence.
Thank you again!
Leila
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Young Neil fan – I had to have that explained to me. Setting sun shines brightly then is extinguished.
I liked the part about the condition being worse for purposes of attention.
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Thank you Doug
When I first heard him sing that line I was quite young and thought it was just some poetic license. Then I understood the truth, that junkies are always just above the horizon, skirting death–except once, of course.
I like Neil, especially his down town where the hippies go song. Due to hit hundred in Portland, I see. Drink plenty of vodka!
Leila
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Drinksh wat yew shay?
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odka-vay
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Although I am a huge fan of Daisy and her cohorts in the Realm I do absolutely love these stories from your pen (keyboard) There is such a feeling of realistic compassion in these and the characters are believible and visible and so well observed. a super read – thank you – Diane
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Thank you Diane!
These realistic stories are the reason why Daisy and the gang exist. There’s the world I must live in and the one I’d much rather experience. Guess that’s the same for everyone who writes–sometimes you only see one, sometimes you get two.
Thanks again!
Leila
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Great stuff. Let’s hear it for the designated drivers – the prison visitors, the couch providers, the elderly parents digging into their wee life savings, and all the other everyday heroes. Let’s leave William Burroughs to moulder on the library shelves.
ps. the deep purple curtains made a brilliant header.
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Hello Mick!
I have always believed that people who do stuff like work two jobs to support children who don’t quite grasp the sacrifice much more deserving of awards than any celebrity. So many unseen and under appreciated people out there.
Thank you!
Leila
p.s. Diane has a special talent for locating the perfect header. I have used this one several times.
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Powerful story of a rather insignificant life made more so by a half century of abject addiction. Interlacing of street terms and drug jargon is very effective. Describes doping in a population not often thought of in terms of addiction: the elderly. This is perhaps the most arresting and poignant and hard boiled realistic story I’ve read so far in LS. Casts the Oxy- scandal in a totally, even more distressing light. Thanks very much, Leila. bill
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Hello and thank you, Bill
When I grew up in the sixties and seventies there was no shortage of percodan and seconal (sp) addicts oblivious to the fact they were hooked until they were cut off. I heard people say, “a doctor gives it to me–it’s not like I have a needle in my arm.” But it was just like it.
Thanks again!
Leila
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Leila – I’m sure I’ve told the tale of being hospitalized with stomach pains (possible gall bladder thing) and being give fentanyl. Happy, happy, feel good. Not for me, but I can see the temptation. Portland appears to be an open drug market.
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Leila – We’re drinking local flavored vodka – peach is our favorite – and chocolate martinis. You know, on special occasions only, like writing a respnse to an LS story.
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Excellent! Peach vodka sounds like good uv protection.
All the best to you and Ed.
Leila
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When I was young, there was an older person in my life addicted to pain killers. I wasn’t a caretaker in any sense of the word, and this story helps me better understand the struggle. This isn’t a story to “enjoy.” It’s one to appreciate. The kind we all strive to write.
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Thank you David
That is high praise and I truly appreciate it. I bet a lot of families had a “surprise” addict in them, back when the pills flew pretty easy. I understand the struggle that you endured. Sadly, there really isn’t no certain cure all except for the Big One. Some people are all in for keeps, and tend to suck at least one other person down with them. Not to be harsh, but that’s just how it goes.
Thanks again!
Leila
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Leila, you have so many snap-smart words and phrases in here that I’m in awe. Going to go back and read this for a third time. This is one of those stories that stick to the ribs!
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Thank you Shoshana!
I appreciate the compliment as well as the great reaction to your work last week!
Leila
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Dear Leila,
Thanks for this super-well-written tale. For me, the subject was as much death as addiction. Memories of one death, and the actual presentation of another death in a death bed scene that felt realistic, accurate, and true. The voice of the piece is amazing, with its use of everyday language (it sounds like the intelligent narrator is speaking, not writing, which is amazing and one of the hardest things to do); and the lingo around opioid usage. This story uses details of everyday life to overturn stereotypes. The piece is unsentimental and sympathetic/compassionate simultaneously. And when one considers that the real subject might also be death as well as addiction, the title becomes even better, more resonant, ironic, symbolic and true. Great work! Thanks again.
Dale
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Hi Dale
Thank you for your comments, they are enough to make me blush, if I could only remember how.
The junk idiom has changed little since old Burroughs was seeking “croakers” in NYC. I have been around that sort of thing about forty years (not so anymore), addict society is far more orderly than most people think.
Also, I thank you for your wonderful comments on all posts. They are greatly appreciated!
Leila
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“The sweet joy of the meaninglessness of life,” says it all re: addiction..83 is a good age… the Aunt had a lot of sweet joy, perhaps. I know someone who says if it wasn’t for alcohol he wouldn’t have been able to stand being alive, with all its absurdities and pain. Kind of reminds me about what Tess said about “the sweetness of death without oblivion.” There is meaning in addiction, if not in life… a way to find relief and live in dreams while in this bodily existence.
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Hello Harrison
I honestly believe, via much observation and experience, that some people are not only happier on their “thing” but are more productive and better people all around. I have known a few, yet sadly that doesn’t prevent the roulette wheel nature of what’s in the needle. I believe drugs should be legalized and the resources spent on the futile “war” be aimed elsewhere–like mental illness and sleeping in doorways.
If legal you can control the amount of poison fillers and eliminate phony fentanyl. I have seen lots of death in this thing and not one wasn’t preventable. I know that in your work that you have probably seen even more.
Thank you!
Leila
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Even though on the face of it this is hard-lined, gritty tale of long-term drug abuse and the ruin it places on people’s lives, it’s also, and perhaps more so for me, a tale of friendship, love, hope, and even joy. I found this story beautifully written and truly moving. Not to mention dozens of killer lines (of which I’ve picked out a few of my favourites below):
‘Anna-Lou’s kitchen perpetually stank of Lilt.’
‘had caused the thing to finally throw up its ventricles’
‘that dopey vegetable serenity.’
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Thank you Paul!
Oh yes, the sixties cannot be accurately described without the presence of Toni and Lilt in some kitchens. I appreciate your comment for me and for those of the others!
Take care!
Leila
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H Leila,
“Tess claimed that it’s always 1979 at Methadone Clinics and Pancake Houses…” This line killed me. Grat stuff!
Marco
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Hi Marco!
Way down Airport Way in the south industrial park, era 1979, Seattle, there stood a “Sambo’s” beside a Methadone clinic. I knew one of the waitresses and she told me that they had a Methadone rush hour every day except Sunday. The clinic patrons were usually good customers, but they had to use sugar dispensers due to the constant theft of sugar packets. Terrible name for a restaurant, but they did make a good French dip.
Thank you!
Leila
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Hi Leila,
I know the place and I’ve been there. Old school.
Marco
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I thought you might. Such a changeless area. Hopefully it will avoid gentrification.
Lela
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Sorry… Great Stuff
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Dear Leila,
I’ve been re-reading “The Designated Shepherd,” and some of your other work on LS. And I must say, I suspected it before; but now I’m positive that the best word to describe it is: GENIUS. Thanks for such a profusion of brilliant, original, human, creative work. This is work that can be studied, enjoyed, remembered, returned to. Far, far, far better than the vast majority of work the New York publishers churn out these days in endless volumes destined for the dust-heaps of history. No comparison (like Bukowski in that way, another genius of the West Coast). Thank you!
Dale
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Hi Dale,
I just wanted to answer you as Leila will be far too humble with her reply.
We don’t say this enough due to some narrow minds thinking on nepotism. We are harder on ourselves than anyone else but you are quite correct using the word genius! Leila’s writing brain is out there with the very best. Her imagination is beyond brilliant and how she simplifies the complexities of her stories is astounding.
Leila is on a role of one hundred and twenty something straight acceptances!! I was slated from some wee prick for pointing that out when it was about ninety. I believe in sharing all our successes. If someone can’t cope with that, they should simply say nothing!!!
If I’m honest, sharing this site with Leila and Diane who is closing in on thirty published novels is a bit embarrassing!! I don’t feel I should be at this party! But sod it, I’m having a great time and will always be honoured to be here!!
Thank you my fine friend, that comment is as good as we have had!!!!
Hugh
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Hello Dale,
Hugh under rates himself. And there is no guile there, it’s really him. I wish I was as honest.
Thank you for your kind words. They mean more than you can imagine.
I finally got around to reading Bukowski’s Pulp. I always avoided it because it was the end for him, suffering from leukemia. There’s a thing on YouTube that contains one of his public performances. Oh, the things he said to the audience, drinking wine and getting a bit drunk, yet rising above it all.
Thank you!
Leila
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Dear Hugh,
The sympathy, empathy, intuition, perception, and UNDERSTANDING you express in a clear, tell-it-like-it-is, comic prose style in both fiction and nonfiction, is, truly, one-of-a-kind. Thanks for the generous spirit you consistently put out there with your honest, wide-ranging words. Totally awesome on every level! I’m proud to be involved with such talented writers.
Dale
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All I can say is ‘Thank you so much!’.
I am proud when someone mentions my work with the word ‘Perception’.
It means I’m looking and listening in all the right places.
All the very best my fine friend.
Hugh
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Dear Leila,
I’m an obsessive reader of biographies about great creative figures and artists of the past. I also received a Ph.D. in the subject from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois Chicago, which was co-founded by one of the editor/writers who first published William S. Burroughs, Paul Carroll. I also taught the subject in academia for over twenty years. So I know very well that such large creative gifts as you possess do NOT come without a price to be paid. Thanks for paying the price, and continuing to create with such humor, gusto and grace! It’s appreciated more than I can say.
Dale
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Thank you Dale!
I hope Burroughs will be remembered for more than junk and the William Tell incident (although he did get lucky there). His cut up pieces (I forget the name he used) actually made sense even though they should not have.
Leila
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