Double Double by Ken Grimes Read Free Book Online

you and my teachers—all authority figures.
    MG : Me being the primary authority figure, since I had to play the role of both mother and father after your father’s disappearing act.
    KG : You bet. As you said, I must have had a natural degree of charm, and without even realizing it, I doubled down onthat aspect of my personality. I know I consciously tried to make people laugh so they’d like me. Also, I was never one of those teenagers who wanted to do shit like boost things from the 7-Eleven or get in fights or steal from people’s cars. I just wanted to get high and party with my friends and chase girls. My question for you is: Did you have any idea what was going on, or were you in denial and trying to fool yourself? Remember that time when you picked me up from school and asked me why my eyes were so red and I said it was because of my allergies? Did you know my eyes were red from smoking too much pot? Did you believe that half-assed lie? I was stoned out of my gourd.
    MG : I had no idea at all. There are two things. One is that I really didn’t know about marijuana smoking back then. I knew nothing about drugs, and I would have had no idea it made your eyes red. The second thing is you were lightning quick with your answers. If you had stammered or stuttered and seemed nervous or guilty, I would have been suspicious. You were always in there with the answers, every single time. I still remember standing in the kitchen when you were in high school, and I was telling you a whole series of things I wanted you to do. You just stood there nodding, dutiful.
   I’ll bet when you were stoned, you stood and looked me right in the eye, like a victim of locked-in syndrome. You had a peculiar ability to muffle this stuff. I knew there was something going on in the woods after you got caught by the teachers in ninth grade for smoking pot. It was a failure on my part that I didn’t do more about that.
    KG : You had no idea? You didn’t smell the marijuana on my clothes or on my breath? Because I was high constantlyfrom the second half of ninth grade through my junior year of high school.
    MG : No. That’s what I said: I wouldn’t have known what I was smelling.
    KG : On the other side, I knew many kids who’ve told me about their drug use and drinking, and they would always tell me about their parents, many of whom were drunks. They couldn’t invite their friends over; the parents were passed out on the couch. That wasn’t the case with you, because you drank but never showed the effects. I can think of only a handful of times that I thought you might be drunk, which is amazing, considering your martinis had at least three shots of vodka in them, and you drank at least two a night, along with some wine. The effects were more joking. And when you got together with your brother or some of your college-teacher friends, the witticisms had more of an edge. You were probably reenacting what you went through with Mrs. D., your mother’s business partner, who was so jovial during the first few drinks but then could become quite cutting in her comments.
    MG : Yes and no. There was a big difference: Mrs. D. got completely paranoid and consequently unapproachable and inexplicable. I didn’t, nor did my brother, nor my friends, ever go that far. Mrs. D. was so much fun in the beginning. But she could become completely irrational.
    KG : Alcoholics are usually very undependable. But your drinking never impaired your driving, you never missed a day of work, dinner was always on the table, so I never really understood what was going on when you lost your temper over what I thought were pretty small issues, or suddenly became furious and got in an argument. It wasbecause of the booze, but I didn’t know that. I remember one time in college going to a friend’s home; he told me in advance how funny his dad was and how much he liked to drink. I met him, and the first thing he