A blank pad of paper and a pencil and a photo of author Christopher Morris.
Christopher Morris
I still feel uncomfortable when I walk through the doors. It’s not even one particular liquor store, it’s all of them. It feels as if I shouldn’t be there or be allowed to buy anything. The drinking culture in Wisconsin just heightens the anxiety. It’s confusing because I’m older now, more than twice the legal drinking age.
It all started almost 30 years ago in Charleston, Illinois, at a little supermarket that’s now a performing arts center. The trailer park I lived in with my mom and little brother was right behind it. These days, the park is just an empty lot with faded markings on the asphalt where the rectangular homes once stood.
I could still tell you the layout of the store. How the grocery carts were lined up, jumbled inside, almost blocking the second front door. The way the first aisles wound all the way around, leading right to my favorite graham crackers. The lobster tank in the back by the meat counter. The cold of the freezer section I rushed passed to get milk.
I was only 7 or 8 years old , but would be frequently called upon to go to the store by myself for groceries. I treated it like a secret mission, feeling as if I were a grown-up in a child’s body. Yet this “adult” might also buy some Wacky Packages or Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, a Mad magazine or some scratch-and-sniff stickers with any money left over. It was just a perk of the job.
These days someone can watch The Glass Menagerie and sit right where I would sheepishly hand wadded-up bills to confused cashiers.
“Where’s your mom?” they’d ask in their small town way.
“She’s not feeling good and um, she’s tired too,” I would say. Remembering it now, the exchange does feel like a poorly acted play.
“Mmmhmmm,” they’d say, shrugging their shoulders at the person bagging my bounty.
I’d walk back to our trailer, both hands juggling paper bags. I would put the food away when I got home, envious of my little brother watching TV while my mom slept on the couch. I threw away the folded grocery list from my mom and opened up my Mad magazine to read cover-to-cover, proud of myself for another successful outing. It wasn’t that hard, but it stopped being fun at some point. Soon I noticed the smell of wine on my mom’s breath when she would lament to me about “being too sick to do anything.” I was young, not stupid.
After a few years, with a new stepdad and a house in suburbia, the missions started again. This time it wasn’t for milk, peanut butter or ground beef. It was for cigarettes. I would ride my bike to the liquor store a half a mile away, another crumpled piece of paper in my pocket along with a five-dollar bill. I was to hand the cashier the note with the money.
Hi,
Please give my son a pack of Benson & Hedges Menthols. Call me if you need to.
- Linda
The first time, the old, bearded man took a drag of a cigarette and looked down at me for a long time before calling the number my mom left at the bottom of the note. I nervously paced around the store while he called. All I heard at the end was something about hoping my mom felt better and not wanting to get in trouble selling cigarettes to kids. He sighed, handing me the cigarettes and change. No trading cards or magazines this time. I went on my way.
As my mom’s drinking got worse, the notes suddenly started to ask for wine too. It was usually the same smoking man at the store. He called my mom again. She told him how much sicker she was. I imagined her flirting with him on the phone, telling him how a little bottle would go a long way. I knew it wouldn’t.
The stranger told me he couldn’t do this all the time. Sure, I’ve heard that before, I thought, trying to balance the brown bag on my knee with one hand, gripping my handlebars while slowly riding home.
At some point, he did stop selling to me and my mom vowed to not go to that store anymore. But she did because it was the closest and well, alcoholism.
The occasions when I step into a liquor store these days, I push my booze to the cashier and take my ID out preemptively, so they don’t kick me out for impersonating an adult. They never have. But it doesn’t matter. My heart still races thinking of that smoking, bearded man with his disapproving look of sadness and judgment.
“You’re such an old soul,” people would tell me when I was in my 20s. Is that a compliment? They didn’t seem to know I seemed that way because I had to grow up too fast. In fact, I’m just a slightly fractured, apparently perpetually scared adult, trying to buy light beer for a housewarming party.
Christopher Morris is a Madison-based professional in the credit union industry and the author of the memoir We Are All Made of Scars.
