It had been seven years since the last time Eugenia had seen her grandson, Sean. She was ninety then, and he was thirty-three. The encounter was unpleasant, uncomfortable. She didn’t really want to have him over, but did so as a kindness to her daughter, Patricia, who mentioned that Sean’s physical and emotional state was deeply troubling to her, and she wasn’t sure what to do anymore. Grasping at straws, Patricia suggested that maybe if Sean engaged more with other family members, it could serve as some sort of lifeline, remind him that he had a support system and didn’t need to turn to drugs for comfort. Maybe such thinking was naïve, out of touch. But Patricia couldn’t help it, couldn’t help holding out hope. In her own youth, she had suffered addictions too; a penchant for heroin landed her at Synanon a few times—at Eugenia’s command. This is partly why she blamed herself for Sean’s state. Maybe she had passed her addictive nature on through her genes.

Whatever the “root cause” of Sean’s apparently irrevocable state, Eugenia remembered only that it been horrible to have him over. The awkwardness of knowing he was tweaking made the entire visit incongruous, particularly as she couldn’t help but make it a decidedly “staid” affair in contrast to what his kind, his generation was used to. Yes, there she was, serving him tea in her fine china cups like he even knew what planet he was on. It was a total waste. But then, everything about Sean was a waste, Eugenia couldn’t help thinking to herself as she nibbled on one of the Viennese fingers she had also laid out on the table to go with the rooibos tea she was serving. Not that Sean cared. Or knew a goddamn thing about tea and biscuit pairings. Though, to be fair, no one in the whole of Sacramento really did. That was one thing that Eugenia still missed about England, even though she had been living there for the past seventy-seven years—the bulk of her life, as it were. She had left Liverpool in 1948, at the age of twenty years old. Although she had been gone for decades, the tea and biscuits snobbery inherent to the British never left her. If anything, it only got more pronounced with old age, as so many things do (save for agility).

It was a high standard that she tried to impart to Patricia, but, after a while, it seemed a hopeless cause. Patricia’s gauche tastes had come from her father, the Sacramentan who lured Eugenia to the city with the promise of a better life (or at least a sunnier one). Bernard’s timing had been too little, too late, as Eugenia would have much preferred to escape from Liverpool during the Blitz that went on for what felt like an eternity between ‘40 and ‘42. And then the war was over in ’45. But Bernard had lingered. Made the most of traveling around England (fetishizing it over any other European country) before he committed to going back from whence he came. Giving him plenty of time to encounter and court Eugenia, who was needled into submission during and after his stay.

The needling continued in the stacks upon stacks of letters he sent to her, insisting he couldn’t live without her and that she would be so much happier out in California with him. Of course, the word “California” meant something entirely different than its usual romantic association when applied to Sacramento. But Eugenia didn’t know that. Couldn’t have known it. In her mind’s eye, she was seeing beaches and sunshine—a land of plenty, a land of promise. And the more she thought about it, the more she figured, Yeah, what do I really have going for me in Liverpool? Apart from that’s where all her friends and family lived. But wasn’t love worth taking a chance on? In those times, yes.

This is what she explained to Patricia after every argument she overheard Eugenia having with Bernard. Patricia would always ask, “If you hate him so much, why did you marry him?” And so would come Eugenia’s stock answer that things were different “back then.” A woman didn’t have options if she wasn’t going to get married. And certainly no chance of ever leaving the country without a man to take care of her. Patricia, who was a certified “bra burner” by the end of the sixties, couldn’t fathom such a hell. That the myth of romance was just something women of previous generations told themselves to ignore the reality that they had no choice but to “believe.” Believe that a man was all they wanted and needed to get by. Because that was the only option afforded to them.

Eugenia would say one thing for Bernard though: he provided. And she didn’t even have to wait very long for him to do it. This because his parents were so thrilled that their only boy was getting married, so they gave them the house they had bought in the early 1930s in Land Park. Which, as of Eugenia’s ninety-seventh year, was worth 2.5 million dollars. That was something Sean took note of when he was visiting her that day, seven years ago. The last time she saw him. He might have been tweaking, but even tweakers notice when there’s the smell of money around them. And oh, how he could smell it. Suddenly, hanging out at Grandma’s house didn’t seem like such a lame idea anymore. Except that, after that day, Sean went on a very long bender that led him down to Los Angeles (where so many Sacramentans end up before invariably returning to Sacramento). It was there that he met Charlene, the Nancy to his Sid, you might say. Only “Sean and Charlene” didn’t have the same ring to it, nor were they nearly as stylish.

It was Charlene who reminded Sean about all that his grandmother could offer them. For he had brought up Eugenia’s palatial abode and the decadent-looking contents therein to Charlene early on in the relationship, and she had “logged it” for future use. When they had exhausted all their resources, all their favors, all their “friends” in L.A., that’s when the idea to go back up to Sacramento and knock on Eugenia’s door occurred to Charlene. Sean immediately glommed onto the notion, making himself sober-ish enough to drive the six-plus-hour-drive (it was always more than six hours because of the traffic) to his grandmother’s (To grandmother’s house/To grandmother’s house/To grandmother’s house/I go). The car being the one thing they still had. Hell, it was practically their mobile home. No matter how dire it all got, financially, Sean and Charlene promised each other they would never sell the car. To both of their surprise, neither one had violated the pact…until Fresno.

It was difficult to drive through Fresno and not end up trading something (apart from your soul) for the promise of some crystal. So cheap and free-flowing. They both wanted their fix, but neither had any cash left, between what it took to escape from L.A. and the price of gas along the way. Charlene was the first to cave, the moment Sean was asleep. Passed out, really, in the back seat. That’s what enabled her to shove him out of the car like a sack of potatoes and drive to an area near an entrance to the 41 highway, where she had previously noticed a promising homeless encampment.

She traded the car for a mountain of meth, and had no regrets…until she woke up. It was going to be an even longer road to Eugenia’s now. But she would make it up to Sean. She could give enough blowies for the bus fare the rest of the way. And that’s exactly what she did. Sean was still furious with her though, knocking her across the face a few times before he calmed down (thanks to an injection). But hell, they’d been through worse scrapes than this, and now, with Eugenia as the pot of gold at the end of the fucked-up, mostly gray rainbow, they wouldn’t have to worry anymore, wouldn’t have to struggle so much. It never occurred to either of them, in their meth-addled minds, that she would say no, would turn them away full-stop…

***

The pair arrived looking more haggard than usual. Which was really saying something. It was dusk, adding a sense of ominousness to their arrival, since dusk is usually associated with vampires. And technically, that’s what they were, there to suck Eugenia dry—just not of her blood. They wanted her wealth, and all the trappings of it. They saw her as yet another prime example of an elder generation that had stolen everything from theirs, refusing to share it. In their opinion, it was time to take it back. Or at least carve out a piece of it for themselves. A piece that Eugenia, evidently, was never going to give of her own volition.

That much they confirmed upon knocking oh so gently on the door (or at least, they thought it sounded gentle) and being met with a cold stare. Gone was the woman who had invited him over for tea and Viennese fingers. Even if the invite was grudging. Now, all Sean could see was a woman with no compassion for her grandson. And that made it even easier to shove her aside and force their entry into the house he viewed as being rightfully his. Never mind that Patricia was the first in line to inherit it, and that she, like Eugenia, would make doubly certain that Sean would never—and could never—get it. Both women would sooner donate the house to some charitable organization than watch it slip into the nefarious grasp of Sean, who would turn it into a flophouse that the neighborhood wouldn’t condone for more than a nanosecond.

Sean probably knew this somewhere deep down. Knew that he had breached all the trust and sense of goodwill that the matriarchs in his life might have once had for him. Now here he was, in the throes of bludgeoning his grandmother to death as Charlene pilfered through the china cabinets (jewelry would be next), appraising what she could hawk. He had no recollection of the boy he was before this, the boy that Eugenia had watched and tended to and cared for and loved. But love has its limits. And they had been reached on both sides. The difference between Eugenia’s love limits being reached versus Sean’s was that his limit resulted in the brutal, senseless killing of another human. A human he had once recognized as his grandmother, but now only saw as a potential “money-making opportunity” from which to mine.

It only took two days for the police to come sniffing around. A neighborhood like this noticed when there was something—or someone—anomalous. It didn’t help that, when Sean finally answered the door, the smell that emanated from within nearly knocked both cops out. A combination of excrement, dead body and two people who hadn’t showered in weeks is what made the odor so pungent. Pungent enough to compel the police to enter the home and investigate.

They eventually followed their noses into the garage, where they discovered Eugenia had been stuffed into the trunk of her Cadillac (obviously, Sean and Charlene were planning to sell that, too). And so it was that their “Templeton-at-the-fair” moment was quickly cut short. Both were arrested and sentenced to fifty-seven years in prison. No one seemed to notice the poetic math of that, for it would mean that, when Sean was finally out, he would be the same age as his grandmother when he killed her. Of course, he probably wouldn’t live that long. He didn’t have the same means or sense of self-care that Eugenia did. And that truly makes all the difference when it comes to longevity. Well that, and, particularly in this case, not having grandchildren.