Six Blocks Away

The pharmacy counter hasn't changed in twenty years. Same faded blue laminate, same flickering fluorescent light that makes everyone look sickly, same ancient blood pressure machine with its cracked display. I'm standing exactly where I stood at twelve years old, watching my grandmother collect her prescriptions with the carefully curated dignity of someone who has turned loneliness into an art form.

She's here now, thin shoulders draped in a cardigan despite the June heat, counting out exact change from a coin purse that's probably as old as I am. The pharmacist – different from the one I remember, but somehow the same – waits patiently as she stacks quarters with trembling fingers.

I could step forward. Help her count. Ask about her arthritis, which is obvious in the swollen knuckles and careful movements. Instead, I adjust my shopping basket and pretend to study the vitamin display while she finishes her transaction.

Twenty years ago, I would have been holding her hand, proud to be her designated pharmacy companion. But that was before I understood what it meant that she never came to my dance recitals, never remembered my birthday without my mother's reminders, never asked about my life unless it was to compare it unfavorably to her own children's accomplishments. Before I realized that her solitude wasn't something life had forced upon her, but something she had cultivated like the prize roses she grew in her backyard – beautiful, thorny, and requiring everyone else to maintain a safe distance.

She's taking longer than usual today. I know her routine, though I've never told anyone I watch her sometimes. Every Thursday at 2 PM, she collects her prescriptions. Then she'll walk six blocks to the grocery store, buy exactly enough food for one person for one week, and take the bus home to her immaculate house where she'll eat dinner at 5 PM while watching Jeopardy. The same routine she's maintained since Grandpa died fifteen years ago.

I know this because I followed her once, five years ago, after my daughter was born. Some newly awakened maternal instinct made me wonder if I was wrong about her, if there was still time to bridge the space between us. I watched her move through her precisely ordered world and realized that she had built it exactly as she wanted it. There was no room for messy family dinners, for children's birthday parties, for the chaos of love. No space for the kind of grandmother who would teach my daughter to bake snickerdoodles or tell her stories about the old country, like my friends' grandmothers did.

The pharmacist is helping her now, sorting pills into daily containers. It's a new service they offer, one that makes me wonder about her hands, about whether the arthritis has progressed beyond the ability to manage childproof caps. My mother would know, but I haven't asked. We have an unspoken agreement not to discuss Grammy Rose unless necessary, like when she broke her hip last year and mom had to handle the hospital paperwork because she's the only one Grammy trusts with medical decisions. Even then, Grammy insisted on reviewing every form, questioning every procedure, maintaining control even from her hospital bed.

"Mrs. Rose," the pharmacist says, "your granddaughter called last week about setting up delivery service. Would you like to discuss that option?"

I freeze, hand still hovering over the vitamin D supplements. That would be my cousin Sarah, always trying to help despite decades of evidence that help is unwelcome. Grammy's response is predictable.

"I am perfectly capable of managing my own affairs," she says, voice crisp as newly starched sheets. "If my granddaughter is so concerned, she's welcome to visit instead of making arrangements behind my back."

The irony of her statement hits like a physical blow. How many times had she made arrangements behind our backs when we were children? Moving to a smaller house without telling us, selling the family cabin where we spent summers, changing her phone number and having mom relay the new one only to those she deemed worthy of contact. The cabin sale hurt the most – I'd left my favorite stuffed animal there, a threadbare rabbit named Henry who'd seen me through chicken pox and first-grade heartbreaks. When I asked about going back to get him, she said simply, "It's time you learned about letting things go." I was eight.

I should leave. My basket only holds shampoo and multivitamins – nothing urgent. But my feet remain rooted to the worn linoleum as she gathers her prescriptions with meticulous care.

She turns, and for a moment our eyes meet. Recognition flickers across her face, followed by something else – not quite warmth, but perhaps the memory of it, like sun reflecting off distant windows. She opens her mouth slightly, and I brace myself for whatever carefully crafted barb she's about to deliver.

But she says nothing. Just nods, the barest acknowledgment, and walks past me toward the automatic doors. Her perfume – the same she's worn since I can remember – trails behind her like a ghost.

The choice hangs in the air between us. I could call out. Ask about her arthritis. Mention my daughter, now five, who shares her blue eyes and stubborn chin. Suggest coffee at the diner down the street, where we used to split chocolate milkshakes before I learned that her love came with conditions I couldn't meet. I still remember the taste of those milkshakes, how she'd always let me have the cherry on top, how for a few sweet moments she seemed like everyone else's grandmother. But that was before she started measuring love in accomplishments and worth in achievements, before every conversation became a reminder of how we'd failed to meet her standards.

Instead, I watch her go, her cardigan a fading splash of color against the summer brightness outside. Some distances, I've learned, aren't meant to be crossed. Some relationships exist best in the space between what was and what could have been – like stars that look brightest when you don't stare directly at them.

I set my basket on a random shelf and walk out, letting muscle memory guide me through the same path she just took. Outside, the heat hits like a physical wall, but she's already halfway down the block, moving with the measured pace of someone who has nowhere urgent to be and no one waiting for their arrival. The summer air shimmers around her like a forcefield, keeping the world at exactly the distance she's chosen. Even now, I can see the straight line of her back, the careful placement of each step, the way she holds herself apart from the casual chaos of the street around her. She's made an art of absence, a science of solitude, and perhaps that's its own kind of accomplishment.

The pharmacy counter hasn't changed in twenty years, and neither have we. Some things are carved too deep to alter – the careful distance, the chosen solitude, the quiet acknowledgment that sometimes love looks like letting go. I stand where I stood at twelve years old, watching her disappear into the bright afternoon, and realize that some stories end exactly where they began, not because we've come full circle, but because some circles were never meant to close.