Chapter Five

Mack is twenty-six-years-old, and man, is he tired.

Mack looks at his hands and tries not to look at his wrists. But that’s an impossible feat, so instead of looking at the lines crawling over his palms, he rolls his forearms back and forth to see the white, faded lines that fit like shirt cuffs.

Mack sits in their living room, checking on those wrists, wondering if the past can ever be unbraided from a person’s soul and maybe what that would feel like. He keeps rotating, feeling all the gut punches, the stink of hot breath on a person’s neck, barely noticing when his daughter, Wren, puts her tiny hands on his. She covers the heart tattoo he got a few years ago, the night he moved out of the duplex. He forces himself to look up and hugs her tight because he’s her whole world, and he doesn’t have the heart to tell her he’s only a man.

They spend the day together and go home eventually after ice cream and shopping around for car parts. Mack still works for Jaime Estes and Jaime pays him a little extra on the weekends to look for things they might need at the shop. Wren loves Saturdays because of Mack and the ice cream but also because she gets to feel and hold things she doesn’t usually get to. She’s very tactile and learns life through her hands, a lot like her father.

They’re home now, so Mack showers and changes and rubs his fingers over Wren’s hair. He gives Natalie a kiss, and Natalie feels a little numb to it which she’ll always regret later on.

His hands are behind his back, and he has Wren’s attention. She tries to swipe at them to see what he’s hiding, but he keeps the game going a little longer and relishes the moment. He looks down at her. At the soft curls of her four-year-old head that are straightening. At the blonde in her hair that is darkening. He takes a permanent picture in his brain and then lets his arms go free.

“A puppy.” Wren says, and he smiles. No, not a puppy. More like a stuffed dog that’s seen too much.

“His name is Roy McGruffin, but you can call him whatever you want.”

“I like Roy. Roy, let’s go.” She whispers and hugs on Mack’s leg before dragging the dog to her room. Natalie looks at the man she always knew she would marry and smiles, but the sadness clings to it.

“I love you,” he says and presses his lips into her hairline. I know, she thinks but doesn’t say, just lets herself be held. She doesn’t even watch him leave as he heads out the door to the bar.

Outside, he smells the air as if he’s assessing his situation, this type of life that’s wrenched him out of the car and left him on the side of the road. And you don’t know how many times I’ve laid my hand on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, but the man gives into the dark little kitten inside his chest.  Rochelle called this morning. Dennis is dying and wouldn’t it be nice if Mack went over and spent some time with him?

So Mack drives, rubbing his fist into his temple and then smacking his temple too hard with it. “Why?” he forms beneath his breath, and his tires take him somewhere he doesn’t want to go.

Dennis still lives in the duplex. Rochelle lives on the other side of town now with Glenn Augustus where she gets older and asks me for forgiveness. And I give it over and over again because I know the love inside her. And I know she’s failed, but the thing is, at least she can admit it.

Mack looks up and feels the duplex before he sees it. He’s spent all these years living in the same town yet living a world apart. There have been shadows of Dennis–half an ear turning down a grocery aisle, a stray arm leaving the dentist–but Mack’s never had to fully look him in the face since the day Rochelle married Glenn Augustus.

He rings the doorbell. His hands are sweaty and his body sober. He should have hit the whiskey, he thinks, but there’s none in the house. One of Natalie’s rules.

He hears shuffling. Every nerve goes blank.

“Hullo.” Dennis’s mouth is shoved in the crack between door and frame. There’s flight but no fight in Mack. His legs are too dull to run so Mack says “hello” back.

“Mack, oh my word. Mack,” Dennis says and shoves open the door. The smell is so rancid, Mack is able to taste it. I can see them playing in the corner–the demons–even though Mack can’t. They balk and whine. They struggle against each other like they’re trapped.

They feel me watching them.

“Boy, come in. Come in and see Uncle Dennis.” Mack walks in and shuffles over loose pieces of floor. He realizes they’re magazine pages. His mother hasn’t been here because Dennis won’t let her. He told her she made her choice years ago, running off with that pretty boy, Glenn Augustus. And Rochelle doesn’t challenge him on it because she’s on the cusp of understanding what her brother really is.

Dennis takes Mack past the bedrooms, his old bedroom, and Mack tries not to form thoughts in his head. They move past the living room to the back of the duplex where the kitchen is.

“Sit. There’s more than enough.” Dennis is indicating that the macaroni and cheese he’s made in an unwashed pot is more than enough for them to share. Eating, breaking bread. There’s a moment where I’m on his heart, and something from a long time ago is nailed to the cortex of Mack’s brain. Church.

They had gone twice when Rochelle momentarily dated the man who changed the oil in her Le Sabre. It was a circus. All these beautiful children running and whooping about in a large gymnasium at Trinity Grace Presbyterian. They were nice enough, Mack guessed. But what really hit him was when they were squeezed into a back hallway, and into tiny crackerjack box classrooms that smelled of kid sweat and candy. And there was a woman with a Bible who read from Mark. The bread, the body. The cup, the blood. Take and eat. Believe.

In what? Mack asks me and closes his arms across his chest.

“I’m okay,” he says to Dennis. A tiny worm of nausea is growing fatter in his stomach. He takes control and beats it down until it’s barely wiggling. His forehead is damp.

“Mack. Mack buddy, you feeling okay?” Dennis comes towards him. His dirty nails are clawing at the air in front of Mack and the movement reveals yellowish stains where wife beater meets armpit. Mack’s insides struggle like the demons watching us. His movements trigger his memory, and the parched word is offered into the air: “Why?”

“Why? Why what?” Dennis is genuinely confused. He’s caught up in it, the demonic energy that vibrates through his veins. Accusations aren’t reality. Reality isn’t reality. He constructs the truth with a decaying mind.

“You know.”

“No, Mack. I don’t. You feeling okay? You want some water?” Dennis points at a dirty cup with water, tinged gray. He takes it for himself, gulps it down then offers it to Mack. The worm grows fierce in Mack’s belly, and he can no longer keep it still. He’s going to vomit, and for a moment, the demons forget themselves and settle with a hopeless sort of hope. But then I shine and burn until I can hear them sizzle.

“Bathroom,” Mack says and doesn’t wait for direction. The duplex is inside of him, and he closes his eyes as he passes Dennis’s bedroom. The smell, the feel of the grimy counters doesn’t help. There’s feces clinging to the upper lip of the toilet, and Mack has the urge to rip it from the floor, but he’s too busy releasing into the bowl.

He weakens, and his back is sliding down the bathroom wall. The feel of the wooden chair against his naked thighs. The rope. His wrists sting, and his tears sear his face. It’s the wrong thing to do to look in the mirror.

He rips open the door and finds Dennis, struggles him against the kitchen wall.

“Why! I asked you why!” he screams. Dennis looks up, the delusion painted thick on his face. “Why did you hurt me?” Mack barely registers that he’s touching Dennis but still, he registers it. The man’s skin is warm and thin and something like empathy confuses Mack’s brain. Mack gets it. He’s nothing like Dennis. He knows the weight and feel of compassion, but suddenly, he takes his hands and strangles it.

Dennis’s warm, thin skin turns a shade of palish blue. Mack thinks right now that he’s getting even. Settling that score. But death has nothing to do with winning.

Mack squeezes so hard until Dennis is lost to me forever. Mack slides down so that Dennis is a mess of limbs in Mack’s lap, and for an instant, compassion revives itself. He’s crying over his uncle, making words out of the jumbled letters in his head. He sounds like a donkey shot in the gut. But in a moment, just as quick as the last one, he’s pushing Dennis off his lap and wiping his hands on his jeans. He leaves, the real score rearing its ugly head. 

Later at the bar, there’s a woman who tugs on his arm, and usually, Mack would shove her off, but he’s too sad and drunk to do something like that. So instead, he dances with her, and they whirl so hard on the floor, the threat of vomiting overtakes him again. She leads him to a back closet near the bathrooms where it’s dark, and her fingers feel like claws. Finally, he comes to a bit and wrestles her off. He stumbles back near the bar, grabs his coat. His buddy Leon who he works with at the shop waves at him, but Mack waves him off and heads to the door.

Mack doesn’t take his truck home. He tries to get the key into the door, but his brain and hand won’t work. So he walks.

The walk is cold but a good cold that smacks his face and works his legs. He doesn’t like thinking of Dennis; who would, really? Dennis I loved, but Dennis most certainly did not love me back.

Mack thinks of the room, and the ropes, and the pain, and all the things I wish I could wash clean if only he’d let me. But he keeps walking on through his past until he gets home, and he finds the tree. It’s the magnolia in their yard that Wren runs around until her little legs give out. He heads on to the shed and finds the coiled rope. It takes him an embarrassingly long amount of time to struggle it out onto the ground. Next, he finds the step stool because he can’t trust his legs to climb.

Inside, Wren wakes up too early. It’s still black around the edges of her blinds. The house is silent except for Natalie’s TV. Wren chews on the knot in her throat because Natalie is the only one in bed. She stands on tiptoes at her parents’ bedroom door–Roy McGruffin a permanent staple in her hand–and watches Natalie’s eyes blankly scan the woman selling snow globes. Her fingers worry a scabby line into her lips. Wren and Roy tiptoe quietly again out into the hall.

Mack has knotted the noose, thrown the rope over the limb after four practice tries. He’s stumbled and straightened, taking shaky step after shaky step. He’s on the top step now where memory fights him. He battles with a broken tooth he received when he was Wren’s age, wiping out on the wooden living room floor in his socks. He’s eight, and his mother has beaten him at Yahtzee, and she’s kissing him because he’s crying but not because he’s lost. He’s fourteen, and Leonard is still in his bedroom, and his heart is still broken. He’s sixteen and angry and keys a car for the sheer pleasure of it. He’s twenty-two and marrying Natalie in a tiny gazebo, and never has he looked at anyone who deserves so much better. He’s twenty-three, and his daughter Wren is in his hands. He’s twenty-six, and his uncle is dead from the force of the same ones.

Memory loses, and he jumps. The rope tightens. Fear tightens. Everything touches and turns, and he sees their home for the first time swiveling before him. It starts to color and shape, and he can feel his daughter and wife inside. Love breaks open his heart, my beautiful boy, and for the first time, he understands. He confesses. He repents. He sees me and calls me inside. I take his hands, and then we go together to the room I’ve already prepared for him. 

Wren softly unlocks the front door and goes to find her tree because she needs to touch it. But when she steps outside, there’s an oversized fruit dangling from it. She squeezes closer to the fruit, squeezes Roy closer to her chest. Her hand goes skyward as if to pluck it down, but the fruit circles around out of her grasp. Once its boots point at her head, she knows what she’s looking at.

Her father. My beautiful, Mack.

Wren has hardly ingested the way it tastes, seeing her father dancing above her, when Natalie opens the door and comes to her knees on the porch. She’s run outside because Wren is screaming, but Wren can’t feel the wind in her throat, or the vibration in her vocal chords, or even Roy in her hand.

She can only feel the empty space where her heart once was.