​​Chapter Seven

Rochelle takes care of the arrangements. They use the funeral home Glenn Augustus’s family has used for the extensive amount of members who have died from old age or drug overdose. Natalie’s family, The Rojases, remain in a tight clump near the casket until Rebecca’s husband, Steven, takes a screaming Antonio out in the foyer.

Mack’s body is on display, all dried and dressed and a fine coat of makeup covers where his old face was. His button-down is buttoned all the way up.  He looks like himself but not himself. Natalie wishes they would have closed the casket. But she was oddly thinking this would be a real goodbye.

In the pew, Rochelle sits at Natalie’s left and is flanked on the other side by Glenn who puts on his public persona. He’s cordial and is able to do the pleasantries while Natalie sits like a sack of potatoes against Rochelle. Rochelle has her arm around her, but the only things Natalie can feel are Wren’s warmth and the quiet “daddies” floating from her mouth. Rebecca sits on the other side of Wren, husbandless, until Steven comes and sits back down with their son. Their father, Benito, sits in the pew behind them, his hand on Natalie’s shoulder.

Look at what you did now, Mack, she thinks, and then she winces. Her heart doesn’t blame him. Her heart blames her, but she doesn’t like the way that tastes either.

She can hear Val come in before she sees her. She talks too loud, and her pantsuit is too tight, but she’s comforting against the home’s formal interior. I nudge Val a little bit until she sits in the pew behind Natalie, next to Benito, and whispers her condolences in her ear.

On the screen above their heads is a montage that quickly plays over and over because they could only scrounge together twenty photos of Mack, and he’s smiling in less than half of them. One hardly counts because he’s lifting Wren up to the camera and his face is hidden behind her suspended body. That’s the only one Natalie can bear to look at.

“Father, husband, friend,” says the pastor at the pulpit.

Liar, Natalie thinks but mainly about herself.

#

“I KNOW THIS ISN’T THE best time.” They’re in Glenn Augustus’s gigantic house eating from small plastic plates. Val is crunching on a celery stick which she wishes was poking out of a Bloody Mary. Her pantsuit is two shades lighter than navy blue. She’s the jammed thumb in a room full of pinkies.

Val doesn’t know me. Val will never know me because she loves herself too much. But Val is exactly who I need to write Natalie’s ending.

“What are you talking about?” Natalie is holding her plate of untouched food at her stomach. They’re in Glenn’s dining room facing the front window. Underneath the tree out front sits Wren and stands Steven with Antonio. Wren keeps pointing up, and Steven follows the point of her finger.

“There’s a job in White Smoke. Floor manager. My old boss is looking for someone. She asked me, but I said no. I like it here. But I told her about you.”

“What’s there to tell?” Southern Account Services gave her two weeks bereavement. Natalie’s dreading the fourteen days she’ll sit quietly with Wren, juggling her daughter’s pain and her own. And there’s something else itching at her. Something Rochelle’s preacher had said at the gravesite. “May we all pray that Mack is with Jesus now,” like it would take an act of God for Mack to end up somewhere good. Natalie doesn’t realize that’s always the point. It’s just up to her to believe it.

Val sets her plate down on the bench seat under the window. She takes Natalie’s shoulders in her hands and looks her in the face. “You are the best thing that’s happened to me at SAS. I mean that. You don’t know what a good TL does for a manager. You have a good head and show up to work and aren’t afraid to take calls. You’re a closer. And Natalie, you have an opportunity to do something big for her.” Val lifts her chin at Wren who’s talking at Steven with her hands again, telling him what she had seen hanging from her tree. “You’re not going to make it on a TL’s salary raising a kid. I’m guessing the life insurance won’t hold you over for long.” Natalie nods, keeping her lips stiff against the truth. There is no life insurance.

“I can’t just move her to a new place. Where is White Smoke anyways?”

“Northwest Arkansas area. Tara, my old boss, says it’s beautiful.”

“I don’t care if it’s right on the beach. I can’t move Wren away from her family.”

“How are you going to survive?”

“I’ll figure it out. I’ll ask for a raise. Maybe Rochelle...” But she quickly puts a lid on the thought. She doesn’t want to be a pity case, taking handouts. Plus, she doesn’t want to gamble on how long Glenn’s good nature would last.

“You already make more than the other TLs. And don’t tell anyone I told you that. And they’re not looking to grow management right now, Natalie. You know I’d vouch for you if I thought there was a chance.” Val plants her hand against her temple. She drank enough this morning to get her through the funeral but her body is yelping at her now.

“I’ll think about it,” Natalie says, distracted by her daughter who is wide-eyed as she clasps her hands around her neck and flails out her feet. Then she sits back under the tree, her little play coming to a close.

#

NIGHTS ALONE ARE AGONY. I sleep at her side and watch her face struggle in exhausted sleep. And then she’s awake again. She studies the ceiling, the blank space next to her. She wonders what ever happened to Todd Hiney and if it’s too late to make amends. She feels guilty for thinking like this. But she feels all alone.

Maybe, I should take that job.

Wren walks in. She looks more like she’s drifting in between Natalie’s sleepy eyelids. She climbs into bed with her mother and Natalie holds her close to her heart. She smells like green apple bath bubbles. Natalie rubs her still damp hair against her cheeks. They have a silent conversation.

I miss Daddy.

Me, too.

And then they drift together.

#

“YOU CAN’T. YOU CAN’T do this to me. To all of us.”

Wren plays with her plastic tea set in her room, and Natalie concentrates on the sound of plastic attacking plastic. Rochelle is wearing black slacks and a white button down. Her frizzy hair is plastered back into a bun and there are pearls at her ears. She gives off the impression of a frazzled penguin and the thought piles on top of all the other worries and concerns in Natalie’s chest.

“That’s not what this is. I just have to think about Wren. Her future.”

“Her future should include her family.” Rochelle pats a chewed up Kleenex around her eyes. The iced sweet tea Natalie made has gone untouched and sweats in the overheated room. Texas winter is right outside the door, and even though it’s only fifty-nine degrees outside, the two women feel ice cold on the inside.

“Dennis won’t even return my calls. My son’s dead. Now you’re taking my granddaughter. What does your father think about this?”

“I’m calling him next.” Rochelle smirks and shakes her head.

“You don’t know what you’re doing, Natalie. You’re acting out of hurt. You don’t have to run away.” Rochelle speaks it to her daughter-in-law, but we both know she’s talking to her old self. The scared girl who was raped and left for dead and ran away from a family who wouldn’t have much to say on the matter even if they had known the truth. Except for Dennis. Sometimes, she wonders if she would have nailed down her feelings and just accepted whatever help they might have offered, if Mack would have turned out different. If she would have turned out different, too.

“Just, think about it for a while. Please. I’ll be praying. I know God has this figured out, Natalie. Let us be there for you.” Natalie’s stomach sours when she thinks about me. I’m the one who did this to her if I even exist at all.

“Sure. Of course,” Natalie says when Rochelle leans forward to hug her. She doesn’t tell her mother-in-law that she already had the interview. That she’s already got the job. That she’s already put in her two weeks’ notice. She just holds on tight to Rochelle, a quiet goodbye.

#

REBECCA WON’T TALK to her. She slammed down the phone, and when Natalie called back, it was Steven’s subdued voice telling her Rebecca wasn’t feeling well. Natalie was so angry. She gave up what it meant to be a child just so Rebecca could know the feeling. And now she needs to go on and grow and all her sister can think about is the way it’s going to affect her. It’s like talking to Rochelle all over again.

She explains this to her father who just nods. They’re sitting in his kitchen, Wren curled up and asleep in his lap. It’s an unfair image, seeing what she knows could be fostered if she stayed in Texarkana. But it’s also alarming, all these hands reaching out for Wren and elbowing her out of the picture.

She doesn’t mean to think it. But she does.

“She’s just sad, mija. She loves you and feels like you’re abandoning her.” His eyes betray him. They tell her he feels the exact same way.

“I’m not leaving because I don’t love her. Or any of you. I just need to make sure life turns out okay even after...all this.” She drags her hand across the air like a game show host.

“The foolishness of man perverteth his way: and his heart fretteth against the Lord,” Benito whispers into Wren’s ear. Everyone calls him Benny and sees a wise old face when they meet him. But Benny isn’t old, really. Mid-fifties but a lifetime has come and curled up inside of him. His wife, Angela, was how he navigated point A to point B. She had told him that verse when he was a young man and dead set on moving heaven and earth for her. And she reminded him, as she often did in her gentle way, that he just wasn’t that powerful. And maybe that was a good thing.

“I don’t, I don’t know what that means, Daddy.” Natalie feels real grief warm her skin and the tears behind her eyes. It’s a strong reaction to hearing my Word and her heart and head fretting against it. There’s a soft feeling against her chest, like a balled up fist lightly striking her sternum, but she digs her fingers into her face and ignores it.

“Not now, mija. But some day,” Benny says and places Wren back into her arms.

#

SHE PACKS ALONE FOR a while, a pick ax playing with her temple. She puts memories and old jokes and a million tears and not enough laughs into boxes while Wren goes and plays at her tree. She thought about telling her to stop. To stay inside. But she knows Wren wouldn’t listen because all she wants is to stand under it and look up above.

The moving truck comes. She had finally gotten Rebecca on the phone and they had a somewhat civil conversation, but she doesn’t plan on coming by. Rochelle doesn’t either. Wren spent the night with her last night, and when Natalie went to pick her back up, Glenn claimed Rochelle had a headache. Her father did show up early on his way to work. He kissed her forehead and gave Wren a big hug. He gave Natalie her mother’s old crucifix that he put in her palm. She was shocked it didn’t burn her skin.

I stand shoulder to shoulder with her as the phone rings. She’s surprised to hear Glenn’s voice.

“Hey, uh, Natalie. You have a moment?” She nods and forgets herself, spits out a “sure.” One of the movers is carrying Mack’s box of photos, and her heart twists itself into a knot.

“We received word that Dennis is dead.” She looks outside, and Wren has grabbed the tree’s waist as she sings and dances around it. 

“What–how? When?”

“We found out a few hours ago. A neighbor...a neighbor smelled something and called the police. It looks like he was strangled. Natalie?”

“Yes?”

“They think it was Mack.”

“Mack? What do you mean?” She can hear Wren’s song coming through the windows now, her stuffed dog, Roy, a patient audience.

“They think he did it. There was no forced entry. Didn’t he stop by to check on him the night...you know. Didn’t he mention Rochelle called and asked him to see if Dennis was okay?” All the thoughts in Natalie’s mind are playing a massive game of hide and seek. She tries to catch them and sit them down, look them in the face. But they’re too quick for her.

“No. I mean, I guess I really don’t know. He wouldn’t do that. He would never...that’s not Mack.” Knowing the history doesn’t help. She shuts her eyes against everything. She doesn’t need her daughter to know her father was a murderer, too.

“Look, it’d be a posthumous trial, and since Rochelle is Dennis’s next of kin, she can make the call on whether or not she wants to look into it. But she’s obviously not going to. She wanted to call you herself, but she can’t think or talk really. She’s devastated. I know you understand.” His voice is soothing, and Natalie assumes it’s the particular one he handpicks to calm down his clients.

“Okay. That’s good, I guess. I’m leaving, Glenn. Like here soon. I imagine she doesn’t want me to drop by.”

“No, she’s a mess right now. I’m sure she’ll make plans to visit in person once you’re settled.”

“Yeah, okay. Look, I need to go. Thank you,” she says, which feels weird to say. “Thank you for ruining my life even more” is what she feels like saying. But it isn’t Glenn’s fault. It’s obviously Mack’s.

She hangs up, and I put my arm around her. There’s a bottom to all of this, and it feels sharp under bare feet. But I already know it’s not sharp enough yet to turn her heart, so she uses the pain to hone in on the only thing that will matter to her for a while. We both watch Wren hug Roy and put her face into his threadbare fur.