Michael wanted to go his own way, but I could tell, even then, that there was a longing within him that he didn’t want to admit—even to himself. I could see it in the way he was constantly being pulled toward us, in the look in his eyes as he turned to us. He hungered for friendship. We all did. MacKenzie, Michael, and Camila—we would become friends and develop roots, and then none of us would ever want to leave Pine Creek.
* * *
I pause. That’s it. We may have been torn apart by a hard, cruel world, but we’ve been reunited thanks to me. That must be the reason I’m still here. I’ve finally found my purpose. I have to make them happy again.
That’s what should have happened. We should have stayed put and been happy together, and we would have been if it weren’t for the town’s narrow-mindedness. Then I think about Michael’s determination to leave town long before the campaign even began. Maybe it wouldn’t have changed a thing, but we would at least have had a chance. Maybe I would have been able to convince him to stay if it weren’t for the Oregon Citizens Alliance.
But here we are, together again. And I’m going to make them happy.
MacKenzie, Camila, Michael. And maybe even Dad, I add out of duty. That’s my list.
Four people. That doesn’t sound unreasonable, does it? It’s not like I’m demanding peace on earth or anything like that.
At one point in time, I knew them better than anyone. Better than they knew themselves. I’m sure of it. Not that they lacked self-awareness, but because they were so busy living that they couldn’t see themselves.
But I could.
I wasn’t distracted by life. I had no other dreams than to be right there with them, right then. I always just wanted what I already had, and maybe that did make me boring, but it also meant that I could see.
If I knew everything about them once, I can get to know them again, I think. Somehow, I have to work out what they need, and I know that the answer must be somewhere in our past. In the house of memories we built together and then let come crashing down.
Somehow, I need to make them remember how we were, and then I need to make them see what we could be. Maybe… I run back to the motel. I’ve got an idea.
I’ve tried talking to them while they’re awake, and there have been moments when it almost felt like they were able to feel me there. But that’s not enough. Maybe it’ll be easier to get through to them while they’re sleeping.
I start with MacKenzie, since I hope she will have dozed off for the last few hours before she has to get up. Whenever I’ve had trouble sleeping, I’ve always drifted off just before it’s time to wake up.
She has actually fallen into an anxious, much-too-light sleep. Her eyelids are twitching, and there is a tense frown between her brows.
“MacKenzie,” I whisper eagerly in her ear. “You’re strong and free and invincible. You want to laugh and joke and go on adventures. You want to live again. You’re tough and fantastic, and you can joke about anything.”
I repeat those words to her, over and over again.
Chapter 21
MacKenzie “Jack Daniels” Jones
The next morning, MacKenzie does seem to have a newfound sense of energy, but there is also a hint of something dangerous glittering in her eyes. Something as hard and brittle as glass.
She grabs her jacket in passing, strides across the parking lot, and walks straight over to…a trash can? She bends down, rummages through it, and pulls out an empty vodka bottle and six crumpled beer cans.
She doesn’t look happy, not really, but her restless frustration does at least seem to have found a new outlet. I join her as she drives to the liquor store on the way into town.
When she emerges from the shop, she has a quart of extremely cheap whiskey in her hand.
She immediately pours half the bottle into the flower bed.
That doesn’t surprise me; MacKenzie takes her whiskey seriously and would never drink that brand. No, what really surprises me is that she saves half. She is on her way back to the car with the bottle in her pocket when she stops dead and turns around. She heads back over to the row of shops.
The trash cans out back prove to be a veritable gold mine: another empty vodka bottle, seventeen beer cans, and a small bottle of gin. MacKenzie grabs a bag and drops her new finds inside.
What the hell are you up to, MacKenzie? I think to myself.
After that, we drive toward town. The car smells of stale beer and gin, and we both hum along with Bruce Springsteen. I stick my head out the window, and we both sing along with the chorus, loudly and insincerely: “’Cause we made a promise we swore we’d always remember. No retreat, baby, nooo surrender.”
MacKenzie parks up on Water Street, carefully scanning all around before jumping out of the car and running over to Dad’s trash can, into which she quickly empties all of the empty bottles and cans.
She throws herself back into the car, drums the wheel in time with the music—blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend—and does a sharp U-turn off Water Street.
If she has a plan, I have no idea what it is, but she’s clearly pleased with how this first step has gone.
By lunchtime, she is parked outside Hank’s, ready to intercept Dad on his daily walk.
“Mr. Broek!” she shouts.
Dad looks uncertain. Uncertain and incredibly tense. He automatically straightens up, the way he always does when he doesn’t know how to act.
“I just wanted to apologize for the other day,” MacKenzie says. Her voice is warm and humble. “I don’t think I showed enough understanding for your situation.”
Dad looks even more troubled now, and for good reason. MacKenzie apologizing! When he was the one who said all those terrible words. I still haven’t forgiven him for that.
“Aha, yes, well…” he says. He can’t meet her eye. “I don’t suppose any harm was done.”
MacKenzie takes Dad’s hand and shakes it enthusiastically. So hard that Dad’s arm and coat flap around, and in the general confusion that ensues, she gently slips the half-empty bottle of whiskey into his pocket with her free hand.
She pats him on the shoulder and then heads back to the car.
* * *
I’m curious to find out what MacKenzie’s plan is, so I spend a few hours just hanging around in town. Making my way over to Dad’s house, I hear Cheryl’s upset voice from her living room.
I pause for a second before tiptoeing over to her garden and pushing my way through the flower bed. I’m in the middle of a rhododendron bush, stooping beneath the open living-room window, and when I stand up straight, I see Cheryl pacing back and forth in front of her couch.
Her husband has a thick book open on his lap and doesn’t quite seem to have given up the prospect of being able to continue reading. His entire face radiates a kind of gentle patience, from his deep-set eyes and tragically ugly glasses, and he wears his lopsided, homemade sweater with a refreshing lack of self-awareness.
“He stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of whiskey, right in front of everyone! Poor Harrison looked shocked, let me tell you. It was open, too! It was obvious that Robert had already taken a good few swigs from it. He pretended he had no idea where it was from. ‘It’s not mine,’ he said as if a whiskey bottle could just appear in his coat pocket. He couldn’t even come up with a better lie!”
Cheryl’s husband closes his book, keeping a finger inside to mark his place. “What should he have said?” he asks. “‘It’s not mine; it’s for a friend’?”
“Well, that would have been more believable than a whiskey bottle magically appearing in his pocket.”
“Better than a rabbit in a hat,” Cheryl’s husband says. I’ve always suspected that he has a good sense of humor.
I raise my head a little higher.
“Whiskey! The man has never touched a drop i
n his life, I could have sworn on that, but grief does strange things to people. And he has been a little…overwrought lately.”
“If you ask me, he’s been overwrought his whole life,” Cheryl’s husband says, and Cheryl smiles reluctantly.
* * *
Oddly enough, MacKenzie devotes a lot of time to denying the rumors about Dad’s alcoholism. She generally stays away from town, and she definitely avoids the people living there. After the vote, she reached a kind of cease-fire with them. It wasn’t quite peace, and she hasn’t forgiven them, but she learned to live with the townspeople by pretending they simply didn’t exist. Her world was the motel. She might have gone to the bar or the grocery store or the post office from time to time, but that was all.
But now MacKenzie even stops to speak with Dad’s neighbors when she runs into them outside Hank’s Restaurant.
“You’ve heard about Robert?” the neighbor asks. “We’re worried about him. We really are.”
“Of course Robert doesn’t have a drinking problem,” MacKenzie says. Then, unfortunately, she adds: “Everyone enjoys a drink from time to time.”
The next day, to a new neighbor: “Isn’t it understandable that he might want a stiff drink every now and then? If people want to drink vodka out of coffee cups in their own homes, aren’t they free to do that? Robert is the last person who’d have a drinking problem.”
The neighbor’s eyes glitter. “Vodka in coffee cups…?”
“Uff , he wasn’t even drunk.” MacKenzie pauses for effect. “Slurring a little, maybe, but hardly drunk.”
* * *
Cheryl is prepared to do whatever it takes to save Dad from himself.She knows her duty, and no one could ever accuse her of not giving her all to save a friend’s body or soul. I can see her filling up with more and more Christian compassion with every bottle that mysteriously appears in Dad’s life.
Eventually, she decides to confront him.
They’re drinking coffee in his kitchen, and everything is perfectly normal until Cheryl says, “Robert—and I’m saying this as your friend, so don’t take it the wrong way—we need to talk about your drinking.”
Dad stares at her.
He isn’t even angry, he’s so shocked.
“My what?”
“Your drinking,” Cheryl says firmly. “I know that Henny’s death has hit you hard. I understand that, I really do. It must be so tempting to escape and avoid having to think about it, to be free and relaxed and have fun…”
Her voice trails off, and then she finishes firmly: “But drinking is not the solution. Believe me. It’s part of the problem.”
“I don’t drink,” Dad says. “I don’t know where you’ve gotten this from. If it’s about the bottle I found, I’ve already told you it wasn’t mine. I was as surprised as you.”
“But, Robert, there were three empty vodka bottles in your trash! Just this week!”
“Have you been going through my trash?”
Cheryl is too absorbed in her mission to feel any shame. “No, the trashman noticed the clinking, and he told Bill, who told… Look, it doesn’t matter. The point is, you have a problem. You need to admit that to yourself.”
“They weren’t mine!”
“Those ones, too?” Cheryl says, her eyebrow slightly raised. “Denial,” she whispers to herself, shaking her head.
It’s only then that Cheryl’s words really sink in. The color drains from Dad’s face. His hands, clutching his coffee cup, start to shake. “The trash man and Bill and… They’ve all been talking about this? Is that why everyone has been giving me such strange looks? Because they think I’ve got a drinking problem?”
“We’re worried about you.”
“Just leave me alone.”
“But, Robert!”
Dad glares at her.
“We can talk more about this later,” Cheryl quickly says.
Once she has gone, Dad buries his face in his hands.
“The trashman,” he mumbles to himself.
* * *
Dad is now refusing to leave the house.
He checks the trash every day to make sure no new bottles have appeared, but he does it in secret. Every time he goes outside, he checks the street to make sure none of his neighbors are nearby. Cheryl calls, but he doesn’t pick up. When she knocks on the door, he refuses to answer.
Instead, he sits alone at the kitchen table, dwelling on the catastrophe that has struck him.
“Come on, Dad,” I say. “It’s just a joke.”
Though when I really think about it, both MacKenzie and I know what Dad thinks about jokes.
Jokes are the reason Dad stopped liking MacKenzie in the first place.
We had just started high school, and it was time for one of the many introductory icebreakers where you talked about your name and what it meant. I obediently got up and explained that Henny was an old European name, a variant of Henrietta; I said that I was named after my father’s grandmother, a woman he adored. She and her seven children had moved from the Netherlands in the late nineteenth century, and, as my grandmother always said, they didn’t lose a single one along the way.
I had just finished when MacKenzie stood up and added: “Or at least that’s what Mr. Broek claimed to get Mrs. Broek to go along with it.”
Everyone looked up at MacKenzie in confusion. Even Buddy, who was the most disruptive boy in class.
“You might not be aware of this, but there’s a famous cognac that people call Henny.”
Buddy was definitely looking up at MacKenzie now.
“Hennessy, her dad’s favorite. Mr. Broek thought that if he named his baby after it and sent them the birth certificate, they’d give him a lifetime supply in return. Or a couple of bottles, at the very least. Sure, he was pretty disappointed when he found out that wasn’t true. But it was nothing compared to how my dad felt when he heard about the idea. ‘Goddamn it,’ he said. ‘If I’d known that, I would’ve called you Jack Daniels.’”
Dad didn’t appreciate that story when it eventually relayed back to him. “Named after a cognac!” he cried in dismay. “How could she say such a thing?”
I tried to explain that MacKenzie hadn’t meant any harm by it. Everyone knew it was just a joke. She wasn’t even making fun of us—the joke was meant to be on her own father. But Dad never looked at her the same way after that.
And if he didn’t appreciate a harmless joke in high school, I don’t want to know how he feels right now.
Though, at the same time, another part of me thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have been so awful to MacKenzie.
* * *
Eventually, he has no choice but to go out and buy food. He chooses a quiet afternoon when most people should be at work, but he still doesn’t manage to avoid them entirely. The woman three houses down waves cheerily from her kitchen window as he passes.
She leans out through it, so that all he can see are her unbearable grinning face and her gray hair.
“Robert! I just wanted to say that I spoke to MacKenzie the other day, and she reassured me there was no way this rumor about you having a dri… Robert? Robert! Where are you going?”
Dad has already hurried off down the street.
There are two old men chatting outside the grocery store, and Dad recoils as though he is convinced they’re gossiping about him.
He snatches a basket and throws things into it as he passes, without once pausing to check his list or compare prices or read the small print on the ingredients list, as he always does otherwise.
When he turns the corner to the vegetable section, he almost crashes straight into two women. They live one street over from him and immediately stop talking when they see him. Dad heads for the checkout without even remembering to buy milk.
He anxiously glances over his shoulder and throws money at the poor young
teenager behind the till.
Freedom is within reach.
He’ll be back in the safety of his own home soon enough.
Unfortunately, however, Clarence is in line right behind him, with a six-pack of beer in his hand. While Dad is waiting for his things to be packed up, Clarence turns to him and tries to be comradely by saying: “Sometimes you’ve just got to drink to cope with this life, am I right?”
Dad flees.
He doesn’t even take his things. He hurries through the automatic doors and almost runs straight into an elderly woman making her way inside.
The boy from the till runs after him.
“Sir!” he shouts, holding up the two forgotten bags of food.
But Dad is already halfway down Elm Street.
Chapter 22
Nothing Works in This Place
Michael and I are sitting opposite each other in the restaurant. The breakfast rush is over, and he has an entire booth to himself. He has his computer and notepad with him, and I tell him all of the latest about Dad as he works.
It feels good just to be able to sit here and talk to him. This is exactly how it would have been if, well, if things were different. He would have been hard at work in the restaurant, and I would have interrupted him by stopping for a coffee.
I smile. I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded.
Michael suddenly starts writing. I get up and move over to him so that I can read over his shoulder. Remembering Henny, he has written at the top of the page.
He pauses, the pen still in his hand. Over by the counter, Alejandro is trying to take a picture of one of Dolores’s dishes, but Michael hasn’t noticed. He stares out of the window as he thinks, and then he continues writing:
Get to know the person she became after I left.
See this dump of a town through her eyes.
“Uh, you might have a bit of work to do there,” I say.
He hesitates before reluctantly adding one last point: Get to know my family.
* * *
It’s hard to be sure, but I think Joyce feels more confused than anything when Michael goes over to their house. She doesn’t show it, but something in her eyes makes them seem even emptier than usual.
Check in at the Pine Away Motel (ARC) Page 17