Near ten o’clock that night, Mac was getting ready to go, and Filipo said, “I can’t hear myself think.”
“Stop thinking for a minute, enjoy your cousins.”
Filipo said, “I picked this for my next book report.” He held up War and Peace.
Mac chuckled, despite himself. “When’s it due?”
“Next week. I should’ve picked something shorter, like Journal of the Plague Year or Don Quixote.”
Mac had supplied Filipo with a list of good books, which the boy had been diligently working through. “Why not do the report on Book One of War and Peace and leave it at that?”
“I could. Book One’s practically a whole book by itself.”
“Yeah, Tolstoy exceeded the norm.”
“Hey, Mac,” said Filipo.
“What?”
“It’s pretty quiet at your place?”
Mac shrugged. “Why—you want to get out of here?”
“Like, starting tonight?”
“Tonight.” Mac wanted to go home and—do what? Not much, really.
“I’ll go ask my mom right now,” said Filipo, and he dashed from the room.
Thus it was arranged. Filipo found his knapsack for the expedition, and as he threw things into it, one of the little cousins knelt beside the open bag. Her name was Teresa.
“Why are you going away?”
“I gotta get outta here,” he said gruffly. “Work to do.”
“Can I see where you’re going?”
“Don’t worry, s not far.”
A few minutes later he said: “She’s the quiet one. Pretty nice. Could she come, just tonight?”
“I thought you wanted to work.”
Filipo hissed in Mac’s ear, “She’s overattached to me.”
Mac understood that reason. “Okay, if her mother says it’s all right. Just for tonight.”
And as it turned out, the dog with three legs and the diaper was Teresa’s. And naturally, she couldn’t go anywhere without him. His name was Manny, and he looked like he was half decayed. “Make sure you don’t forget his diapers,” Mac said. Still, after they let themselves out of the cage, onto Mission, the dog insisted on walking his ragged, wobbly walk on a leash beside them instead of being carried, but he managed to keep up somehow.
After ten o’clock, and the couples were still out on the street enjoying the warm night. Kids on their skateboards and bikes. No one wanting to go to bed. No one wanting to go inside.
He didn’t yet know what he’d make of himself in this city. “Sometimes I’m afraid of what I can become,” Carolyn had written. Well, weren’t we all, once we understood the continuum? He especially, with the model of his mother and his newfound dad! He’d found himself bumbling around for months after he left Redwood City, missing interviews, collecting parking tickets, even shopping for groceries an unsettling chore. But after a while he found a routine. He hit upon a job in the mail room of a textbook publisher, made a few new friends, but visited Bill Galeotto only once, and that visit strained civility as he paced in the dark room, unable to form a complete thought, so fierce was his contempt. You sick bastard! What the hell? The man coughed and clammed up. And looking at his father in that room and thinking how he’d gotten there, he surmised that his quest had taken him far afield from his dreams, and judged it a crooked little trip indeed.
Was he ever going to get that picture out of his mind? Of a summer on a beach, Adela in her bikini, the baby in Isabel’s arms, and young Carolyn in an old maid’s swimsuit? The weight of a new world on her shoulders. Her father’s shadow eclipsing her face.
That day with Adela, after the confrontation he thought he’d been ready for, he left the restaurant and wandered up the street without any thought of where he was going; finally, he sat on the loading dock of a mattress outlet, and the letter he had held back for so long spilled out.
Dear Carolyn,
Once I was on a plane next to a mad scientist guy on his way to a conference in Chicago. He started telling me that the solid things around us, like buildings and concrete and stone, all pick up the electronic imprints of the events that happen near them, kind of like the surface of a CD. And that if you could play them, you could see history. Maybe he was crazy, I’d be the last to know. But I do think when feelings burn, that people leave something behind, and if that’s the case, we’ve burned the closest thing to “true love” I’ve ever seen onto the face of this town.
I’m a hokey old sap, sure, but let’s keep unknotting all this craziness together! Whatever it takes. Neither of us has any experience with something that could really stick, you know.
It traveled to New York in a mailbag; at least that much he knew.
Meanwhile, meanwhile. A guy whose true love was the lover of his father, who was the true love of his mother and of the daughter’s father, who was the grandfather of the sister?—a tale fit for the Decameron. Holy C.arolyn O.phelia Ware. She read him those tales on long nights in her room, but would never tell her own story to the world.
Now he pulled a lemon out of his bag and peeled it. Filipo said, “What’s that for?”
He put a section in his mouth. “Try it,” Mac said, and handed him a piece. “Go on, try it.”
They started to climb the two short blocks to Guerrero. Couldn’t see the stars—too bright in the city. But that was okay. He could see other things that were closer. He saw Filipo put the lemon straight into his mouth and bite down. He saw his whole face screw up. And he saw a dog in a diaper using its hind leg like a pogo stick. He saw a young woman’s bare shoulders behind a sheer curtain. He saw an old man pushing a cat in a cart. And when they hit his street, he saw the light in his high window, his own North Star.
“Hey,” Filipo said, “that was good.” And he stuck out his hand for more.
Acknowledgments
Many beloved friends have read this and made their mark through its various incarnations. I would especially like to thank Roberta Montgomery for being a creative touchstone since we were fourteen. Our first collaboration, “The Stench of My Soul,” makes its debut herein.
I would like to thank Kim Witherspoon and Eleanor Jackson, who provided crucial notes early on, and Laura Ford at Random House, whose patience and wisdom fostered the completion of this book.
Jim Cox is unsurpassed as a believer, while Emily Cox is simply unsurpassed.
My group, past and present, has been steadfast and opinionated, just as I’d want them. And Pat Stacey’s publication of embryonic segments was great support. I’d like to thank Donka Farkas for her willingness to lend her literary sensibilities on a moments notice. Last, I’m indebted to Steve Woodhams for not only lending his, but allowing me to monitor every flicker on his face while doing so.
ELIZABETH MCKENZIE’Sfirst book, Stop That Girl, was short-listed for the 2005 Story Prize, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Best American Non-required Reading, The Pushcart Prize XXV, Other Voices, The Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and ZYZZYVA. Her stories have been performed at Symphony Space in New York and Stories on Stage in Chicago and have been recorded for National Public Radios Selected Shorts. A former staff editor at The Atlantic Monthly, she lives in Santa Cruz, California. Visit the authors website: www.macgregortells.com.
A Random House Trade Paperback Original
Copyright © 2007 by Elizabeth McKenzie
All rights reserved.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKSand colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48782-7
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
MacGregor tells the world: a novel / Elizabeth McKenzie.
p. cm.
1. Young men—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction.
3. San Francisco (Calif.)—Fiction.
PS3613.C556M33 2007
813'.6—dc22 2006049736
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