Chapter 5 Mack
Mack
What the hell is this?”
Mack’s stomach did a little flip. Hailey had snuck up on him in the kitchen, a letter in her hands.
It would be the one from the English department, telling him that he was on probation, that he was under investigation for inappropriate interactions with his students, during and after the Covid lockdown.
The department administrator had warned him this was coming, and Mack had been patrolling the mail even more religiously than usual.
Except today Hailey beat him to it. He had not given her even the tiniest warning about the shitstorm that was blowing in, and this was not the way he wanted her to find out.
He braced himself for impact, until he realized that what she was actually holding was another check from Sunshine Enterprises. He snatched it from her.
“Why do you insist on opening mail addressed to me? That’s a felony, you know.”
“Why is someone paying you seven thousand dollars?”
Mack pushed his glasses down from his forehead. She was right about the amount. This was the third check in six weeks, and each time the amount had increased by $1,000.
Hailey stood staring at him. He sighed. Maybe this would be good practice for the rest of the truths he had to deliver.
“I think they’re coming from my dad.”
“They?”
Interesting that she had seized on the pronoun. “Yep. He’s been sending money.”
“Your dad? The dad you hardly know? How much money?”
Mack was an English professor; it took him a long minute to do the math. “This makes eighteen grand. There were two other checks.”
“How could you not . . . You cashed them?”
“I deposited them. I’m surprised you didn’t notice.” Turn it around on her, he told himself. The best defense is a good offense.
“Don’t try to turn this around on me. You didn’t think to mention that your father—the father that you hate, the father that you haven’t spoken to in twenty-five years—has been in touch? Have I just entered the Twilight Zone?”
“He didn’t get in touch. I mean, not other than to send these.”
She took the check back from him. “But how do you even know it’s him? There’s no name on it. What’s Sunshine Enterprises?”
Mack sighed again. This was but a drop in the ocean of what he had been keeping from her. “He’s tried to send me money before, back when I was starting college. I thought I’d told you about it before. I sent it back.”
Hailey’s face softened. He had to give her credit; she had always trodden lightly around the topic of his father, had sensed not to poke that bear. “I didn’t know that. I didn’t know you ever knew where he lived.”
“He lives in Daytona. Or at least he did then.”
“How would he get our address?”
“Google?”
Gulliver’s nails clicked across the kitchen floor.
His ears were tied up like pigtails with two purple hair scrunchies, and he was wearing a pink-and-blue bathrobe commandeered from Mabel’s American Girl doll.
The pained expression in his eyes almost made Mack feel sorry for him, especially when Hailey laughed.
The betrayal must’ve broken Gulliver’s momma’s-boy heart; he fled the kitchen immediately.
“I can’t believe I didn’t know this about your dad. Maybe he’s trying to—”
“Who cares what he’s trying to do,” Mack interrupted her. “But I will take his money. It’s not like he doesn’t owe me.”
Something that looked like sadness flashed across Hailey’s face, and it irritated him.
“Listen to me, this is not a big deal. If my father wants to get in touch because I accept this money, let him. There are a few things I’d like to say to him.
” Mack had always imagined that he’d start with a nice little anecdote about how hard his mom had worked to fill the void his father’s sudden departure had left.
Mack was seven years old, and Leonora tried to take him to a Dolphins game.
She’d gotten lost, got a flat tire, forgotten the tickets, and eventually they’d ended up listening to the end of the game in the car while she sobbed.
Yeah, now that he thought about it, Mack hoped his dad would get in touch. But until he did, Mack would sit back and take his money.
“But you can’t just take this money. There are tax implications too, Mack. Do you even know what this company is? Did you google it?”
“Obviously. There are about a billion Sunshine Enterprises, though.”
“Did you google it with his name?”
“Of course. Nothing comes up.” Why did she think he was so stupid?
“But then how can you be sure—”
Gigi saved him. “Mabel won’t share Gulliver,” she announced, tearing into the kitchen.
“She’s got him in the doll buggy and she won’t let him out and he’s sad and she won’t listen to me about any of it and it’s very upsetting to me.
” Gigi at three was more eloquent than most adults; she was like living with a tiny version of one of Mack’s more erudite colleagues. Former colleagues, soon.
Mack normally wouldn’t have jumped so quickly on the chance to rescue Gulliver, but this was enough truth for Hailey’s first helping.
He found the dog down in the playroom, where Mabel had strapped him, upright with his belly exposed, into a doll stroller using the belt from Hailey’s fancy trench coat.
He couldn’t have been there long, but Gulliver’s hips were wedged in deeply, and his short legs stuck out helplessly in front of him.
The worst thing though, the thing that was making Gulliver howl like a banshee, was that the poor dog’s hairy little penis was all in a twist, squeezed by the belt and folded at a terrible angle. Mack knew exactly how he felt.
* * *
That night, after the girls were tucked in and the painkillers the emergency vet had prescribed Gulliver had rendered him unconscious, Mack treated Hailey to a little more of the story of his father.
They were in bed, and she was wearing a silk nightie that he liked, and he thought that if he laid the groundwork properly, he might even get some sex out of his terrible childhood.
He brought her a glass of red, though it was August and hot as hell outside, and he told her everything he knew.
(Everything about Warner Thomas Evans, that is.) Mack’s dad had been shady, really shady.
Maybe even Mafia shady, though Leonora had only ever hinted at this once, after they’d watched The Godfather on VHS.
But Mack’s mom had been clear on the fact that Warner was in construction, and that he was a criminal.
In the 1970s, he’d been involved in the building of three massive high-rise condominium complexes down in the Florida Keys.
Hundreds of apartments were pre-sold for 300K a pop, a lot in those days.
Mack’s dad’s company finished off the construction, moved all the retirees and snowbirds in, and everyone was happy.
Until the ceilings began to crumble on the new owners.
The cement used to make the building had been mixed with untreated seawater to cut costs, and his mother’s legend had it that within six months the walls literally came tumbling down when the saltwater corroded the steel reinforcements.
By which point Warner Evans had vanished into thin air, taking the money and leaving behind his wife and young son.
Leonora had told Mack later that throughout most of his childhood, she wasn’t even sure whether her husband was dead or alive.
Hailey was speechless. “I see what you mean,” she said finally. “Sunshine Enterprises. As in, the Sunshine State.” Then she said something that surprised him: “You know, I almost feel sorry for your dad.”
“Why? I’ve just told you; the man was a criminal.”
“I know, but I mean, is anyone sure he meant to do it? What if it was just a mistake?”
“Mixing concrete with saltwater is a pretty big mistake.”
“I’m just saying,” Hailey said. “You might want to hear the man out. Plus, think of all the money he’s spent on your mom’s care all these years.
He couldn’t be all bad. I mean, I get why you hate him so much, but think about it—it must be hundreds of thousands of dollars by now, your mom’s been in that home so long.
I’d always wondered where he got that much money from. ”
“Yeah, well, the stress he caused probably put her in that place.”
When it had become clear that Mack’s mother wasn’t ever going to recover from the aneurism, nor would she be lucky enough to die anytime soon, there was a brief and terrible interval when her insurance company refused to pay for a decent nursing home.
And then in a matter of weeks, Leonora’s lawyer had come to see Mack and delivered the news that from this point on his mother’s care was being handled by a trust, set up by an anonymous benefactor.
There was enough money that Mack didn’t have to worry about it going forward, and this benefactor wanted Leonora’s son to go on and live his life as best he could, and here also was a very small nest egg to get Mack started.
Mack knew exactly who this mystery benefactor was: the very same one who had tried to give him a thousand bucks the year before, when he’d gone off to Duke on a whole lot of financial aid and a partial golf scholarship.
Then, Mack had told that “benefactor” that he could go fuck himself, even though he could have used the money.
But getting his mother taken care of was too big for Mack to take a stand over.
An exception to the embargo on his father was made, and now Mack’s thinking was that he would take the same approach toward these new payments.
Especially if he was about to lose his job and his entire career and thus have no salary for the remainder of his life.
“But then couldn’t this be like Mafia money you’re taking? Or homeless old people’s money?”
Mack could sense that Hailey was still in the foreplay phase of this conversation, whereas he was already smoking his metaphorical cigarette.
“Who even cares anymore? My mom and I were his victims too. Nah, I’m going to take it and spend it and not feel even the slightest bit bad about it.
I will look into the tax implications though, don’t worry.
” He only added the last bit because it made him sound capable.
The IRS wasn’t going to come after an English professor, for fuck’s sake.
Especially an ex-English professor on unemployment . . . he had to stop thinking like this.
“But I mean, God, Mack,” Hailey said, stretching out her smooth, tanned legs in a way that filled him with hope. “This is pretty big to keep from me. I feel like I don’t even know you anymore.”
That must’ve been a positive thing in her eyes, though, because he did get sex.
Afterward, he was just drifting off when Hailey prodded him awake.
“I can’t stop thinking about the fact that he knows where we live.”
“Who?”
“Your father. If he is some big criminal, he has our address. He could be keeping tabs on us, watching us, anything. Do you even know what he looks like?”
Mack did not; he had no photos of his dad.
But the idea of his father spying on them didn’t bother him so much.
If he was really honest with himself, in his mind Warner Evans had been watching him his whole life.
His father had been the invisible, internal audience throughout all of Mack’s triumphs, and especially during his defeats.
“I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it,” he said to Hailey. “If he’s that big of a criminal still, he’ll have more interesting things to worry about than us.”