Chapter 11 Mack
Mack
The dean of humanities was stuck on the fact that Mackenzie Ewing, an eighteen-year-old rising sophomore and a member of Mack’s tutor group from last year, had regularly referred to him in emails and text messages as “Big Mack.”
“It’s just a reference to McDonald’s,” Mack told Ernest Favre. “And to both our first names.”
“But you concede that it was a nickname?”
“I guess you could call it that. I have a friendly relationship with all of my students, and we just thought it was funny that we were both called . . .” Mack gave up.
He had lost Favre at “relationship,” could see him shut down.
Neeta Tulley, head of the English department, had fallen even earlier, at the first meeting a few weeks back, when Mack had had to admit that he had sent and received multiple text messages from Mackenzie, some at unsociable hours.
“So you deny the suggestion of the anonymous student mentioned previously that ‘big’ is a reference to the size of your . . . manhood?” Favre’s specialty was Renaissance prose and poetry.
He had written an inexplicably successful nonfiction book called The Tragedie of Grand Theft Auto, some garbage that Mack hadn’t read about how poetic virtual carjacking could be.
Favre would probably leave soon, head for somewhere with a proper big-boy English department, and Mack simmered with jealousy every time he saw him, which made the current situation even worse, if such a thing was possible.
“Yes, I deny it. It’s ridiculous.”
“This student is lying?”
“Or mistaken. I can’t really speak to a rumor I know nothing about.”
“But you don’t deny hosting these get-togethers at your home, at least some of which were during a pandemic?”
Mack sat still as a Michelangelo as he explained for the thousandth time: “During the pandemic we sat outside. Some of my group—a lot of them actually—were having mental health issues, and I—”
Favre leaned forward and straightened the stacked copies of his own book on the corner of his desk.
“I’m going to be straight with you, Mack.
Everyone in the department has heard talk of these little parties, and we turned a blind eye to them because you’re a good professor.
A very good professor. But what I’m hearing now is extremely disturbing. Booze, drugs, underage students . . .”
Mack could only stare down at the floor.
“Did you ever meet with Mackenzie Ewing alone?”
“No, never alone. Always with at least one other student.” This was a tiny bit of a lie, because sometimes the students who were supposed to be with Mackenzie came late or left early. That wasn’t Mack’s fault, though, and it certainly didn’t need mentioning now.
“Mack, listen. I don’t want to believe anything happened with this girl.” Favre leaned forward again, lowered his voice. “But this looks bad. We’ve got all these text messages back and forth, with nicknames . . .”
“Nicknames? It’s not like I called her Sugar Tits, Ernie,” Mack said, and watched Favre recoil in horror. “I care about my students. She was a friend.”
“She’s twenty years younger than you. A student can’t be your friend.
And for your sake, I hope to God she wasn’t more than that.
No—don’t say anything, I don’t want to know.
Just be aware that if there was anything sexual involved, the university will come down on you like a ton of bricks and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. ”
“Did someone say that there was sex involved?” Even Mack could hear the panic creep into his own voice.
“It’s been insinuated, is all I can say. It’s pending investigation.”
“What does that mean, insinuated? What is this, Kafka? As far as I can tell there isn’t even an accusation, so why am I being pressured into time off? Maybe I need a lawyer.”
“Maybe you do; I can’t advise you on that.
Talk to your wife about it.” Favre had met Hailey and must have been aware of her profession, but this was not the only reason he was bringing her up.
“This isn’t going away, Mack,” the dean told him.
“It’ll be on the minutes of the Board of Trustees meeting next week, and possibly in the public domain.
And I’m afraid that because of the alcohol and substance charges involved, and the accusations of grade inflation and fraud, we have to refer the matter to the police.
It’s just standard procedure these days.
You must understand; the college has to protect itself. ”
“I don’t know what to say to that, except that this is beyond crazy.” Mack stood too quickly, almost knocking over a potted plant on the table next to him. “I have to pick up my kids.”
* * *
Sitting in the car outside Gigi’s day care, Mack let his mind wander to places he had banned it from going.
It sprinted straight for Mackenzie Ewing, on the porch swing of his old house in Lakewood, saucerlike eyes blinking up at him from underneath a bobble hat, small hands in fingerless gloves clutching a red wineglass.
God, he’d loved that house, how his students congregated there, how it made them see him as one of their own, how they felt relaxed and safe, hugged in the smoke of his homegrown marijuana.
Yes, Mack had broken a few rules. But he’d done it for their sake, for his students, to show them that being an adult didn’t have to mean selling out and turning into some corporate dick.
You might not get rich, but you could spend your life smoking weed and teaching Hemingway and discussing the meaning of it all on a winter’s night, if you were brave enough to make that choice.
(The only flaw in Mack’s own personal version of that plan had been when he married someone who insisted on living in Bratenahl.)
Once Gigi was safely buckled in her car seat, Mack picked his way toward Shaker Heights, where he joined a long line of cars that cost as much as his annual salary. A ridiculously young-looking teacher nodded Mabel toward him, and she collapsed into her booster seat with a sigh.
“How was school today, Mabie?” There was no answer she could give that would bring him joy: If she loved it, it only meant that someday he’d have to break it to her that they couldn’t afford it, and that they’d have to move away because Daddy was a pariah.
If she hated it, he would be equally devastated that they’d paid $24,000 for her to be miserable.
“Fine,” Mabel said.
“What did you do?”
“Some stuff.”
“Okay.” He knew Hailey would push enough for the both of them, make Mabel recount every single second at Shaker School for Girls before she was allowed to eat her dinner.
“I did Play-Doh,” said Gigi, though no one had asked. “What did you do today, Daddy?”
“Some stuff,” Mack said, and he turned up the radio, let an inane preschool song paralyze his brain cells.
The drive home passed in a blur, so much so that he almost rear-ended Betsy Wakefield as she made the right-hand turn into Magpie Court.
She noticed; she waved her hand at Mack in a not altogether friendly gesture.
He had maybe been tailgating. They pulled in their respective driveways, and she rolled her window down.
“We meet again!”
“We do,” said Mack, though to him the morning was a thousand years ago.
“I keep meaning to talk to you and Hailey,” she said. “We should carpool. Silly to both drive, now that the girls are settled in.”
Mack looked at Mabel in the rearview mirror.
She was sucking her thumb, hair disheveled, eyes drooping.
He couldn’t abandon her to some strange lady’s car, not when everything was still so new and daunting.
He felt an overwhelming instinct to draw his family in close—even Hailey, who would require a careful grip.
Besides, give it another week and Betsy Wakefield wouldn’t let her daughters anywhere near him.
“Uh, yeah. You probably should text Hailey. I just go where she tells me to.” Mercifully, they were interrupted by the babysitter pulling up behind him, here to fulfil her goddamn contracted hours. Mack waved and pulled the rest of the way into his driveway.
The babysitter’s arrival was now the low point of Mack’s day.
He wondered what Hailey had told Chenise about reducing her hours, about him being home when she was there.
He hated the overlap; it made him feel the way he had when he was a scruffy teenager in a dollar-store hoodie, and the manager of the local 7–Eleven would stare him down like the theft of a Twix might crumble his entire convenience-store empire.
Mack did not steal candy, and he didn’t give a shit what Chenise got up to with his kids, either, as long as they were happy.
Chenise hadn’t picked up on his apathy; even all the way down in his office, Mack could hear her singsong voice, and he always had the sense that she was performing for him.
He said an awkward hello, and then numbly let her take over.
He heard talk of fruit snacks and playing in the yard and then the three of them disappeared into the kitchen, leaving Mack in the front hall.
He picked up the mail from the floor, saw the thin brown envelope, recognized what it was at once, and tore it open: Sunshine Enterprises again, $25,000.
But it wasn’t the climbing amount that sent Mack’s heart rate soaring, it was the payee: Hailey J. Evans, Esq.