Chapter 14 Mack
Mack
He had never known Hailey to be this reckless.
The check had thrown her, that he could tell.
It was all well and good to spend Sunshine Enterprises’s money when it was in Mack’s name, but now that she’d been officially dragged into it, Hailey had gone into panic mode.
She’d stood there in the family room two nights before, staring at her name on the payee line, and then at Mack.
She’d acted like he’d tricked her, so much so that he began to wonder if he had.
They’d agreed not to cash this one—that part was easy—but she still seemed off .
. . stiff somehow. Even stiffer than usual.
And then she’d gone and agreed way too quickly to this fool’s errand to Jupiter.
It had been so easy to convince her to leave the kids with her parents and to take time off work that it felt to Mack as if he’d blinked in Cleveland and ended up south of the Mason-Dixon with a complete stranger.
“What will your parents think?” he’d wondered aloud. Twenty-five grand might as well have been a million to the Byers, who were staying at the house with the girls so the school run would be easier.
“They’ll think it’s a mistake, which it is,” Hailey had barked at him. “We’ll figure it out when we get back, return the money to whoever sent it. I don’t want to talk about it now.”
She still didn’t want to talk about it, or anything else. They sped past billboards advertising fireworks and strip clubs and tracked their progress on the signs for South of the Border—YOU NEVER SAUSAGE A PLACE! YOU’RE ALWAYS A WEINER AT PEDRO’S! JUST TEN MORE MILES!
“Should we stop for a quickie?” Mack asked Hailey, gripping the door handle as they weaved around an ancient Ford Probe.
Hailey managed the ghost of a smile, but otherwise gave no sign of fondness at the memory he was referring to: in the spring of their senior year at Duke, they’d been on their way to Myrtle Beach with a carload of friends.
On a dare, and with enough beers in them to make it seem like a good idea, they’d had sex in the disabled bathroom of the giant tourist-trap service station, exiting to the claps and cheers of half a dozen truck drivers.
He’d known then that Hailey was his soulmate: smart, beautiful, and more than a little rough .
. . not around the edges, but way deep in the cracks where no one could see it but him.
He still had the faded Sombrero mug he’d bought that day in his office.
He shifted in his seat at the memory, but Hailey stared straight ahead, expressionless.
When the SOTB mileage signs finally reached zero, they did not stop for a quickie, but pressed on for nine more hours, barely pausing to eat and pee.
They slept a little in a Best Western on the edge of Jupiter, in side-by-side double beds.
Mack dreamed that he’d accidentally let Gulliver loose in a parking lot, and he was trying to dodge cars and giant sombreros to catch him before Hailey noticed.
When he woke, covered in sweat and freezing in the air-conditioning, he wondered what would have happened if his dream self had simply asked for Hailey’s help, instead of hiding from her like a bad little kid.
* * *
Sandy Hollow felt different with his wife there.
Or maybe it was that he’d visited twice in a single month.
He’d been coming here (more or less) annually for fifteen years, and yet had hardly noticed the ocean views before, or how cushy the furniture in the lobby was.
He’d always entered the place with his head down, his jaw clenched.
Now he saw it as if for the first time, this luxurious God’s waiting room by the sea.
It probably was worth ten grand a month.
He hoped his wife thought so too, since it was her money they’d have to spend, at least until they could make a change or work something out.
Hailey had never been to Sandy Hollow, had never met his mother even after all this time, and Mack stumbled at the introductions.
“Well, here she is,” he said as he rounded the final corner to Leonora’s room, his throat closing up with the smell of old age and disinfectant.
He wasn’t quite sure whether he was presenting his mom to Hailey or vice versa, but the stakes felt high.
His stomach churned with watery orange juice and coffee, his back throbbed from the hotel mattress, and his eyes were dry and stinging from the stale air of various climate-controlled environs.
What if Hailey went all Hailey on his mom, and rushed through this encounter like it was some kind of sidebar?
Or she might continue this judgy, quiet thing she’d been doing lately, and just shrug her shoulders at the sight of his mother—after all, Leonora was a disappointment to her too.
Their daughters were down two grandparents right from the word go, and Hailey had been denied the basic human right to complain about your mother-in-law.
The prospect of a disappointed silence from both Mrs. Evanses, of such a terrible combination of emptiness and resentment, brought forth a verbal diarrhea like Mack had never experienced.
“Looks like they’re doing breakfast now, maybe we should come back.
It’s going to be hard to top the food here, if we have to move her.
They’re limited as to what she can eat, of course, but Tilda says they do a pretty good job of offering variety, and even though it’s hard to know exactly how much she’s aware of, it’s a good sign that she can still digest real food. She has to be fed, of course, but—”
He stopped because Hailey had reached his mother’s bedside, had stepped around the untouched breakfast tray and moved in close.
“Hello,” Hailey said softly, and Mack heard himself exhale. His mom returned his wife’s gaze, but only by coincidence. And yet Hailey took his mother’s hand in both of her own and gently uncurled Leonora’s fingers. “I’ve been waiting such a long time to meet you.”
Mack could not think of when she might have come across anyone else in this state, so how was Hailey so sure of herself? He never had been.
“In person she looks so much like Gigi,” Hailey whispered, as if it were a secret. “I never realized.”
Mack had. The soft angles of his mother’s nose, the fullness of her lips, the set of her gray-blue eyes—it was unmistakable.
He had always tried not to think of Leonora as Mabel and Gigi’s grandmother, had resisted categorizing her with the sixty- and seventy-something women he’d watched dipping a baby’s toes into the Shoreby pool or holding chubby hands as they walked along the dock.
Or cramming little feet into crappy plastic shoes, the way Pammy Byers did.
Better not to dwell on what Leonora might have been or done .
. . probably she would have just taught Gigi to swear, or corrupted Mabel’s fledgling musical sensibilities with “Le Freak.”
“Mack? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.” His voice cracked. “I’m just going to go talk to the manager and see what’s what. Are you all right to stay with her? I don’t know where Tilda is, but she’s always around. I told her we were coming.”
“It’s fine. We’re fine.”
It took Mack ten minutes of wandering up and down washed-out-pastel hallways to find the Sandy Hollow business office, where a woman named Marilyn Murphy was expecting him.
He took a seat behind a coffee table covered in binders and brochures; Sandy Hollow had quite the marketing budget.
He wondered whether Leonora would ever have chosen the place for herself if she’d been given the option.
He guessed Irene Weigand had made the decision; he had no recollection of any of it.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you, Mr. Evans,” Marilyn said. “I’m sorry our paths haven’t crossed before. I’ve been here almost five years now, but I guess our timings have never matched up. I’ve heard so much about you from Tilda and Irene . . . Mrs. Weigand.”
Mack nodded. He was aware of being somewhat of a celebrity at Sandy Hollow.
Tilda had told him about how the staff still asked after Leonora’s handsome son, even the ones hired in more recent years for whom he was only folklore, the teenager whose mother had suffered a fate worse than death while he was in the middle of rushing fraternities and playing beer pong.
“We’d be so sorry to see Mrs. Evans go,” Marilyn was telling Mack in a hushed voice. “Though I understand if you want her closer to you.”
“Yeah, well, like I said on the phone, it seems I’m taking over her care from the trust—from Mrs. Weigand.” He suddenly felt embarrassed, a cheapskate whose free cable trial had long since run out.
“Yes, she’s informed us of the changes. I’ve got a lot of your details on the emergency contact sheet, so we can set up the billing today, if that works for you.”
“The thing is,” Mack told her, “You see, the thing is, I hadn’t really been aware of the situation.”
“The situation?”
“With my mother’s finances. I didn’t know Irene Weigand was paying for her. Or that she might stop paying for her.”
“I see. That must have come as quite a shock.”
“Shock doesn’t cover it. I’m just wondering if there is federal funding we can access—Medicaid or Medicare, or something we can apply for? I really don’t want to move her from here, but I’m not sure quite what to do.”
Mack had secretly hoped that doing this in person might make his plea more convincing, but he could not find much comfort in Marilyn’s face.
“We can get the ball rolling to try to get some supplementary funds, certainly,” she said after a minute.
“Though I must tell you that most of our residents are self-paying; we’re not really a Medicaid-type facility.
In the meantime, why don’t we set up a meeting with Mrs. Weigand, and let her know your concerns? ”