Chapter 23 Mack #2
Simeon turned to walk back toward his van. “Let me talk to my concrete guy,” he said over his shoulder. Mack would have just let him go, but Hailey slipped around the hedge and got to the van before Simeon did.
“So that’s the next step? And then you’ll get back to us?
Because I’m sure you can appreciate that this is really stressful.
I mean, this is a brand-new house, and it looks like it’s about to fall down.
” Hailey sounded on the edge of hysteria, Mack thought, and he wondered whether this would work for them or against them.
“Now don’t let’s all panic,” Simeon said, calm as could be.
“This is just one of those joys of the construction business. I’m sure it looks scary to you, but this is the sort of thing that gets blown out of proportion.
The cracks might be the house settling on the lot, might be the time of year .
. . Biggest thing is, you folks don’t panic and ruin the enjoyment of your new home.
Keep your heads, I’ll get my concrete specialist out and we’ll get you all fixed up. Okay?”
“Right,” said Mack. “Like the garage door?”
Simeon pretended not to hear. As he drove off, Hailey watched Mack struggling to untie his new running shoes. “Where’d those come from?”
“Oh, it’s a crazy story. You know that guy with a weird moustache that walks around here all the time? His dog like jumped out of nowhere and bit me, and he gave me these shoes, I guess so I wouldn’t sue him. He lives in the Eliot estate, you should see it. It’s like something out of a movie—”
“You went to that guy’s house?”
“Yeah. He showed me around, and you wouldn’t believe this place, like something out of Gatsby.”
“That’s just great, Mack. I’m glad you’re chilling with retirees while our lives fall apart around us. Don’t worry about it, though, I’ll take care of everything, okay?”
It felt like the sting that hit Mack originated from somewhere inside him, instead of from Hailey. The two of them stood, not looking at each other, while Mack tried her own trick against her and waited to see if she would say anything else.
Eventually she did: “I’m late. I’ve got a meeting. I don’t even know why I came home.”
Hailey went to get her bag from inside. As Mack dove to grab Gulliver before he ran into the street, she brushed past him again on her way to the car, shaking him off when he tried to ask her about calling the police.
“I told you, I’ll take care of it.” She sped off and left Mack standing beside an eggshell of a house that he had never wanted, holding a dog that had never loved him.
Fine.
Mack would focus on Simeon; if that prick had messed up their house, maybe he’d messed up the whole damn street of them.
Maybe there was even some money to be had from his ineptitude.
Mack dropped Gulliver back inside, retied his shoelaces, and made his way to the Wakefields’ front door.
The layout of the porch, a mirror image of his own, gave Mack a slight sense of vertigo.
Their doorbells were identical; he listened as the Wakefields’ echoed through their house. Betsy came to the door.
“Well hello neighbor,” she said dryly. She was wearing tennis whites and K-Swiss sneakers. Her bare legs were a similar shape to Hailey’s, but longer.
“Hey. Sorry to bother you. I just wanted to ask you something about the house . . . your house, I mean. Have you guys had any trouble with cracks?”
“You mean like in the windows?” She stared at him.
Mack looked at her blankly.
The golf ball! She was talking about Mack’s golf ball. “No, sorry, I uh—”
“I’m only kidding.” She opened the door wider, and Mack could see through into her big living room with its double-story windows. “See? All better now.”
“Looks great,” Mack said. “Those guys did a good job. And again, I’m really sorry. I hope your tennis game is better than my golf game.”
She laughed a little then, and Mack felt rehabilitated.
This woman liked him, maybe, even if his own wife didn’t.
He had to admit Betsy was attractive, in a prissy kind of way.
He peeped into the house—he saw lots of pink and green and tassels, nothing like Hailey’s slick grays and whites—and Betsy caught him looking.
“Do you want to come in? It’s a little cold out to have the door wide open.” Her tennis skirt was short, and there were indeed goose bumps on her skin, Mack noticed.
“Nah, sorry, I’ll be quick. It’s just we’ve just got some cracks that have come out in the concrete in the house, and I thought I’d check to see if you’d had the same kind of trouble.”
“Cracks? No. No cracks here.”
“I just thought since the houses were built at the same time . . . well, anyway, be sure to check your basement. We’ve got bad ones in the floor and the walls. And then some outside too.” He glanced toward her brickwork. It looked fine from where he was standing.
“I’ll keep an eye out, thanks. Not teaching today?”
“No. I’m on leave.”
“I thought I’d seen more of you around lately.” Something in her voice let Mack know she was in on his secret, and he felt his confidence shrink. Betsy’s own husband worked so much that Mack had never even laid eyes on the guy.
“Yeah, well, anyway . . . thanks,” he said to her, though he wasn’t sure for what.
He turned to face the street. He’d knock on the Sinclairs’ next—their house was across from the Wakefields’—but he wanted to be thorough.
“I just realized I don’t know . . . Who owns the lot next to you on the other side here? ”
“I don’t know,” Betsy told him. “The people who bought it got into a fight over their view, or lack thereof. I think they’re still trying to get their money back from Cletus.”
“From who?”
“Cletus. Cletus Simeon, your builder? You know, the one who built all of our houses?”
“His first name is Cletus?”
“Yes.” She looked at Mack with something like pity. “I’m going to close the door now, okay?”
“Yes, yeah. Sorry. Just let me know if you find any damage, okay?”
“Will do.”
Mack knocked on a few more doors, but no one was around.
He knew the couple on the far opposite side of the street were lawyers too, and were hardly ever home.
He had caught only glimpses of their children; most of the kids in Bratenahl he had only seen staring out at him from the back seats of giant Escalades, like miniature presidents being driven by motorcade from one activity to the next.
The guy in the middle house was a snowbird and probably in Florida, and the Sinclairs would be golfing or tennis-ing or bridge-ing .
. . Even though the houses were close together, Magpie Court always felt empty; it was what he hated most about the place.
He checked his watch and made his way home.
He ditched his shoes, now pretty much ruined by the mud, and polished off a stale bag of pretzels and half a tub of H?agen-Dazs.
Then he went down to his office and called his mom.
“There he is,” said Tilda, after the usual shuffling of the camera.
She was having Chick-fil-A. Mack’s mother was in the yellow robe again, and, like always, Mack could see the Florida sunshine streaming in through the window in her room.
Thank God he had at least gotten her through the end of the year.
(Or Hailey had.)
“Hey, Mom. Hi, Tilda.”
“How are all your girls, Mackie? They good?”
“We’re fine. Everything’s fine.”
“Good. I said to Irene this week, I said they’ll have such a nice time decorating their big new house for Christmas. You started yet?”
It occurred to Mack then that Tilda’s bragging about him might have been what led Irene Weigand to pull the plug on their arrangement.
“Nah. It’s not that big of a house, you know, Tilda.
Don’t forget I’m on a teacher’s salary.” Or I was, thought Mack gloomily.
At least his mother would never have to hear the name Mackenzie Ewing or read about her son the drug-dealing booze hound. Every cloud and all that.
“So Irene’s still coming to visit her?” Mack asked Tilda.
“Of course. Ten a.m. on Tuesdays, same as always.”
“Right.” He knew it was irrational, he knew it was unfair, but Mack hated that Irene Weigand was still showing up there. His mom needed Irene’s money, not her time. What use did his mother have for friends now?
“She was asking me about your book. How’s the writing going?”
“It’s going great.” Mack watched as his mom shifted a little in her bed. He knew better than to think she’d understood him.
“Irene was really sorry not to meet Hailey,” Tilda went on.
“I told her how nice and down-to-earth she is, even though she’s a hotshot lawyer and all.
Course, Irene’s heard so much about her over the years.
Where you’re living, what you’re doing.” The nurse laughed.
“Ah, there’s nothing like us old ladies gossiping. ”
Jesus Christ. Tilda had probably single-handedly caused the greatest financial crisis of Mack’s life. Wasn’t there some sort of patient confidentiality nurses were supposed to abide by?
“Irene said she’s real proud of you, too. For stepping up.”
“What? Stepping up? What does that mean?”
“Oh now, I didn’t mean to speak out of turn. Watch me put my foot in it. She’s just glad you can be there for your mother now, that’s all.”
Irene was just an old woman gossiping, Mack reminded himself. A lonely old lady who had paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars for his mother. He had to let her commentary go.
“How’s Mom been this week? You been playing her some good tunes?”
“Oh yes! We’ve had some Everly Brothers and—”
“I’d ask Tilda for some Hendrix, if I were you, Mom,” Mack said. “I know you used to love him.”
“I’ll do that for her, Mackie.” Tilda looked at her watch. “It’s rounds time, so we’ve got to keep it short today. You have a great weekend, okay?”
After he’d clicked off the call, Mack stared up through his tiny window.
There was a recess there to increase the light, and he could see the chunk of brick that Simeon had knocked from the house; part of it had turned to powder when it hit the mud.
Mack thought of concrete, and then of his father’s crumbling towers down in the Florida Keys.
Forty-seven thousand dollars. From Liberia.
Did the Mafia operate in Liberia? These days they probably did.
Mack clicked around on his laptop until he found a website for the Florida Department of Health.
For $8, he ordered a copy of the death certificate for Warner Thomas Evers.
What exactly that would prove, he didn’t know, but there was nothing else to reach for.
Only the barest traces of his father existed online; there was no one left to ask about him except for rickety, judgy Irene Weigand, so what could Mack do?
Drive down there again, interview some coroner from seven years ago?
Start digging into the records of those shitty towers he’d built?
Mack grabbed the last Dr Pepper from his fridge. Even if his father was alive, even if he was their sunny benefactor—and way deep down, Mack still thought he probably was—why on earth would he ask Mack to burn down an old shed?
The box of his mom’s papers was next to Mack’s desk, and he took his dad’s letter from it.
He studied the desperation in the words never, ever.
Desperation never got you anywhere, Mack knew.
He felt pretty desperate right now, yet all he was doing was treading water, winding himself up.
He took out the photograph of the old-time prairie family, presumably some of his relatives.
They looked like all pioneers did: dusty and miserable.
But also stoic, resolute, watchful. Mack propped the picture up on his desk.
There was no use in panicking now, he told himself.
Unless Hailey dragged him—which was looking unlikely—he wasn’t going to the police.
And he wasn’t going to the bank. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to burn down any old buildings or take orders from some strange company.
He would stay the course, and it would all shake out: his job, the house, this money.
Even, with a bit of luck and a lot of patience, his marriage.