Shadowkiller (14 page)

He made his way over to her. “Carrie. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to leave you. I sort of got dragged away.”

“It's okay.”

He set down his beer and took her arm. “Let's go someplace quiet, away from all this. I know it's probably a little overwhelming.”

At that moment, Mack's cousin Colin stuck his curly red head through the kitchen doorway and bellowed, “Who wants Jell-O shots?”

“A
little
overwhelming?” Carrie said to Mack with a faint smile.

He gestured at the carnation pinned to her coat. “I see you met Aunt Nita. Thanks for being a good sport. Come on.”

He led her upstairs, past a gallery of framed family pictures that Maggie had hung, one by one, throughout his lifetime: baby portraits and school photos of him and Lynn, First Communion and cap-and-gown shots, a family portrait done at his parents' twenty-fifth anniversary party, then Lynn's wedding, his niece and nephews as babies, and now their school portraits . . .

Mack had walked up and down these stairs thousands of times without paying much attention to the photographs. Now it hit him: his own wedding picture would never hang on this wall, nor would pictures of his babies. His mother wouldn't be alive to meet his wife and children, and even if his father was around for that, he'd most likely have to be reintroduced every time he saw them.

Engulfed by a ferocious wave of sorrow, Mack halted at the top of the steps, still gripping the railing with one hand and Carrie's arm with the other.

This is the end of an era. I'm losing both my parents, and it's happening too soon, too fast . . .

“Are you okay?” Carrie asked.

He tried to blink tears from his eyes and succeeded only in allowing them to roll down his cheeks.

“Yeah,” he said, surreptitiously wiping his eyes on his sleeve. “I'm good. Come on—I'll take you in to meet my mother.”

“Meet your mother?” she echoed.

“She's lying down in there.” He gestured at the closed door to the master bedroom.

“I'm sure she doesn't feel like meeting a total stranger.”

Carrie was the one who didn't feel like meeting a total stranger, Mack realized—then, to be fair, reminded himself that she'd just been bombarded with dozens of total strangers downstairs. Could he really blame her for not taking all of that—and now a terminally ill mother—in stride?

“Never mind. Come on,” he said, leading her down the hall to his boyhood room. He opened the door and stuck his head in to make sure the room was vacant and presentable.

His twin bed was still covered in the denim quilt his mother had bought on sale at Caldor years ago, to replace the “little boy” one printed with fire trucks. Matching denim curtains hung at the lone window, and dangling from the rod was another old Cub Scout project: the Native American dream catcher he'd made from a twig, twine, beads, and feathers. Somehow—no doubt courtesy of too-sentimental-to-throw-it-away Maggie—it had recently found its way back to his room, along with a couple of other crafts he'd made back in his school days.

The bookcase was lined with childhood favorites: the Hardy Boys and Narnia sharing space with Tom Wolfe and V.C. Andrews's entire Flowers in the Attic series, which he'd borrowed from his sister, Lynn, and later wished he'd hidden away so his friends wouldn't see it.

The shelf beneath his old stereo—complete with a cassette deck—was crammed with stacks of tapes that revealed an equally eclectic taste in music: Foreigner, Warren Zevon, Culture Club. His father used to bring albums home from work, saying, “Here, Mack, give this a listen and tell me what you think.”

How could he possibly reconcile the memory of that sharp-eyed, sharp-eared businessman with the fog-shrouded senior citizen his father had become?

Mack cleared his throat and told Carrie to wait for him in the bedroom. “I won't be long,” he said. “I just want to go see her.”

“Take your time.” Carrie unpinned the carnation from her coat as she sat on the bed, but she didn't unbutton it.

“Do you want to take off your coat? It's a little warm in here.”

He waited for her to say, “A
little
warm?” The house, which had always been drafty, was uncomfortably toasty tonight, between all those bodies downstairs and the thermostat being raised for his mother, who was always cold now.

But Carrie just tucked the carnation into her bag and said, in her quiet way, “No, I'll be fine. Wait—do you have a cigarette?”

“I do, but . . . you really can't smoke here.”

She just looked at him, probably waiting for an explanation, given the fact that at least half the people downstairs were puffing away.

“It's just . . . my parents don't really know that I smoke.”

“
How
old did you say you were?” The words themselves might have been meant in a teasing way, but her expression and tone weren't the least bit lighthearted. “Everyone is smoking down there.”

“Well, it's not allowed up here. My rule. Not theirs.” Jaw set, he headed for the master bedroom.

He knocked, heard his mother's voice, and opened the door. “Mom?”

“Hi, Mack.”

The room was dim, and it smelled funny. Stale, medicinal.

He closed the door, shutting out the sounds of laughter and music from below, and crossed over to the bed.

“You can turn on a lamp,” his mother said, and he did. She winced and blinked her lashless eyes.

“Sorry—do you want me to turn it off again?”

“It's okay, I'll be fine.”

No. Unlike Carrie, his mother wouldn't be fine.

She was dying.

It still seemed surreal. Emotion clogged Mack's throat again, and he tried to think of something to say, wondering if he could even push words past the lump of grief.

It was so hard to look at her, lying there wearing one of her cancer turbans. She had wigs, but she said they scratched her scalp and anyway, they looked stiff and fake. The turbans were soft and kept her head warm, and this one was green, Mack noticed with a pang, wondering if he should compliment her on it.

“Did you eat?” she asked.

“Not yet. I just got here.”

“Go eat. I made corned beef in the Crock-Pot. Daddy helped.”

“You're kidding, right?” His father didn't cook.

“No, I wanted to teach him how to make it, because . . . because.”

Because she wasn't going to be around next Saint Patrick's Day.

Mack forced a smile. “How'd he do?”

“You know your father. It took him forever to chop the cabbage and he wanted all the pieces to be exactly the same size. Like it matters.” His mother tried to laugh, but it morphed into a coughing fit.

He reached for a glass of water on the bedside table, offering it to her.

“No, thanks,” she sputtered.

“Mom, please . . . it'll help.”

Reluctantly, she accepted the glass.

“I would have helped you with the cooking,” he said as she sipped. “Maybe I could have left work early.”

“Don't be silly. We were fine.”

Yeah, sure, and
I'll be fine and you'll be fine and everyone and everything will be fine . . .

Except it won't.

“I thought you were bringing a date tonight, Mack.”

“I did. She knows you weren't feeling well and she didn't want to bother you, so she's in the other room.”

His mother would have raised an eyebrow if she still had them. “Which other room?”

“Down the hall. My old room.”

“It's dusty in there. I haven't gotten to it in weeks. Why isn't she downstairs with everyone else?”

He thought about saying that she was just shy, but opted instead to deflect the question. “I was just going to ask you the same thing.”

“I was too tired to deal with a crowd tonight.”

Too physically tired? he wondered. Or too tired of seeing the fear and sympathy in the eyes of everyone who loved her—including her own son?

Stoical Maggie MacKenna certainly didn't need Mack tiptoeing in here and treating her differently, too. She needed someone to treat her as though she still inhabited the land of the living. She needed to laugh, or at least smile.

“By the way, I like your festive beanie,” he said, sitting on the edge of the bed and giving her turban a gentle pat.

“Oh, sure you do.” She shook her head, but she was grinning. “But it's not as festive as your corsage.”

“This,” he said, looking down at the green-tinted carnation Aunt Nita had given him, “is a very manly boutonnière.”

“Sure it is.”

Ah, there was the old Maggie, busting his chops.

“Hey, I'm on a date here, remember? I can't afford to go around wearing a corsage.” Mack unpinned the carnation from his lapel and leaned toward his mother, carefully fastening it to her turban. “There. That makes your beanie even more festive.”

“It smells like church on Easter morning when I was a little girl.” She inhaled deeply and smiled, eyes closed. “It seemed like Easter always fell on a miserable rainy day. Sometimes we even had snow. But every father in the neighborhood would get corsages for their wives and daughters to wear to Mass—just like Daddy always did for me and Lynn when you were little. And when you stepped into church and breathed in the scent of all those flowers, it was as if springtime had come after all.”

She fell silent, lost in her memory.

“When
is
Easter this year?” Mack fervently hoped there would be warm sunshine.

Her eyes popped open. “Late. Not until April twenty-third.”

“That's good. The weather should be better by then.”

Seeing the shadow that crossed his mother's face, he remembered.
She
wouldn't be better by then—she might be much worse. She might even be—

No. Not that soon. When pressed, privately, by Lynn, the oncologist had guessed six months, so . . .

September.

That's always been one of Mack's favorite months of the year, even when it meant going back to school. Summers here were hot and sticky, while Labor Day literally brought a breath of fresh air.

Now he would dread it.

“Don't leave your friend waiting,” his mother said. “It isn't nice. Take her downstairs and have something to eat.”

“I will.” He stood up again.

“Be sure you tell your father he did a nice job with the cabbage.”

“I will. I just hope he doesn't ask me what cabbage is,” he added, his own black humor still intact.

Maggie only sighed and shook her head. “He might. Poor Daddy.”

Mack sighed too, and bent to kiss her pale cheek. She was right, he thought, catching a whiff of the carnation. It did smell like church on Easter. He fervently hoped they would all be together on April 23, just as they had been every Easter of his life.

Just one more holiday. That's all I want. Please, God. One more Easter.

But that
wasn't
all he wanted. It wouldn't be enough. He wanted one more Mother's Day, one more Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and New Year's . . . one more year. One more lifetime  . . .

“What's her name?”

“What?”

“What do you mean, what?” Ah, sassy old Maggie was back. “Your new girlfriend. What's her name?”

Again, he hesitated, and opted not to inform his mother that she wasn't exactly a girlfriend.
Yet
, anyway. “It's Carrie. Carrie Robinson.”

“Carrie.” His mother nodded, and settled into her pillows. “I'll meet her next time. She's very nice, I'm sure.”

“She is.”
I'm sure.

Pretty sure.

“Good.” She started to close her eyes and then opened them again. “Mack?”

“Yeah?”

“Make sure you tell Dad you like the food.”

“I will,” he told her again. She wasn't the kind of mother to nag and repeat herself.

“And can you make sure he remembers to eat?”

“Mom, the house is full of food. Every surface down there is covered in plates and bowls. Eating is one thing I'm sure even Dad can't forget.”

“Not just tonight. I mean . . .”

He knew what she meant.

His instinct was to pretend that he didn't—denial was a seductive balm.

Again, he thought about all the people downstairs who loved and pitied his mother, talking to her face about how prayer or modern medicine could work wonders, then weeping and grieving behind her back . . .

She had always been a straight shooter who appreciated the same in return.

“I'll take care of Dad,” he promised hoarsely. “And so will Lynn. We'll look out for him, make sure he eats, make sure he takes his medicine, make sure he doesn't drive . . .”

“That's not going to be easy.”

None of this was easy.

He shrugged. “I've got it covered, Mom. You don't need to worry about Dad right now.”

“Thank you, Mack. Go.”

“I'm going.”

He closed the bedroom door behind him and leaned against it with his eyes closed, thinking about what lay ahead.

“Mack?”

Startled, he opened his eyes and saw Carrie in the hall.

“You look upset,” she said.

Upset. Devastated.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked. “Someone recently told me that I'm a good listener.”

He couldn't help but smile at that. “It must have been a very wise man who said that.”

“It was.”

Mack was surprised to realize that he did want to talk to her about it. She'd told him, that first night they met, that she knew what it was like to lose someone.

“We can go someplace quiet,” he decided.

“There?” She pointed at his room down the hall.