“Yeah, I had it once too. Was pretty good, like you just said a few seconds ago.”
“Mack?”
“Yessir?”
“Don’t be nervous about this. I’m sure everything is going to work out just fine.”
“Yessir.”
“That’s right,” Wash says. “Now, when we get there, I’ll walk you to the front door. Then we’ll get that hood off you, let you see some free world.”
“Amen.”
(Saturday, September 12, noon)
CÉCE:
“Ma, you
seriously
don’t need to give the guy cornbread.”
“Will you re
lax
?” Carmella says.
“All we need: The dude strokes out on your Jalapeño Halleluiah.”
“Where the flip is Vic? Try his cell again.”
“Just did. Straight to voicemail.”
A green van idles in our driveway. The engine cuts out. Two guys in the front. One of them gets out, looks up and down the block. Grills cover the back windows.
“Don’t smile, Ma. You have lipstick on your teeth.”
“Well, can you wipe it
off
?”
“You had to pick the sluttiest red in your arsenal? This guy’s a criminal.”
The van driver smiles at us as he climbs the porch steps. He tries not to do a double take on Carmella’s hair, Day-Glo Sun. “Ladies, would you mind if I do a quick walk-through?” He checks the rooms, for what he doesn’t say. He asks Ma to unplug the phones as we go through the rooms “—to minimize the possibility of distraction.”
“You think he might try to do something bad while we turn to answer the phone or whatever?” I’m seeing a montage of all my there’s-a-convict-in-your-house movies.
“Not at all. Please don’t worry about that. It’s just that we have less than two hours, and we want to keep everybody focused on the site assessment.”
“Oh.”
“If you could turn off your cellular devices too, I would appreciate it.”
“But we’re expecting somebody else,” Ma says.
“This is the application sponsor, Victor Apruzese?” the driver says. “And you’ve tried calling him? Then I suggest you leave word on his voicemail that your phones need to be off.” He explains the rules to us: Don’t touch the prisoner—like who would want to? Keep arm’s length from him at all times. Don’t ask his name, don’t give him yours. If he asks personal questions, don’t answer. Keep your conversation about the dog. “Now, when he comes out of that van, he’ll be wearing a hood.”
“That’s horrible,” Ma says.
“We’ll take it off as soon as we get him inside.” The guard tells us to wait in the vestibule, and he heads back to the van.
First out is the dog.
Oh. My. God.
Ma and I claw each other’s arms. “He’s so
cute
.”
“Huge.”
“Look at that
tongue
.”
“Look how fat!”
“How pretty.”
“That
tail.
”
“Those eyes.”
The giant one-eared pit bull sits and waits, looking into the van. The other guard helps the prisoner out. Tall thin dude in a baggy orange jumper. That hood. A white mesh sack with patches over the eyes. Ghostly. The guard has him by the arm and coaches him as he turns him toward the house. Toward us. Shackles clink on the driveway. The driver has the dog on a leash, but he doesn’t need it. The dog walks behind the prisoner. The shorter guard helps the dude up the porch steps into the house. “All right,” the guard says, and the prisoner stops. The dog peeks from behind the prisoner’s legs to look at me and cock his head. That tongue hanging out of his mouth. When I smile, his tails whirls.
“Ladies, my name is Sergeant Washington.” He indicates the prisoner with a nod. “My friend here would like to have a look around your house. Would that be all right?”
“Please,” Ma says.
“Hold still now, son. Close your eyes and open them slowly, till they adjust to the light.” Sergeant Washington takes off the hood.
Suddenly the house is freezing. And dark. Airless. I think I’m breathing, but I can’t be. My lips and fingers are numb. I half fall into the couch. I know where all the heat went now: into my stomach. It’s cooking something up down there, making squishing noises—loud—as it twists. I’m going to cough blood.
Ma yells at Sergeant Washington, “What the flip is this? You think this is funny? Seriously, why are you doing this?”
The sergeant squints at her, then at Mack. Mack’s mouth is moving, but I can’t hear him. He’s talking to
me,
though. I read his lips, and he keeps saying, “Céce.”
“You come heavy,” I say.
“What?” he says.
“You’re finally inside my house, and you come in chains.”
“I’ll kill him,” Ma says. “Victor Apruzese is a dead man.”
“Let’s all settle down,” Sergeant Washington says. He’s calm. The other guard is too, but they’re resting their hands on their gun butts. “Now,” the sergeant says, “nice and easy, what all’s going on here?” His eyes dart from Ma to me to the other guard to the kitchen door to Mack. “Son, how do you know these folks?” He turns to Ma. “Ma’am, are you the one who makes the goblin breads?”
“They’re snowmen,” I whisper, my eyes on Mack, his eyes on mine. Ma explains how Vic must have duped us. As she talks, Mack and I stare. His face is hard, tight lips, jaw clenched. Two tears, his, spike the carpet. “Tony?” he says. “But he’s still training, no?” His eyes drop to my chest.
The stickpin. I still wear it every day.
I’m a fool. I’ll never be more embarrassed in my life. Letting him see that I still love him, even after he treated me like I was weeks-old garbage our last visit—or what I thought was to be our last visit. But this is the one. This is the final time I’ll be with him. I’m sure of it now. The chains on his arms and legs. I can’t bear to see him like this.
“The dog?” I say. “What’s his name?”
Mack looks down at his feet.
If he did, I’ll never forgive him. I make a clicking sound, my tongue against the inside of my teeth, the way he taught me. The dog looks my way. “Boo,” I say.
The dog comes to me. He rolls into my feet and over onto his back for me to scratch his stomach. But I don’t. The new Boo does a wiggle worm dance for me. I back away.
“How could you?” I say. “How could you do that to her? To me?”
“I did it
for
her,” he says. “For
you
. Céce, please.” He’s stepping toward me, reaching out to me, his arms stunted by the chains and the guards’ pushing them down. They’re pushing Mack back into the wall, trying to calm him. He’s crying out to me. I almost can’t hear him. Now I’m the one drowning in white noise, the whoosh of a UPS truck flying by the house. He yells from where they have him pinned to the door frame, as I back away, “Céce, hold up, just for a second! I gotta tell you something!”
No, I can’t hear it, not again, no matter how nicely he says it, the truth he needs me to know so we can move on, what he tried to tell me in the visiting room: that we can’t love each other anymore.
My legs are shaky as they hurry me through the hall, to the front door, out onto the porch, toward the street.
“Céce?” Ma says. “Céce!”
I’m running to the corner, pulling the stickpin from my shirt, throwing it, pulling my phone, waiting for it to boot up.
Hurry
—dialing—
before I change my mind
. Ringing. “Bobby, you wanna go to the movies?”
(Saturday, September 12, ten past noon)
MACK:
“Wash, I swear I didn’t know—”
“I know you didn’t,” Wash says. “Let’s everybody just stay calm now. It’ll be all right.”
“What do you want to do here, Wash?” driver says.
Wash sizes up Mrs. Carmella. She’s got her arms crossed, and she’s tapping her foot fast. She’s glaring at me. “I think we’re okay here, Jack,” Wash says. “Why don’t you go on out to the front porch and wait to see if this Vic gentleman shows up.” Wash backs up a bit to the kitchen doorway, turns half away, pretends to check his phone.
I force myself to look Mrs. Carmella in the eye. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”
“You ought to be. Do you know how worried sick we’ve been about you? Do you know what you put her through? Not even a
word
from you. That poor girl, laying her heart out for you, going all the way over there? You were
awful
to her, Mack. You were mean to my daughter.”
Boo leans into my leg. His tail whirls, shaking him, shaking me. “I had to be mean to her.”
“No. Hey, look at me. No. You didn’t have to hurt her like that. You could have explained it to her. You could have let it wind down slowly. You should have given her the time to take it in, that you two had to let go.”
“It would have hurt too much, the slow fade.”
“You’re not giving her enough credit. She’s a smart girl. A strong woman.”
“Not her. Me. It would have hurt me too much.” I know I’m right too. Seeing her just then? Her soft brown eyes? Sucking her lips to hide their shivering? I saw my lips on hers.
The stickpin. Still wearing it after all this time.
How many times have I fallen asleep to the memory of us, and there she was right in front of me, and I didn’t even get to hold her hand, to tell her what I need her to know?
If I’d touched her, even for a second, I would have started it all over again, the lie that someday we can be together.
Boo nudges my hand. He just has to show me he’s a whirly-tail Boo.
“I meant I was sorry about Tony, ma’am. Can I just peek in on him and say hi?”
Tony’s name gets her misty and madder. “He’s still down south, in rehab. The two of you. What’s wrong with you? Throwing everything away, for what?”
Boo crosses to her and leans into her leg and looks up at her with that dopey tongue sticking out of his mouth. His tail is spinning so fast you almost can’t see it. She bends to cuddle him. She squeezes him. “Look at his eyes,” she says. He licks her head like it’s ice cream.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I’m sorry about everything.”
“Let’s get you some cornbread,” she says, or I think that’s what she said. I can’t really focus on anything but the door. Damn me, but after all that pushing her away, I pray she comes back.
The weeks of seeing her only in my mind, the details of her fading.
That little gold fleck in her left eye—I can’t ever forget that. I have to burn it into me to carry me through the nights. I need to look into her eyes, just for a minute, to kiss her one last time, no matter what it costs us.
(Saturday, September 12, an hour and a half later)
CÉCE:
Me and Bobby have a seat between us. In the empty seat are two jumbo buckets of popcorn. I’m eating, not tasting; watching, not seeing. Popcorn shrapnel speckles Bobby’s gut. He spills his soda bucket. “Yup. Yup. There I go again. Sorry about—”
“It’s
fine
.”
I just had to pick a comedy. I should have picked the tearjerker, for cover. The last person I want to talk with about Mack is Bobby. I don’t know how I’m not losing it in front of him. Fortunately, he’s really into the movie. His tongue is sticking out of his mouth.
I can’t see the screen. My eyes are blurry with the memory of Mack in my living room and the movie I want to see: The guards fade away. Carmella fades away. Mack’s chains fade, and now it’s just the two of us—the three of us. The new dog. The new Boo. We run. We escape. We’re together, forever.
Maybe they’ll give us one last minute alone together. How could they not?
He was supposed to be at the house from noon to two, and then they were taking him back.
“Bobby?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Don’t tell me what time it is.”
He checks his phone. “It’s one forty.”
“Don’t let me leave this seat, Bob.”
He stands up to make room for me to get out. “You look like you have to puke,” he says.
I’m heading for the aisle. “Trip me.”
He trips himself as he waddles after me with a near-empty popcorn bucket. “Here, barf into this.”
I’m running through the lobby. Out the door. Into the warm afternoon breeze. Once I ran a mile in eight minutes. Twenty pounds ago. I’m sprinting for the bus, pulling away . . . gone, but I’m still hauling. My lungs are like,
Are you insane?
I flag down an unmarked cab, the only kind that comes around here, but the drivers are fast. Twenty minutes. I’m going to make it. I can be there for him—