CHAPTER FOUR
I find Mackenzie building with Legos in the morning. She’s trying to make something grand and tottering, but I can tell just by looking, as I make my coffee, that it’s not to her satisfaction. She’s wearing that frustrated face she gets. Looking at her when she’s like this, it’s hard to believe she’s only nine. She could be forty, working as a civil engineer.
“What’cha makin, Honey?”
“It’s a birdhouse.” She’s somehow tied a string to the roof — barely more than a pile and hardly connected. She lifts the string to show me how the thing will hang, and it all falls apart.
Some kids would cry when their creation breaks. Some would get angry. Not Mackenzie. No. She gets disapproving, as if the house has gone out of its way to offend her.
“Dang.” She crosses her arms to show the pile of Legos who’s boss.
“Birdhouses are hard, Sweetie.”
“I tried a dollhouse first.”
Oh. That breaks my heart a little. Because her grandfather makes dollhouses, and she’s emulating the only male role model she has. Because I haven’t given her another. There were times, in the past, when I thought I could date — not hook up, but actually date. Those times, Mac did meet a few of the guys. The encounters, as I remember, only confused her. The guys weren’t into the idea of inheriting my kid and were awkward around her, conversing with me and pretending she wasn’t there. To my credit, I kicked them all to the curb because their displays so repulsed me, but that doesn’t mean I did Mackenzie’s development any favors.
“Dollhouses are even harder. Especially with Legos. That’s why Grandpa uses wood.”
“Can I use wood?”
“You need nails and screws and stuff too. And the wood needs to be cut just so.”
“Can you show me how?”
“I’m sorry, Sweetie. I don’t know how to build birdhouses. Maybe Grandpa can show you sometime.”
She puts on a frumpy face. “Grandpa doesn’t like anyone there when he’s working. Even Grandma.”
Ah, yes. I remember it well. Woodworking, for my father, is meditation. I once got him to let me watch him make a chair, but my many questions ensured that it never happened again.
I’m not sure what to say, so I finish making the coffee. I watch Mackenzie from the corner of my eye as I do, watching her gather spilled Legos. She’s already made a failed birdhouse after making her disaster of a dollhouse. She’s been at it forever.
“How long have you been up, Baby?”
She shrugs. She can tell time just fine, but she seldom bothers. “Dunno.”
I try to see the living room wall clock, but even in our tiny house a corner manages to impede me. I reach for my cell phone instead, which I’ve left plugged in overnight to charge. When I touch it to see the time, I notice a missed call and the voicemail to go with it. Curious, I unplug the thing and pick it up.
“Mommy?” Mackenzie says. “Can I take shop class in school?”
“I think you’re a little young for shop class.”
“I could do shop class,” she pouts.
I hop to my phone’s voicemail and touch the new message. I don’t recognize the number. It didn’t come in terribly late, just, like, 11 p.m., but I was zonked. Between Ed and Nosh Pit stuff and the way I managed to deny myself, I was beat. I took a bath after putting Mac to bed then detached the spray nozzle and made myself come twice. It relieved some of my tension, but it wasn’t the same. A spray nozzle isn’t warm, unless the water makes it that way. It won’t hold you. It won’t tell you you’re pretty. I guess a spray nozzle is a touch illicit because it’s not something I’m dying to do in public, but there’s also no adrenaline thrill. It’s not new. It doesn’t pursue you, and you don’t take the power back when you’re ready.
“Mom?”
Barely paying attention, I say, “Yes, Baby?”
“Can I do Brownies?”
“We don’t have any.”
The voicemail is playing in my ear. I hear clunks as someone prepares to speak, then there’s a voice I recognize. A voice I’d rather not hear because I really do want to hear it. A lot.
“No, Mom. Like Girl Scouts?”
“What about Girl Scouts?”
“Brownies.”
“Girl Scouts sell cookies,” I say.
“No, I mean — ”
“Shh, hang on, Mackenzie!” I snap. “I’m trying to hear this.”
She stops immediately, and I feel terrible. But it only lasts a second because now that she’s quiet, I can scroll the message back and listen from the beginning.
It’s from Chadd.
I guess I gave him my number.
I guess I wanted him to call me.
And I guess that despite what I’d like to believe right now, I gave him the wrong impression — meaning I gave him exactly the impression I meant to give him last night (i.e., that I’m interested in seeing him). But that I’m not really looking for a relationship, at all.
Jesus. I can’t believe I did that. Except that I’ve done it so many times before. Because his smile was the kind that melts me. And because he told me my hair looked like fire.
Mackenzie is watching me. There’s a horrible second where I think she overheard the suggestive message, but then I realize she’s just waiting until I’m done with the phone so we can speak again.
I set the phone and its tempting contents on the countertop. I wish he hadn’t called. I wish I hadn’t been stupid enough to give him my number. I wish those things because with his interest there on the counter in front of me, it’s going to be terribly hard, the way I’ve felt over the past day, to resist. It’s like I’ve decided to diet, and that’s the day someone backs a truck of hot, fresh donuts up in front of my house then opens the door and offers them for free. I don’t like having access to what I shouldn’t have and desperately want. I need those things kept from me, shuttled away under lock and key.
Mackenzie’s soft blue eyes are still on me, saucer sized inside her halo of fine blonde hair. It’s getting long again, and in the mornings it’s such a mess. Her look is polite but expectant. The kind that requires an answer.
I pick up the phone. Feeling like I’m leaping into a frigid pool to get it over with, I stab the delete button. Infuriatingly, the phone doesn’t simply delete Chadd’s message. It asks me if I’m sure. I have to summon my will again and tell it that I’m definitely sure. Then the temptation is gone. The free donut truck has been sent away, and I have no idea where it’s going.
Today isn’t about me. Today is about Mackenzie, and repairing what I’m increasingly afraid is slowly breaking.
“Okay,” I say. “All done.”
“Brownies.”
“Where is this coming from?” I ask.
“Alice is in Brownies.”
“Yeah? And does she like it?”
“She says it’s great.”
“I do like Girl Scout cookies.”
“There’s more than cookie selling, Mom.”
I hold up my hands in surrender. “Of course.” I should know. Mom had me in Scouts, too. I did all the right stuff, down to choir. And as much as the Holland family helped out in the church community, shilling cookies was easy. I was always one of the top three sellers in my troop, and once I was number one. My mother was so proud.
“So can I?”
“We’ll see.”
I turn because my coffee is ready, but halfway through my rotation back to the front room, I pause and think about what I just said. We’ll see is the parental equivalent of We’ll take it under advisement. It’s what I say all the time then file away and never act on. I could keep fooling myself into believing that Mackenzie hasn’t figured that out and that she believes that WE WILL ACTUALLY SEE this time, but she’s smarter than that. We’ll see is like death. Once a proposition goes into We’ll see, it rarely if ever returns.
I stop, add half-and-half and a packet of sweetener to my coffee, then come around the counter to sit beside Mackenzie on the floor amid the Lego detritus. She looks over at me, indicating a possible breach of protocol.
“Tell you what, Sweetie. I’ll text Alice’s mother today and find out the details of where her group meets.”
Mackenzie brightens. On one hand, seeing her light up that way lifts my ambivalent spirits, but on the other hand it bothers me a little. The fact that she’d seemed acquiescent before but outright hopeful now means she sees through my bullshit as much as I’d feared. How many other times has she pretended to understand and believe me, but has, in fact, known it would never happen?
Did she believe me yesterday, when I promised to pick her up so we could do something together? Or did she know I’d break my word yet again? It doesn’t even matter that I had a good excuse. The way things go in our lives, there’s always some sort of excuse, good or not.
Worse, did she think I was full of crap last night when I promised — for really, really real this time — to spend today with her? It’s Saturday, and I don’t work until five. We have plenty of time, if we focus and do a bunch of only-us stuff rather than home chores and other things that really need doing.
I meant it last night. But then again, I always mean it.
“Today? Really?”
The way I am, I know I might slack if I let myself. So I set my coffee on the table, retrieve my phone from the kitchen, and return to my place beside Mackenzie. I type a text to Sandy, show it to Mackenzie, then hit Send.
“Done.”
She leans forward and hugs me. All I can think right now is that inquiring isn’t doing, and there’s every chance in the world that Sandy will reply that the group meets at a time when I need to work. I can ask my parents to take her if they’re unencumbered; they’re both retired and don’t do all that much. But when I got pregnant as early as I did, I swore up and down that they wouldn’t end up raising their grandchild. They wouldn’t need to support us, and we wouldn’t live with them. I’ve mostly kept that promise, and it’s one thing I’m proud of. This little place isn’t much, but I pay for it myself, and we don’t share walls with neighbors. There’s a tiny yard, and we can hike to Reed Creek. Every time I have to ask my folks to do something a proper mother should do for her kid, it feels a bit like taking charity. Like I’m not good enough, and they’re having to rescue me after all.
I’ve asked about Brownies, but that doesn’t mean that Mackenzie will be able to join.
“Alice says it’s great. They make crafts and take walks and stuff. And she says it’s nice because she doesn’t have to be around her brother.”
“She and her brother don’t get along?”
“They’re okay, I guess. But he always wants to do boy stuff at home. She says they get to do girl stuff at Brownies. With real girls.”
I consider asking what other kind of girls there are.
“Mostly her and Kyle are friends though, yeah. Mom, do you ever think I’ll have a brother or sister?”
I keep my face straight. “Who knows?”
She trails her finger through her Legos. I feel myself tighten because I recognize the gesture. It’s what she does when she wants to tell me something or ask me something and isn’t sure how I’ll react. There was a bit when she mentioned Brownies earlier, but it was mostly lost in the effort it took to pull my attention away from the phone’s delicious candy.
“Mom?”
“Yeah?”
“Alice’s Dad sometimes helps her do her Brownies stuff. But it’s really cool. Like, they don’t have to build things as much as Kyle’s Boy Scouts, like cars and things, but she still always gets better projects than the other girls, and she said that at the last camp, he volunteered to — ”
“Honey,” I say.
“It’d just be neat if someone could do that. Maybe you could, I mean, or Grandpa. But … ”
I know exactly where she’s going. This is the ultimate We’ll see in our little family of two, and Mackenzie keeps testing me to see if I’ve weakened, to see if another jostle will cause new information to fall. I don’t want to talk about it now, at all, but this is Mackenzie’s day, not just mine. If she wants to bake cupcakes, we’ll bake cupcakes. If she wants me to ask about Brownies, I’ll ask Alice’s mom about Brownies. And if she wants me to delve into the painful past, I’ll do it. But only a bit because there are things she needs to know and things she shouldn’t.
I grew up wanted by my father. Mackenzie didn’t. The truth isn’t always the best policy.
“All families are different,” I say. “It’s the differences that make them special.”
“I know that. But — ”
“Alice’s family has a mom, a dad, and two kids. And that’s great because they can work as a team. Her dad can volunteer with Brownies. Her mom can take Kyle to school, or they can all four go roller-skating.”
Mackenzie is looking away, down at the Legos.
“But us? We have two members here, and Grandma and Grandpa just down the road. And that’s a different kind of great, isn’t it? We’re still a team, but Grandma and Grandpa do neat things that I’ll bet Alice’s mom and dad don’t, right? Like building dollhouses and making all of Grandma’s crafts? And the stories Grandpa tells. Older people have better stories than younger people, you know.”
I can tell she’s not buying this whitewash. “Alice has a grandma and grandpa, too.” What she doesn’t add, maybe because she hasn’t thought of it and maybe because she knows how much it would hurt, is that we both know Alice actually has two sets of grandparents. I’ve met all four at family events for school, and they’re all great. These are things I’ve denied my daughter, and that her father never cared to provide.
“Sure, but not like yours, right? And I’ll bet Alice doesn’t get to spend as much time with hers as you do with yours.”
“No, but — ”
“And do you know what else? Because there’s just two of us, we can do stuff other families can’t.”
“Like what?”
I think. “Like use one of the paddleboats on the lake in the park.” I rush on, anticipating a forthcoming point about how twice the people could hire twice the paddleboats. “And when you have four people, everything is more expensive so you can’t do as much stuff. Like if we wanted to go to Disneyland, it’d cost a ton for four people, but only half as much for the two of us.”
Her eyes become saucers. “Can we go to Disneyland?”
“Not right now, Honey. But someday.”
“Oh. Sure.”
There’s a moment of quiet between us. I’m about to declare this unfinished topic complete and move on to fun mother-daughter activity proposals, but then Mackenzie blindsides me.
“What was Dad like, Mom?”
“Honey, we’ve talked about this.”
“I just want to know what he’s like.”
Now, which of a hundred ways should I answer that? Should I tell her I made a mistake by being with him, or the much more adult answer of how badly I pined for him, how intensely he drew me in? Should I tell her that he needed his own space or that he was selfish to leave us alone? Should I tell him that he was kind and gentle, or that he was a bastard?
“He was just someone I knew a long time ago,” I say, knowing it’s a cop-out and that I’m a coward.
Mackenzie isn’t pacified. She’s heard this non-answer before. But she pretends it’s enough and resumes shuffling through colored bricks on our tiny home’s miniature floor.
I reach down and lift her chin. She looks at me with giant eyes that trust me. Eyes that I’d only lie to for her own good, and only if I absolutely had to.
“He had his own issues, Baby,” I tell her. “But I know for sure that if he was able to come back, to meet you and get to know you, he’d be so proud.”
This is not kind, or brave. It’s simply cruel. There is no benefit in saying what I have. Because as much as I once wanted the man we’re speaking of, my proposed hypothetical will never, ever come true.
I was wrong about him. It doesn’t matter how I feel now. All that matters, from here on out, is this trusting little girl beside me.
“Yeah,” Mackenzie says.
The resignation in her simple, single word is painful.
It wounds us both to the core.