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(Seattle, Sunday, September 21, 2013)
“Mac?” Lindy’s voice asked outside his bedroom. “Are you OK?”
Lindy opened the door and stepped inside. She leaned against the door jam, a small, compact woman with short—almost crew-cut short—blonde hair. The blonde was from a bottle; Lindy was over 50. Mac looked up at her from his big leather chair, took a hit on his pipe, offered it to her.
“What makes you think I’m not OK?” he asked.
She came in, sat down on the other chair, took the pipe. Inhaled. Exhaled. “Because you’ve been up here with that head-banger music on at full blast since 4 p.m.,” she said dryly. “You dropped your gym bag in the middle of the laundry room, something you never do. You didn’t come down for dinner. You’re smoking weed—nothing unusual about that—but Shorty just called to ask where the hell were you? He was expecting you out at his place for a basketball game.”
“Shit,” Mac said, not moving. “I forgot.”
Lindy handed him back his pipe, settled into the chair. It was a pleasant room—a bedroom with a sitting area near the window. A desk and computer in the corner. A separate bath. Her own suite was downstairs. She rarely came up to the second floor. Mac’s rooms were always spotless. Even now, when he was obviously disturbed by something, not a thing was out of place. Very different from Lindy’s suite of rooms where things clustered together in the corners and reproduced. Even in her studio, chaos stood watching for the chance to take over.
“What’s wrong?” she repeated.
“You hear from Mom lately?” Mac asked, not looking at her.
“Not really. She stopped by Michael’s place in Oakland a month or so ago, he said.”
Lindy stayed in touch with her ex-husband better than she did with her son, Mac thought. But then her ex-husband wasn’t dealing drugs in Vallejo.
“What did he say?”
“Sali’s fine, got herself an old RV, modern-day hippie school bus, I guess. Said she’d never be homeless again that way.”
“Some guy with her?”
Lindy took the pipe from him, took a hit, returned it. “Sali will never be without a man, Mac,” she said. “Yeah, she had some young guy in tow. They stopped in because she was having engine problems with the RV and wanted Michael to help them get it fixed.”
Mac grunted. Sounded like his mother.
“You don’t ever ask about your mother. What brought this on?” Lindy asked, leaning her head back against the chair, her eyes closed.
“Janet.” Mac told her what had happened.
“It bothers you? That she gave her son up for adoption?”
Mac felt frustration seep in around the relaxation of the dope. “No matter what my mom did, I always told myself, at least she didn’t give me away. She loved me enough to keep me.”
Lindy said nothing; Mac assumed that meant she disagreed with something but wasn’t going to say anything. “No?” he asked.
Lindy sighed. “Sali....”
She shook her head, changed her direction. “You said Janet was raped. That would make a difference.”
“Yeah.” Mac avoided looking at Lindy “Did you know my Dad?”
“Probably.” Lindy’s tone was dry. “I just don’t know for sure who he was.”
Mac winced. “Have you a guess?”
“Oh, Mac, things were so different then. I was 22, going to the U, your mom was 16. Mom and Dad gave up on her. She was wild, uncontrollable. Dad came to town, found this house, put a down payment on it for Michael and me and Toby with the condition I take Sali in, and wished me luck.”
Mac looked around. “Didn’t know you’d been here that long.”
“Yeah, the Me Generation, the last of the free love world. You know.” Lindy was silent, looked at him considering. “I guess you can’t really. AIDS changed all that, even for people who don’t ever think about AIDS.”
She sighed, remembering, “Sali was beautiful, small, curved, with long red hair. I can still see her dancing, just for the joy of it, her hair swinging about. Laughing, always laughing. She was wild and fun, and crazy. But we didn’t know the last was really true. Not then. Not until much later.”
“So, my father could have been anybody.”
Lindy shook her head. “Not anybody. We didn’t do strangers, just friends. It’s just that we had a lot of friends.”
Mac snorted.
“Seriously, I think he was a graduate student in English; he was up from Mexico, a bit older, worldly wise. By our standards at least. Sometimes I see him in you, but mostly I see my father. Your gray eyes. Your build.”
“What was his name?”
“I don’t remember, Mac, I’m sorry. He wasn’t here very long, went back home. I don’t think he knew about you at all. But I can see him, sitting in a chair, with this amused half-smile on his face, watching all of us. We must have seemed like children to him. And I can see him in passionate argument about this or that, his hands gesturing, a cigarette in one hand, smoke trailing. Sali was in love, and she amused him, I think.”
Mac thought about that. He never had unprotected sex. Didn’t matter if the girl said she was on the pill or not. There’d been one scare, in college, but no kid, thank God. Part of it was the change in times, Lindy was right about that. Part of it was he wasn’t going to do to some kid what his father had done to him.
“At least when you were born, I knew your father wasn’t Michael, or you’d look more like Toby,” Lindy said with a laugh. Mac could tell she thought it might have been a possibility.
Mac snorted. Michael was black and his son Toby looked like him. Mac didn’t look Black, or white, or Hispanic. Or maybe he looked like he could be any of them. Not knowing made it hard. It seemed to Mac that American society was intent on categorizing people so they could be sure everyone was fairly treated. Sometimes he marked White; other times he just marked Other. Not to protest, as some did, but because he just didn’t know.
“You said you didn’t know Mom was crazy until later. Literally?” he asked abruptly, changing the direction of his own thoughts.
Lindy sat up straight, looked Mac in the eye. “Your mom is literally crazy. She’s bipolar. She won’t stay on her medication, no matter how hard someone tries to make her. I’m not sure that she’s not schizophrenic or even borderline. We were apart for a while. I went off with Michael to California. Sali took off with you. I got postcards from all over. It wasn’t until later, you were 10 or so, when she came for a visit, and I knew. I tried to get her to stay, get some help. She wouldn’t. Wouldn’t leave you with me either. I never knew what happened to make her send you to Michael three years later.”
Mac knew. He remembered it well. “I was 13, getting that adolescent growth spurt,” he said slowly. “Wild. I’d always been wild, but I was discovering girls.” His smile was lopsided as he remembered. Actually, in hindsight, girls discovered him. He started out with a 19-year-old who knew what she was doing. He didn’t remember ever going younger.
He shrugged. “I came home, late, one of mom’s boyfriends was there, drunk. He started yelling at me, hit me, knocked me to the floor. I came up with a gun. He knew I was going to kill him. I could see it in his eyes. Mom walked in about then. She screamed at me, and I let him go. The next morning, I was on a bus to Vallejo.”
“Why did you have a gun?” Lindy asked. Then shook her head. “Never mind.” Mac had guns stashed in various places all over the house. She humored him and his paranoia. Apparently, it had started early. For good reason, it seemed.
“I’ve always been afraid to ask how bad it was.”
Mac was silent. Images of being left alone in barren apartments with milk—powered milk, he hated that stuff—and cereal for days at a time while his mother was out with a new friend. Later, there were memories of going to school hungry, of never having the same clothes, the same shoes, as everyone else. God, he had wanted running shoes like the other kids had rather than the K-Mart specials he wore. Of hanging out on the streets because there was no one at home. Sometimes no home. He’d gone home more than once to a door whose locks had been changed for non-payment of rent. Of learning to fight and take what he needed from those who had more than enough. Of the men his mom entertained who came and went.
He shook his head, his eyes red and itching. “Long time ago,” he mumbled. Janet had felt like this when he’d questioned her, he realized. Some things you just didn’t have words for.
“Yeah,” Lindy acknowledged. “You’ve done well for yourself, in spite of it. Most kids don’t.”
Mac took long deep drag on the pipe, exhaled slowly, letting it calm the ragged edges of his memories. Lindy had a broad definition of done well, he thought, considering the trouble he’d been as a teen. “Do you think Mom should have given me up for adoption?”
Lindy shrugged. “She kept you like she would keep a fun toy,” she said bitterly. “Not because of what was best for you. It’s a miracle you survived it. She could have left you with me if she wasn’t going to provide for you right. Which sounds like the decision your boss made: she gave her son to family because she couldn’t raise him herself.”
Mac thought that over, finally nodded. “And if Janet had an abortion?”
“Come on, Mac, you know I’m pro-choice. A woman has to do what is right for herself at the time, and she’s the only one who can decide what that is.” Lindy got to her feet. “I’ve heard you say the same thing.”
“Yeah.” Mac didn’t say anymore. Somehow abortion was a different subject when you thought about your mother.
Lindy paused in the doorway. “One thing you should consider: If Janet was raised in a religious commune, miles from anyone, who was the father of her child? She was probably raped by someone she knew and knew well.”
Mac winced. Lindy nodded in agreement and left shutting the door behind her.
Mac put the pipe and weed away, lit incense around the room to freshen it. He turned the music down to a less mind-numbing level. Then he picked up the background reports he’d pulled at the office and began to read them.