Mac is sitting on the couch in his mother’s living room and the upholstery is the brown corduroy it used to be. He is watching the TV, I Dream of Ginny, and the details of the show are suddenly engrossing. Is Major Healey in the Air Force or just a part of NASA? Why isn’t he in Vietnam? Is it because he’s an astronaut? Then the bang of the back door slamming makes Mac jump. It is followed by a sound of alarm from his mother in the kitchen. “Don’t!” she says, “Sit down first! Don’t touch him!”
Mac's father, a big man looking even bigger, charges into the room forcefully making Mac's heart race; his fingernails raking the corduroy for comfort.
“Did you do it?” his father yells.
Mac finds no air in his lungs with which to make a sound.
“Tell me!” his father demands, taking another stride towards his son.
“Let him answer you!” his mother yells, now standing in the kitchen doorway.
“Did what, Dad?” Mac says, but it comes out as a raspy whisper.
“Joanne’s father just told me! How long were you gonna try and keep it a secret?!”
“Dad…” Mac stumbles breathlessly.
“You disgrace this family,” his father roars, advancing, “and then don’t have the guts to tell me what you’ve done!” He can see the veins bulging from his father’s neck.
Mac opens his mouth to speak but it is immediately shut by a hard blow across his face.
Mac wakes up with his hand touching his cheek. His heart is hammering, the presence of his father is so rich that for a second he swears he can smell him.
He wasn’t even alive when I got Jo pregnant, he tells himself. But tears spring to his eyes and in a second he is crying as if he has just heard that his father is gone. Mac roles over and buries his face in the pillow. He shuts his eyes tight but there is no stopping it. The memory is like a roller coaster ride; he is strapped in and the assent has begun.
It had happened in that beautiful summer twilight. He had just gotten stoned with some friends and was shooting hoops. His little brother had come running down the block full speed, arms windmilling as he tried to slow down at the court. Mac was so high he laughed out loud at the sight of it, but when he looked again he could see that Neil was as white as a sheet.
“What the hell?” Mac had said, trying to pull some toughness and authority into his 15-year-old tone. Truth was the look on Neil’s face had scared the shit out of him.
“You gotta come now!” his brother had gasped. “A cop is at the house and he just told Ma that Dad’s dead!”
Shot. Cops said it was a mugging – that maybe his father had refused to give up his wallet. Who knows why some crack head might do it? Mac didn’t spend a long time trying to figure that part out. All he knew was that his father had been killed on his way home from work – that he was gone, not coming back. His father hadn’t been there to catch on that girls were being taken up to the empty second floor apartment, or to straighten out Neil who was fucking up in school every five minutes, or to get the news that Mac, golden boy next to his screw-up brother, got Jo pregnant – a girl who was the daughter of his father and mother’s friends – but for whom Mac had had no real feelings.
It was not his own father, but Jo’s who had jacked his 17-year-old ass up against the living room wall.
“In memory of your father,” he had said, two inches from Mac’s face, “and because your mother has been through enough…I won’t kill you with my bare hands. But you’ll marry her, MacNamara. Do you hear me?”
And marry her he did.
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