Cracked (26 page)

“Then Corinne got sick. I was twelve. She died.”

“Oh God,” I said. “Baby, I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head and looked around for the waitress, and when she scuttled over Jack, after a pause, ordered a Diet Coke.

“Cancer. Anyway. After that, everything changed. Everything. Michael stayed home with us and barricaded himself in his room for days at a time, getting one of the girls to bring him in food. And…” He shook his head.

“And…?” I asked. I dreaded hearing what he might say.

“Jeanette was his favorite. She was just turning twelve when Corinne died. I remember that, ’cause we didn’t wind up celebrating her birthday. I think – well I know, Danny, I mean I know – that he was messing with her.”

“Oh shit.” Fuck. Why did stories always end like that? What was wrong with people?

“I mean, when Corinne was around, everything was so – I don’t know, innocent I guess. But it’s like Michael lost it. He started talking about The Family like we were something really, really special. And he was the head of it, you know? We all owed him our lives, as far as he was concerned. And I mean, for most of us, we really kind of did.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said. “You could have wound up somewhere else, somewhere better.”

Jack shook his head. “No. I had a lot of amazing years there. The best years of my life. Until I met you,” he added, seeing the look on my face. “But then he started treating us like acolytes, and the girls were like his own little harem. Corinne would have just – well she would have died before anything like that would have happened. And Lola, Jeanette’s best friend in the house, her little puppy dog – well Michael didn’t really like Lola, but he was so into Jeanette that he
allowed
Lola to do things for him.” Jack shook his head at the memory.

“Oh my God,” I said.

“Yeah.” He folded his hands on the table. I could tell he was trying hard not to fidget. “Danny, I was turning thirteen when Corinne died and all this started to happen. I was a runt. I just kept my head down, listened, and didn’t make waves. But, Danny – Jeanette was my sister. Sort of.”

“Oh God,” I said again.

“Jeanette thought Michael was God. I think that whatever he was doing to her, had been done much worse when she was very little. She really thought she was just his favorite – which she was – and it was like she was flattered by the attention. I didn’t know what to think. I hadn’t exactly come from the best role models myself. And Michael seemed to love us.”

“Was he – did he stop working? What did he want? How did he support all of you?”

Jack shook his head. “At the beginning, I’m not really sure. I mean, I was a kid. I remember there was some life insurance or something, from Corinne. And then – well, it didn’t take long before Michael started lecturing us about The Family, and everything we did had to be for the good of The Family, and if we worked together we could have anything and everything we ever dreamed of, and show the people who had abandoned us that we were a force to be reckoned with. Those of us over twelve had to start bringing money into the house. That was fine with me – I was always a little capitalist. I got a paper route.”

I smiled. This, I remember him telling me.

“But the money had to go into the family pot. We were allowed to keep ten percent, like a reverse tithe. Danny, the thing is, while it sounds crazy, other than the Jeanette thing – which I, for one, just tried to ignore – a lot of it worked. He gave self-esteem to a bunch of kids who had none. We cooked and cleaned together and we still played games on Friday nights.”

“Sounds nice,” I said. “That part, anyway.” I couldn’t get the image of a man who would have had to have been in his thirties at the time, taking a twelve-year-old girl into his bed.

“Eventually things got weirder, though. Michael set up a quota – any kid over twelve had to bring in a certain amount of money each week, and he didn’t care how we got it. Stealing, whatever. Then he started a chocolate-bar scam – you know, kids wandering around shopping malls selling chocolate for a youth group or whatever? Well, every Saturday a few of us got dropped off at a different part of town and we had to pretend we were selling chocolate in support of our local 4-H club, or whatever he thought up that week.”

Our steaks came, but I barely noticed.

“It was still fun. I mean Michael had a whole elaborate system of rewards for kids who brought the most money into The Family. He had a great sense of humor, though not about himself – he couldn’t take a joke on himself, that’s for sure.”

“It sounds like he was building his own army of misfits,” I said. I cut into my steak. Beautiful.

Jack talked about starting to realize, when he was fourteen and thick in the grip of adolescent hormones, that Michael was encouraging Jack to have sex with one of his “sisters.” They weren’t related by blood, Michael told them, so there wasn’t anything wrong with it. Michael told Jack that it was a reward because Jack was bringing a significant amount of money into the house – he was tutoring students in math after school and on weekends, and of course he only kept his ten percent.

“One early evening I was in the stable, mucking out the stalls. Jeanette came in – I guess I would have been turning fifteen by this time, so Jeanette was fourteen – and without a word she pulled me away from what I was doing and…”

I put my fork down.

Jack didn’t look at me. “Danny, I was a kid, a horny kid who had been told that this was normal. It was my first time, but of course Jeanette knew what she was doing.” I thought I was going to be sick. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. I couldn’t blame Jack, I couldn’t. He was a kid, he didn’t know any better.

“I’m sorry, Danny, I’m sorry, but you have to know this. This is key to what’s going on right now.”

“Yup,” I said. “Keep going.” I sipped my water. I needed my head to clear up a bit, or I was scared I would do or say something I would regret, and all I should be doing was focusing on getting the twins back.

Jack and Jeanette became obsessed with each other, like any other young couple in love. Jeanette would sneak out of Michael’s room in the middle of the night and climb up to Jack’s top bunk. There were fewer boys now, Jack told me, and the bottom bunk was empty. After six months or so, Michael took Jack aside and told him that this was okay – as long as Jack kept being a “strong member of The Family,” things like ready access to whatever girl he wanted could be his. So Jack and Jeanette kept up their nighttime assignations, and things continued, as happily as they could.

“You’ve got to understand, Danny,” Jack said. He finally took a bite of his steak. Blood was congealing on his plate, and I lost my appetite. “This was my normal. I didn’t know any different, really. I mean, I went to school and everything, played baseball, all the normal things guys do. But we had no TV in our house, no visitors, no other family. Our moral code was Michael’s.”

I nodded. I tried to understand.

One day, however, Jeanette didn’t crawl into Jack’s bed, and not the next night either. When Jack saw Jeanette over breakfast the second morning, he saw that she had bruises on her throat, and she was quiet. When he tried to touch her, she jerked away and continued cooking bacon.

“I went to Michael right away. Michael said that physical violence was only called for against our enemies, never The Family. But Michael explained that Jeanette wasn’t bringing in her fair share, that at her age – fifteen, at this point – she had to earn her tithe.” Jack stopped, and laughed. I didn’t like the sound of it. “Her tithe, can you imagine?

“Michael had set up dates, as he called them, for Jeanette. Pay dates. He was selling her. I guess on the second night, the man got too rough with her. Tried to choke her.”

Jack’s voice was low, and I had to lean in to hear.

“I skipped school that day, and Michael and I talked for hours. He told me that he had a dream of creating a sort of empire, a business model of multiple income streams. That’s what he called us, by the way – income streams. He said he saw something in me, knew I was smart, a leader, and as he had raised me, he knew he could trust me. He said that for those of us who stayed loyal to The Family, you know – untold riches and success could be ours.”

“Sounds more like the mafia than a cult,” I said.

Jack smiled. “Sure. An even more twisted one, where you bring in broken kids and train them up to follow.” He pushed his plate away. I had never seen Jack leave a steak on his plate. “Anyway. That was the day that I knew that I would leave Michael, leave this place, and never look back. I would take Jeanette with me. I didn’t tell Michael that, of course. After our talk, Michael decided that we had a piece of business to conduct.”

I stayed still. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear what this piece of business could be.

“Michael drove me out to the farm where Jeanette had been hurt the night before. Some rich rancher had died and left everything to his shit-bag son, and Michael said the son was blowing through his father’s money so fast there would be nothing left in a year. Michael said the guy was actually doing drugs. Michael thought people who did drugs were the lowest strata of society. Bottom-feeders, he called them.”

“And him a pedophile,” I said. “Nice.”

Jack continued. “I was full of rage. You know?”

I nodded. I knew.

“Michael pulled up this long, winding driveway. On the mailbox it said ‘Heart’s Content.’ He named his fucking house Heart’s Content. This almost made me want to kill him more than anything else.” I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I knew the feeling – when you have hatred in your heart, anything can feed it.

“This skinny fucking idiot opened the door in his bathrobe, with a cocktail in his hand. It was early afternoon, just after lunch, and this guy didn’t look like he’d been to bed yet.”

I fiddled with my wine glass. Been there, done that.

“I didn’t know how to control my temper yet. I just looked at this guy, just stared at him for a minute. I know he said something to me, but I have no idea what. Then before I knew what I was doing, I was pounding him down. Punching. Kicking. I remember the glass in his hand sort of smashed against the wall and I caught a piece of it on my forehead.” Jack showed me the tiny scar that I’d noticed hundreds of times before and never bothered to ask about. He’d been a hockey player, after all.

“Then Michael was behind me. He stood there watching me, with his arms crossed, this – look on his face. Approval, I think. I’m still not sure.”

Someone cleared our plates, but I barely noticed.

“When I was done, the guy was pulp. I mean, he was still breathing, but his face was nearly unrecognizable. My hands weren’t much better.” I looked at Jack’s hands, which had touched me so gently. But I had also seen what else they could do.

“Then Michael kind of moved me aside and crouched down, whispered something in the guy’s ear. I couldn’t hear him. Besides, my blood was still up. I couldn’t hear anything. Michael went into the kitchen, cool as anything, and came back with a bag of ice for my hands. Then he disappeared down the hallway. He was gone for minutes – I don’t know, maybe five, ten minutes? When he came back, he was carrying a gym bag, swinging it from his hand like he was on his way to a racquetball game, not a care in the world.” Jack stopped for a minute and shook his head. It was all I could do not to reach over and stroke it.

“Michael just stepped over the guy on his way out like the guy was a piece of dog shit on the ground, and he led me back out to the truck. He sort of threw the gym bag on my lap and when we were on the road he told me to open it.” Jack ran his hand over his mouth, which seemed dry. “It was money, Danny. Bundles of twenties and fifties. There was about a hundred and fifty grand in that bag. Sitting in that truck, it just hit me: Michael knew. Somehow, he knew what this guy would do to Jeanette, and he knew what I would have to do to the guy. He knew.

“Michael just laughed and laughed, driving home, like it was the best day of his life. Which it probably was. I remember saying something about the police – I mean, wouldn’t the police be after me? Wouldn’t the guy call the cops? And Michael assured me that it wasn’t possible. It was all taken care of.”

I drank my water and looked down. It was all becoming too, too clear.

“That was it, for me. That was the moment that I knew I was out. But I also knew that I couldn’t let Michael know that. If I let him know that – well, I had a feeling I would end up worse off than that fucking miserable prick in his dead daddy’s mansion.”

“How much longer were you there?” I asked quietly.

“Two more years,” Jack answered. “I graduated early, got the scholarship, but didn’t wind up going to that school. I had been planning for a while, you understand.” He ordered a coffee. I shook my head. “I knew I was going to disappear. If Michael thought I was at Berkeley, I would always be there for him. I had my papers ready. I had saved up for nearly two years, for good fake papers.”

“Oh.” Somehow, I hadn’t thought of that. Jack MacRae was not, of course, his real name.

“Scott,” Jack said, half smiling at me. “Harper.”

“Scott, huh,” I said softly. “Nice to meet you.”

“Scott is dead. He died twenty years ago. But – well, they found me. And you. And Ginger and Fred.” Jack looked squarely at me.

“Right,” I said. “Right.”

Jack and I sat and talked for another hour or so. How he had gone to school in the Midwest under the name Jack MacRae.

“How did you pick it?” I asked. I smiled at him, trying to see a Scott Harper in there.

“When I was very little, I remember Doreen saying her mother was Scottish,” Jack said. He smiled. “And I just always liked the name Jack.”

“Me too,” I said, and realized I was whispering. Jack grabbed my hand.

“Danny, you have to hear the rest of this,” he said. “All of it.” I nodded.

Jack had gone through his young adulthood as happily as he could. He worked hard. He had girlfriends here and there, but the messed-up nature of his earliest relationship haunted him. He left the States and took a job in Toronto. He had what he called “flashbacks,” periods of paranoia that Michael and the others had found him. He didn’t trust anyone – until me. And Ginger, eventually, and Fred. But no matter how happy he was with me and my family, fear and paranoia were his constant companions. He told me he didn’t remember things about some of our marriage, at least towards the end when he unplugged our phone unless it was absolutely necessary, and insisted that we keep the drapes closed, twenty-four hours a day.