Miracle Beach (7 page)

Macy waved an arm high above her head. The figure waved back.

“Who is that?” Jack asked.

“That,” Macy said, “is Mama Sophie. She lives just down the road.”

“You tryin’ to kill yourself out here in this bloody heat, girl?” the woman yelled.

“You’re the one wearing swampers, you crazy ol’ coot,” Macy yelled back.

Mama Sophie walked up to Macy and forced her into a half hug, shoulder-to-shoulder. “It’s good to see you out and about,” she whispered to Macy.

“Good to be out,” Macy whispered back. Then she turned to Jack. “Jack, meet the infamous Sophie McLean. Mama Sophie, Jack Allen.”

“Infamous, huh? I’m up to infamous now?” she said to Macy.

Jack held out his hand. “It’s a pleasure, ma’am.”

Mama Sophie grabbed Jack’s hand and pulled him in for a hug. Macy knew that the Allens weren’t a hugging family, which had always fit her just fine. Discomfort showed on Jack’s face. He looked like the cartoon characters who were squeezed until their eyes started to bulge.

“Welcome to Campbell River, Jack. Or back to Campbell River, I guess. I know you’ve been here before, but it’s nice to finally get the chance to meet you. But don’t you dare go ma’aming me. It’s Sophie—just Sophie.” She patted him on the back, then took her arm from his shoulder and placed it on top of his hand, sandwiching it between hers. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been here for the funeral. I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said.

“Thank you, Ms. McLean,” said Jack.

“Is he a little slow on the uptake, darling?” Mama Sophie asked Macy, who smiled and shrugged.

“How long you been here, Jack? How long you planning to stay?” Sophie asked.

“Been here about a week,” Jack said, raising one finger, “and no real idea,” he said, raising a second finger.

Sophie nodded. “I’ve been out guiding all week. Sorry I’ve missed you.” Then, turning to Macy, she said, “Caught some really nice sockeye this mornin’; you want some?”

“Oh, is that the reason for the fabulous footwear?” Macy kidded her.

“You want the fish or not, you little smart-ass?”

“How about this,” Macy said. “You bring your catch of the day over about seven tonight and we’ll throw it on the barbecue.”

“You like salmon, Jack?” Mama Sophie asked.

“Love salmon,” Jack said.

“Good.” Turning to Macy, she said, “He can stay awhile. Mends fence, eats salmon. We can work on the rest.”

Jack chuckled.

“I’ll see you at seven thirty, then,” Mama Sophie said, already walking away from them.

Jack mouthed to Macy,
I thought it was seven?

She waved him off and whispered, “Mama Sophie does what Mama Sophie wants.

“You going to change for dinner?” Macy yelled after her.

“You going to have anything to eat if I decide not to come?” she called back over her shoulder.

“Bye,” yelled Macy, feigning exasperation.

Mama Sophie waved back at them without turning around.

“Quite a character, that one,” Jack said. He and Macy watched the old woman tromp through the grass and weave herself limberly through the fence rails.

“Just wait till she gets a drink or two in her,” Macy said. “You’ll be wanting a little stronger word than
character
.”

Jack looked at Macy with his head cocked, seemingly surprised, though at what was hard to tell. That the old woman who had just trounced over here and back—probably a kilometer either way as the crow flew—would drink, maybe? Or that she had appeared at all? Macy caught a fleeting glimpse of a much younger Jack Allen as he looked back over his shoulder and his gaze lingered in the direction Mama Sophie had gone.

“Bourbon,” Macy said. Jack turned his attention back to her, his eyes keen, focused, and dancing all at once. “Straight. Three cubes. Serve her up one of those without her having to ask and you’ll have her eating right outta your hand in no time.”

Macy raised her water bottle in the air in front of her as if making a toast. Jack raised his. They clicked the lips of their bottles together.

 

Jack and Macy finished up the second-to-last row of fence line as wispy clouds crawled over the sun. They decided that the last section of fence—an extraordinarily long one—would take them the better part of the next morning, or the day even, and this was as good a place as any to stop.

Driving back toward the barn, Jack suggested they maybe start around this time tomorrow and work until dark. “We’d get four or five good hours in,” he lobbied.

The thought had never occurred to Macy. Probably because she wasn’t much for innovation. And also because it felt good to punish herself in the heat. Even before everything that had happened, she had felt that way. Like every hammer swung and every pound of wire lifted and every step trudged through back pastures equaled some sort of mercy that she owed. To whom, she couldn’t be sure, but it felt good to store it all up. For safekeeping, to pay later.

Having Jack here was much in the same vein. When he called to say he wanted to come, her first concern was that his worse half would be making the trip alongside him. But even when he assured Macy that Magda didn’t know about his plans, she couldn’t muster the cheer she figured others in her same situation surely would. The thing was, what had happened still stewed raw in her mind, like a soup that hadn’t yet come together. She couldn’t make sense of it all, but she didn’t want someone else making sense of it for her, and didn’t want Jack or anyone else to make sense out of any of it before she was able to. Macy wanted to get this grieving right, but it was tricky. And if Jack came in and had all the answers, it might only add to the long list of things she hadn’t been able to do well enough, or at all.

More than any of it, though, she wanted—no, needed—to have Nash to herself for a little longer yet. She knew what Jack was after long before his Allen Edmonds–loafer-clad feet touched down on Vancouver soil, and she just couldn’t do for him what needed doing in his mind—answer countless questions about Nash: Where was his favorite place to have a beer? What was his favorite kind of beer? Where did they go on Friday nights? How did he spend his days? Where did he get his hair cut, his car serviced? Where did he work out? Did he work out? How did he take his coffee? What did they do about breakfast—were they brunch people or did they skip it altogether and delve right into lunch?

She knew these questions were coming. She could hear them in his voice when he had called a couple of weeks back. She could see everything he wanted, gathering like a far-off storm. And at the moment, she didn’t have a shelter built for two. Hell, right about then she didn’t even own a goddamned umbrella.

In the moments that had stretched between Jack’s saying he was going to come and now, Macy would get angry at Jack for asking this of her: that she share all she had of Nash—the island and their life here—with him. Then she would reprimand and remind herself that Nash was his
son
. What must it feel like, she would scold herself, to spend your whole life protecting this little being, a little baby that grew up to be a man but was still always a little bit that baby, only to outlive him? She was certain that no matter the pain she felt, it paled next to Jack’s—this man sitting and staring pensively out the half-lowered passenger window of a beat-up truck owned by a stranger-woman his son had thrust on him by taking a vow that wasn’t even made in a church. Who was
she
, after all? Nash was this man’s flesh and blood. Nash was Jack’s heart, walking around outside of his body. Macy wasn’t a mother to Nash’s children. Her life had barely begun to intertwine with his; theirs wasn’t a history that spanned decades. She was barely his wife—little more than a woman Jack’s son had lived with for a time.

Really, how could she have said no?

JACK WATCHED MACY SLICE THE RED, GREEN, AND YELLOW PEPPERS into thin slivers from where he sat at the kitchen table. Her hands were scrubbed clean, nails trimmed short but painted a soft, almost translucent pink—a physical oxymoron to the rough brown skin stretched taut over protruding veins and knuckles, so much larger than the bones they joined together that her wedding ring floated freely along her finger between the joint and hand.

They were a woman’s hands. Not a lady’s hands, like Magda’s—lotion-soft and cushiony, always adorned with the “sophisticated look” of the fake nails that she preferred. No, Macy’s were callused and ruddy and looked like they belonged to someone ten or twenty years her senior.

Those are the hands that touched Nash
, thought Jack.

They knew Nash better than anyone else’s in the world. Better, even, than Magda’s—the very hands responsible for diapering his downy bottom or smoothing his feverish forehead for so many years. Because Macy’s were the hands that could trace by rote, like Braille, the gradual curve of Nash’s neck to his collarbone or the slow, shallow dip below the inside of each hip bone. And Jack was slightly jealous of this—jealous that this woman in front of him, deftly slicing a red pepper, knew Nash in ways that he or Magda never, ever could have.

“You okay?” Macy asked, pausing midchop.

Jack looked up at her, thought a moment, and said, “Yeah. It’s that . . . being here, I don’t know . . . it’s—”

“Weird?”

He nodded. “I mean, it’s nice—to be here, but I didn’t really think this through a whole lot before I got on that plane. I don’t exactly know what I’m doing here, you know?”

Macy grabbed handfuls of chopped peppers and dropped them into a bowl where cucumbers and tomatoes were waiting to be tossed together. Jack had seen her make this same version of a Greek salad several times on previous visits. When he had remarked on the frequency with which the salad showed up at meals, Macy admitted it composed approximately one-fifth of her cooking repertoire.

Macy made a few tiny nodding movements with her chin, and then looked up at him. “You know what Magda always says: ‘A reason for everything.’ ”

“Yes, that is what Magda always says,” Jack agreed. The smell of salmon wafted from the grill. Sophie had wrapped it in newspaper and dropped it on the porch with a note, begging off dinner for a last-minute early-morning guiding trip.

“You know,” Macy said, “sometimes I think Magda’s full of shit.”

“Only
some
times?”

Macy laughed.

“But you never know,” Jack said, smiling.

“No,” Macy said a little quieter, “you never do.”

They sat there a moment, smiling at each other, minds and thoughts clearly drifting elsewhere. Jack snapped himself back to the present and made an abrupt move to get up. “Can I help with anything?” he asked.

“Yes, you can,” Macy said. “You can get me a beer, get yourself a beer, and then sit right back down on that chair and entertain me while I finish up.”

“That I can do. One beer and some riveting conversation, coming right up.”

And for a flash of a moment, Jack didn’t feel like bolting to anywhere other than where he was, or like crawling straight out of his own skin. It didn’t even bother him that he didn’t know why, or that a minute later he could feel the familiar way his son’s memory cut his stomach like shrapnel. The fleeting moment of feeling okay—that moment was enough.

 

Jack had expected the show grounds at Windmist Farms to look more crowded. According to Macy, this was a major event, but there seemed to be only a smattering of motor homes and trailers, most of which looked like mansions on wheels, around the show grounds. All had “slide-outs”—whole sections of the motor home’s side that popped out on hydraulics to give the residents more living space. Through windows he could see lighted display cabinets, leather couches, and more square footage than he and Magda had had in their first apartment together. More than one had a group of Mexicans diligently washing and polishing the exterior. They chattered as they worked, their quick back-and-forths in Spanish sounding like a song.

Macy caught him gawking.

“Not too shabby, huh?”

Jack shook his head and let a low whistle escape his lips. He made a decent living with his concrete company, and he and Magda ran in a social circle made up of prominent local doctors, lawyers, and Packers front-office executives, but this was a whole different level of success. He knew that most of these rigs had to cost more than his and Magda’s house, and just by reading the ads in magazines stashed throughout Macy’s truck, he knew that the horses did, too.

“How do they do this?” Jack asked.

Macy shrugged. “That one there . . .” She pointed to a massive black-white-and-chrome bus with slide-outs on both sides. “That one belongs to this amateur lady. She buys a new one every single year. Her family’s old money; her dad was a railroad tycoon or something like that. Just for tax purposes she has to spend a million or so a year. That’s how the chatter goes, at least,” she said. They walked by motor homes, gleaming semi trucks pulling giant horse vans, and cars that should have been in a showroom somewhere, or at least under protective covers—not parked haphazardly along gravel driveways and grass embankments. “Family jewelry store, insurance company, hotel chain, oil,” she explained, pointing at each rig or car of note as they passed.