The FBI man said, "Answer my question, then I'll answer yours."
40
Mac's Letter
June 1996
Little Partner,
What a shock you just got. Finding this with my riteing and the Walpole return adress in your mailbox. Wish I could of seen your face. Whats the old crook up to now? Im not riteing to ask you anything. You no thats not my style. I never ask for anything from anyone in my life. What I wanted I took and what I needed done I did myself. I no your the same Duggy.
I do'nt rite much and I no I never rote you before. Hard to get you out here tho and after last time I felt like we were'nt done. Whenever it comes time to see you theres so much to say that it never all gets said. So much saved up in my mind. Then your gone and I got another year to puzzle you over.
When I get out theres no way I can make up for the things I owe you. Your a man you understand this. Misstakes take 2x as long to fix as they do to make. Thats why you never look back. OK you look back but never go back Duggy. You keep going on.
About your mothers house. I met your mother at the Monumint in November of 63. Kennedy had just died-- shot in the head-- and the town was in morning and Coffy and me and the rest of us were sick of moping so we went out to find trouble. We were kicking around the steps there and this little gide comes out-- this little tour gide with copper red hair-- she was younger but she bitched us out like somebodys mother. A little pint glass with a black band on her school uniform giving us all kinds of shit till she started crying her eyes out for Kennedy. We had our fun but next day I came back alone. I listened to her school speech to the torists and she saw me. Her name tag was Pam. I came back 6 days in a row before I got a smile. I do'nt no what she saw in me. I did'nt no what I wanted exept to take her out. 1 nite she snuck away from her frends and came bowling.
We had to get marryed Duggy. Her parents new I was Bottom Of The Hill. A Slope Kid and they never liked me but they never gave up on her ether. They gave us the downpayment for the house on Sackville when you came along. But I always payed the moregage. The house was mine.
What I promised her on that day we bowled was that Id never make her cry again and I broke that promise a thousand times. She did things because she was angry at me. I was away a lot and she left you at her mothers to much. The $$ I gave her for food she took down to the corner. I scared off all her hippy friends, but from then on she just did these things alone.
I am not telling you this because I am a prick. I am telling you this because I am not a prick.
She did'nt do it on purpose. The thing of the time in the 60s was to push bowndrys and walk on the moon and free your mind. Her mind just got to free. You were asleep in front of the tv when I came home and found her in the bathroom and the needle. I got you to the naybors 1st thing. When you woke up in the morning and started asking for her what coud I say? What do you tell a 6 year old kid? Your mother went away. Shes gone. I do'nt think shes coming back.
You wanted to go out looking for her so we looked. Her parents had a private funeral and insted I took you out walking the nayborhood looking for her until you cried so hard you coud'nt walk. You saw a tv show about a missing dog and wanted to put up posters on telephone polls so we put up posters. You wanted the light on over the front door for her so I change that bulb every month. You woud'nt sleep if you coud'nt see the light from your bed.
I said she went away and so who else in Town would say other wise. My truth was truer than truth. But what I did'nt plan for was that she would become this bigger than life thing and I would go from Daddy to no one. A lot of you you made yourself. I give you that. I always see her in you. But I did what I could. I teached you the things I new.
Bottom line is I will be out soon. Then it will be the 2 of us again. You had trouble with Gem but patch it up. Loyalty is what we need now. You cant buy that.
Maybe you always new about her or gessed or never wanted to ask. If you do'nt want to talk about this again I would not mind.
This is the longest letter Ive ever ritten.
By the way. Old Uncle G came to see me. But I did'nt see him.
Do'nt no how to end this Duggy. Do'nt even no if Ill mail it.
Mac.
PS. Your mother never came back, Duggy. I am.
41
Birthday
D
OUG ROLLED DOWN A lane of tidy homes, checking addresses, coming up on a line of parked cars and an inflatable castle in a driveway. The bladder castle jerked and jiggled like a stomach full of screaming, indigestible kids. Doug slowed at the silver mailbox festooned with birthday balloons. The house number matched.
He pulled over at the end of the row of cars and stood out of the Caprice. The house was a gray Cape, kids chasing each other around the front yard with squirt guns, parents chatting in the driveway. Doug was about to get back in his car when he saw Frank G. step away from a small group near the castle's generator and wave him up. Frank wore a collared, short-sleeved shirt, long shorts, and Converse flats, walking down the driveway to meet him. "You found it."
Doug pulled off his shades, looking at the party. "Frank, man-- you should have told me."
"You said you needed a few minutes, right? C'mon."
Frank walked him past the screaming castle toward an open garage full of chairs and folding tables of food. Twin girls in matching pink eyeglasses sat hip to hip on the front lawn, eating melting blocks of ice cream cake, and three plastic paratroopers came swaying down to earth out of a bedroom window, followed by a balsa wood airplane in a tailspin. Then a kid with his arm in a blue cast came racing past, nailing them each in the gut with water out of a tiny green pistol, taunting, "Ha-ha, Uncle Frank!"
Frank pulled a pastel pink Saturday night special out of his pocket and turned on the kid, blasting him, the kid running off squealing in a war-movie zigzag as Frank's piece ran dry. "Inside," he said. "Gotta reload."
He did so at the sink, the kitchen bustling with women wrapping to-go plates of ziti and lasagna and cold cuts. Frank led Doug past two dads talking business in the hallway, past a cooing woman changing a sleepy baby on the dining room floor, past the Sox game in the family room. A ruckus up on the second floor made Frank reverse direction, taking Doug to a side door, down wooden steps into a cool basement.
Half of it was finished, the paneled walls papered with Michael Jordan, Ray Bourque, and Mo Vaughn posters. There were Koosh balls everywhere, old U-Haul boxes overflowing with sporting equipment, and an elaborate Matchbox racetrack setup in the back. In the center of the room stood an air hockey table under a billiards lamp.
"So what's doing?" said Frank.
Doug shrugged. The birthday party had thrown him, he didn't know where to start. "How
you
doing?"
"Me?" Frank walked around to the other end of the table rink. "Much better. You caught me at a bad moment last time. I let that little old guy get to me, I don't know why. He doesn't stand for everybody. I know he doesn't stand for me."
"Good. Good to hear." Doug prowled back and forth, uncomfortable, as though asking for money.
Frank switched on the game table, the jets pushing air through the perforated playing surface. "I'm back at meetings, been to a few." The puck stirred, a red plastic disk drifting to the side as though by an invisible hand. Frank flicked it back to the opposite boards-- just diddling, not an invitation to play. "What about you?"
Doug ran his hand briskly through his chopped hair. "Meetings? Nah. Not since before we talked."
A herd of elephants went trampling overhead. "Big mistake," said Frank. "You got crisis written all over your face, I can see it. Beeping me was the right thing to do. Listen to me now. She's not worth it."
"Who? Not worth what?"
"That drink you haven't taken yet. Your girl isn't worth it."
"Nah, Frank-- "
" 'I think I met someone...' You remember that?" Frank pushed the wafer puck harder now, sending it clicking off the boards, coasting on the low-friction surface. "The way you first told me about her-- I knew. This girl is your disease, Doug."
Doug held out his hands. "Frank-- and I never said this to you before-- but you're dead wrong here. This girl... if
anything,
she's my sobriety."
"And she's gone now."
Doug admitted, "Yeah."
"And you're thirsty. It's right there on your face. But if you can somehow get her back-- that'll cure everything, right?"
"Frank, look. This other girl, my
old
girlfriend--
she's
my alcoholism. Fucking haunting me every good step I try to take. But this girl-- no. She's
too
good for me. She's-- "
"Everything you want but can't have. You've poured all your hopes into this person who can't be with you-- am I right?
She's too good.
Can you hear it? You set up this unattainable thing."
"You're reading me wrong."
"Set it all up maybe even since the beginning. A long, slow slide into you giving yourself the okay to drink again, with her as your excuse.
With all I'm going through, who wouldn't slip just a little?
" The disk click-clanked into one of the slot goals like a coin dropping into a bank. "That's the bullshit you have to fight here. That's the demon."
Doug paced with his hands folded behind his head. "How did it get so complicated?" he said. "It's a beer. You drink it, or you don't."
"It
used
to be a beer," said Frank, switching off the table, coming out from behind it. "Face that, Doug. You got to eat what's eating you. You can't drown it. You tried that already. Didn't work."
Doug wondered what it would taste like, this thing that was eating him.
The door opened on the party above them, a woman's voice: "Frank?"
"Yeah, down here, hon."
Toeless summer sandals stopped two steps down. "Steve and Pauline just left, they couldn't find you."
"I'm sniffing glue with a friend. Hold on."
Frank trotted up the steps for a whispered conversation. Then the sandals flapped down ahead of Frank.
"I'm Nancy Geary," she said, offering her small hand for a quick, purposeful shake; not unfriendly, but not sweetly fake either. He was a guest in her house and she was presenting herself to greet him.
"You have a beautiful home here," said Doug, because he was supposed to, and because it was true.
She was small, a tough city girl. "You get anything to eat yet?"
"I'm a gate-crasher. Frank didn't tell me you were..." He waved at the thumping upstairs.
"Take some sandwiches home with you, okay?"
"I will. Thank you."
She was already starting back up the stairs. Probably never beautiful, but steady, no more attractive with makeup than without. A constant. Not trying to impress anybody, she had a house and a family and a birthday party to run.
The door closed, and Doug looked at Frank. "You wanted me here for this," he said. "Wanted me to see the house, the wife, the kids."
"It's not unattainable. All you gotta do is get lucky. This girl, Doug-- people come and go. There're reasons. That's what life is. It doesn't mean anything about you yourself."
Doug shook his head at how wrong Frank was. "'Course it does."
Frank studied him. "What's this do to you moving on from your friends?"
Doug felt the suffocation again. "No, that's still on."
"You've been saying that."
"Frank, look, I'm committed. There's nothing left here for me now. I'm setting it up so that there's no turning back. But I gotta... I gotta take care of things first."
"That I don't like the sound of. You trying to save people who don't want to be saved."
"It's not that. Truly. It's knowing what will happen to them after I'm gone, and trying to give them, at least, one good last chance."
"Chance at what?"
Doug shrugged. "I guess, life."
"You really think that? Think you're the only thing kept them safe all these years? The designated driver for everyone?"
Doug considered this. "Yeah. I have to say-- it's exactly that."
They went back up the stairs together. In the hallway a kid went racing past waving a plastic sword, and Frank stopped him with a shoulder squeeze. "Mikey, where's Kev?"
"Right here, Dad," said a shorter, tow-haired boy in the kitchen doorway, holding a hockey stick with a big blue bow on it.
"C'mere, Roscoe," said Frank, steering the two boys across into the dining room, past a supermarket tray of cookie crumbs. Frank stood with one hand on the swordsman's shoulder and the other on the shorter boy's blond head. "Michael, Kevin, this is the guy I was telling you about. This is Doug MacRay."
