The Death of Wendell Mackey (29 page)

For a moment, each just stared at the other.

Agatha started: “If you’re sick, then why haven’t you gone to the hospital?”

“It won’t do any good.”

“Let’s go together and just see.”

“They don’t have an answer to what I’ve got.”

“So you’re beyond the whole medical profession?”

“Well, yeah.”

“That’s rather bold. Arrogant even. You don’t strike me as the arrogant type, Wendell.”

“I’m not. But it’s true.”

Agatha folded her hands in front of her and pursed her lips, like she was sucking on something sour.

“I was at Mass this morning, taking the host, and I was thinking about our conversation a few days ago.”

“The host?”

“The wafer. The body. The body of Christ. So, I was kneeling at the front, and—”

“You go there every day?” Wendell asked.

“Yes, every day. At St. Jude’s. Maybe you’ll come with me one day.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“You’re going somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“With
them?
” she asked.

He looked up at her and nodded.

“So where were you yesterday?” she asked. “I knocked, but…”

In his mind he saw the blood, and the knit cap being carried away by muddy water towards a storm drain.

“Sister, please, don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Agatha leaned towards him. “You’re going to burst if you don’t let it out. Please, Wendell. I just want to help—”

“You said you couldn’t help.”

“That’s not what I said. I’ll do whatever I can.”

He tugged on his gloves.

“I want you to understand,” he said, “I
need
you to understand, that it wasn’t always this way.”

Agatha watched him curiously.

“It was different,” Wendell said, “a long time ago, different. When I was a kid, I remember we had this big old knotted beech tree in the back yard, something that had been there for decades. It was almost like the house—the whole neighborhood even—had grown up around the tree, and not the other way around. The old guy across the street would tell my dad the same story about seeing it as a sapling, and watching it grow into this giant with octopus limbs. I doubt that; that thing was probably older than him. With all the shade that it gave, grass had a hard time growing back there, but I loved it. It had these roots like stairs, and I was always begging my folks to get a tire to hang from one of the limbs. It was one of those defining things, you know? The tree defined the house. Even though it was in the back yard, it was so big you could see it from the front, so ours was ‘the house with the tree,’ not the yellow house, not Number 47 or ‘the one with the little kid.’” Wendell paused, remembering how, from the front of the house, its top limbs seemed to jut out from the roof like an uneven crown. “But apparently it got some disease, some fungus, and the thing began to die. Limbs would get brittle and break. One fell and took off part of the back gutter. So even though we had to move, the tree had to come down or the house wouldn’t sell. My grandma had died, and left my dad a little money, so after paying some creditors, we used the rest to hire the crew to cut it down. It took five guys all day to do it. There was sawdust like snowdrifts.”

“Wendell, why are you telling me this?”

“I just thought you should know how things were. I looked out the back window of the car when we left, hoping it would still be there, wanting things to be like they were.”

“But that’s not how it works,” she said.

“Nope. The world’s moved on. And we do too, come good or come bad. So, I don’t need to worry about what I did, do I? I mean, I’ve moved on, I’ve changed.”

“Wendell, what are you talking about?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Don’t do that Wendell.”

“No? Okay then. I’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

“
It
. The worst of the worst.”

“Wendell…”

“Drake was me, all me. Not that he didn’t have it coming, Sister.”

“Wendell, Drake was a gang thing. Some feud carried over from prison—”

“But it was this last guy, with the knit cap.”

“Did you hurt someone?”

“You ever go over to Brewster’s Market?”

Agatha nodded.

“Just past there, and you’re bound to see police cars. Look Sister, I think I…I think I…”

“You think you what?”

“I
know
I killed him, but I think I—I’m scared I might have…eaten some of—”

“Stop it Wendell.”

“What, were you there?”

“Were you?” she said, placing her palms down on the table. “Wendell, you say you’re sick. Is it possible that the sickness is…well, that you imagined this?”

“That I’m crazy?” He huffed. “You know what I would give for that to be true? You know how much I want that? But that’s not what’s happened. That’s not who I am.”

Agatha leaned back in her chair. “So who are you then?”

Wendell looked at her. “No. No more questions. I’m tired of all the—”

“No, Wendell.” It was sharp, spoken with an insistence that must have come in handy with her former students. “You come here, to this building, you’re shy and secretive, threatened or even a little
threatening
. And you start to unroll this story—and I’m not calling you a liar, not at all, even though it sounds crazy—you unroll it, like it’s the red carpet unrolled and leading into…something dark. And dark I know, dark I’ve specialized in, for a long time. And you’re as dark as they come, from what I’m seeing. Crazy? I don’t know. Truthful? Not sure about that either. But you want me to believe this story about you, yet you’re evasive. So I’m lost here, wondering who you really are.”

So is this opening up?
Wendell thought. Dr. Harbison’s persistence never resulted in Wendell doing that, no matter his pleasant demeanor and subtle promptings. “It’s safe,” he would say, “to
open up
, Wendell.” And then would come that therapist’s smile, almost apologetic, with a warmth neither feigned nor real.
Practiced
, Wendell thought, as if it were taught to him during medical school. But opening up—and Wendell assumed it meant opening the inner recesses of the human heart, of what made humans human—implied having something worthy of being revealed, something more than the murmurs of a demon drum that he felt, that he
knew
, were in him. That was not something for the light of day. No matter what Agatha had seen, she hadn’t seen anything like him.

“Darkness I can do,” Agatha added, like she knew what he was thinking. “Horribly unpleasant, but I can take it. Part of my mandate, I suppose. But with you, compounding it all is this blindness. I’m trying,
trying
Wendell, but you won’t let me see it. The horrors you were telling me about, like your dad’s death, your brutal mother—and believe me, you don’t need to tell me that she was a horrid woman—or this institution and whatever it…” and she trailed off, and for what particular reason Wendell didn’t know. Perhaps she was hesitant to stir any more emotions in him. Or perhaps she didn’t believe any of it.

“This blindness,” she continued. “It’s hard for me to get a sense—and I’m starting to think it’s the same for you—of who
you
are, Wendell,” she said, pointing at his chest.

“
What
.”

“What?”

“
What
I am.”

“Imago Dei, Wendell. The image of God. I know what you are. Created by him, in his image, just like—”

“I’d love for it to be that simple.”

Agatha sighed. “Okay Wendell, then I’m wrong. But you’re still not spelling it out for me.”

She didn’t get it. They were on different planets.

Then Agatha’s face changed, looking resolute. “But I never accept this ‘I’m a broken man, I’m a nothing, I’m a ghost’ nonsense. That’s what you’ve believed for years, I’m sure. But there’s something there, Wendell,” and she pointed at his chest again, “there always has been. Something in there.”

He began to retort, but stopped himself, struck by something. What he felt wasn’t as much a denial of what she said as it was plain confusion. If she was correct, that he was a something rather than a nothing, then it added significance to a past seeming devoid of any, at least as he had always seen it. But significance in suffering? It seemed to give it all some sort of transcendent quality, which was frightening to someone who had already endured so much. Only a nun could be so bold, he thought.

“I’m not blind.”

“I didn’t say you were, Wendell. It’s just that attached to you is this big question, monumental is more like it, this unanswered puzzle just sitting there, waiting. And you haven’t bothered with it.”

“But that doesn’t change anything,” he said, his voice momentarily high and shrill. “It’s like you want some spiritual quest out of me, but none of
this
,” he said, planting his thumb into his chest, “is gonna change. Nothing’s gonna change.” He slapped his hands onto the table and stood up.

Agatha watched him, unfazed.

“You want to know who I am?” he said. “I’m like firewood, fuel for whatever fire’s burning. Necessary but nameless. Just one in a pile. So as a kid I kept the family going, just smoldering, but something’s gotta burn, right? Any warmth, any survival those two people had was because of
me
, because I kept that godforsaken family fire going. So then that fire burns out, and here I go, tossed on another. Feeding some scientific bonfire. Hey, they needed a pile of guys like me, dry and cracked and cut up, me and whatever other creatures they made in there. They needed people like us, brainless pieces of kindling, for the same reason that my mother needed me: something needed to die to keep those engines going.”

Agatha folded her hands on the table, hooking her thumbs together tightly, carrying her tension there, and not in her face. She wore a hint of a smile, almost sly. “So, why are you reacting at all? Why escape? If all you are is fuel, then there is no point. You’ve been burned up. Chewed. Digested. You’re nothing.” She looked around the room, gesturing to all with a sweep of her hands. “Yet, here we are. The fuel speaks. It reasons. Shows
emotion
.”

“Don’t play with me. Don’t joke about this or—”

“Or what, Wendell?”

“You’re an old lady. So don’t.”

“Because I’ll end up like Drake? I’m not worried.”

On any other day, it would almost be sweet
, he thought.
She’s trying to care, because she thinks she knows. She thinks this all matters
. The trouble was, even with his attempts to brush her off, Wendell wanted her to continue. This silly little nun, this discarded urban anchoress in her little rented cell, was becoming addictive.
That’s what they do
,
they get themselves hooked in so they can’t be ripped away
. Still, perhaps she was right.
Perhaps
. It was all a stretch, but monstrous as he was, he might still have value, at least in her eyes. Was it ridiculous? Yes. But so was the peeling skin, the claws and hooves, the teeth, the wings. And in this ridiculous world was this nun, unkempt, wrinkled, ugly, but speaking with a certainty far larger than her tiny frame, and without fear when, if she really
knew
what was happening, she would be afraid.

“I’m not a therapist,” she continued, “I’m not a self-help guru here to tell you that it’s all okay, as long as you believe in yourself. I’m not here to wallpaper over past pain. Too often, life
is
pain, Wendell. And yours is no daytime talk show, half an hour of pain. It’s black horror. And you’ve been alone, all these years, suffering alone. But you’ve made it all worse, the more you’ve bought into this narrative that you’re meaningless, or only meaningful in the context of some sort of bigger machine, and nothing else.”

“So you don’t believe me.”

“No, just
stop
Wendell. I didn’t say that. In fact, Santos went out to Industrial Parkway at my request last night, and you’re right about some sort of building out there. So there’s that. Santos is doing some more digging for me. But you’re missing the bigger question of who you are.”

“I’m revolting.”

“Against what?”

“No,
revolting
, Sister.”

“You’re God’s child.”

Wendell snickered. “You nuns.”

“We nuns. We’re right. And you’re stubborn.”

“This ain’t church,” he said.

God’s child
, he thought. If only. That was a level of significance that would stop one’s breath, if it were true. But he wasn’t God’s child, or even his mother’s, anymore. Wendell had been reborn—re
created
, some miasmic hatchling—in that building at the corner of the lot, his speciation making him a child to another parent. And for a moment he saw hovering in his mind two Cheshire cat smiles; the rest of the faces were gone but he knew the smiles belonged to Scotia and Thane, beaming down on him in his shackled bed like he was in a bassinette. But the level of significance that Agatha was tempting him to accept was too much. That he mattered to the old woman across the hall was one thing. But believing her meant not only belief in some bearded, enthroned deity, but also in some inherent value in himself, independent of thought and deed. Significance in suffering wasn’t enough; now she was selling significance simply in existing. To live was to matter. He wanted to laugh at her, while still wanting it to be true.

“When you’ve seen and done what I’ve seen and done,” he said, “then—”

“Come off it, Wendell. Just accept it as true. You’re a child of God, so you matter. You
matter
. Your life, your soul, whatever God knit together—”

“You think that’s what it’s all about. It’s your job—or your
mandate
, like you said—to sell me on that kind of stuff. Meaning and God.”

“Just because you’re a stubborn fool who can’t see—”

“So I’m a liar and a fool now?”

“A fool, yes. But just keep avoiding it all, Wendell. It seems you’ve been good at that for a long time.”

“No, Sister. It’s not that.” Wendell exhaled slowly. His desire to argue was fading, as were his chances of winning. “When you’re nameless,” he said, “and when you’ve always been that way, you make an easy target. They find you when you’re nameless.”