Dwelling Places (4 page)

Mack

Mack comes home from the hospital on a Thursday evening. Friday at midmorning he goes to Hendrikson's Tractor & Implement Company, where he has worked as a mechanic for two years or so. Harold Hendrikson is happy to see him, and by noon Mack is elbow deep in work and chatting with Cheryl, Harold's daughter, who comes in once a week to do the books. Mack continues to feel as if he's moving in slow motion, but he is surprised at how this day seems like any other, as if he's not been off somewhere else and fighting for his life. Engines work the same as they always have, thank God. He's grateful that his tasks are physical and for the most part uncomplicated. He
tastes the autumn air that sweeps across the oily garage floor. And on his way home he drives slowly, startled by how the corn tassels in the Merkles' seed plot form a cream-colored fringe that rides atop the rows of drying stalks. He's watched the progress of corn for years, but today is the first time it's made him think like this.

He's home by six, and Jodie has set out leftovers from last night's dinner. Kenzie eats supper with them, but Young Taylor is at his friend Dale's. This too is normal, and a comfort. Evidently his nearly grown son considers Mack well enough that it's not necessary to stay close to home. Mack imagines that his wife and daughter watch him closely, but there's no fear in their attention. He remembers their fear. Even when they didn't speak it, their motions and tone of voice made it clear that they were uneasy around him. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case now. Maybe this will work out after all. He will go to work every day, family life will carry on, and the past few weeks will have just been a glitch in his life.

On Sunday they attend church as a family. Mack is self-conscious as he takes Jodie's elbow and follows her to their usual pew. She wears a sage green jacket over tan pants and turtleneck. Mack has always liked the way she can look comfortable no matter what she wears. Nothing fancy, no starched lace or tough-looking suits. Even her colors are soothing to be near. She wears no perfume, but the heat of her body pulses out jasmine scent from the soap she used early this morning. Mack knows that while the rest of them slept Jodie rose and showered and dressed in the quiet. She put herself together with care, just so she could stand beside him now steady and sweet.

Folks greet them, smiling pleasantly at Mack. They welcome him back but make their greetings short, as if they understand how much he does not want to be put on the spot. It is the same way they greet someone who has lost a loved one or begun chemotherapy. The suffering is clear enough to everybody; what is necessary is saying hello, giving a bit of acknowledgment, that nod or handshake that lets a person know he is still one of them. He will always receive a handshake as long as he walks in the door. At the same time, his battles are his
own, and no one pretends that they can do the fighting for him. They are here, just the same, and they won't forget his name or his pain.

Kenzie tucks herself into the pew on Mack's other side, and he enjoys the curl of his daughter's arm around the crook in his own and the brush of her cheek against his shoulder. Young Taylor has come today, which is uncharacteristic. He looks almost normal in jeans and a regular shirt rather than the all-black stuff. Jodie says that Young Taylor has begun wearing makeup, white face and black lips, but Mack has yet to see this. He's disappointed that, in his absence, Young Taylor didn't settle down and give his mother nothing else to worry about. The boy walks in behind his grandma Rita, who turns to talk with him several times, as if he always accompanies her. Young Taylor sits on the back pew, while Rita slides in beside Kenzie and pats her leg.

As normal as it seems for them to be seated in a row with people filling the spaces around them, Mack is lightheaded for most of the service. A few weeks ago he couldn't hold in his mind for the shortest second a picture like this one, and it still seems as though the simplest, most ordinary things have run away from him. During the opening hymn he's aware of his body taking breaths and joining in, and he listens with some wonder to the sound coming out of his mouth.

In a moment that hangs there for his pleasure, he feels the weight of the hymnbook and the sensation of his daughter clearing her throat beside him. He breathes in the calming atmosphere of his wife. He watches Bernice Warner's hands move over the piano keys and the shadows of small clouds travel across the sanctuary. There is still a deep tiredness in Mack's soul, left over from days of fighting himself and searching for death, of tedious sessions with doctors and tiny paper cups of colorful pills, of dull hallways and echoing sounds of despair. But he sits down after the invocation and recognizes the creaks of everyone sitting at once on the eighty-year-old pews. The tears pool in his eyes, and he knows precisely what it feels like to come home.

It seems like months ago that he was last with his family on Sunday, although not that much time has passed. They went to church,
just like today, and invited the pastor to eat with them. They came home, and Rita and Jodie put on dinner. They ate at one o'clock, as always. They sat around and passed the casseroles and salads and sliced roast beef. The weather carried the weight of August humidity, and while they were eating, a late summer thunderstorm rolled through, causing Rita to hurry to the window nearest the dining room table and pull it down against the wind.

Then they moved into the living room for banana cream pie. And while Mack was digging into the crust and whipped cream, the pastor, Reverend Alice Maynor, began to talk.

“Mack, several of us have been concerned about you lately. We can see that you're not feeling well.”

Before Mack realized what was happening, his wife and mother were in tears, and the children sat motionless and wide-eyed, while the pastor's voice became urgent, even though she spoke in low tones.

“It's time to see a doctor.”

“You've not been yourself for a long time.”

“We've set up an appointment tomorrow morning.”

Suddenly the pie was melting on his tongue without flavor. Suddenly he was one person against a multitude. They kept assuring him that they weren't angry. But it felt like anger just the same—the scheming they had done to gang up on him like this, the precision of their planning. The way they were in such agreement that they were nodding and finishing one another's sentences. He'd been left out of all of it—they'd taken the chalk and made the mark just short of where he sat. He set down his dessert bowl and felt the blood rush at his temples and his mouth go dry. He couldn't bring himself to agree with them at that moment—it would have been like transferring every last bit of power from himself to them. He was no longer safe in their midst. He remembers feeling exposed and hounded, shut out and smothered all at once.

But underneath those immediate reactions there flowed a deep, black fear that had swelled about him for days and weeks on end. A panic that never left, a jittery sense that kept him off balance. He'd
taken all his guns out to the barn and cleaned them and loaded them and held them toward himself in ghostly practice runs. He'd watched himself deliberate and arrange and rehearse. Of course, he would never admit that here, in this room. It took him three days to confess to a doctor, and that under medication. The darkness had ridden so low in his soul that he couldn't put words to it all at once, and when he did, he couldn't connect to what the words really meant.

“Have you planned how you will do it?”

“Yes.”

“Have you made arrangements?”

“Most of them.”

As if they were discussing tractor repairs.

It was one of many tedious and devastating conversations between Mack and strangers, in rooms that were too clean and bare, where everything smelled like old medicine and laundered sheets. They wouldn't leave him alone. Eventually there would be exchanges of words. And even that wasn't enough. Words began to mean less and less, and emotions began to be the goal.
Lord God, get me out of here, away from all my words. Please, please take away every thought I've ever had. Maybe if the thoughts get taken away, I can finally sleep in peace. Just to sleep on my own, no drugs. Just to sleep and wake up and be better. Lord God, I'm begging you. Take every bad thought out of my head.

All of it started that Sunday afternoon, in the room where Mack sits now, in his place at the head of the table. His mother is at the other end, his wife and children in between. They pass baked chicken, sweet potatoes, applesauce, fried onions and peppers. The furnace kicks on, the windows are all shut tight. Jodie has put in a tape of religious instrumental music. The room is warm and full of good aromas. It cannot be the same room in which the hospital segment of his life began, and these cannot be the same people. Yet he knows that the hospital has saved his life; he still feels somewhat begrudging about that. He has no choice but to call it a good thing—even so, good can be beneficial in one sense and horrifying in another.
He doesn't feel any relief or safety when he remembers the hospital. He feels only that it is over, and that it is good to be back here, in his house.

Jodie

This morning, in church, for the first time in months, Jodie said a prayer. She sang it, really, but she's certain that this counts as prayer. Haley Jones, who leads the music at Grace Methodist, ended the service with “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us,” an old, old song, and Jodie sang without looking at the hymnal. By the third verse, when they got to the chorus, “Blessed Jesus, blessed Jesus, thou has loved us, love us still,” Jodie's voice had kicked into a different gear. She was aware of her words and spirit merging, and she sang each phrase from a deep place, understanding that she was begging Jesus, just then, to not give up on her. It was a startling experience of maybe ten seconds, but its importance registers with her hours later.

She has never been a vocal person in the congregation. She's more of a doer, someone who helps collect clothing and other items for the Community Closet, someone who can always be counted on to cook a huge pan of lasagna for a funeral dinner. Once in a great while she sings in the choir, usually when Haley calls her because she's missing two of her three altos. Grace Methodist is a fifteen-minute drive because it is in Oskaloosa, not Beulah. Jodie's family does not have the history in the Oskaloosa congregation that they do in the one closest to home. At Grace, no one remembers their struggles, the sale of the farm, or the death of Alex, because no one was witness to those events. After Alex died, and when weeks had passed and Jodie and Rita were desperate to go to church somewhere, they visited Grace Methodist and decided to call it home.

Jodie is still unwilling to say that the people of Beulah First Methodist failed her family. She looks back at the worst days and must admit to herself that people did care, they did say how sorry they were, did bring casseroles to the door. But those people are
woven into the bad memories. And that is enough to make it impossible to be with them.

Mack's eyes lit up this morning when he walked into the kitchen before church and saw her. She didn't really dress up, but Sunday attire is always a notch or two up from everyday clothes. She bothers to put on some makeup for church, doubting that anyone else notices but knowing that she feels a little better for it. Well, Mack noticed. He truly looked at her. He hugged her and gave her a kiss and seemed so grateful.

She tried to be grateful too and returned the kiss, but something in her system seized up and stayed that way even while she kissed Mack. She doesn't think he noticed the tension, but she worries about what it means that she feels this way around him. Now she's in the bathroom, changing into her everyday clothes while Sunday dinner is simmering. She tries to pinpoint why she's holding back from Mack, her lifelong love, the man she knew before he was a man, when they were in school together and making love eyes in study hall.

She takes off her bra and replaces it with a jersey tank that serves as underwear beneath her flannel shirt. Although she has nursed two children, her breasts don't look worn out yet. They sag some, but when Jodie complained about it once, Mack stretched out on the bed and smiled. “Aw, they just look lived-in and happy.” Having entered her forties, Jodie has at last become grateful for small boobs; she can go braless and get away with it. Her hair is growing out, its natural curl beginning to go flat. At least there's not much gray visible yet, maybe because her hair is light brown to begin with. It still streaks a little in the summer.

She turns from the mirror and finishes dressing, aware that she thinks a lot about her looks these days, and not because of Mack. Over the past several weeks, another audience has entered her consciousness. This is embarrassing to admit, and she has stayed extra busy in order to distract herself. But she buttons her shirt and thinks of Terry Jenkins and how his smile lights up when he comes through the cafeteria line at school.

He's the social studies teacher for the junior high, and his class schedule now has him in the last lunch shift. When Jodie stands behind the counter dipping up food, she is encased in an apron, plastic gloves, and a hairnet. So she was startled to look up the other day to see his brilliant green eyes watching her. She says hello to all the teachers, but she was compelled to say hello and then return his gaze. He was smiling.

“What do you recommend from today's menu?”

She laughed a little. “The tater tots are nice and crispy.”

“Can't go wrong with tater tots.” He took his tray, nodded, and was on his way. That was all that happened. But his look—and she realizes this just now, as she pulls on blue jeans—was the same look Mack used to give her. The same twinkle, just on the edge of laughter. The same acute interest. Yes, interest.

She is too young to be without sex, yet she has been without it for some time. The depression stole what passion Mack had left, and the meds that now keep depression at bay mute other feelings as well. At least that's what Jodie assumes. Mack has said little about it, only referred to the several medicines he has to take and told her they have side effects. They have not ventured to talk about anything more specific. When Mack looks at her, as he did this morning, she knows that some light remains in his gaze, but it is shadowed by so many other things.