Shhh...Mack's Side (3 page)

“Dad
, can I go to Grandma’s instead?” I looked to him for help. My mom ignored me and continued to pack.

“Sure, what’d your mom say?”

“I swear you’re the most ignorant man on earth,” my mom snapped, tossing fancy lingerie to her bag.

“You wearing that?” my dad asked with raised eyebrows.

“Shut up,” she said, giving him the eye. They didn’t have to hide anything from me. My ears were just fine. I was old enough to put two and two together. I heard the screaming matches they didn’t care to hide from me, and I heard the moans from the closed door later on the same night.

“Please, Dad,” I begged.

“McKenzie, stop. You’re not going there. We’re only going for one night. Go find something to do.”

“Are you going to have make
up sex?” I asked, touching the black lace.

“What? Who told you that?”
my mom asked with a frown.

“I watched it on Sex in the City.”

“You’re not allowed to watch that show.”

“Well, I couldn’t sleep.”

“Go!”

I pouted, stomping my way out. My life sucked. It was stupid. I should just run away. Run away to Michigan with Grandma and Grandpa Coen.
It wouldn’t do any good. They would never miss me. I ran away to Gia’s garage once for two hours. I was mad at my mom because I wanted to go to the mall. Gia got new roller blades and was outside, going up and down our street.

My mom wa
s bitching up a storm to my dad. Trying to work and ignore her at the same time, he half listened. Like he always did. Never. My mom was furious because she had to listen to me whine about it until she either took me to get a pair, too, or Gia put them away. She wasn’t going to put them away. She was rubbing it in. She was enjoying knowing I was on the other side of the curtain, envying her new rollerblades with sparkly wheels.

“Why the fuck wouldn’t she just pick McKenzie up a pair
, too? She did that knowing McKenzie would drive me crazy if I didn’t take her to the store. She’s going to try and steal this restaurant listing. She’s trying to keep me from digging into it before she gets a chance. You take her, Mark. You take her to get new rollerblades.”

“No. She doesn’t need new rollerblades. Just because Gia gets something, doesn’t mean McKenzie has to have it
, too.”

What?!
“Yes it does,” I whined. I should have begged my mom for them away from my rational dad. I didn’t want him making sense to her right now. I was trying to be manipulative.

“No
, it doesn’t. Now go find something to do before I give you something to whine about. I’m trying to work.”

“Yeah, Mack. Your dad’s trying to work. It’s Sunday, remember?” my mother sarcastically replied,
ushering me out of the den.

“Like you’re not going to work, Liz. I’m not stupid. If it wasn’t for you wanting to work
, you’d already have her in the car to shut her up,” my dad accused. Bam. I was right. My dad knew her, too. Not that he had room to talk. It was football season and a Sunday afternoon. He was hid away with his nose in front of graphs and pie thingies instead of screaming at the television like I knew Gia’s dad was doing.

“Just work, Mark. Your job is more important than mine.”

Great. Not again. “Mom—Mom—Mom,” I tried interrupting to stop the fight. “Mom. Mommy.” I didn’t want to listen to a fight. I wanted new rollerblades. “Mom. Mom. Mom.”

“STOP!” my mother screamed.

“You go buy her the rollerblades that I’ll be throwing over a nail in the garage in few days when she’s on to something else. Here, take my credit card. Why don’t you see if you can buy her some morals while you’re at it? You sure as fuck aren’t going to teach her any.”

“Mom. Mommy. Mom.”

“McKenzie, so help me god, if you don’t stop.”

“If you don’t stop, M
ommy will go buy you what you want,” my dad explained the consequences of me not shutting up soon. It really could go either way. I still had a chance.

“What are y
ou going to do with her, Mark? Huh? You think maybe you can be a dad once in a while, too?”

“Why? She’s going to have new rollerblades regardless of what I say. Why wouldn’t she? Gia got some. How the hell do you expect me to teach her anything when you’re always competing with Melanie?”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Mom. Mom.”

“It means you just got a new car last year. I’m paying over a thousand dollars a month in car payments now because you had to have a new car. Melanie got one. You had to get one that cost just a tad bit more,” my dad yelled, holding his fingers about an inch apart.

“You don’t pay my bills.
You’ve never paid my bills”

I sighed, now the fight was going to go into the money part. That’s how it always was. I went up to my room
defeated, and packed my backpack to run away. I fell asleep in a lawn chair in Gia’s dark garage. The fight was over when I came in the back door to my mom cooking dinner.

“Do you have homework to do?” she asked
, not looking up from her cutting fresh vegetables right in front of me. She didn’t even look for me.

“Was competing with the Edwards always an issue?” Lila asked.

I turned my attention back away from the busy streets below, returning to the present. “Yeah, I guess so,” I confessed, sitting
on the sofa in front of her.

I liked Lila. She was quite a bit older than me, but she practiced in a way I hadn’t experienced before. Most of the therapist
s I’d seen throughout my twenty-six years always wanted to go deep, talk about feelings and emotions. Lila didn’t do that. Lila let me tell my side of the story without passing judgment. Tossing in a question here and there like that, she’d get me back on track. She had a certain way she practiced. Like nothing I’d ever seen before. She was smooth in a sneaky sort of way. She could have you talking about something you hadn’t planned on in the flip of a switch.

“Let’s stop here. When you come back next week I want to discuss the visions you mentioned.”

I left with a prescription of the new meds Lila was trying me on. I wasn’t sleeping well, and I needed to be sleeping. We had Fashion Week coming up at the magazine. I didn’t have the energy to do Fashion Week on no sleep. I needed my sleep for the next month.

Absolutely wonderful, just great. I slipped off my shoe with the dangling heel and tried like hell to hang on to the umbrella. Of all days to wear a skirt. The wind whipped my dark hair, sending wet strands to my face. Squinting my eyes from the sting of my own hair, right to the eyeball, I struggled to make it to my door.

Thank god my doorman loved me. Charles walked half way up the sidewalk
to shelter me with an umbrella. One that wasn’t being blown to smithereens.

“You’re my favorite person in the whole world,” I sang, taking shelter in
his much-better-than-mine umbrella. Mine was going in the trash. Stupid, stupid umbrella. And shoe. Stupid shoe. 

“You’re very welcome. Tak
e the elevator today, Ms. Perry.” He nodded, holding the door with a bright white smile. Normally, I slipped off my shoes and walked the twenty-one stories to my apartment. I didn’t do it for the healthy exercise.  I did it for the exhaustion. My theory being the more fatigued I was, the better chance of sleep I had. I liked Charles. He looked out for me in a sense. He never came out and told me that. He just assured me that he was worried once when I’d gotten back from a five day trip. I probably read more into it than I needed to, but it felt good to have someone worry about me and wonder where I was.

I did take the elevator. I’d punish myself tomorrow.

“You have a good night
,” he said with a nod. Dismissing me with my broken shoe, he took my discombobulated umbrella. No sense in taking it upstairs. It was never going to serve its rightful purpose again. That was about the extent of our conversations. Charles was polite, friendly, and all business. I imagine he was trained not to be too friendly. He had a job to do and it didn’t consist of befriending the tenants.

I checked my cabinets for food, knowing I wouldn’t have much luck. A bag
of potato skins. Yuck. I spit and sputtered stale potato skins to the sink, tossing the bag to the trash. Two pop tarts, not my favorite kind. They were strawberry with no frosting. Somehow I picked up the wrong box. I hated plain pop tarts. Gia liked the plain ones, not me. Stupid rain. It could have waited until my belly was full.

“No.” Swipe. “No.” Swipe. “No. Swipe,” I audibly said, trying to pour my one glass of wine. Days like
this was when I wished I would have never made the one drink rule. I was going to want more. “No. No. No.” I continued my search, swiping my thumb over the ginormous list of delivery. Nothing sounded good. Placing an online order, I decided on cheese pizza from Mario’s.

I showered, wrapped my hair in a towel
, and slipped into my soft white robe. Nursing my one glass of wine, I sipped it here and there, needing to savor it as long as I could. Or I could just break that stupid rule and finish the bottle. No. No. I wasn’t doing that. That would break my promise. Shaking my head, I forgot about the stupid rule, why I had made it in the first place, and got to work. I had a deadline. That’s what I needed to focus on. Deadlines.

I didn’t spend the last almost three years of my life working
to get where I was to slack now. I had to keep up. Sliding my glasses up the bridge of my nose, I focused on my screen, hoping the photo shoot was waiting in my email.

My stomach growled, thinking about the cheese pizza. Taking notes and
sorting photos, I started my plan for the layout. Ignoring a call from my mother, I buzzed the pizza up. Sniffing, savoring the smell, I lifted the cardboard lid. Hmmm. Heaven.

Did I take my meds?
I wondered, staring at the pizza. I hated anchovies and slimy mushrooms. That’s what Gia liked. I hated sharing pizzas with her. I didn’t want those nasty fish things anywhere near my food.

Gia used to chase me around the room with her tongue out. I’d scream for her to stay away from me. Her breath smelled like Mrs. Belter from Physic
s class. That old lady, forgot-to-take-a-bath-for-a-few-days kind of smell.  

I dumped Gia’s side in the trash. I couldn’t look at it so close to mine. Had it not been anchovies and mushrooms, I would have blamed the pizza shop. I couldn’t blame them. I was sure
, for whatever reason, I ordered it myself.

I made sure I took the handful of pills
before going to bed. I thought for sure I’d taken them earlier, but apparently not. They were right there. I placed my hands over my head and breathed. Slowing it to a nice steady pace, I did the ritual exercises I’d been taught. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. As soon as I felt calm, I started the next phase. I could hear the sounds of the relaxing ocean in my head. The breeze from the sea touched my skin, and I sucked in a long, relaxing breath. The sand beneath my body radiated warmth from my bed. I could almost see the bright sun, piercing my closed eyes while my cheeks welcomed the heat. Cognitive behavioral therapy. Bullshit. That’s what it was. Experts could call it what they wanted, it didn’t work. 

And phase three. Sleep. Peaceful sleep that would last for all of two hours. These sleeping pills didn’t work any better than the last ones. Deep sleep consumed me. Nothing was erroneous. Everything was qui
et and still, until it wasn’t.

“Mack. Mack. Can you hear me? Over here. Come on, Mack.”

Wind chimes blew in the distance and I could smell a warm spring rain. I was crying. Why was I crying?

“Mack. Mack.
Where are you? Can you hear me? I can’t find you, Mack.”

That was it. That was when
the wind chimes were so loud I’d wake up, clinching my chest, soaked in sweat. Sucking for air, I would heave. In and out. In and out. The loud sound of my own breaths, panting for dear life, never ended. It didn’t matter how many times my meds were changed, it was always the same. It was always the same. The new meds helped for a while, and I rested peacefully for at least five hours. That was good for me. I could function on five straight hours. It was a couple months of nights like these that left me exhausted.

I’d been down this road before. Upping my meds would do absolutely nothing. The last time I did that,
Lila was on a cruise and I ended up in a psych ward until she was back on dry land. Three days. Jane, my boss, was ready to send out an all-points bulletin on me. I made up some excuse about having to fly home after my grandmother passed away unexpectedly. I had no cell phone service.

I didn’t really have to explain myself. Jane knew I was unparalle
led to the new generation. Jane said I was rare. It wasn’t every day that an employee like me came along. This new generation wanted everything handed to them in an eight hour day. Nobody wanted to work for anything anymore. I heard this lecture time and time again, every time I did something spectacular. I didn’t do it to be
ahead
of anything or anyone. I did it to occupy my mind, stop the childhood voices, and forget that night. 

Deciding I was so worked up about Mr. Nichols being up for parole again, I breathed. Long. Deep. Breaths. In and out. In and out. I coiled up like a rattlesnake, wrapping my arms around my legs, and closed my eyes. Deep breaths. In and out.
Seven years. Mr. Nichols was coming up on seven years of being taken from civilization and having his rights ripped from him.

I don’t even think it was the thought of him getting out. I hoped he did get out. I needed the day to come and go, stop being reminded of it. I wasn’t sure I could handle it if he served the entire ten years. This was the second time he was up for parole. I couldn’t do it anymore. I would write the letter my mother hounded me over and over again. I’d write it and inform the parole board that I had forgiven Mr. Nichols and I think he has served his time and paid his dues.

I never wrote the one my mother insisted I write. I never confessed how I was so messed up because of that night, or that I wake having nightmares because of that night. I never told them I was on medication, and was up to four different prescriptions, just to stay afloat and cope.

I never told them any of it. It would have been a lie. I was messed up before that night ever happened. That night just spread the frosting, evenly over the top.
Seven years wasn’t the magic number that I had been dealing with my issues.

“It’s not real, Mack. It’s not real,” I told the empty room, trying to calm the adrenaline running through my veins at a rapid speed. The only way to describe it is to imagine those times when something horrific has happ
ened. That first initial response of a disaster. A close accident, missing an oncoming driver by centimeters. You get that rush that takes a while to dissipate and even out the nerves. Your muscles turn to jelly and your heart beats from your chest.

It had been a while since it had got
ten this bad. I just wanted the day to come and go, so I could move on with my life. I had a magazine to lay out.

“It’s not real. It’s not real. Seven. Seven. Seven years. Seven days in a week. Jesus preformed
seven miracles on the Sabbath day. Lucky number seven. It’s not real. Seven Wonders of the World. Seven continents. It’s not real. Seven colors in a rainbow. Seven rows in the periodic table. There are seven deadly sins. It’s not real. Seven years of bad luck when you break a mirror. Rome was built on seven hills. It’s not real. Seven astronauts were killed in the Challenger. Seven dwarfs. Seven year itch. The 7-eleven on the corner has grape slushy’s. The opposite dots of a dice add up to seven. It’s not real.” I breathed long, deep breaths, forcing my mind to venture to safer places. The number seven. The number of years Mr. Nichols had served thus far.

“You look like shit. You okay?” Colton asked.

“Yup, let’s get started,” I ordered, avoiding eye contact.

“We have a month. Chill out. Get her some coffee, Jane,” Colton teased, turning to our boss and York Fancy’s Editor in Chief.
She flipped him off and passed the buck down to her assistant.

“Make coffee in the conference room. We’re going to be there for the next month,” Jane
ordered Adina.

I spent the day with Colton and Jane, mostly listening to the chatter about new trends, old trends, what worked last year, what to do different. Both Colton and Jane went through photo after photo, searching, sorting, tossing, un-tossing.

“Do you have anything to say about this at all?” Jane finally asked.

“I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well today. I’ve got a killer migraine. I’m going to take a break and grab a sandwich.”

Jane looked down to her designer watch, taking up three inches of her wrist. “Okay, that’s a good idea. I need you on board, McKenzie. We have to pull this off.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ll be fine
, don’t worry.”

My entire week went that way. Sleep was virtually impossible. I knew what I had to do, but I was trying to hold out as long as I could, hoping my creative mind would kick in without doing it. I talked to
Lila about it the first time I had seen her. I explained how I would come off my meds when I needed to be creative, or like now. When I needed sleep. I was so tired. I needed sleep. She made me promise to never ever do that, explaining how dangerous it could be for me. She had no clue.

I could use Colton. I just had to
work up the audacity to do it. It wasn’t like he didn’t know. He found out once when we were working on a photo shoot in L.A. It wasn’t on purpose. My medication was sitting on my bathroom sink in New York. I remembered getting them ready to go, but I couldn’t remember packing them.

It was the first year Mr. Nichols was up for parole and my sleep was replaced with visions of the trial and wind chimes. I was going on four
, nonconsecutive hours of sleep in three days. Colton and I had just worked a twelve hour day, and I was exhausted. I went back to my room, bathed and fell into bed. I sat up when I realized the fuzzy feeling I felt in my head was due to not taking my medicine. I forgot to take it that morning, so it was already starting. Digging through my purse, barely lifting my head from the pillow, I searched for the three bottles of pills, knowing I had better take them before I started going crazy. I didn’t want Colton to see that side of me. He wouldn’t understand, and he would probably tell Jane. They weren’t there. I searched everywhere, dumping the contents of my purse to the floor. I panicked and called Lila. I had to have them. The best she could do was the following morning.