My mother was mad at Aunt Vera for not telling her about my illness and just wanted to get out of there, but I had to say goodbye to Macon. I made an excuse about forgetting a pair of shoes and ran through the house to find her. I knew where she would be.
She’d taken down all the damaged paintings (leaving rectangular spots of lighter paint all over the walls, the contrast like a cherckerboard) and piled them in a heap beside my bed. When I walked in she was sitting in the middle of the mess, just staring.
What do you want? she asked. She said it quickly, defensively (one hand dropping to grip the frame of a broken canvas, as if she thought I might brandish a new knife and pick up where we’d left off). I knew better than to try to take another step toward her.
My mother’s here, I said.
Yeah, she said.
My father didn’t come, though. (A sympathy bid, and a pathetic one. But I had nothing to lose and I so desperately wanted her to look at me.)
She said nothing.
I’m leaving, I said.
Good, she said.
It was the voice she was using that hurt the most, that dead voice. It was the voice she used when we ran into that girl she hated who lived at the end of the street. It was the voice she used with Collin. But it wasn’t as though I hadn’t expected it. I’d spent the whole night expecting it.
I gestured at Night Playground, still hanging on the wall. I said, That one’s okay.
Yahoo, she said. She turned her shoulder a little, away from me.
Silence expanded in the room. I could hear the adults talking down on the driveway, my mother’s angry voice rising and falling. I didn’t have much time.
I looked down at the painting closest to my feet. It wasn’t really that bad at all. He’d only cut one corner. I said, You know, this one could probably—
Shut up, Jacob! Macon cried. She sprang to her feet.
I blinked at her. This was the first time, the very first time she’d ever stood up to me, or maybe to anyone. I was a little taken aback.
It happened so fast, I protested. I couldn’t stop him.
Oh, ok, she said snottily, her platitude now a sarcastic jab. She was finally looking me full in the face and right away I wished she wasn’t. She said, You think that makes it better? You shouldn’t have let them up here in the first place.
She shook her head, her blue eyes searching mine, and for the first time that day I felt the full force of my betrayal like a kick in the teeth. I swallowed and I almost tasted blood. A part of me wished I could.
I searched desperately for some excuse, some reason that would convince her—I hadn’t turned on her really. I was just a bystander. I was still hers. We were still us.
I-I just, I spluttered, I think— I don’t care what you think, she cried out, her voice shrill. She sank back down into her pile of ruined paintings. She shook her head at the floor. I could see the rage seeping out of her, like air out of a tire. Macon wasn’t the type to hold on to anger. She didn’t have that kind of hate in her.
When she spoke again it was so quietly that I almost missed it.
I never thought you’d take it this far, you know, she said sadly. I figured you’d eventually see that you and me was better than them. Better than… him.
My mouth opened as though to speak and stayed that way, widening and narrowing, like a dying fish.
She looked at me over her shoulder. She said, I though you’d choose me.
Hot tears slid down my cheeks.
I wanted to, I moaned.
I think we both know that’s not true, she replied. And it’s too bad.
The words she said next were delivered in a strange lilt. Her voice actually shook, and I would have taken it for disgust if her eyes had not been brimming with tears.
She said, It’s too bad, because being who they want you to be will never make you happy, Jacob.
(Years later Caroline Kalinsky, my prom date, would accuse me of breaking her heart when she caught me making out with Brandon Riley under the punch bowl table. But I knew then that I had only ever once broken a girl’s heart, and it was my cousin Macon’s when she was ten years old and I was thirteen and she spat my own words back at me. I know, because at that moment, my heart broke as well.)
If I hadn’t already been sobbing I would have started then. What amazed me the most (even through my weeping) was how thoroughly I’d underestimated her. Macon knew me far better than I knew myself, and I was suddenly struck by the fact that I really didn’t know her at all. Had I ever really tried to?
All along she’d been watching me, and waiting for me to set myself right. All along she’d let me think I was winning as I lost her.
I wanted to go to her, to weep on her, to prostrate myself at her feet.
I took a step forward, but she held up her hand. No, she said. She looked down and my gaze followed hers over all the mangled paintings littering the floor, like mountains and oceans of art, destroyed. Mountains and oceans that I could not cross.
She looked at me and her eyes were cold again. Just get out of here, she said.
And I left.
Epilogue
I didn’t speak to Macon again for six years. It was at the wedding reception of our cousin Kerry (which my mother had guilted me into attending by pointing out that I’d missed every family event since I’d started university) that I found myself once again thinking about that fateful summer. Macon was sixteen by then, and I was just about to turn twenty.
I spotted her from across the room, skulking by the bar, wearing an ill-fitting blue dress I suspected she’d borrowed from a friend who was much bigger than her, especially in the chest. Still, she looked beautiful, her blonde hair long and straight. She looked almost nothing like the child she’d been. She’d grown out of her baby fat. I, on the other hand, looked a complete mess, my shirt wrinkled and fraying at the collar, my suit jacket stained. I’d been stoned for most of the afternoon and my buzz was just now wearing off. I needed a drink.
I stepped up next to her without saying a word. It was a few moments before she noticed me. I smiled at her pleasantly, unsure if she would recognize me. I’d recently grown a beard and the last time she’d seen me, at someone else’s wedding three years before, my parents had been going through a very messy divorce and I’d hardly spoken to anyone. My father lived in Halifax now and coached high school football. My mother was engaged to a chiropractor named Gill.
But she did recognize me.
Oh, Jacob, she said flatly. (She was in her sullen teenager phase. Nothing that happened could get much of a reaction from her. Not even coming face to face with the cousin who’d ruined her life.)
Hi there, I said. How are you this fine evening? This is an exquisite reception, wouldn’t you agree? (I was actually still a little stoned. I always spoke in an affected way when I was high, like a bizarre imitation of a 1950s sitcom father. I also had the tendency to be overly honest. It occurred to me, a moment too late, that it might be better if I didn’t strike up a conversation with Macon right then.)
She gazed out at the dance floor, fidgeting with the silver bracelet on her wrist. This sucks, she said. I couldn’t figure out if she was talking about the bracelet, the reception, or being stuck talking to me. (I figured, all of the above.)
I said, I saw the article about you last month. I think it was just terrific, I mean really top-notch. The photos were especially impressive. The one of you, that close-up was pretty great. It really captured your essence, I’d say. Can I say essence? Do you know what I’m getting at?
I knew I was prattling, and that I sounded like an idiot, but I couldn’t stop myself if my life depended on it.
She gave me a look. I was sweating and I mopped at my forehead with my sleeve.
What’s the matter with you? she asked.
I need a drink, I replied.
Here, take mine, she said, and handed me a glass of white wine from the bar.
I just stared at her, I couldn’t help it. She was on
ly sixteen! Where were her parents? How had she gotten the wine in the first place?
Macon laughed at me.
Oh, okay, she said simply (and I couldn’t help but grin). You don’t want it? Get your own, then.
How’s Handle? I asked, just to change the subject. (Handle was the easier brother to enquire about. Collin, I already knew, had been caught dealing drugs to middle school kids the year before and there had been court dates set. Had he gone to jail? I wasn’t sure. I didn’t really care. He’d sent me a nasty letter after I came out which had been so thoroughly riddled with spelling mistakes as to make me almost pity him. In it he’d revealed that he’d always known I was gay, even when we were little kids, didn’t I know that? And of course, by that time, I did, though it certainly would have shocked the hell out of me at thirteen. They’d all know the whole time, even Handle. I’d finally realized this, months after I returned home, because in all the time I spent in their house that summer, sick with mono—the kissing disease—not once had anybody asked me who I’d been kissing.)
He’s over there, Macon said, referring to Handle. He was sitting at a table, his arm around a pretty girl with curly red hair. He was whispering in her ear and she was laughing and trying to push him away. Macon said, He has a different girlfriend every week.
Good for him, I said.
What about you? she said, turning to me. Got a boyfriend?
No, I replied with forced composure, though talking openly about my sexuality still mortified me. (I still had a lot of growing up to do.) You?
She smiled slightly, but didn’t deign to reply.
We stood around for a few minutes, saying nothing. I was starting to get that feeling I used to get around the girls I’d dated in high school, that desperate apologetic feeling. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t stand here next to her without bringing it up.
She was staring out at the dance floor again. Her parents were dancing in that way parents dance to fast songs—a little jerky, sort of trying to waltz and do the twist at the same time. They looked like they were having a good time.
Listen, I said, suddenly serious. She leaned in to hear me. I said, I know you must have hated me all these years, and I’m sorry. It was horrible, what I did. I was such an idiot. I know that. I want you to know that I know that and I’m so sorry.
She straightened up without any change of expression. I wondered if she hadn’t heard me. I took a breath to start the whole schpeal over again, but she interrupted me.
It was years ago, she said. I don’t hate you. I hardly even remember it.
I felt a flood of relief, six years of anguish leaking away. But then, just as quickly, I became suspicious. It had been too easy. She couldn’t really mean it. I remembered the look on her face when she’d come running into the attic. I remembered our last conversation.
But you stopped painting, I said. We broke you.
No, you didn’t, Macon said, shaking her head. You did me a favour.
A favour! This was too much. A pile of broken paintings on the floor could never be a favour.
She said, That break from painting helped me figure out who I was without the art. It helped me grow up.
But I hurt you! I cried. I took her by the shoulders, turned her to face me. She still had those big blue eyes. I said, That’s the worst of it. You shared your secrets with me, you shared your art and I took it and killed it. I hurt you worse than I’ve ever hurt anyone. And yes, I was just a kid and I had my own problems. But I used you. I took what you had and twisted it around until it was all about me. And Colli— Don’t talk to me about Collin, she said, averting her eyes. I wondered what it had been like, continuing to live in that house with Collin. What had he been like as a teenager? What else of hers had he destroyed?
I waited until she looked up again. I said, I’m sorry I hurt you, Macon.
Oh, ok, she said. And I’m sorry I let you.
I let her go and we stood in front of each other, a little awkward.
All that wasted potential, I said. All those wasted years. With your talent, who knows what you could have done during those years. Who knows how many paintings were never painted.
Macon frowned. Is that all that matters to you? she asked. The paintings?
Of course not! I was aghast. You were my best friend.
I was ten, sweetie, she said, patting me on the arm. We were kids.
You were a fabulous friend, I insisted. And you were a genius.
She gave me a look that was almost pitying. I was never a genius, Jacob, she said. I was just a little girl who liked to paint.
A drunken uncle came ambling over and elbowed himself between us at the bar, striking up a conversation with me about Virignia Woolfe. (What the hell is all that about, I ask you? I mean, why doesn’t the woman just say what she really means?). He seemed to think I was an English major when in fact I was studying Anthropology. In truth I was flunking out and within the year would drop out entirely and spend five months backpacking around South America. Around that same time Macon would start taking classes at the Art Institute in New York, having graduated from high school a full two years early.
Whether she would admit it or not, she really was a genius.
By the time I extracted myself from the uncle she’d wandered off and I didn’t see her again until the very end of the night. The party was winding down. People were lining up to say goodbye to the bride and groom. I was sitting at an empty table with my feet up, half-dozing. Then I saw Macon out on the dance floor.
She was swaying to the music, dancing by herself. Squinting, I realized she was wearing converse sneakers, just like those ones we’d worn years before. She was hunching and her elbows stuck out like wings, masking her newfound beauty, and all at once I was struck by a wave of nostalgia. I saw the Macon she was then: running beside me through the house, giggling like a fiend; kneeling over a canvas with paint in her hair, her brush poised for the next stroke; talking with me for endless hours about art, as if it was the only thing in the world worth talking about.
It only lasted a moment. Then somebody came up to her, taking her arm. She nodded as she was pulled into the conversation, leaving her dancing behind, and all at once she was herself again.
The Macon I knew was gone.
Table of Contents
COVER PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
CONTENTS
EXCERPT FROM THE SICKROOM
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
EPILOGUE
The Sickroom: A Novella Page 7
