And now, in more direct language than ever before, those pricks were talking in his ear. Now they were writing himletters.
Mack stopped in front of the old shed. There were no streetlights at all now, and pretty much all he could see was the outline of the building and the glow of his cigarette. The night was silent, though Mack swore he could hear a chorus of prick voices from all around the world, laughing at him. His head began to swim, and he felt rage sloshing around with the wine in his stomach.
He couldn’t even complain. His whole life, he’d had enough food and a decent place to live. He’d had his own opportunity and privilege bestowed upon him just by being born into the skin he was, he knew this. And even though he’d lost her so cruelly, he’d had his mother too, with her excellent soundtrack and her relentless drive to make sure her son had everything he could want. So yes, Mack was very aware that most people on the planet had it so much worse.
The thing was though, some had itbetter. And it was one of these better people who was screwing his wife.
He wished for his golf club then. He yearned to smack it against the dry, ramshackle wood, to feel the splintering of old boards as he beat the thing to death. But his iron was at home, and all Mack had now was the shirt on his back and the joint in his mouth.
You win, pricks.
In a single motion he flicked the joint from his lips into the tangle of weeds at the base of the small structure. He saw its red tip land and surge slightly, and then it went dark. He swayed on his feet, backward and forward, laughing at himself, at how ridiculous he was. How inept even at this. Nick Flack and David Whateverhisnamewas would be so disappointed in him; he couldn’t even play their prick game right.
The wind picked up, and the sharp blast of winter air made Mack think of Christmas, of pine trees and eggnog and log fires.
How would they do Christmas now? In their miserable gray identikit house, in this isolated neighborhood among all this damage Hailey had inflicted?
Mack had barely registered the thin curl of smoke snaking up from the weeds when an angry lick of flame appeared. He managed to stamp it out—he felt its heat through the sole of his sneaker—but then another burst of orange popped up, and another. Mack stood frozen as the fire spread along the vegetation at the base of the little building, but by the time the first board had ignited, he had turned and run for home.
27.
When I said that Cleveland had never burned, that wasn’t entirely accurate. What I meant was, Cleveland has never burnedto the ground, not in the transformational way that Chi-town did. The Mistake on the Lake has had its fair share of fire, to be sure. There’s the Cuyahoga River, of course, and, less than a ten-minute drive from Bratenahl, the Hough neighborhood exploded into six days of riots in the summer of 1966. Whole blocks went up in smoke, businesses were destroyed, four people were killed, scores injured.
It happened like this: tenants in the mostly Black neighborhood lived in overcrowded properties that were neglected by their mostly white landlords. The streets were filthy with uncollected trash, kids played with rats, there were building violations wherever you turned—you get the picture. It was 1966, and the city was a powder keg of police brutality, inequality, and racial tension that those of us who live in these gentler times would struggle to recognize. Even back then, civil rights experts saw what was coming and tried to get the situation addressed, but—shocker—nobody would listen.
No one knows for sure exactly what set the whole thing off, but most historians agree that the Hough riots had something to do with the Seventy-Niners bar on East Seventy-Ninth and Hough Avenue. In one account, a Black woman was denied the right to leave a collection box for her deceased friend’s children; another involved a sign on the door that read “No Water for N******.” Whatever went down, somebody in Hough had finally had enough. Somebody was the first person to convince a friend to head on down there, and once a crowd of three hundred or so friends had gathered outside the Seventy-Niners, somebody threw that first rock. And then somebody (maybe even the same somebody) lit that bar full of racist drunks on fire. Everything that burned after—the diners, the dry cleaners, the Chevys, and the converted multifamily houses—started with a single spark of rage.
Now you’ll get mad at me for saying this—madder at me for saying this than for anything that might happen later, I’ll bet—but it is not race that interests me about the story of the Hough riots. It is humanity, and that single moment when something ignites inside and coaxes from us—any of us—acts that we never before dreamed possible.
I’m not big on religion, but I am a believer in Free Will, and I’m fairly certain that God—or Karma or the Universe or whoever is pulling the strings—can never tell precisely when this fire will be lit, or what will draw it forth. All we can do is wait and watch for the smoke.
In other words, I never know exactly why they do it. But they almost always do.
28.
Hailey
Hailey was woken by the hollow feeling in her still-overstuffed stomach. She lay there, alone in bed, as the previous day played through her mind: raw turkey parts, the shock on her father’s face as she ran to him like a little kid, her drunk sister telling her that she’d always thought Mack was a jerk, that this kind of behavior after they’d driven three whole hours to spend Thanksgiving with him just proved it.
Eventually she got to the worst part, and Mack’s discovery of her night with David Rainier settled over Hailey like the flu. She would’ve stayed there in the brushed-cotton sheets forever, except that the four thousand calories she’d eaten and drunk yesterday were not sitting well. She leaped from bed and made it to the bathroom just in time. She was still retching when she heard Mabel’s voice behind her.
“Are you okay, Mommy? Mommy? Should I get Daddy?”
Hailey sat back and leaned against the side of the toilet cubicle. The library-themed wallpaper that had seemed so clever when she’d chosen it now made her feel like she was about to be crushed to death by the sepia-washed spines of a thousand books with no titles.
“Can you just get me a wet washcloth, baby?” Hailey said, and Nurse Mabel raced to fulfill this duty. “Is Daddy here?”
“He was sleeping in the playroom,” Mabel said. “I brunged him a blanket.”
“Brought. Thanks, Mabs, I feel so much better.” She pressed the cool terry cloth to her face, and she did feel better. Especially since it sounded like Mack was in a safe location: downstairs and far enough away that she had a minute to think about what to do, but not gone forever, which felt entirely possible and filled Hailey with a fear so great that she could really only sense the edges of it. She had fantasized about leaving Mack more than she would ever admit, even to herself, but never in her deepest, darkest thoughts did the end of their twenty-year relationship look like this.
“Can I try on my dress now?”
Hailey sighed. Mabel was obsessed with the Christmas dress Hailey had bought her. It was navy taffeta with a white velvet collar (both fabrics being impossible to get stains out of, Hailey’s mom had warned), and the skirt was printed with a forest of snow-covered pine trees. It had come from Italy, by way of an obscenely expensive children’s boutique in Chagrin Falls. Gigi had a similar number in pink and navy plaid; Hailey had spent almost five hundred dollars on the dresses and two pairs of black patent leather Mary Janes. It was a ludicrous amount, but she’d told herself it was for the Christmas card photos, and for the Shoreby party.
The party.Why would anyone schedule a Christmas party two days after Thanksgiving? Hailey’s stomach lurched again at the thought of it. She pressed the washcloth to her forehead.
“Please, Mommy?”
