a couple of squirrel feeders on my next visit.
“Squirrel feeders?” she said.
“Yeah, it’s just a little platform I build. You strap it around a tree and put food on it for the squirrels. I have six in my own backyard. The squirrels love it.”
“Well, okay, I guess. But don’t let daddy see it. He’s always complaining about the squirrels running over our roof.”
He complains about that?, I thought. I always liked the sound of squirrels running over my roof.
Whenever Nancy came to my house my mom and dad always treated her like the baby daughter they never had. We’d sit in the living room and my mom and dad would show Nancy pictures of my life in chronological order, beginning with bare ass baby shots.
“And here’s little Mackenzie riding the Merry-go-Round at Palisades Park,” my mom said. “He never went anywhere without that cowboy hat. Oh, and here he is on his tenth birthday. He got that scrape on his chin from falling off his bicycle. Poor little thing.”
Nancy liked my mom and dad, and I was glad because if we decided to get married within a year we’d have to live with them. But if we put off getting married for a year or more, then we could afford our own apartment. When I told Nancy of this option she thought it best if we waited.
I really loved Nancy, but early in our relationship I never actually said the words “I love you.” I don’t know why I couldn’t say it; maybe it was because I had never said it to anyone before and the words just seemed so foreign to me. Nancy was always saying she loved me, and when she did I’d just say, “Me too.” I don’t think I consciously avoided saying the words, they just never came out of my mouth. I didn’t know it bothered Nancy until one Sunday night while we were saying good night on her porch. We had our arms around each other and kissed one last kiss.
“I love you,” she whispered.
“Me too,” I said.
“Me too what?”
“You know.”
“No I don’t know. Tell me.”
“Well, you know I do.”
“Do what?”
“You know.”
“So, say it, Mackenzie.”
“I…”
“Yes?”
“Lub-you. There.”
“Such conviction,” she said with a smirk.
“Well, I do.”
“Well, I want to hear it.”
“Okay.”
“What do you mean okay? Say it!”
I shrugged my shoulders and mumbled, “Loveya.”
She gave me a playful shove. “You’re hopeless. Goodnight.”
“See you tomorrow?” I asked.
“Yes, I suppose.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“No, I’m not mad at you, you dope.”
“Okay, see you tomorrow.”
I walked to my car parked in the street. Nancy was still standing on the porch as I got in the car. I saw her waving her arms frantically. I quickly got out of the car again.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
“I love you, Mackenzie Peck!”
I really wanted to say the words she longed to hear. I looked up and down the street. No one was around. I took a deep breath and held it. I was going to shout out so the the whole neighborhood could hear. I wanted the whole world to know I loved Nancy Marshall of Maplewood, New Jersey. And I wasn’t ashamed to say it. “Me too!”
Chapter Seven
Death should be reserved for soggy Winter days. Everything in Winter is cold and colorless anyway. Dreary, lifeless, rock-hard landscape. Windows closed, curtain drawn days. Winter is perfect for death.
Death should never occur during the Summer. Never on warm, sun-caressed, stroll-on-the-beach days. Death should especially never occur on the Garden State Parkway.
But that’s exactly what happened.
It was late August. Nancy and I were driving north near exit 120 when I heard and felt the muffled clong of metal against metal. The engine gave one last burst of kinetic energy and fell silent. I let the car coast to the shoulder of the Parkway. Nancy and I looked at each other. She wanted to laugh. I wanted to cry. I know the car was old, but I wasn’t ready to part with it yet, especially since Nancy and I had worked so hard to improve its appearance.
I opened the hood and Nancy stood at my side as I looked over the six-cylinder smudge pot. The engine seemed ridiculously small for such a large compartment. There were no fluids leaking, no billowing steam, I had no idea what was wrong.
“Can you fix it?” Nancy asked.
I pulled out the oil dipstick, which was about the extent of my mechanical ability, and could see the engine had plenty of oil. I came to the only feasible conclusion: 106,000 miles was all one could expect from a car held together by spit, twine, and glue.
“It’s dead,” I said, glumly.
I left the hood open as a distress signal while Nancy and I sat on the grassy slope along side the Parkway. It was a fitting end to a less than perfect day. The day had started with great promise, blue sky, bright sun, a cashed paycheck. But the promise was broken early. We had gone to Seaside Heights to spend a day on the beach. While I had protected Nancy with plenty of sunscreen lotion, I decided to do the manly thing and get a tan the natural way. In hardly any time at all I had a pinkish glow on my shoulders that felt like a dragon had breathed on me. Then for lunch we had walked up to the boardwalk for a sausage sandwich and I got a splinter in the fleshiest part of my foot. Later, while sitting on the beach in my tee shirt, a low flying sea gull christened the top of my head. And when I waded into the ocean to wash it off, some fat little kamikaze on his inflatible mat bowled me over.
We decided that for once we would try to beat the homeward bound traffic, so we started packing up at four thirty. That’s when I closed the folding chair on my finger.
Finally, the topper was the internal parts of my engine fusing themselves into a solid block of metal.
So there we sat, with grass stains on our shorts, looking at the traffic thicken into a slow parade, looking at the people looking at us.
Nancy put her arm around me and I grimaced.
“Ooh, I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot about your sunburn. Does it hurt much?”
“Only when I breath,” I said.
We
