Mackenna on the Edge Read online

  In the year since she had returned home after her parents’ deaths, Mackenna was rarely seen or heard from around the house, and her mood was almost always melancholy. After twenty years of varying degrees of estrangement from her family and childhood home, she was a veritable stranger to the people who had essentially raised her with their own children during her parents’ innumerable absences. And, after a year in residence, though the dynamics had changed somewhat, the difference was not considerable.

  “Oh darn,” Mackenna exclaimed to no one in particular. “There’s the phone. Well, I guess that’s a good sign.” She pulled the thick, yellow rubber gloves from her hands and tossed them onto the floor where they landed in a small cloud of white plaster dust. “I’ll get it—why don’t you guys take a break.” She rubbed the older woman’s back and said lovingly, “You too, Izzy.” She started for the library then turned suddenly, casually addressing the fifty-six year old housekeeper, without regard to the phone ringing incessantly in the background. “Oh, Iz?”

  Izzy Aldama, who was wearing a pair of her husband’s grey coveralls, two sizes too big and rolled up at the wrists and ankles to accommodate her own five-foot-one-inch frame, answered with a tender tone in her voice Mackenna always believed was reserved just for her. “Yes, love?”

  “Since Cook couldn’t make it in today, would you mind… you think you can manage to whip up something to eat for everyone?”

  “Aye, don’t be ridiculous, girl.” Izzy smiled broadly and said with more than a hint of an Irish brogue, “It won’t be the first time in thirty some-odd years I’ve fed this bunch. C’mon fellas, let’s see what kind of leftovers Cook’s got in the kitchen. Ricky, angel, have you eaten yet today?”

  “No, Gram, and I’m starvin’ to death!”

  “Oh you…” she kidded, and gently cuffed her tall teenage grandson on his chin, “You’d be starvin’ two minutes after supper!”

  “Now, Mama,” Estevan interrupted, his Cuban accent starkly contrasting his wife’s, “don’t bother the boy.”

  Their son, Rico, playfully grabbed his son around the neck in a headlock and lightly rubbed his knuckles on Ricky’s head. “Yeah, Ma—trust me, a whole person can live for a week on what he normally eats in a day. Half a day won’t kill him, right kid?” Ricky laughed and play-wrestled with his dad.

  Nearly out of the room, Mackenna stopped mid-stride again as the phone continued to ring. “Estevan,” she said across the room to the older man, “Shall we start on the second floor when I’m off the phone?”

  “Yes, of course, Mary-Mackenna,” he replied and attempted to ask about details when Izzy interrupted with her usual mock-stern tone. “There’s not gonna be a phone call to answer if you don’t pick it up, lassie! Hurry up now. Shoo! Estevan, darlin’, it’s my job as Ricky’s Grammy to ‘bother the boy,’ and as for you, Rico, he’s a growin’ boy and he shouldn’t be skippin’ meals. You think you’d be so strong and handsome if I let you skip meals when you were a boy?”

  “Gram… I’m not a boy anymore!” Ricky whined with exasperation. “I’m thir-teen!” he added emphatically just as his voice broke, going quickly from a warm baritone to a high prepubescent squawk.

  “You’ll always be my granbaby boy, Ricardo Sean, Junior,” Izzy said to the red-faced teenager as his father snickered. She immediately turned her attention to the lingering Mackenna. “Now you better get that phone, girl—it’s not gonna ring all day now, Mary-Mackenna. Hurry up and I’ll bring ya a plate in, all right love?”

  Mackenna smiled at the ease with which Izzy was always able to handle many things at once. She was so maternal and completely in charge, but in a gentle and compassionate way. “Don’t worry about me Izzy—I’m not hungry right now. Maybe a little later.”

  “You gotta eat…”

  “Later, Iz —” Mackenna waved behind her as she headed again for the library, her slight limp causing Izzy to shake her head.

  “You’re a difficult child, Mary-Mackenna,” she called after Mackenna with the tenderness of a mother’s devotion in her voice. “Always have been. I’ll fix you a plate and you can eat when you’re ready, all right love? C’mon gents… Rico, Estevan. Ricky, be a love and run outside and tell Xavien, your momma, and your Auntie Moira dinner will be ready in half an hour—and they better not be late.”

  “Sure, Gram.” “C’mon now… Estevan, Rico—I think some potatoes that need peelin’ are callin’ your names. Let’s go, boys.”

  SIX

  The Shakes

  “Mackenna? Mackenna, is that you?” The shrill voice crackled through the phone with a frantic energy bordering on hysteria.

  “Yes.” Mackenna’s response was flat, still unsure of the identity of the panic stricken voice on the other end of the line. She stood impatiently in front of the desk in the library, her clothes covered with dust and grime. With a weary swipe of her free hand, Mackenna pushed the strands of soft black curls away from her face and waited for the caller to identify herself.

  “Oh god, I am so glad I finally got a hold of you… I’ve been trying to reach you all day!”

  Camille. Mackenna’s posture slumped ever so slightly.

  “Are you all right?” Camille asked with urgency. “Mackenna?”

  “Camille, hi.” Mackenna halfheartedly acknowledged Camille’s existence as she leaned back on the edge of her father’s desk; her long legs stretched out in front and crossed casually at the ankle. “Yes, I’m fine… just… a little tired,” she said as she rubbed her aching leg—she wasn’t keeping up with her daily stretching and she was paying for it in spades.

  “Oh, I know.” Camille settled back into her pillow and cozied herself in for a long conversation. “Talk about rude awakenings!”

  Mackenna remained aloof and uncommitted to the conversation and answered briefly, “Yeah.” She winced as she sat down heavily in the large leather desk chair, too weary to continue standing. She gently ran a hand over the worn leather upholstery, dragging her fingers over the brass upholstery tacks just as she had as a child. Only then, she was sitting on her father’s knee and incessantly quizzing him about “why this” and “why that.” Papá, what are these shiny things on the chair? What’s a poultry tax, Papá? Why don’t the other chairs in the house have them… don’t they need them, too? How come? How come, Papá? But Papá…

  “I swear,” Camille exclaimed. “I’m in shock, I tell you! I’m thinking of getting the hell out of town before it’s too late—god, you don’t think it’s too late, do you?” Camille Barton, nee Camille Louise Bartonucci and the former Mrs. Aron Zolenstein, M.D., sat in her bed surrounded by piles of the things she valued most in the world, their proximity to her based on their order of importance.

  Camille’s California King bed, expertly clothed with custom bedding designed by a local upholsterer-to-the-stars, was her designated safe zone. Propped up against several over-stuffed goose down pillows, Camille herself wore faded jeans—worn-out in just the right places—a white undershirt and her cherished, perfectly broken in and custom-made cowboy boots. Despite an unseasonably warm day, even for L.A.—eighty-five degrees in January—Camille also wore a fifties-style flannel bathrobe decorated with cowboys chasing Indians wrapped tightly as a makeshift security blanket over her clothes. She just had to have it when she saw it in Aardvark’s Odd Ark, the second-hand clothing store on Melrose Avenue. The robe reminded her too much of her childhood—a time of innocence and naiveté—and it was just too luscious to pass up, even though it was so un-PC she had to hide it whenever she had guests. Whoever invented political correctness had to be a heartless, busybody bitch, she decided.

  As opposed to the natural disaster of which she found herself an unwilling participant, Camille’s perfectly spiked hair (“neutron hair” as her friends preferred to called it, much to her delight) was an absolute unnatural disaster. With short, nearly black hair alternately clumped or sticking straight out of her head, entwined with streaks of “premature” grey—grey which was
bought and paid for in a Beverly Hills salon—Camille looked more like an aging punk rocker with a really good hair day than a literary agent who wouldn’t be caught dead in public without the proverbial paper bag on her head if her hair wasn’t stunningly perfect.

  At least she wouldn’t on a normal day. But this was not a normal day. On this day, and depending on how things went, probably only on this day, Camille Barton was a survivalist and didn’t give a rat’s ass what she looked like or who saw her. Her main objective was to survive any further imminent disasters with her life and body intact, with as many important possessions as she could carry or quickly throw out the window if the need suddenly arose.

  Camille’s interpretation of disaster preparedness, after-the-fact, included being literally encircled by the following survival items: a landline phone, a portable phone for when the power came back on, and a cellular phone (after all, what good was one without the other?); a Sony Watchman color television, a fax machine (she made a note to herself to look into getting a cellular fax just as soon as the immediate crisis passed); her Rolodex, which included practically every name and phone number of anyone she’d ever spoken to (or hoped to), a laptop computer, several small piles of manuscripts; and, her black Haliburton aluminum briefcase, stuffed to overflowing with very important papers.

  At the end of the bed lay two rather high heaps of designer clothing with another pile of matching designer shoes sandwiched between them, a black Versace lambskin motorcycle jacket, two banker’s boxes stuffed with cherished memorabilia and a six-pack of white, un-perfumed, quilted toilet paper (because you could never have enough toilet paper in a disaster).

  Crammed between her legs were six large bottles of Evian water, in addition to an opened, half-eaten, family-size bag of Oreo cookies. A large bag of unopened, fat-free, salt-free baked potato chips and a treasured box of Snackwell’s chocolate fat-free cookies also insured Camille would not starve or thirst to death, at least not in the immediate future. A stack of precariously balanced already gutted Oreo cookies perched on her upper thigh guaranteed it. Closest to her, tucked underneath, between her body and her pillows, were a 5 D battery Mag-Lite flashlight, a Smith & Wesson .38 police issue revolver, a 9mm Beretta pistol, two spare ammo magazines and two additional boxes of ammunition. She could barely move without disturbing the delicate balance of her survival stores, which was fine with her. She didn’t want to—voluntarily or involuntarily.

  “I mean,” Camille continued rather dramatically, “My god, wasn’t that just the most frightening thing? And can you believe how much damage it’s done?”

  “Actually, I don’t have a clue how bad it is,” Mackenna admitted. “I’m totally cut off up here, but I imagine it’s pretty bad.”

  “Really? Haven’t you had the news on at all?”

  “Nope.” Mackenna shrugged. “Power’s off. Been off all day.”

  “Don’t you have a portable TV?” Camille queried with urgency.

  “No.”

  “Not even a radio?” Camille was incredulous.

  “Nuh uh. The only radios we have around here are in the cars. We’ve just been too busy to go and sit out there. We weren’t really prepared…” Mackenna shrugged as her voiced trailed. Her mind wandered slightly as Camille continued describing the mayhem from her point of view. She absentmindedly traced the jagged impression above her left eyebrow, lightly dragging her finger back and forth several times over the aged, barely visible scar and then down the side of her face along the larger, but no more visible gash healed in the shape of an oblong z. She then followed the scar running from the outer corner of her eye. Jagging down her cheek and extending down to the near center of her chin, she slowly traced down and back up over the scars to begin the tracing ritual once again.

  “But yeah, I know what you mean about not being prepared,” Camille concurred finally. “But who wants to think about preparing for these things? I mean, they’re horrible enough when they happen out of the blue… who would want to think about it on purpose? Personally, I’m in sincere denial when it comes to earthquakes, y’know? Still, I can’t get over how big and violent it was—I actually think I’m in shock. I mean really, really in shock.”

  Camille competently twisted an Oreo cookie to reveal the undamaged white creamy center—“the Middle”—and proceeded to slowly and systematically scrape the filling off the cream side of the cookie in small precise sections with her upper teeth, savoring each portion as if it was a rare delicacy. The naked, de-creamed cookie itself was added to the stack on her thigh for later consumption, when a whole cookie-half at a time would be placed in her mouth and gently smashed against the roof of her mouth with her tongue, and finally and deliciously devoured—one by one. Oh, if only she had some milk! “Was it as bad up there?” she asked with her mouth full of Middle.

  Smick smack.

  “Well, yeah… I thought it was pretty bad. There was a moment there…” Mackenna trembled slightly, unwittingly drawn into the camaraderie of mutual experience. “I thought we were going to go right down the hill, but we didn’t…” Realizing she had just stated the obvious, Mackenna added wryly, “I guess that’s pretty apparent.” Visions of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland when she was eight filled Mackenna’s head… eerily similar to what they experienced earlier in the morning, she thought.

  “What about the house… any major damage?” Camille inquired as she devoured another Oreo.

  Smick smack.

  “I don’t think so. So far, everything looks all right…” Mackenna wearily relaxed back into the chair, propping her feet on the imposing desk—a previously forbidden act when her parents were still alive. “And in the house, hmm, let’s see…”

  Smick smack.

  The irritating sound coming from the other end of the phone was beginning to drive Mackenna to distraction, and sounded suspiciously like someone eating with their mouth open.

  Smick smack.

  In a huff, Mackenna flung her feet down onto the floor and abruptly sat straight up in the chair. Clearly annoyed, she demanded, “What is that noise? Are you eating something, Camille? In my ear?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry…” Camille looked at the growing stack of gutted cookies precariously balanced on her leg and added sheepishly, “Oreos. I guess I’m a little stressed… I’ll try to be a tad more quiet. Sorry.”

  “Oreos? Camille! Those are filled with lard!” Mackenna’s face contorted with a combination of disgust and disbelief. “Animal fat?” Boiled down animals and sugar—how revolting, Mackenna thought to herself.

  “They are not! They used to be—I’m not even sure they ever used to have lard in them. Probably an urban legend. I think you’re thinking of Hostess Cupcakes —”

  “Are you sure? I could have sworn they had —”

  “I’m looking at the ingredients right now, Mac… no lard. They’ve got vegetable shortening…” she added, hopefully.

  “That’s still fat, Camille.”

  “I know, I know. But I can’t help it…” Camille whined. “They were left over from Christmas and… well, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just having a fat attack. It happens when I’m stressed out, and I can say with certainty, I’m pretty much stressed out right now.” Camille was suddenly overwhelmed with shame. “You know how it is, Mackenna. Anyway, you know my convictions don’t stand a prayer when confronted with stress or fat attacks… or in this case, both! I’ll probably have to practically live at the spa when this is all over.”

  She conveniently failed to mention the empty quart container of vanilla Hagen Daaz ice cream on her night stand with tell-tale smudges of Trader Joe’s gourmet hot fudge around the rim, or the also empty party-size bag of blue corn chips on the floor—both leftovers from the holidays and devoured completely and without remorse. No remorse at the time, anyway. Mackenna didn’t need to know every detail of her life, Camille decided, and quietly slipped another cookie in her mouth.

  “That’s just too gross, Camille… of all the cookies to pig o
ut on.” Mackenna made a gagging sound to accentuate her displeasure. “Ugh.”

  “Okay, okay… you’re absolutely right. Now that you’ve reminded me about what’s in them, I could practically barf myself! Really! It’s just so hard to remember that something that tastes so fantastic can be so, so —”

  Mackenna interrupted. “Fattening?”

  “I was going for politically incorrect, but… well, yeah. Right… okay. I won’t eat any more. As a matter-of-fact, as soon as we hang up I’m going to throw them out because you are absolutely right. Anyway, if I’m going to eat cookies, I should be eating my Snackwell’s… crisis or no, right?”

  “Right,” Mackenna retorted and decreed, “Oreos are poison.” It felt good to win sometimes, but under the circumstance, Mackenna didn’t feel particularly victorious. She didn’t even know why she cared or why she felt compelled to be so bossy about what Camille decided to put into her own body. Another sign she wasn’t herself these days.

  “I know… I know. I shouldn’t even let crap like this in my house let alone my body. What was I thinking? I’m so embarrassed.” Camille reached for another Oreo and continued with the eating ritual that was perfected in early childhood, savoring ever so quietly, careful not to arouse Mackenna’s suspicion and prompt another indignant tirade. Vegetarians and reformed fat eaters, they’re always so pushy! Better feign remorse, she thought, and said with a hushed voice and a hint of embarrassment, “I hope you won’t… you know… mention this to anyone…”

  “Please, Camille…” Mackenna said indignantly, “I’m not a narc, for cripe’s sake.”

  “Great. Hey, anyway, at least I’m not smoking… right? Of course I would… if I could find anything around here to goddamn smoke, but…” Afraid of another tirade from Mackenna, Camille stopped mid-sentence. “Never mind,” she added quickly. There was nothing worse than a reformed smoker in Camille’s mind… unless you included vegetarians.