The Vocabulary of Guns

55.

Maginnis’ mom is sitting on the porch of her house on Constantinople Street, sipping from a can of Dixie beer. She greets me with a toothy smile and gives me a hug and a wet Irish smooch.

“Aren’t you working?” she says, and when I tell her no she offers me a beer. Yes, I need a beer. I stood for ten minutes in the billiards room at TC’s house hearing JW’s cries of love turning into cries of pain and fear. I hear ‘Gabriel’ bouncing around the walls of the great and unforgiving Victorian. I hear Grandma creeping about, looking for sin. I heard the refrigerator, full to the brim with food, snap on and run angrily, controlling my thoughts. I stood next to the wall of books across from the carom table, admiring TC’s father’s collection of the complete works of the Marquis de Sade. ‘You have become them,’ I said to myself. ‘You have become one of them too. An attacker. Therapist. The Rapist. That’s you.’ And then I left the billiards room and left TC’s House of 10,000 Delights and drove a few blocks over to Maginnis house, ½ a two-story double, circa 1900. It’s bright orange and somewhat rundown, characteristic of the Maginnis clan. Flashy and a bit weird at the edges. They’ll all go on to rule empires of commerce, all nine of them or however many Ms. Mac has these days. She adds them like house plants. Her own kids, other people’s kids, homeless high school students. Miguel lives here from time to time when he’s not slaving for Uncle Sam. She’s got a heart bigger than the Antarctic continent and one day it will break it half, simply fail her at her moment of greatest grief, not for a kid or a kid’s kid, they’ll all be knuckleheads but fine, no it will finally shatter for this place, her adopted city, New Orleans and all its sorrows and deceits. Someday she’ll watch from afar the flood waters engulf man and machine. She’ll hear the stories of commandeered hospital pharmacies, looting, untold violence, rape and murder and shame. And it will kill her stone dead. But that’s a long way from tonight, baby blue. Ms. Mac is right here giving you a can of Dixie and saying, “So what’s up?” and you could say, oh nothing, and she’d chat about the weather or her new tandem bicycle or any random thing or you could open your heart to this great and magnificent woman, mother to us all until the end of time and beyond and tell her, tell her, let it out Gabriel, let it out, it’s killing you man, dying inside. Tell her everything, every terrible detail and how the frying pan got so hot JW jumped out, straight into the fire and you could not have done a damn thing, she’ll remind you of that but it won’t matter, it’s Sisyphean, this task, always pushing the chance back up the hill, the chance that you could have just taken a ride to Houston to see her, maybe on the 4^th of July. And bow your head young man and weep into the bosom of Ms. Mac. Weep long hot tears of shame and anger and terrible sadness. She’ll hold you close and hard and pat your back and bite her lip and cry a little too and say under her breath ‘Those son-of-bitches, those son-of-bitches,’ again and again and again. Her kids will appear on the porch and bite their fingers and leave again. Music will come on from upstairs. Prince. You can’t escape him. Dig if you will a picture, says the Purple One. You and I engaged in a kiss. The sweat of your body covers me. And someone upstairs is singing it, one of the Maginnis girls, and she’s got a sweet voice that contrasts with Prince’s growl and yipes. And Ms. Mac will look at you, not even imagining what you are planning on doing, and she’ll say, ‘It’s gonna be all right. You'll be all right. You’re a good kid, Gabe. A damn good kid.’ And she’ll have a kid fetch you another beer. ‘Tick tock,’ says her watch. It’s almost nine p.m. You have to get on the road soon but the road sounds hard and faraway. You’ve had a long day, a long life. Lay down on the Maginnis community couch. Just for a minute. Five minutes. Ten at the most.