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“Jim, put me in his ear, and get off the line.” The familiar voice was terse and clipped, and . . . furious, Jim realized.
“Shit, Mac, we’re back in twenty . . . eighteen now. Can't it . . .”
“Now! Do you hear me? And buy us some time. Run the 60 second promo for Elliot’s special.” Wow! Whatever Will had done, Jim was happy at that moment not to be him.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jim replied, and switched the feed over to Will’s earpiece, interrupting Will’s review of notes for his next interview. “Will.” ACN’s star journalist looked up. “The president’s on the line and would like a word with you.”
Will looked confused. “Of the United States?” he asked.
Jim snorted. “You wish. No, of Atlantis Media. I'm running the long promo for Hirsch’s healthcare show to give you guys more time.” Before Will could ask for clarification, Jim switched his feed to Mac.
She didn't say hello. “My God, Billy, have you gone senile?” Since it was a rhetorical question she didn't give him time to answer. “Did you really tell Daniel that he was conceived on the floor of your office?” This time she paused.
Jim watched as the leonine visage of America’s elder statesman of broadcast journalism morphed into that of a middle schooler called to account by the Principal.
“Maybe,” Will mumbled.
“What were you thinking? He's twelve years old!”
“I told him not to repeat it to anyone,” Will countered defensively. What had he been thinking?
“He told me,” Mac practically shouted back.
“You think he thought maybe you kinda knew already, seeing as how you were there?” Will replied, feeling the need to defend his son. “Look, Mac, it was In the car on Father’s Day when he and I drove out to meet you, Charlie and Dunk in the Hamptons. He has this girl he likes, someone in his class, I think, and before he told me about her, he started asking me about love and attraction . . .”
“And you just felt compelled to discuss our sex life with him,” Mac interrupted. Again, it wasn't really a question so Will said nothing. Although she was still clearly irritated, Will thought he detected the first inkling of her coming down off of the ceiling.
“No,” Will said calmly after a moment. “Look, I know that he's young, but there’s something about Danny, a maturity that neither Dunk nor Charlie had at that age. Furthermore, you know, it is in my job description to discuss sex with our sons, and talking in the abstract only goes so far. Tell me you’ve never revealed anything personal about us in conversations with Charlie.”
There was a pause. Gotcha, Will thought triumphantly.
“Not when she was twelve,” Mac shot back, not quite prepared to forgive him.
Just then, Jim’s voice broke in, “back in 10, Will.” He quickly exited, hearing only half of Will’s “okay.”
“Mac,” Will said, “I didn't give Danny the gory details. Your secret’s still safe with me.”
Almost against her will, Mac snickered. “See you at home,” she said. “I’ve got the guest room all ready for you.”
Will had barely wiped the smile from his face when Camera One blinked live.
The Long Island Expressway, Father’s Day, 2029, three weeks before.
“May I ask you a personal question?” The voice woke Will up from the daydream he was having about taking a sunset walk along Long Island Sound that evening with his wife. She and their two older children, Charlotte and Duncan, had gone ahead two days before to Grandma Lee’s house in the Hamptons, where the extended “family” were assembling to celebrate Father’s Day. Will had volunteered to stay behind in the City to wait for Daniel, his and Mac’s youngest child, who was returning from a school trip to Washington, D.C. The daydream of planning for a sunset seduction had started with Will recalling his conversation with MacKenzie earlier that morning.
“How do you want to celebrate Father’s Day, Billy?”
“I was thinking we'd do a reenactment of the moments I became a father.”
Mac had snickered. “Seriously? You want me to moan and grimace and scream and pretend to be in labor?”
Will had suspected that she was being purposefully obtuse. “Well,” he drew out the word as if contemplating the question, “the moaning and screaming parts are fine with me, and the grimacing is totally up to you, but I was actually referring to the more seminal moments in my journey to fatherhood than delivering the children.” In his mind’s ear, Will had heard the words, “seminal; well done, my boy,” spoken with a chuckle in a cultured British baritone. He missed his father-in-law deeply, and knew that this first Father’s Day since Ted McHale’s death would be gut-wrenching for his wife.
Mac had laughed, and replied, “you know, Billy, your celebratory choices are remarkably consistent, not to mention, limited.”
“Are you complaining?”
“Not in the least, darling. Not in the least.”
Now, Will looked over at his youngest son and the only other occupant of the car. “Sure,” he replied, “ask me anything . . . shoot.”
“Do you . . . “ Daniel cleared his throat in a gesture reminiscent of his mother. “Do you . . . ever . . . um . . . masturbate?” Dan tugged nervously at a loose thread on his jeans. He'd used the proper word instead of some slang term like “beat off”on purpose to indicate that he wanted to have a serious conversation. It was one of his grandfather’s most oft-repeated maxims that the more delicate the subject matter, the more formal the language should be that is used to discuss it.
“You mean, like now . . . or when I was a kid?”
Danny nodded, still not looking at his dad, and whispered, “now.”
Will thought about it. “Well, no . . . not really,” he continued, trying to think of the last time. Sometimes with Mac . . . but he certainly wasn't going to go into that. But while he wanted to be honest, he didn't want to answer in a way that might convey that there was something wrong with the act or with having the conversation. “I mean, everybody does it. When I was a kid, you know, and before I married your mother . . . “ Will made a gesture to reinforce the idea that the activity in question was ubiquitous. “But since then . . . you know . . . It's only when I’m away from home for a long time . . . Sometimes then at night . . . if I’ve been talking to Mac,” Will added almost inadvertently, and felt the heat rise on his neck. “I can't believe I just said that,” Will commented, as much to himself than to his son.
“Really, Dad?” Daniel turned to look at him with the same bemused expression Will had seen a thousand times on MacKenzie’s face. “Paleeze. You think we don't know? I see how you look at Mum. Sometimes . . .”
“How do I look at Mum?” Will couldn't resist asking.
Daniel continued to stare at Will, as he paused to give the question a moment’s thought. “Like she’s a great triple scoop double banana split you’re about to tuck into,” Daniel replied.
He was referencing his father’s favorite desert, usually eaten only once a year on Will’s birthday. In the tradition that had started when the children were little, Will would blow out the candles Mac had set into the ice cream scoops and dig into the bowl, while the little McAvoy’s watched closely, waiting for the moment when he'd lean back and gasp breathlessly, “you gotta help me, guys . . . I just can't do it all by myself,” after which Mac would produce four more spoons and the entire family would come to his rescue.
Danny continued to look at Will knowingly, saying only “whoa,” when his answer caused Will to veer sharply out of his lane, nearly driving the car onto the shoulder, and activating the lane correction sensors. “Jesus,” Will thought to himself as he considered putting the Tesla fully into auto drive for the duration of this conversation. But he liked driving, and was old-fashioned enough to believe that humans should maintain control of automobiles. His son, his barely pubescent youngest child, not yet in high school, had just told him that he'd observed sexual desire and carnal hunger on his father’s face. And, he'd done so with all the ease and style of an experienced raconteur entertaining an audience. Sometimes, frequently, Will was simply amazed at the wit, the maturity, the intelligence, the sheer “MacKenzieness” of his children.
Daniel, who would indeed one day relate a version of this conversation on a late night talk show in response to being asked his favorite memory of his father, was looking straight out the windshield with just the hint of a bemused smile tightening his lips.
When Will didn't speak, Daniel cleared his throat. “When did you first know? About Mum . . . that you wanted her . . . “ he paused, and seemed to suddenly become embarrassed, “you know, to be our mum? Was it like the first minute that you saw her?”
The first minute that he saw her. Will smiled, thinking about that moment. Walking toward him down the corridor at CNN to claim his show and his life, the “applicant from the BBC,” young, tall, lithe, brunette, in a pencil skirt, with those legs that wouldn't quit. Will could see the scene in his mind’s eye as vividly as if it’d happened yesterday, and not more than two decades ago.
“Probably not that first minute, although I couldn't help noticing that she was gorgeous.” Will paused. “Seriously, Dan, I think it was about an hour later when my interviewing her turned into a screaming match over some international policy position that I'd written for Bush 41, and I realized that she wasn't just the most attractive woman I'd ever met, she was the most intelligent person I'd ever met. After that, she owned me.” Will paused, and then smiled impishly, “but that was like 10 in the morning, so it was probably another 12 to 14 hours before I started fantasizing about . . . making her someone’s mother.”
Danny laughed out loud, obviously getting the joke, and appreciating how his father had turned the phrase he’d used in his question into a double entendres. “How did you tell her? About how you felt?”
Will wondered where all this was coming from and where it was headed, but rather than ask, he opted to just go with the flow and answer his son. “I didn't tell her . . . not for a long time, anyway. I spent months trying to tell myself that it was all a very bad idea. There were so many reasons why it wouldn't work out. First, she was way too young for me . . . practically jailbait . . . .”
“Jail bait?” Dan interrupted, not understanding the phrase. “What’s jail bait?”
“Um, it's kind of a slang term for a woman under 18.”
“It is?” Dan’s brow was furrowed. “I know lots of girls younger than 18, but I've never heard them called jail bait before.”
Jesus! With thoughts of explaining to the Head of Dan’s school why his son was calling the girls in his class, “jailbait,” Will endeavored to nip the situation in the bud. “Actually, it's not something you’d ever say to a girl,” he advised, “or even about a girl. It's considered kind of crude. I'm really sorry I said it about Mac. I shouldn't have,” Will sighed, and launched into a short, and he hoped, age-appropriate explanation of statutory rape.
“Okay. I get it,” Danny said when Will concluded. “So, you thought Mum was too young for you.”
“More like I was too old for her. I couldn't see how she'd be interested in an old guy like me. And, she was my EP . . . the best one I'd ever had, and I didn't want to mess that up. What if I asked her out and she didn't like me that way, and then things would be uncomfortable between us at work. What if we dated a little while and then broke up, and we couldn't work well together any more. I really didn't want that to happen.”
Dan nodded sagely. “I hear you,” he said in a way that made Will even more sure that there was something behind all of this beyond idle curiosity. “So, what did you do?”
“I made myself be content with being her friend. We'd eat lunch and sometimes an early dinner together. We'd talk and talk and argue and talk some more. On other days, I'd call her at night and we'd talk for hours about all sorts of things, about music and books and work and politics.”
Is that where the Nightbird came from?” Danny asked.
“No, that started later, after we were together.”
“So, what happened? I know Mum took you to a wedding on your first date.” Danny giggled. “Did she have to ask you out?”
“No!” Will exclaimed in mock offense. “Well, not exactly. After about eight months or so, I screwed up my courage, got tickets to a play, here in New York, and asked her to take the train up from D.C. with me. But she turned me down ‘cause she’d promised some friends from Cambridge that she'd read a passage from one of Dostoyevsky’s books at their wedding.”
“So, you got rejected?” Danny asked, in a tone that suggested that the idea of his famous father ever being turned down for anything was almost beyond imagining.
“Yeah,” Will laughed. “Hard as it is to believe, it does happen.”
“Were you upset . . . when Mum said no?”
“Upset?” Will laughed again. “I was crushed, devastated, gutted, as Mac would say. As much as I’d thought I'd come to terms with my feelings for her, in that instant of disappointment, I realized that I had no defenses against MacKenzie McHale. In fact, I was so caught up in my newfound misery that I almost missed hearing her asking me if I wanted to go to the wedding with her.”
Will was bracing for more questions about the wedding date when Daniel abruptly changed the subject. “I was an accident, right?” he asked.
Will paused, not knowing what to say. He wouldn't lie, but he certainly didn't want his agreement to translate into something Danny would take as the equivalent of not having been wanted.
“Oh, come on, Dad,” Daniel scoffed at the delay. “Dunk and I are insanely close in age.”
“So I've been told,” Will responded dryly, then shook his head and smiled at the memory of traveling to Surrey when Mac was almost 5 months along with Danny. “Your mother, who is the bravest, most direct, even confrontational person I know, couldn't bring herself to tell Gran that she was pregnant again. So, we arrived in the country that summer, and Maggie found out by taking Dunk out of Mum’s arms and hugging her.” Will chuckled softly. “I thought she was going to kill us.”
“So how did I happen?”
Will ignored the question. “You know, Danny, just so we’re clear, unplanned and unwanted are two very different things. You were wanted from the moment we found out your mother was pregnant. You were wanted by everyone. Gran was just concerned because two pregnancies very close together can be hard on a woman’s health.”
“And was I? Hard on Mum’s health, I mean.”
Will laughed. “No. She was strong as a horse carrying you. In some ways, you were her easiest pregnancy. She had the least morning sickness with you. Little or no pain from her scar stretching. Her asthma went into total remission for the whole nine months . . . for a couple of years, really. Her back ached the least. Even her feet and ankles didn't swell until the last few weeks before you were born.”
Danny nodded, a self satisfied, almost smug expression on his face. “So, answer my question. How did you guys come to have two kids so close together?”
Again, Will ignored the question. “And, happy . . . God, Danny, she was so happy to be having you.” Will laughed again. “I think she could have done without all the ribbing and wisecracks she had to put up with about being pregnant again so soon after Dunk. She threatened to fire Uncle Don if he didn't shut up about it.”
Danny’s eyes grew wide with disbelief. Don Keifer was his mother's right hand man. “She didn't mean that.”
“No, of course she didn't,” his dad replied.
“So, why did she get pregnant with me so soon after Dunk was born?”
“We were just lucky, I guess.”
Danny shot him a sour expression. “Didn't you guys use birth control?” he asked pointedly.
At first, the question surprised Will. What the hell did Dan know about birth control? But then he remembered that sex education began in the Fifth Grade. Actually, come to think of it, growing up in Nebraska, he knew a couple of people who claimed to have had sex in the Fifth Grade.
“No. Yes.” Will sighed. “It was complicated. She'd just started it again a couple of days before. We went to a party, and on the way home, we stopped at my office so I could pick something up that I'd forgotten, and one thing led to another . . . .” Will trailed off. “It wasn't exactly planned, but we thought we'd be okay because she was nursing Dunk and that produces hormones that act as a sort of natural birth control. Except obviously not well enough . . . .” He ended with a little shrug.
“Your office?” Danny repeated, a smile spreading across his face. “Are you fucking kidding me? You and Mum did it in your office?” He began to laugh. “Holy shit! That’s so cool!”
“It is?” Will asked tentatively, purposefully ignoring his son’s language.
“Yeah. I can't believe that you actually did it in your office.”
More than once, Will thought, but didn't say.
“I mean . . . Mum, really? My mum?”
“Well,” Will drew out the word with a twinkle in his eye. “I'm pretty sure it was your mother. Brunette, dark hazel eyes, slim, about 5’8” with spectacular legs. Yeah, I'm almost certain I was with your mother.”
Danny laughed. “How did you get Mum to agree to . . . anything that crazy?”
“Hey, man,” Will replied, “I'm a very persuasive guy.”
New Year’s Eve 2016
“Hasn't anyone ever warned you, Billy, about the dangers of saying no to a woman whose fingers are wrapped around your balls,” Mac purred, looking up at Will through lush dark lashes.
“Oh, Lord,” Will whispered.
Mac was high as a kite on Kaylee’s magic cookies.
It was a sight that few had ever seen because she rarely smoked, vaped or ingested marijuana. She'd smoked a joint a few times with Will when they were at CNN, but it made her cough and wheeze. Even in Iraq, where the herb flowed like water, Mac hardly ever partook in the nightly numbing of mind and senses indulged in by almost everyone else, CNN and military. It wasn't high-mindedness on her part, or even health consciousness. It was that the few times she'd gotten stoned, she’d had great difficulty keeping her emotions in check. She'd been overwhelmed by the intensity of the loss and grief that she felt . . . Will, their baby, her life as his EP . . . all of it gone forever. Unlike the vacant, alcohol-induced haze into which she had to be vigilant not to escape too often, being high on weed focused her emotions so that she felt like the sole survivor of some horrific cataclysm.
Since she and Will had been back together, Mac had vaped a few times (much less coughing), but truthfully, they didn't drink much either. This was partially the result of the fact that Mac had been pregnant, trying to get pregnant or nursing for almost thirty-six of the forty-nine months since “Election Night.” (In News Night parlance, there were many “election broadcasts,” but November 2012, when Will set the world on its axis again, would always be “Election Night” to everyone who had been there in the bullpen.)
But it was New Year’s Eve, and Will and Mac, like the rest of the News Night crew had put in an appearance at the formal ACN party thrown by Pruitt, and then high-tailed it out as soon as was socially acceptable and not career suicide. One by one, or in small groups, they'd made their way to Don’s and Sloan’s apartment to welcome in the New Year. Seven-week-old Walter Duncan McAvoy and two-year old Charlotte were having a sleep-over at Grandma Lee’s, along with Rebecca Halliday, Rebecca’s year-old granddaughter, and their nanny from Atlantis World Media Daycare. Although Mac had fretted that Duncan was too young to be away from her for almost eighteen hours, Lee had insisted that they all could manage it. They had enough frozen expressed milk to last eighteen days, Leona had reassured Mac, and argued that this would be a good way for Dunk, who was about to start being left half-days in the daycare center twenty floors away from his mother, to learn to adapt. Charlie had gone easily to drinking expressed milk from a bottle as well as from Mac’s breast, but Mac had her doubts that Duncan would be as cooperative. But after extracting promises from both Lee and Rebecca that they would call at the first sign of trouble, Mac had kissed Duncan’s sleeping forehead, given Charlie a big hug and departed childless.
As the hours passed with only reassuring texts from Lee, Mac started to enjoy her footloose and fancy free New Year’s Eve. Nonetheless, it had taken some cajoling by Will and a lot of discussion with Kaylee for Mac to even consider eating half of one of Kaylee’s magic cookies. The debate between the two women had gone on and on, with several iPad internet consultations to determine the degree to which cannabinoids are detectable in expressed in breast milk. Finally, Neil couldn't stand it any longer, and had cried out, “For God’s sake, Mac, Dunk will be fine, but either eat the bloody thing or don't,” whereupon with uncharacteristic impulsiveness, MacKenzie had stuffed an entire cookie into her mouth, chewed and swallowed.
She'd been the life of the party. Will had finally dragged her away at “only half one,” saying that he really needed to pick up some notes he'd left at the office so he could work the next day on a major interview that he had coming up with a key member of the increasingly dysfunctional (to Will’s way of thinking) Trump transition team. Now, he was alone in a dark room at a little after two in the morning with the most attractive woman he'd ever met who was stroking his balls and telling him she wanted to make love.
“God, Kenz, you think it's easy, or I want to stop?”
“I don't know,” she answered, a little pout creeping into her voice.
“It's just . . . I'm worried . . . you recently had a baby . . . a big baby. You can trust me on this. I was an eye-witness.” Mac thought of their obstetrician, Danny Shivitz, telling her that Will had practically swooned to the delivery room floor at the sight of blood as Dunk’s big head tore her a bit, pushing out of the birth canal. She was completely healed now, of that Mac was sure, but Will apparently was not fully recovered. “I don't want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you. Mac, shouldn't we give it more time?”
“You won't hurt me, Billy. I promise. I'm fine. Really. Both Danny and Catherine have inspected the spot that tore and it’s completely healed.”
Will looked unconvinced, so she continued, “apparently, you can’t even see the stitches Danny put in which means that they’re totally absorbed.” When the word stitches made Will blanch, Mac abandoned medical logic and decided on a different tack. She pressed her body against him, and spoke so softly that he almost had to strain to hear.
“Billy, you won't hurt me. You’ve never hurt me during sex. You can’t hurt me if I'm ready,” she said in a breathy voice. Then, Mac lowered her voice another half-octave and Americanized her accent. “You just have to get me ready. You know how to get me ready, don't you, Billy?” She arched an eyebrow, imitating Betty Becall, and paused just long enough to hear his breath hitch. “You just put your lips together . . . and blow.”
Will felt the smile on her lips as he covered her mouth with his and gently and slowly lowered his wife to the floor. After several long breathless kisses, Will nibbled and blew on the soft skin behind his wife’s ear and then began a languid dissent down her body. Fumbling with the zipper of her evening gown and the clasp of her bra, he freed and caressed her breasts. He would never be sure exactly what possessed him since he usually shied away from Mac’s ultra-sensitive breasts when she was nursing, but that night, he took one nipple into his mouth and sucked tentatively, one, two, three times.
With a moan, Mac arched up toward him, pushing herself against his mouth. When his mouth filled with warm, sweet liquid, he nearly choked in surprise.
“Don't . . . stop . . . don't . . . stop,” Mac gasped, pushing against him insistently.
He didn't. He swallowed, and then he sucked her dry.
When Will’s hand found the soft folds between her legs, Mac was more than ready. It required only a few caresses for her to climax violently against his hand. He entered her with agonizing gentleness. As it frequently did, that first moment, the first sensation of his flesh sliding against MacKenzie’s filled him with feelings of love and need that were almost excruciating in their intensity. He froze and let the experience overwhelm him. He later thought that it was possible that his wife thought his fears and indecision had gotten the better of him because in the next instant, Mac took charge, thrusting her hips up until he was fully inside her and then rocking insistently until he could think of nothing else except how good she felt and how deeply he loved her.
It was almost three in the morning when Will thought his breathing was again regular enough to try for speech, but since the only things he could think to say were the words, “Kenz,” “wow” and “shit,” he assumed that his brain had yet to check back in. It was a night Will vowed not to forget, never guessing that fate would supply him with a souvenir to help preserve the memory. No, in those first hours of 2017, as he held his wife, his love, his most trusted partner tight in his arms, Will thought only about what in the fuck he’d ever done to deserve pleasure like he'd just experienced and whether he could get Kaylee to bake him a couple dozen of those cookies.