For Mac, his father was an incomprehensible entity he tried to follow, obey, and please, but from whom he never received a clear sign, guidance, or reward for his efforts. Interestingly, this dynamic slightly reminded him of his relationship with God, so over the years, Mac convinced himself that perhaps, like religious belief, the love between a father and a son was an act of faith, something he had to believe in blindly despite having no tangible evidence of it. Even if his father had never said he loved him, he had to believe that he did and maintain his unwavering conviction despite everything.
(...)
It was well known by everyone that Mac insisted on acting as if he had a good relationship with his father, and trying to reason with him about reality was futile. In the occasions when the gang discussed childhood and the terror of the relationship between parents and children (which often resembled more a competition to see who had suffered more than a liberating release), Mac preferred to stay out of the fight, calling the others ungrateful brats, convinced that there was no worse offense than a child speaking ill of a parent. The rest found this facade ironic, as the absence of love and affection in his home was an open secret. No matter how fervently Mac tried to convince himself that he could find words of love in his mother's silences, or the alibis he sought to excuse the fact that his father had never dedicated words of affection to him, reality came to light in the form of cigarette burns that traversed his skin for not keeping quiet when he should have or the terror that glimpsed in his sincere eyes every time he recounted that his father had come home from prison.
Perhaps the stubbornness with which he clung to the idea that there was still room for love in his home stemmed from the fact that there was a time, during childhood, when Mac believed he had seen in his parents the potential to love and be loved (perhaps not towards him, but between them), although over time that certainty seemed increasingly elusive. He also felt that his father had set a countdown for him to become someone he wasn't, a deadline to discover how he should be, and as the years approached the end of the deadline he had been given, resentment and disappointment had grown inside his father, who never looked at him with even a hint of tenderness again. It was as if during childhood he had had certain suspicions about his son that adolescence had ended up confirming, and the hope that he would change and become what he wished he would be had been buried beneath the certainty that his son was a disappointment.
All Luther seemed to want to give Mac were cold stares, silence, insults, or blows. Mac couldn't even keep alive the hope that, even if he couldn't love him, perhaps in his return his parents would find a way to reconcile to be happy together again, as the only words they exchanged were grunts and insults. The longest sentences Mac heard his father direct at his mother were always about him, blaming her for how she had raised him while he had been absent, pointing out the great disappointment he had become.
"If I had been here, none of this would have happened," he heard his father say one afternoon when he came home from school. He had muttered the words under his breath, but loud enough for Mac to hear from the entrance. "That's what happens when kids grow up without a father to teach them how a man should behave." Mac closed the door behind him silently and walked to his room, pretending not to have heard anything. For a moment, he fantasized about his mother coming to his defense, explaining to his father how he had been a good son during the time he hadn't been there to take care of them, how he had protected her and made money selling drugs at school, but, unfortunately, Ms. Mac only let out a sigh of exasperation and continued smoking her cigarette in complete silence.
Deprived of protection from his mother and feeling increasingly rejected by his father, Mac could only obsess over the fact that the insults Luther directed at him every day now came laden with a new poison, trying to dig into already open wounds instead of drawing new scars. His insinuations seemed to want to reveal that he knew how he felt for Dennis, that he was aware of his desires and impulses. It was as if, despite being locked up in prison for most of his teenage years, his father had had access to every episode of his life, as if he were an omnipresent entity who saw and knew everything.
(...)
That night, sleeping hugged by Dennis on that wide couch, Mac dreamed of his father's stern gaze, and the insults he had heard him utter to his mother repeated over and over again in an agonizing nightmare. Therefore, once morning came and he had said goodbye to his friend, Mac went to church to confess, anxious to find relief, forgiveness, or guidance to lighten the burden that had embedded itself in his being, convinced that if God didn't punish him for the feelings that settled in his stomach when sleeping embraced by Dennis, it would be his father who would detect them as soon as he saw him and would scold him for it. As he uttered the words "forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," his mind evoked the image of Luther on the other side of the confessional, wanting to believe that his words and the forgiveness that would be granted to him upon reciting the Hail Marys that the priest deemed necessary could be transmitted to his father by the grace of God.
(this is an excerpt of a fanfic i'm writing!! i wanted to share this snippet where i reflect on mac's relationship with luther during his adolescence. i thought you guys might like to read it even if you don't want to read the whole fic!!
but in case you do want to read it... here it is: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48676942/chapters/122787364 <3)
