A Fighting Chance

by T. L. Hayes

  Lorraine looked at her perplexed, then turned her attention to the present, unwrapping it gingerly. When she finally got it open, she pulled out a green sash and her eyes widened in surprise. She looked at Lou’s grinning face. “Really? Already?”

  “What is it, Mom?”

  Instead of answering Steve, Lou said to Lorraine, “You didn’t know it, but I was testing you this weekend. You passed into the next level. Congratulations.”

  “Oh, Mom, that’s cool.”

  Lorraine reached over and gave Lou a hug. “Oh, thank you so much.” When she pulled away she lightly swatted Lou on the shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Lou laughed. “Because I didn’t want you to be nervous. You did great, by the way.”

  “Keep it up and you’ll be a black belt in no time, just like Lou.”

  “Oh, I don’t care if I reach that or not. I mean, it would be a great testament to the work I’ve put in, but I don’t need that to prove anything. What’s that you always say, Sifu, belts are just for holding your pants up?”

  Lou laughed. “That’s it. And that’s a great attitude. That’s why you continue to do well, because you are focusing on learning and not on achieving.”

  “And this is such a pretty shade of green. Perfect for the holiday.” She draped the garment around her neck like a scarf for a moment, then she quickly took it off and looked at Lou with a sheepish expression. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be disrespectful.”

  Lou gave her a gentle, reassuring smile. “No, you’re right, it is a lovely shade of green and it looks lovely on you. It just doesn’t go with the rest of your outfit.” Lorraine gave her a grateful smile in return. Lou put her hand over hers. “It’s not disrespectful at all. I’ve often thought they would make great scarves myself—it’s just not my style.” Lou shifted her gaze to Steve, who was giving her such a warm look that she knew she was blushing, and she had to look away.

  “Thank you, Lou. You are a great teacher.”

  “Thank you. Now you’re going to continue your learning, yes?”

  “Of course. Have to learn all I can, just in case some of those men get too fresh. A little fresh is okay.”

  Steve was immediately on the alert. “What men?”

  Lorraine and Lou laughed together. “Would you listen to her?” Lorraine said.

  “Mom…what men? Have you started dating again?”

  “So what if I have? I’m old, not dead. A girl has needs.”

  Lou stifled a laugh.

  “Oh, gross, Mom, I don’t need to hear about your needs.”

  “Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to tell you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. Besides, I’m allowed to have a private life. I don’t have to tell you everything,” Lorraine replied haughtily, as she winked at Lou, who nodded in agreement.

  “Fine, don’t tell me. But if there’s a man in your life, I’d like to meet him. After all, you’re not getting any younger. It’s about time I had a stepdad.”

  Lou couldn’t hold it back anymore and laughed out loud. Lorraine appeared shocked and couldn’t find the words to speak.

  Steve went on in the same manner. “Don’t look so surprised, Mother. Fair is fair. If you can hound me about grandchildren, I can hound you about having a father figure in my life.”

  “Well, I suppose you’re right. Then you should know, I may have a date for New Year’s Eve. I trust you kids can get along without me.”

  Steve said dryly, “We’ll somehow make do.”

  Ignoring Steve, Lorraine looked at Lou and said, “Now it’s my turn to give you my gift. Stephanie, can you get it for me, please?” Steve went to retrieve it and handed it to Lou with a smile.

  Lou accepted the gift, which was wrapped very delicately, Lou thought, way better than she could ever hope to do. She took the paper off slowly. She opened the flat box that was big enough to hold a picture frame—which was what Lou had guessed it was, maybe holding a picture of Steve and her mother, which she would have been proud to have. But it was actually something quite different. Lou held aloft what looked like a piece of bark that had only that morning been sliced off the trunk of an oak tree, carved with a quote, and polished to perfection. It was a beautiful piece of art. Lou read aloud, “I never teach my pupils, I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. Einstein. I’ve always loved this quote. Lorraine, this is…this is beautiful. Thank you.” Lou reached over and hugged her and wiped more tears from her cheeks.

  “Oh, you are quite welcome. Some woman was selling her wood art at the craft show a few weeks ago and when I saw it, I just thought of you. It practically had your name on it.”

  Lou held it aloft, then turned it around for Steve, who stood there smiling, to see. “Oh, it sure does. It will have pride of place in my office.”

  “Good. Now, Stephanie, don’t just stand there like a post, hand her your gift.”

  “I was getting to that, Mother.” Steve went to the tree and picked up a smaller box and handed it to Lou as well. “I hope you like it.” Then she leaned down and kissed her on the cheek.

  “I’m sure I will.” She opened it to reveal a book of Elsa Gidlow’s poetry with a bookmark placed in the middle. Curious, she opened to the indicated page and saw that it marked a poem entitled “Love’s Acolyte.” She read it to herself and it brought tears to her eyes. She realized she was crying a lot that day and didn’t care. She set the book aside, stood, and put her arms around Steve’s neck and hugged her tight. Steve returned the embrace. Alluding to a line in the poem, she said, “Don’t be ashamed. It definitely wasn’t a small gift. I love it. Thank you.”

  “You are most welcome.” Steve kissed her on the lips, wanting to linger, but knowing now was not the time or place. She just held Lou to her for as long as she could, then released her.

  Lou stepped away, walked over to the tree, and retrieved her gift for Steve. She handed it to her with a small, nervous smile. “Merry Christmas, Steve.”

  Steve took the offering from her trepidatiously, hoping the small box didn’t hold what she thought it did, and not sure how she would feel about that if it did. She almost sighed with relief when she opened the blue velvet covered box to reveal a silver necklace adorned with something she couldn’t quite identify in an elongated W shape, with diamonds at five different points. She looked at Lou, confused. “It’s beautiful, but I’m ashamed to say I don’t know what it represents.”

  Lou smiled. “It’s Cassiopeia. The diamonds represent star points in the constellation.”

  Steve gasped when she realized what it was. “Oh my God. I just…I have nothing else to say. Just…wow.” Lou chuckled, but not unkindly, as Steve, at a loss for words, hugged her again.

  “You’re welcome.” Lou knew she’d picked the right gift because Steve’s eyes shone like the diamonds in the necklace.

  “Let me see,” Lorraine requested from the couch. Steve walked over to her mother and handed her the box, and Lorraine exclaimed appreciatively, “Oh, Lou, it’s just gorgeous. I suppose it holds some special meaning for you two?”

  Lou smiled at Lorraine, then at Steve. “It does.”

  “Steve, your girlfriend knows how to pick good gifts.”

  “Yes, she does.”

  Steve gave Lou a look of love and tenderness, but she didn’t put the necklace on. Instead, she closed the box and put it in her pocket.

  They all stood silently until Lorraine broke the tension and asked, “Now, who wants to help me clean the kitchen?”

  Steve put her hand on Lou’s arm to usher her out the door and said in a rush, “Wow, Mom, really love to stay, but we have another stop to make. Come on, Lou, don’t want to keep Bill and Dix waiting.”

  Lou stepped out of Steve’s touch with a wink over her shoulder and started to follow Lorraine into the kitchen. “They’ll wait. We’ll stay and help your mother. Come on, it won’t kill you.”

  “I’m going to hold you to that.” Stev
e dragged her feet but followed Lou and her mother out of the room.

  “Stop whining.” Lorraine turned to Lou and said with a shake of her head, “Raised by wolves. I tell you, that child was raised by wolves.”

  “You should be lucky I’ve learned to walk upright and I didn’t lick the plate clean.”

  “I would have taken that as a compliment. I still would have smacked you, but I would have taken that as a compliment.”

  As the banter went on, Lou let it drift around her like pleasant background noise, and she couldn’t stop smiling, feeling lucky to be a part of it.

  * * *

  After they helped Lorraine clean up the kitchen, they went to Bill and Dix’s as promised. They did indeed have mulled wine and sing drunken Christmas carols. They also exchanged gifts. They stayed for a few hours, then headed to Lou’s house for the evening, with promises to return for the boys’ New Year’s Eve party the following week. When they got to Lou’s house, they were still flush with the wine and in good spirits. They made slow, sensual love the rest of the evening, finally dozing off in each other’s arms around two in the morning. It had been an emotional day for both of them, bringing up many memories, most of them good, but not all. Lou had found it was easier to push the bad ones away when they crept up, just by looking over at Steve as she sat next to her on Bill’s couch, glass of wine in her hand, in animated conversation with Dix about her time in the service. As a history professor, Dix was interested in the human aspects of war and couldn’t resist the opportunity to ask Steve questions. Bill and Lou had tried to dissuade them from talking about such topics on Christmas, but it was no use. She and Bill could only shake their heads and commiserate and have a completely different conversation without them. Being surrounded by her friends and the woman she loved made the day special for Lou.

  When the Brenda Lee classic “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” played, Bill pulled Lou off the couch and they started to sing in animated fashion. Steve and Dix stopped talking and enjoyed the show. Realizing they had an audience, they segued into “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” then ended it with “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” a song that always brought tears to Lou’s eyes. It was a good thing Bill had put his arm around her shoulders at the beginning of the song, because she needed the support. That song made most of her hard memories come back, and it was tough to keep it together. When the song was over, Steve walked up to her and put her arms around her, and Lou clung to her for a moment, needing her strength. But as soon as she realized what she was doing—that she needed Steve—she gently backed away from her with a smile and whispered that she was fine. Overall, however, the whole day had been wonderful and one of the best Christmases she’d had in a long time.

  Around dawn, Lou was awakened by the bedroom light coming on. She opened her eyes to see Steve frantically searching for something. She reached for her glasses on the nightstand and asked, “Baby, did you lose the necklace again?”

  Distractedly, Steve replied, “Yes. And I can’t find it anywhere. I’ve checked all our clothes, and under the bed. It’s not here. It’s fucking not here.” She was carelessly throwing clothes aside, clothes Lou was sure she’d already looked through.

  Calmly, Lou said, “Maybe the clasp broke and it came off at your mom’s or Bill’s. Or in the car. We’ll find it. I’ll help you look.” Lou got out of bed and got down on the floor as she had the last time and checked under and all around the bed, thinking it was surely nearby, that in Steve’s panic she had just overlooked it. She began a methodical search around the nightstand and near the bed, trying to cover the whole area.

  “I’ll go check the other room.” Steve walked out of the room and went into the living room to check there. They hadn’t started undressing there, but if Lou was right and the clasp had broken, it could have happened anywhere. There were clothes on the couch from a day or two before where Lou had discarded them, a horrible habit Steve hated, but it was Lou’s house, so she never said anything. She went through those clothes, as well as the couch, the floor around the couch, and the front door area, not finding her necklace. There was a part of her that knew Lou was probably right—it was probably in one of those other places she’d been the day before and they would find it. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was gone for good? What if it had fallen off in the grocery store parking lot when her mother had sent her on a last-minute run for potatoes? What if it was right now bent and mangled after having been run over by countless other vehicles, all on last-minute shopping excursions? Or worse, someone had found it and thought it would make a great gift for someone and it was right now around someone else’s neck, someone who didn’t care where it had come from. Who didn’t care that Steve wouldn’t be able to sleep without it, someone who didn’t know that it had been left for Steve in an envelope with a letter from Cairyn, telling her good-bye and that she couldn’t wait for her to come home anymore. No one who found it would know or even care about any of that. It would just be some piece of jewelry to them. The perfect gift for the Capricorn in their life.

  Steve suddenly felt sick and fell to her knees clutching her stomach and started to rock back and forth on the floor, arms across her chest, hands on her elbows. Her rocking intensified and her arms shifted to a crossed position over her chest, much like the sign for I love you she learned as a child.

  She was in this position when Lou walked into the room.

  Lou shook her head to indicate she was sadly not victorious from her methodical search of the bedroom. She immediately went up to Steve and knelt beside her and put her hand lightly on her shoulder. “Steve, honey, it’ll be okay, we’ll find it. We just have to keep looking. We found it last time, and we’ll find it again.”

  Steve didn’t stop her rocking. If anything, its frequency increased and she didn’t respond.

  “Honey? Come on, let’s keep looking.” Lou moved her hand to the back of Steve’s arm, to help her off the floor.

  Steve cried out in a panicked voice, “Don’t touch me!” and swung her left hand back in a warding off gesture. Her hand made contact with Lou’s face, hitting her nose and glasses, breaking the glasses at the nosepiece, but thankfully not Lou’s nose.

  The impact was painful and surprising, and Lou rocked back on her heels, her glasses falling off her face, clutching her nose, which had started to bleed. Steve was still rocking and was oblivious to her. When Lou saw the blood on her fingers, memories of her father came rushing back of the first time he had hit her and how much her nose had bled. Just like the first time, she grabbed a T-shirt off the floor and held it to her nose to stop the bleeding. Her voice was muffled around the shirt when she said to Steve, “Get out.”

  Steve started to come around, about ten minutes after the initial onset of her panic attack. She took a few breaths and swallowed and put her head down. Softly she said, “I have to find it.”

  A little louder and more clearly, Lou said, “I said, get out. Get out of my house. You’re not doing that to me again. Just go!”

  Startled, Steve turned around and looked at Lou as if for the first time. Her eyes widened when she saw the blood and took in the broken glasses on the floor. Confusion was written all over her face when she asked, “What happened?”

  “Just go.”

  Steve reached out to her, but Lou backed away and stood up, then walked toward her bathroom. Steve stood up slowly, still feeling shaky. She called out, “Lou, if I did that, I’m sorry.”

  From behind the bathroom door, Lou said, “Go, just get the fuck out, goddammit.”

  “Lou…?” But Lou said nothing more. Steve heard running water and knew that Lou was done talking to her. She leaned her head against the door and cried. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you.” It was the only thing she could think to say. She stood there for a few more minutes, her head on the door and her eyes closed, tears on her cheeks. But the door never opened, and after a while she went back to Lou’s room and got dressed, took one last look at the bed, the bed where
they had declared their love for each other just a few hours before, and left the room, taking one last look at the impenetrableness of the closed bathroom door. She whispered again, “I love you, Lou.” Then she walked out of the house, wishing she hadn’t left her car at her mother’s the night before when she and Lou had gone to Bill and Dix’s.

  As she walked down the street, putting some distance between herself and Lou’s house, she pulled out her phone and called a cab, not wanting to wake her mother up so early, but also not wanting to have to explain.

  Chapter Twenty

  Lou had heard Steve’s first declaration of love. When the bleeding stopped, she had thrown the bloody T-shirt on the counter and began to splash her face, grateful her nose hadn’t broken a second time. Instead of reviewing the situation that had just played out, her mind went to practical things, such as wondering when and where she would be able to get a new pair of glasses over the holiday and whether or not she still had her previous pair that, though a slightly different prescription, would suffice in the meantime. She shut out thoughts of her father and thoughts of the woman who’d just left her house, possibly for the last time. She concentrated on cleaning her face and decided to go ahead and take a shower, since she was in there.

  Now, two days later, Lou was sitting alone in her favorite café, laptop open, working on her novel. She was making good progress and felt good with how the story was going. She was always happy when she was able to just focus on her writing. She found it very relaxing. She was on her second cup of coffee and planned to spend the rest of her Christmas holiday doing what she was doing now: writing and drinking coffee. Her classes for the following semester were mostly already planned out because she was teaching the same classes as she had the previous spring, with only one new prep, which meant she only needed to take a day to tweak the other syllabuses for those other classes. The one for the new class she had worked on the previous month during a rare moment when she had gotten ahead on her grading. Her research project, the one she had been working on all semester, the one she was going to submit to a conference next summer, was also in a good place. The research and writing were done—she just had to edit it, make sure it adhered to the conference committee’s guidelines, and get it turned in on time. So it was a relief to be doing something just for herself, which is what writing her novel was.