Chances Are

by Richard Russo

  She certainly hadn’t the night before. Of course, they’d both been exhausted after a long day on the road, and their room had two single beds. But Mickey suspected it wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been a king. She’d gone into the bathroom, where he’d heard the shower running, but when she emerged she was wearing a long nightshirt and she’d immediately climbed into one of the twins, saying, “It’s all yours.” Meaning what? The bathroom? The shower? That he needed a shower? He took one, just in case. But when he came out, wearing a towel around his waist, the room was dark except for the reading lamp next to the empty bed, a signal that even he could interpret. That she didn’t want to have sex was disappointing, though this troubled him less than the fact that she seemed not to want any affection at all. No cuddle. No kiss goodnight. Was she afraid she’d get his motor running and then there’d be no way to turn it off? Or was she having second thoughts, great big ones? Maybe changing her mind about getting married had opened the floodgates of self-doubt and she wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Beyond exhausted himself, he’d fallen asleep before reaching any conclusions. Tonight, though, he had to wonder if it’d be more of the same. And the night after, too.

  The room was cheap enough, but when Mickey checked in and pulled out his wallet to pay he was a few dollars short. So far she’d let him pay for everything—lodging, food, gas. He knew he was getting low on funds and meant to stop at some bank to see if he could cash a check, but it had slipped his mind. Back at the car, humiliated, he said, “Sorry, but I need to borrow five bucks.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, but when he opened the trunk so she could get her backpack, she held it so he couldn’t see anything. Then, after zipping it back up, she handed him a bill that he pocketed without a glance. Only when he was in the office did he notice it was a hundred. He hadn’t seen one of those since his father died. Michael Sr., like many workingmen, always carried his money in a roll in his front pocket, no doubt comforted by its weight, the illusion of control you couldn’t get from a flimsy credit card. What am I doing here, Pop? he wondered as the woman at the front desk counted out his change, though he knew what his response would’ve been: Find out, Son.

  For dinner they went to a family restaurant just up the road, where he ordered a chicken-fried steak, Jacy the baked haddock. For some reason, maybe because they’d be safe in Canada tomorrow, her mood had brightened. “What exactly is chicken-fried steak?” she said when the food was served. “I’ve always wondered.”

  That gap again, Mickey thought, forking over a piece.

  She chewed it thoughtfully. “It tastes like beef-flavored breading.”

  He shrugged.

  She grinned at him. “Cracker fare, according to Don and Viv.”

  Mickey nodded. “The food of my people.”

  “Oh, come on. Your people are Italian.”

  Which made him chuckle. “What do you think’s in a meatball?”

  “Meat?”

  “Maybe a little, but mostly bread crumbs. Some other stuff that’s cheaper than meat.”

  “When the truth is found,” she sang, “to beeeeeeee … lies.”

  THEY APPEARED TO BE the only guests at the motel, which made sense this far north, still weeks before high summer. Each room had a small concrete patio in the rear with two plastic deck chairs. Mickey still had a smidgen of the weed he’d scored from Troyer before punching his lights out, and he figured they’d smoke that and watch the distant ocean as night fell. Also, driving back from the restaurant, they’d stopped at a convenience store and he bought a six-pack of beer. He’d also paid for dinner out of the hundred she’d given him. There was still some cash left, but he had to wonder: was this how life was going to be now? Him turning to her for money when he ran out? So halfway through the first beer, he decided to bring it up at an angle. “Once we get to wherever we’re going,” he ventured, “how do you see this working?”

  “What do you mean, ‘working’?”

  “We’ll need jobs.”

  “I’ll wait tables. You’ll tend bar.” She said this as if it pained her to state the obvious. After all, they weren’t likely to find work as nuclear physicists. “At some point you’ll start a band.”

  “In that case,” he said, “we should’ve gone home first and picked up my guitar.” He had some money in his checking account, assuming he could find somebody in Canada to cash a check, but not enough to replace his Stratocaster. Since graduation he hadn’t given much thought to money, figuring Uncle Sam would soon start picking up the tab. Now, suddenly, it was an issue again. “Anyway,” he continued, “that sounds like what we’d be doing if we hadn’t gone to college.”

  She took a swig of beer. “You got a better plan?”

  “No, that was my plan. I was hoping you’d have a better one.”

  “Nope.”

  “How do you see us working? You and me.”

  She reached over and took his hand. “Things will be different once we’re in Canada.”

  “Yeah?” he said, pleasantly surprised. It hadn’t occurred to him that sexual intimacy might have a geographical component. If it did, she might’ve mentioned it earlier. They were only twenty miles from the border, and he’d have happily driven the extra half hour had he known such a reward was awaiting him on the other side. Hell, he’d have sung “O Canada!” the whole way. Which naturally made him think of the evening when he’d gotten the draft number that set this particular journey in motion.

  When he finished his beer, he said, “I noticed a pay phone in the lobby. I really should call my mother.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was supposed to get home yesterday. She’ll be worried. Also, before long she’s going to start getting phone calls from the draft board wondering where the fuck I am.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, reluctantly, it seemed to him. “But you can’t mention that I’m with you.”

  “No?”

  “No. Promise me. Nobody can know.”

  “What’re you so worried about?” he said. “It’s me they’ll be after, not you.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  Which gave him genuine pause. Did she mean Vance? Her parents? The sorority sisters who’d so faithfully guarded her virtue at Minerva? All of Greenwich, Connecticut? He knew what they were doing would have serious consequences for him, but until now it hadn’t fully registered that Jacy was turning her back on her entire world.

  “I need your word, Mick.”

  “You have it.”

  When he rose from his chair, she said, “Can it wait until morning?”

  “Sure,” he said, sitting back down. “I guess.”

  “Good. Because tonight I need to tell you about my father.” When he remained silent, she said, “Nobody knows about this. You’ll be the first to hear it.”

  “I don’t understand. You mean Donald? Of Don and Viv?”

  She blew a raspberry. “Who said anything about him?”

  IT PROBABLY SHOULDN’T HAVE come as a surprise. After all, she didn’t look anything like tall, sandy-haired Donald Calloway, who’d always referred to her as “our little Gypsy” because of her dark, curly hair and olive complexion. She was a kid, though, and what kid doubts what her parents tell her? But then eighth grade happened, with all its casual cruelty, its constant, roiling fluctuations of social capital. And boys. There was this one, Todd, that she’d liked because he was funny, always clowning around. She had to warn him not to when she introduced him to her parents, especially her father, who was aggressively humorless and thought she was too young to go out on dates. The kid managed to behave himself in their home, but once they were out the door he said, “Wow! How old were you?” When she asked what he was talking about, he said, “You know, when you were adopted?”

  She told herself it was just one of his jokes, but she remembered feeling sick to her stomach and wasn’t able to laugh it off. They’d gone to play miniature golf, and Todd paid, which he seemed to think gave him the right to conti
nue teasing her even after she begged him to cut it out. Had she been adopted from an agency, or did she just get left on her parents’ doorstep? Or was she found floating down the Connecticut River in a basket?

  The most difficult hole was the Volcano, where you had to putt up a steep slope at the top of which was a tiny, shallow crater. If you misjudged your speed or didn’t hit the center of the cup, the ball would rim out and roll all the way back down the mountainside, then you’d have to start all over again. Rattled by Todd’s teasing, Jacy couldn’t seem to get the hang of it, rimming out one shot after another. By rule, ten was the maximum score for any one hole, but Todd refused to move on until she sank the putt. When she finally did, she burst into tears and refused to continue, demanding he take her home. There, she crawled straight into bed, but it was impossible, even with the covers pulled over her head, to compose herself. The boy had opened a door into the part of her brain where riddles were stored. Things that had long puzzled her now began to make sense. How many times had she entered a room full of her mother’s friends, only to have them all stop talking at once and regard her guiltily? And what about her father’s cryptic remarks when he and her mother discussed some disagreeable habit of Jacy’s (“Well, Viv, she certainly doesn’t get that from me”).

  The following morning Todd called to apologize, claiming he hadn’t meant anything. Lots of kids didn’t look like their parents until later in life. He’d even asked her out the following weekend to make it up to her, but she said no. Her father, suspecting that something must’ve happened, insisted that she tell him what the boy had done, because he’d fucking kill the little prick, but Jacy said only that he’d made fun of her when she couldn’t sink her putt on the Volcano hole. She could tell he didn’t believe her.

  It took Jacy a month to work up the courage to broach the subject with her mother. She expected her to go ballistic, but instead she went into the master bedroom and came back with the metal box where important documents were kept. It contained Jacy’s birth certificate, and of course there she was: a baby girl, Justine, six pounds, eleven ounces, born to Vivian Calloway. Seeing this, thirteen-year-old Jacy once again began to sob, this time tears of relief. She was who she’d always been, not some other person from some other place full of dark-skinned, curly-haired people. Later, though, when she replayed the scene in her head, the banished doubts returned. When she’d asked point-blank if she was adopted, why hadn’t her mother been surprised? It was as if she’d been expecting this day and was prepared. Documents, Jacy recalled thinking, could be forged.

  TWO YEARS PASSED. She was in high school now and not the same girl at all. She was vigilant, questioned everything. She watched both her parents like a hawk. Made a study of them. Why did they argue so much? Why did her father get so many calls after working hours and always take them in the den with the door closed? Why did her mother become so annoyed when Jacy dragged out old photo albums and pored over them intently? “What are you looking for?” she wanted to know. Evidence was the short answer Jacy couldn’t give. Evidence that she was who she was supposed to be. There were almost no photos of her father as a young man—because he was the youngest of eight siblings, he claimed—whereas her mother’s life had been well documented. The photos that meant the most to Jacy were of her mother as a girl, because there she thought she could see a resemblance. Okay, sure, different color hair and lighter skin, but the same posture, the same delicate nose and round eyes. Which meant the birth certificate wasn’t forged. She was who she was. Why, then, was she unable to shake the feeling that something was being kept from her? Why did everything feel like a lie?

  One day when she got home from school, a taxi was sitting at their curb, completely out of place in their upscale Greenwich neighborhood. She was trying to figure out what it was doing there when their front door opened and a middle-aged man in a dark, ill-fitting suit lurched out. Jacy instinctively ducked behind the privet hedge. Her mother appeared behind him and called, “Wait! Wait! Let me help you!” He said something in response, but his voice had a strange, braying quality, and she couldn’t make out what. Clearly, something was the matter with this man. As he came down the steps, his gait was spastic and his elbows jerked wildly, as if pulled at by invisible strings. She expected him to regain his balance on level ground, but instead he reeled around even more uncontrollably, and when her mother, catching up, reached out to steady him, he keeled over onto the lawn, where he lay on his side while his legs kept churning as if he were still upright. “Andy!” her mother cried. “You have to let me help you!” Eventually, she managed to get him on his feet and back onto the sidewalk, and it was then they both noticed Jacy, who’d stepped out from behind the hedge. “Mom?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  Her mother stiffened with surprise but quickly gathered herself. “Inside!” she ordered. “Now! This instant!”

  Jacy would’ve liked nothing better than to do as she was told, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the dark suit. Though she was sure she’d never laid eyes on him before, he looked somehow familiar. His gaze was now fixed on her as well. Was that a smile on his face, or a grimace? When he reached out to her, his hand jerking, she quickly backed away from him.

  “Inside!” her mother hissed.

  “Aaaace!” the man bleated, trying once again to touch her.

  This time she ran up the brick walkway and the front steps, stopping in the open doorway. A car, invisible behind the long privet hedge, was roaring up the street in their direction, and she knew who it would be before her father’s Mercedes came to a rocking halt behind the taxi.

  Her mother stepped in front of the stranger as her father came trotting toward them. “Don!” she said, holding up both hands. “Everything’s okay. Andy was just leaving.”

  But her father was having none of this. Elbowing his wife aside, he planted both hands on the stranger’s chest and shoved. The man took two quick, awkward steps backward, arms windmilling, and fell flat on his back. “What the fuck are you doing here, Andy?”

  “Don!” her mother was yelling now. “Don’t hurt him! He’s leaving!”

  “You’re goddamn right he is,” her father said, standing over the man now, both hands clenched into fists.

  “How can he go away if you won’t let him up?”

  Apparently the taxi driver had seen enough. Putting the vehicle in gear, he pulled away from the curb. “Hey!” her father yelled, chasing it down the street. “Come back here! Do you hear? Come back!” The driver stuck his arm out the window and flipped her father off.

  By the time he returned to the lawn, her mother had the man they’d called Andy back on his feet again. He just stood there, docile, his head hung low, as if to concede that all this was his fault.

  “Now what?” her mother wanted to know, seemingly of both men.

  “Now we go for a ride,” her father said, grabbing the man by the elbow.

  “Don’t you dare hurt him,” she called after them as Jacy’s father dragged the man to the Mercedes and shoved him roughly inside. As he went around to the driver’s side, the stranger’s face was framed in the passenger window. At first Jacy thought he was looking at her mother, but then saw that, no, he was looking straight at her.

  When the Mercedes raced up the street and out of sight, her mother didn’t immediately turn around. When she finally did, she just stood there staring at the house, as if seeing it for the first time. To Jacy, still frozen in the doorway, she looked like a woman casting around for nonexistent options.

  Q&A. THE KITCHEN. Twenty minutes have passed since the scene on the lawn. A pot of coffee has been brewed. Jacy’s mother has wrapped some ice cubes in a dishcloth and applied it to the fat lip she somehow got in the struggle. Mother and daughter are seated on opposite sides of the kitchen island.

  Her mother’s first words are predictable. “Thank God there’s never anybody around this time of the afternoon. I don’t think anyone saw.”

  “Who is he?”

>   “A drunk.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A drunk,” she repeats. “A falling-down drunk. Couldn’t you see?”

  “Who is he?”

  Finally her mother meets her gaze with a pleading expression of her own. “Someone I knew a long time ago.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He has nothing to do with you. Forget about him.”

  “He said my name. He tried to say my name.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “I heard him.”

  “You heard something.”

  “He reached out. To touch me.”

  “He’s never going to get his hands on you. Ever.”

  She says it. Just fucking says it. “He’s my father, isn’t he.”

  Her mother looks away.

  “Isn’t he.”

  When her mother turns back, her eyes have gone icy hard. It’s a look she’s seen before, but it’s always been directed at her father, never at her. “You’ve got a choice to make, little girl, and you’re going to have to make it now, before your father gets home.”

  “My father’s not coming home.”

  Her mother actually laughs. “Hey, you’re lucky. You get to choose. Who do you want in your life? The man you’ve always known as your father, who treats you like his daughter, who pays for the food you eat and the clothes on your back and the roof over your head. Or that … thing”—here mimicking the man’s spastic arm motions—“you saw on the lawn.”