Winning Chance

by Katherine Koller

  Her little claw hands quiver, hovering over my big belly. Old ladies believe they have magic, prophetic, or fortune-telling powers and therefore, licence to feel. I snap myself up before she can touch me and sidestep to the window. The silver sports car she came in, with leather interior and fine wood detailing, waits in my driveway for a stroller mom to pass, then backs up and drives away. I’m still clutching Mom, and put her back on the coffee table, a witness.

  “Mrs. Wong,” I say. I must have mentioned the baby shower to Jonathan.

  The woman is all over my tummy, holding it this side and that. Cornered by a dwarf who comes up to my swollen coconuts, I can hardly see where her hands are. But they’re talking to me: Your unborn son is my blood. My grandson.

  “Would you like some ice cream cake?” That’s Meg.

  “Yes. Party cake?” Mrs. Wong pulls my girls over to her.

  “Maybe let’s wait for the others,” I say.

  “No, no! Let’s have it now,” yell Jasmine and Jola.

  I could take the cake back. White with blue icing but no writing, so totally returnable. Sixteen dollars.

  “I cut it,” says Mrs. Wong. She bulldozes into the kitchen on her own and brings back a double-sized piece and three forks.

  Mrs. Wong feeds the cake to Jola with a blue plastic fork, tiny bit by bit, without dropping a crumb. She smiles and fusses. Meg takes photos and gets them up on social media. I’d like to add for all the no-show mothers, Look what you’re missing, suckers. I should have invited all the ladies at work, but they’ve already come to Jasmine’s and Jola’s showers. I’m still hoping they might have an impromptu lunch party before I leave and maybe a gift certificate to the Bay because, you know, boys need different things. I open Mrs. Wong’s gift, a velour blue sleeper. A quality one. She must have got it on sale. Yup, there’s the marked-down price tag from Winners. I leave the tissue paper and ribbon on the floor to make the place look like a party. Meg gives a gift card to McDonalds. Very original.

  “The girls can play in the PlayPlace and give you and Jae a quiet feeding time.” Okay, I buy that. Actually, pretty thoughtful. How does she even know that?

  I remember to thank them both and look them in the eyes. Mom taught me. She could have taught me a whole lot more. Like how to cope without adult company. How to dream. How to plan. How to keep trucking.

  “So, Jonathan is your son,” I venture.

  “Yes. Good boy. My son. And my grandson, so healthy. Name Jae.”

  I redden. My family plans do not include any contact with the fathers or their families.

  “Practice grandson,” she continues. “Jonathan say no more dates, eh?”

  “We went out once and once was enough.”

  Mrs. Wong claps again. Startles me every time.

  Meg gets her talking about him, Jonathan smart this and Jonathan smart that. Her only son. It’s pretty nauseating, but Meg’s lapping it up until Mrs. Wong makes it clear that only a Chinese girl is good enough to be her son’s wife.

  “But grandson, no matter who the mother. Grandson is grandson.”

  I extract Jola but then Jasmine climbs on Mrs. Wong’s lap for her piece of cake, also hand fed, with the second fork. Like a big bird.

  “Can you start the bath, Meg? Time for the girls to go to bed.” They run to the tub with her.

  While the water runs in the bathroom, I sit to get my eyes level with the beetle eyes of Mrs. Wong.

  “You’re not welcome here, Mrs. Wong. I don’t want to see you again.”

  “I see you again. You’re welcome.” She takes my hand.

  I pull it away. “Jonathan should not have brought you here.”

  “I come back by myself. For Jae. My grandson.”

  “I’ll write this in to our agreement. Jonathan has to keep you away.”

  “I make wonton soup for the girls. Next time I come. You have big pot?” She bangs her way through my kitchen cupboards until she finds it. And brings it to the door. She’s taking my pot home to fill up. In a dizzy moment I imagine Jae, my unborn Jae, curled in the pot, under the lid. I know it’s preggo fuzzbrain, but it terrifies me.

  “You can’t take that. It’s mine.”

  “Who else going to help you?” Mrs. Wong says. “That Meg, she have job, then school.”

  It was going to be Mom. She never told me about her lung condition. Another reason to mix my kids’ genes up a bit. If I’d known Mom and I only had three years to figure each other out, I’d have looked for her sooner. I didn’t get the urge until after Jola. Until I sorted out my own way to have my family, for myself.

  Meg brings the kids in, ready for bed. I hold out my arms, but the girls run to Mrs. Wong.

  “When are you coming back?” says Jasmine.

  “I see you soon. You good girls. Best big sisters for my grandson.” Jola and Jasmine each get a kiss goodnight and a squeezy hug from Mrs. Wong.

  “Tuck us in?” Jola says. They each take a hand and lead her to the bedroom.

  I motion for Meg to help me pick up the decorations and put them in a bag.

  “You could reuse them,” she says.

  “Get rid of this nightmare.” I squish the blue elephants into paper balls. Mrs. Wong sings to the girls snuggled in their flannel sheets.

  I lock myself in the bathroom. Meg and Mrs. Wong clean up the living room, put back the chairs, and tidy the kitchen, chattering about recipes and cleaning tips and gardening. When Jonathan comes to pick up his mom, Mrs. Wong makes him drive Meg home, too. They both call out goodbye but I pretend not to hear.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” says Meg. “I can’t leave unless you say. You’re not having premature labour pains, are you? I’m outside your door until you say you’re fine.”

  How can she care that much about everything? “Thanks but I need some alone time.” That’s what I say to the kids when I lock myself in the bathroom, and it works on Meg. She and Mrs. Wong bang out the door with the big pot, dropping the lid twice and laughing.

  The next weekend, I go into labour three weeks early while Jonathan is at his engineering firm barbeque. He takes my call like it’s a message from his accountant, sends his mom over in a taxi to watch Jasmine and Jola, and prepays the cabbie to take me to the hospital. He also arranges for flowers when I return from the delivery room with a card that promises his mom will come over the next day with a stuffed blue elephant for Jae.

  An easy-peasy birth, no problems, and Jae’s a good size even being half-Asian and a few weeks premature. I miss Mom, who promised she’d be here because she wasn’t at Jola’s or Jasmine’s births since that was before I found her. I really wanted her here for this one. I thought it would reunite us, rewrite the moment she gave me up and put me on the merry-go-round from foster home to foster home. I was too smart and nobody likes a smartass kid, but Mom says I was a survivor, like her, because we got along alone even though we thought about the other every single day. Who knew that pile of emotional splinters could ignite intense and full love at first sight?

  Mom fell for my girls like she might have for me. She made every moment count. I tell Jae all about it while he feeds, in our own curtained off bubble in a quad ward of new mothers and their families. One mom I recognize from three years ago when Jola was born here. What are the odds of that? We nod, veteran moms, sore and tired and happy and facing years of responsibility with fierce pride. The other mom has a girl this time, two boys at home. No man in sight. We mirror each other. Do I look that exhausted? We exchange phone numbers but I doubt we’ll ever call each other.

  Mrs. Wong stays overnight like I knew she would and the girls sound happy and fine on the phone. Mrs. Wong is bringing the girls over to meet their brother and then we’ll all go home for wonton soup.

  Before Mrs. Wong arrives, I keep Jae with me every minute and tell him the whole story. He needs to connect with my voice b
efore he hears hers. He really responds to sounds. He’s extremely intelligent, I can tell. Brilliant, I bet. His eyes are so curious. Before he meets Mrs. Wong, I want him to see his other grandma. I show him her picture. He stares. Not cross-eyed like most newborns, but totally concentrating. Fixed on her face, and I know Mom’s helping me wherever she is. Then it occurs to me that maybe she sent Mrs. Wong.

  When Jae sees his Chinese grandmother, he blinks and I watch her tumble in love. And in that moment, we’re the same. We’re two women alive with love for a baby boy named Jae. Mrs. Wong makes me laugh, and I thank her a hundred times, for the blue elephant, the candies, the oranges, for loving Jae, too. We sink into his serene eyes.

  That’s when I wonder, what if something happens to me? I can’t be all my kids have. Foster care is most definitely not an option, so I’m going to ask about Jola’s and Jasmine’s other grandmothers. As Mom would say, consolidate your resources. I asked her, why Denny, why name me that, and she said, “Denny for Denise, my mother.” Even I have one little thing from a grandma I never knew.

  While I struggle through post-partum cramping, which is worse this time, I push away thoughts of my three kids under six alone while I’m bleeding on a California freeway or strangled on a Mexican beach and instead imagine inviting Mrs. Wong and Mrs. Esperanto and Mrs. Walker for tea. The girls and I serve cut-out cookies we made ourselves for the very first time, and Jae lies on a blanket in the centre of the room chewing his blue elephant. A private family gathering: three ladies and the three children who share their blood. Meg’s there, too, taking pictures. Mom is there, too, in her frame on the side table, smiling, always smiling. I know it’s a fantasy, but it cheers me. Darn hormones.

  In our agreement, Jonathan will come to the hospital and sign the documents. He’ll bring the car seat. He’ll drop Jae and the girls and me off at home. And take Mrs. Wong away, unless the girls share the top bunk like they did last night and Mrs. Wong keeps the bottom one, for now.

  Spring Fever

  With one arm, Charlie cradled the burlap bundle and, with the other, he clutched the railing down the steep steps of the bus. The heat of the afternoon hit his bare head, the sun made him squint, and he didn’t see the skateboarder careening down the sidewalk toward him.

  “Geezer!” the kid called out over his shoulder.

  Charlie froze a moment, waiting for the other boarders. They travelled in a pack of three and used his driveway to build speed when they thought he didn’t notice, but he did.

  The bus puffed dust and fumes as it pulled away but still Charlie didn’t move until he stood alone on the curb.

  Protecting his package against his chest with both arms, Charlie began to cross the street to his tidy little bungalow when a water truck downshifted to avoid hitting him.

  “Lardass,” yelled the driver.

  Charlie didn’t hear and kept going nevertheless, not stopping until inside the haven of his garage. He unwrapped the burlap on his potting table. He snipped the tag off, $64.99, pricey but worth it for its colour, a shocking hot pink. He stored the tag in a logbook, marked the date in grease pencil, gathered his tools and a pail of high-grade fertilized mix, propped open the side door, and carried his prize out to the other rose bushes in the yard.

  “Say hello to Sexy Lady. Give a warm welcome to your queen.” Sexy Lady had been on special order for over a year.

  Only then, he noticed. He whirled back into the garage. Sweetheart, his British racing green ’72 Jaguar XKE hardtop had vanished! He hadn’t even looked when he came in! He nearly dropped Sexy Lady and, when he caught her, a thorn nipped through his worn leather glove.

  Hastily, he planted and watered the rose bush without the usual ritual of stalk placement, fertilizer layers, and repeated soaking. He put it in without another word to the others, situated in a spiral. This one, in the centre, finished the rosarium. He packed down the dirt roughly with his foot, pulled off his gloves, chucked his trowel (which rarely rested on the ground) outside the garage door, unhooked the triple-latched gate without even checking that it closed behind him, and ran down the street to his neighbourhood beat patrol station in the strip mall a block and a half away.

  Red-faced and sweating at the front counter, he asked for Donna first.

  “She quit,” said the young thin thing, “said she had spring fever.”

  “Where’s Arnie?” Charlie demanded.

  “He hasn’t come in yet. Late shift.” Then she coloured, her crush for the genial superfit constable animating her face. “Wait, I think I hear his cruiser. Take a seat.”

  Charlie could not take a seat. He waited at the counter and spilled out his story before Arnie had both boots in the door.

  “Whoa, Charlie.” But Charlie couldn’t “whoa.” He usually said five words maximum at a time, but now the same story fountained over and over. After the third rendition, Arnie nodded to his new volunteer assistant and ushered Charlie out to investigate. They walked the distance to Charlie’s garage, Charlie a little behind Arnie’s long-legged stride.

  Breathless, Charlie pushed in his code for the overhead door and up it went. And there sat his barn-find restored Jaguar, engine slightly warm.

  “Guess you didn’t see it the first time.” Arnie grinned.

  “Someone took it out. Really, Arnie. Feel the engine.” Charlie, relieved to see Sweetheart intact, worried about how she’d been handled. Could it have been one of the skateboarders? Had he missed them, with his eyes shut when the bus pulled away? And with the water truck, that noise machine?

  Arnie said, “I didn’t even know you owned a car. And what a car.” Arnie ran a hand over her rear lines the same way Charlie did the first time he saw her.

  Charlie was gratified that Arnie gave the Jaguar the praise she deserved. “I keep it in case of emergency,” he said.

  “Or a hot date?” Arnie, still tickled, wrote down the time in his log book and left Charlie in his perplexed state.

  On the way back down the street to the station, Arnie stopped in at Donna’s, who waved him in for coffee. He told her about Charlie. He also remarked on her empty backyard, vacant since the old garage had come down.

  “Yeah, that’s my project. Planting it all in,” Donna said. There were bedding plant trays filled with yellows and orange and pinks on her back porch. “When you get to my age, every spring is a gift. From now on, I’m following my heart. There should be a law about that.”

  “Ah, spring,” said Arnie. “The kids failing school come out for a few kicks and end up in juvie, the street folks get restless, and the old guys emerge from hibernation to waste my time.”

  “Charlie never does that,” Donna said. “He’s one of your eyes and ears and you know it. Especially since Rosie went, five years now.”

  “I think he’s losing it, Donna. Happens to everyone.”

  “Take some cookies for the new girl. She’s way too skinny.”

  “Miss you, Donna. Look in on Charlie for me, would you?”

  “Don’t worry about him.”

  Arnie didn’t. Donna would take care of the situation, like she had when she worked for him as a citizen volunteer every day for fifteen years. Widowed way too long. A rock of a woman, thought Arnie.

  Charlie watched Arnie walk away from Donna, certain that he told her and she thought he was demented.

  He fussed about that while he made a place in his Nanking cherry bushes, with a small stool to sit on, a thermos of coffee to keep him awake, camera and binoculars at the ready. Sure enough, as the rosy afternoon light spread lazily across the driveway, he woke up from a bent head snooze to glimpse Sweetheart drive away. The driver glided slowly, not haphazardly, at least. Short in the driver seat. For sure one of the skateboard kids. Charlie fed both what he knew and what he conjectured on the garage phone to Arnie. He even had photos, like a professional UFO watcher.

  “Okay, Charlie. When it
got back earlier, it was spic and span, not a scratch on her, and filled with gas, right? Let me know when she gets home.” Arnie turned back to his reports before he hung up the phone.

  The garage door gaped wide open, and the skateboarders jumped off at the top of the driveway. One pushed the button to close the overhead door.

  “No, no, no!” yelled Charlie from inside the garage and pushed the inside button to reopen it. He counted the boarders: three.

  “Hey, man, we thought you forgot to close it. Can’t be too careful” said the leader, the one with blond hair in a bun who had nearly creamed him earlier. “You’ve got tools ‘n stuff in there, eh?”

  “Yeah, leave it open.”

  “Okay, man.”

  “Thanks anyway.”

  “Old fart,” the skater barked out to his pals, down the sidewalk. Charlie heard that and let some gas go in reply.

  Back in the bushes, Charlie waited for what seemed like hours. The sound of the driver door gently closing woke him from a troubled dozing position, head in hands. It was already dusk. The Jaguar side-opening hatch door was open. Charlie, afraid to confront the thief, wished he’d brought a baseball bat. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, he thought.

  “Throw me the key!” he yelled.

  The key landed in the bush a little behind Charlie. He turned and had to take three grabs for it, caught in some undergrowth. By the time Charlie’s head came out of the dirt, the intruder had fled. Charlie didn’t hear running steps even though he’d changed his hearing aid batteries after the water truck incident. The boarders skated by again. The trunk of Sweetheart, splayed open, lit up a packed tray of multi-coloured pansies.

  The last boarder skated by. “Hey, your honey come home?”

  “Did you see who ran out of here?” called Charlie. No answer from the teen, eyes focussed on the piece of pavement ahead. Charlie was steaming mad. At himself, for not catching the perpetrator, at the car, for being vulnerable to theft, and at the thief, who had outwitted him again.

  Charlie inspected the key ring. A rose with three keys: the house, garage, and car. It was a set he’d given to Rosie ages ago. Now curiosity bobbed out of perturbation. Was this a sign from Rosie? On the day he’d completed the rosarium, what she always wanted, posthumously?