Second Chances

by Lincoln Cole

  “We sat on the street, just watching, for a couple minutes. It didn’t take long before we saw her. She was home with her parents making dinner, and she was very pregnant. Looked like a watermelon sticking out of her stomach.

  “And that was my watermelon. My child. I couldn’t believe…I didn’t know what I was going to do. The guy who drove me said I should go up and talk to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t. What the hell was I supposed to say? ‘Hi honey. It’s been six months but I finally got your text and would like to be a part of your life again.’”

  Ben shook his head. “No. I couldn’t imagine doing something like that. She didn’t deserve that. So I went back to the shelter and decided I would clean up my act. I would get my life together and stop drinking. Forever.

  “I would swear off alcohol, figure out some way to get a job, and talk to Desiree. I would tell her that at least I wanted to make some money to give her to raise the baby. And maybe, just maybe, if she could find it in her heart to forgive me, I could be a father for that child and see it once in a while.

  “I’m not stupid. I wasn’t shooting for the moon. I didn’t plan on sweeping her into my arms or declaring my love and winning her back. But I just thought, you know, maybe there was a chance I could contribute to the raising of my child. I could, maybe, do something good for a change. Something that wasn’t just about me.

  “That’s when I heard about this clinic. People at the shelter said the guy who ran it could help me. He’d helped a lot of them through some really tough times and was really friendly. A great guy. I figured, what the hell, I could give it a shot. The last time I’d quit I did it alone, but everyone needs help sometimes.

  “That’s when I started coming. I started making regular trips here. I didn’t talk. You gotta understand, I don’t really like to talk, especially in groups, but I didn’t mind coming to listen. It was rough, a lot rougher than the first time I’d quit drinking, but I stuck with it. I was going to have a kid, you know? So I forced myself to get over it and came every single day.”

  Ben looked back at the floor, a fresh tear making an appearance. He brushed it away and rubbed his hands over his face.

  “You left tonight, though,” Richard said.

  “I decided I’d had enough.”

  “Why? What changed?”

  A long moment slipped past, and then Ben made a chortling sound, shaking his head.

  “Me,” Ben said, leaning back and chuckling sadly. “I woke up. Look at me, man. Just take a nice long look. I’m useless. I’ve never been good at anything, I’m a drunk. I don’t have any money or property to my name. I don’t have anything to offer anyone, let alone a little kid who needs a father.

  “It started to hit me a few weeks ago. I’m out of her life. She only sent that one message. Nothing else. She never reached out, never looked for me. I was just a forgotten piece of Desiree’s history, the only legacy being the seed I’d planted inside her. She doesn’t want me back in her life, man. She’s moved on.

  “The only thing I could do by going back is to stir up old problems. Open old wounds. If I wanted to fix this, to really make it right, I needed to go back a long time ago. Right after I’d screwed up. I needed to go back clean and apologize for what I had done.

  “But I wasn’t there. I can blame the broken phone, sure, but it’s a hollow excuse. If I’d gotten that text message on that night, drunk, I’m not sure anything would be different. I’d left her when she needed me the most because I was a coward.”

  “So you feel like you can’t go back?” Richard said. “You think she’s moved on, so you’re going to give up?”

  “That isn’t why I can’t go back,” Ben said softly. “If that was the only reason, I still might have given it a shot. But tonight I really realized why I can never go back.”

  “Why?” Richard asked. His fists were clenched tightly, shaking.

  Ben let out a deep breath. “Because what if she did take me back? What if she did forgive me and let me back into her life? Then I would have a kid to take care of, and…I don’t know how to take care of kids, man. I don’t know anything about them or what I’m supposed to do.

  “What if…?” Ben started to say, faltering, “what if I hit him? Like my Dad hit me. What if I—”

  “That’s bullshit,” Richard interrupted.

  The kid stopped midsentence, floundering on his words. He looked at Richard sharply with a vague expression of anger and confusion.

  Silence enfolded the room, hanging heavy, while Richard slowly shook his head back and forth.

  “The only thing that would make you hit your kid is you.”

  “After everything I was exposed to by my father—”

  “No,” Richard said, breathing heavy. “No. You can’t keep blaming him. I get it. You were abused as a kid. It sucks. It really does. But guess what? It’s time to grow up.”

  “Grow up? How the hell am I supposed to grow up?”

  “I listened to your sob story,” Richard said, “And I get it. I really do. Life is tough and you were dealt a crappy hand. But you act like you’ve got everything figured out. You keep pointing the finger of blame at yourself, like you know all the answers and like you’re the problem.”

  “I am the problem—”

  “But you know what,” Richard said, ignoring the kid. His voice went up a notch as he felt his anger flare a little bit, but he kept it steady. His years of practicing law had taught him how to keep control of his emotions and argue in a clean, clear voice. “You don’t know anything. It’s time to get passed it. It’s time to grow up and move on. You have a kid on the way and all you want to do is complain about how bad you’ve got it?”

  “What the hell do you know?” Ben asked angrily, standing up.

  Richard stood up as well, kicking his chair back and stepping closer to the kid. It screeched on the floor.

  “I know that you’re looking for an easy way out. An easy solution. But guess what? Life. Isn’t. Easy. Sometimes you have to mature and stop looking for excuses.”

  “Excuses? Man I was beaten by my father. My sister overdosed and died. What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to step up and take ownership over your life. Stop pretending like you have all the answers and admit that you don’t know everything. Hell, you don’t know much of anything right now.”

  “Man—”

  “Admit that you need help,” Richard continued. “There’s a cutoff point for every person where they have to stop blaming their parents for their childhoods and take ownership over their own lives. Their own mistakes. And guess what: you crossed it. You crossed that line when you got a girl pregnant. Now it’s time to grow up and accept responsibility.”

  “And what if I turn out—”

  Richard took another step closer, his voice rising in volume. He felt his body trembling and reminded himself to stay in control. To stay cool.

  It didn’t work.

  “You just want someone to blame. You want people to feel pity for you. You want me to say: ‘Oh life was so rough for you, I totally understand why you’re a fuckup.’ You want to be able to say, after you screw up and make mistakes: ‘see, I knew I would mess up, but it isn’t my fault. It’s everyone else’s fault.’’”

  “I don’t want to blame anyone,” Ben shot back.

  “Yes. You. Do. You’ve been telling me this entire sob story, and the entire time all I hear is ‘woe is me, woe is me, I had it so rough and now you can understand why I’m this way.’ But do you know what I see? I see a young man who is going to be a father who is looking for any reason possible to abandon his child.”

  Richard took another step closer. The kid backed up, mounting fear in his eyes.

  “That’s why you stole the bottle from the liquor shop.”

  “I brought it here, didn’t I?” the kid said meekly.

  “Because deep down there is some part of you that is crying out, begging for help, and all you keep doing is trying to push it back down
because you think you already have all the answers. You think you know the whole story. You are afraid to admit that you need help and that you can’t do this alone. You want to drink so that things will get easier. If you drink, it isn’t your fault. It’s your Dad’s fault because he beat you. It’s your sister’s fault because she died so tragically.”

  “Dude, fuck you,” the kid replied, taking another step back.

  Richard continued ignoring him, stepping closer again. “You say it’s your fault, and you know you shouldn’t blame anyone else. But you are still lying to yourself. You’re just saying what you think I want to hear. Do you know whose fucking fault it isn’t? It’s not your child’s fault. So either grow up and start taking responsibility for your mistakes or get the fuck out.”

  “What do you know?”

  “There’s the fucking door,” Richard yelled, gesturing toward the exit. “If you want to whine and moan and look for easy answers for why you are this way then get the hell out.”

  “Man, what the fuck do you know?” Ben yelled back.

  “I know because I was beaten too,” Richard shouted into the kid’s face.

  The words hung in the air, suspended, and suddenly all the anger slipped out of Richard. He felt tired, drained, and weak. The kid stood there, mouth hanging open but with nothing to say.

  Richard fell heavily into his chair, rubbing his forehead and slouching.

  “I was beaten too.”

  Ben sat back down, bowing his head slightly. A minute passed, then turned into two. Neither of them moved.

  Richard forced himself to sit up straight, rubbing his hand across his eyes. “I was seven the first time. He only hit me once in a while, and only for a few years until I was about eleven. But it was enough.”

  The kid seemed to chew over several responses before shaking his head and just mumbling: “Man.”

  “I hated him,” Richard continued. “I turned seventeen and I left. Went to college and didn’t look back. Didn’t speak to anyone in my family for years. I didn’t even start talking to Jason again until I was almost forty. I wanted to blame my Dad for everything, make it all his fault. He beat me, so what else was I supposed to do? I was just a product of my environment so it wouldn’t really be my fault if I screwed up. And do you know what happened?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I thought I was punishing him by avoiding him, but he could have cared less. I was only hurting myself, hurting my family. And because of it, I almost turned into him.”

  Richard paused here, not sure if he should continue.

  His mouth kept going, though, before he could even decide:

  “I fell in love at college to the sweetest woman in the world. Someone who could tolerate that I was an asshole; who would put up with me through thick and thin. Someone who understood me. We got married, and were happy.

  “Then one day my wife and I got into a fight. It was over something really stupid, we were both wrong, but that wasn’t the point. It was a screaming match and we were both pissed off without good reason. I said something cruel and she pushed me into the wall. So I drew my hand back to hit her.”

  Richard hesitated, wiping his eyes again. The room was deathly quiet.

  “I remember it all perfectly, frozen in time. I remember thinking how good it would feel to hit her. To assert myself, because she’d already hit me. And I remember thinking: ‘it won’t really be my fault because it happened to me when I was a kid.’

  “And that scared the shit out of me,” Richard said. He shook his head slowly, back and forth with his eyes closed, as if willing the memory away. “I only hesitated for a second, but long enough for me to stop and ask: ‘is this the man I want to become?’ I hated my father, and here I was about to turn into him.”

  “What did you do?” Ben asked.

  “I ran out of the house. I ran down the road and left my car behind. I didn’t even have shoes on. I could hear her screaming behind me, yelling for me to come back, but I didn’t care. All I knew was that I had to get away.

  “I wandered down the road until about four in the morning before she found me. She was scared to death, and she apologized profusely for the fight, for hitting me, for everything. We made up, put it behind us, and moved on.

  “But I never really moved past it. Not inside. I vowed something to myself at that moment: never again. Never again would I have to stop myself like that only seconds before hitting someone I loved. I would never be like my father.

  “I hated him because of what he did to me, so how could I do something like that to someone else? I was my own man, and he wouldn’t have that kind of power over me.

  “I have two kids now,” Richard said. “I love them to death, and I hope…” he hesitated and shook his head again, “no, I know that I am giving them a better life than I had.”

  Ben bowed his head again, folding his hands between his knees. “How do you do it?”

  “The anger is still there,” Richard said. “At my father. At life, because it wasn’t fair. I just don’t give it a voice. I decided upon the man I want to be and I worked at it. I’m still working at it, even now, because the anger will never go completely away. That voice that wants me to just give in, to just give up, it’s still there. The journey never stops, but I can make incremental steps along the way.”

  A moment passed in silence.

  “I was lucky,” Richard said. “I honestly have no clue what made me stop, what kept me from hitting her. God maybe, or more likely something more mundane. I don’t really care, I’m just thankful every day that I’m not that man. I have my problems—God knows we all do—but I’m working on them.”

  On an impulse Richard reached into his jacket pocket and pulled a little silver box out. From inside he fished out a business card. He handed it to Ben.

  “I don’t really know how this whole process works, with sponsorship and alcoholics and all of that, but if you don’t have someone you can call and you’re thinking about doing something stupid, then call me.”

  Ben glanced at the card. “I thought you weren’t an alcoholic.”

  “I’m not,” Richard replied. “But I know part of what you’re going through. It’s not easy. I do get it, Ben. You had it rough. A lot rougher than me. Your life has sucked so far, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to just keep going how have been.

  “You don’t owe me anything. You might owe yourself something, but that’s for you to decide. But this kid? You owe him or her a chance to maybe one day meet their father. Their sober father. You owe this child your best shot, even if it’s just a shot in the dark.

  “All that stuff you told me? It’s horrible. I wouldn’t wish your life on my worst enemy. And believe me, in my profession I have some pretty bad enemies. But you need to put it behind you. Turn it into your past, something that used to be a part of you but isn’t any longer. Make this your past, and go find your future.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “It is a daily struggle for me, and sometimes I wish I had someone I could just reach out to. Someone who understood how hard it was to get over something like that. Something blessed me and helped me become a better man…

  “…and maybe, just maybe, I could do the same for you.”

  Ben stared at the card for another second. “Thanks,” he said, sliding it into his pocket.

  “No problem,” Richard said, then stretched his back out, feeling it pop and crack.

  The moment was over: “God these chairs suck.”

  The kid laughed. The air seemed to get lighter, easier to breathe. “I know. They are terrible.”

  “Won’t have to deal with them anymore,” Jason interrupted sadly from the back hallway.

  Richard turned and saw his little brother leaning against the wall with his arms folded, partly hidden in shadows. He wondered how long Jason had been there and realized it had probably been most of the time Ben had been speaking. He just hadn’t made his presence known.

  “What d
o you mean?” Ben asked.

  “This was the last day the clinic is open,” Jason said, stepping further into the light and walking toward them. “Tomorrow I have to turn the keys over.”

  Chapter 25

  Richard

  “You’re kidding,” Ben said, looking back and forth between the two brothers. “Where are we supposed to go now for help?”

  “I don’t know,” Jason said, “I’ll figure something out. We used to use a local church, before I rented out this space, so maybe they’ll let us come back.”

  “We need to have somewhere,” Ben said. “Yours is the only clinic in the area.”

  “I know. There’s nothing I can do about it though. I already tried every resource I have available. Do you have a place to stay?”

  Ben shook his head. “I’ve been sleeping in an alley up the road on most nights. It’s out of sight.”

  “I know a shelter you can stay at for a while,” Jason said. He turned to Richard. “You don’t mind going a few minutes out of the way before getting home, do you?”

  Richard shook his head. His entire body felt numb right now from his recent outburst and he was still trying to get his raging emotions under control.

  His father wasn’t something he liked talking about, and especially not the events of his childhood; it wasn’t that his father was a terrible person and Richard hated him: Richard didn’t even blame him for what had happened all those years ago.

  But, that didn’t mean he liked to think about it.

  Jason gestured toward the door and they headed out into the night. It was completely dark outside and cooling off from the heat of the day. Traffic was nonexistent. They stood in silence for a minute outside the clinic, and Richard closed his eyes, letting the air cool off his skin.

  “Are you ready?” Jason asked.

  “Yeah,” Richard said. “I’m ready.”

  He let out a yawn as they climbed into the car, rubbing his eyes and wondering how late it was. He wasn’t sure how long Ben had been talking.

  He decided he didn’t really care. Probably after ten, but he could handle going to work tired.