by Erik Tarloff
And I told him, I said, “Well, that might’ve been true when I was a baby or a little girl and didn’t have any personality of my own. It was easy for him to adore me then. But once I started thinking for myself, he didn’t like it one small bit.” And then I noticed what he’d said, and I said, “Is that when you and he started fighting? When I was born? I never knew that.”
Anyway, we suddenly had something to talk about, the two of us. And we talked and talked. It was just amazing. This guy I was thinking was a total stranger to me, but we were talking about people and experiences we shared, and really opening up to each other, and it was great. I felt like a huge burden was being lifted off my shoulders, just being able to say what I was feeling to someone who seemed to understand.
For the rest of his visit, we were almost inseparable. As I told you, we hadn’t been close before—I mean before he’d gone off to college, we were too far apart in age and we lived in different houses and so on—but now, for the ten days or so he was with us, we saw each other pretty much every day. We went for walks, we went down to the drugstore for lunch, we caught a movie, and after the movie he started telling me about the acting in it, who was good and who was bad and why, and that was really amazing, he pointed out stuff I’d never noticed before. And we stayed up late after dinner, just gab gab gab. I finally felt like I had a brother.
Mary Bennett
He drove from New York to Hollywood. I never could fathom making that kind of road trip, but hey, I’m kind of a stick-in-the-mud gal when it comes to going places. Back then, people made that drive pretty regular. It was the main way of getting from coast to coast, either that or by train, change in Chicago. Four or five days on the road, minimum. Most people didn’t fly in those days. Air travel was still a big deal. They didn’t have jets for commercial travel yet, you had to take a propeller plane. Flying seemed a little…I don’t know, exotic-like. Something rich people did. A little scary too, like, if God had wanted man to fly, that sort of notion. People still thought that way. And besides, Chance was moving himself lock, stock, and barrel, he was moving his whole life from one place to another, and even though I don’t believe he owned much, no furniture at all, just his clothes and some books and those jazz records of his, it was probably easier to take all of it with him than try to ship everything. Especially since he didn’t even know where he was going to be staying. So ship it to where, you see what I mean?
But anyway, he stopped here for a little visit on that trip. A week or two. Stayed with Earl and me. Sally hoped he’d stay with her, but that really wasn’t practical. Not enough room in that tiny bungalow, and Steve would probably have nixed it anyway. And besides, Chance would rather have slept in a parking lot than stayed in the same house as Steve.
It was wonderful to have him with us, even for so short a time. But it was a little peculiar, too, and it still makes me sad to think about that aspect of it. He’d been part of our household, and I thought of him as being almost like a son, which of course upset Sally no end. But I did, I adored that boy, and now he was more like a guest than a family member. What with his having gone to college and having lived in New York—which was like another country to us, might as easily have been Belgium or Saskatchewan—and then on his way to Hollywood, also like another country, and having been on a show on the TV and everything…well, we hardly knew whether he would be our Chance at all, or just some person who looked like him but acted completely different, somebody who looked down on us for our small town ways.
And I have to say, it was a bit like that. Not that he looked down on us, but it took a while to get used to having him among us again. Sally was as nervous as a kitten around him, her own son, and Steve pretended not to be impressed, which only showed how impressed he actually was, and as for me, well, I kept wanting to hug him and kiss him and kept feeling like he’d find that unwelcome. And it was hard to know what to talk about to him. Lord knows life around here is pretty dull, or we figured he’d think it was, you know, after all he’d seen and done and everywhere he’d been, so we didn’t want to bore him with our own dreary lives. But it was hard to know what to ask him about his own. Every question felt like prying. Like prying or like…like we were country hicks asking about life in the big city. [laughs] Which I guess we were, but still…
And he was different. Not in real obvious ways, mind you. He was still quiet and polite. He never acted high-and-mighty or hoity-toity. And if anything, he was more helpful around the house. I guess living alone he’d learned about household chores. But there was something else…it’s hard to describe, maybe someone smarter than me could do it…his mind always seemed to be yonder, even when he was talking right to you. I don’t mean he wasn’t in the conversation, because he was, but you got the feeling he was talking to you on automatic while his real self, his soul, was somewhere else. Or like he was worried about something, something you couldn’t guess at and wouldn’t understand.
I think Sally felt it more than I did. He was living in our house, he had to deal with Earl and me. With Sally…well, he still called her “Mom,” he kissed her hello when he saw her, he took her out to dinner once or twice—without Steve, incidentally, I don’t know how he managed that—I mean, how Sally explained it to Steve that made it all right, so it didn’t provoke some sort of blow-up—but anyhow, when Chance was with her, there was just something missing. Some special degree of, of, of devotion, I guess you’d call it. We all could sense it, but I think Sally really felt it.
And on Sunday morning—he was here through one Sunday—when we all were getting ready to go to church—we used to all go together, Sally and Steve and Dot and Earl and me—he said he wasn’t going. That was a little upsetting. When I asked him why not, he said he just didn’t do that anymore. He said it real mild, not argumentative, but still…and after, there was this pause, and I wanted to ask him if he’d become like an atheist or a, a, I can’t remember the word anymore, whatever you call it when someone doesn’t believe in God exactly but isn’t real militant about it, but anyway, I didn’t have the nerve to. Maybe I was afraid of how he’d answer.
But I’ll tell you this. The next week, after Chance had already gone, Dot announced she didn’t want to go to church anymore either. She said she figured she was old enough to make up her own mind about things and she didn’t feel like church was for her. She wasn’t sure she still believed in Jesus, she said. Well, Steve wasn’t having it. They went back and forth a few times, so Mary told me, and then he slapped her pretty good and forced her to go. So I don’t know if Chance was to blame for all that, but I kind of think he must’ve been.
But on the other side, I gotta say this: Chance was wonderful with Earl. Earl was beginning to get forgetful around this time, asking the same questions over and over, telling the same stories, looking confused about this and that. And Chance was real patient with him. Lots of people weren’t. Including Steve, by the way. Steve used to make fun of Earl, which was downright cruel. And it hurt Earl’s feelings. He wasn’t so confused that he didn’t know he was confused, didn’t realize something was wrong. But Chance was super-patient about it. Pretending to be interested when Earl told the same story over and over, and repeating his answers over and over when Earl kept asking him the same questions. And it’s interesting, because, as I think I mentioned, Chance and Earl were never especially close. I never got the feeling Chance felt much in the way of warmth toward Earl, which was fair enough, since at best Earl was kind of lukewarm about Chance. But on this visit, Chance was, you could even call it saintly when it came to Earl.
Dorothy Goren Mckenzie
So like I said, things were mostly okay this visit, a little uneasy maybe, we none of us were exactly sure what to expect from Chance, but things mostly went pretty smooth. And like I also said, Chance and me, we actually became close while he was around. It was the grown-ups—by which I mean my mom and dad and Uncle Earl and Aunt Mary; because of course Chance was a grown-up by then too
, but he wasn’t part of the grown-ups’ generation, if that makes any sense—they were the ones who seemed queasy around him. Unsure how to act, unsure what to make of him. They were more used to dealing with him in a way that no longer made any sense, they had to figure out what way did make sense. But for all that, things were on a pretty even keel for most of the visit. He was nice to our mom and he restrained himself with my dad—although I could see my mom wanted more from him than she was getting, which was a little heartbreaking to watch—I’m not sure what would have satisfied her or what she expected, but whatever it was, she wasn’t getting it—and he seemed appreciative of Uncle Earl and Aunt Mary, if not exactly doting. He was helpful around the house in thoughtful ways that he hadn’t been before, making his bed, doing the food shopping without being asked, various household tasks, making coffee in the morning if he got up first, stuff like that. Things Uncle Earl didn’t ever do. He would’ve dismissed that stuff as woman’s work.
But the stuff really hit the fan on his last night in town, just when we were all breathing easier. There’d been so much apprehension before his visit, but it had seemed to go fine, and we were feeling really sad to see him go. Especially me. Well, Mom and Aunt Mary too, it looked to me like Mom was coming to terms, or at least trying to come to terms, with the way she’d sort of let her relationship with Chance slide when she first married my dad and when I was born, it was like she was discovering all this motherly feeling toward him that she’d denied or—what’s the word?—suppressed when he was younger. And wanted to make it up to him. But still, even considering my mom and aunt, I think it may have been hardest on me. Like I said, I felt I’d finally found someone who understood me. Someone I could really talk to. I’d been having a pretty rough time in high school—not so different from what Chance had gone through, I guess, or at least that’s what he told me, he said in those days he felt like someone who didn’t even speak the same language as the kids he went to school with—and it had been fantastic to finally have someone who seemed to be on the same wavelength. Who understood what I was trying to say. To finally have, like I said, a real big brother, not just in name, not just as a formality, but in the way he treated me and in the way I looked up to him. But now it was his last night with us, he was all set to drive on to California the next day. His car was all packed up and gassed up, he was planning on getting an early start. So it was a bittersweet occasion.
My mom—our mom—insisted we have Chance’s farewell supper at our place. I don’t believe Aunt Mary put up much of a fight about that. Not that time. Chance had been staying with her, he’d been having most of his meals at her house, and she wasn’t so mean or so competitive with her sister that she was going to begrudge her the opportunity to give Chance his last meal before he left us for Hollywood. And of course mom made something special. Not macaroni and cheese this time, she wanted it to be fancier than that. So she made this leg of lamb thing for him, a kind of complicated dish with some sort of spicy tomato sauce, I think she’d found the recipe in a magazine years before, and she recalled that when she used to make it at Easter he’d always ask for second helpings. And she wouldn’t let Aunt Mary bring anything except a salad. She wanted this to be her show.
Well, my dad was in a pretty grumpy mood all day. Where Chance was concerned, Dad was often grumpy, and today, since it was totally devoted to Chance, to giving Chance a big send-off, he was especially grumpy. Complaining about how elaborate the preparations were, and how expensive the meal was, and making fun of Mom’s nervousness. Not making fun in fun, either. Mean making fun. Putting her on the defensive, which of course made her even more nervous.
“I want it to be a nice evening for him, Steve,” she told him. Almost pleading. “It’s his last night here till goodness knows when, maybe till forever, and I want him to remember that we told him goodbye in a loving way. I want him to want to come back sometime.”
Dad just grunted, but if you knew Dad well, you knew how to parse his grunts. This was an ominous grunt.
So Chance came over at about five thirty with Aunt Mary and Uncle Earl. They all came together. She brought what passed for salad in those days: Some iceberg lettuce, a sliced tomato, some sliced cucumber. A Russian dressing she made herself that was just ketchup and mayonnaise mixed together, nothing else. And Chance brought a bottle of red wine he’d bought in town. I don’t remember anything specific about the wine except that it was French. The specifics wouldn’t have meant anything to me, partly because I didn’t know the first thing about wine and partly because I was too young to drink alcohol, my parents were really strict about that. But I’m guessing it probably wasn’t the cheap stuff. I think Chance wanted to make a handsome gesture on his last night, so he might have been a little extravagant. He probably got the best bottle that was available in the town liquor store, which, you know, wouldn’t have been like one of those Rothschild things, but probably wasn’t swill either. Something a cut above Thunderbird or Italian Swiss Colony.
Well, bringing wine turned out to be a mistake. Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Maybe it’s wrong to believe the wine was the problem—maybe just Chance’s existence was the problem. Daddy was going to find something to make a fuss about, and it’s possible that if Chance hadn’t brought wine Daddy would have picked on, I don’t know, Chance’s haircut, or his shoes, or his calling Aunt Mary “Mary” instead of “Aunt Mary,” or pretty much anything, no matter how ridiculous. Whatever was handy. Whatever he could seize on. But what was handy that night, what first caught Daddy’s attention, was the fact that Chance brought a bottle of wine.
He started in immediately. “Wine, huh?” You know, sounding suspicious, like he’d never heard of anyone drinking wine before, or maybe like it was poisoned or something. And then, “Is this what you and your fancy friends drink in New York? You all must be mighty sophisticated. Real artsy-fartsy little prancers.” With his pinky in the air.
And you know, at first, Chance—and all of us—tried to pretend this was meant in fun, even though we of course knew it wasn’t. Chance smiled—laughter was out of the question, but he did manage a smile at first—and answered with “Yeah” or “I guess so” or something like that. But that just got Daddy more determined. He wasn’t out to be amusing, he wanted to be insulting. He didn’t want things to go smooth, he wanted trouble. He wanted to provoke trouble. If Chance didn’t rise to the bait then he was just going to re-double his efforts. Not let up until he got a big enough rise out of Chance to make the exercise worthwhile.
Mary Bennett
That last night, the last night of Chance’s visit, was just terrible. I try not to think about it. Thinking about it, even after all these years, still gives me the willies. Lordy. See, Steve started in, the way only Steve could, and right from the first it just put everybody on edge. And then he got worse and worse. Poor Sally suffered the most of all of us, I suppose, because she wanted so much for this dinner to be something special, to be something Chance would remember fondly. Although…you know, to be honest, now that I think about it, maybe the real victim that night was actually Dotty. She wasn’t hardly out of childhood yet. She was defenseless, trapped inside that house with those people. And she couldn’t even protest, she wasn’t allowed a voice. She just had to watch it in silence.
Dorothy Goren Mckenzie
So we finally sat down to dinner. It seemed like an eternity sitting around the parlor making small talk, although it couldn’t have been more than a half-hour. And of course as soon as we got to the table, Daddy announced he was drinking beer. And then he glared at my mom, kind of daring her to have any of the wine Chance brought. And as usual, she was so cowed by him, all it took was that look of his and she immediately announced she’d be drinking milk, which is what she usually drank with supper. And Uncle Earl, he was a beer kind of guy too, so without really understanding what was going on or noticing the vibrations, he signed up to be on Daddy’s team. And I say Daddy’s team because suddenly this w
as almost a political battle, you know? Like you were choosing sides. Then Aunt Mary upped and announced she wanted wine, that was how she cast her vote, but I don’t even think she really did. I think she was making a statement, just like my dad was. She’d probably have preferred milk to be honest, or maybe Dr. Pepper. But she wanted Steve to know he couldn’t boss her around, and she wanted Chance to know she had his back.
But then my mom, seeing her sister side with Chance like that, suddenly felt, I don’t know, like she’d backed the wrong horse, and as I said, they’d been kind of having this unspoken contest all along, so she said, “You know, on second thought, maybe I’ll try some wine. That sounds like fun.” At which point my dad gave her a really dirty look and said, “You said you wanted milk and that’s what you’re going to have, Sally. We don’t drink wine in this house.” It was so ugly and brutish and childish and bullying, I didn’t know where to look. But he always was able to lord it over her, so although she looked upset, almost like she was going to cry, she nodded and waved her hand at the wine bottle Chance was offering her, waved it away.
Mary Bennett
So the wine business was already nasty, childish, and unpleasant, and surely gave us all the indication we needed that this was going to be a miserable night. But it turned out to be just…just a…what’s that word for a drink before dinner? An aperitif. [laughs] I mean, I’d already seen Chance start to stiffen when Steve ordered Sally not to have any wine—that was the first time he let on in any way, even silently, that Steve was bothering him, no doubt because he hated to see his mom bullied like that, but he still kept his peace. It was borderline, mind you. I think he was biting his tongue, but he kept his peace.