Chances Are

by Richard Russo

  THAT SUNDAY, she and Vance and both sets of parents were meeting for brunch at the club, which was celebrating its centennial. The walls of the long entryway were hung with photographs of the clubhouse itself and its members over the years. Time Machine, it was called, and the photos were displayed in chronological order so that as you proceeded down the corridor you dove deeper into the past. Vance loved it. “So fascinating,” he enthused, stopping every few feet to examine another picture or newspaper article about renovations to the dining room or the construction of the Olympic-sized swimming pool. “So much history!”

  “Right!” Jacy mocked back. “Find the Negro and win a prize!”

  Brunch was a disaster. Jacy, monosyllabic throughout, drank two Bloody Marys, barely touched her eggs Florentine and insisted they leave before dessert, Vance’s favorite part of any lunch or dinner. Since their return from Hartford, Don and Viv had both been out of sorts, so it had fallen to Vance and his parents to carry the conversation for the entire table.

  “Will you please tell me what’s wrong?” Vance begged, when the ordeal was finally over. There was a bottleneck in the corridor, people oohing and aahing over the Time Machine photos.

  “Nothing is wrong,” she assured him, though everything would have been closer to the truth.

  “Well, you obviously haven’t been yourself all weekend.”

  Actually, she thought, I have been. This is the new me.

  “You were disrespectful to our parents in there and, frankly, rude to me. In fact, you act as if you don’t love me at all.”

  It’s not an act, Vance. I don’t love you. Not even a little.

  “If you’re worried about the wedding, that’s understandable. The future’s always scary. I get it.”

  The future with you is scary. And you don’t get it.

  “But we’re going to be happy, Jace. We are. I promise.”

  No, we’re going to be miserable. I’m going to see to it. You have no idea how completely devoted I am to our misery, now and till the end of time.

  “We’re going to be just like those guys right there.”

  He was pointing at one of the Time Machine pictures, of Don and Viv, together with Vance’s parents, all four in their twenties, raising champagne flutes, Vance’s mother clearly pregnant. The caption read: A Toast to the Future!

  And there he was, behind them, the grinning tuxedoed bartender, champagne bottle raised, as if to top them all off. Young, dark skinned, curly haired, handsome. The only person in the picture not looking at the camera was Viv, whose head was turned so she could regard the bartender, and the expression on her young face was one Jacy had never seen before. The names of those in the photo were listed beneath. The bartender’s was Andres Demopoulos.

  Andy.

  THE NEXT DAY Jacy heard the phone ring in her father’s office. Her mother must’ve heard it, too, because when Don emerged she was waiting for him. From the top of the stairs Jacy was able to eavesdrop, though they kept their voices low.

  “I just got a tip,” Donald said. “They’re on their way.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Nothing. They’re fishing.”

  “Fish get caught.”

  “I’m not the fish they’re after. The worst that happens to me is a slap on the wrist.”

  “Why not give them the fish they want?”

  “How about you leave this to me.”

  Ten minutes later a dark sedan pulled into their drive and two nondescript men wearing dark suits got out. Donald met them at the door and invited them in. When his office door closed behind them, Jacy joined her mother in the kitchen, where Viv sat staring into a cup of tea as if she were trying to read the leaves in the bottom. Jacy had considered confronting her yesterday when they returned from brunch, but decided that a perfect bitch would let her new discovery marinate. She would wait for the precise right moment, which had now arrived. With Don occupied behind his closed office door, her mother was alone and vulnerable, a sickly wildebeest culled from the herd. Sitting down across from her, Jacy said, “Andres Demopoulos.” When her mother blinked but said nothing, she repeated the name.

  “Your father is being investigated for insider trading and money laundering,” her mother replied. A plea for sympathy? Good luck with that, lady. “He claims it’s not going to happen, but there’s a chance he might go to jail.”

  “Your husband may go to jail. My father is Andres Demopoulos.”

  Her mother lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply. “Exactly what is it that you want from me, little girl?”

  “To start, it would be nice if you didn’t call me ‘little girl.’ ”

  “It would be nice if you didn’t call me Viv. It would be nice if you didn’t call your father Donald.”

  “I call my father Andy. And what I want is for you to tell me about him.”

  Her mother appeared to ponder how to best respond, or maybe just whether to. Finally she said, “He’s just a man I once knew. He was handsome. Charming.”

  “You loved him?”

  “No.” But she looked away.

  “He loved you?”

  A pause. Then, “Yes.”

  “This was before Donald?” And when Viv didn’t respond, “During?” When she didn’t respond to this either, “Okay, during. And for how long?”

  “Not very.”

  “How long?”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “Did Don know?”

  “Of course not. Your father’s a narcissist. That I’d be interested in another man would never occur to him.”

  “My father is Andy—”

  “I know. You don’t have to keep saying his name.”

  “I like the sound of it.”

  Now her mother looked at her. “You can’t be serious.”

  Jacy ignored this. “But eventually Don found out.”

  “Well, you were born a month early, with olive skin and dark, curly hair.”

  “And what was his reaction?”

  She stubbed the half-smoked cigarette out in the ashtray, which contained several other butts. “It was a rough couple of weeks.”

  “That’s all?”

  “If your father understands anything it’s the importance of appearances. Divorcing me wouldn’t have looked good.”

  “Okay,” Jacy said, “but you were lying before.”

  “When?”

  “When you said you didn’t love him. There’s a photo of you and Don and Vance’s parents at the club. And my father. Everybody is looking at the camera but you. You’re looking at Andy. You loved him.”

  Her mother was studying the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray with what appeared to be genuine regret. It’d been a mistake to stub it out. “Like I said, he was charming.”

  “Why can’t you admit you loved him?”

  “What good would it do?”

  “Do you still love him?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “What happened? If he loved you and you loved him—”

  “He went away.” She picked up her coffee spoon and she used it to push the half-smoked cigarette around.

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “He got fired. For drinking on the job.”

  “Did he know you were pregnant?”

  That got a nasty laugh. “I didn’t even know I was pregnant, little girl.”

  “So he went away. Just like that. He loved you, but left anyway.”

  “I told him to go.”

  “Why?”

  Her mother continued fooling around with the cigarette. “Because there was no future for us. He was an immigrant. He didn’t even have papers. He could barely speak English. I was engaged to your father. How many reasons do you need?”

  “So, you just told him to go away and off he went?”

  She looked up now, and Jacy saw that her cheeks were wet. “I had to be very, very cruel to him.”

  “Tell me what you said.”

  “The truth.”<
br />
  “That he was an immigrant? That he could barely speak English?”

  “That I could never introduce him to my parents. That if we married, we’d be poor. That I had no intention of being poor.”

  “So instead you married a man you didn’t love,” Jacy said.

  Her mother stood up and took the ashtray over to the sink, where she held her last cigarette under the running faucet until she was sure it was out, then dumped all of them into the trash.

  When she sat down again, Jacy said, “So when did Andy find out about me?”

  “When you won that junior tennis tournament. Your picture was in the paper.”

  “You’re lying again. If he went away, how could he have seen my picture?”

  “He subscribed to Greenwich Time.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Think about it.”

  She did. “He was still in love with you. Even after the horrible things you said to him.”

  She shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Even though you’d married my … married Don.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “He knew you had a child?”

  Another shrug.

  “But not that I was his?”

  “Not until he saw your picture.”

  “God, you’re so fucked up.”

  “You’re not to use that word in this house.”

  “Oh, right. You get to fuck my father and toss him out with the trash, but I don’t get to say a dirty word?”

  “I didn’t …,” Viv began, then stopped. Wiping her eyes on a napkin, she said, “I made a choice.”

  “And now the man you chose is going to jail. Well done.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. It’s only a possibility.”

  “It would serve you right.”

  “Also a possibility.” She rose again, this time setting her cup and saucer next to the sink before returning.

  “Who knows that Donald’s under investigation?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Vance’s parents?”

  “No.”

  “How long before they do? How long before everybody knows?”

  “Feds don’t talk. Besides, it’s his boss they’re after. And his boss’s boss.”

  “Tell me something, Viv. Do you even know about the safe behind the Renoir?”

  At this her mother started. “You vicious little snoop.”

  “Mmmm,” she agreed, then, “How do I get in touch with my father?”

  “He’s down the hall. Just knock on the door.”

  “How do I get in touch with Andy?”

  “You don’t. He’s gone. How many times do I have to say it?”

  That made it twice that she’d used the word gone to describe him. Jacy swallowed hard. “I want to see him.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “He died.”

  “Stop … fucking … lying.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Finally her mother said, “How about we make a deal? I give you what you want. You give me what I want.” And when Jacy hesitated, “What’s the matter, little girl? You don’t like being the one who has to choose?” Her mother wore a different expression now, and when Jacy recognized it as triumph, she realized she’d somehow misplayed her hand. Her mother knew what Jacy wanted, but she had no idea what Viv wanted in return. “Your call, little girl. Do we have a deal?”

  THE OBITUARY PAGE from the Danbury News-Times, which her mother produced as her part of the bargain, contained half a dozen death notices, some running to several columns. Her father’s was by far the shortest. It stated that Andres Demopoulos had passed away at the age of forty-five at Holloway House, a nursing facility in nearby Bethel. He’d originally come to America via Canada with his older brother Dimitri. They’d grown up in New York City, but after his brother’s untimely death he’d moved to Connecticut, where he’d worked in the food-service industry before falling ill. He had—his daughter read—no surviving relatives. Which meant that somehow the grinning young man from the Time Machine photo was gone again. What little Jacy had of her father—a few terrifying minutes on the front lawn of their home, a glimpse of an old photograph and the few thin facts of the obituary—was all she’d ever have.

  Finally, after Jacy’d read the obit several times, her mother spoke. “I’m sorry.”

  Which sent Jacy into a warp-drive fury, though she kept her voice down. “Really, Viv? You’re sorry? About what? Are you sorry he died? That he loved you? That you loved him? That he loved me? That you kept him from me and me from him?”

  “That he had such a hard life.”

  “You’re the one that made it hard. You and Donald.”

  “For your sake.”

  “Don’t … you dare say that. You chose. You said so yourself. You didn’t even know you were pregnant when you made that choice.”

  “You don’t know the whole story.”

  “I don’t know any of the story. You weren’t even going to tell me that he existed.”

  “That’s right, and I’m sorry you found out. Look what knowing has done to you. Your ignorance was bliss. Don’t you remember how happy you used to be?”

  Was this true? Had she been happy? If so, that happiness was so long ago that it now felt like someone else’s. “How do we even know that any of this is true? How would a newspaper in Danbury know that my father had a brother named Dimitri? It says he had no living relatives, so who would’ve told them?” Her mother just looked at her, waiting for her to understand. Finally, she did. “You.”

  “There was no one else.”

  “You wrote my father’s obituary.”

  “I answered their questions. They wrote it.”

  “You told them he fell ill?”

  “He did.”

  “Alcoholics don’t ‘fall ill.’ ”

  “He wasn’t an alcoholic.”

  “Stop lying, Viv. You can’t even keep your story straight. That day on the lawn you told me yourself he was a falling-down drunk. Just now you said he got fired from the club for drinking on the job.”

  “That’s what he was fired for, yes.”

  Jacy rubbed her temples, trying to force the few facts she knew into alignment. Clearly, her mother was choosing her words carefully. Rhetorical hairs were being split. But to what end? “Did he or did he not drink himself to death?”

  The smile her mother offered then—an odd mix of wonder and shame—was one Jacy knew would stay with her for a long, long time. “Strange you should put it that way,” she said, “because in a sense that’s exactly what happened. He choked to death drinking a glass of water.”

  “You are so full of—”

  “Cerebellar ataxia is what it’s called. A degenerative disease of the nervous system, like MS. Over time you lose motor function. Your speech slurs. Your limbs flail. You look and sound drunk. That’s what you were seeing on the lawn that afternoon.”

  “But you told me—”

  “I know what I told you. It seemed best.”

  “For you.”

  “For me, for everyone. He didn’t want you to see him like that.”

  “That’s a lie. I’m the one he came here to see, not you.”

  “He wanted you to know he existed, that’s all. Okay, it’s true he wanted to see you, to … take you in. But when he saw how terrified you were, he knew the whole thing was a mistake. I knew where he was living, so I went to see him there, and he made me promise never to tell you the truth. He said it would be easiest for you if you believed he was a drunk. In time you’d forget he ever existed.”

  “Except I didn’t.”

  “No, you certainly didn’t.”

  “You stole him from me.”

  “For your own good.”

  “I could’ve helped him.”

  “No. No one could help him.”

  “I could’ve been with him. Comforted him.”

&n
bsp; “Don’t lie to yourself, little girl. It’s a bad habit. Take it from one who knows.”

  Jacy ignored this. “How did you even learn that he died? Am I supposed to believe you read the Danbury News-Times?”

  “Of course not. We hired someone to keep tabs on him, your father and I. Don and I. We didn’t want a repetition of that day on the lawn.”

  “Right. God forbid that I should ever see my father again.”

  “Also, he had expenses. His condition … deteriorated. He was unable to work. By the end he needed … well, almost everything.”

  “You’re saying you paid?”

  “We paid. Your father … Don and I. We paid.”

  “Why would Don pay? He hated Andy. I could see the hatred in his eyes that afternoon.”

  “He didn’t want to. I made him.”

  “How?”

  “Simple. I told him I knew.”

  Suddenly there was no air in the room. “Knew what?”

  Her mother just looked at her.

  Jacy felt her stomach rise. “How long have you known?”

  “I can’t answer that. One day I didn’t and then I did. That day on the lawn, maybe. I saw the hope in your eyes. The hope that Andy would come and take you away. From me, was my first thought, because I knew you despised me. Then I thought again.”

  “But you did nothing.”

  “Well, I didn’t really know, did I.”

  “You just said you did.”

  “I told myself it couldn’t be true. Made myself believe it wasn’t.”

  “Ignorance is bliss.”

  “That it is, little girl, and don’t ever let anybody tell you different. The truth will set you free? Don’t make me laugh.”

  Down the hall there was a rustling, the sound of chairs sliding back, men getting to their feet.

  Jacy felt hot tears welling up, but she refused to cry. Instead, she said, “You know what, Viv? I never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I want to be just like you. I want to be selfish. I want to not give the tiniest little shit about anyone but myself. I want to be able to do the kinds of things you do and never suffer the consequences.”