The Realm of Last Chances

by Steve Yarbrough

  She took another sip. Objectively the wine was dreadful, but right now it suited her just fine. The right wine for the moment—sharply acidic, no lulling velvet aftertaste. “You don’t regret what you did with Donna?” she asked.

  “Why would I?”

  “You don’t think maybe it helped wreck your marriage?”

  “My marriage wasn’t a wreck,” he said quietly. “It was great till it wasn’t. As for all that stuff with Donna and assorted others … well, I’d do it all again. Except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  He spread his arms wide in what she would’ve taken as a gesture of defeat except that he burst out laughing. “I can’t. I would if I could. But there’s no way I can.”

  A great many facets of American life dismayed Cal Stevens. Among them, in no particular order: the willingness to accept shoddy goods and poor workmanship when better products and services were available; a preference for the most vapid pop music, played so loudly over someone else’s iPod that you couldn’t help but hear it, even if you hated it; the easy platitudes spewed from pulpits and swallowed whole by millions; the scarcely veiled licentiousness promoted by commercials, stupid movies and reality TV; the assumption that ours was the most dynamic country the world had ever known, that it would always be so, though at present one out of every ten people was unable to land a job flipping patties at McDonald’s. Nothing, however, was as repulsive to him as football.

  This, in fact, encapsulated many of the American traits he hated most. It was about getting and taking, about breaking the will of an opponent, who by virtue of wearing the wrong-color jersey could only be regarded as the enemy. Many of the players seemed to operate under the assumption that the Lord was on their side, kneeling after touchdowns to thank Him for leading them through the wilderness into the Promised Land. The game was preceded and often interrupted by crashing cymbals and blaring trumpets. On the sidelines, busty young women paraded their half-naked bodies before scores of thousands in the stadium and many millions on the couch. It was the kind of spectacle especially beloved by military leaders and corrupt businessmen like his father.

  Sitting there with Dave and Jimmy, who frequently hopped up to high-five each other after yet another New England score, he kept his revulsion private, even forcing himself to grunt with feigned pleasure once or twice, though he virulently disliked Tom Brady, who reminded him of too many burnished beach boys he’d known in California. He downed a couple of beers fast, and while this produced the desired effect he couldn’t help wondering if he was really glad to be where he was or if he was the sucker who’d accepted the low bid.

  Around two thirty Dave’s wife showed up. Her name was Gloria, and even if Dave hadn’t already told him a bit about her background, Cal would’ve known the moment he laid eyes on her that she was Hispanic. Her short, frosty hair looked striking against her copper-colored skin.

  When she said hello, he heard the Caribbean accent. “Dave tells me you’re from California,” she said. “Do you speak Spanish?”

  “A little bit,” he answered, hoping to Christ she wouldn’t switch.

  “My sister lives out there.”

  “Where?”

  “Crescent City.”

  “Up on the north coast.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “I go out there every other year,” Gloria said. “The off years, she comes here.”

  Dave rolled his eyes. “Seems like it’s more like a couple times a month.”

  This didn’t sound bitter, just like banter. Confirming Cal’s impression, Gloria reached over and swiped playfully at her husband’s head.

  She hugged Jimmy and said she was glad to see him, then Dave led her into the kitchen and introduced her to Kristin. She dawdled there before returning with a glass of red wine. She and Cal discussed California for a few moments, and she asked if he thought he’d ever get used to cold weather and snow.

  “Oh, I imagine I can handle it.”

  “My parents and I came here from Cuba when I was a teenager,” she told him, “and they never did learn to cope with it. Some people are just made for sultry climates.”

  “What about you?”

  She laughed. “I was probably made for that too.”

  “Have you ever gone back to Cuba?”

  “No. It’s not that easy. And I’m not sure I want to.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “How could you? You live in the country you were born in.”

  “This country’s not one country,” he said. “It’s several. And this certainly isn’t the one I was born in.”

  “Okay, I understand your point. But you have the same language and, overall, the same customs. I mean, it’s not like you grew up burning dolls on New Year’s Eve, right?” She laughed and laid her hand on his arm. “In Cuba, we did it as a symbolic gesture to rid ourselves of everything bad that happened over the preceding year.”

  “I kind of like that,” Cal said. “Maybe I’ll buy a Barbie this year and light her up.”

  Vico soon announced it was time for dinner and herded them into the dining room, where Kristin was placing an oval platter of stuffing on the table. “Sit wherever you choose,” he said, “but leave the seat at the far end for me. I’ll be running back and forth between here and Armageddon.”

  “That’s not why you want to sit there,” Gloria told him. “You want to sit there because you’re the caudillo.”

  Cal waited to see where she sat, then took the chair beside hers. He was on either his fifth or sixth beer, and his head was cloudy, but he retained the presence of mind to know what was going on, which was why he sat beside her rather than across the table, where he could see her face. She was in her midsixties and until an hour or so ago had been nothing more than a name—my wife, Gloria—but she reminded him intensely of someone he used to know.

  Vico brought the turkey out to cheers and set it in the middle of the table—the largest bird Cal had ever seen, a twenty-one pounder, according to his neighbor, who promptly informed them that since each person was responsible for consuming precisely three and a half pounds, they’d better dig in.

  “What about the bones?” Jimmy asked.

  “What about ’em?”

  “Don’t you got to subtract the bones from the overall weight?”

  Cal ate far too much. He didn’t really like turkey, just as he didn’t really like Thanksgiving, but he wanted to keep something in his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Gloria employing a fair number of hand gestures when she spoke, often laying down her knife and fork. A couple times she appealed to him for confirmation—as, for instance, when she observed that Proposition 13, along with the prison guards’ lobby, was destroying the state of California, forcing people like her sister, a public-school teacher, to retire early or be laid off. Each time she turned to him, he nodded and kept chewing.

  Once, when he got up to get another beer, his thigh brushed hers and he mumbled, “Sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “I liked it.”

  He pulled a beer out of the fridge, stood it on the counter, then locked himself in the downstairs bathroom. After emptying his aching bladder, he flushed and put the top down and sat on the toilet for a few moments. He wanted to keep teaching Dave—easily the best thing, he’d decided, about this new life—but he’d have to limit his time around Gloria. If he wasn’t careful, the next thing he knew he’d be suffering full-fledged flashbacks, like the ravaged men you used to see wandering the outskirts of Bakersfield in the early seventies, the ones who’d stayed too long in the Mekong Delta.

  When he got back to the table, she was telling Jimmy he needed to remarry, that his clothes were always wrinkled and he was starting to lose weight. As Cal took his seat, she again touched his arm. “Don’t you agree?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “I think everybody needs to get married.” He should’ve stopped there but didn’t. “It’s
the only thing,” he added, “that could’ve saved a wretch like me.”

  In the kitchen, after the dishwasher had been loaded and turned on and all that remained were the dirty pots and pans and a few leftover serving pieces, Gloria said, “I’ll wash and you dry, or I’ll dry and you wash. Whichever you prefer.”

  “I’ll wash,” Kristin said, pulling on a pair of yellow rubber gloves Vico had laid on the counter and getting busy with a scouring pad.

  From the living room, they could hear the sound of instruments being tuned. Cal hadn’t particularly wanted to bring his guitar along, but when you were at Dave’s stage, he’d told her this morning, you needed to play with somebody else whenever you got a chance.

  “My husband can’t believe his good fortune,” Gloria said as Kristin passed her a clean pot. “He says Cal’s not just a great player but a great teacher too.”

  “Well, according to him, Dave’s progressing by leaps and bounds.”

  “He lives with that thing in his hands now. For forty years he’s said he can’t carry on a conversation while watching a football game. But he can certainly watch while he plays the mandolin.”

  “Cal’s never been able to do anything else when he plays. He usually closes his eyes.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to see the notes.”

  “Seeing them wouldn’t do him any good. He can’t read music.”

  “That’s amazing. So he’s just a natural musician?”

  “He’d object to that term.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You never asked?”

  “No, I never did,” Kristin said, handing her a sparkling gravy boat. “I guess I always felt like the music was just for him. He used to play once a week with a bunch of other people at a little country store—this was close to Sacramento—and they’d all smile while they played, nodding at one another like they were sending special signals or whatever, but he never did. He just sat there with his eyes shut. When it was time for him to take a solo, he seemed to sense it.”

  Gloria wiped the dish dry and stood it on the counter next to the pot. “How did he learn to play?”

  “I’m not sure. He never told me.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about your husband.”

  The assessment was inarguable, the reasons hard to explain. For one thing, she could tell at once he was a private person, that he wouldn’t willingly surrender large chunks of information about himself or his past; for another, she was afraid to learn too much. The more you thought you knew, the worse it might hurt if it proved untrue.

  “I guess that’s right,” she told Gloria. “Maybe I’m short on curiosity.”

  “Well, curiosity can be good, or it can be bad. There’s no such thing as a standard marriage. What works for one doesn’t work for another.”

  “It looks as if yours works well for you.”

  “More or less.”

  “But not completely?”

  Gloria laughed. “I live in Cedar Park, Massachusetts. Not in heaven.”

  “Was your marriage ever in trouble?”

  “Maybe once. But that was a long time ago.”

  “What made it last?”

  “It wasn’t just love. I could easily love somebody and still leave him. People do that all the time. It was mostly that I’d gotten so used to having him around. And honestly? He’s a really great guy. He doted on our kids, he still dotes on me and we never have to call a plumber. He can work miracles with toilets and garbage disposals.”

  “Cal can do pretty much anything around a house, including building one from the ground up.”

  “It looks to me like you’ve got a great situation. A man that can take care of a house, serenade you on the guitar and who’s madly in love with you.”

  The statement shocked her so badly she couldn’t disguise her surprise. “What makes you say that?”

  Gloria was wiping down the huge turkey platter. “I have eyes,” she said. “And since I’m sixty-three, I usually know what I’m looking at. Don’t you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, trust me then, because I am. And you know what? Good men don’t come along all that often. When you’ve got one, it’s best to keep him close by. There are too many women looking for something they can’t find.”

  They finished the dishes, leaving all of them neatly stacked on the counter, then poured themselves two more glasses of wine and went into the living room.

  Another ballgame was on, but Vico had turned the sound off so Dave and Cal could play. Kristin knew most of the tunes, though not always by name. They slowed them down to a crawl, so Dave wouldn’t be forced into making mistakes. Every now and then Cal voiced encouragement. “That’s it, go on and reach for that D, you can hit it.” Then Dave laid the mandolin on the rug, and while Cal played chords and runs on the guitar the retired policeman sang “I Saw the Light.” He had a pretty voice, high and clear, if a little too nasal for her taste.

  She sat there and listened for a few more minutes and decided not to drink the wine in her glass. She’d already had too much. Back in the kitchen, she’d come close to telling the wife of her husband’s new friend that while she didn’t know he was in love with her, she knew she wasn’t in love with him and that her marriage might be about to end. And that would’ve been cowardly. At least Philip had the decency to tell her to her face.

  It was after seven, and they’d been gone several hours, so she could easily say she needed to look in on Suzy. “I’m going to check on the dog,” she said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

  “Why don’t you bring one of the big guy’s mandolins?” Dave asked. “I’d love to hear him bear down on that F-5.”

  She glanced at Cal. “Want me to?”

  “Might as well,” he said without looking at her. “It’s in the gray fiberglass case.”

  Outside, she checked to see if Matt’s car was in the driveway, but it wasn’t. Probably still at his boss’s place. She unlocked her door and, as she’d suspected, Suzy dashed down the hallway and into the kitchen, where she stood panting at the back door. When Kristin opened it, she bounded down the steps into a distant corner.

  The night was clear and cold. She’d left her coat over at Vico’s, so she pulled her wrap around her shoulders, waiting patiently on the steps. Lately, she’d noticed that Suzy was having trouble negotiating stairs, and if winter was as harsh as the forecasters were predicting she’d have a rough time. She’d never even seen snow before, and it was hard to imagine how she’d handle icy steps and the salt on the streets and sidewalks.

  Kristin let her back inside and then picked up her cell, which had been lying on the windowsill, and without pondering she called Matt, entered in her list of contacts as S. Connulty. She didn’t know what to say if he answered, and for that reason she mostly hoped he wouldn’t. She thought she might tell him she couldn’t do this anymore. If he asked why, she thought she’d serve up a single word in reply: Guilt. He probably wouldn’t ask, though. He’d probably try to talk her out of making any decision until they could see each other, and most likely she’d agree. And then the decision wouldn’t get made.

  She was relieved when the call went to voice mail. “I hope you’re having a nice time at your boss’s,” she said. “I came home to let Suzy out, and now I have to go back. I couldn’t risk writing to you about it last night, but I spoke yesterday to one of my plagiarists and things are even more complicated than I thought. I believe I’m going to have to try to help her. I wish we could talk over the weekend, but I know you’ll be with your daughters.… Well, have a good time, okay?” Before ending the call she added, “By the way, Matt … I love you.”

  She was standing in front of the kitchen window when she said it, her eyes trained on the China Bear saltshaker she’d purchased at a Chapel Hill flea market twenty-five years ago. It always sat on the windowsill, as amusement for when she was washing dishes. If the saltshaker hadn’t been there, she might have
looked out the window, and if she had she couldn’t have failed to see her husband standing at the sink in Vico’s kitchen, looking right at her.

  cal drove into downtown montvale the following Monday and bought several cans of paint. When he got back home, he pulled most of the living room furniture into the dining room, spread an old speckled tarp on the floor and went to work priming the walls. He meant to have the ground floor looking good before Christmas. He had half a mind to buy a tree this year, though he’d resented having to in California. They’d only done it because she always gave an end-of-semester party for other administrators, and while none of them, according to her, was the least bit religious, they would’ve considered it odd if she didn’t have a Christmas tree. Even the Jewish provost had one.

  Why Cal wanted a tree this year was a mystery to him, and maybe it was nothing more than living in a place with wintery weather. In the valley you could swim on Christmas Day if you wanted to, and most years he did, since he’d usually drunk far too much the night before, and the water in the pool was always bracing.

  He worked through the day, stopping only to eat lunch and play the mandolin for a little while. In the afternoon, he went though his CDs and found David Grisman’s Acoustic Christmas, set the Bose to repeat and listened to the disc all the way through three or four times. When he’d finished priming the walls and taken a shower, he pulled out one of the Martins and tried playing “Auld Lang Syne,” doing his best to replicate Mike Marshall’s cross-picked guitar break. Easier said than done. But he thought Dave would probably enjoy learning to play a holiday tune on the mandolin, and it would be nice to accompany him on guitar.

  He drank a couple of beers, popped a slab of Trader Joe’s frozen lasagna in the microwave and ate it with a little salad. After that, he washed the dishes and looked at the clock. Seven forty. He let Suzy out for a few minutes, then called her back inside, put on a heavy jacket and a pair of gloves and a wool cap and left the house.

  In the days when he was working with his late friend Ernesto at the construction company in Modesto, he’d seen guys overlook all kinds of problems. A tile man would lay a crooked row in the shower of somebody’s two-million-dollar home, then walk off and leave it. A carpenter would sister-up a floor joist with the nails on the wrong side. They simply didn’t want to see those flaws and hoped no one else would either, but sooner or later someone always did.