Taking a Chance

by Jan Feed

  Helen turned at last and looked at her, but blindly. Her face crumpled. “No.” She drew a ragged breath. “No. Never. Not for a single moment.” As tears wet her cheeks again, she seemed to focus on Jo with understanding and even compassion. “The joys are worth the sorrows, Jo. I promise. They are.”

  Jo nodded jerkily, wishing she could believe this grieving woman with her whole heart.

  Helen went straight to the bathroom, then stopped in front of the door. “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “No, go ahead. I’m going to…read for a while before I go to sleep anyway,” Jo lied.

  She closed her door and turned, for a moment not seeing the parcel. Panic and fury swept her. What had Emma done with it? She’d wake her up! She’d…

  There it was, neatly centered on her desk. Jo’s knees briefly buckled. How ridiculous, to get so emotional. If she’d had to wait until tomorrow, what difference would it make? She’d waited twenty years, hadn’t she?

  She took scissors from her desk drawer and the package to her bed, switching on the reading lamp that sat beside it. Jo hesitated, then tugged her sweater over her head. Pajamas first. She might as well be comfortable.

  In a sacky T-shirt and flannel PJ bottoms, feet bare, she settled in the middle of the bed. With the scissors, Jo neatly slit the tape, set down the scissors, and took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking, she noticed with distant wonder, as she lifted the cardboard flaps.

  On the very top lay a bundle of photos secured with a rubber band. Breath shallow, Jo picked it up and found herself looking at her mother.

  A very young mother. Rhonda Dubray looked no more than nineteen or twenty. She wore very short shorts, a halter top and sandals. Long dark hair, parted down the middle, was pulled into a ponytail. Arms outstretched, she was balanced precariously on one foot on a driftwood log on a beach. Her laughing face looked uncannily like the one Jo saw every morning in the bathroom mirror.

  In the next snapshot, she was younger yet. Jo had seen this one, in her aunt’s photo albums. In it the sisters, dressed in Sunday best, leaned against each other, arms around each other’s waists, heads tilted so they touched as they smiled at the camera. Rhonda was half a head taller than her slightly younger sister.

  Other casual photos followed: Jo’s mother playing a piano, her gaze fixed intently on the sheet music; holding an armful of cut roses, as if surprised coming in from the garden; and singing, clearly on stage at a coffee shop or bar. In that one she was sitting, guitar balanced on her knees, the microphone close to her mouth. Her hair flowed loose and she wore some filmy white shirt with embroidery. Jo peered closely. A Mexican peasant blouse. Her mother looked like a young Joan Baez or Carly Simon.

  A wedding photograph, in which Jo’s absurdly young parents posed stiffly, her father in a dark suit and tie, her mother with a circlet of flowers around her head and wearing a simple white dress. The young man in the picture stared straight ahead, as if self-conscious, while the young woman’s head was tilted just enough to let her look at her new husband’s face.

  Jo didn’t start to cry until she reached the photo of her mother holding a baby, apparently in the hospital. Above the standard-issue faded blue gown, her dark hair was tangled around a face that glowed with delight and love as she gazed down at the infant in her arms.

  Me, Jo realized. That was me.

  She had an album on her shelf that she’d taken when she left home, one that held her school pictures as well as some her parents had taken of her and Boyce when they were little. A few included her mother.

  But not this one. She had never seen this one.

  Others followed of her mother with Jo at home, first as a baby, then as a toddler. There were lots of these, as if her father had been as eager as any new parent to freeze forever the stages of his small daughter’s life. Tears wet her cheeks and kept falling as she understood that her parents had been proud. Of her.

  Boyce came into their lives. A snapshot showed a three-year-old Jo making a horrible face at her new baby brother while her mother laughed in the background. Jo’s first day of kindergarten was immortalized in a slightly different pose than the one in her album—but there she stood, small for her age, hair pigtailed so tight it must have hurt, legs skinny beneath a red corduroy dress she knew her mother had sewed.

  How funny. Jo frowned in space. She’d forgotten that, but suddenly she had a vision of herself standing beside her mother, who was working on her sewing machine. Jo was watching the needle flash, up and down, up and down, as the fabric she had picked out slipped beneath it. Mom had made a pinafore, too, but Jo had refused to wear it the morning of kindergarten. Mom hadn’t minded. She’d said, “You look so pretty in red, I don’t blame you.”

  Her voice was as clear as if she were standing beside the bed right now. She sounded…affectionate, proud.

  She’d walked Jo to school that first day, all the way to her classroom door. Then, when Jo froze outside, suddenly scared to go in, Mom had given her a gentle, loving push.

  Other images followed, other clips Jo’s memory had stored until this day. A fall she’d taken from a swing set, and the fright in her mother’s eyes as she helped her up and brushed her off and took her home to bandage her scrapes. A fight with Boyce, and Mom’s disappointment in her, more effective than any raised voice. A piano lesson, her sitting on the bench beside her mother, Mom gently guiding her hands. They’d owned a piano, Jo suddenly knew, an old-fashioned upright. Her fingers recalled it, the rosewood cover she lifted, the faintly yellowing ivory keys, the faded linen runner that went over the top. What had happened to it? she wondered. It disappeared from her memory along with her mother, and must have gone about the same time. Had her father sold it because it reminded him too much of his dead wife?

  But she didn’t linger on the piano, because she heard a song, low and haunting. Nothing she knew or could put words to, just a beautiful, lilting impression. Her mother sitting on the edge of her bed, tucking her in. Singing to her.

  The box held letters, some of which she read, some of which she kept to read another day. A small book labeled My Child held proud notes of when Josephine Dubray had smiled and rolled over and sat up and walked. Small versions of her school kindergarten and first-grade pictures were glued inside. The entries ended there; nothing had been written for second grade, not even her teacher’s name. Jo didn’t remember it, either. Her mother had died in August that year.

  A jewelry box held a few good necklaces and bracelets, some of which pinged at her memory and others of which weren’t familiar. But with them were her mother’s wedding and engagement rings, gold, the small ruby flanked with tiny diamonds a testament to their youth and optimism when Jo’s parents said, “I do.” Jo slipped the rings on her finger, and found they fit perfectly.

  Her mother had died at thirty, only a year older than Jo was now. Her death had been sudden, the result of carelessness. She’d been looking over her shoulder when she stepped into the street in front of an oncoming car. Or so Jo had been told; she’d suffered enough nightmares just from imagining the thud, her mother being thrown over the hood and into the windshield so hard her head cracked it.

  So much had ended that day. The family photos, the proud entries in My Child, the piano lessons and the dresses sewn just for her. Jo would have given anything to have had her mother look that day before she crossed the street.

  She might have had her mother at her wedding.

  Squeezing a pillow convulsively, burying her wet face in it, Jo thought in pain and exultation, But at least now I remember.

  THE PHONE RANG that night, well after Ryan had said good-night to the kids. It wasn’t so late that he should have been alarmed, but gut instinct told him the news wasn’t going to be good.

  Jo, was his first, disquieted thought. Her mood had been…odd this afternoon and evening. Maybe because of the box of her mother’s things waiting, unopened, for her at home. Had something her father sent upset her so much she needed to talk?


  He grabbed the phone on the third ring. “Hello.”

  “Ryan?” his ex-wife asked, as if she didn’t know his voice.

  “Wendy.” Damn. He should have had one of the kids call her to let her know they’d arrived safely. Of course she’d worry. “Melissa and Tyler got here fine,” he told her. “They’re babbling about the presents you helped them buy. Tyler is sorry I’ve already put up Christmas lights, because he wanted to help me.”

  “They’re excited about Christmas.” Strain thinned her voice. “Ryan…”

  Something tightened inside him. He’d heard her sound this way before.

  Ryan, I’m not happy. Her face lifted in sad appeal, as if he should sympathize. You work so much, and we never go dancing or do anything romantic. You hardly touch me anymore! This is so terribly hard to say, but…Ryan, I want a divorce.

  He’d been ashamed of his surge of relief. Both emotions had been swamped in the next second by his terror of losing his children.

  Now he felt some of that same fear. She was going to say something he didn’t want to hear, something that threatened his relationship with Melissa and Tyler.

  He imagined her breathless voice coming faster and faster once she’d gotten past the difficulty of starting.

  Ronald has this wonderful new job in Tokyo. I just wanted you to know, because of course the kids won’t be able to see you next summer. Maybe not for a couple of years, because it’s too expensive and anyway we want to immerse them in a new culture. Oh, she would feel sorry for him, but not so much that she would tell her new husband that, no, they couldn’t take his children halfway around the world.

  He shifted the phone to his other hand and wiped his sweaty palm on his jeans. “What?”

  “Ryan, Ronald and I have been having…problems. He didn’t understand what taking on children meant.”

  Ryan listened blankly. How the hell could anyone not know what having kids involved?

  “You remember what it was like when we were first married. How wrapped up we were in each other.”

  He mumbled something she must have taken for assent, because she hurried on.

  “We…we need some time without Melissa and Tyler. I know this is truly dreadful, but…can they stay with you? At least for the rest of this school year?”

  For a moment, he felt…nothing. Her request was so unexpected, so far from what he’d feared. Ryan waited until it sank in, shimmering beads of water blotted by a cloth.

  She wanted to give up the kids. She’d chosen her new husband over them. What would this do to them?

  “If they stay,” he said in a cold voice, “they won’t be going back to you, Wendy. This will be their last move.”

  A sob preceded her whisper, “I know you’ll be better for them, but… This is so hard!”

  Hard. God. He clenched his teeth to keep from a savage response. She was abandoning her children, and it was “hard.” For her, of course.

  “Have you told them?” he asked.

  “No.” Her voice was thick with tears. “I needed to talk to you first. To find out if you wanted them.”

  Wanted them? She must know how desperately he had missed them, how hungry he was for every letter, every e-mail, every phone call.

  Or maybe she didn’t. Maybe her own emotions didn’t run deep enough to allow her to understand his.

  “Yeah,” he said rawly. “I want them.”

  The sounds of muffled crying came through the line. At last she blew her nose. With a form of dignity, she said, “You’ve always been a better parent than I have. I do know that.”

  He was silent for a moment. “I pushed you to have kids. I guess I shouldn’t have.”

  “I’m going to miss them so terribly!”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes! Why don’t you believe me? I love Melissa and Tyler! I just…” she faltered. “I need to save my marriage.”

  “More than you need to be their mother.”

  “It’s not that simple!” she cried. “Are you trying to make me feel worse?”

  Me. That’s all she ever thought about. If he hadn’t been so young when they married, he would have noticed.

  But then, he wouldn’t have Tyler and Melissa.

  “Do you want to tell them yourself?” he asked, knowing the answer.

  “Would you?” she asked meekly. “Then I’ll call. But…oh, I think it will come better from you.”

  Yeah. Of course it would. He’d had to tell them about the divorce, too.

  He swore. How did you say, Mommy doesn’t want you anymore?

  “We’ll call you tomorrow,” he said harshly, and hung up before she could beg again for his understanding.

  Because she wasn’t going to get it. A part of him was rejoicing—he didn’t have to put Melissa and Tyler back on the plane. He would tuck them in at night, chauffeur them to dance and soccer, go to parent-teacher meetings, deal with teenage sulks when they came in the next year or two. His children were home to stay.

  But rage gripped him nonetheless, for their sake. No matter how badly he wanted them, how would they live with the knowledge that their mother didn’t? Would there always be a hollow place inside them? How could she do this to them?

  How, God help him, would he tell them?

  He turned out the lights and went upstairs, his steps heavy and slow. Light from the hall streamed in on Tyler, sound asleep, a tattered stuffed dinosaur tucked under his arm. He looked so young, no more than the five-year-old he’d been before the divorce.

  Melissa slept more restlessly. She’d already thrown off her quilt and twisted the sheet around herself. Ryan gently untangled the sheet and pulled the quilt over her again, then eased out of her room as she sighed and turned over.

  Tomorrow night, he guessed, they would cry themselves to sleep.

  It wasn’t until he looked at himself in his bathroom mirror that horror hit him.

  Oh my God! New Orleans.

  He was going to prove that he and Jo could have fun as a couple, that they could be romantic and spontaneous and adventurous. That week was his one chance to convince her that life with him included more than obligations and dull routines. It was his chance to woo her, to seduce her, to persuade her that he was her greatest adventure.

  Kathleen would take care of Melissa and Tyler—but how could he leave them right away, even for a week, when their mother had just dumped them?

  Clutching the edges of the sink to keep himself standing, Ryan let a ragged, desperate moan escape, the closest he could allow himself to a howl of despair.

  How could he look his kids in the eye, say, “See you, guys, Jo and I are off on our vacation!” and depart for a romantic, theoretically carefree getaway?

  How could he not, when it meant losing the woman he loved?

  And he’d claimed not to understand Wendy. Ironic, wasn’t it? Ye who judge, shall be judged.

  The difference between him and his ex-wife was that he knew, from the roaring anguish in his chest, what sacrifice had to be made.

  And his children wouldn’t be the ones making it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I NEED TO TALK to you two,” Ryan said.

  Despite his best effort, something in his voice scared the kids. Tyler, who had been about to set his cereal bowl in the kitchen sink, turned with it still clutched in his hand. Melissa closed the refrigerator and backed against it as if facing an attacking Rottweiler.

  “What?” she asked.

  He nodded toward the living room. “Let’s go sit down.”

  They sat next to each other on the couch, a rare event. Ryan lowered himself to the coffee table facing them, close enough to touch.

  “It’s Mom, isn’t it?” Melissa said. “Is she sick or something?”

  “No. She’s not sick.” Searching for inspiration that hadn’t come during the night, Ryan looked down at his hands, splayed on his knees. “She and I did talk last night, though, after you’d gone to bed.”

  Melissa blanched. Tyler’s face
was pinched, his eyes wide. Neither said a word.

  “I guess she and your stepdad have been having some problems.”

  His daughter gave a tiny nod. “They argue sometimes.”

  “The thing is,” he drew a deep breath, “we decided it would be best if you two live with me.”

  Tyler seemed frozen, his mouth half open, his eyes unblinking. Melissa was the one to scoot sideways, close enough to her brother so that their shoulders touched.

  “She knew before she sent us, didn’t she? That’s why she was so sad.”

  “I guess she was thinking about it,” Ryan admitted. “I didn’t know until last night that she would consider letting you stay with me.”

  They said nothing.

  “I hope you both know there’s nothing in the world I want as much as to have you living here, with me. It’s been killing me having you so far away. The trouble is, now you’re going to be a long ways from your mom instead.”

  In a small voice, Melissa asked, “Will we visit her?”

  He hadn’t asked, had no idea. “I assume so,” he said. “Your mom and I haven’t discussed that yet. She was pretty upset. You’re right. She’s sad.”

  Tyler unfroze. “Will we go to school here and everything?”

  “Yep. Your mom will have to send your stuff. The first day of school, we’ll go down and enroll you here.”

  “Can I be in the same class with Chad?”

  Ryan exhaled. “I don’t know. We can ask.” Or beg, if he had to. “Your mom is going to want to talk to you tonight. You can think of questions to ask her.”

  They nodded like automatons, apparently numb.

  “Once you’ve had time to take this all in, we’ll have to talk about rules here. What I expect from you, what you expect from me. We’ll look into getting you signed up for whatever you want—dance, music lessons, whatever interests you.”

  He expected Melissa to demand instantly that she have her own bedroom. Instead, she put her arm around Tyler.

  “Mom didn’t want us, did she?”