Left to Chance

by Amy Sue Nathan

  Chapter 3

  THE CELIA STILLMAN COOPER

  MULTIPURPOSE ROOM

  I DIDN’T KNOW THEY’D named a room after Celia. No one had posted that on Facebook. I could see why. Naming a multipurpose room after someone who had died way too young—that was just, well, strange. A park or just a tree would have been nice. A room in a library or a library book about art. Or a street lined with trees with a library at one end, or a gazebo, or a garden. But a “multipurpose room”? I’d never thought of Celia as generic.

  But once I was over the threshold, the room popped to life with sculptures displayed on the floor, on tables, attached to walls. Papier-mâché, metal, wood, clay. Paintings and sketches hung on the walls. People filled the room, as did chatter and laughter.

  Now her name fit.

  “I’m going to find Vi and Shay,” Miles said without turning toward me. “Look around. These kids are amazing.”

  THE BEST OF UNION TOWNSHIP said the sign. Well, if it was on a sign it had to be true.

  I surveyed the scene. I could stand in one spot and look around the room, be finished in less than a minute, and just wait for Shay to show me around. Or I could start with the pieces closest to me, read the name of the artist, the age, and the name of the work and then study it. That was probably the better plan. I wasn’t sure what was expected of me. Was I supposed to care about kids I didn’t know?

  I was here for Shay but I didn’t want to appear rude and just look for her sculpture. Everyone else seemed to be kvelling and snapping smartphone photos of everyone and everything for social media bragging and cloud-based posterity. There were the duck face poses, and the head tilt poses, and the poses pointing to artwork like it was just revealed from behind Door Number 1 on The Price Is Right. There were also the ear-to-ear smile poses, parents hugging-the-kid-a-little-tighter-and-longer-than-she’d-have-liked poses.

  My favorite photos to take were the quiet gotchas—someone staring out the window or at their phone or at someone else across the room. I loved freezing those moments—faces contorted from listening or laughing, bellies extended, foreheads scrunched. Those candids weren’t the prettiest or most composed photos, but they were most real, capturing not just what someone was doing—but what they were feeling.

  And that’s why they paid me, as Simon liked to joke, “the big bucks.”

  There were dozens of photos like that of me and Celia—most tucked away in boxes, stored away in my memory.

  My phone buzzed in the pocket of my dress. All my dresses had pockets, thanks to the seamstress at the Hester in New York. I was like a child the way I collected trinkets on my travels. Not to mention that I needed my hands free to hold my camera. After a second vibration, I slipped the phone only halfway out. Simon. I pressed a button to make him go away. For now.

  Someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. I turned around faster than I should have, still woozy from the flights and their accompanying naps, not to mention the wine. As the girl came into focus, I looked into familiar green eyes and noticed dark lashes. The kind that didn’t need mascara. The kind of lashes women envied, like Celia’s.

  “Aunt Teddi!”

  Her giggle pierced through me. “Shay?” I stepped back to see her more clearly. Flat-ironed auburn hair down her back, a spray of freckles across her nose. I pulled her into a hug. “Shayna Rose!”

  God, she was beautiful. Was it possible that she was more beautiful than her mother? And since when were there so many years between eleven and twelve? When I saw Shay in Chicago last summer she was a little girl. Now I detected the scent and shine of lip gloss. No, maybe ChapStick, maybe strawberry. Whatever it was, Shay was now one tube of liquid eyeliner away from being a teenager. I hugged her tighter and swayed. She hugged back, and didn’t stop me from rocking.

  “Should I say it?”

  “Sure, Aunt Tee.” Shay smirked.

  “You look just like your mom did when she was twelve.”

  “I know.”

  My throat tightened and I squeezed my eyes closed. For one moment—maybe two—I pretended she was Celia, that I was twelve and hugging my best friend, that we had more than twenty years left together. But this was Shayna. I pulled back.

  “You’re so grown-up! I love your dress!” A mint-green skater dress floated around her slender frame.

  Shay rolled her eyes and smiled. I chuckled. Celia had rolled her eyes in defiance as a teen—for effect as an adult.

  “Show me your sculpture.”

  Shay and I linked arms as we walked across the room. Shay looked at me, and smiled. We were almost eye to eye. She didn’t get her height from Celia, who tipped the growth charts at five foot one. I ached to lift Shay the way I had when she was two, when she’d hold on with her legs and let go with her arms, certain I wouldn’t let her fall. How had we come so far and gone backwards at the same time?

  We stopped in front of a metal structure that looked like an Erector Set pileup. And then I saw it. The slide. The swing perpetually ready to fall. “It’s a playground!” I said as I glanced at the title that confirmed my vision. Thank goodness.

  “You’re darn right it’s a playground.”

  Shay and I turned around.

  “Uncle Beck!” She collapsed onto him, and he hugged her. “Do you like it?” Shay looked up at her uncle as if his answer was uncertain.

  “Like it? It’s the best one. I love it.”

  “It’s for you! It’s your backyard from when you and Mommy grew up. From the pictures you showed me.”

  “So it is!” Beck said.

  I squinted. The slide and swings, the sandbox and playhouse I’d claimed as my own as a child. All artistically out of proportion and awkwardly, beautifully, close together and built from metal scraps and held together with nuts and bolts and imagination. And with hope.

  “Nice to see you, Beck.”

  He nodded, as if I were a passerby in the grocery store he kind of sort of recognized. He glanced at everything except my eyes—my longer hair, the slight definition in my arms, the curve of my waist. Then he looked away. At least he didn’t punch me like he had when we were kids, when he was the bratty little brother I never had but always wanted. Until we’d grown up and wanted more. My heart pounded in my chest and boomed in my ears, muting the sounds around me. Beck should not be happy to see me, and he wasn’t.

  “Teddi.”

  Then finally, for a moment, we looked right into each other’s eyes.

  I looked away first.

  God, he looked good. Almost too good. Five-o’clock shadow and closely cropped hair (silver since his twenties) added a refined touch to his artsy veneer. I shuddered. He wore faded jeans (well worn, not bought that way) and a white button-down shirt. I diverted my eyes from his face, to the buttons. I stood close enough to see the cloth’s weave. I looked back at the sculpture, but not before noticing how Beck’s shoulders packed the inside of his black sport coat.

  I wished he’d let himself go.

  Beck was one of those annoying people without a substantial online footprint. I didn’t really know much about him anymore, did I? There was a time I would have asked how he was, what was new, how he felt—and another time when I’d have just known.

  Now I only knew what I saw.

  Beck at thirty-five looked much older than Beck at twenty-nine. There was a seriousness to him, a heaviness, as if he couldn’t be budged.

  He wasn’t the only one. I was weighted to the floor. Everything around me looked far away. I widened my stance so I wouldn’t fall. I willed my voice not to shake, not to sound too happy, too terrified, too unsure. Too anything.

  Before Celia became sick I’d have teased Beck. I might have made fun of the gray or given him a noogie for old times’ sake. But our shared sorrow had changed us. Brought us close. Kept us apart.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said.

  “Uncle Beck is here all the time!” Shay beamed.

  I reached my arm around Beck’s waist. He w
as six-four, so he bent sideways and reciprocated with a quick one-armed hug around my waist. He steadied me … and then pulled away. I wanted both arms. I closed my eyes, a fleeting wish for another scenario. But Beck stepped away and still had one hand in his jeans pocket. Casual and unaffected. Breezy Beck. Same as always. And not the same at all.

  “Oh, I want you to meet someone,” Shay said. “Be right back.”

  Shay scampered away, hair and dress bouncing with enthusiastic oblivion.

  “I’m going to look around,” Beck said as he turned.

  “Wait, don’t go … I’m not here to bother you.” I couldn’t even ask him if he’d left the wine. Considering this welcome, the gift didn’t fit.

  “I know why you’re back.” He shook his head. “What I still don’t know is why you left.”

  Shay returned with two other girls and saved me. “This is Aunt Teddi, the one I told you about. She’s a photographer.”

  No one had ever said it with such pride.

  Beck kissed the top of Shay’s head and walked away.

  “This is Chloe and Rebecca. Want to see their sculptures?”

  I did not.

  “Of course,” I said. “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  After my guided tour, I shrank into a chair in the corner of the multipurpose room as Shay and her friends rounded for the second and then third time. She waved at me with every lap, and I replied with a thumbs-up. Shay walked with her head up, shoulders back. She was a budding artist with a graceful air, who had time for school, art, and technology but not for toys. Or boys, from the looks of things. She stayed solely with Chloe and Rebecca. Celia and I had always existed within a cluster of girls and boys, living as if our roots were entangled, because they were. It was both the advantage and drawback of growing up in Chance—the infinite impact each person could have on you. And you on them.

  Until you left.

  Miles stood on the opposite side of the room with Beck and Violet, who I’d seen only in a few Facebook photos, along with assorted other parent-looking people. Miles, Violet, Shay, and Beck were the only people I recognized in the whole room. This was the rec center for the whole township—all eighteen thousand residents—and the classes were sixth through twelfth grades, or so I’d gathered from the artist bios that accompanied each piece.

  The grown-ups in the room drank ginger ale out of plastic champagne flutes and tipped their heads back in laughter, waved their arms in animated conversation. The kids whispered and skipped, or stood, all serious brooding-artist-like, with arms crossed. Nobody—neither friend nor stranger—gestured for me to join them. This time, I was relieved when my phone vibrated in my pocket.

  Annie: There’s an issue with the meeting in Miami.

  I typed back, only briefly glancing at the screen.

  Me: What?

  Annie: They want to reschedule for another weekend but your calendar says Portland. What’s in Portland? Do we have a property in Portland I don’t know about?

  Me: Don’t worry about Portland. Book Miami.

  I had just finished typing when I saw Shay walking toward me with—with Violet. I stood, ready with my excuses for staying on the other side of the room, antisocial, engaging with my technology and not with the artwork or humans. The closer they came, the taller Violet appeared. And wispy. Tall and wispy like a single flower. She wore a pink linen sheath. Her hair was short and tapered and offset by a pair of dangly earrings that showcased her long neck. Her makeup was subtle, yet polished. She wore it all well.

  If I were working, I would refer to Violet as “the bride.” I’d grown accustomed to the billowy ease, and lofty expectations, of born-to-privilege women, not to mention the high demands that matched the high style of the ones who were self-made. I knew just what to do. But Violet was no ordinary bride. She was marrying my best friend’s husband. And she had her arm around my best friend’s daughter.

  “Thank you for coming, Teddi.” Violet drew me into a hug.

  Damn, she smelled like a flower, too.

  * * *

  I stood in the community center foyer, staring at the flyer-covered bulletin board. The kids and grown-ups around here had plenty to choose from these days: a slick, colorful poster announced children’s theater auditions; a black-and-white photocopied flyer offered a Mandarin tutor; other brochures listed local contests, craft fairs, and sporting events. Everything from acting to ukuleles.

  No zoology? Slackers.

  I expected Shay to be huddled with Chloe and Rebecca, or buzzing about the awards ceremony with a group from her class, but she was walking the perimeter of the room—alone. I stepped back to the bulletin board before she could see me, and this time, I read about the computer classes for seniors.

  “Hey, Aunt Tee.”

  “Hey, Shay-Shay.” I kept my gaze on the board while I put my arm around Shay’s shoulder. “Tonight was great. Thank you for inviting me. One day I bet your art will be shown in a fancy gallery in New York.” No pressure. No expectations. No rush. “If that’s what you want. And I will be right there on your opening night if you do.”

  Shay shrugged. I turned and playfully pushed her shoulder. “Don’t do that,” I said. “I mean it. You’re really talented. I’m glad you’re doing what you love to do. Not everyone gets to, you know.”

  “Did my mom?”

  I smoothed my dress to camouflage the fact I wasn’t sure how to answer. “Did your mom what? Do what she loved? Of course she did. She loved kids and teaching art and making clothes and she loved being your mom. That was top of the list.”

  “Why didn’t she just, you know, be an artist?”

  “It’s not always easy. You know that, right? But she really always wanted to teach.”

  Shay turned her head and looked at me, as if the side-eye would force me to reveal the truth. That was the truth. Celia always loved kids and always loved making art. When she realized she could be an artist and a teacher, she was sold. One night she mentioned moving to New York to try the starving-sidewalk-artist lifestyle, but when I brought it up again, she laughed, citing temporary insanity. I wasn’t always sure why she had tucked away her dreams for a picket fence, but Celia had always promised me that Miles and Chance were enough. I only half believed her until Shay was born, then I knew she was telling the truth.

  “How about you?” Shay asked.

  “What did I always want to be? I always wanted to be a photographer. But you! You wanted to deliver pizza until you were five. You thought that was the best job ever. We saved pizza boxes and you wore a hat and went outside, rang the doorbell, and delivered pizza to your mom and me about fifty times one night. Lucky for us you thought a nickel was a great tip.”

  Shay opened her eyes wide and laughed. Then she pointed to a brochure tacked to the board. “OMG, look at this.” She unpinned it and handed it to me.

  Union County Art Council Photography Contest

  I unfolded the page and looked at last year’s winning entries. First place—a covered bridge at sunrise, half-bare trees, leaves scattered on the road, high grasses curved from a breeze. Cliché, perhaps, but beautiful. Second place—an outstretched arm and open hand poised to catch a twirling, blurry baton. Third place—I closed the pamphlet. Maybe this year Shay could win. I’d definitely come back for that. “I didn’t know you were into photography too, Shay. That’s awesome.” My heart pattered with delight and I bent into Shay, our heads almost touching.

  “Not me, Aunt Tee. You. My next class is on collage, anyway. No offense, I’m really into multimedia stuff. You totally should do it though. I bet you’d win.”

  “Oh, that’s not for me, sweetie.”

  “Why not?”

  Where to start? “Well, I’m here to shoot the wedding, and I don’t live here anymore, it’s for residents of the township.”

  Shay grabbed the brochure and rifled through it, then pointed and tapped.

  Ages 18 and up

  Subject: My Ohio

  “Look, it
says it right here. The subject has to be Ohio. The photographer doesn’t have to live in Ohio, just have ties to Ohio.”

  I had ties all right, and at the moment they felt like a noose.

  “Oh. You’re right. I don’t have any pictures of Ohio.”

  Shay tapped me with her shoulder. “Just take something while you’re here. You said I should do what I love. Don’t you love taking pictures? Not the wedding ones. The other ones.”

  “What other ones?”

  “The art ones.”

  I swallowed as if I’d been caught in a lie. “I do love taking those kinds of pictures.” I did, didn’t I? I knew I had.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “That’s not why I’m here.”

  “You hate it here.” Shay snatched back the brochure.

  “I don’t hate it here.” I took back the paper.

  “You haven’t been here in years. I hear what people say, you know. That you took off during Mom’s funeral.”

  I felt dizzy and touched the wall for balance. “It’s more complicated than that.”

  Shay rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “Not whatever. I’ll tell you what happened, but not here. Not now. Okay?”

  “Fine. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the contest. Don’t you think there’s anything here besides a stupid wedding you could take pictures of? Is that why you left? Because there’s nothing here?”

  “You’re here. I came back because you asked me to. You know that.”

  “So what’s the big deal in entering a contest while you’re here?”

  “Shay, look. I’m a professional photographer. And if you believe the hype, I’m good at my job.” I laughed as I said this, hoping she would laugh too. No such luck. “It wouldn’t be fair for me to enter. Would it?”

  “Nothing is fair.”

  “What are you talking about?” I knew damn well what, so I draped my arm around her. “You know what I mean.”

  She looked away, as if so disappointed in me she didn’t know what to say, or did know. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

  “Honey, I wish I could do the contest, but the thing is—”

  “Don’t you think you could win? Because if that’s the reason then that’s lame.”