Last Last Chance

by Fiona Maazel

  “That might be the craziest thing you’ve ever said.” But he was smiling. And so was I.

  “Can you believe it? A meeting. In my house, with my friends.”

  He took a swig of orange soda and said, “Cheers.”

  Forty-four

  There was one market that still catered to the foodies among us. Most other places had shut down. We drove across town and loaded up. We bought platters. Vegetables, cheeses, international bonbons. I liked these platters despite the wilted broccoli and that strange dill paste you never saw anywhere else. We got fried chicken and roasted chicken and chicken breasts marinated in chicken stock. Stanley wanted peanuts. I wanted teddy grahams. Spinach pie by the slab, enough for fifty, was on sale. Likewise ginger ale and ginger beer. I worried the pink room was too pink. I worried that for some people, the pink, yellow, blue triptych of the rooms might cause seizure. I’d heard of this before, a color scheme that clashes with the retinal bias of your eyes. I worried the lighting was maudlin, and the rugs too Persian. Too Persian.

  I dedicated the yellow room to the enterprise of buffet. Mingling went to the blue room, meeting in the pink. The apartment had never felt more like a game of Clue. All I needed was a hank of rope and motive to spare.

  I put on lipstick. I wore a necklace whose gold spangle sat in the base of my throat. I plucked a white hair from my scalp. Several white hairs from my scalp. When did I start getting white hair?

  People began to roll in at about six-thirty. From walking the stairs, they all had the wheeze. Rheum at every hatch—eyes, nose, mouth. I think substance abuse can affect your glands well into abstinence so that you’re always leaking, sweating, shedding no matter what. On the other hand, the summer broil did tend to solicit whatever coolants you had. It was August, and the weather was behaving according to type. You’d think anything that conformed to type might allay fears that life would never be the same, could never be the same, postplague. Or that a chance to complain about things prosaic might come as a welcome departure from complaining about the end of the world. But mostly, it wasn’t like that. It was too fucking hot to be like that.

  By seven, we were thirty-five addicts and a whole bunch of cheese. No one went for the cheese. In ante-party mode, I had thought the cheese wise for its ease of consumption—cube, toothpick. By midswing, I realized the cheese was a horror. Who cubes Brie? And what sort of Brie clots around a toothpick? My platter hailed from Mars. I hailed from Mars. And everyone else had the wheeze.

  We grouped in the pink room. The petit-point loveseats came in handy. Likewise the Victorian parlor chairs. Plenty of space to sit in a circle. Take us back a couple centuries and we were Napoleon’s court deciding to sell off Louisiana.

  Long-timer Morgan had agreed to run the meeting, so all I had to do was read some stuff and introduce him. I was not even nervous. There was, in my home, a spirit of fellowship that seemed committed to including me no matter what. I’d been trying to win points by having these people over. I’d made up my face to look pretty so that when I smiled, people would smile back. What kind of behavior was this? No one minded at all.

  Morgan took the floor and asked for quiet. He was in his sixties, clean for twenty-two years. Three children, no wives. I’d seen him before, he was hard to miss; he sold a line of sportswear for the nocturnal athlete that managed to glow in the dark and blind in the day. Tonight he wore a carrot jog suit with reflective chevron medallions sewn into each arm and leg.

  “I’m glad to be here,” he said. “It’s so great to see everyone, especially now. I see you people together and I know God is at work in my life.”

  Stanley nodded.

  “Tonight we’re talking about the decision to ask God to take away our shortcomings, all the stuff we do and feel that’s bad for us. I’m a selfish guy—let me put that on the table—and I don’t want to give up on anything that’s mine. I like my defects. I cling to them for dear life.”

  I noticed the webbing at his neck lacked for color. It was pigmented white.

  He leaned forward. “Here’s the thing I’ve learned, and learned the hard way: My defects never got me anywhere. At the same time, they are so a part of me, I can’t get rid of them on my own. And that’s why we ask for help. I have a lot of anger and from keeping it inside, I used drugs. And for letting it out, I went to jail. So what’s the alternative? Ask God to release you from whatever will turn you to drugs. And He will. He does.”

  More nodding. Even I was nodding. Because though the God thing was still a problem, I knew well what it meant to want to be released from yourself—in the good and bad sense. I also knew what it meant for me to articulate the desire to be rid of my worst self. It meant the compulsion to feel well outweighed the compulsion to do bad. And that was already an achievement.

  When Morgan finished, I raised my hand and I guess because this was my house, he called on me first. I said, “You know, I totally sympathize with wanting to hold on to your character defects. I have a million, but the worst is just wanting to self-destruct. So even though I don’t much believe in God and certainly don’t think anyone’s gonna release me from anything, it’s good even to want that release. Because if your worst problem is wanting to die, but you are somehow able to want to not want to die, that’s a step closer to, you know, not wanting to die. Know what I mean?”

  No one had any idea, but Fran scratched my back by way of support.

  Morgan called on the Blade, who said, “I’m glad to be here. I like what you had to say about defects. My problem is that I forget to ask for help and then it’s too late. I get into trouble with my anger and do something dumb and then realize later I should have prayed. Just the other night my mom was busting my balls about making her coffee too hot and I got so mad I hit her. My own mom. Now she’s praying for superplague to come to our house and I go, Mom, that’s not funny, and she goes, Good, because I’m not kidding.”

  Half of us were laughing. The other half were too busy wondering what had become of his lisp. Underneath, of course, all of us were stricken.

  Glenn cut through the noise. “This is really hard,” he said. “A woman on my block died of plague yesterday. Nice woman, three grandkids. Always sitting out on her front steps. I suspect there are all these people dying and no one is reporting them for a reason. I want to get out of here, but I have no place to go. I can’t prove residence anywhere else. I can’t even prove it here. Is this the way I’m supposed to go down? After everything I’ve gone through to get here? All I ever wanted was to fit in and be liked, I never wanted the choices I made, and now that I’m clean—for four months—now that I’ve stopped killing myself, the superplague is going to do it for me? What sort of reward is that? I know I should be asking God to take away my urge to question His authority. But instead I pray for a way to get out of here. When push comes to shove, I just can’t act with the selfless nobility people are always talking about. And then I feel like shit. Yeah, yeah, we’re not saints and no one acts with anything like perfect adherence to our principles, but that doesn’t change the fact that I feel like shit.”

  This meeting was getting good. We all felt like shit.

  Stanley raised his hand. I could not believe it. I’d heard him speak about his alcoholism in passing, but that was it. He said, “I’ve been living with a woman for a year or so now. Before that, I had barely spoken to a woman since my wife died in a car accident with me at the wheel, drunk. But this new woman I met, she got me excited enough about life to think about actually trying to have a life. After that, I had some ideas, but they didn’t pan out. Now I just live with this woman and it’s fine. I love her. It’s not painful, I don’t suffer, I just live. I live with a woman I love. And that’s my bottom line for today. Just for today, just for me, I don’t really need anything else.”

  People who didn’t know me thanked him for sharing and moved on. People who did know me smiled like a parent smiles at her child’s graduation or marriage. And even as I was conscious of them delighting in me
, or me and Stanley, I was still able to feel touched. I loved and was loved, so what if I didn’t keep the feeling between us? So what if I relayed? Isn’t that what we do? Relay feeling from person to person, from one life to the next?

  I slipped my hand into his and squeezed.

  After, we mingled in the blue room. Another meeting over. Fran was double-fisting Cokes; Neil was checking his blood glucose with one of those strip meters. In a corner, several people had congregated around the Blade, who sat cross-legged on the floor, doing something fancy with a dishrag.

  “Says he can make a chicken,” Glenn said.

  “Oh, boy,” and I went for Stanley. Given our specialized horror of all things chicken, I figured this trick was meant for us.

  It was just after nine. The phone rang. Hannah at nine? I felt a whole bunch of cheese nosedive in my gut, and ran for the extension in the pink room, in which all the sconce lighting had been turned off. Facing my friends, the effect was of looking through a window at the office Christmas party.

  I said hello a couple times. I heard breathing, or weeping, actually, and said hello again. All I could think was that Hannah was sick. But it wasn’t Hannah. And for an instant, I was disappointed because I was so rotten, I’d rather she be sick and forgiving than never talk to me again. No, no, that wasn’t right. I just wanted to hear her voice.

  It was the last coherent feeling I would have for the rest of the night.

  I returned to my friends. Stanley said, “What’s wrong? You look like death. Who was that?”

  Fran came up beside me.

  “It was Kam.”

  “Oh no,” they said, in tandem.

  “Eric went to North Brother this morning.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “They just came for him with a van. No warning or anything. He’d been sick for a day. She’s coming over.”

  Stanley sat me down.

  “With the baby,” I added.

  “Oh no,” they said, in tandem.

  Fran took on a look I’d never seen on her before. It was fear. I could sense she was having racing thoughts. She gave me a hug and said, “I wish I could stay, but I’ve got to get downtown, honey. You can handle this. Will you call me tomorrow?”

  I nodded. I understood. “You could go even if you didn’t have an appointment.”

  “But I do!” she said.

  I stood and smiled.

  Word spread quickly that plague might well be entering this house. You got the feeling people were trying to take their leave politely, but then flying down the stairs. Most left without saying goodbye because the shame just wasn’t worth it. Morgan half sighed and said his kids were waiting at home. Everyone’s excuse was fine with me; the apartment emptied in three minutes.

  I sat on a couch and stared.

  “When’s she coming?” Stanley asked.

  “Now.”

  He put his arm around me. I was conscious of my eyes blinking. Slowly, slowly.

  “Eric’s going to die?” I said. “On some island with all those strangers? But he’s got a new baby. He’s got a life.”

  I was starting to feel hysterical. “What the fuck sort of divine plan is that? He could have taken me, instead. I’m ready! How many times have I said I’m ready? There is no God. There’s just not.”

  “Lucy, listen to me.” Stanley put hands on either side of my head and looked me straight on. “If you can’t believe, just believe I believe. It’s enough.”

  I leaned into him and closed my eyes. Sometimes before falling asleep at night, I’d think about what if my dad had left a suicide note. What it would say, what it would have felt like to see it. I’d imagine him instructing Izzy to take care of me and Hannah. That he loved us, but could not endure a world in which his work imperiled the lives of those closest to him. That he suffered and did not know another way out. And then I’d imagine a scenario in which I didn’t have to read his note because he’d waited for me. Because we’d died together.

  “Stanley,” I said. “Don’t say stuff like that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you will leave me, too.”

  “I won’t leave you,” he said. “Even if I die, I won’t be leaving you.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t know what that means.”

  “Yes you do.”

  And so we sat. Well into the night, waiting.

  Forty-five

  We left in the morning. We had breakfast and packed our bags. Outside, the silence was comprehensive.

  I hired a pilot for ten thousand dollars. On the way to the heliport, the baby nursed. We stopped for diapers and Clif Bars at a deli. The reek of dairy gone bad suggested the owners had evacuated some days ago. They probably took what they could, and the rest was plunder.

  In the car, Kam and I agreed to talk in the air. And in the air, we agreed to talk at the base. Now we are only half an hour away, five thousand feet up.

  She’s sitting with the baby in her lap. Her eyes are closed, she is unwell; and the times we had, they belong to a different life altogether. She seems to know my thoughts because when she opens her eyes and locks onto mine, she looks mournful for things too abstract to cry over. We will bawl for Eric later. Right now, we’re talking about us. And where we were. And who we will be.

  I feel the rise of grief in my chest, which is when her face breaks and she coughs into her palm.

  Stanley reaches for the baby. The way he cradles him to his heart, he’s a natural. Kam wipes her lips on a tissue and presses her forehead to the glass. There is blood spatter on the cuff of her shirt. I try to look elsewhere. Her eyes have the most beautiful almond shape.

  They named the baby Travis. After the man who died trying to get help for his uncle. I couldn’t believe it at first, but then apparently a lot of babies born that summer were named Travis.

  We are almost at the base. The pilot says it’s been a good day to fly. Outside my window, there are trees and lake and a swath of land, in which our home, cut from a forest centuries old.

  My father is dead. Three thousand, three hundred and ninety-eight people are dead. Agneth and Isifrid. Benis and Geoff Spence. Kam has made no requests, only that we find Eric and put her nearby. I know this won’t happen, but I say we’ll try.

  The baby is too much fat for you to say which parent he resembles more, but when I hold him, and I have just learned how, I think he looks very much like Travis. It is uncanny, and I am so scared. But the baby, he doesn’t mind. He smiles a lot. He laughs for no reason. And some days, when he’s just woken up, he looks on me as if I am the dawn and we have plenty of time.

  Tabias Everke

  Fiona Maazel was a 2005 recipient of a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, winner of the Bard Fiction Prize for 2009, and recognized by the National Book Foundation as one of the best fiction writers under thirty-five. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

  www.lastlastchance.com

  Acknowledgments

  For the completion of this novel, I owe many thanks to many people and organizations, chief among them:

  The Lannan Foundation and the Corporation of Yaddo.

  Oliver Broudy, Martha Cooley, Steven Ehrenberg, Claudia Gonson, Michael Hearst, Amy Hempel, Brigid Hughes, Rick Moody, Peter Rubin.

  Also:

  Lydia Wills and Paul Elie, miracle makers.

  JJR, for staying, for everything.

  And, with all possible gratitude, Jim Shepard, for whom, even so, there can never be gratitude enough.

  A Conversation with Fiona Maazel

  by Bret Anthony Johnston

  Why do you write?

  Well, I want to say it’s because there’s moral fortitude to be had in the rendering of other people’s problems. That writing is one of the best ways to make sense of the mess and pathos of being alive. That it gives me the illusion of imposing a sensibility on the world that will last. I want to say these things—and I think they’re true—but I can’t because none actually gets at why I chose this life.
Truth is, I do it because it’s fun. Writing is the most fun I get. I’m sure this says more about my private life than necessary, but never mind. Even when the writing goes badly—and it frequently does—it’s fun. Even when I think I can’t do this, this is too hard, I enjoy it. I love the craft of storytelling and the mental labors therein. Every sentence feels like its own universe, and so I think long and hard about how to put that universe together. Likewise every paragraph and every page. It’s a tremendous challenge and I often feel like my brain is being exercised to its detriment—like holding a bad yoga pose—but then I also find it exhilarating. And addictive.

  What is your writing process or habit?

  I think it’s important to be writing all the time, no matter the genre. Lyrics, poems, letters, journals, anything to keep the muscle going. Me, I like to write found poems. I know that finding a poem isn’t quite writing, but it is about organizing words on the page. And it can teach you a lot about how to generate possibilities with language by forcing you to think outside your comfort zone. Sometimes I look at an incredible sentence by Cormac McCarthy and try to imagine a state of mind in which I might have written that sentence. On what planet do I need to be for those words to have arranged themselves thus in my head? Probably I can’t get to his planet, but I can get off my own. So I’m always messing around with language to see where it gets me, and that is certainly part of my routine. As for the more prosaic stuff, I do best in concentrated spurts. If I am writing a novel, I will go to some remote location, forget the rest of the world exists, and put in twelve-hour days at the computer. Then I come home and despair and count down the days until my next retreat.