by Sand, A. J.
“I won’t be here when you decide, honey,” Mom replied in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Don’t think like that.” I took her hand in mine before I gave her a hug.
But Mom scoffed. “We can’t pretend there’s more time for me. I’ve made peace with that, but you’ve been avoiding it. And I have so much to say before I can’t say anything anymore. So you’ll have to face it today, my little boy. You will be motherless very, very soon. And I’m sorry for that.” The cancer had taken her sight almost to complete blindness, but it meant she was touching my face more, touching me more, which I had come to appreciate. “From the moment I laid eyes on you, my precious baby boy, I knew you would have my heart forever. But I also knew you were going to be nothing but trouble, Jesse Richard Chance. I was going to name you Archibald, after your grandfather but, I swear on his grave, you would kick me so hard every time I called you Archie. You were a fighter even then. I guess that’s why you love going to Perry’s so much, huh?”
I shot Drew a look when she giggled, and tears were streaming down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them. “Perry’s got that back problem, Ma. He can’t handle the farm equipment like he used to...it’s a lot of property, even with four sons.”
Ma smirked. “Don’t you lie to me, child. I’m blind not stupid.” She sighed and a faint, sad smile appeared. “I just wish you would fight with only your heart, baby boy.” The smile vanished and her look became more pensive. “But you’re angry. I know that. You’re angry about so much, and I have cried for years because I can’t make it right. You’re paying for my misdeeds. Rejection hurts, and I know that more than anybody. Henry’s in-laws offered me more money than you can imagine to leave Glory when I got pregnant. I told them I was ashamed of my relationship with him but never of you and that you weren’t something to hide. I told them I loved you more than I had ever loved anything in this entire world, more than my own life. Still do. But I remember one day, when you were about five or six, you asked me how come you didn’t have a daddy like the other kids. I told you who he was, and you have been so focused on him ever since, even though—”
“Ma—”
“Let me finish. You better never let yourself be defined by who decides to love you, you hear me? Don’t you ever define yourself by the way people treat you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly, hearing the tremble of sadness just below my own words.
“You need to give love in this world, in spite of the people who don’t love you back. You must love without expecting it in return. It will be hard and it will hurt, but that’s how you must define yourself, by your ability and willingness to give love in this cruel world, no matter what, because it will try to tell you not to love. And that includes love for yourself, Jesse Richard Chance. You better walk with your head held high and your heart full. Am I making myself clear, son?”
I nodded and touched her face. I was crying too hard to see her. “Yes, Mom.” I dropped my head to her lap and wrapped my arms around her waist. “Please don’t go. Please. I need you. You can’t die.” A choking sensation seized my chest, and panic overwhelmed me to the point that I was bawling into her nightgown. Why her? Why us? Why me? I didn’t have a father and I wouldn’t have a mother. The feeling of helplessness sparked my rage, and without any answers, all I wanted to do was punch something. It wasn’t like I could fight her cancer or her death. “Please don’t die, Mom. You can’t die. You just can’t.”
Mom rubbed my head before she lifted it to kiss me between the eyebrows. “I don’t want to, Jesse.” Her voice came out weak, like she was wrestling with her own tears. “I don’t want to take anything else from you…but it will happen. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. But when I go, you call up Diane Kimble immediately. She’s an attorney and she came to visit when you were very young, so you probably don’t remember her. She’s in my address book; she has things for you.”
“Okay, I will,” I mumbled, still sniffling, still filled with the unrelenting urge to beg her for the impossible.
“Well…” Mom sighed into a smile. She was already upbeat again. “Tell me which colleges you’re applying to and which one you want to go to the most.” The three of us talked for a while, and Drew even went and got her guitar from her car to play Mom’s favorite song, “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley. I knew Mom was using up too much energy trying to stay awake, so eventually, I made an excuse about Miss Madison needing me to track down Kingston, her golden retriever. When I was sure she was asleep I went back to her room to pull the covers over her. I lay next to her for a few minutes, listening to her breaths, memorizing the rhythm like it was a song, listening and knowing the music would stop soon.
“I so need a cigarette right now,” Drew said, dabbing her red eyes when I returned to Miss Madison’s living room. When she found one in her bag, she signaled for me to join her on the back patio, and we settled into the porch swing.
“I thought you were quitting…”
“Hey, you have your vice, and I have mine…” she mumbled defensively as she lit the cigarette with shaky hands, but a calm fell over her as soon as she exhaled a puff of smoke. She had convinced herself that a stimulant relaxed her, and I wished I could find some sort of peace right now, too. My head was clogged with everything to come in the next few weeks or months or however long we had left. Mom had planned every detail of her funeral months ago, like she was just going on vacation, to make things easier on me, but the one thing she could not do was what I wanted the most: for her to just stay.
Once she was done smoking, Drew snuggled against me and I hugged her close. “I’m glad you liked your guitar pick.” She was flipping it between her thumb and forefinger.
“I do. You want me to play something for you?”
“No,” I said, kissing her temple. “You really can’t stand me most of the time, Drew?”
“What?” She tightened her arms around my waist.
“That’s what you said at Perry’s.”
“Not all of you. I just hate the guy who goes to Perry’s. I hate everyone who goes to Perry’s. I can’t fucking stand any of it, especially after they fake worship you, and all of y’all go to the lake and get drunk. A lot of mornings when I’d go get you, after they just cleared out and left you sleeping in the bed of your truck, I’d wish I were strong enough to just toss you into the water.” She lifted her head and kissed me on the lips.
I laughed as I cupped her face. “And you really filled the applications?” She nodded. A strange sense of determination surged in my chest just then, and for the first time ever, college took on a sudden and newfound importance. I didn’t know if it was because Mom wanted it and in my grief I was trying to find ways to give her things, or if I just really wanted to escape my current life, but it really didn’t matter. I decided right then I was going. “Thank you.”
“I didn’t do that for you.” She was snippy, but like always, Drew’s fingers found mine. “I love how her face lights up when you come around. I’m going to miss that. Whenever I get sad, I always think about how much that woman loves you. You should think about that too…when…when it happens.”
A tear eased down my cheek. Instead of comfort, I just felt crushed, and it was a powerful burning mixture of irritation and hopelessness again. I had beaten a man until he stopped moving tonight, and then walked around with his blood on me, unfazed. This was my mom’s legacy. The thought brought on unimaginable despair, and I tried to shake it away before more emotions spilled out of me. “Yeah, she loves me, but she’ll still die with me being like this, Drew. Secret’s out. She knows what I go to Perry’s for, and she probably suspects you’re behind the college applications. She’ll never know me as a better person. She wants that for me, and she’ll die still praying about it.”
Drew looked away from me like something in the distance had caught her attention. In the time she took to ponder, I could tell my words troubled her. She sucked in a deep breath before she turned her teary eyes to me. “Not true. Whether sh
e lives another month, a week, a day…I think you have a chance to make sure it ends up being more than just a wish.”
And Kerr Edwards turned out to be the last person I ever hit for sport. I hung up my fighting gloves that night, and I never went back to Perry’s barn again. I kept my pledge by focusing on school, and I visited my mom at least three times a week as senior year wore on. Bucky was disappointed with my choice but he convinced his dad to hire me for a real job around the farm. I didn’t believe in God, but I thought getting my shit together was my way of asking him to spare my mom so she could see that she had raised a son who could be everything she hoped for.
It wasn’t enough.
She slipped in and out of a coma over the next few months, until she fell into one that was eventually deemed irreversible, right after Hamilton accepted me from their waitlist. But I was happy that I had gotten to read the letter to her. She was taken off the ventilator two weeks into my freshman year at college, and died. Funeral attendance was sparse. Some of that was my fault. I didn’t know who to tell and how to tell them. Diane Kimble told me that she was the trustee of a small fund Mom and my grandma had established for me shortly after I was born. She also helped me sell the house, and once we paid off Mom’s debts with her life insurance, I was able to close the financial aid gap some.
My old life was over. Just like Mom’s. And once the dirt covered the casket, I planned on never returning to Glory. So, all of it—Drew, my hometown, my past—ended up in a grave, too.
The PAST IS LIKE SHRAPNEL TO THE PRESENT
Lydia makes chamomile tea for Henry in my apartment as she waits for leftover pasta to warm up in the oven, but I know she’s really just delaying her departure. Henry and I can’t have the type of conversation we need to have in front of her, so we sit at my kitchen table making small talk while we wait. I’m on edge, anxious to hear what he has to say, and more than ready to send him on his way right after. Every once in a while, his eyes drift around the room—to my splayed open textbooks on the coffee table, my poor attempt at decorating the place and, of course, my girlfriend’s ass. As he whistles, he taps on the wood and I can’t tear my eyes away from his mangled hand. Missing fingers? Someone did that to him, I know it’s why he’s here, and it’s nothing I want to be involved in.
I take the pasta out and tell him he’s free to serve himself, just as Lydia walks out of my room with a bag full of makeup and girl shit and books on her shoulder. “Okay, I got what I need for the night. Did we remember to return the movies to Redbox? I couldn’t find them anywhere.”
“Yeah. I took them back yesterday…” I say, chuckling. She thinks she’s slick. She’s not listening to me at all. She’s rolling back and forth onto the balls of her feet, peering over my shoulder at Henry.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?” she whispers.
“One-hundred-percent.” I really don’t want her to go, but I don’t want her and my father in the same room, either. My past and present are colliding, and I’m afraid that this life I’ve built will be the one left shattered.
“Okay, but call me if you need anything…” Lydia strokes my face, with concern on hers. “It was nice meeting you, Mr. Chance!” she yells, shooting a kind smile at him.
Henry sips from his cup and his lustful gaze follows Lydia to the door. “You, too, dear.” His brain is still in his dick, that’s for sure.
I lean against the doorframe and kiss Lydia good-bye to distract her from the attention she’s still giving my father. I know she has a million questions after meeting the man I told her wasn’t a part of my life. She’s the only reason he’s even in my apartment right now, because she invited him as she tried to mediate the confrontation outside.
She presses her lips to mine one more time, and her reluctance to leave is clear on her face. “Do you have any idea what he wants? After all this time…”
I rest my forehead on hers. “No, but I doubt I can help him with anything. And don’t you spend all night worrying. I’ll figure it out.”
“You just…you seem different since he got here. Right now, you look…scared. It’s a lot, so that’s why I’m worried. Anyway, if you can’t help him, I’m sure he’ll be gone in the morning. I really hope so since I’m taking you to brunch!”
“Can’t wait,” I say. “You want me to walk you out?”
“No, it’s okay. I love you, babe,” Lydia says as she heads down the hall.
“I love you, too.” I stand there until I can’t hear her footsteps in the stairwell anymore. I get a sinking, uncontrollable feeling of loss. Lydia’s a beautiful woman, but what really drew me initially was the way she smiled at me, completely oblivious to the burdens I shouldered. And it still took me months after meeting her to finally ask her out. We’ve had our ups and downs, but our relationship has been comfortable and normal. Yet a growing hollow feeling in my stomach tells me that nothing between us will ever be the same again. I bolt the door shut and take my seat across from Henry.
“This is a nice place. Nice school, too. Seems like you’re doing well here.”
“Alert the media…it’s a scientific breakthrough. The fuckup gene can apparently be suppressed,” I say, letting sarcasm spill all over my words.
He snorts. “And, damn, that’s a hot ass slam-piece you’ve got, son.”
“Don’t call her that…and don’t ever call me that again.” I lunge for him and collar him out of his seat.
“I’m sorry…hey….I’m sorry…just trying to break the ice, kid. I thought you would laugh. You know she’s gorgeous, right? And you were sitting there”—he gestures at my empty chair—“like you had a stick up your ass.”
I have to remind myself that Henry’s not worth a lot of things, including my aggression, or any of my feelings, really, so I release him and he sits. “How am I supposed to act when my so-called father can fly thousands of miles because he needs something from me, but couldn’t make a ten minute drive to my mother’s funeral?”
He lifts remorseful eyes up to me. “I wanted to, Jess, but Barbara threatened me with a divorce and sole custody of HJ. I’ve been to her grave a few times to put flow—”
“Just tell me why you’re here before I get really angry.” He hasn’t even attempted to find out anything about me or my life before now, so I doubt he’s ever been to my mom’s grave. “Who did that to you?” I tick my chin up at his hand.
“Punishment for late payment on a debt I owe.”
I chuckle. I can’t even muster up an ounce of sympathy. “Let me guess, it wasn’t a Bank of America teller?”
He inches his hand across the table, as if he wants to touch me, but he pulls away suddenly. “I was trying to do a good thing and I got screwed. I gave up gambling, honest. I had been on the right track since I got released.” Shortly after Mom died, Henry went to prison for his role in an intricate car theft ring. “I met a guy in the joint who got out around the same time I did, and he said he had a brother who was starting a business and looking for some investors. The brother seemed legit and he showed me paperwork…the articles of incorporation. He said he’d pay me a fee for finding investors. I called up some old friends and raised the money, but it turned out to be a Ponzi scheme. He used that money to fake investment returns for the investors he already had. I’m on parole. One dumb thing and I’m back in to finish the sentence, so I needed a way to pay everyone before they went to the cops.”
“Oh God.” I bury my face in my hands for a second. “And you borrowed from the people who did that.”
“Yes.” He nods with urgency, his jaw clenching. “The brother fled, my friends who invested won’t give me the time of day, and I don’t really have a way to pay back the people I borrowed from—”
“I don’t have it, just so we’re clear. I can’t—no, I won’t—pay this off for you. Maybe you should go to the police. I think severed fingers are more than enough to get someone to help you.”
“This was just to intimidate me.”
What the
fuck will they do when they really want to scare him then? “That’s some intimidation…”
“They don’t care about the police, and I can afford to lose a few fingers. They’re probably not going to hurt me anymore. I can’t pay them if I’m dead. They know that, so they’ve started going after what I can’t afford to lose. A guy showed up to HJ’s school while he was waiting for Barbara to pick him up, and asked him…” Henry’s jaw trembles and he’s forced to pause. “If he thought people went to heaven after they died. Henry Junior said yes…and then he asked him, ‘What about kids?’ Fuck, Jess, he’s ten. And they’ll kill him. They did that with another guy. They mailed him his kid—a teenager—piece by piece for an entire—”
“What? Where’s HJ now? Did you get him out of Glory? And what the hell is wrong with you? You got involved with people who kill kids?” I jump up from my chair and pace the apartment, wrapped in jumbled emotions. I’m not close to Henry’s two older kids, but HJ was so small the last time I saw him, and I remember seeing Barbara strolling him around town before that. We’re cursed with the same problem: being the son of Henry Chance, and it’s completely unfair. My blood heats with infuriation and bitterness. “You know, this fatherhood thing isn’t really working out for you, so you should just do the world a solid and get a vasectomy or something. Maybe that’s what your loan sharks should’ve cut off.”
Henry cringes from the bite in my words and hangs his head. “It was stupid, I know. I just didn’t want to go back to prison.”
I scoff as I return to my seat. “Oh, right, ‘cause borrowing money from dangerous people seems like a much better option. How much is it?”
“Fifty thousand,” he says, whispering, and I burst into laughter because he has to be joking. Maybe he and Lydia teamed up to see who could pull the bigger birthday surprise on me.
“Donuts? Because you can’t possibly mean dollars. What the hell do you expect me to do?” We lock eyes and the answer is so plain in his expression, it rips my smile away. “No. No. I don’t do that anymore and I won’t ever do it again. I’m not fighting to earn the money.” I put some acid behind my words to drill into his head just how emphatic I am about this. “No. Not even an option.”