Chances Are . . .

by Richard Russo

  Though the moon on the waves and the chill in the air were reminiscent of 1971, tonight was different, too, and not just because Jacy was gone. This night there would be no singing. They were sixty-six now, far too old to convince themselves that their chances were awfully good, that the world gave the tiniest little fuck about their hopes and dreams, assuming they had any left. Even so, before coming out onto the deck, he put some music on low. Delia, still pissed at him for blaming her for how things had turned out, finally did drift off, and she slept more soundly when there was music playing. Most nights she went to bed wearing headphones, claiming music muted the voices in her head that always reminded her that she was a piece of shit. Tonight, to mute his own dark thoughts, Mickey had rooted around in the kitchen cabinets until he found the bottle of good scotch Lincoln had mentioned buying in town. He hardly ever drank hard liquor anymore, not since going to the doctor with shortness of breath and being told about his defective heart valve. Of course it was defective. Was he not his father’s son? The pitcher of Bloody Marys he’d mixed that morning was the first booze he’d tasted in over a year. He’d promised Delia he was done with the hard stuff, and until today he’d kept his word in the vain hope that it might help her keep hers. Fat fucking chance. Mickey disliked standing in judgment, but he did wish people wouldn’t lie about being clean when they weren’t. Was that so much to ask?

  Yet what was his own life but a web of lies, most of them unnecessary. That he should want his friends to believe he was still a serious boozer when all he ever had anymore was beer—which his doctors told him would kill him less quickly—mystified him. The mountain of ribs he’d eaten tonight had also been for show. Hell, if there’d been any coke around, he probably would’ve done that, too, all to convince Lincoln and Teddy that he was who he’d always been, that his life was proceeding according to plan, that he regretted nothing because there was nothing to regret. He wouldn’t even have admitted to the motorcycle accident if the evidence weren’t so gruesomely visible, the livid white scar at his hairline. If it had been just Lincoln, he might’ve taken his chances. One day back at Minerva, Lincoln had noticed his government professor limping and asked why. Because, the man informed him, his left leg was a prosthesis right up to the hip. He’d been clomping around like Captain Ahab all term, but Lincoln had only just noticed. In some ways his friend’s habit of not really taking things in made him the perfect college student, more interested in what things meant than that they existed in the first place, as if you could determine the significance of something without actually observing it. Teddy, however, had an eagle eye, especially for anything involving bodily injury. It was as if he expected whatever he came in contact with to maim him. No hope whatsoever he wasn’t going to notice the scar.

  Had his father lived, things would’ve been different, Mickey thought, but maybe this was another lie. Strange, and yet somehow fitting, to be back here where the life of deception he hadn’t planned on had begun. This island. This house.

  * * *

  —

  BY THE TIME the guys returned, Mickey had dozed off out on the deck. The crunch of tires on gravel woke him, and then he heard car doors open and close, his friends’ voices muted in the soft night. He was relieved. He’d told Lincoln that Teddy would be ready and waiting for him when he arrived at the hospital, but he hadn’t been at all sure that would happen. Teddy hadn’t been officially discharged, so it was possible the graveyard nurse might try to stop him. Or maybe when he tried to get out of bed and dress himself, Teddy would find he couldn’t. But no, here they were. A light came on inside and a moment later Lincoln appeared behind the glass door, his face a thundercloud. Sliding it open, he stepped aside for Teddy, who paused in the doorway, wobbling and woozy. A thick white bandage the size of a tennis ball was affixed over his right eye.

  Mickey stood up. “Can I help?”

  “I got him,” Lincoln said, his fury barely contained as he guided Teddy outside. When he was settled, Lincoln started to take a seat himself but noticed the whiskey bottle and went back into the kitchen.

  “Well,” Mickey said, looking Teddy over, “you look better than you did at the club. How do you feel?”

  “Weak. Not much pain at the moment.”

  “What’d they give you?”

  “I forget. Some next-gen pain pills. They’re working, is the main thing.”

  “I hear the trick is to stop taking them when the pain goes away. You up to this?”

  “Wake me up if I nod off. I think I’ve already figured out most of it.”

  “Yeah?” Mickey didn’t see how that could conceivably be true.

  “Not figured out, exactly,” Teddy said. “It’s more like…I just woke up knowing.”

  Mickey chuckled. “Good, then you can tell it.”

  When Teddy offered up the weakest of smiles, Mickey felt a wave of guilt wash over him. What he was doing—demanding that his friends listen to his story this very night—was both selfish and cruel, though the alternative would’ve been to sneak off the island with Delia and let them imagine the worst, which Lincoln, quite possibly, was already doing.

  When the door slid open again, Lincoln reappeared with two glasses holding a few cubes of ice and set them in the middle of the table. “You probably shouldn’t,” he told Teddy, who took a glass anyway. Lincoln poured himself two fingers, gave Teddy a splash, then set the bottle down within Mickey’s reach. The message was clear: he could pour his own, which he did. “Okay,” he began. “I’m not sure where to start, but—”

  “It was an accident,” Lincoln blurted. “Begin there.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “How she died. Explain how it was an accident.”

  “Lincoln,” Teddy said, his voice almost a whisper. “Let him tell his own story.”

  “Yeah, Mick,” Lincoln agreed. “Tell us how Jacy died.”

  “She died in my arms,” Mickey said. He could feel her there still, almost forty years later.

  “An accident.”

  “Yes,” he confessed, though he had no idea how Lincoln could’ve intuited this.

  Lincoln swallowed hard. “Is she buried here?”

  Stunned, Mickey shook his head. If the idea weren’t completely lunatic, he’d have sworn that by here his friend meant under this very sloping lawn. “I’m lost, man,” he said. “Why would she be buried here?”

  “Don’t lie,” Lincoln said. “Don’t you fucking lie, Mick. The cops will be here tomorrow and they’ll dig up every inch of this place. If she’s here, they’ll find her.”

  Laughing was exactly the wrong thing to do, of course, but really, he couldn’t help himself. Lie your ass off for forty years and everybody believes you, but when you finally decide to tell the truth…“Lincoln,” he said, “I don’t have the first clue what you’re—”

  But this was as far as he got, because Lincoln, showing no signs of back stiffness now, came flying out of his chair. Grabbing Mickey by the throat with his left hand, his right was balled into a fist and cocked. He would’ve thrown the punch, too, Mickey was certain, if the door to the deck hadn’t slid open just then. Seeing Delia in the doorway, blinking and groggy, Lincoln let go of Mickey’s neck, straightened up and turned to face her. When Mickey rose to his feet, Teddy did, too.

  “It’s okay,” Mickey told her, his voice raspy. “Come on out and meet my friends.”

  For a tortuous moment nobody moved. But then Teddy went over to where Delia stood in the doorway and put his arms around her. Startled, she glanced at Mickey over his shoulder, but allowed the embrace. After another long moment Teddy stepped back so he could study her at arm’s length. “You look like your mom,” he said, smiling.

  The smile she returned was Jacy’s, to a T.

  * * *

  —

  THEY’D AGREED TO MEET at the restaurant adjacent to the ferry landing in Woods Hole,
but he wasn’t sure she’d show up. Their hasty plan was hatched yesterday afternoon when Lincoln was on the phone with Anita, and Teddy, in one of his periodic funks, had gone for a walk.

  But a lot had happened since then, and Mickey wouldn’t have blamed her for having second thoughts. “Since when have we started keeping secrets from each other?” he’d asked her, the question not entirely rhetorical. She and Teddy had snuck off to Gay Head earlier in the day, and to judge by his demeanor when they returned, something must’ve happened there. Poor Teddy. They were all hopelessly in love with her, but he seemed the furthest gone. Had he lost his composure and confessed his feelings, begged her not to marry Vance? Had she then clipped his wings? She would’ve done so gently, of course, because Mickey suspected Teddy was her favorite. On the other hand, if he’d violated their unspoken pact, well, didn’t he kind of have it coming?

  Thinking this, he immediately felt guilty. After all, if their pact was unspoken, who could say they even had one? He’d always assumed that that’s what all for one and one for all amounted to—a coded agreement that they’d never go behind one another’s backs in pursuit of Jacy’s affections, which was all the more convenient since she was engaged to someone else entirely. If it existed at all, their understanding amounted to little more than a noncompete clause that there would be no need to ever enforce. Yet in a sense they had been competing, even when they were together, and if Jacy was going to marry someone not named Mickey, he preferred it wouldn’t be to someone named Lincoln or Teddy. A shameful admission, but there it was, and unless he was mistaken his friends felt the same way. Vance probably was a complete asshole, and Jacy certainly deserved better, but Mickey had accepted the idea that they would get married as one of the many things in life he was powerless to alter, like his father’s death or his own lottery number. But if Jacy were to end up with either Teddy or Lincoln, well, he wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to that.

  Anyway, it was possible that after last night’s all-for-one singing and boozing she’d thought better of their planned assignation and hopped on a bus to New York City, as she’d originally intended. In fact, looking around the restaurant and not seeing her, he felt both crushing disappointment and—hey, relief. But then a young woman in a big floppy hat and dark glasses, sitting by herself on the deck, waved to him.

  Going outside, he pulled up a chair opposite her. “Is that supposed to be a disguise?” She looked like a hippie version of Audrey Hepburn in Charade.

  Jacy narrowed her eyes theatrically. “Were they suspicious?”

  Mickey shook his head. Lincoln and Teddy had dropped him off at the entrance to the Steamship Authority lot in Falmouth, where they said their awkward guy-goodbyes.

  “I wish you’d listen to reason,” Teddy told him. “Hell, I’d go to Canada with you if it’d keep you out of Vietnam.”

  Mickey, moved by the offer, had deflected it with humor, assuring both friends that he was really more worried about them than himself, especially Lincoln, given how pussy-whipped he already was and not even engaged yet. With Mickey gone, he’d be without a male role model.

  To which Teddy said, “Thanks a lot.”

  In the end, Lincoln had refused to allow either a joke farewell or the offer of a handshake, saying only “Come here” and pulling Mickey into a tight embrace, whispering, “Good luck, man,” which meant that Teddy had to hug him, too.

  Once they drove off, Mickey, feeling like a heel for deceiving them, retrieved his car and drove back to Woods Hole.

  “So,” he told Jacy. “Explain what we’re doing here, because I don’t understand.”

  “All in good time,” she said. “Let me see your hand.”

  He flexed his fingers for her, trying not to wince. “It’s better today. Not so swollen.”

  She just shook her head and gave him her why-are-men-so-full-of-shit smile, one of his favorites, though he loved them all.

  Her Bloody Mary looked like just the thing, so when the waitress came by he ordered one, too. “I’m assuming we have time?” he said.

  Jacy nodded. “I got nowhere to be.”

  “I thought you were spending a day or two with Kelsey in New York.”

  “So I lied.”

  When the truth is found, Mickey thought. “Next you’ll be telling me you aren’t getting married.”

  “An excellent prediction!”

  He tried not to beam at this news, but he could feel he was. “Does Vance know this?”

  “Not yet, but he won’t be surprised.”

  “How about your parents?”

  “They’ll be shocked.” Now she was beaming.

  “So what happened?”

  Jacy sighed. “We couldn’t decide where to live. I was thinking Haight-Ashbury. His idea was Greenwich, midway between our parents’ houses.”

  “You could’ve compromised. I keep hearing that’s what marriage is all about.”

  She shook her head. “Vance laid down the law. Which, if you’re a woman, is what marriage is about.”

  The ferry, loaded up again, sounded its horn and pulled away from the slip, island-bound people waving from the upper deck. When the waitress brought Mickey’s Bloody Mary, he swilled a third of it and felt his hangover instantly recede. “Teddy said he’d go with me to Canada, if it’d keep me out of the war.”

  “Poor Teddy,” she said, looking away now, her eyes glistening.

  “Did something weird happen at Gay Head yesterday?”

  “We went skinny-dipping.”

  “Yeah? Whose idea was that?”

  “Mine,” she said, meeting his eyes now, and there was a challenge in this admission. Was it some sort of a test? Don’t ask, he thought, but of course he had to. “Did anything else happen?”

  She was still looking directly at him. “That was it.”

  Well, he thought, that would explain Teddy’s funk. He’d looked guilty, but he was really just broken-hearted. No wonder they’d had to coax him into singing “Chances Are” with them on the deck. His own slim chances had just been rendered null and void, whereas Mickey’s own were now magically revived.

  “Anyway,” Jacy said. “You can’t go to Canada with him.”

  “No?”

  “It’s out of the question.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re going there with me.”

  * * *

  —

  “HAVE YOU EVER BEEN to Bar Harbor?” she wanted to know two days later. She’d lapsed into silence an hour earlier, and Mickey sensed she didn’t want him to fill it in with chatter. It was possible, he thought, that the gravity of what they were doing—running off to Canada without money or even a real plan for what they’d do when they got there—might finally be dawning on her. He’d been expecting the next words out of her mouth to be Okay, turn the car around. This was a dumb idea.

  Since leaving Woods Hole, they’d made it halfway up the coast of Maine, with the Atlantic always on their right, sometimes only a hundred yards off, then disappearing completely for an hour or more. When he’d pointed out that there were more direct routes into Canada, she said, “Your days of going anywhere directly are over,” a statement he took to be metaphorical, though its meaning still eluded him. She’d promised to answer the question he’d posed back in Woods Hole (What are we doing?), as well as a host of others that had occurred to him since (Shouldn’t you call your parents so they don’t worry? Shouldn’t you let Vance know the wedding’s off? What about Lincoln and Teddy? Why all the secrecy?). But every single one had gone unanswered. Something seemed to be troubling her, but all he could get out of her was that he’d understand everything in the fullness of time.

  “When would I have visited Bar Harbor?” he snorted.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Where’d your parents take you on vacation when you were a kid?”

  “
We went to the lake.”

  “Which lake?”

  “See, that’s the thing, poor little rich girl. When I was a kid I thought there was just the one. We’d go for a week in August. Sometimes two, if we were flush. Everybody from the neighborhood vacationed there.”

  She squinted at him. “So…when you went on vacation, you saw the same people you saw the rest of the year? On the street where you lived?”

  “People stop and stare,” Mickey warbled, “they don’t bother me…’cause there’s nowhere on this earth that I would rather be…”

  How long would it be before she understood, he wondered—this thing, his life before Minerva, that he was forever trying and failing to explain. Even Teddy and Lincoln—neither of whom came from money, though Lincoln’s family was pretty comfortable—seemed to have a hard time grasping why he clung to certain ideas so stubbornly. They’d been incredulous, for instance, when he chose to remain in the kitchen scrubbing pots when he could’ve been a face man swanning around in the dining room. How did one explain the Acropolis, a West Haven diner and his real first job—yeah, scrubbing pots—where Nestor, the owner, paid him under the table? Just a few hours after school and a few more on weekends. Each day an abundance of pots and pans awaited him on the long drainboard where they’d been sitting, crusting up, since lunch. Over the next two hours he’d slowly plow through them, imagining what that Fender Stratocaster he’d had his eye on for a while would feel like slung over his shoulder, the frets along its sleek neck smooth beneath his callused fingers. Aware that his parents wouldn’t approve of a job after school when he was supposedly getting his grades up, he told them he’d joined a Catholic Youth study group, not the kind of lie that he judged would keep him out of heaven. But back then his old man was suspicious of everything that came out of Mickey’s mouth, and one day when he finished up in back, he found Michael Sr. seated at the counter, eating a piece of cheesecake. When he indicated the vacant stool next to him, Mickey slid onto it. “You want a soda?” his father said. “You look all sweaty.” When the Coke arrived, his father said, “So what’s this all about?”