Chances Are . . .

by Richard Russo

  “A guitar,” Mickey confessed.

  “You already got a guitar.”

  “This is a better one.”

  His father’s eyes narrowed. Dangerous territory, this. “The one we got you last Christmas isn’t good enough?” An off-brand Nu-Tone, with a bowed neck and raised frets that buzzed and barked.

  “Think of it…as a tool,” Mickey explained, pleased to locate an analogy his old man might accept. A man’s no better than his tools was one of his favorite sayings.

  “Okay,” his father said, willing, for the moment, to concede the point, “but there’s this other thing.”

  “What other thing?”

  “You lied to your mother.”

  This was his father in a nutshell. Whenever Mickey got caught doing something he shouldn’t, it was always his mother he was disappointing, not both of them. As if his father had long ago written him off as a lost cause.

  “You told her you were in study hall or some horseshit. Sorry,” he added, because the waitress had appeared just then to warm up his coffee.

  “You gonna tell Mom about that cheesecake?” Mickey said. Because his father’s last visit to the doctor had revealed both high blood pressure and elevated blood-sugar levels. Since he’d been instructed to lose weight, sweets were no longer on his diet, except for Sunday mornings when they made a special trip to Wooster Street for Italian pastries.

  His father appealed to the waitress, who looked like she might be a diabetes candidate herself. “Do you believe the mouth on this kid?”

  “These days, they all got ’em,” she replied, winking at Mickey.

  “His is gonna be the death of him,” his father said, slapping a twenty on the counter.

  Outside in the car, Mickey said, “So I can keep the job?”

  “For now,” his father said, “granted your mother agrees. Is Nestor treating you right?”

  “Yeah, he’s okay.”

  “He’d better be. I got a piece of broken PVC pipe in the trunk that’d fit in his ear just perfect. You like the work? The only reason I ask is I’ve never known you to wash a dish at home.”

  Mickey started to say no, that washing pots was just a means to an end, but then realized that wasn’t quite true. Yeah, that pile of pots was always dispiriting to contemplate when he first walked in, but he actually kind of liked working through them at his own pace, and he liked the feeling of being finished even more, of having accomplished a task, even if that task was mindless and left you smelling like a dishcloth that had been marinating in bacon grease. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  “Good,” his father said. “I don’t ever want to hear about you doing a half-assed job. That PVC pipe would fit in your ear, too, capisce?”

  This was what Lincoln and Teddy—never mind Jacy—couldn’t seem to wrap their minds around. They suspected he stayed in the kitchen because he had something against rich girls, didn’t like the idea of having to be nice to them. But he really just liked it in the back of the house. The cooks reminded him of his mother’s friends in West Haven, and he even liked the long stainless-steel drainboard, the industrial-strength sprayer above the sink and the always-humid air, all of which took him back to the Acropolis and the thrill of that first Stratocaster he’d bought with the money he earned there. To Mickey, the Theta house’s kitchen felt a little like a church, or rather how he imagined church was supposed to feel but never did, at least not to him. He’d enjoyed Minerva, but unlike Lincoln and Teddy he’d never truly believed he belonged there. Sure it was better than West Haven, but that didn’t mean he had to love it. He also was slowly coming to understand that his father’s greatness, what made the man worth emulating, was his ability to love what he’d been given, what had been thrust upon him, what he had little choice but to accept.

  He would’ve liked to explain all this to Jacy now. The questions she asked him about his earlier life always suggested genuine interest, though he could also tell that, for her, it was like studying a foreign language. She was able to recognize cognates and build a small, pragmatic vocabulary, but to become really fluent she’d have to immerse herself. And what Greenwich, Connecticut, girl would want to immerse herself in West Haven, with its construction workers and overweight cops and preening bodybuilders? While he liked that she was curious, his answers didn’t seem to lead to real understanding, just more questions. (Why hadn’t his parents taken him to Bar Harbor? Okay, maybe they couldn’t afford to stay for very long or at the nicer places, but couldn’t they at least go?) Even with him as a guidebook, she remained a tourist. Not that he blamed her. What did it matter if she really didn’t speak his language fluently? At Minerva he’d learned to speak a dialect closer to hers than his own, right? It wasn’t like they couldn’t communicate. If a gap remained, over time they would bridge it.

  “So, Bar Harbor was your family’s regular summer spot?”

  “Not every year. Sometimes we went to the Berkshires. Or the Cape. Or Nantucket.”

  “Just the three of you?”

  “Occasionally we’d go with another couple. Usually somebody from Donald’s firm.”

  Mickey was about to ask who Donald was when he remembered Jacy always referred to her parents by their given names. Donald and Vivian. Don and Viv.

  August on Nantucket versus a week at the lake. That was the gap they needed to bridge for this to work. Not a gap, a chasm. Still, he supposed it might’ve been wider. He might’ve been poorer, she even richer. He might’ve been black. Yet the gap was real and not nothing. Love might help, assuming that’s what they were feeling. In fact, wasn’t love the so-called answer?

  And there was another gap. Running off to Canada instead of reporting for duty, after the solemn promise he’d made his father. “I’m not sure I can do it,” he’d told her back in Woods Hole.

  “But it’s the right thing,” she insisted. “You must see that. This war is crazy. Not to mention immoral.”

  True enough, and it was also true that his father would understand, at least in part. “Marrying your mother was the smartest thing I ever did,” he was fond of saying when she wasn’t around to hear it. He would surely recognize the power of his own feelings for Jacy. But although the man was dead, Mickey could also picture the two of them perched on stools at the Acropolis, his father scarfing down forbidden cheesecake. So what’s all this about? he would ask. Not another fucking guitar, I hope.

  A girl, Mickey would reply.

  Okay, sure, his father would agree. That’s fine, but there’s this other thing.

  What other thing?

  This war.

  It’s stupid, Dad.

  They’re all stupid. That’s not the point.

  What is?

  The point is, if you don’t go, somebody goes in your place, capisce? Look around right here, this diner. Half a dozen guys your age in here. A couple right over there in that booth. Which one should go in your place? Point him out to me, because I can’t tell.

  The point is nobody should go.

  Yeah, but somebody will. Some poor bastard is going.

  And you think it should be me.

  No. In fact, I’d go in your place, if they had any fucking use for a middle-aged pipefitter with a bum ticker.

  And he would’ve, too. Mickey was sure of it. More than anything else, he wished that his father was alive for Jacy to meet. Because then she’d have understood what she was asking him to do.

  I’m sorry, Pop. I’ll try to make it up to you.

  Except it’s not between me and you. It’s between you and you.

  “So,” Mickey said, “do you want to spend tonight in Bar Harbor?”

  “God, no,” Jacy told him. “I hate the fucking place.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY SPENT THAT NIGHT in a run-down motel on a hill overlooking the Atlantic, not far from the Canad
ian border. Jacy, still in her Audrey Hepburn disguise, waited in the car while Mickey went inside to register, just as she had the night before. “They couldn’t care less,” he assured her, “it’s 1971.” Free spirit that she was, it seemed out of character for her to worry about what strangers might think. Was it possible he’d misjudged her? He’d always assumed she and Vance were having sex, but he didn’t know it for a fact. Was it possible Jacy was secretly chaste? There were plenty of girls like that in West Haven—especially the Italian ones from the neighborhood, girls who talked a good game and let on that there’d be sex galore, maybe even tomorrow, except tomorrow never came. It was hard to imagine that Jacy was one of these, but there was no telling. Nor, he reminded himself, did it necessarily follow that her decision not to marry Vance meant that she’d leap right into bed with him.

  She certainly hadn’t the night before. Of course, they’d both been exhausted after a long day on the road, and their room had two single beds. But Mickey suspected it wouldn’t have mattered if there’d been a king. She’d gone into the bathroom, where he’d heard the shower running, but when she emerged she was wearing a long nightshirt and she’d immediately climbed into one of the twins, saying, “It’s all yours.” Meaning what? The bathroom? The shower? That he needed a shower? He took one, just in case. But when he came out, wearing a towel around his waist, the room was dark except for the reading lamp next to the empty bed, a signal that even he could interpret. That she didn’t want to have sex was disappointing, though this troubled him less than the fact that she seemed not to want any affection at all. No cuddle. No kiss goodnight. Was she afraid she’d get his motor running and then there’d be no way to turn it off? Or was she having second thoughts, great big ones? Maybe changing her mind about getting married had opened the floodgates of self-doubt and she wasn’t sure about anything anymore. Beyond exhausted himself, he’d fallen asleep before reaching any conclusions. Tonight, though, he had to wonder if it’d be more of the same. And the night after, too.

  The room was cheap enough, but when Mickey checked in and pulled out his wallet to pay he was a few dollars short. So far she’d let him pay for everything—lodging, food, gas. He knew he was getting low on funds and meant to stop at some bank to see if he could cash a check, but it had slipped his mind. Back at the car, humiliated, he said, “Sorry, but I need to borrow five bucks.”

  “Oh, right,” she said, but when he opened the trunk so she could get her backpack, she held it so he couldn’t see anything. Then, after zipping it back up, she handed him a bill that he pocketed without a glance. Only when he was in the office did he notice it was a hundred. He hadn’t seen one of those since his father died. Michael Sr., like many workingmen, always carried his money in a roll in his front pocket, no doubt comforted by its weight, the illusion of control you couldn’t get from a flimsy credit card. What am I doing here, Pop? he wondered as the woman at the front desk counted out his change, though he knew what his response would’ve been: Find out, Son.

  For dinner they went to a family restaurant just up the road, where he ordered a chicken-fried steak, Jacy the baked haddock. For some reason, maybe because they’d be safe in Canada tomorrow, her mood had brightened. “What exactly is chicken-fried steak?” she said when the food was served. “I’ve always wondered.”

  That gap again, Mickey thought, forking over a piece.

  She chewed it thoughtfully. “It tastes like beef-flavored breading.”

  He shrugged.

  She grinned at him. “Cracker fare, according to Don and Viv.”

  Mickey nodded. “The food of my people.”

  “Oh, come on. Your people are Italian.”

  Which made him chuckle. “What do you think’s in a meatball?”

  “Meat?”

  “Maybe a little, but mostly bread crumbs. Some other stuff that’s cheaper than meat.”

  “When the truth is found,” she sang, “to beeeeeeee…lies.”

  * * *

  —

  THEY APPEARED TO BE the only guests at the motel, which made sense this far north, still weeks before high summer. Each room had a small concrete patio in the rear with two plastic deck chairs. Mickey still had a smidgen of the weed he’d scored from Troyer before punching his lights out, and he figured they’d smoke that and watch the distant ocean as night fell. Also, driving back from the restaurant, they’d stopped at a convenience store and he bought a six-pack of beer. He’d also paid for dinner out of the hundred she’d given him. There was still some cash left, but he had to wonder: was this how life was going to be now? Him turning to her for money when he ran out? So halfway through the first beer, he decided to bring it up at an angle. “Once we get to wherever we’re going,” he ventured, “how do you see this working?”

  “What do you mean, ‘working’?”

  “We’ll need jobs.”

  “I’ll wait tables. You’ll tend bar.” She said this as if it pained her to state the obvious. After all, they weren’t likely to find work as nuclear physicists. “At some point you’ll start a band.”

  “In that case,” he said, “we should’ve gone home first and picked up my guitar.” He had some money in his checking account, assuming he could find somebody in Canada to cash a check, but not enough to replace his Stratocaster. Since graduation he hadn’t given much thought to money, figuring Uncle Sam would soon start picking up the tab. Now, suddenly, it was an issue again. “Anyway,” he continued, “that sounds like what we’d be doing if we hadn’t gone to college.”

  She took a swig of beer. “You got a better plan?”

  “No, that was my plan. I was hoping you’d have a better one.”

  “Nope.”

  “How do you see us working? You and me.”

  She reached over and took his hand. “Things will be different once we’re in Canada.”

  “Yeah?” he said, pleasantly surprised. It hadn’t occurred to him that sexual intimacy might have a geographical component. If it did, she might’ve mentioned it earlier. They were only twenty miles from the border, and he’d have happily driven the extra half hour had he known such a reward was awaiting him on the other side. Hell, he’d have sung “O Canada!” the whole way. Which naturally made him think of the evening when he’d gotten the draft number that set this particular journey in motion.

  When he finished his beer, he said, “I noticed a pay phone in the lobby. I really should call my mother.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was supposed to get home yesterday. She’ll be worried. Also, before long she’s going to start getting phone calls from the draft board wondering where the fuck I am.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, reluctantly, it seemed to him. “But you can’t mention that I’m with you.”

  “No?”

  “No. Promise me. Nobody can know.”

  “What’re you so worried about?” he said. “It’s me they’ll be after, not you.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  Which gave him genuine pause. Did she mean Vance? Her parents? The sorority sisters who’d so faithfully guarded her virtue at Minerva? All of Greenwich, Connecticut? He knew what they were doing would have serious consequences for him, but until now it hadn’t fully registered that Jacy was turning her back on her entire world.

  “I need your word, Mick.”

  “You have it.”

  When he rose from his chair, she said, “Can it wait until morning?”

  “Sure,” he said, sitting back down. “I guess.”

  “Good. Because tonight I need to tell you about my father.” When he remained silent, she said, “Nobody knows about this. You’ll be the first to hear it.”

  “I don’t understand. You mean Donald? Of Don and Viv?”

  She blew a raspberry. “Who said anything about him?”

  * * *

  —

&n
bsp; IT PROBABLY SHOULDN’T HAVE come as a surprise. After all, she didn’t look anything like tall, sandy-haired Donald Calloway, who’d always referred to her as “our little Gypsy” because of her dark, curly hair and olive complexion. She was a kid, though, and what kid doubts what her parents tell her? But then eighth grade happened, with all its casual cruelty, its constant, roiling fluctuations of social capital. And boys. There was this one, Todd, that she’d liked because he was funny, always clowning around. She had to warn him not to when she introduced him to her parents, especially her father, who was aggressively humorless and thought she was too young to go out on dates. The kid managed to behave himself in their home, but once they were out the door he said, “Wow! How old were you?” When she asked what he was talking about, he said, “You know, when you were adopted?”

  She told herself it was just one of his jokes, but she remembered feeling sick to her stomach and wasn’t able to laugh it off. They’d gone to play miniature golf, and Todd paid, which he seemed to think gave him the right to continue teasing her even after she begged him to cut it out. Had she been adopted from an agency, or did she just get left on her parents’ doorstep? Or was she found floating down the Connecticut River in a basket?

  The most difficult hole was the Volcano, where you had to putt up a steep slope at the top of which was a tiny, shallow crater. If you misjudged your speed or didn’t hit the center of the cup, the ball would rim out and roll all the way back down the mountainside, then you’d have to start all over again. Rattled by Todd’s teasing, Jacy couldn’t seem to get the hang of it, rimming out one shot after another. By rule, ten was the maximum score for any one hole, but Todd refused to move on until she sank the putt. When she finally did, she burst into tears and refused to continue, demanding he take her home. There, she crawled straight into bed, but it was impossible, even with the covers pulled over her head, to compose herself. The boy had opened a door into the part of her brain where riddles were stored. Things that had long puzzled her now began to make sense. How many times had she entered a room full of her mother’s friends, only to have them all stop talking at once and regard her guiltily? And what about her father’s cryptic remarks when he and her mother discussed some disagreeable habit of Jacy’s (“Well, Viv, she certainly doesn’t get that from me”).