Chances Are . . .

by Richard Russo

  The following morning Todd called to apologize, claiming he hadn’t meant anything. Lots of kids didn’t look like their parents until later in life. He’d even asked her out the following weekend to make it up to her, but she said no. Her father, suspecting that something must’ve happened, insisted that she tell him what the boy had done, because he’d fucking kill the little prick, but Jacy said only that he’d made fun of her when she couldn’t sink her putt on the Volcano hole. She could tell he didn’t believe her.

  It took Jacy a month to work up the courage to broach the subject with her mother. She expected her to go ballistic, but instead she went into the master bedroom and came back with the metal box where important documents were kept. It contained Jacy’s birth certificate, and of course there she was: a baby girl, Justine, six pounds, eleven ounces, born to Vivian Calloway. Seeing this, thirteen-year-old Jacy once again began to sob, this time tears of relief. She was who she’d always been, not some other person from some other place full of dark-skinned, curly-haired people. Later, though, when she replayed the scene in her head, the banished doubts returned. When she’d asked point-blank if she was adopted, why hadn’t her mother been surprised? It was as if she’d been expecting this day and was prepared. Documents, Jacy recalled thinking, could be forged.

  * * *

  —

  TWO YEARS PASSED. She was in high school now and not the same girl at all. She was vigilant, questioned everything. She watched both her parents like a hawk. Made a study of them. Why did they argue so much? Why did her father get so many calls after working hours and always take them in the den with the door closed? Why did her mother become so annoyed when Jacy dragged out old photo albums and pored over them intently? “What are you looking for?” she wanted to know. Evidence was the short answer Jacy couldn’t give. Evidence that she was who she was supposed to be. There were almost no photos of her father as a young man—because he was the youngest of eight siblings, he claimed—whereas her mother’s life had been well documented. The photos that meant the most to Jacy were of her mother as a girl, because there she thought she could see a resemblance. Okay, sure, different color hair and lighter skin, but the same posture, the same delicate nose and round eyes. Which meant the birth certificate wasn’t forged. She was who she was. Why, then, was she unable to shake the feeling that something was being kept from her? Why did everything feel like a lie?

  One day when she got home from school, a taxi was sitting at their curb, completely out of place in their upscale Greenwich neighborhood. She was trying to figure out what it was doing there when their front door opened and a middle-aged man in a dark, ill-fitting suit lurched out. Jacy instinctively ducked behind the privet hedge. Her mother appeared behind him and called, “Wait! Wait! Let me help you!” He said something in response, but his voice had a strange, braying quality, and she couldn’t make out what. Clearly, something was the matter with this man. As he came down the steps, his gait was spastic and his elbows jerked wildly, as if pulled at by invisible strings. She expected him to regain his balance on level ground, but instead he reeled around even more uncontrollably, and when her mother, catching up, reached out to steady him, he keeled over onto the lawn, where he lay on his side while his legs kept churning as if he were still upright. “Andy!” her mother cried. “You have to let me help you!” Eventually, she managed to get him on his feet and back onto the sidewalk, and it was then they both noticed Jacy, who’d stepped out from behind the hedge. “Mom?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  Her mother stiffened with surprise but quickly gathered herself. “Inside!” she ordered. “Now! This instant!”

  Jacy would’ve liked nothing better than to do as she was told, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the man in the dark suit. Though she was sure she’d never laid eyes on him before, he looked somehow familiar. His gaze was now fixed on her as well. Was that a smile on his face, or a grimace? When he reached out to her, his hand jerking, she quickly backed away from him.

  “Inside!” her mother hissed.

  “Aaaace!” the man bleated, trying once again to touch her.

  This time she ran up the brick walkway and the front steps, stopping in the open doorway. A car, invisible behind the long privet hedge, was roaring up the street in their direction, and she knew who it would be before her father’s Mercedes came to a rocking halt behind the taxi.

  Her mother stepped in front of the stranger as her father came trotting toward them. “Don!” she said, holding up both hands. “Everything’s okay. Andy was just leaving.”

  But her father was having none of this. Elbowing his wife aside, he planted both hands on the stranger’s chest and shoved. The man took two quick, awkward steps backward, arms windmilling, and fell flat on his back. “What the fuck are you doing here, Andy?”

  “Don!” her mother was yelling now. “Don’t hurt him! He’s leaving!”

  “You’re goddamn right he is,” her father said, standing over the man now, both hands clenched into fists.

  “How can he go away if you won’t let him up?”

  Apparently the taxi driver had seen enough. Putting the vehicle in gear, he pulled away from the curb. “Hey!” her father yelled, chasing it down the street. “Come back here! Do you hear? Come back!” The driver stuck his arm out the window and flipped her father off.

  By the time he returned to the lawn, her mother had the man they’d called Andy back on his feet again. He just stood there, docile, his head hung low, as if to concede that all this was his fault.

  “Now what?” her mother wanted to know, seemingly of both men.

  “Now we go for a ride,” her father said, grabbing the man by the elbow.

  “Don’t you dare hurt him,” she called after them as Jacy’s father dragged the man to the Mercedes and shoved him roughly inside. As he went around to the driver’s side, the stranger’s face was framed in the passenger window. At first Jacy thought he was looking at her mother, but then saw that, no, he was looking straight at her.

  When the Mercedes raced up the street and out of sight, her mother didn’t immediately turn around. When she finally did, she just stood there staring at the house, as if seeing it for the first time. To Jacy, still frozen in the doorway, she looked like a woman casting around for nonexistent options.

  * * *

  —

  Q&A. THE KITCHEN. Twenty minutes have passed since the scene on the lawn. A pot of coffee has been brewed. Jacy’s mother has wrapped some ice cubes in a dishcloth and applied it to the fat lip she somehow got in the struggle. Mother and daughter are seated on opposite sides of the kitchen island.

  Her mother’s first words are predictable. “Thank God there’s never anybody around this time of the afternoon. I don’t think anyone saw.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A drunk.”

  “Who is he?”

  “A drunk,” she repeats. “A falling-down drunk. Couldn’t you see?”

  “Who is he?”

  Finally her mother meets her gaze with a pleading expression of her own. “Someone I knew a long time ago.”

  “Tell me.”

  “He has nothing to do with you. Forget about him.”

  “He said my name. He tried to say my name.”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “I heard him.”

  “You heard something.”

  “He reached out. To touch me.”

  “He’s never going to get his hands on you. Ever.”

  She says it. Just fucking says it. “He’s my father, isn’t he.”

  Her mother looks away.

  “Isn’t he.”

  When her mother turns back, her eyes have gone icy hard. It’s a look she’s seen before, but it’s always been directed at her father, never at her. “You’ve got a choice to make, little girl, and you’re going to have to make it now, before y
our father gets home.”

  “My father’s not coming home.”

  Her mother actually laughs. “Hey, you’re lucky. You get to choose. Who do you want in your life? The man you’ve always known as your father, who treats you like his daughter, who pays for the food you eat and the clothes on your back and the roof over your head. Or that…thing”—here mimicking the man’s spastic arm motions—“you saw on the lawn.”

  “He has a name. Andy. I heard you say it.”

  “Yes, his name is Andy, and we’ve said it for the last time in this house.”

  “Andy,” she repeats.

  Lightning quick, her mother reaches across the island and slaps her face. “You ungrateful little bitch. Do you have any idea what I saved you from?”

  She doesn’t. She has no idea about anything, except that it’s all a lie, that it’s never been anything but a lie.

  Outside, her father’s Mercedes pulls into the driveway. No, not her father. It’s Donald. That’s who he’ll be from now on. And her mother will be Vivian. Don and Viv. And one day soon—though not soon enough—she’ll be free of them.

  * * *

  —

  LIKE ON THAT LONG-AGO evening, their last together on the island, the temperature tonight had continued to drop, and despite their windbreakers and the whiskey bottle, all three friends were now shivering in the chill. When Lincoln went inside to search for blankets they could drape around their shoulders, Teddy said, “Look, Mick, you don’t have to do this.”

  “I do, though,” he said. “I should’ve come clean a long time ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “She made me swear.” Which was true, though not, he had to admit, the whole truth and nothing but. “Also, I was ashamed. When we left the island that morning and you guys dropped me off at the Falmouth parking lot? I convinced myself that not telling you how Jacy and I were planning to meet up back in Woods Hole wasn’t really a lie, or at least not the kind that keeps you out of heaven. But that’s the thing about lies, right? Individually they don’t amount to much, but you never know how many others you’ll need to tell in order to protect that first one, and damned if they don’t add up. Over time they get all tangled up until one day you realize it isn’t even the lies themselves that matter. It’s that somehow lying has become your default mode. And the person you lie to most is yourself.”

  The deck’s sliding door rumbled open, Lincoln returning with blankets and the flashlight Mickey’d requested. Was it his imagination or had Lincoln, just in the last hour, segued into old age? It seemed impossible this was the same man who’d so recently come flying out of his chair, his face burning with fury. Now that same face was a collapsed wreck, and despite his gruesome injury, Teddy appeared to be in better shape. Mickey’s own fault, all of this.

  “Okay,” Lincoln said, sitting back down, “what did I miss?”

  “Nothing much,” Mickey assured him. “Ted was just asking, in the nicest way possible, how I could’ve been a big-enough asshole to keep all this from you until now. Here’s your answer, or part of it.” Taking out the photo he’d brought with him to the island on the off chance he’d somehow locate the courage (Kuh-ridge!) to fess up, he slid it down the table. “I’ve never shown this to anybody.”

  When Lincoln switched the flashlight on, Mickey, not wanting to witness their reactions, purposely looked out at the dark Atlantic. That didn’t keep him from hearing Lincoln’s sharp intake of breath, though. He studied the photo for a good minute before passing it and the flashlight to Teddy, who examined it for at least that long before saying, “Dear God.” Switching the flashlight off, he said, “That afternoon when Andy came by? He wasn’t drunk, was he.”

  * * *

  —

  SHE LOOKED FOR HIM everywhere, Mickey told them. Especially on holidays and birthdays. Also at sporting events (tennis, field hockey) where she was a participant. It had come to her gradually that it wasn’t her mother that Andy had come to see that afternoon but herself. That he wanted to be part of his daughter’s life was the only explanation that made any sense. But didn’t that mean he would keep trying? Mostly she dreaded the possibility, because she always imagined him lurching toward her, bleating at her, unable even to say her name. Why, then, at other times, did she long to see him again? Because when he looked at her, there’d been love in his eyes; surely she hadn’t imagined that. And the fact that he’d been drunk that afternoon didn’t mean he always was, did it? That she could both dread and yearn for something confused and frightened her. Was she losing her mind? Andy, she kept thinking, his name just there in her head. Andy. The more she tried to banish it, the more insistent the voice became. At least that’s how it was in the beginning. Gradually, though, as she came to understand that he was probably gone for good, the voice receded, disappearing entirely for long stretches, until suddenly it would be there again, a whisper now: Andy. And when this happened, all she wanted to do was to crawl into bed and pull the covers up over her head as she’d done when that boy Todd brought all this into question.

  She thought about trying to find him, but how? All she knew was his first name. She couldn’t very well ask her mother or fucking Donald. Looking for clues, she once again returned to the family photo albums, searching them for some younger version of the man she’d seen on the front lawn. There were a few pages where photos had been removed, and she stared at these absences as if she could conjure up the missing images by sheer force of will. The summer between her high-school graduation and her freshman year at Minerva, when her mother and father had attended a weeklong conference in Hawaii, she used the time alone to toss the house. It took her all of two minutes to locate the metal box that contained her birth certificate, but its other contents—passports, mortgage documents, her parents’ marriage license, various insurance policies, the titles to their two cars—were of no interest. The box yielded neither letters nor additional photos. Frustrated but determined, she went through every room and closet in the house, examining the contents of every shoebox and plastic bin. The desk in Donald’s office was always locked, which suggested it might contain the treasure she was seeking, so she jimmied the lock with a letter opener, scarring both. She went through each drawer methodically, including the large one that contained Donald’s clients’ file folders, though none of these bore the name Andy or Andrew. But of course that made sense. Why would her real father hire Donald, the man who’d stolen his daughter, to manage his portfolio? Would a drunk even have a portfolio?

  On the opposite wall, behind the Renoir, she discovered a small safe that she never suspected was there. She tried various numerical sequences related to Donald’s and her mother’s birthdays, their anniversary, even her own birthday, but no luck. Thinking the combination might be written down somewhere, she went through the desk again, this time looking for numbers in three sequences of two, and again came up empty. She was about to give up when she noticed that the desk’s center drawer was slightly cockeyed, as if it had been removed and returned to its runners inexpertly. Pulling the drawer completely out, she used a flashlight to peer into the cavity, thinking the combination might be scratched onto one of the interior walls. She was about to slide the drawer back onto its runners when she noticed a yellowed piece of masking tape affixed to its back panel. The numbers written on it were badly faded but legible. The first two digits were preceded by the letter L, the next two by an R, the third by another L. She dialed these carefully, but the safe didn’t open. She tried twice more, even more carefully, with the same result. She was about to concede defeat when she remembered the padlock on her school locker. You couldn’t go directly from the first number to the second. You had to pass the first number in the opposite direction. Only then could you proceed to the second and third. This time, bingo! The tumblers clicked into place and the door thunked open. Inside were stacks of bills, mostly twenties and fifties, totaling at least a hundred thousan
d dollars. Maybe twice that. But there were no documents, no letters or postcards, no photos. No Andy.

  Face it, she told herself, he was gone. Donald’s volcanic anger had driven him away, and he was too frightened to return. And, really, she asked herself, why should that be such a big deal? For most of her life Andy hadn’t existed, then for a very few minutes he had. Why should she feel more bereft and alone now than she had when his existence was undreamed of? If he could live without her, she could live without him. And, for the most part, this strategy had worked, right? Minerva—being out of Don and Viv’s orbit nine months out of the year—had helped. So had her burgeoning friendship with Mickey and Teddy and Lincoln. Gradually Andy’s ambient presence faded, like a Polaroid left out in the sun.

  Why, then, as graduation approached—not to mention her June wedding—did she find herself backsliding, once again imagining that for these events her father would materialize? Sometimes she pictured him in the auditorium’s front row, beaming up at her with fatherly pride. More often, genuflecting before reason (because, really, how would Andy score a front-row seat?), she located him in the back of the hall where distant relatives, family friends and college staff congregated. The problem with this scenario (speaking of realism) was: how could she recognize him at such a distance? She’d only seen the man once, six years earlier, and then only briefly. Would she even be able to pick him out of a police lineup? Would she know who he was if she passed him on the street? If he wasn’t drunk and bleating, how would she recognize him? If he was sober, a model father, wouldn’t that amount to a disguise? Somehow, she told herself. She would know him somehow. Her logic? She would know him because otherwise his presence there would serve no purpose.