Second Chance

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

AVON

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This paperback edition 2007

First published by NAL Accent, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Ltd 2006

Copyright © Elizabeth Wrenn 2006

Conversation Guide copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2006 All rights reserved.

Excerpt from ‘Her Grave’ from New and Selected Poems by Mary Oliver.

Copyright © Mary Oliver, 1992. Reprinted by permission of Beacon Press, Boston.

Elizabeth Wrenn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9781847560049

Ebook edition: September 2008 ISBN: 9780007278961

Version: 2018-05-23

For Stuart

You must have been a dog in a past life because never in the world has there been a better best friend.

Tteote

A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.

—from ‘Her Grave’

MARY OLIVER

Contents

Title Page Copyright Dedication Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Epilogue An Interview With Elizabeth Wrenn Questions For Discussion Acknowledgements About the Author About the Publisher

ONE

Hairy took some sort of perverse feline pleasure in shedding his voluminous white fur into my cookware. I’d been cleaning behind the kitchen sink when I’d seen him paw the door open and slip into the spinner cabinet. In my simmering anger I didn’t think it through and I’d gone in after him. Now my hips were stuck in the door opening, my torso wedged between the two tiers of the giant lazy Susan that held my pots and pans.

My derriere was blocking most of the light, but just enough found its way in for me to see Hairy’s smug Persian face staring at me from the depths. I probed with my toothbrush. He retreated farther into the dark recesses, his tail swishing with satisfaction.

Hairy loved all cabinets, but especially the spinner. He often clambered over and around the small towers of pots and pans, heaving his girth over hill and dale, sending the circle spinning as he jumped into the empty back corner. He’d then watch the pans fly by, looking like a kid at an amusement park debating whether to hand over his ticket and actually go on the ride. But the spinner was motionless now, held in place by my shoulders. Hairy lifted a paw, gave it a single neat lick, and stared at me from the back of the cabinet.

‘Hairy, get out of there!’ I growled. He was just beyond my reach and he knew it. It made me crazy to find him in a cabinet, especially the spinner, since white cat hairs had a way of turning up in my stir-fry.

How did I end up here? I wondered. Not here in the cupboard, but here as the owner of a cat, much less a fat, white Persian cat. I’m a dog person.

I’d always had dogs, growing up. My family lived on a cantaloupe farm in southeastern Colorado. We grew Rocky Ford cantaloupes, among other things, and over the decades we’d had a succession of black Labradors. Always two, always named Rocky and Fordy. My farm family did not routinely demonstrate the height of creativity.

My parents got Rocky number one before they had us. When I was three, they got Fordy. When Rocky one passed on, we got a new puppy, named him Rocky, and off we went. When Fordy died, enter Fordy two. My aging parents still have Rocky four and Fordy five. My brother Roger absconded with Fordy four. Which means there are two Fordys running around at every family reunion. Then Roger went and named his son Rocky. Don’t get me started.

When Neil and I married, I got not only in-laws in the deal, but cats. Three of them, all gone now. Hairy was ‘Lainey’s cat.’ Lainey’s cat for whom I cleaned the litter box, and who I fed and watered, took clawing and yowling to the vet, and, every so often, to the groomer for a first-class cut and poof that cost three times as much as my own economy-class haircuts.

It wasn’t that Neil disliked dogs; he loved Rocky and Fordy. When we went to the farm, he was often out throwing a stick or taking them for walks down to the lake. He explained that he didn’t want to own a dog because ‘dogs tie you down.’ Like a wife, two teenagers at home, a son at college, and a thriving medical practice didn’t. He was also fond of saying, ‘The only good dog is someone else’s dog.’

The phone rang. I pushed back, trying to wriggle out, but the only part of me moving was the flab on my upper arms. The phone rang a second time.

‘Damn!’ It might be one of the kids calling from school. Or even Sam. Although Matt and Lainey rarely called these days – very uncool in high school – and Sam had called only once since he’d left for college last year. For money. But old instincts die hard. A third ring. I pushed myself backward but my hips were stuck. Painfully stuck.

‘Ow! Goddamn it, Hairy!’ I had to blame someone for my big butt, and Hairy was as good a candidate as existed. I twisted sideways, pushed off the center pole of the spinner, and finally shimmied out, lunging for the phone.

‘Hello!’ I said, somewhat angrily.

‘Deena? I was getting ready to leave you a message.’

‘Hi, Elaine.’ I breathed deeply, trying to catch both my breath and my temper.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah. I got stuck in my cabinet.’

A pause. ‘Come again?’

‘That damn Hairy got into the lazy Susan cabinet again and he won’t come out for Pounce or punishment and I can’t reach him and he gets cat hair all over everything!’

‘Oh, God! No!’ she shrieked in mock horror. ‘Has the press arrived?’

Elaine had a way of trivializing my problems, which were, admittedly, mostly trivial. I leaned back on the desk and pulled a paper clip from the drawer and began pulling it apart.

‘Very funny. I’ll have you know we had another Szechuan Persian Hair incident the other night. It grossed out the whole family. Even Matt.’ If my sixteen-year-old eating machine wouldn’t eat something, it was newsworthy.

‘But especially you, I bet. A little cat hair’s not gonna kill you.’ A pause, and then just the slightest change of tone. ‘Y’know, you didn’t used to be such a neat freak.’ True. Elaine and I had lived together for almost two years at the University of Wisconsin, and we would not have won any awards for the cleanest apartment. But it was Elaine’s boyfriend at the time, with the unusual first name of Meyer, who was the real culprit, a world-class slob. He drove Neil crazy. Thank God Elaine hadn’t married Meyer.

‘Hey, have you seen Peter lately?’ I asked, changing the subject. It was Peter Ham she’d married. Before she’d reckoned with the fact that she was a lesbian. I’d always suspected it. Peter had too, it turned out, but loved her so much he’d married her anyway. Now Elaine and Peter both delighted in telling people that they’d been married just long enough for Elaine to become a Jewish Ham.

‘He’s great! Just saw him and Bethany at the grocery store yesterday, actually. They’re making all sorts of plans for next year. You know Seth’s graduating from high school this year?’

‘No!’ Seth was their youngest. Well, it made sense. Peter had married Bethany about a year after his divorce from Elaine was final.

‘Yeah. I think they’re kind of looking forward to the empty nest. They’re talking about going on a cruise next fall.’

‘A cruise! Where?’ Neil and I used to say we’d do that after our kids were all gone. But it hadn’t come up in years.

‘Alaska. Not my idea of a cruise, but they’re all excited about it.’

‘Let me guess, your idea of a cruise is something more tropical?’ That’s what Neil and I had fantasized about.

‘Exactly. Give me that sun, sand, and margarita any day!’ A little sigh from both of us as we contemplated life in a lounge chair.

‘So,’ we both said in unison.

‘Your turn,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’ve been yakking away, as usual.’

I missed her. Over the decades she’d come out to visit every few years, and we talked on the phone often. But I was amazed our friendship had stayed so strong. Our paths couldn’t have been more different.

‘Okay. I was just going to ask about Wendy, and your art.’ I loved and hated asking about both. Elaine was always so passionate about those subjects that it tended to draw a sprawled sidewalk chalk line around the lack of passion in my own life.

‘Wendy’s fantastic! New accounts all over the place. I’m so proud of her. As for me, well, suffice to say I’m having a ball. Doing some new things. We’ll see where it goes.’ She was unusually circumspect. Probably swamped at work. She was the art director for Art of the Matter magazine. Unlike me, Elaine had not only gotten her bachelor’s in art, but had gone on for a master’s, then built an impressive résumé. Plus, she’d been doing art on her own all this time for her own pleasure, even had an occasional small show in Madison.

‘So, what were you doing before you got into the cat-extrication business?’ she asked. I loved Elaine. She could always make me smile.

‘Scrubbing grout.’ The words clunked to the floor like bricks.

‘Oy-vey, girlfriend!’ she cried across the miles, sounding both Jewish, which she was, and black, which she was not. ‘What is it with you and cleaning the past few years? You gotta get out.’ She said it like ‘owwwwt!’

‘But I’m a full-time mom, it’s my job. And my kids still need me, even if they don’t think so.’

‘Well, of course they do, Deena-leh, but not every waking minute. It’s not like they’re babies, hon.’

Babies. Now there was unconditional love. These days it felt like all my kids needed me for was as a wall to push off of. ‘No, they’re not babies.’ Another little sigh slipped out.

‘Whoa, Nelly! Don’t tell me you’re thinking about another baby again!’

In my early forties, my ovary must have burped or something and I’d approached Neil about having another baby. After we’d poked the vein back into his forehead, we’d agreed we were way too old. Besides, babies grow up into teenagers. I’d eventually be right back where I was now. Which, ironically, was wanting to be something other than a wife and mother. More and more I found myself fantasizing about leaving. Just up and leaving. Fantasizing. I wouldn’t actually do it. Probably not, anyway. No. Of course not.

But I could fantasize, right? Every day.

‘No. No more babies. Probably couldn’t even if I wanted to. Haven’t had a period in months.’ Not to mention the part about having to have sex in order to become pregnant.

I put the straightened paper clip down, slid off the desk, walked to the sink, and gazed out the window at the leaden sky. ‘But you know, E, only a baby has the power to make the world a better place simply by existing.’ But then again, they also had a way of sucking up your own existence when you weren’t looking.

‘I feel like opting out of my life right now, E.’ There. I just blurted it out.

‘You just need to get away, Deena. Come see us! For once.’ Elaine had stopped lobbying me to come out there since I’d refused for decades, hating to fly and unable to stretch the maternal ties, but usually claiming timing or money or both.

But now I wanted to go. Sort of. The mere thought of flying sent my blood pressure soaring, and going by car or bus didn’t appeal to me either. If I could only be there without having to get there. That was how I felt about losing weight. And fitness. And menopause.

Transitions. I guess they named the hardest part of giving birth that for a reason.

But then there was also the terrifying thought that even if I got to Madison, what if I didn’t want to come back? I picked up the toothbrush and started scrubbing grout again and told Elaine, ‘I don’t think so. It’s really tight now with Sam’s tuition.’ I pressed the toothbrush under the base of the sprayer, going after a bit of grime.

‘Deena, is it really that tight? Or are you just addicted to sacrificing for your family?’

What was that supposed to mean?

‘Look, come out, we’ll have a girls’ weekend. I’ll pay for it, your trip, some pampering. My treat. It’ll be your birthday slash Christmas present. Let me and Wendy take care of you for a change.’

‘I— can’t. Besides, my birthday and Christmas, as you well know, were both last month, and you already sent gifts for each.’ I knelt on the floor, holding the phone with one hand and the toothbrush in the other. I scrubbed forcefully at the grout between the floor tiles.

‘What are you doing? Are you scrubbing the grout again?’

‘The floor grout. Not the tile grout.’

‘Who cares?! Put down the damn toothbrush! You’re using a toothbrush, aren’t you?’

‘Well, yeah.’ I stood and obediently put the toothbrush in the sink. Still with the phone to my ear, I bent down and glared into the spinner cabinet at Hairy, who was now sitting demurely in the wok.

‘Dammit, Deena-leh! Anyone who cleans with a toothbrush anything other than her teeth has completely lost perspective. I’m worried about you.’

There was another long silence. What could I say? I was worried about me, too.

Elaine finally spoke. ‘So, will you come?’

I couldn’t tell her the real reasons. It was nigh unto impossible for me to justify something like a trip alone. As in, by myself. For myself. Plus, I was scared to fly, scared to travel alone. I didn’t even like walking alone on the lovely mountain trails above my house. Sometimes I wondered if I hadn’t become a little agoraphobic.

‘Deena?’ Elaine’s voice was now tentative, a cupped hand around my vulnerability.

I looked out the kitchen window at the snow beginning to fall. Big, fat flakes. I massaged my temple. ‘I’m sorry, E. I just can’t.’

After we hung up, I stood with the phone in my hand, just staring at it. Finally, I dialed Sam’s cell phone, struggling a bit. I knew the number by heart, but my damn hand was trembling. Ridiculous. He never answered anyway. I imagined him, in the shade of a tree somewhere on campus, stopping to look at his phone, seeing the number of the caller, shoving the phone back into his pocket, striding on. His voice mail clicked on. ‘Hey. It’s Sam. Leave a message.’ I hung up. I was not going to leave another message. I put the phone back into its base.

I really had been trying to give him space, as he’d requested in a lone e-mail. But Colorado to California is a damn lot of space.

The vacuum’s roar was not enough to drown out the voice in my head. Just up and leave. Go spend a weekend with Elaine. Go now! But I was truly afraid. Afraid to fly. Afraid to ask Neil for the money when he was working so many long hours lately. Afraid to leave. Afraid I’d arrive and curl up on a bed in Elaine’s house and not come back. I pushed the vacuum over the plush emerald depths of the carpet, back and forth, back and forth. My thoughts still raced, but I could always count on that huge hum to drown out most everything else: phones, cats, kids, husbands. Lawn mowers worked well, too. And both left those satisfying clean, dark tracks. Like dozens of little fresh starts.

I slowly sank to the floor, the vacuum still roaring. At first the sobs were silent and choking. Then I began to roar right along with the Hoover, my hands clinging to its plastic neck. I didn’t know where it was coming from, this deep animal cry.

I loved my family. Loved them. But, God! What if it was now simply out of habit? An ‘on paper’ love?

I don’t know how long I cried. Exhausted, I flipped off the vacuum and pulled a box of tissue off the end table. I was as swollen and snotty as a post-tantrum two-year-old. If only I’d get a period, maybe these moods would end. But maybe I wouldn’t ever get another one. Although, just when I thought I’d seen the last, a crimson flood would show up at the worst possible time – for instance, the very day I’d tried my first master’s swim workout, and I’d left little pink puddles all the way into the locker room. That had put the kibosh on exercise of all sorts.

I blew my nose and clicked on the TV for something other than my own thoughts. The painting instructor Bob Ross was on PBS. He was even more soothing than the vacuum. Neil used to tease me that I would leave him for either of two men: Mister Rogers or Bob Ross. Both represented the parts of my life at opposite ends of the spectrum of how I defined myself, or didn’t any longer. The former was the equanimous host of the children’s tele vision show ‘Mister Rogers Neighborhood,’ and was known for being encouraging, kind, gentle and an advocate for children. Bob Ross was a soft-spoken TV painting teacher, known for being encouraging, kind, gentle and an advocate for squirrels. Both were gone now. I wondered if I’d reached the age when I knew more celebrities who were dead than alive.

The show was almost over. He had mostly finished his painting of snowy mountains behind a glistening alpine lake. A single pine tree stood sentry in the foreground. The lake looked clear and crisp and … liquid. I could never get water to look like water. At least thirty years ago, when I took that painting class, I couldn’t. Elaine had always said I was good at figures, though. Was good at figures. My artwork of the past few decades had been limited to things like glue-and-glitter pinecones, doily valentines and gingerbread houses. Which, to be honest, I loved every minute of. But now … Where had it gotten me?

As the credits rolled I grew suddenly ravenous. And decisive. The kids would be home in an hour, and until then it was going to be me, a big – no, huge! – bowl of Corn Pops, and Oprah.

It was one of my favorite pastimes, eating cereal and watching Oprah. I sometimes squirmed a bit when she was doing a program on weight loss or exercise, which, of course, she often did. I didn’t care anymore, though.

My Tupperware bowl filled with the golden nuggets of carbohydrate bliss, I settled onto the couch just as Oprah was striding into the studio, gently touching the hands of a few of her many-hued disciples. I wondered if I were ever to go see a taping of the Oprah show whether I’d scream and get all teary-eyed and reach for her holy touch. I hoped not. Well, I’d definitely get teary-eyed. Lately I tear up at everything, and nothing.

‘Today we’re talking about using your life.’ I clicked up the volume on the TV. ‘You-zing your life! You-zing your life!’ I smiled. Oprah loved to emphasize syllables. After the introduction came commercials, during which I channel surfed and ate Corn Pops. I lingered too long on the Weather Channel and was a little late back to Oprah. But I got the gist of it. A ten-year-old girl had started collecting donated suitcases from friends and neighbors for foster kids to use as they went from home to home. A ragtag group of about a dozen kids, every color and size, bore their suitcases proudly as they left the house. It was hard to eat the Corn Pops through my tears. Next was a piece on a flight attendant who was building a school for orphans in Vietnam. Then there was a man who helped inner-city kids learn new skills and teamwork by building low-income housing. Then a husband and wife who’d adopted eleven siblings so they wouldn’t have to go to different homes. Eleven! Lord.

I could collect backpacks and suitcases maybe.

During the next commercial break I scurried to the kitchen and refilled my Corn Pops. This was just what I needed. Fill up the void. I was pouring on the soymilk as the Oprah theme music started in the den. The soymilk was supposed to help with the menopause symptoms, although I hadn’t seen any evidence of that yet. But it was tasty on Corn Pops. I hurried back down into the den as Oprah began speaking.

‘My next guest, Annie Forhooth, falls in love repeatedly, for approximately a year each time, only to bid a fond farewell to her loves, again and again. Why does she do this? To help provide loving eyes for the blind. Take a look.’

The piece opened with an eight-week-old black Lab puppy gamboling over Annie’s lawn. I set my cereal bowl on the coffee table as Annie’s taped voice-over talked about how exciting it is to get a new puppy, to know you’re going to raise it with love and care for a special purpose, a special gift. I sat up, gripping my knees in my hands as I watched.

The last shot of the piece was of Annie, with a blind woman, during some sort of graduation ceremony. Her voice-over said, ‘You do fall in love with the dogs, but you know from the beginning that you’re raising them so they can help someone; these dogs love to work. They love to be a part of the world. I just help them get started.’

In the video, Annie, crying but smiling broadly, handed over the leash of a full-grown, sleek, and boxy black Lab to a blind woman, her unseeing eyes also teary, her face uplifted. Annie put the leash into her hands, their four hands clenching around it in a tight ball. The two women then hugged, laughing, crying. The dog was sandwiched between their legs, tail wagging, eyes bright.

Sitting there wiping my own wet cheeks and eyes, I had only one thought: That’s what love looks like.

TWO

I was having another Art Instructor dream. I’d been having them off and on for several months now. They weren’t really erotic dreams, not in the usual sense of the word anyway. Although my definition of erotic was quickly becoming ‘any time spent alone.’ What was especially erotic, by my definition, was that Art Instructor never wanted anything from me; he only offered me things, beautiful things, to look at, to linger over. Then he’d politely disappear.

This time, we were strolling through an orange grove. Art Instructor was tall and handsome, though far from dark – he was actually stone white. He was always naked, at least the part I saw, which was typically just his chiseled upper back. A David back, deeply muscled and perfectly symmetrical. In this dream, he reached up with his also deeply muscled arm and picked a fat, absurdly brilliant orange, the color pulsating from it. Without turning around, he handed it back to me. This is when I realized he had no hand. The orange was just kind of stuck on the end of his wrist, and its color contrasted deeply with his whiteness. Then he turned, and for the first time ever, I looked down. Between his legs. His yoohoo was broken off, too. Dream-me smiled.