So Many Chances

SO MANY CHANCES by Susan Buffum (Copyright Susan Buffum 2018)

When no one was looking I spit into my brother’s casket because I was mad at him. My scratching his wrist with my ragged fingernail earlier had drawn no blood, just sort of scuffed up his flesh a bit. I really wanted to punch him with my balled up fist, just lay into him like I’d seen Henry do a hundred times and raise a big bruise along the sharp ridge of his jaw but my Aunt Nancy had come up on my blindside, startling me so badly I’d nearly toppled off the prie dieu I’d been standing on to reach him. She’d told me it was for kneeling on, not standing on with dirty shoes. My shoes weren’t dirty, but she’d lifted me off anyway, setting me on the carpet, shooing me away to stand with my brothers and sisters, telling me to behave myself because funerals were solemn occasions.

My mama was sitting in a wingchair dabbing her swollen eyes with a plain white handkerchief someone had given her when she’d run out of tissues. Her face was all distorted as if she was made of pallid dough that someone had kneaded with careless hands, giving her a new face with red eyes and a jack-o-lantern mouth. She hadn’t put her partial in as she was just so distraught. Her hair, blonde shot through with white, was pulled severely back into a taut bun at the nape of her neck. I didn’t know  her like this so was avoiding her every time she reached toward me trying to draw me close. She smelled of gardenias. It was giving me a headache.

My papa was standing beside her chair. He looked like a mannequin from the department store, a grim look molded on his face, his eyes like painted plaster of Paris they were so flat and lifeless. There was a little scab on his chin where he’d nicked himself shaving with the straight razor this morning. He had one hand on the back of the chair. His hands were huge for a man his size, his fingers like fat sausages. There was still some dirt underneath his nails. He could never get it all out. His suit hung on him as if sewn for a bigger man two sizes larger. The collar of his shirt gaped away from the cords of his thin neck even though he’d drawn the knot of his tie as tight as he could. The toe of his left shoe was scuffed. He’d stumbled climbing the three stairs into the funeral home. My brother Johnny had caught him by the elbow, helped him regain his balance. Neither one of them had said anything about me walking backwards up the cement ramp meant for the handicapped. I hadn’t wanted to come inside so I was pretending to be leaving.

Johnny was standing on the other side of our mother and he looked like a TV commercial for shampoo or something with his pale-blonde hair shining and blow-dried, not a single hair out of place. He was a handsome devil according to everyone in town but none of his three exe wives were here. There was a girl around my sister Anita’s age standing beside him. I gave her a look and she gave me one right back, gripping his hand more firmly as if I might have cast the evil eye upon her and she was a little scared of what curse I’d summoned from the depths of my dark little soul. “Get in line, already, will you,” Johnny hissed at me. “And wipe that look off your face. Nobody wants to see that monkey puss at a funeral.”

“I was born looking like this,” I replied.

“More’s the pity,” he retorted.

 “Why’s she got that eye patch on?” the girl’s voice murmured to Johnny, but I had two perfectly good ears and heard her just the same.

“Poked her damn eye out with a stick when she was two years old,” he replied.

I stomped on Anita’s right foot in passing her and she retaliated by cuffing me upside the head. I hated her and she hated me. I hated that she was fifteen and pretty. She hated that I was seven and didn’t listen to anyone anymore. She hadn’t set herself free from the switch and the backhand when she was my age, having had no vision of a brighter future, I guess. I stopped in front of my brother Joe, looking up at him. He ignored me for a long moment then lowered just his eyes to look down into my left eye. “I’d rather be fishing,” I said, watching the corner of his mouth twitch.

“Hush,” he said softly.

“It’s the truth.”

“The truth won’t set you free here and now. Now be quiet and get in line. The mourners are filing in. You behave yourself. Try to be a little lady.”

“They don’t teach you nothin’ like that in school. But I can guestimate the number of mourners for you.”

“Guestimate how many lashes Pa will give you if you don’t shush up.”

“I hate Jimmy,” I said and was surprised when he suddenly grabbed me above the elbow and shook me as if I was a ragdoll. “Hey!” I cried.

“You take that back!” he flared.

“Joseph!” It was mother’s voice wedging itself between us like a physical force. He glanced at her then gave my arm a last shake and let go. I shot him a sullen glare then went to stand beside my eleven-year old brother Jesse, taking my place at the end of the line of my immediate family members. My Grandmama Agnes was sitting in a straight chair, her hands clutching her black purse on her lap. Beside her Grandpa James, whom Jimmy had been named after, rocked a bit in his chair, humming to himself. His eyes looked sort of glassy, like my father’s did when he’d been down to Bobby’s Bar and Grill on a Saturday night and came back stumbling and mumbling, ready to lash out at anyone who got in between him and his bed. Beyond them was Grandmama Frances who was widowed, then my various aunts, uncles and cousins who kind of kept their distance from us.

I stared at the ugly patterned carpet for several long minutes, then looked over at the people in the long line who’d come to gawk at Jimmy in his casket. You’d never know he had a big hole in his chest from the shotgun he’d used. I’d heard Anita talking on the phone to a friend two nights after he’d killed himself saying that of course he wouldn’t have blown his head off because he was vain of his good looks and wouldn’t want people gaping at a monster with broken teeth and shattered cheekbones. I’d had a nightmare that same night, Jimmy coming out of his room all bloody with his jaw hanging loose, one eye dangling from its socket, his teeth all jagged as he  reached for me with bloodstained hands, trying to say my name with a torn tongue flopping around in his messed up mouth. I’d screamed bloody murder, waking the whole house. Mama had come in and slapped my face hard, the pain startling me into silence. She’d said, “That’s enough out of you!” then turned and walked out without offering a comforting gesture or word. It had been Joey who’d climbed into my bed and held me, rocking me because when the shock of being struck had worn off I’d found myself crying and shaking like a leaf, still afraid Jimmy was out in the hallway waiting to grab me when I left my room and drag me to Hell, which was where people who killed themselves went directly.

I stood there squirming a little, barely tolerating being patted and petted, hugged and kissed by a bunch of people I barely knew and many I had never seen before in my life. One younger woman not much older than Johnny, who was twenty-one, had crouched down to fix a bow at the end of one of my strawberry-blonde braids, getting herself eye level with me. I stared at her and she stared at me until finally she said, “Well, there you are,” as if I had been absent from my body and had stepped back inside just that moment. She stood up and moved away, my head turning to follow her black suit. She had long red hair. I wanted to follow her, ask her what her name was and why she had come. How had she known my brother? I frowned. She was the only person in the room moving in my field of vision. Everyone around me seemed frozen in a tableau and even the sound had been stilled in the room. The young woman had turned her head to look back at me over her shoulder. Her shiny lips formed an enigmatic smile before she turned away again just as the sound and motion in the room resumed with a slightly jarring effect on my nerves. I drew a breath, having realized that I had been holding it since she’d tied my bow.

“Who’s she?” I asked Jesse.

“Who’s she who?” he answered, looking disinterested, bored, if truth be told.

“The redhead.”

“Dunno,” he said with a shrug.

“Bet she’s a witch,” I murmured. He gave me a skeptical look then turned his head away. “She just cast a spell on me.”

“Ha,” he said shortly. “Waste of time, you ask me.”

“You two shut up,” Joey hissed, scowling at me in particular.

“I’ve gotta pee,” I said. Joey narrowed his eyes, his mouth going flat before he pointed to the door. Freed by his signal I stitched a meandering path through the gathered mourners, dodging elbows and knees but bumping into a few people I couldn’t see on my right.

In the wide hallway there were groups of people milling about, talking quietly. I caught bits and pieces of their conversations, gathering the words ‘shame’, ‘disgrace’, ‘suicide’, ‘beatings’ and ‘angry man’ in my ears before a man in a black suit called me by name saying, “Jennie, can I help you?”

“I’ve got to pee,” I told him bluntly.

“I’ll show you to the ladies room. Come with me.” I followed him into a side hall, then right into another corridor. “Here you are. Can you find your way back or would you like me to wait here for you?”

I frowned. Did he think I was an idiot, too stupid to find my way back to the big noisy room where my brother lay in his casket like a statue with his heart all blown to smithereens? “I can find my own way,” I said. Then I added, “Thank you kindly,” because the walls have ears everywhere.

“Very good.” He turned and walked away. I twisted the knob and let myself into the bathroom to do what I had to do.

I’d finished what I’d come to do but was still sitting there, craning my neck, looking at the pictures hung on the walls of the little bathroom when the door opened and the redhead in the black suit walked in. She looked at me then said, “So sorry, the door wasn’t locked.”

“You can come in. I’m done.” For some reason the toilet paper was farther away than I could reach. She noticed me stretching forward and closed the door, locking it, then came and spun the roll, tearing off a half dozen or so sheets, folding them then handing the tissue to me. “Don’t watch,” I said. She seemed almost amused by my sudden shyness but turned and looked at her reflection in the mirror over the sink, opening her small black purse, taking out a tube of lipstick and applying a little to her lips. It was, I realized, colorless. “What’s that stuff?” I asked as I slid off the toilet and pulled my panties up.

“This? It’s lip gloss. Want some?” She turned back to me. I was tugging down the skirt of my dress but it was being stubborn, caught in the elastic of my underpants behind me. “Here, hold this a second. Let me help you with that.” She handed me the tube, set her purse on the edge of the sink then crouched down, reaching around me to ease my skirt out of the elastic and smooth it down. “There you go!” she said cheerfully. “Now, push your lips out. Make a face like a fish.”

“Like this?” I puckered up like a fish.

“Perfect!” She took the tube of lip gloss back, opened it then cupped my chin in one hand while rubbing the glossy stick over my lips. “Now, fold your lips in and move them side to side a bit to smooth it out, like this.” She demonstrated and I copied her, feeling suddenly grown up. Anita wore lipstick sometimes but she’d never let me try any on and probably couldn’t be bothered showing me what to do. “Very nice.”

“Do you need to pee before I flush? It saves water.”

“No, thank you, suagr. Go ahead. I just ducked in to comb my hair and check my lips.”

I flushed. She moved aside after turning on the water so I could wash my hands. “Are you a witch?” I blurted out figuring I might as well ask while I had the opportunity.

“A witch? No! What a strange question.”

“My papa saw a woman with red hair like yours once once and said she was a witch. A bad one.”

“Well, maybe she was. But I’m not.”

“Oh.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“I was hoping you rode here on a broom and might be inclined to take me for a ride.”

She laughed. “Sorry. I rode over in a Honda Civic.”

“My mistake,” I murmured. “Pardon me.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “People mistake me for a witch all the time, if truth be told.” I looked up at her. Her eyes had mischief in them. “Maybe there’re a lot of witches with red hair. What do you think?”

“Red hair and green skin,” I said, nodding.

“And warts. Witches have warts, don’t they?”

“Big ugly ones on their chins or noses.”

“Well, are we all done in here?” she asked. There were voices in the corridor outside the door, other women needing to use the bathroom. I nodded. She unlocked the door and we stepped out. “Excuse us please. Pardon us, ladies!” she said, wending a path through the half dozen or so women filling the narrow corridor. “Why don’t we sneak outside for a breath of fresh air,” the redhead said. That sounded enticing to me, so I followed her.

We exited into a garden at the side of the funeral home. She walked down a brick path and I trailed behind her like an obedient puppy. When we reached a bench she sat down, patted the place beside her. I pulled myself up, feet dangling to sit beside her. She opened her purse, took out a pack of cigarettes and a slim lighter. “Bad me,” she said, shaking one slender white cigarette from the pack, putting it between her freshly glossed lips, then flicking a flame to life and applying it to the blunt end. Little puffs of smoke drifted upward. She inhaled deeply then blew the smoke out through her nose like a dragon. I sat watching her smoke for nearly a full minute. Finally she said, “That’s better,” then crushed the butt out on the edge of the bench, looked around, and shrugged before tucking the extinguished cigarette back into her bag. “I’m not a litterer,” she said.

“Good.” I was suddenly at a loss for words, which was unusual for me to say the least. I wracked my brains then asked, “What’d you say your name was?”

“I didn’t say. My name is Stephanie,” she replied. “And you’re Jennie. I recognized you because of the patch.” She pointed to her own eye. “Jim told me all about your accident when you were little.”

“You know my brother?”

“I knew him,” she said, correcting my verb tense. “We met at Renny’s.” My eyebrows rose at the mention of Renny’s Roadhouse. Even my father didn’t go there. I didn’t know my brother had ever gone there! “He’d come and shoot pool with the bikers. He was pretty good with a cue. Sometimes he won a little money, sometimes he lost some. He played a little Keno and won more than he lost. He was lucky like that.” She smiled wistfully. “Sometimes we’d dance a little and sometimes we’d just sit at a table and talk over a beer or two.” A window had just been thrown open in my mind. My oldest brother went to bars and talked to girls, drank beer, played pool and danced. It was like he’d led a secret life I’d just been made privy to. On the farm he’d milked the cows, drove the tractor out into the fields, sheered the few sheep we had left, picked tomatoes and corn, or whatever crop had come in, mended fences and ran irrigation lines. He’d never said much, not even at dinner, but I’d heard him and Papa, and especially Henry, one of the hired hands, yelling at one another in the barn quite often when I’d been chasing chickens or running from the mean goose that was always wanting to bite me. “He gave me the money he won to hold for him. He said your father would just take it and piss it away on beer and whisky.” Her eyes met my eye, giving me a long look before she said, “I mean, he would just spend it like water.” I nodded. “I was going to give it to your family this evening, or tomorrow after the funeral.”

“What for?”

“It was Jimmy’s money. I really ought to give it to your folks.” I was shaking my head. “No? Well, why not?”

“He gave it to you.”

“Only to keep it safe.”

“Well, how much money is it?”

“Oh, around five thousand dollars, I’d say.” That seemed like an awful lot of money to me. I was lucky if I saw a few dollars in a month’s time. I mostly earned my pocket money selling vegetables at the farm stand. People told me to keep the change, or slipped a dollar into my hand as they were leaving. I liked it when I got money like that. I was like a squirrel hiding acorns with the change and dollar bills, hiding the money in an old Smucker’s jelly jar under a loose floorboard underneath my bed, where I also had my mama’s clip on earrings she’d left on her dresser after Grampapa’s funeral two years ago, my papa’s old comb with the missing teeth he’d left on the edge of the bathtub one night, a matchbook belonging to Henry he’d dropped in the yard. I had Jimmy’s baby teeth in an envelope under my bed, having found them in the desk drawer yesterday when looking for a stamp for a note my Mama had written. “Your folks could probably use the money.”

“Nope,” I said, shaking my head. “You can keep it.”

“You’re a little on the young side to be giving me permission to keep your big brother’s pool earnings.”

I made a face, kicking my legs faster so I was in imminent danger of launching myself right off the bench. “Papa’d only spend it like you said.  It wouldn’t really do none of us no good.”

“So what do you think I should do with the money then?” she asked.

I stared at the flower bed across from the bench until the flowers all blurred together in pools of bright colors. What should she do with the money? I didn’t know. I didn’t have a lot of experience managing money. I only bought a box of Cracker Jack at the grocery store once in a while. “Just put it in the bank,” I finally concluded. “For a rainy day.” I’d heard my Mama say that from time to time, that she was settin’ a few dollars aside for a rainy day. I jumped off the bench and nearly fell but she bent forward, grabbing me by the sash of my dress.

“Be careful!”

I regained my balance then turned back toward her. She was watching me. I thought she was the prettiest girl I’d ever laid eyes on. No wonder Jimmy’d liked dancing with her. “Were you his girlfriend?” I asked, little dots finally connecting in my head to form a picture.

“I suppose you could say that. He trusted me more than he trusted anyone else. We were good friends.”

“Did he kiss you?”

“That’s a rather personal question, honey.” She tilted her head back, looking up at a mockingbird sitting above us running through his repertoire of songs. Her eyes shimmered in the dying light of the day. “Yeah, we kissed. It was so nice. He always treated me like a real lady.” She blinked rapidly then looked down, opening her purse. “You want a stick of gum?” I nodded and she dug one out for me, then one for herself. “I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, Miss Jennie,” she said, snapping her purse shut. “I’ll put Jimmy’s money in a separate bank account where it’ll be safe and earn a teeny bit of interest every month. Pennies, that’s all the bank gives you nowadays for saving money. But pennies add up over time slow but surely.” She gave me a long solemn look. “You sure have grown up to be a pretty little girl. Breaks my heart, it does, about your poor eye.”

“Accidents happen,” I said with a one-shouldered shrug.

She reached out, grabbed my wrist and pulled me so that I was standing right in front of her. Her eyes held mine. “I’ll save Jimmy’s money for you. When you’re all grown up you come and find me and I’ll give it to you. It’ll be all yours. But don’t you tell a soul about it, okay? It’ll be our secret. Promise?” I nodded although I must have looked confused because she pulled me close and hugged me. “It’s going to be all right, sugar,” she said softly. “He never should have left us like this.”

“No,” I agreed. He never should have.

“He had so many chances to make everything right, the way it should have been. We’d talked about it often enough but my father was so angry with him still. He still won’t speak to me. Such a long time to hold a grudge!” She shook her head. “But that’s not your worry, is it? Of course not,” she said, answering her own question.

“Jennie.” It was Johnny. He’d come up the path just now, startling us both. “My sister should be inside,” he said to Stephanie.

“Your sister wanted a breath of fresh air,” she replied.

“Well she’s had it and now she needs to come back inside with me. And you should go.”

“I have a right to be here,” she said, giving me one last quick hug before letting go. “But I’m ready to go. So, you go on now, Jennie. I have to get home, but you remember what I said.”

Johnny took my hand and led me back along the path. “You stay away from her,” he warned me.

“She’s not a witch. I asked her.”

“There are all kinds of bad people in the world, not just witches.”

“Is she a bad person?” I asked, jogging to keep up with his long stride. He didn’t answer me. “Well, is she?” I asked again as we reached the side door of the funeral home.

He stopped and looked down at me and I could see he didn’t really know how to answer my question. “Look what happened to Jimmy,” he said.

“He shot himself.”

“Well, he had to have had some reason to, right?”

“Was he sad about Stephanie?” I asked, and he stiffened, looked at me then looked away. “Did she say she wouldn’t dance with him and he got sad because he thought she’d never dance with him again so he shot his wounded heart so it wouldn’t hurt him no more?”

He suddenly bent down, picked me up and held me close. “There were a lot of things that were making him sad, not just any one thing in particular. But you know what? You never made him sad. You always made him happy, didn’t you? You always made Jimmy smile. You were his little sunshine girl.”

Jimmy always sang You Are my Sunshine when we were alone together, taking a walk down the road to see the ducks on the fire pond at Chapman’s farm, or when he let me ride on his lap on the tractor putting his John Deere cap on my head so that it covered my eye, or when he’d come and tuck me in at night, smelling of hay, cows and sweat. “I’m gonna miss him something fierce,” I said, my eyes flooding with hot tears. “I’m sure gonna miss him bad!”

And I finally let go of my anger and cried for James Alan Lacroix, my heart broken at the loss of him and the loss of all the love he’d shown me every day of my life.

Second Chance

Second Chance by Susan Buffum (copyright by Susan Buffum, 2019)

“Have a seat,” said the red-haired girl with the incredible jade green eyes.

“Where the hell am I?” he asked as he watched her in her tattered amber gown sweep soot and ashes from a granite bench near a fire pit.

“Precisely,” she replied, dusting off her delicate white hands then looking at them, frowning. She sighed, shrugged and then wiped her grimy hands down the stained amber fabric covering her thighs. Glancing at her palms and fingertips again she seemed satisfied that her hands were clean enough and motioned for him to sit. “Please, sit. There’s a long line ahead of you. You might as well relax while you can.”

“Where am I and who are you?” he asked as he looked down at the bench that still had grains of soot and flakes of ash on it. He bent and began to blow the debris off, but almost as soon as it was gone more settled on the polish granite and he began to look peeved.

“Stop wasting your breath,” she said, and then she covered her mouth with the fingers of her left hand as she tried to suppress a giggle. “As if you have any left, really.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded, feeling suddenly surly with annoyance. He craned his neck, looking around but it was dark and he thought he might be out in the woods still but not at the party he had been attending. He shook his head, wondering if he’d had too much to drink, or if someone had slipped something into his beer. He felt a little off. Had he gone into the woods to take a piss behind a tree and gotten himself turned around and ended up at some after prom party? He hadn’t gone to the prom but a lot of other seniors had. He turned back around and looked at the girl again but he definitely did not recognize her. He was pretty sure that he’d have known her if he’d seen her before with that short, spiky red hair, although it looked good on her, kind of sassy, he thought, unable to keep his lips from curving in a smile as his gaze traveled down her petite but alluring form. The hem of her gown was torn and ragged, exposing her bare feet. “Where’d you lose your shoes?” he asked, admiring her slender ankles.

“Stand up, turn around and bend over because I think one of them might be lodged up your ass.” His eyes rose abruptly to meet hers. She had a stern expression on her face. Her face was fox-like, he noticed. “From kicking your ass,” she added.

“Did you kick my ass? A little bitch like you? I’m over a foot taller than you and probably outweigh you by seventy pounds.”

“Sixty two pounds, nine and three quarters ounces,” she spat out.

“Explain to me how a little squirt like you kicked my ass.” He crossed his arms and glared at her, tired of this nonsense already. “I need to get back to the party I’m at. Yours is kind of sparse as far as friends go. Where is everybody?”

“They’re already trough. I held you back.”

“Held me back. Yeah, well, a lot of my teachers wanted to hold me back but there was nothing they could do about it because I got good grades. And now I’m graduating in June. Fuck them.”

“No, you’re not graduating,” she said, shaking her head. “You blew it, buddy. No diploma for you.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

She began moving, circling around behind him. She’d circled him six times before he reached out and grabbed her delicate wrist, pulling her to a stop. “I mean you’re dead,” she said, raising her hands, making several odd gestures.

It was a moment before he realized that he had been gripping her wrist but now she was waving her hands around like a magician or conjurer. He looked at his hands. “How did you do that?” he asked.

“Your physical body has no substance here.”

“But I grabbed your wrist!”

“Your mind just hasn’t grasped the concept that you’re rather insubstantial now.” She began circling him again. “Do you want to know why I herded everyone else through the door and then swung it shut, but kept you here on this side?”

“I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing here but this is really too weird for my taste. I have to get back to my own friends.”

“They’re busy. They haven’t even noticed that you’ve gone missing. Really, Drake, heroin? Did you really believe you were invincible? That it couldn’t kill you? Everybody dies. That’s the rule. No one escapes death. Not even you. Your four minutes are falling from the top of the hour glass called Drake Carter’s Life grain by grain into the bottom of the hour glass. When the last grain falls, I have no choice but to open the door and usher you through it, and then slam it shut behind you. That’s called sealing your fate. Ever hear of that?”

“I’ve heard the phrase,” he replied, feeling somewhat uneasy.  The girl was more than a little strange. “Do you mind telling me who you are? Are you the death fairy? Sort of like the tooth fairy from the dark side? Instead of leaving a dollar under the pillow you take a soul and what? Keep it in a jar on a shelf in your creepy little cottage?” He shook his head. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, I have a lot of names but most people just call me, Essie, short for Second Chance.” He chuffed an amused laugh mostly through his nose. “I’m your last and best hope. I’m your miracle, Drake. Do you believe in miracles?”

“”I’m eighteen years old. It’s a miracle I haven’t been killed while texting and driving. It’s a miracle I haven’t been shot by some psycho with an assault rifle intent on taking a whole gang with him when he blows his brains out in the school cafeteria, or the gym or the library—wherever he goes to hole up when he runs out of ammo or his gun jams. It’s a miracle someone hasn’t shot me in a fit of road rage because I braked to make a right hand turn and slowed them down! My life is full of goddam miracles.”

“It certainly wasn’t any miracle that you ended your own life shooting shit into your vein like you did.” Her tone and the look of disgust in her green eyes caused him to look away, to feel a frisson of apprehension about his situation because it was becoming more apparent to him by the moment that something was happening to him that was so far out of the norm it was making him feel off balance and frightened. “Drake!” she said sharply, causing him to look at her again. He watched as she slipped two fingers into the bodice of her gown, down between her breasts in that hollow where a female’s heat and scent resided. How many times had he nuzzled a girl’s neck and then her throat and then let his lips roam down to that enticing place framed by the V of a low cut sweater’s neckline? “This is what you need,” she said, withdrawing a pen-like object from that enticing space.

“What the hell is that? An Epi-pen?”

“It’s a naloxone auto-injector pen. It can reverse the respiratory depression that’s more or less suffocated you. You’re dead. It just happened. In four minutes your death will be irreversible. This won’t save you.” She shook the pen-like device in his face. “Three minutes and fifty-nine seconds to be precise.” She tucked the device back down between her breasts and then waved her arms as if she could direct the black clouds in the dark sky.

His eyebrows rose as an opening did appear in the clouds overhead, allowing a beam of pure white light to shine down on the ground at his feet. “That’s a cool trick,” he murmured.

“Just watch your life. It’s going to flash by fairly quickly,” she said.

“What?”

“Look!” She pointed down at the illuminated oval sphere between his feet.

He looked down and saw shadows moving inside the sphere. As he watched they gradually came more clearly into focus. He recognized his parents but they looked younger. His mother was holding a blue blanket wrapped bundle, smiling. His father was leaning over the bed, grinning ear to ear. His mother moved the blanket aside to reveal the baby’s face and Drake reacted to seeing his familiar infant visage. There had been dozens of pictures of him in every room of the house when he was growing up. He had finally convinced his mother to put the damn things away when he was eleven and wanted to have friends over. She had taken down the pictures and put them into albums that she kept in her bedroom. “I was kind of cute,” he said.

“You’re not so cute now with purple lips and a blue nose, ashen skin,” she said, making him grimace. “Keep watching.”

It did go fast. Eighteen years flew by in what seemed like only a heartbeat. “I really haven’t lived much,” he observed. He hadn’t even graduated from high school yet.

“No, you hadn’t lived much at all. You really only just reached legal adult status, although you were still three years away from being able to drink legally.” Her tone was wry. He had been drinking beer since he was fourteen. That had led to smoking pot at sixteen. And now he’d been trying heroin at his friend Jake’s insistence that it was amazing stuff. “You’d only had sex five times this year with a female. I’m not counting all the times you were alone.” He scowled at her and then looked away, somewhat horrified that she knew this much about his intimate business. “You’re not going to college. You’re never going to fall in love. You’re never going to walk on the beach again. You’re never going to have sex again. You will never get married. You will never be a father. You will not teach a son to ride a bike or play hockey. You will not pace the house waiting for your daughter to come home from a first date. You won’t kiss boo-boos and make them better. You won’t buy a new car, get a good job, buy a house, put in a pool, take another vacation, win the lottery, kiss your mother, hang out with your father, celebrate Christmas or your birthday.”

“All right!” he shouted, jumping up off the bench and walking away. “I hear you!” He walked into the deep shadows until he began to shiver. There was a sense of panic eating away at him from the inside now. “How do I fix this?” he asked. He turned and the panic flooded him—she was gone! He was alone in this place he now had some vague understanding must be limbo. He was in limbo—balanced between life and death. She had said that he was dead but there was a four minute window before he was dead dead. “Second Chance!” he shouted, striding back into the area where the bench stood. “Essie! Miss Chance! Hey! Miracle girl! Where are you?”

“Be quiet and sit down. It’s a busy night,” she said as she came out of the deepest shadows, guiding a girl with long brown hair by the hand. “Go through this door,” she told the girl. The girl hesitated a moment and then crossed the threshold. Second Chance swung the door shut.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Is she going to hell, too? What did she do? I mean, she looked younger than me!”

“She was thirteen years old. She just hung herself a few minutes ago. You didn’t see the mark on her neck?”

“Uh, no. Her hair was hanging down.”

“Bullied,” she said, sounding disgusted again. “Sometimes I hate my job with a burning passion!”

He dropped down onto the bench again, feeling drained. “Can I ask you something?”

“If you’d like.”

“Do you work for, uh, you know, the devil? Are you sort of the door person to the other side? You kick everyone through and slam the door behind them?”

“Sometimes.” She looked at him and something touched her inside. “Look, the thirteen year old? Different doorway. She’s heading upstairs. There’re some stops along the way. Everybody is sorted out in the end.”

“Don’t you mean judged?”

“No, they get sorted first and then they get judged. If judgement declares you go elsewhere it’s a direct path there, and that’s it. It’s final.”

“Why’d you stop me and keep me back?”

“I told you, some people get second chances. You happen to be the lucky winner of the second chance lottery tonight.”

“Okay, so how does this work?”

She raised her face, eyes traveling up to the dark clouds. “Three minute warning. You’ve been without oxygen for sixty seconds.”

“Fuck!” he cried. “I can’t hold my breath that long!”

“Don’t you dare use that kind of language here! I find it highly offensive and if you persist, I might renege on this chance and shove you through the other door and be done with you! Really! Show some respect not only for me but for yourself!”

“It’s how everybody talks these days,” he muttered.

“So that makes it all right?” She came up to him, grabbed him by the hair and pulled his head back until he was looking up into her flashing green eyes. “I thought you had a brain. I thought you had a backbone and guts. I was wrong. You’re no different from any of the others I’ve shown through the door!”

“I am different!” he protested. “I’m sitting here and you’re giving me a second chance! You must have seen some redeeming quality in me! You must have seen something!” he cried.

“I was wrong. I’ve been wrong before. No big deal.” She abruptly let go of his hair and stepped back. He grabbed for her wrists but her wrists went right through his fists.
“Hey! No!” he cried, jumping up onto his feet. “How long has it been? How many minutes and seconds do I have left? Let me prove to you that I’m worth this chance! Please! Don’t offer me a chance and then yank it out from underneath me because I used one bad word! It’s everywhere in the world! I just said it because I’ve heard it so often it has no meaning to me! I’m sorry if it offended you. Really. I’m sorry.”

“It’s crude and vulgar.”

“Okay. Fine. I will never say it again. I promise!”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” she said.

“Okay then, I will try never to say that word again but I can’t promise you that it won’t slip out from time to time. I will try to control my urge to say it. Is that all right with you?” She nodded. “Can I ask you something?”

“The sand is still falling grain by grain...”

“Yeah, yeah! I know! I just want to ask you if you were ever alive. Were you? I mean, you look like you’re wearing a prom gown. Did you die in an accident on prom night?”

She turned her back to him but he could tell he’d hit a nerve in her. She wasn’t soulless after all. She had feelings. “I’m not at liberty to discuss this with you.”

“You must have been one feisty girl. I mean, the way you were talking to me, it was like you weren’t going to take crap from me no how, no way.”

“Drake, stop. This is about you. Not me.”

“But I want to know. How’d you get this job?”

“You’ve got two minutes and forty-five seconds,” she said.

“Tell me in fifteen seconds or less. I need to know what happened to you.”

“I have one minute and thirty seconds left,” she replied, “and then I will be shown through one or the other of the doors by you if you fail to...”

He stood stock still for a moment and then approached her. “Are you saying that you’re not dead yet? That somehow you got this job from the last person who had it? Am I supposed to take over from you when you’re officially dead?”

“I was at my cousin’s wedding. This is a bridesmaid’s gown. I was one of her bridesmaids. I was supposed to ride with the other bridesmaids in a limo but I wasn’t feeling well after the photo shoot in the park and they left without me. I’d been stung by a bee in the rose garden. This guy, a friend of Tom’s, the groom, he offered to drive me to the reception. I was having trouble breathing. He drove me to the emergency room and kind of just dumped me out the door and took off. He was scared. I’m not sure what’s happening because when I stopped breathing I was here and no longer there, just like you were no longer at the party. You were here. And it’s weird because I instinctively know who goes where and why. But I didn’t know when you came across. I just suddenly knew about second chances.”

He nodded and slipped his hand into his back pocket. “I hear you. And I have this on me, so maybe this was meant to be. You have that naloxone pen thingy and I have this.” He held out a similar looking item. “I have a peanut allergy,” he said. “I always carry an Epi-pen. That’s what I thought you had. But it turns out I have what you need and you have what I need, so maybe we should swap?”

She was looking at the injector he was holding out to her. A lot was going on in her head, evidently, but then she sort of gasped. “I have forty seconds left,” she said, her voice wavering. She quickly plucked the naloxone injector back out. “I carry this because my brother is a user and he’s overdosed before. He was one of the ushers and I was afraid he’d be shooting up at the reception and would screw up there and need this.”

“It’s a crazy world.”

“Drake, don’t ever use heroin again. If you’re addicted...”

“It was the first time and believe me, if I live, it will be the last.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, I promise. Here, you need this. Your time is almost up.”  He popped the cap off. “Hike your skirt up.” He crouched down before her, helping her get the long skirt of her gown up high enough to expose the front of her thigh so he could use the Epi-pen. She flinched slightly as he jammed it into her skin and the medication was injected into her.

“Hurry up! Get up! Lift up your shirt!” she said quickly. He stood up, tugging his shirt up. She fumbled as she unfastened his jeans and tugged them low on his hips. Her green eyes met his for a brief moment before she administered the naloxone in this abdomen.

“Chance! How old are you? Where do you live? What’s your real name?” he called through the sudden fog that rose up between them. “Chance!” Hey!”

She could be anybody from anywhere, he thought as he lay in the ER treatment room trying to remember her face. The world was a huge place.

“You’re a damned lucky young man,” the doctor said, from the doorway of the room he was in. “Another minute or so and your parents would have been grieving the loss of you. I’m admitting you for the night and we’ll see how you’re doing in the morning.”

“Who found me?” he asked. He couldn’t remember anything about that.

“When you went unresponsive one of your friends had the intelligence and foresight to call nine eleven. Fortunately for you there’d been a fire just down the road. Truck three was on its way back and another of your friends ran to the road to flag it down. They got to you pretty quickly or else, like I said, your parents would be devastated right now. They’re in the waiting room. You up to seeing them?”

“Bee sting,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what?” he asked.

“I thought you said bee sting. It’s an odd thing to say. But then again, you had an Epi-pen in your hip pocket. Are you allergic to bee stings?” He looked down at the chart, his eyebrows bending together over the bridge of his nose. “Your mother told us that you have a peanut allergy.”

“Yeah, I’m deathly allergic to peanuts.”

 He hesitated and then said, “I could have sworn you said bee sting, but maybe you heard one of the nurses talking. We treated a girl earlier who had an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting.”

“Redhead?”

Again the doctor looked taken aback. “As a matter of fact...” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t discuss other patients with you. It’s a privacy issue.”

“Yeah, I understand. Can you tell me if she was admitted or not?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

Drake spent the night, receiving further treatment. Mid-morning the floor doctor came in and told him that he would be going home soon, but he was referring him for drug counseling. “I’m never touching that stuff again,” he said.

“Nevertheless, you need to go to this counseling to avoid an arrest for possession of a narcotic and drug paraphernalia. It’s your first offense. You nearly died. This counseling avenue keeps you out of the criminal justice system. You get this one shot at having no record. You mess up again and you’re just a number in their system.”

“I hear you. I’ll go.”

“Good idea. You can get up and walk around. Just tie your gwn shut so you’re not mooning the nurses, although some of them wouldn’t mind.”

“I don’t want them looking at my ass,” Drake said.

“Your mother’s coming with clean clothes. She’ll be here soon. The paperwork should be done by then and you’ll be free to go. Stay clean, son.”

“I will.” The doctor nodded and left the room.

Drake pushed aside the covers and sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Hospital gowns were the worst thing ever invented, he thought. He fumbled with the various ties and snaps until he was fairly certain nothing was hanging out. The little slipper socks were hardly high fashion either but he had nothing else. Reaching up, he finger combed his tangled hair as he walked a bit unsteadily to the door and stopped, peering out into the corridor. There was no one around, except down by the nurse’s station.

Stepping out into the hallway he began a slow walk up one side of the corridor and then back down the other, casually glancing into each room. Most of them were occupied by older people, senior citizens. He made it to the far end, then crossed and entered the other corridor that ran parallel to the one his room was in.

In the third room from the elevator he caught a glimpse of red hair and he stopped. He wasn’t certain it was her. He had a vague idea of what she had looked like- fox like. This girl was chubby-cheeked and her skin was blotchy. She had oxygen tubing in her nose, was sitting up, staring out the window. Her hair was spikey. It seemed familiar. “Hi,” he said from the doorway. “Bee sting girl?”

She turned her head and looked at him. The first thing that struck him was the color of her eyes. Jade green. They were very vivid even from this distance. “Heroin overdose guy?” she asked a bit hesitantly.

“Can I come in?” he asked.

“If you want to. I’m all itchy hives and rash.”

“Yeah, you look like hell.” He came further into the room. “Of course I hardly look GQ worthy in this less than flattering attire.”

Her eyes traveled up to the top of his head then down to his sock-clad feet. She had to lean forward a bit to see his feet. Her eyes met his again on the way back up. “Charming. But we match.” She indicated her own gown. It was the same color, the same pattern as his. “How embarrassing to show up wearing the same gown.”

He quirked a smile. “My name’s Drake. Drake Carter.”

“Like the duck.”

“Yeah. Guess it’s a little better than Mallard.”

“Chance,” she said. “Chance Payton.”

“Chance, that’s an unusual name.”

“My father was scratching lottery tickets as my mother was trying to come up with a name for me. He won two thousand dollars on one of the tickets and said, ‘What’s the chance of that happening, me winning two thousand dollars on the day our baby girl was born?’ So Mom named me Chance and he agreed.”

“You from around here?’ he asked.

She shook her head. “No, I live in Waterbury. I was at a wedding photo shoot at Graystone Park here in town when I got stung by a bee. I was brought here.”

“You in high school or are you a college girl?”

She laughed. “Thanks, but no. I’m not in college. I’m a senior. I graduate this month.”

“Me, too. I’m from here.” He raised his hand, rubbing his nose, feeling suddenly way underdressed and awkward in her presence. He smiled nervously as he lowered his hand and she returned his smile. She seemed a lot calmer than he felt. “I had a weird experience,” he blurted out. Her smile faltered but her eyes met his and held them. “It’s all kind of vague now.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to describe it.”

She continued to hold his gaze for a few moments longer and then she turned her head and looked out the window. “Me, too,” she said. “It’s strange but the moment you appeared in the doorway I felt like I knew you from someplace, like we’d just...I don’t know, been together. I thought it was a dream, but it was a really bizarre dream.” She frowned slightly and then she sighed. “You gave me an Epi-pen. How weird is that? I mean, how could that even be? I don’t even know you yet in my dream you pulled an Epi-pen out of your back pocket and administered it.”

He was silent, shaken by this confirmation that she had had a very similar dream or experience to his. “All right. Let me tell you this. I have a severe peanut allergy and I always have an Epi-pen on me. I carry it in my back pocket, usually. In my dream I gave a girl in an amber-colored gown an injection in her thigh.” She had gasped and her eyes had widened at this. Her hand rose from the covers and she shakily pointed at the narrow closet against the wall at the foot of the bed. “What?” he asked. “What’s the matter?’ He thought there might be a call button he needed to push for her on the wall although she had a call button on the bed controls. “Hey, are you all right?” Tears were trickling down her cheeks. “Chance?”

“Go look. Just go look inside,” she managed to say.

He slowly got up and went to the closet, glancing back at her as he touched the door handle. Her face was ashen pale beneath the blotchy hives still marring her complexion. He tugged open the door then slowly turned his head to look inside. “Holy shit,” he said, his voice sounding strangled because his throat had closed up, not from an allergic reaction but from strong emotion. Inside, hanging from a hook, was an amber gown. He reached in and touched the fabric but he already knew it would be satiny and soft. He’d touched this dress before, helping her hike it up to expose her thigh. “How can this be?” he murmured.

“Drake, what does this mean?” she asked, sounding almost scared.

He let go of the slinky material and slowly closed the door.  “We both more or less died last night. Somehow our spirits found one another’s. You were kind of bossy and in charge.”

“I’m a redhead, I can be that way sometimes.”

“You’d gotten there first, to this place we were at, and...”

“There was someone else there before me. I had to stay and she left through a door. I had to show people through the door but when you showed up...”

“You couldn’t open the door and let me go through.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I can’t remember much more about it.”

“You had a naloxone injector pen in the top of your dress. You jabbed me with it.” He laid his hand over his abdomen.

She was shaking her head. “I had one at the wedding but not in the top of my dress! It was in my bag. My...”

“Brother,” he said and her eyes met his again and held his gaze.

“Yes, my brother, Chase. He’s overdosed in the past. I carry one when I’m going to be someplace he is, just in case. He’s been to rehab a few times but he’s using again.” He could tell by the sound of her voice that she was upset about it. “Why would you inject that stuff into your body in the first place?” she asked, having looked away again.

“This friend of mine, he’d been after me to just try it. He said it was amazing stuff.”

“And you just believed him.”

“Yeah.” Her expression said it all. “I’m stupid, I know.”

“Not stupid. You must be smart enough to know better but you caved in to peer pressure just like Chase did.”

“For what it’s worth, I’m never touching it again.” She would not look at him. “You gave me a second chance, Chance. It was you. Of all the people you’d ushered through those doors in the, what, seconds you were put in charge by the previous doorkeeper, you chose me and stopped me. You must have seen or sensed something worth saving in me. Do you remember what that was?” he asked. “Why did you stop me and not just kick my ass through the f....”

“Hey!” she said sharply.

“Right, sorry.” He remembered now that she didn’t like that word. “I’m sorry. But why didn’t you kick me through that doorway to Hell?”

“Because you didn’t belong there!” She leaned back against the pillows, her hands gripping the bedcovers. “I can’t explain it!”

“Okay, then don’t try. You saw, heard or sensed something that made you believe I was worth intervening for. You had the naloxone pen. I had the Epi-pen. It worked out for both of us.” He ran a hand through his longish, tangled, dark hair. “Chance, I truly appreciate what you did.”

She was silent for a long time and then she asked, “If it was you in charge of the door, would you have given me a second chance?”

“In a heartbeat,” he replied as the nurse trundled in her stand to record Chance’s current vitals. “Should I leave?” he asked the nurse.

“No, although Jennifer is probably looking for you in your own room. You’re almost ready to be released.”

“Yeah, but. I was told I could take a walk. I just stopped in to visit Chance for a few.”

“I didn’t realize that you knew her,” the nurse said.

Drake’s eyes met Chance’s. “I do, but we haven’t known one another all that long. I recognized her as I was passing by so thought I’d say hello,” he replied.

“Chance will probably be going home this evening.” She finished typing her notes and headed for the door. “It’s nice that you two know one another. Take it easy, both of you!”

Drake watched the nurse leave and then he turned back to Chance who was smoothing the bedclothes. “Um...” he said, uncertain how to proceed. She looked up. “Uh, what do you think about maybe keeping in touch? I mean, I don’t know if you’re in a relationship or anything. I’m not. Nothing serious anyway.”

“I’m not seeing anyone right now.”

“So, you want to give me your cell number? I’ll call you?”

“All right.” She indicated a small pad of paper and a pen on the bedside table next to the tissue box. “Write your number down for me and I’ll give you mine.”

“I have a car. My Mom bought a new car last year. It’s a Honda Accord. Not new, but not in bad shape.”

“So basically you have a car and you drive.”

He laughed self consciously. “Yeah.”

“Good, because I can’t afford a car yet. I’ll probably be taking the bus to college in the fall.”

“Where are you going?”

“Community college here,” she answered. “My parents can’t afford anything else. I’m the baby of the family. They’re pretty much tapped out after putting my older brothers through college.”

“Do you have any sisters?” She shook her head. “So you’re the only girl in the family?”

“Yes.”

“That explains your no nonsense attitude then. You don’t take crap from guys.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Good.” He wrote down his cellphone and home telephone numbers. “I’ll be working for my uncle’s landscaping business this summer. That’s what I’ll be studying at the same college you’re going to. Business and they have some horticulture and landscaping courses. My Uncle Henry is grooming me to take over his company.  He doesn’t have any kids so he’s adopted me and I’ve been working for him summers since I was twelve years old.” He handed the pen to her. “What are you going for?”

“Administrative Assistant.”

He nodded. “Cool. Maybe I’ll hire you to help me run the business one day.”

“Your uncle might have a say in that.”

“My uncle has cancer so he might not be around for many more years. He’s getting treatment but it’s spread. I’m going to take as many courses as I can for as long as I can before he has to stop working. He’s doing okay, has good and bad days. I’m hoping I can get my Associates degree before he bows out.” He shook his head. “Pretty heavy conversation here for just having met you.”

“It’s all right. Maybe our chance meeting was meant to be, Drake. You never know. Maybe you will need me to help you manage and run the business. Does your aunt work there?”

“He never married. He’s got some guys who’ve been with him for years but he’s been running the business himself.”

“Oh.”

“Hey, maybe I can talk to him and tell him you want to help out in the office. You think you could work part time and take courses, too? He can start teaching you stuff so when the time comes you’ll be familiar with things and I’ll be able to trust you to do stuff like pay the bills, cut the paychecks and send out the statements so I can be more hands on in the greenhouse and landscape design areas.”

Chance suddenly grinned. “That would be awesome, Drake. Even if he pays me minimum and I only work maybe 16 hours a week or so I’d be able to save that money toward a car.”

“I think he’s coming over tonight, that is if my stupid stunt hasn’t upset my parents too much and they’ve canceled Sunday night dinner. If they’ve canceled then I’ll call him during the week. After I talk to hm I’ll call you and let you know what he says.” She nodded. “Hey, before I go, I’ll call you anyway during the week. Do you maybe want to get together and do something next Saturday?”

“That would be nice. But I have to tell you, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs, and I don’t jump into bed with a guy until I feel comfortable enough for that. And I have never felt comfortable enough with anyone yet.”

He understood what she was telling him. “This has changed my life for the better. No more beer, not more drugs, I never smoked and don’t plan on taking it up. As for sex, well, let’s see how it goes. If and when you feel comfortable with me let me know and we’ll talk about it first. Sound good to you?”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” She looked at the numbers he’d written down then wrote her own cellphone number and home phone numbers on the pad, tore off the page and handed it to him. “Don’t lose that.”

“I won’t.” He had no pocket except for the pocket sewn into the center of the top of the gown but it had a hole in it for passing wires through. “I’ll just hold onto this for now.” He put the pad and pen back on the side table. “Well, I need to go before they send the dogs out in search of me.”

“Do you believe in fate?” she asked, reaching for his hand, catching it before he could turn away. Their eyes met, his hazel, hers an amazing shade of green. “I didn’t believe in it yesterday, but I am a firm believer today.”

“I am, too, a believer now.” His hand slid to hers and they laced their fingers together. “Thanks for seeing something in me worth saving.”

“Thanks for seeing something in me worth saving.”

He hesitated a long moment before bending quickly to kiss her swollen, blotchy cheek. “You look like a puffer fish,” he said.

“By next Saturday I should look like myself again.”

“Good. We’ll go someplace where there’re no bees.”

“Or peanuts.”

He shook his head. “You bring your Epi-pen and I’ll bring mine and we should be okay. You never know.”

“Will do.” She watched him walk to the door. He hesitated there and then turned back. “What?” she asked.

“This crazy thought just came into my head. Don’t take me wrong, but, if things work out for us, if this is fate, and we have a kid one day, what do you think we should name her?”

She gave him an incredulous look. “Really? That thought just came into your head?” He nodded. “Well, here’s another weird thing. I started thinking the same thing and you know what name came into my head just before you asked?”

“No, what name?”

“Destiny,” she replied.

He nodded. “That’s cool.” He raised his hand in which he held the paper with her numbers on it. “Talk to you soon. Hope you get to go home tonight.”

“Bye, Drake. Thanks for finding me.”

“I think I was meant to.”

He returned to his room, his heart feeling unusually light after such a life-changing experience. Chance. Fate. Destiny. How could it all have been merely a coincidence? He’d been essentially dead or nearly dead. So had she. They hadn’t known one another before last night, yet seeing her, talking to her this morning he felt as if he had known her longer than the less than four minutes he’d been with her in that twilight place between life and death.

It was possible that they had been discussing her while treating him and in his unconscious state he had conjured her up, worked her into a very bizarre near death dream, but that didn’t explain how he had known that she had red spikey hair like that and that she had been wearing an amber gown, unless he’d been semi-conscious when they’d brought him into the ER and he had caught a glimpse of Chance in another treatment room in passing but how would he have known about her brother being a user and that she carried naloxone like she did? That had nothing to do with anything, except he might have transferred the naloxone pen that an EMT had used on him to her but still, there had been the brother thing.

It was beyond his ability to comprehend and he decided he was not even going to try to understand what had happened to him last night. He would just accept it. That’s all he could do was accept it and move on with his life. But his life now included a girl named Chance, kind of ironic in and of itself. But Chance would always remind him that he’d been given a second chance at life, whether by her hand or by the hand of some higher being using her as an instrument to change his life.

Whatever had happened last night, he was pretty sure that Chance was going to be a part of his life for a long time to come, maybe to the end of his life here on earth.

 “Are you ready to go home?” his mother’s voice asked from the doorway. He looked up, looked at her pale, worried, haggard face, the shopping bag with clean clothes she had brought for him and then he did something that he had not done for a long, long time. He cried. “It’s all right, Drake,” she said, coming further into the room. “It’s going to be all right. Your father will certainly have something to say to you when he gets home tonight but we’ll get through this. You’ll go to those counseling and drug education sessions and we’ll put this behind us and move on.”

“Yeah, I’ll go, and we will.” He stood up, a piece of paper fluttering from his lap. “Oh,” he said.

“What’s that? A prescription?” she asked.

He laughed as he bent and picked it up. “This is a very important piece of paper. This is sort of a prescription. It’s a prescription for my future delivered to me by the hand of fate.” He walked up to her and took the bag from her hand. “I’ll get dressed and then, before we go, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Oh, good Lord, Drake! Have you been shamelessly flirting with the CNAs?”

“No! Nothing like that. I’ll explain it all to you later, or I’ll try.  This is a special girl and she’ll be going to the community college this fall.”  He shook his head. “I just want you to meet her and say hello.”

“Oh, all right!” she cried. “Go on, put your clothes on. I need to run to the grocery store before we go home and then I have laundry to do.”

He went into the bathroom to change, listening to her as she continued on with her list of things she needed to do before his father got home from work. He wasn’t too worried about his father reaming him out. They had a good relationship. He’d apologize, assure him it would never happen again, tell him he would do what he was supposed to do to avoid getting his name in the criminal justice system and then he’d tell him about this girl he’d met in the hospital. He hadn’t dated as much as his friends had through high school. His father had taken him aside several times, concerned about that. He’d told his father every time that he just hadn’t met the right girl yet, but that had changed. He’d finally met her.

Fate, he thought, was a pretty cool thing.

Working From Home

I joined the work from home work force this past Thursday after a coworker tested positive for COVID-19. I'm immune suppressed, have RA and diabetes. It feels weird to roll out of bed, grab breakfast and then confine myself to the desk where I have commandeered Kelly's former desk and set up my computer from work and my desk to be as functional as possible. John has a link to our copier/scanner/fax so I can scan and then fax paperwork to various agencies. I just have to figure out how to get prescriptions and paper work that needs a wet signature signed from five miles away. I can only go in to grab new fax and drop off completed work after normal business hours when everyone else has gone home. I have to wear a mask and gloves. I feel like a theif sneaking into an empty building to grab my next day's work.

I'm staying home otherwise. John is handling all the errands and washing up when he gets home, disinfecting his phone and doing what he has to do to keep our home corona free. I appreciate his efforts. He continues to work from home.

The most difficult thing is that Kelly is considered an essential worker and must go to work daily. This means she has the potential to get sick, or to be a carrier of COVID-19. Therefore, we had agreed that there should be no contact between us except via text messages, phone calls, and Skype. It's extremely difficult not having our usual Sunday morning breakfast together before we run errands. It's especially difficult to not have her over for Sunday dinner...our family time. Today she stopped by to drop off somethings and pick up some things. We utilized the garage since it was raining. standing apart the length of the garage to chat for a few minutes with Revere pacing frantically on the other side of the door because he could hear her voice. It wasn't easy letting her leave without giving her a hug. You never know what the future holds for any of us right now. It makes a mother's heart ache not to be able to hug her daughter. But I did tell her I love her. That's what really matters, I suppose.

NEW: Pitty-pat

Here is another little story I wrote this month. Another small diversion from what's going on in the world--


Pitty-pat by Susan Buffum, copyright March 2020


I’m not exactly sure when it started. I guess it was after the break-up, when I’d moved into the apartment with our three and a half year old son, Max. I don’t remember anything like this happening prior to our move.


The apartment is on the third floor of a Victorian house on Maple Street. The exterior of the house is rather shabby, the clapboards in need of scraping and painting. The owner is an elderly woman whose husband died about five or six years ago. The house had gotten away from her. Tenants had come and gone from the second and third floor apartments. The second floor was unoccupied at present, the young couple who’d lived there having split up and moved out a few weeks ago. The third floor had been pretty trashed when I’d looked at it, but I’d needed a cheap place to live. Max was at day care while I worked as a medical receptionist. His day care expenses ate up most of one pay check. Rent, food, and bus fare took a big bite out of the rest. I was relieved that he was toilet trained and out of diapers. I’d used to feel like that was the only reason I was working, to pay for diapers.


At breakfast the other day Max had been eating dry Froot Loops. Well, not really eating them so much as stacking them by color to one side of his bowl. “Eat your breakfast,” I reminded him. He’d made a face in response. “Max, stop playing with your food and eat it. We’ve got to catch the bus. You still need to brush your teeth and put your sneakers on.”


“Pitty-pat likes the yellow ones best,” he replied, sliding the pile of yellow cereal ohs to one side. “There you go. You can eat those,” he said. “And I’ll eat the green ones.”


“Stop fooling around and just eat. I’ve got to finish getting ready for work. You’d better be done in five minutes, mister,” I said as I headed toward the narrow little bathroom
.

When I’d returned to the kitchen he’d eaten the green and yellow Froot Loops, had drank his milk, and put on his sneakers. His sneakers were tied. “Who tied your sneakers?” I asked. He couldn’t tie them, although I’d been trying to teach him the bunny ears method which was how I had learned to tie my own shoes when I’d been his age.


“I gotta brush my teef!” he said, baring his teeth at me before running off to the bathroom. I heard him drag his stool over to the sink, the faucet turn on, and him chattering away to himself about how he had to brush his teeth because “Mom can’t afford to pay the dentist if we get cabboties.” I shook my head as I dumped the remaining cereal back into the box then quickly washed his bowl, spoon, and cup, leaving them in the dish drainer.


“C’mon, kiddo! We’ve gotta go!” I groaned as I saw little stacks of blue and purple cereal still on the table, but we were running late.


Out the door we flew, barely making it to the bus stop in time. At the day care center down the street from the medical office where I worked I had to haul him into the bathroom to wash blue toothpaste off his chin. “You can’t go around with a blue beard,” I said making him laugh.


“Pitty-pat has a white beard,” he said. “It’s really long! It goes down to here!” He bent to touch his ankle.


“Well, maybe Pitty-pat should visit the barber and have that beard trimmed before he trips over it.”

Max shook his head. “No, he can’t do that.”


“Whatever,” I muttered, taking him back to his play group, giving him a quick kiss and calling, “See you tonight! Have a fun day!” as I ran out the door.




Last night after I’d put him to bed I’d heard him giggling and talking in his room. He has a small room under the eaves, the ceiling sharply slanted. His bed is tucked under the slanted part so I have room to open the drawers of his little four-drawer dresser. “Hey,” I said, opening the door. He has a nightlight shaped like a robot beside his dresser, and some light spilled into the room from the living room so I could see him sitting on his bed with some toy cars around him. “It’s bedtime, not play time.”


“But Pitty-pat likes my cars. We’re playing.”


I felt a flash of annoyance. It had been a bad day at work and I was tired. I had no patience for this nonsense. “Well maybe Pitty-pat should put the toys away now and read you a bedtime story and then go to sleep herself.”


“He’s a boy, remember? He has a beard,” Max replied, rolling his eyes. “Can’t you see him, Mommy?”


“I can’t see someone who’s not really there. I know you’re lonely, kiddo. I know we had to move away and you miss your friends in the building we used to live in, but things’ll get better when we can get out and meet new people in this neighborhood. Now, put the cars away, get into bed, and go to sleep. We have another busy day tomorrow.” I grabbed a handful of cars, tossing them into the plastic bin that served as his toy box. “Goodnight, little man,” I said, pulling the covers up over him as I bent to kiss his warm cheek. “Love you lots. See you in the morning.”


And now this morning he’s grumpily sitting at the table because I had to give him Cheerios. He’d blown through the entire box of Froot Loops in less than a week. “Eat your breakfast. It’s all we have in the apartment. I’ll try to run out and get a box of Froot Loops at lunchtime. I’m sorry, Max. It’s not easy having to do everything on my own like this. I’m doing the best I can.”


“Pitty-pat’s mad because he doesn’t have yellow Froot Loops.”


“Well, Pitty-pat can go to the grocery store and buy some if he wants them. He won’t starve, and neither will you. Eat your breakfast. We’re going to miss the bus.”


That evening when we got home I was a little upset to find drawers and cabinets open in the kitchen, the box of Cheerios spilled across the kitchen floor. “What in the world?” I cried. Maybe I had left the cereal too close to the edge of the table. I know I hadn’t had time to clean up, but the cabinets and drawers had not been open. The cereal must have fallen off the table, but I couldn’t figure out how it had spilled all over the place like it had. Grimly, I set the bag of groceries down on the counter, told Max to go take off his sneakers in his room, then angrily slammed the cabinet doors closed and shoved the drawers shut before grabbing the dust pan and broom and sweeping up the mess.


Later, it vaguely crossed my mind that Mrs. Maguire had come up here to see if we were keeping the place clean, and she’d done some snooping while she was at it. A few of my dresser drawers had been slightly open, their contents obviously pawed through. “Great,” I’d muttered as I sat down at the kitchen table to pay a few bills that needed my attention. “I’m not going to stand for this invasion of privacy and her leaving a mess like that! If you’re going to snoop and pry into other people’s lives then don’t leave doors and drawers open to announce your nosiness!”



The next three or so weeks passed by fairly uneventfully. And then I had a restless night, troubled by lack of money, worries about my being able to properly take care of Max, his pulling away from me, playing more in his bedroom with his invisible friend. I liked that he wasn’t always shadowing me everywhere, demanding my attention, but I also disliked his playing in his room alone, constantly chatting and laughing with this unseen friend. He seemed to be shutting me out and that didn’t seem healthy at all. I’d tried calling Danny to discuss my concerns with him but his phone just kept going to voice mail so I was frustrated there. He must have creditors hounding him. He had always been irresponsible with money and his credit cards. I thought I should get Danny to his pediatrician and talk to him about my concerns, but a part of me knew it had to be our rather socially isolated private life, although his day care worker had mentioned that he was playing by himself more off in a corner and seemed irritated or angry when other children tried to sit and play with him.


“Are you mad about something?” I asked him one night after giving him his bath. He was still wrapped in a towel, my having just dried his hair with one corner of it. He needed a haircut rather desperately.


“No,” he replied.


“Are you having any trouble in day care? Is someone annoying you?”


“Nope.”


“Mrs. Hooper says you don’t want the other kids to play near you.” He shrugged a shoulder. “Why not? You like to play with the other kids, don’t you?”


“They’re boring,” he said.


“Boring? How so?” His brown eyes met mine. “How are they boring?”


He seemed to be thinking about it but not able to find the words he needed. “They just are.” He squirmed. “Can I go play with Pitty-pat now?”


“You play with him too much,” I replied.


He gave me a surprisingly nasty look. “He’s my friend,” he said. “You want me to have friends, don’t you?”


“Yes, real ones like at day care. Not make believe ones.”


His reaction alarmed me. He pushed me away with strength that caught me off guard. As I was crouched down still I wasn’t well balanced on my toes and fell backwards against the side of the claw foot tub, banging my head against the cast iron rim. “He is real!” he flared, throwing the towel aside, grabbing his pajamas off the closed toilet lid and then stalking out of the bathroom.


“Hey! Max! You do not push me like that! Do you hear me? I want an apology!” I scrambled up off the floor, rubbing the back of my head near the crown. “Max!”


He had put on his pajama pants and was struggling to get his shirt on. His head came up as I entered his room and he told me to, “Get out! I’m mad at you!”


“Well, I’m not exactly happy with you either!” I flared. “You are never to push me like that again, do you understand me?” He just glared at me and it frightened me to see such hostility in his eyes. I really needed to get him to his doctor. He was obviously having issues with my break-up with his father. I also needed to track Danny down and get him more involved with Max again. “Put your shirt on and go to bed. No talking. No playing. Just go to bed. I don’t want to hear another peep out of you.” I closed the door firmly behind me then sat in the quiet living room fighting back tears.


About a half hour later there was noise in Max’s room. It sounded like he was hurling his toys around the room, some striking the walls, some the ceiling, others the back side of the door. “Hey!” I cried. “Max, stop that!” I jumped up, running to his door and flinging it open. A toy truck hit me in the face, making me stagger backwards. “Max, stop! Stop throwing things!”


“Mommy!” he cried. “Mommy….ow!”


His cry of pain made me blink the tears from my eyes. I reached into his room, flipping on the overhead light. His room was a mess, toys, some broken, scattered everywhere, little dings and dents in the plaster. But it was Max, cowering at the top corner of his bed, sheet nearly covering his head, just his pale face and large eyes showing, that caught my attention more. As I stepped into the room to go to him a small car flew across the room, hitting me in the shoulder, then another came soaring toward me. I swatted it away. Max was whimpering. “What’s going on in here?” I cried, rushing to the side of the bed, bending to reach for Max, being pelted by toy cars as I did so, aware that my son was not moving, that he was frightened, that he wasn’t throwing anything. I grabbed him, dragging him off the bed, sheet and all, and rushing to the doorway.


“Pitty-pat,” Max whispered. “Pitty-pat’s mad at you.” 


I reached back, pulling the door closed behind me. I felt resistance, as though someone was on the other side trying to prevent me from closing it. “Let go of the door!” I shouted. “Leave us alone!”


I didn’t know what to do. The sounds of objects striking the door and walls continued. The door knob rattled. I carried Max into my room and put him on the bed. He crawled beneath the covers and huddled there. I closed and locked the bedroom door, got into bed, and pulled him close, holding him tightly. The noise spilled into the living room, kitchen, and bathroom, too. Neither one of us slept.


In the morning it was quiet. Max remained huddled under the covers, just one wide eye peeking through the folds over his head as I got up and slowly approached the door. I unlocked it and cautiously opened it, gasping when I found a steak knife embedded in a door panel about level with my eye. “Oh…” I said, shocked, stunned, and terrified.


Tearing my eyes away from the knife, I glanced into the living room and kitchen area. The cabinets hung open, the drawers were pulled out. We didn’t have much, but everything we owned was strewn about as if a cyclone had raged through the apartment. I bit back a sob, my mind frozen in horror. And then, through a blur of tears I saw a small man standing across the room, a small man with a long white beard. His burning eyes were fixed on me. I stared at him until my own eyes burned, and then I had to blink. I blinked and he was gone.


But I had seen enough. I had seen more than enough in his fierce face.