Works and Days

Second Chance

Part Two

It had been so long since she had cried. It was good to surrender to it. She wept while fear overwhelmed her. She wept until she was ready to stop, and then sniffed and sniffed and suddenly wept again. She wept loudly, softly, hoping it would end, hoping to get to the end of it, putting up no defenses. She wept over Thom’s ignoring her, she wept over the fact that he hadn’t even tried to speak to her. She wept over the fact that he had probably spent the weekend fucking Liz Parr. She wept from envy. She wept wondering what she had done wrong to turn him from what he’d once been to what he was now. She wept because Russell had left the house, and she was glad he had left because she wasn’t good for him now. Neither she nor Tom was. They were failures. She wept because for thirty-eight years her life had gone down the wrong path. She wept because the severance pay would run out sooner or later, perhaps sooner than it would take for her to find a right path. She was lost in the woods. There was no Hansel. The breadcrumbs were gone. Patricia Mc.Larchlahn was afraid.

She put on jeans and a sweatshirts, shades, and pulled a comb through her tangled hair. Patti got in the station wagon and drove to the grocery store. Afraid or not, depressed or not, she needed to eat, and if Russell should choose to come back tonight or tomorrow night or the next, then there had better be food in the fridge.

She was amazed that on a Monday mid-morning there would be this large of a crowd at the Kroger on East Side. She had to park near Bunting Street and walk across the entire lot.

The shopping was different this time. Patti didn’t get the usual red meats and potato mixes. She got some chickens. She went to the fish aisle for the first time since Lent. She bought fruit, weird things like kiwi and mango that never came inside 1735 Breckinridge. She delighted herself in the different colors of the fruits and, passing the floral section, found herself picturing a house full of flowers. Those hydrangeas would be beautiful on the coffee table, and imagine all those carnations in the window! And what was the harm in getting roses for herself?

And while she was at it. What was the harm in getting chocolate? Fat wasn’t going to her hips. It never had. She’d hated her body in childhood, all of her Mc.Larchlahn cousins telling her she had the body of a boy, blah, blah, blah. But later in life it seemed to be to her benefit. Russell had been a hard birth, but there’d been no other children after—not for lack of trying—and her body had quickly shed what little pregnancy weight there had been.

She was thinking of this and many other things when she crashed, and heard a swear and a tumbling of cans.

Back in the present world Patti found herself helping a man pick up spilled cans.

“I am so sorry,” she told him.

“It’s alright,” he shook his head. “It’s not every day I collide into a shopping cart driven by a beautiful woman.”

“It’s not today either,” Patti said, ruefully, handing him the last of the cans.

“Oh, yes,” he said earnestly, smiling at her. “It is.”

He was only a little taller than her, but this was amazing after eighteen years of Thom.

He looked right at her, down into her, with bright greenish blue eyes and a very wide smile. He turned around, and she was sorry for the turning, and went to put the cans in her cart.

Patti stood at her cart, rooted to the middle of the aisle, watching him, or the back of him, his easy stride, his broad, sloping shoulders, his blond hair.

“Excuse me,” she said, at last.

`    He turned around with an uplifted eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“I’m a bit out of practice,” Patti said. “But it seems like you were hitting on me.”

“I’m a little out of practice too,” he chuckled—that smile again—and wheeled his cart up beside hers. She saw he had a wedding ban on. Recently divorced?

“And yes, I was hitting on you.”

“Oh,” Patti said at last. Then turning from him with genuine excitement, exclaimed,“Look, chocolate chips!”

She scooped them into her cart too.

“Are you free Saturday?” he asked, “Wait, I should introduce myself.”

“I’m Chuck Shrader.”

“Patti—” she started, extending her hand, “Patricia Mc.Larchlahn.”

“So, Patricia Mc.Larchlahn, are you free?”

“Uh.... Yes.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven-thirty?”

“Ahhhhh,” Patti tried to find her voice, smiled and said, “Yeah. Yes. Saturday night.”

“Saturday night,” Chuck echoed.

The two of them continued down opposite ends of the aisle, and then as both were about to turn in their own directions, they both turned around.

Patti stopped Chuck in the midst of preparing to speak.

“1735 Breckinridge Avenue.”

Chuck smiled, saluted her, and bowing, turned on one heel as he headed back down the aisle.

“Oh, Patti, your life is so exciting!” Jackie rejoiced, liberally splashing paint onto the easel.

“How do you figure?” said Patti, sitting on the steamer trunk, folding her legs under her.

“You’ve got severance pay to last you for a year. You’re the age a lot of people are when they realize they’ve never lived, and you have lived! You’ve lived a lot! And now you’re getting ready to start a whole new phase of your life. At least you know you don’t want to go back to the old way, and now you can do anything you want. You’ve got two Masters and a Ph.D for God’s sake.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Patti murmured.

“Well, honey, you’ve got to,” Jackie said, a cigarette pinched between her lips.

She lit the cigarette.

 “And then add to it this man you’re going out with tonight. You just bump into him, give him your address and everything. You are so dangerous!” her sister-in-law exulted.

Patti hadn’t thought about that either.

“I mean, you could get raped or something!”

Patti stared at her sister in law.

“I mean, you probably won’t but…. Still… What an adventure!”

 

Patricia lewis admired her figure in the floor length mirror. If Chuck had not said it she would not believe she was beautiful. She was here before her own image. She had ignored herself for so long, and now she was embarrassed at the pride she had in her appearance. Her dark golden brown curls were shiny and springy. There was rosiness in her cheeks. She had looked like forty was supposed to feel this morning. Now she could pass for twenty-nine. Twenty-eight? She hadn’t worn this red dress, this splash of blood that stopped right at her knees, or these pumps that could slice oranges, in some time. She wanted to laugh at herself—with herself. Patti dared to toss her curls and laughed again.

In the middle of the next laugh, there was a rapid series of rings at the front door. Patti frowned and looked at the clock. This Chuck was not only early but, she determined as the bell went on ringing, rude. She went down the hall and down the stairs carefully, getting accustomed to heels again, and answered the door to look down on the momentarily awed, and then suddenly enraged form of Thom Lewis.

Your husband.

What a depressing thought.

Thom couldn’t read her mind. He simply charged into the house shouting.

“Do you know where our child is?”

In the face of Thom Lewis’s rage, Patti raised an eloquent eyebrow and said, “Three blocks away on 1421 Curtain Street?”

“No, Patricia—he’s in CHICAGO!!!”

Patti’s eyes widened a little, and Thom shoved the piece of paper he was carrying with him at her and said, “Read this. I went to go see Russell this afternoon and—”

“You never bothered to see him in the last fifteen years—”

“And when I got there I saw this note on the door. Read it.”

Patti shrugged and read.

   

Dear, Whomever,

    We (Russell and myself) have gone to Chicago for the next few days to get my belongings from my old apartment. We are with a friend, Dr. Faye Mathisson. All is well. We will be back by Wednesday,

                                          Sincerely,

                                                      Chayne

 

    “Oh, Faye Mathisson,” said Patti. “She’s good. I read her book The Stone and—”

    “Patti, what the hell kind of mother are you!” Thom snatched the piece of paper from her. “Your son’s off in Cook County when he should be in school, and you’re whored out in red and—”

    “And you’re out of place.”

    “Where’s your son, Patti?” Thom demanded, getting ugly as he tried to stare down his wife.

    “Apparently he’s in Chicago.”

    “He should be here!”

    “You haven’t even bothered to go over there. It doesn’t bother you that he just walked out of here! I come to tell you Russell’s gone and I find you dressed like a prostitute—”

    “You wait a minute you short—little—fuck!”

    Thom stopped.

    “What I am doing is letting my son deal with his adolescence the way he needs to. I can’t help him right now. You’re useless as hell. You haven’t been any help. You’re not about to be. And while he’s dealing with his adolescence I’m dealing with my approaching middle age by going out—on a date—with a man. And not the old flame I had from college unlike you—who probably spent the entire weekend fucking her.

“And I threw you out. So get out.”

    Thom stared at his wife. She looked down at him, and then he left. She closed the door, went into the dining room for the Scotch, poured herself a small glass and murmured, “To Chicago? Holy shit, Russell!”

    Only in Geshichte Falls, and possibly only on Curtain Street, and only in a house owned by Chayne would there be a sign informing whoever stepped onto the porch that the owner of the house would be gone until Wednesday. Not that Chayne had much a thief would steal.

    Patti was halfway through the glass of Scotch when there was a ring at the door, and her eyes flew open. She looked down at the glass, started to place it on the coffee table, then thought of the ring it would make and placed it on the carpet before answering the door.

    “Chuck!” she said, immediately aware of her whiskey breath.

    “You look,” he started, that smile spreading across his face, “beautiful! Are you ready? I left the car on.”

    “Yes,” said Patti. “Do you have a stick of gum?”

    Chuck looked at her with a raised eyebrow as she locked the door and they both set out down the walk.

    “My almost ex-husband came by,” he might as well know about Thom, “and his leaving required a drink.”

    Chuck looked amused.

    “I think some gum can be arranged.”

    “I thought he was you,” Patti said, “when he rang the doorbell.”

    Chuck opened the car door for her. She smiled and murmured, “A gentleman!”

    “As long as I get some tonight.”

    Patti looked at him.

    “Oh my God, it was a joke and a bad one. I’m out of practice with the etiquette of humor on a first date.”

    “Too bad,” she said, putting on her seat belt before Chuck closed her door and went around to the other side. “I was thinking of saying yes.”

    He rounded the car and got in, laughing.

    Patti said, “It’s been a while for me too.”