A Fighting Chance (5 page)

“Y
ou don’t think I know that?” I couldn’t help screaming. I always felt like screaming when I had to talk about my mom, like all my tangled emotions were just sitting at the base of my throat. “I’m staying in our house alone! I hear her voice in my head all day, and I wonder if I’ll forget what she sounds like when she’s gone. I’m working out a schedule of how and when I’m gonna pack up her stuff, and who might want it…” I pressed my nails into my knees. “And maybe I don’t want to see her anymore because I don’t want her to see
me
, Drew! She has to die with
me
as a son. I don’t want her last memories to be this!”

She
looked over once without saying another word, but she held my hand the entire rest of the drive. After Mom stopped responding to treatment, she refused hospice care, so she had been staying at an old friend’s house in Kenzie, a town about an hour outside of Glory. Other people might have thought it was odd for a dying mother to be so far away from her son, but I think Mom wanted me to get used to not having her around. Growing up, she never called the work she made me do around the house “chores” because she said it came with a negative connotation. Instead, they were tasks for a functional life and adult survival. Maybe she always knew I would be without her earlier than she really wanted.

Drew parked at the curb in front of Miss Madison Shaw’s house
, and she answered as soon as we knocked. She was a registered nurse and she and Mom had gone to college together, so her home was really the best place for Mom to finish out her life. Mom didn’t get many regular visitors out here, except for Drew and me. She had extended family in California that she wasn’t close with, and she really didn’t have many friends in Glory. Everyone knew Henry slept around, but my mom was the only one who had gotten pregnant. She had worn a scarlet letter for seventeen years now, but somehow Henry Chance managed to walk around as just a weak man lured into temptation by a home-wrecker.

Drew handed me a clean shirt from her car, and I went into
Miss Madison’s downstairs bathroom. Now I felt sick about what I had done to Kerr tonight as I scrubbed my face, neck, and chest with soap. And I couldn’t believe how wrapped up in Henry’s shit I had almost gotten myself. In hindsight, I knew I was just a walking dollar sign to him, nothing more than a way to line his pockets. The man gambled on anything with a winner, no matter how small, just for the chance to get a little richer.

“I’m sorry
about what my dad said to you,” I told Drew when I joined her at the bottom of the staircase. She pulled me into a tight, comforting hug. “You deserve better than me.” I told her this all the time but tonight it came with the pain of a million thorns, because I always meant it, but for the first time I realized I was right.

“
You
deserve better than you,” she said.

“And earlier
in the ring I was—”

“
I know, Jess.”
My life was an ugly mess, at times of my own making and at other times because of whom I was in Glory; yet, even at my most unlovable, Drew only loved me harder. “Can I go see Miss Carla now, please?”

Mom
had chosen Miss Madison’s biggest guestroom, so that she could have space to move around, back when the pain wasn’t so much.

“Miss Carla, I’m so glad you’re awake!” Drew raced to my mom’s side and hopped onto the bed to hug her. Mom’s nightstand
was covered in pain pills and anti-nausea medications, crackers, and a gallon of water—just the stuff she could keep down these days. Every time I came here I noticed how much she was wasting away, especially now that Drew was taking up more space on the bed than she was. Her skin was ashen, there were deep, dark circles under her eyes, and she was so thin that the shape of her bones was prominent through her skin. The sight of her pinched my stomach and it hurt to breathe; I couldn’t move past the doorway.

I used to stand on her feet and she would dance all around the house with me.
During the Glory holiday parade, she would sit me up on her shoulders to see, the only mom doing that. One time the whole school heard her yelling at Principal Stern in his office when I was in elementary school because he hadn’t done anything when another kid called me the son of a whore during recess. She had always been my hero, and I couldn’t think of anything more devastating than her death.

“I stayed up
for you. Did you bring my boy?” There was so much excitement in her voice; it finally cracked through my sadness.

“Hey, Ma.”

“Why are you all the way over there?” She waved for me to come closer and she couldn’t stop smiling. “How are you? Drew gave me the big news! You finally got around to filling out those college applications. I’m so proud of you. College was always what I wanted for you.” As Mom talked, Drew gave me a look that dared me to contradict her.

“Yeah
, I did,” I said as Drew moved so I could sit. “I’ll buy you a t-shirt of the school I end up at.”

“I won’t be here when you decide, honey,” Mom replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

“Don’t think like that.” I took her hand in mine before I gave her a hug. 

But Mom scoffed. “
We can’t pretend there’s more time for me. I’ve made peace with that, but you’ve been avoiding it. And I have so much to say before I can’t say anything anymore. So you’ll have to face it today, my little boy. You will be motherless very, very soon. And I’m sorry for that.” The cancer had taken her sight almost to complete blindness, but it meant she was touching my face more, touching
me
more, which I had come to appreciate. “From the moment I laid eyes on you, my precious baby boy, I knew you would have my heart forever. But I also knew you were going to be nothing but trouble, Jesse Richard Chance. I was going to name you Archibald, after your grandfather but, I swear on his grave, you would kick me so hard every time I called you Archie. You were a fighter even then. I guess that’s why you love going to Perry’s so much, huh?”

I shot Drew a look when she giggled,
and tears were streaming down her cheeks faster than she could wipe them. “Perry’s got that back problem, Ma. He can’t handle the farm equipment like he used to...it’s a lot of property, even with four sons.”

Ma smirked. “Don’t you lie to me, child. I’m
blind
not
stupid
.” She sighed and a faint, sad smile appeared. “I just wish you would fight with only your heart, baby boy.” The smile vanished and her look became more pensive. “But you’re angry. I know that. You’re angry about so much, and I have cried for years because I can’t make it right. You’re paying for my misdeeds. Rejection hurts, and I know that more than anybody. Henry’s in-laws offered me more money than you can imagine to leave Glory when I got pregnant. I told them I was ashamed of my relationship with him but
never
of you and that you weren’t something to hide. I told them I loved you more than I had ever loved anything in this entire world, more than my own life. Still do. But I remember one day, when you were about five or six, you asked me how come you didn’t have a daddy like the other kids. I told you who he was, and you have been so focused on him ever since, even though—”

“Ma—”

“Let me finish. You better never let yourself be defined by who decides to love you, you hear me? Don’t you
ever
define yourself by the way people treat you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said quietly, hearing the tremble
of sadness just below my own words.

“
You
need to give love in this world, in spite of the people who don’t love you back. You must love without expecting it in return. It will be hard and it will hurt, but that’s how you must define yourself, by your ability and willingness to give love in this cruel world, no matter what, because it will try to tell you
not
to love. And that includes love for yourself, Jesse Richard Chance. You better walk with your head held high and your heart full. Am I making myself clear, son?”

I nodded and touched her face.
I was crying too hard to see her. “Yes, Mom.” I dropped my head to her lap and wrapped my arms around her waist. “Please don’t go. Please. I need you. You can’t die.” A choking sensation seized my chest, and panic overwhelmed me to the point that I was bawling into her nightgown. Why her? Why us? Why me? I didn’t have a father and I wouldn’t have a mother. The feeling of helplessness sparked my rage, and without any answers, all I wanted to do was punch something. It wasn’t like I could fight her cancer or her death. “Please don’t die, Mom. You can’t die. You just can’t.”

Mom rubbed my head before she lifted it to kiss
me between the eyebrows. “I don’t want to, Jesse.” Her voice came out weak, like she was wrestling with her own tears. “I don’t want to take anything else from you…but it will happen. I can’t even tell you how sorry I am. But when I go, you call up Diane Kimble immediately. She’s an attorney and she came to visit when you were very young, so you probably don’t remember her. She’s in my address book; she has things for you.”

“Okay, I will,” I mumble
d, still sniffling, still filled with the unrelenting urge to beg her for the impossible.

“Well…” Mom sighed into a smile. She was already upbeat again. “Tell me which colleges you’re applying to and which one you want to go to the most.” The three of us talked for a while, and Drew even went and got her guitar from her car to play Mom’s favorite song, “Hallelujah” by Jeff Buckley. I knew Mom was using up too much energy trying to stay awake, so eventually, I made an excuse about Miss Madison needing me to track down Kingston, her golden retriever. When I was sure she was asleep I went back to her room to pull the covers over her. I lay next to her for a few minutes, listening to her breaths, memorizing the rhythm like it was a song, listening and knowing the music would stop soon.

“I so need a cigarette right now,” Drew said, dabbing her red eyes when I returned to Miss Madison’s living room. When she found one in her
bag, she signaled for me to join her on the back patio, and we settled into the porch swing.

“I thought you were quitting…”

“Hey, you have your vice, and I have mine…” she mumbled defensively as she lit the cigarette with shaky hands, but a calm fell over her as soon as she exhaled a puff of smoke. She had convinced herself that a stimulant relaxed her, and I wished I could find some sort of peace right now, too. My head was clogged with everything to come in the next few weeks or months or however long we had left. Mom had planned every detail of her funeral months ago, like she was just going on vacation, to make things easier on me, but the one thing she could not do was what I wanted the most: for her to just stay.

Once she was
done smoking, Drew snuggled against me and I hugged her close. “I’m glad you liked your guitar pick.” She was flipping it between her thumb and forefinger.

“I do. You want me to play something for you?”

“No,” I said, kissing her temple. “You really can’t stand me most of the time, Drew?”

“What?” She tightened her arms around my waist.

“That’s what you said at Perry’s.”

“Not
all
of you. I just hate the guy who
goes
to Perry’s. I hate everyone who goes to Perry’s. I can’t fucking stand any of it, especially after they fake worship you, and all of y’all go to the lake and get drunk. A lot of mornings when I’d go get you, after they just cleared out and left you sleeping in the bed of your truck, I’d wish I were strong enough to just toss you into the water.” She lifted her head and kissed me on the lips.

I laughed as I cupped her face. “And you really filled the applications?”
She nodded. A strange sense of determination surged in my chest just then, and for the first time ever, college took on a sudden and newfound importance. I didn’t know if it was because Mom wanted it and in my grief I was trying to find ways to give her things, or if I just really wanted to escape my current life, but it really didn’t matter. I decided right then I was going. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do that for
you
.” She was snippy, but like always, Drew’s fingers found mine. “I love how her face lights up when you come around. I’m going to miss that. Whenever I get sad, I always think about how much that woman loves you. You should think about that too…when…when it happens.”

A tear eased down my cheek. Instead of comfort, I just felt crushed, and it was a powerful burning mixture of irritation and hopelessness again. I had beat
en a man until he stopped moving tonight, and then walked around with his blood on me, unfazed. This was my mom’s legacy. The thought brought on unimaginable despair, and I tried to shake it away before more emotions spilled out of me. “Yeah, she loves me, but she’ll still die with me being like this, Drew. Secret’s out. She knows what I go to Perry’s for, and she probably suspects you’re behind the college applications. She’ll never know me as a better person. She wants that for me, and she’ll die still praying about it.”

Drew
looked away from me like something in the distance had caught her attention. In the time she took to ponder, I could tell my words troubled her. She sucked in a deep breath before she turned her teary eyes to me. “Not true. Whether she lives another month, a week, a day…I think you have a chance to make sure it ends up being more than just a wish.”