Second Chances

© 2001 by Lance Lee

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Back cover art by Ron Sandford

Photos by Lance Lee

ISBN: 0-595-16821-3

For those I love who have known great losses and great gains.

*

A perfect love is founded on despair.—Santayana

Contents

I: FAMILIES

1  THE FOX ABANDONED

2  ANNE

3  MAGGIE

4  TED

5  FIRST GATHERING

6  BEDTIME STORIES

II: FALSE START

7  AFTEREFFECTS

8  ANNE AND MAGGIE TOGETHER

9  INVOLVED DESPITE HERSELF

10  SECOND GATHERING

11  FIREWORKS

12  REVELATIONS

13  ANNE DECIDES TO LEAVE

14  A FAILURE OF NERVE

15  THE STORM THAT WASN’T

16  SOMETHING LIKE A FAMILY

17  PANIC

18  THE BEST DAY

19  BEFORE THE STORM

20  RAIN

III: THE FOX COMES HOME

21  ANNE’S CARGO

22  FRANK TRIES TO HELP

23  MAGGIE’S RIDE

24  AUNT LOUISA HELPS

25  FACE OFF

26  THE FOX COMES HOME

I: FAMILIES

1

THE FOX ABANDONED

A child was crying.

The crying first woke Anne, then puzzled her: none of the neighbors had a child. Then she realized it wasn’t a child.

An animal, Anne Bedford murmured. The cries entered her warm room although her windows were barely open because of the chill that still crept in from Nantucket Sound. Ben stirred at her feet, lifted his head,ears cocked,then clattered downstairs with a throaty chuff .

She hesitated, then shrugged on her robe and followed Ben. She stopped at the door out from the laundry room.

You stay here, she told Ben, blocking him. You’re a killer.

She went past her garage toward the crying, clutching the top of her robe tight. Nothing was visible in the moonless night until her eyes grew used to starlight alone. Then she found a small shape moving erratically near the road, a small animal that froze when it spotted her and then, as it tried to back off, gave a piercing cry, and twisted into a series of tight spirals, completely disoriented.

Anne edged closer and saw something like a puppy; closer, she saw it was a baby fox, and scooped it up.

Poor thing, she said, have you been hurt? It lay motionless in her arms, silent. She felt it cautiously but found no blood or broken bones, and carried it into her kitchen to have a proper look, pushing Ben away when she came in.

Down Ben! You’re not to hurt this baby!

The light revealed no obvious hurt to the little fox. He was small, covered in a dense, light gray puppy fur, with sparse, longer black-tipped gray hairs. There was a hint of rusty color along the sides, a white belly, and a wash of rusty fur over his snout and eyes. His paws were black. He was still soft and roly-poly, but there was no mistaking the foxy demeanor, the sharp black eyes and the pointedly inquisitive look.

What am I going to do with you? Anne laughed. Why are you going in circles? Crying? His eyes met hers without blinking, wary, wild, reserved. She had an inspiration and flipped through the phone book, still fending off Ben.

You have reached the Southfleet Wildlife Trust, a voice answered after a single ring. Our hours are 10-3 Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please call again. Thank you. She was disconnected.

Great, she muttered: wildlife isn’t part time, why are you? She looked at the fox. It stared back. She dialed another number.

Mother, she said when Florence answered, I have a problem.

What can be wrong at this hour?

I have something wild in my arms—

Lucky you.

It’s a little fox! Running around in circles.

That gave Florence a momentary pause. Whatever for? she asked.

It was crying in my driveway. I’ve got it in here now—

Watch out for Ben. That dog’s a killer. You remember.

She did. One afternoon three weeks ago Ben lunged out when Florence came in balancing a rhubarb pie, ran straight into old O’Connor’s yard, knocked over his new rabbit hutch, and seized the rabbit. By the time Mr. O’Connor and Anne reached Ben and Anne pried open the dog’s jaws, the rabbit was dead.

The old man said nothing, just stared from the rabbit to the lunging dog while Florence hurried up, patting her hair into shape as she pulled off the red bandanna she wore when cooking.

Mother, I’ll handle this—

Oh bother! That dog’s a killer. What an awful thing!

I got this for my granddaughter, Mr. O’Connor said finally. It was supposed to be a surprise. Florence shook her head and took him by the arm.

I’ll have Frank make a chain to keep Ben on, she said, soothingly. And we’ll get another rabbit, don’t you worry. Now let’s go in and sit down and I’ll make a nice cup of coffee and we’ll catch our breaths… Anne, take care of the body. Florence took Mr. O’Connor’s arm and led him in, her voice never stopping.

I called the Wildlife Trust, but they’re closed, was all Anne said.

I would think so now!

I don’t know what to do.

There was a pause long enough for Anne to notice. Then: You’re 37, Anne. Take two aspirin with some warm milk and turn in. That fox is not a child. Cope. Don’t call Lulu. Good night.

Don’t talk to me like I’m still getting over Susie or had any desire to be dependent which you know I don’t and—

I don’t know why you’re carrying on. Florence hung up. Anne slammed the phone down.

Fine, fine. I’m a big girl. Can do! For a moment Anne thought of putting the fox back where she’d found it, but was too angry for that now.

Instead, she opened the icebox, holding the fox high to keep him from Ben. There was nonfat milk, a stick of margarine, a loaf of diet bread and some sliced Swiss cheese, still in its wrapper: a half dozen eggs, one apple, two oranges and a half empty half gallon of apple cider. Anne hardly saw this, Florence’s words echoing in her mind. The milk, she forced herself to think, that’s too thin. She shut the door and saw the pictures of Susie held there by magnets.

Ben’s food, she muttered, then realized that was too large and dry and grainy even when wet. The pictures caught her eye again.

She slammed out to the driveway and put the fox down. He backed off and immediately twisted into tight spirals, crying again piercingly. She grabbed him and went back in and stood helpless in the middle of the kitchen until she realized the phone was ringing.

Hello? Ben, stay down!

Do you have milk? It was Lulu—Aunt Louisa, to Anne.

Mom shouldn’t have woken you up. I can manage.

Can you? Good night.

Wait! I have some nonfat.

I thought so. Eggs?

Yes—

Mix a bowl of milk and an egg or two. If it’s too young to drink from the bowl then try dipping your fingers in and letting it suck you.

Auntie—

Find a box and put it in and leave that outside. Mothers usually look for their children. Even animals.

Even if we touch them? Anne asked.

I don’t know about foxes. Is the mother outside?

How would I know?

Hit by a car? demanded her aunt.

I didn’t look.

Look! Good night. Aunt Louisa hung up.

Mixing milk and eggs with one hand was hard: finally Anne shut Ben in the basement and put the fox down at her feet. For a moment he stood still, then started to spin and cry. She picked him up, but he ignored the bowl of enriched milk held under his nose. With a sigh Anne dipped a finger in the mix, but the fox turned his snout away. Impatient, she rubbed her dripping finger against his gums: at that he sucked hungrily. It took a long time for his belly to fill this way: when he was finally done they rested quietly together.

Still holding the fox Anne went back down her driveway to the road with a flashlight, but there was no sign of a killed or injured animal. Maybe it’s wandered from its den, she thought, maybe the mother is the fox I and Ben sometimes surprise in the cranberry bog. An occasional car passed distantly on Rte. 28. Anne looked up at the stars and shivered in the warm night; despite their distance she felt their twisting energies reach out and fill her with a sense of life’s fragility: one moment of violence or neglect, and a life could end or a mother disappear.

She lined a box in the garage with paper, crumpled an old rag together as a bed, put him in with the mix, set all below her bedroom window for the mother to find, and at last went back to bed, freeing Ben.

The fox cried steadily below her window. She stroked Ben, and stared into the darkness, those cries filling her mind. There is always a child crying in the night hopelessly somewhere, she thought. Then she was in a small white box of a room in a country clinic. There was a sink and cabinet, a medical bed where Susie lay stretched with a bruised, slashed face, and a nurse with a puffy face and peroxide blonde hair noticeably gray at the roots. The nurse monitored the IV in Susie’s arm while a middle-aged, paunchy doctor with red-lidded, watery eyes came and went. Anne was in pain herself: her arm was broken, while Henry hovered helplessly beside her with a gash on his cheek.

Help me, mommy! the thin child cried.

I am darling, the doctor is here helping, see?

I can’t breathe, mommy!

Don’t panic, Susie: everything is alright.

Her thin body…The gashes to the bone over the bridge of the nose and up the forehead above the left eye which Anne went on seeing, although they’d been cleaned and closed…Susie’s labored breath-

ing…Her sweaty, matted hair, white blonde in this light…

Help me, mommy…

I am darling, the doctor is here helping, see? beginning the litany over again: Anne had lost count how often they’d repeated themselves.

I can’t breathe, mommy!

And then Susie really couldn’t, coughing and coughing blood.

Anne screamed at the nurse, screamed at the doctor who hurried in and fluttered helplessly around Susie, screamed as Susie drowned from blood filling her lungs they hadn’t the equipment or time to diagnose or help: screamed at their helplessness, at the injustice that took innocence but passed over her, stained and compromised with living: screamed beside the dead child until she lost her voice altogether.

Nor was Anne consoled in the slightest by the information after the autopsy that Susie would have died from a massive bleed in her brain no matter what anyone could have done.

Susie was gone: Anne was still pointlessly here.

A yelp from Ben broke the memory as he pulled free from Anne’s clenched hand. The fox still cried outside like a wounded child, but more weakly, as though farther away. Would it cry like that if its mother had come, she wondered? She imagined weasels rending the helpless animal, and an unreasoning panic drove her out. She found the box overturned and heard weak cries from the pines near the irregular angle of the cranberry bog that jutted sharply into her property. There, she thought, panicky, under the chair by the picnic table in the middle of the pines.

She picked him up and stroked the damp fur, then, carried on a tide of emotion, ran across the meadow behind Florence and Frank’s to Aunt Louisa’s. The back patio was damp and cool underfoot, and smelled of the new paint laid down earlier that day. Fortunately it was dry. She banged at the door.

Auntie! Auntie! Open up! It’s me, Annie!

She went on knocking until a light went on in Aunt Louisa’s bedroom. Then she waited, shifting foot to foot on the cold cement while the old lady inside put on a robe and slowly made her way with a cane to the back door. The outside light flashed on. Aunt Louisa opened the door.

At 85 her face still kept the shape and character of a younger woman. Prim lips set under a fine nose, although her once beautiful eyes now swam behind thick glasses in a nest of wrinkles. She was still thin and straight shouldered and had lost none of her alertness.

She took one look at her wild-eyed niece and said nothing, only shifted her attention to the fox, then to Anne’s cotton nightgown that was even more worn than her usual run of clothes.

You’re a sight.

I’ve got the fox!

No robe, not even flipflops.

I put him in a box and he fell out and yes I did feed him he sucked from my fingers and I’m never going to get any sleep tonight and it’s not cold!

There’s quite a big box in my attic. Aunt Louisa meant the upstairs bedrooms she used for storage now that she no longer went up any stairs.

That’s got all the Easter costumes in it—

So what? The class pageant is long past.

That is pretty big… Anne conceded.

Aunt Louisa nodded.

Here, you hold him while I get it. But the old lady drew back in alarm.

No, you keep him! All those birds you tried to save died, Annie, and the chipmunk with the head at right angles after one of the Lamazo trucks hit it: I don’t want any more involvements.

The heat was almost unbearable in the second floor bedroom where they stored the costumes as Anne emptied the box with one hand, not daring to put the fox down. Then she dragged the box downstairs. Aunt Louisa waited by the door, leaning with both hands on her cane, and stirred only to drop a robe over Anne’s shoulders with a look that cut off discussion.

Anne ran across the wet grass exhilarated by the same stars that had felt so hostile earlier, the wind of her running playing with her nightgown and robe and hair. Home she lined the box and set it outside her window with a fresh bowl of mix. She held the fox a moment and soothed him, then set him down. He was still while she stood beside the box looking at the clear stars of the Milky Way. She wondered suddenly how much of the light came from dead stars, the light of each star going on forever after its source became a husk in a black coffin. She shuddered, her giddy mood swinging again, and went in.

Surely, Anne thought as she heard the fox’s cries begin again, surely his mother will come and sink her confused child’s cries into her maternal silence. So much goodwill can’t go unrewarded! Sleep, sleep, Anne thought as she twisted in her bed.

Instead, for two hours she sobbed, fighting her grief over Susie’s death while the fox cried below her window. She hadn’t suffered like this for a year—the terrible crying spells of the first two years following Susie’s death had stopped and a precarious balance been struck. But as the fox went on it seemed finally that Susie cried outside, and then that some animal’s wild grief came from Susie’s lips as she lay in the small country clinic.

Anne flung off the covers, clasped her fists, grabbed Ben and dragged him downstairs into the basement and, slamming him shut, stalked out.

Once you’re gone you’re gone! she said. The fox fell silent. No one comes for you! No one you want!

Anne carried him to her bedroom and set his box beside her.

Now be quiet!

A moment of silence while they looked at each other. Anne flung herself back. The crying resumed.

She ground out: This is not funny!—and dissolved into a hysterics mingled with the fox’s cries.

What a night, she gasped, and lifted the fox beside her. He lay still now, silently enduring her strokes; when she started to doze in the welcome silence he snuggled between her arm and breast. There he was lulled to sleep at last by the steady rise and fall of her breasts and the heart he felt beating beside his own.

2

ANNE

Anne raced down a country lane a rich, earthy red, the foliage vivid greens, the sky with a purity of tone like a soprano’s high C. She held a slight girl, face hidden, barefoot, slovenly, with an unruly shock of shining blueblack hair. Who is she? Anne wondered, but didn’t stop to take a better look because some horror was closing in on them. She saw a shack in an overgrown clearing and hurried towards it. Its gray roof shingles were broken; bleached, plywood walls curled out at the corners. The roof sagged and the whole structure tilted to one side.

Anne stumbled through the open door and rammed it shut. Blood pounded in her ears as she held the child’s dark head tight against her neck. She spun around in fear: something was inside with them. But there was nothing, only the child, only herself squeezing the child—

squeezing until small hands struck against her—

Anne was the menace—.

A head was pressed against her chin and, as Anne gasped awake, heart pounding, withdrawn. She sat up abruptly. The small fox looked at her wide-eyed, arched its back and hissed.

There, there! she laughed, the dream swiftly dimming in the early light filling the room. Don’t be afraid." She reached for the fox before it fell off the bed, stroking the soft fur. His snout looked blunter than a fox’s should, thanks to the soft baby fur, though there was no doubt about what it was—a fox by any other name is a…An adult coat was already starting, those long gray black-tipped hairs she’d noticed last night.

How old are you, baby? Old enough to leave the den? How old is that? She tried to remember if the fox in the cranberry bog had this sort of fur or coloring.

Why have eyes, she chided herself, looking and seeing nothing but a generality. A fox. Well, she said, holding him to her face, I’m the best you’ve got. He dazzled Anne with the freedom she saw in his look. Ben’s scratching to get out of the basement broke the spell.

She left the fox