Chances Are

Richard Russo

• Publisher: Allen & Unwin
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781911630388
• eBook ISBN: 9781760871680
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

One beautiful September day, three sixty-six-year-old men convene on Martha's Vineyard, friends ever since meeting in college in the 1960s. They couldn't have been more different then, or even today - Lincoln's a commercial real estate broker, Teddy a tiny-press publisher and Mickey an ageing musician. But each man holds his own secrets, in addition to the monumental mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since 1971: the disappearance of their friend Jacy. Now, decades later, the distant past interrupts the present as the truth about what happened to Jacy finally emerges, forcing the men to reconsider everything they thought they knew about each other. Shot through with Russo's trademark comedy and humanity, Chances Are also introduces a new level of suspense and menace that will quicken the reader's heartbeat throughout this absorbing saga of how friendship's bonds are every bit as constricting and rewarding as those of family. For both longtime fans and lucky newcomers, Chances Are is a stunning demonstration of a highly-acclaimed author deepening and expanding his remarkable body of work.

Mickey

Though the season was different—the end of summer, not the beginning—the moon rose over the distant waves just like it did back in 1971. That night, too, there’d been a chill in the air, one that eventually drove them inside. Down the slope Mason Troyer’s house was dark, just as it had been then. Yesterday Mickey had even considered strolling down there and offering a much-belated apology for punching him. Had the man’s jaw completely healed? Mickey’s own right hand, which he’d never seen a doctor about, still ached on rainy days and was prone to swelling. His own damn fault, of course. His father, who’d been a brawler in his youth, had warned him about physical violence, both its dangers and, especially, its pleasures. When you threw a punch, whatever was coiled in you got released, and release, well, what was better than that? Starting and finishing a fight with a single punch, as Mickey’d done with Troyer? That was the absolute best. Proving that any job, no matter how dubious, could be done well. Indeed, it was his father that Mickey had been thinking about that afternoon outside the SAE house. Bert. That’s what the guys in his father’s crew all called Michael Sr., due to his resemblance to Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. “Hey, Bert,” they’d say. “What makes the muskrat guard his musk?” And his old man, playing along, would reply, “Kuh-ridge.” And damned if those stone lions hadn’t looked just like him, too.

By contrast, the beating Mickey’d given Jacy’s father had felt like a distasteful duty, not even remotely pleasurable. Maybe it was the office setting, and that there’d been so many people around, the majority of them women, all of them horrified. Mickey’s first punch had reduced the man’s nose to ruined cartilage, and yeah, okay, that had felt pretty good. So had saying, “Your daughter says hello,” as the man lay there on the snazzy carpet. Maybe if that first punch had landed flush and he was out for the count, Mickey would feel better about it. Instead, Calloway had struggled to his feet not once but three more times, as if he didn’t want Mickey to stint on the beating they both knew he had coming. So Mickey had obliged, though with each subsequent punch he’d applied less force and torque. When the cops arrived and cuffed him, he was glad. He wouldn’t have to hit the man anymore. The experience had so soured him on violence that he hadn’t punched anyone since, except occasionally in his dreams.

Though the moon on the waves and the chill in the air were reminiscent of 1971, tonight was different, too, and not just because Jacy was gone. This night there would be no singing. They were sixty-six now, far too old to convince themselves that their chances were awfully good, that the world gave the tiniest little fuck about their hopes and dreams, assuming they had any left. Even so, before coming out onto the deck, he put some music on low. Delia, still pissed at him for blaming her for how things had turned out, finally did drift off, and she slept more soundly when there was music playing. Most nights she went to bed wearing headphones, claiming music muted the voices in her head that always reminded her that she was a piece of shit. Tonight, to mute his own dark thoughts, Mickey had rooted around in the kitchen cabinets until he found the bottle of good scotch Lincoln had mentioned buying in town. He hardly ever drank hard liquor anymore, not since going to the doctor with shortness of breath and being told about his defective heart valve. Of course it was defective. Was he not his father’s son? The pitcher of Bloody Marys he’d mixed that morning was the first booze he’d tasted in over a year. He’d promised Delia he was done with the hard stuff, and until today he’d kept his word in the vain hope that it might help her keep hers. Fat fucking chance. Mickey disliked standing in judgment, but he did wish people wouldn’t lie about being clean when they weren’t. Was that so much to ask?

Yet what was his own life but a web of lies, most of them unnecessary. That he should want his friends to believe he was still a serious boozer when all he ever had anymore was beer—which his doctors told him would kill him less quickly—mystified him. The mountain of ribs he’d eaten tonight had also been for show. Hell, if there’d been any coke around, he probably would’ve done that, too, all to convince Lincoln and Teddy that he was who he’d always been, that his life was proceeding according to plan, that he regretted nothing because there was nothing to regret. He wouldn’t even have admitted to the motorcycle accident if the evidence weren’t so gruesomely visible, the livid white scar at his hairline. If it had been just Lincoln, he might’ve taken his chances. One day back at Minerva, Lincoln had noticed his government professor limping and asked why. Because, the man informed him, his left leg was a prosthesis right up to the hip. He’d been clomping around like Captain Ahab all term, but Lincoln had only just noticed. In some ways his friend’s habit of not really taking things in made him the perfect college student, more interested in what things meant than that they existed in the first place, as if you could determine the significance of something without actually observing it. Teddy, however, had an eagle eye, especially for anything involving bodily injury. It was as if he expected whatever he came in contact with to maim him. No hope whatsoever he wasn’t going to notice the scar.

Had his father lived, things would’ve been different, Mickey thought, but maybe this was another lie. Strange, and yet somehow fitting, to be back here where the life of deception he hadn’t planned on had begun. This island. This house.

_________

BY THE TIME the guys returned, Mickey had dozed off out on the deck. The crunch of tires on gravel woke him, and then he heard car doors open and close, his friends’ voices muted in the soft night. He was relieved. He’d told Lincoln that Teddy would be ready and waiting for him when he arrived at the hospital, but he hadn’t been at all sure that would happen. Teddy hadn’t been officially discharged, so it was possible the graveyard nurse might try to stop him. Or maybe when he tried to get out of bed and dress himself, Teddy would find he couldn’t. But no, here they were. A light came on inside and a moment later Lincoln appeared behind the glass door, his face a thundercloud. Sliding it open, he stepped aside for Teddy, who paused in the doorway, wobbling and woozy. A thick white bandage the size of a tennis ball was affixed over his right eye.

Mickey stood up. “Can I help?”

“I got him,” Lincoln said, his fury barely contained as he guided Teddy outside. When he was settled, Lincoln started to take a seat himself but noticed the whiskey bottle and went back into the kitchen.

“Well,” Mickey said, looking Teddy over, “you look better than you did at the club. How do you feel?”

“Weak. Not much pain at the moment.”

“What’d they give you?”

“I forget. Some next-gen pain pills. They’re working, is the main thing.”

“I hear the trick is to stop taking them when the pain goes away. You up to this?”

“Wake me up if I nod off. I think I’ve already figured out most of it.”

“Yeah?” Mickey didn’t see how that could conceivably be true.

“Not figured out, exactly,” Teddy said. “It’s more like . . . I just woke up knowing.”

Mickey chuckled. “Good, then you can tell it.”

When Teddy offered up the weakest of smiles, Mickey felt a wave of guilt wash over him. What he was doing—demanding that his friends listen to his story this very night—was both selfish and cruel, though the alternative would’ve been to sneak off the island with Delia and let them imagine the worst, which Lincoln, quite possibly, was already doing.

When the door slid open again, Lincoln reappeared with two glasses holding a few cubes of ice and set them in the middle of the table. “You probably shouldn’t,” he told Teddy, who took a glass anyway. Lincoln poured himself two fingers, gave Teddy a splash, then set the bottle down within Mickey’s reach. The message was clear: he could pour his own, which he did. “Okay,” he began. “I’m not sure where to start, but—”

“It was an accident,” Lincoln blurted. “Begin there.”

“I’m sorry?”

“How she died. Explain how it was an accident.”

“Lincoln,” Teddy said, his voice almost a whisper. “Let him tell his own story.”

“Yeah, Mick,” Lincoln agreed. “Tell us how Jacy died.”

“She died in my arms,” Mickey said. He could feel her there still, almost forty years later.

“An accident.”

“Yes,” he confessed, though he had no idea how Lincoln could’ve intuited this.

Lincoln swallowed hard. “Is she buried here?”

Stunned, Mickey shook his head. If the idea weren’t completely lunatic, he’d have sworn that by here his friend meant under this very sloping lawn. “I’m lost, man,” he said. “Why would she be buried here?”

“Don’t lie,” Lincoln said. “Don’t you fucking lie, Mick. The cops will be here tomorrow and they’ll dig up every inch of this place. If she’s here, they’ll find her.”

Laughing was exactly the wrong thing to do, of course, but really, he couldn’t help himself. Lie your ass off for forty years and everybody believes you, but when you finally decide to tell the truth . . . “Lincoln,” he said, “I don’t have the first clue what you’re—”

But this was as far as he got, because Lincoln, showing no signs of back stiffness now, came flying out of his chair. Grabbing Mickey by the throat with his left hand, his right was balled into a fist and cocked. He would’ve thrown the punch, too, Mickey was certain, if the door to the deck hadn’t slid open just then. Seeing Delia in the doorway, blinking and groggy, Lincoln let go of Mickey’s neck, straightened up and turned to face her. When Mickey rose to his feet, Teddy did, too.

“It’s okay,” Mickey told her, his voice raspy. “Come on out and meet my friends.”

For a tortuous moment nobody moved. But then Teddy went over to where Delia stood in the doorway and put his arms around her. Startled, she glanced at Mickey over his shoulder, but allowed the embrace. After another long moment Teddy stepped back so he could study her at arm’s length. “You look like your mom,” he said, smiling.

The smile she returned was Jacy’s, to a T.

THEY’D AGREED TO MEET at the restaurant adjacent to the ferry landing in Woods Hole, but he wasn’t sure she’d show up. Their hasty plan was hatched yesterday afternoon when Lincoln was on the phone with Anita, and Teddy, in one of his periodic funks, had gone for a walk.

But a lot had happened since then, and Mickey wouldn’t have blamed her for having second thoughts. “Since w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Prologue
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Mickey
• Teddy
• Lincoln
• Teddy
• Acknowledgments