“A Second Chance”
By Meredith Black
Rebecca Clark watched the rain fall through the cracks of the old tobacco barn on the farm in Southern Maryland where she lived with her Aunt Mary and Uncle John. Then she looked up at the dark clouds that hovered above farmland to the east and the road to the west, and wondered, as she did every time she looked up at the sky, if her mother—w¬¬¬¬¬herever she was—was watching the same clouds. She’d never known her mother. Growing up, Rebecca had always begged Aunt Mary to tell the story of her mother. Now on the eve of her fifteenth birthday, Rebecca recalled fondly those days sitting in Aunt Mary’s kitchen and listening to her tell the story…
“Your mother was very beautiful,” Aunt Mary always began. Then she smiled at Rebecca. “You have much of her in you. Same blue eyes, same shiny golden hair—only hers was longer.”
At this point in the story, Rebecca would demand, “And tell me where she is now!” Her tone was half despairing over the undeniable truth of the absence of her mother, but it was also half-filled with excitement because she knew that what Aunt Mary was about to say would fill her with a pride in her mother.
Aunt Mary said, “She’s in New York, the land where all is a stage.”
“The land where all is a stage,” Rebecca repeated, her eyes wide with wonder. She looked out the window at the cornfields golden in the sun, and the little girl tried to imagine a wooden platform covering them all the way to where they met the sky. “And what is she doing in New York?” Rebecca asked.
Aunt Mary said, “She’s Penelope, the great actress. And the president sometimes comes to see her plays. And she has a butler who puts a velvet cushion under her feet whenever she sits down, and she lives in a great house with windows framed with the finest diamonds.”
Rebecca’s face first registered awe, then her expression darkened and she asked in a fearful whisper, “Will she ever want to come back here?”
Aunt Mary turned and seeing the child’s fearful eyes, smiled compassionately at her. Rebecca sat at the kitchen table wrapped in a shawl that guarded against the bitter autumn breeze. The breeze came into the kitchen through the partially-opened sliding glass door, and mixed with the fresh aroma of Aunt Mary’s famous blueberry muffins wafting through the oven door.
“Oh, yes she will be back,” Aunt Mary said confidently. “Your mother had to go to New York of course,” she continued. “There were no jobs here. And it was always her dream to be an actress. But I tell you Becky (her nickname for the little girl) as sure as the nightingale sings your mother will be back here with us one day. She said so when she left.” Shaking the mixing spoon for emphasis she added, “You’ll see. You, Uncle John, and I will see her coming through those cornfields like the Prodigal Son one day soon.” Then Aunt Mary took her rosary and made the sign of the cross with it in her hand, with a reverence that she believed would bring Penelope home more quickly…
Rebecca was brought back to reality by the sound of her Aunt Mary calling her to dinner. She and the family were having a special birthday dinner for her fifteenth birthday. After the dinner was finished, Rebecca went up to her room to be alone. She began to think about her mother again. Having recently remembered the story Aunt Mary told about her mother when she was a little girl, Rebecca felt overcome by a sudden feeling of impatience and irritation. Would her mother ever come? She felt stirred with passion then. Maybe her mother would never come and she’d be waiting here forever. Rebecca suddenly made up her mind. If she won’t come to me, then I’ll go to her, she thought.
The next day Rebecca told Aunt Mary and Uncle John about her plans to go to New York. “Sweetheart, that’s far to go,” Aunt Mary said. “Why don’t you just write her a letter? I’m sure we could find her address.”
Rebecca said stubbornly, “I’ve made up my mind.” Her blue eyes were resolute. “Because if I wait here I’ll never see her. And a letter wouldn’t be the same as seeing her in person. And what if she never answers the letter?” The sun glinted off Rebecca’s hair and for a moment Aunt Mary had a vision of her sister with the same blond hair and blue eyes. Rebecca was beginning to resemble her more every day. She didn’t tell Rebecca, but inside of her, she felt uneasy. She knew that it was possible now that she would lose Rebecca too, who it many ways was like her own daughter.
***
Rebecca was in her room packing for New York. Aunt Mary called up the stairs. “Rebecca! Will you bring me a flashlight from the attic?” Rebecca went up to the attic to fetch the flashlight. There slipping through the rafters and covered in dust was a pink leather-bound book. Impulsively, Rebecca picked it up. Turning to the first page, she read: How come I never have any choices in life? I never asked to be a mother. This thing inside me is like a parasite, sucking the life-blood out of me. What shall I do?
Intrigued, Rebecca searched the inside cover of the diary, looking for its owner. When she saw the name, her heart stopped: Penelope Clark. She couldn’t read any more and she flung the diary down. Of course she knew her mother was talking about her in the diary entry. Rebecca knew that her mother had had her when she was eighteen. Now she was filled with anger. She was sure now that her mother had abandoned her and that she had never promised to come back at all. No, Rebecca thought. I will not go to New York now. She wouldn’t chase after a mother who’d never wanted her. When she stood up, the rosary that she always carried in her pocket fell out onto the rafters. Rebecca reached down to pick it up then flung it angrily across the attic. She felt like it would be too hard to pray anymore anyway. Maybe God would abandon her too.
***
Ten years later…
The book was very good—she knew it in her heart and recently others had also confirmed it. The sky was dawning a pale pink as Rebecca got up and put on her woolen stockings and went downstairs to make a pot of coffee.
***
The outside of the bookstore was painted in neon colors, and it shone brightly, situated along the pebbled road in the small town of Wasilla in Southern California. Rebecca was setting up her table around lunchtime inside the small bookstore, called “Hook-it-up Books.” Today she would be reading a passage from her new book. It was a work of fiction and the critics loved it. But only Rebecca and her closest family members and friends knew that it was really the story of her own life, with names and places changed and improvisations in the plotline. The story was dear to Rebecca because it was her own, more real to her than the stars in the night sky, which in their stationary places illuminate parts of the world below with their brightness. It was Rebecca’s greatest desire that somehow her story would shed some light into someone else’s life, move them in such a way that she herself had never had the opportunity to be changed and moved.
The story was about her childhood, growing up without a father and a mother. How hard it was on Father’s Days and Mother’s Days and days when her classmates brought their fathers to school to talk about their jobs, or their mothers were “classroom moms,” helping out in the classrooms, bringing in cupcakes and other desserts that only moms can make. Or how hard it was to never have a mother’s comforting hug or time together having “girl talk” and looking at family photo albums. Or to never have a chance at being “daddy’s little girl.” To have to dodge the questions from her friends: “where is your mother?” “Does your dad work late every night?” Because those were the stories she made up for her friends to hide the truth that she had no parents.
Rebecca loved her Aunt Mary and Uncle John. They had been there for her all her life. Aunt Mary had been like a mother to her, but knowing that her real mother was still out there, Rebecca could never really see Aunt Mary as her mother. The story Rebecca had been told as a child—that her mother had left for New York to earn money as an actress—had always been the lifeblood that had moved her and kept her going. And the promise that her mother would return to her. Until she was 15, she had believed in that promise. Then she had discovered the diary in her aunt and uncle’s attic and she learned the truth that her mother had never wanted her at all.
The anger and the bitterness over that discovery had stuck with Rebecca all these years. That same bitterness shone through in almost every line of Rebecca’s new book. In the book, Rebecca’s imagined mother is unsympathetic and self-absorbed. She leaves Rebecca in the hands of her unfortunate and financially-strapped aunt and uncle without the promise of return in order to pursue a glamorous life on the New York stage. The mother dumps Rebecca’s father in a scene of absolute cruelty, telling him that he will never measure up to her standards. He dies soon after from a broken heart.
This book of course was fiction. But over the years Rebecca’s bitterness towards her mother had grown to the point that the story seemed plausible. She really believed the book to be the story of her mother and of Rebecca’s life. However, deep in her heart, Rebecca knew that she was probably being harsh on her mother. Rebecca did not know what kind of pressures her mother faced when she chose to abandon her. The thought had occasionally crossed her mind that maybe her mother had something else going on when she left Rebecca with her aunt and uncle and went to New York. The part in the book where she says that her mother dumped her father and he soon after died from a broken heart was a lie. The story Aunt Mary had always told her was that her father had died from a rare disease soon after she was born. But Rebecca wanted to believe that her mother was cruel and heartless, so she changed the story in her book.
***
The clouds were little puffs in the California sky on the day the letter came. The back of the envelope had little black stationary hearts. “Sealed with love,” a perfectly manicured stamp said on the back part of the envelope. When she broke the seal, the smell of fresh lilacs filled the air close to her lips, and the scent was curiously like the lilacs for sale in the flower shop across the street from where Rebecca lived.
“Dear Rebecca,” the letter began.
“I suppose you’re wondering why I’m writing to you after all these years. You’re probably wondering, where have I been all this time? Well let me explain. By the way, I’ve heard you’ve had a book published. That’s wonderful hunny! I am so very proud of you.”
At this point, Rebecca immediately knew that the letter was from her mother.
The letter continued: “Now back to my story. It was so very difficult to leave you when you were so small. I remember the little gold curl on the top of your head, how your eyes were such a clear blue that I thought how you could shed a million tears and they’d still be as faultless as the perfect blue sky—In fact, I remember everything about the way you looked when I last saw you. I can only imagine how you are now.
I left because I had to. You see, Rebecca, your father was a very sick man. And I don’t mean sick in the way your Aunt Mary has probably told you he was. What did she tell you, Rebecca? That he died of a rare disease soon after you were born? Well, the truth is Rebecca, that that is a lie. Your father’s sickness was more of an abstract kind, a sickness underneath the skin: a sickness of the mind.
I tried to live with him as best I could, but in the end things did not work out.
Do you know what one of our favorite things to do was before he got sick? We’d always watch the sunset together. It was very beautiful, sitting on the veranda watching the sun set over the cornfields. There is something wonderful about being in the moment—I hope you get the chance to understand that one day.
Anyway, your father’s sickness came on slowly. Before I knew what was happening, his illness was full-blown. He started to do things that weren’t right. He started to abuse me. One day I knew things would never again be the same between us. It was the day I told him I was pregnant with you. I think he got scared, afraid he couldn’t be a good father.
Your father seethed at me, in a voice angry and full of resentment, “Do you know how it feels…” he said. “Do you know how it feels to live each day knowing that the sky will always be gray?”
I pitied him them—his depression had obviously become so deep that he could see nothing but gray skies. But what he said next scared the living daylights out of me.
“If you have this child,” he said. “I will make sure your skies are always gray too.”
So you see, Rebecca, I had no choice. I left him. I could stand if he did something to hurt me, but the thought that he might hurt you I could not stand. So I hid you from your father by giving you away to your Aunt Mary and Uncle John. And we told you your father had died. But the truth is Rebecca, your father only died a month ago. That is why I am contacting you. He had been in a mental institution all this time.
I hope the things in this letter have not upset you. I want you to know that I love you very much. I hope we can get in touch soon.”
Sincerely,
Your loving mother, Penelope H. Clark.
When Rebecca had finished the letter, it slipped out of her hand. The contents had been that overwhelming and she was in disbelief. That her mother loved her after all was a novel thought. Rebecca couldn’t quite absorb everything in the letter—not yet. The image in her mind of a cold, unsympathetic and unacceptable mother was so ingrained in her that she couldn’t reverse that image in an instant.
Rebecca debated whether to see her mother.
***
The sky was gray when Rebecca finally, at age 25, met her mother. The tulips near Rebecca’s apartment were drooping in the rain. Few clouds blocked the long stretch of gray in the sky overhead.
Her mother looked to Rebecca older than her age. The truth was that years of hard work had worn the woman down. She didn’t tell Rebecca, but she also had a bout with cancer not too many years back. The battle with the illness had left small craters under her eyes, leftover from when lack of sleep from chemotherapy had caused dark circles under her eyes.
Her hair, thin from the cancer treatments—and just starting to bear streaks of gray—was pulled back into a tight ponytail behind her head.
She looked as if she didn’t know how to react when she first saw Rebecca. She lifted her tired hands to her face, as if she was catching her breath. Then her arms fell to her sides and she smiled tentatively, like she was trying to show her joy at seeing Rebecca and to lighten the mood.
Rebecca stood there and stared at her mother. For years she had imagined this moment and built it up in her mind until she no longer knew whether the woman standing before her was really her mother, or only one from her imagination.
Rebecca’s mother spoke. “How was your day?” she asked, the inviting smile still on her face, as if cemented there. Around them the rain had started to fall.
Then the strange impulse to hug her mother suddenly overwhelmed Rebecca. She took a step forward and hugged her. Rebecca didn’t know what to say—but then, she didn’t have to think about it, because then the words came naturally. “Mom,” she whispered, and tears were rolling down her face. “You deserve a second chance.”
The mother, worn and frail, pulled her daughter close to her.
