Becky
A huge sign billowing across the entrance archway reads Solstice Shakedown! in dark blue text. The snowfall stopped late last night, as Chance and I were sleeping in the car, my head resting on his shoulder, so that the maintenance people only had to clear it out and warm up the machines. I remember when I read the article that the organizer said he wasn’t sure if it was worth it, bringing everything out just for one special event, but as Chance and I walk through the entrance, I can see right away that it is. People from all over are here, so many that the crowd is thick, impenetrable in some places. People climb onto the Ferris Wheel, giggle as they head toward the Tunnel of Love, hand in hand, prod each other teasingly as they climb into the ghost train ride. Bumper carts and air rifles and cotton candy: all of it combining to make me feel like a little girl again, hand up in the air clutched in Mom’s, wishing the day would never end.
Chance takes my elbow and leads me to the edge of the crowd, near the railing which encloses the attractions, away from the rides where there are fewer people. After so long spent cooped up in the motel, it’s good to be outside. Not that being cooped up was necessarily a bad thing with Chance to keep me warm…But as I watch Chance, his predator’s eyes scanning the crowd, I see at once that he’s not comfortable. He looks out of his element; I get the sense that Chance is more of a lone wolf, the man outside the crowd, watching it but rarely entering it.
I make as though to cuddle into him, but he sort of turns away. Not in a mean way, but a silent way of telling me he’s not comfortable with that. He’s so frustrating. One second we’ll make kissing love in the shower, and the next he won’t even hold me.
We stand here in silence for a time, watching the crowd move by. It’s early, a tiny glint of sunlight shining through the crowds, and there are kids everywhere, running all over the place, squealing at their parents. I watch the kids, thinking about how I was sick over the toilet bowl, thinking about how I must be pregnant. There’s no other possibility. I haven’t had my period in six weeks. What else could it be? I watch the kids and I turn back to Chance and I reflect that the likelihood that Chance and I will ever take our child here, giggling and playing, is low. I can’t imagine Chance dropping his hitter persona and becoming a father. I swallow as that thought works its way through me, making me feel rotten.
“What’re you thinkin’ about?” Chance asks, hands in his pockets, never once taking his eyes from the crowd. Luckily there are so many people that this isn’t conspicuous.
“Nothing,” I say, not wanting to admit it. Though, I’ll have to tell him sooner or later, won’t I? I can’t hide it forever. He’ll want to know why I’m being sick all the time.
“Nothin’?” Chance mutters. “You’re over there chewing your cheek so loudly I can hear it.”
I blush. “I do not chew my cheek!” I protest, but now that he’s mentioned it, my cheek does hurt.
“Course not,” Chance says.
“I was thinking about my mom,” I say. “She used to bring me here all the time when I was a kid, every day during school holidays sometimes. It was when my dad was busy with his mob stuff, you know? A way to get me way, way out of that life and into this one, a way to bring me somewhere safe where she knew I’d have a good time and not have to see any of that business. Last night you said I might have another reason for wanting to come. Maybe this was it. I wanted to try and reclaim a little of my mom.”
“You don’t see her much?” Chance says, his eyes tracking a man with his hands in his green bomber jacket and a cigarette clutched between his teeth. It seems like he’s hardly listening to me, but when I don’t answer, he says, “Do you go to California to see her?”
“No,” I say. “I haven’t been down there yet. I—it’s silly.”
“What’s silly?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
He grunts out a half-laugh, half-snort. “Tell me, Becky.”
“It’s just that I keep thinking I can make dad better.” I talk quickly, aware that I’m revealing something that makes me feel very uncomfortable right now. “Even after he sold me to Julian, even after he shouted at me that I better still be a virgin, even after everything, I still think there’s some good left in him. He and my mom used to be really happy, Mom tells me. Before he started getting into gambling and drinking and he was just a regular old enforcer. Or maybe there isn’t such a thing as a regular old enforcer.”
“Maybe not,” Chance says. “What’d that look like? Most of ’em are fucked, Becky. And hitters are worse.”
I see that his gaze is following a young boy and his father, both of them laughing, the father leaning down to hand the boy some cotton candy. Chance watches them for a long time, and I’m sure there’s some hurt in his eyes. I know he isn’t the intimate type, but after spending almost two months with him, I’m getting to know his looks pretty well. And the expression he’s wearing now is something close to pain. Without stopping to think how he’ll react, I place my hand on his arm and give it a squeeze. He flinches as though ready to turn on me and go into hitman mode, but then he relaxes, hands buried in his pockets, eyes fixated on the crowd.
“What were you thinking about, just now?” I ask.
“Nothing,” he grunts.
“Chance!” I snap. “I want to be close to you, I want to be here for you, but how am I supposed to when you won’t tell me what’s going on in here?” I tap his chest with my finger.
“I never asked you to figure out what’s goin’ on in there.”
“Now you’re just being a jerk.” I give his arm another squeeze. “You were looking at that boy and his dad and you were thinking about something. I saw it in your face.”
“Saw it in my face?” Chance laughs darkly. “Nobody sees shit in my face, Becky. That’s part of my job. I’ve gotta be unreadable.”
“Well, I saw it, and I think you’re skirting the question because you know I’m right.”
All of Chance’s looks are smaller versions of other men’s. When he smiles, it’s a slight, shadowed smile instead of a wide, cheesy grin. So when the corner of his lip twitches downward, I know that he’s acknowledging what I’m saying. I know that I’m right. I lean close to him, whispering in his ear. Maybe I’m coming on a bit strong, but he’s the father of my child and I know very little about him. It’s not good enough.
“After all we’ve shared, you can tell me, Chance,” I whisper. “After all we’ve done, you don’t have to be nervous around me.”
He shrugs, and then says quietly, “I don’t know what good talkin’ about shit does, Becky. Never saw the good in it.”
“Humor me,” I say. “Just think of it as doing me a favor.”
He mutters something I don’t properly hear—it sounds like, women, but I’m not sure—and then says, “You’re a goddamn psychopath, wantin’ to dig deep into a man who’s empty inside. For no damn reason.”
There is a damn reason, I want to say. I’m pregnant with your child and you’re still half a stranger to me, even if your body is well known to me now.
“Fine, I’ll tell you what I was thinkin’,” he says. “I was lookin’ at that kid and his dad and I was thinkin’ about the time Boss took me into a room with an enforcer called Irish Mick who Boss said might adopt me, ’cause my mom was gone and my dad was dead. I was young then so I was pretty damned excited about it. Stupid little kid. I even put on a fancy shirt, the one Dad used to make me wear to church, and went in there all ready to be accepted by a new daddy.” He shakes his head. “This Irish Mick knelt down, took my face in his hands like I was a fuckin’ prize dog or somethin’, and said, I don’t like the look in his eyes. He looks like trouble. And that was that. See? Not very exciting, eh?”
I feel like I’m going to be sick all over again, but somehow I manage to keep it down.
“Chance,” I say. “Irish Mick is what they call Mikey, my dad. Did this man have dark eyes, and—wait, back then he would’ve had black hair down to his shoulders, a sort of greasy look?” I remember seeing a photo of him and my mom from a few years ago and thinking he looked like a hippie.
“Yeah,” Chance says. “Damn, so maybe it’s the best he didn’t take me. We would’a been brother and sister.”
I rest my head on his shoulder, hugging close to him. “I’m sorry you never had a home, Chance. I know that must’ve been hard.”
He pushes away from the railing, walking back toward the crowd. “Come on,” he calls over his shoulder. “We don’t wanna miss all the rides, do we?”