Second Chances (13 page)

Richard sat still in his chair, listening to Ben speak and
afraid to interrupt. He was mute and uncomfortable; some of what Ben was saying
struck a chord in him, awakening memories he buried long ago. 

Certainly when he envisioned coming to Jason’s clinic to
visit this conversation hadn’t been a part of it. He thought it would be
incessantly boring and a waste of time. 

Or, maybe he had been expecting it. Subconsciously, at
least. Ben spoke from the heart, a sad young man with nothing to lose. Ben had
hit his bottom and was here trying to figure out if he could ever be redeemed.

Maybe Richard had realized that this conversation
was
a possibility. His hands were sweating and his mind rebelled, trying to bury
his own memories. There was nothing he could do to help Ben, and listening to
him speak would serve no purpose other than to remind Richard of his own past.

Right?

“After about a week of wallowing in self-pity, though, my
outlook started to change. My anger shifted from being mad at myself for
screwing up to mad at my uncle Roger for throwing me out.  I messed up,
sure, but only that one time and because of my Dad.  I hadn’t been
prepared for that kind of a situation to occur, and a little lapse wasn’t such
a big deal.  

“I decided that I should have been given a second chance.
Any decent Christian would have forgiven me, not tossed me on the street. It
wouldn’t have been a problem if he hadn’t thrown me out, and so maybe Roger
wanted me to fail all along.

“He’d set me up to fail, so really it was
his
fault I
was out here alone. Not mine.  He hadn’t even offered to give me my stuff
back.  I didn’t have much of anything that was rightfully mine, but that
wasn’t the point. What kind of self-righteous prick throws a kid on the street
after one chance?

“So,” Ben said, scrubbing at his cheek, “I did what made
sense.  I felt like he owed me, so I went to collect.  I broke into
his house, and I was piss drunk. 

“It was the middle of the night, something like four
am.  I probably made all kinds of noise as I went through his drawers and
cabinets, taking anything small enough to fit in my pockets. I was frantic. I
found his wallet and shoved the bills into my pocket, then threw the wallet in
the trash. Found some jewelry his wife wore and took that too.

“At some point he woke up and came downstairs.  He had
a baseball bat, but he didn’t use it. He confronted me instead, said he was
going to call the police. He said I would be going to jail if I didn’t leave
right now.  

“So I punched him and took the bat away.  He wasn’t a
big man, and by this point he was pretty old, so when he came at me I held him
back easily.  I laughed at him and taunted him, calling him all sorts of
terrible things. Then I threw him into the wall.    

“He crumpled to the ground in a heap and I busted out
laughing.  I heard him moaning and it just made me laugh more.  Like
a joke that isn’t even that funny but by God you just can’t stop. 

“His dog came running out of the kitchen, a little Cocker
Spaniel, barking at me.  I kicked it into the wall beside him and that
just made me laugh even harder.  It wasn’t even funny, because I loved
that stupid little dog, I just couldn’t stop.  

“I remember grabbing a bottle of wine off the countertop and
staggering back outside, laughing my head off.”

Ben paused here, tears streaming down his cheeks freely
now.  He sniffled.  

“I kicked the goddamned dog,” he said softly, shaking his
head in disbelief, “and was proud of myself for it. It was the lowest point in
my life, by far, but I didn’t know it at the time.  I’d gone a long way
down before, after my sister had died, but Roger propped me back up. 

“But this time I just crashed at the bottom. Roger was good
to me, and I was too selfish and stuck on myself to even care.  I threw an
old man into the wall, kicked his dog, and was proud of myself for it, like I
had really accomplished something.

“At the time, though, all I did was start wandering
more.  Cops never showed up to arrest me so I don’t know if Roger called
the police or not.  I kept wandering, spent the last of Roger’s money,
sold the little things I’d stolen from him and his wife, and did anything I
could to keep myself drunk.  Screw Roger, screw Desiree. I drank.

“But the relief was gone. The self-pity fell to ashes as I
started to realize what I had done.  I was the lowest of the low, the sort
of scum I’d promised myself I would never become.  What kind of person
would do something like that to another person, let alone a person who was good
to them?

“A month passed, and that dragged into two.  I spent a
good number of nights drunk, and when I wasn’t drunk I would cry. I kept
wandering, just like when I was younger, only it wasn’t the same this
time.  I wasn’t running from something like the death of my sister. I was
just running.  This time there was nothing I could escape from.  

“I was at the end of my rope.  I could see it all so
clearly, even at the time, but it was like staring at a blurry picture.  I
knew what I was, and how sad I had become, but I just didn’t really admit
it.  I was lost, confused, and lying about everything.

“The only thing I kept from my time at Roger’s was that
stupid broken phone.  I would look at it, once in a while, and then
chuckle to myself.  It was as if the phone was a reminder of the man I
almost became. The man Desiree fell in love with.  That man was a lie. A
cheat on the system.  
This 
was the real man. The one
living in doorways and on park benches, staggering around for his next drink.
 

“I was almost twenty-seven years old with nothing to show
for my life except an addiction to alcohol.  I blamed my Mom. I blamed my Dad. 
I blamed Roger and Desiree and I even blamed my little sister.  The only
person I didn’t blame was me.”

Ben leaned back in his chair and let out a deep breath,
wiping the tears away. He looked younger to Richard. More fragile in the chair.
Defenseless and vulnerable.

“Then everything changed.  My world was flipped on its
head.  This was two months ago. I was staying at one of the shelters near
here. One of the guys, Mike something or another, worked there.  An older
guy, friendly and welcoming, he always tried to get me to talk. 

“I never wanted to because, well, what the hell was I
supposed to say? ‘Hi, I’m Ben. Don’t be nice to me or I might beat you up and
kick your dog’? 

“But Mike was persistent. He saw me looking at my stupid
broken phone that I kept in my pocket and asked me about it.  I told him
I’d broken it a few months ago and that it was a gift from my uncle.  It
was the kind of phone where you buy minutes whenever you need them instead of
setting up a contract.  

“I’d only ever used it to text Desiree, and she always
teased me about how slow I typed on it.  She said I looked like an old
grandpa sending messages, and I’d tell her if she talked on the phone like a
normal person instead of only communicating in texts I wouldn’t have such a hard
time.

“He said he might have an extra phone lying around his house
if I still had minutes to use up. He said they never expire. I didn’t
know, it had been so long since I’d actually used the damn thing, but I said
sure. 

“What the hell? Why not? We could give it a try. Anyway he
brought his phone to the shelter the next night and we swapped those little
cards in the back.  Then we turned the new one on and started going
through it, you know, to see what was on there from six months ago. We were
just bored and looking for something to do, you know?

“The minutes did expire, it turns out,” Ben said, “but it
still had the text messages saved on the account.  Mike showed me how to
look at them, and we realized one of them was new.  Well, not ‘new’
exactly, but it had come after I broke the phone. It was around midnight the
night I got in the fight with my Dad. The last text message I received.  

“It was Desiree, and all the message said was: ‘had my
doctor appointment today and took a pregnancy test. Call me. Very important.’”

Ben stopped talking here, staring at the floor. His
breathing was slow and his eyes were closed. 

“We sat there, Mike and me, staring at that message for
about an hour. Neither of us were able to speak.  When I finally looked up
at Mike he looked sad.  The only thing he would say was: ‘Man, I’m sorry.’

“I asked him why he was sorry.  He just shook his
head.  ‘Since you’ll probably never get to see your kid,’ he said.  

“Then Mike just walked away and left me alone with the
phone.  It took a couple more minutes before it really sank in what he had
said and I ran to a payphone. I called Desiree, but the number was out of
service. Her number had changed, so I tried calling her parents’ house. Her
little sister answered. She recognized my voice, and when I asked if Desiree
was pregnant, all she said was ‘stay away from her Ben’ and hung up.

“I stopped drinking,” Ben said.  “I stopped that night.
It was like a ton of bricks had been slammed into my back and I could barely
breathe whenever I thought about it. 

“I mean, what if she
was
pregnant? What if she was
pregnant with 
my child
? I don’t know how to explain it…it was
like…I don’t know…like maybe if I was capable of having a child there was hope
for me yet. Like I could still do something good in this world.  Like I
wasn’t a total screw up. 

“I couldn’t even imagine touching a drink.  I had to
figure this out.  I had to make it a reality one way or another.  I
asked everyone there for a lift back to her town—it was about an hour away—and
some guy took me back to the house where she lived. 

“We sat on the street, just watching, for a couple minutes.
It didn’t take long before we saw her.  She was home with her parents
making dinner, and she was very pregnant.  Looked like a watermelon
sticking out of her stomach.

“And that was
my
watermelon. My child.  I
couldn’t believe…I didn’t know what I was going to do.  The guy who drove
me said I should go up and talk to her, but I couldn’t.  I 
couldn’t. 
What
the hell was I supposed to say? ‘Hi honey. It’s been six months but I finally
got your text and would like to be a part of your life again.’”

Ben shook his head.  “No. I couldn’t imagine doing
something like that. She didn’t deserve that. So I went back to the shelter and
decided I would clean up my act.  I would get my life together and stop
drinking. Forever.

“I would swear off alcohol, figure out some way to get a
job, and talk to Desiree.  I would tell her that at least I wanted to make
some money to give her to raise the baby.  And maybe, just maybe, if she
could find it in her heart to forgive me, I could be a father for that child
and see it once in a while.

“I’m not stupid. I wasn’t shooting for the moon. I didn’t
plan on sweeping her into my arms or declaring my love and winning her
back.  But I just thought, you know, maybe there was a chance I could
contribute to the raising of my child. I could, maybe, do something good for a
change. Something that wasn’t just about me.

“That’s when I heard about 
this
 clinic.
People at the shelter said the guy who ran it could help me. He’d helped a lot
of them through some really tough times and was really friendly. A great guy. 
I figured, what the hell, I could give it a shot. The last time I’d quit I did
it alone, but everyone needs help sometimes.

“That’s when I started coming.  I started making regular
trips here.  I didn’t talk. You gotta understand, I don’t really like to
talk, especially in groups, but I didn’t mind coming to listen.  It was
rough, a lot rougher than the first time I’d quit drinking, but I stuck with
it.  I was going to have a kid, you know? So I forced myself to get over
it and came every single day.”

Ben looked back at the floor, a fresh tear making an
appearance. He brushed it away and rubbed his hands over his face.

“You left tonight, though,” Richard said.  

“I decided I’d had enough.”

“Why? What changed?”

A long moment slipped past, and then Ben made a chortling
sound, shaking his head.

“Me,” Ben said, leaning back and chuckling sadly.  “I
woke up.  Look at me, man.  Just take a nice long look.  I’m
useless.  I’ve never been good at anything, I’m a drunk. I don’t have any
money or property to my name. I don’t have anything to offer 
anyone
,
let alone a little kid who needs a father.  

“It started to hit me a few weeks ago. I’m out of her life.
She only sent that one message. Nothing else. She never reached out, never
looked for me.  I was just a forgotten piece of Desiree’s history, the
only legacy being the seed I’d planted inside her.  She doesn’t want me
back in her life, man.  She’s moved on.

“The only thing I could do by going back is to stir up old
problems.  Open old wounds. If I wanted to fix this, to really make it
right, I needed to go back a long time ago.  Right after I’d screwed up. I
needed to go back clean and apologize for what I had done. 

“But I wasn’t there.  I can blame the broken phone,
sure, but it’s a hollow excuse.  If I’d gotten that text message on that night,
drunk, I’m not sure anything would be different.  I’d left her when she
needed me the most because I was a coward.”

“So you feel like you can’t go back?” Richard said.  “You
think she’s moved on, so you’re going to give up?”

“That isn’t why I can’t go back,” Ben said softly.  “If that
was the only reason, I still might have given it a shot.  But tonight I
really realized why I can never go back.”

“Why?” Richard asked. His fists were clenched tightly,
shaking.

Ben let out a deep breath.  “Because what if she 
did
 take
me back?  What if she did forgive me and let me back into her life? Then I
would have a kid to take care of, and…I don’t know how to take care of kids,
man.  I don’t know anything about them or what I’m supposed to do.