second chance
sandra e. mcbride
Elsa blew a cloud of steam away from the cracked Christmas mug and sat it on the cluttered table. Her slippers rasped on the cold linoleum as she shuffled across the kitchen to get a jug of milk out of the refrigerator. Through the frost patterns on the window she watched the snow blowing across the stubbled field behind the house. Only a few hardy starlings fluttered around her feeder, and she hadn't seen any deer in three days.
“Too cold for them, too cold for me,” she muttered aloud as she poured a stream of milk into her coffee.
Wrapping her old woolen robe tightly around her, she pushed aside a pile of drawings and put the jug on the table. She sat by the window and peered into the whiteness that swirled outside. Elsa shuddered as she sipped the hot, bitter coffee.
Ross would be along soon, in spite of the bad roads, she knew, and her comfortable routine, her solitary life, would change forever. Ross, good-hearted soul that he was, had offered to go to the airport in Burlington to pick up Benjamin, knowing that her old pickup truck barely ran and had no heater.
“You can't go fetch a seven-year-old kid in that old rattletrap, Elsa,” he had admonished her when she told him that Benjamin would be arriving on an 11 a. m. flight. “I'll go myself, and that'll give you time to clean this place up.”
Ross was never openly critical of her lax housekeeping, but he gave her a subtle nudge now and then. She looked around. She had been so busy working on the rough sketches for her new picture book that she hadn't swept the floor in two days. The laundry was piled in an untidy heap on top of the washing machine, and her unopened mail was scattered across the dining room table. Unopened because the first letter she had seen two days ago when she returned from the post office in town was the one from Roslyn telling her that Benjamin would be on this morning's plane.
Elsa swallowed the last of her coffee and stood up. The first thing she had to do was feed the sheep. She would fill the woodbox, too, otherwise Ross would feel the need to do it for her when he came. Ross was a good man, a kind neighbor, but Elsa hated to be beholden to anyone.
She climbed the worn, uncarpeted stairs to her bedroom. As she entered the room, her eyes fell on John's picture smiling at her from the top of her bureau. John. Her tall, slender, blond, blue-eyed, much-too-serious son. The son she raised, but barely knew. Father of Benjamin, the grandson that she did not know at all.
Her easel and all her art supplies were crammed into the corner by the window. At least she had found time to remove them from John's bedroom so Benjamin could have it. She'd arrange them in some sort of order after she got the sheep fed and the woodbox filled. She tossed off her robe and pulled on her quilted flannel shirt and threadbare chino pants, then made her way downstairs again. She slipped into her sherpa-lined denim coat, wool ski cap, heavy work boots and mittens, and stepped out into the bitter cold morning. The snow bit at her face as she trudged through the drifts to the sheep shed.
How John had hated the sheep. She wondered if Benjamin would hate them, too. “Dumbest animals God ever put on earth,” John would mutter when she sent him out to take care of them.
John hadn't liked much of anything about Vermont. She wasn't surprised when he enlisted in the Navy on his eighteenth birthday and left. She'd never been much of a mother to him. John was the biggest mistake of her life, and she'd never been able to hide it from him.
He'd been a good enough boy. It was just that she was an artist, a single parent and sole provider, and she didn't have time to fuss with little things like other mothers did. She had deadlines to meet, work that required total concentration. If she was to survive and grow artistically, she had to make sacrifices. She had realized, too late of course, that it was John that she had sacrificed.
He got stationed in San Diego, and wrote to his mother extolling the virtues of the warm, sunny climate. Then after not hearing from him for two years, she got a letter from Hawaii, enclosing a picture of himself and his bride, Roslyn. The girl, clad in a skimpy bikini, smiled coyly, her arms and one leg wrapped around John's lanky body. Elsa couldn't help feeling that the woman in the picture was taunting her.
She pulled open the door of the sheep shed, and stepped into the pungent-smelling interior. Sheltered from the wind, her breath shrouded her head in a white cloud. She pulled two bales of hay from the pile, cut the strings with her pocket knife, and tossed the bunches of fragrant dried clover into the rack. Jostling and bleating, a dozen plump, woolly sheep attacked the forage. Snow clung to their curly backs and crusted their eyelashes.
“Sheep-eyes” was the derisive nickname she had given her daughter-in-law on the rare occasions she spoke of her. Five months after the wedding picture arrived had come another showing Roslyn grinning triumphantly over a prune-faced, squinting infant. Even after giving birth, Roslyn was picture perfect—mascara, blush, lip rouge, and a lacy negligee. God, Elsa hoped that vamp made John happy.
She left the shed. Snow sifted down into her boots as she struggled through the drifts. When she reached the back porch, she cupped her hands over her eyes and watched the snowplow rumble past, its flashing yellow lights blinking dimly through the white haze. With the roads cleared, Ross would have no problem bringing Benjamin to her.
The fragrant, earthy smell of the firewood she piled in her arms made her think of spring. She used to like Vermont winters. Now they seemed just another unwelcome burden. Like John was, she caught herself thinking.
When John was born, she had considered giving him up for adoption. She was unmarried, unemployed and just barely scraping by illustrating books for a Boston publisher and writing an occasional children's book herself. She had not loved John's father. They had a brief, passionate affair and then he was gone, leaving her to her solitary existence. She hadn't even realized that a child was on the way until three months later.
The grinding, endless pain she endured pushing her unwilling son into the world reinforced Elsa's belief that motherhood was not for her. Yet something in that wrinkled little face had touched her heart, and she refused to sign the adoption papers. She brought him home to the two-room flat she lived in then, and spent all the years since then proving she was right in the first place.
Her biggest success as an author-illustrator, a book entitled “Child of the Forest,” had bought her this farm when John was seven. It was a run down fixerupper on a remote dirt road, for sale to cover back taxes. It was the perfect, secluded place to set up her easel and work on her painting and sketching. It was her dream, her sanctuary. She ignored John's loneliness.
She gave John a pair of lambs as an Easter present when he was eight. He did not like the lambs at all, but Elsa did. She learned all she could about sheep from Ross, who owned the farm down the road. He taught Elsa how to care for them and how to shear them. She spun the wool into yarn, and dyed it with rich, earthy colors. The profits from her next book, “Lambs in Heaven,” enabled her to buy a loom, and she spent hours weaving beautiful woolen coverlets which she sold on commission at a local craft shop. They got by. Life wasn't easy, but they did get by.
When John joined the Navy and went away, she was secretly glad; his presence always reminded her of her inadequacies as a mother. John was not at all rebellious, he was just silent. When he kissed her good-bye and walked out the door, his worldly possessions crammed into one duffel bag, she knew she'd never see him again.
Elsa piled the firewood in the box beside the stove and pulled off her gloves, hat and coat. She soaked a rag with soapy water from the sink and scrubbed the counter top. That done, she went into the dining room and glanced up at the clock over the mantel. It was nearly two o'clock. Ross should arrive any minute.
She scooped up the pile of mail from the dining room table and tossed it into the wastebasket. It was all bills and flyers anyway, she told herself. Her creditors would send new ones next month, and by then she'd have a check for the illustrations she had mailed to the publisher last Monday.
A gust of wind rattled the windows. Even with the fire crackling in the pot-bellied stove, the house was cold. Would Roslyn have had sense enough to buy Benjamin warm clothing before she packed him off to New England? Elsa was angry with herself for not doing more to prepare for Benjamin's arrival. A cold pang of regret stopped her in her tracks as she recalled that she had not prepared for John's arrival twenty-seven years ago, either.
She dragged the cumbersome old Hoover out of the closet, plugged it into the wall socket, and vacuumed the worn brown carpet. As she pushed the machine past the buffet, she looked sideways into the mirror that hung above it. She stared at the graying, unkempt woman gazing back at her. Wisps of hair stuck up all over her head. She was still wearing her flannel shirt and chinos. She looked more like a lumberjack than somebody's grandmother.
“My God, woman,” she groaned, “you'll scare the poor child half to death.”
Elsa shoved the vacuum cleaner back into the closet, and walked quickly to the front door. She scraped frost off the glass with her fingernails and peered through the opening. The road was deserted. No sign of them yet. Perhaps if she hurried, she'd have time for a quick shower and a change of clothes before they arrived.
Elsa turned her face up to the prickly spray of water and slathered on strawberry-scented shampoo. Steam filled the bathroom. She closed her eyes and let the water stream down her face and body. Nervous tension drained from her, and she was filled with a sense of anticipation. Having Benjamin living with her might not be so bad. Maybe she could talk Ross into driving them both to the mall and she could help Benjamin select a winter coat and mittens, sweat pants, and warm pajamas. They could stop at the grocery, and she would buy cereal and juice and cookies that he liked.
Elsa toweled herself dry, and ran a comb through her hair. How, she wondered, could a mother just abandon her child, sending him off to live with a total stranger? Her anger dissolved into gut-wrenching guilt as she studied her own blue-eyed, sad-faced countenance in the steamy mirror.
“It's not that much different than what I did to John,” she whispered, tears clouding her vision. “I abandoned him to himself. I was here with him, but I wasn't here for him. Roslyn has at least had the decency to send her son to someone she believes will love him. I didn't even do that for John.”
Elsa pulled on navy corduroy slacks and a white fisherman's knit sweater. She wiped the steam off the mirror with the wet towel and then tossed the towel into her clawfoot tub. She'd find time to do the laundry later.
The door to John's room was ajar. She stepped inside and looked around. With her easel and paint supplies removed, it was spare and lifeless. She had done little with the room in the nine years since her son had left. It still had the same faded floral wallpaper, brown and green checkered linoleum and small student desk in the corner. She had long since taken down the window shade and frayed lace curtain so she could get the best light possible for her painting. The view from the window was of the sheep shed and pasture. John grew up gazing out at the sheep he hated.
The brown iron bed was covered with a faded green chenille spread. Elsa felt a wave of despair as she studied the room with a critical eye. How drab and uninviting it would seem to a frightened seven-year-old. She knew that Ross's grandson had a New England Patriots comforter on his bed; she was with Ross when he bought it for the boy. Maybe she could buy one like it for her own grandson, and matching curtains and a rug. If she could make the room cheery, he might be able to accept being sent here to live with a grandmother he'd never met.
She always sent gifts to Benjamin on Christmas and his birthday. They were never acknowledged. She had no idea what the child liked or didn't like. Was he like John? Would he be passive and silent as his father had been? In the few pictures of the boy her son had sent her, she saw a resemblance to John. But the eyes, “sheep eyes,” were Roslyn's.
The first Elsa knew that John had left his wife and son was when she opened the letter from Roslyn two days ago. She hadn't heard a word from John since last year's Christmas card, postmarked Juneau, Alaska. She assumed he was there on a job, but Roslyn's letter, short and filled with anger, set that straight. John abandoned them, went to Alaska with an anthroplogy student he met, and had not been heard from in more than a year. Roslyn filed for divorce, met a “nice, wealthy car salesman” who disliked kids, and decided rather than give up her “one chance for true love,” she was sending Benjamin to New England to live with his grandmother. If Elsa had any problem with that, she was to locate John and work it out with him. Roslyn was relinquishing all custodial rights to the boy.
The crunch of truck tires in the snow startled her. She descended the narrow stairs, slipped her feet into her town boots, and stepped out onto the front porch. Ross was opening the door on the passenger side of his Ford club cab truck. He reached in and pulled out a large duffel bag. Elsa recognized it as the same khaki bag that John carried down the driveway nine years ago when he left home for the last time. Her heart began pounding, and her knees felt shaky.
“Come on, Tiger,” she heard Ross say, “your grandma is waiting for you.”
Two sneakered feet slipped down from the truck and disappeared into the snow. Ross held out his hand, and small, thin fingers twined around it. The boy stepped around the open door of the truck and looked anxiously toward the weathered farmhouse, and the weathered woman who stood waiting for him. Elsa choked back a sob. He was small for seven. His wispy blond hair blew on the frigid arctic wind that howled all around them. He looked so much like John. He was dressed in jeans and a navy blue nylon windbreaker, much too light for the sub-zero wind chill.
Elsa made her way through the uneven snowdrifts. She leaned down and wrapped the child in her embrace. His thin body shivered with cold and, she imagined, the reality of abandonment.
“Tell me, Benjamin,” she said in a husky voice, “Do you like the New England Patriots?”
He looked up at her, his big, dark eyes solemn. “No,” he answered. “I like the San Diego Chargers.”
“Ross,” Elsa said, not taking her eyes off the child's serious face, “Do they sell Charger comforters and curtains and jackets here in Vermont?”
Ross laughed. “There's a sporting goods store in Burlington that sells every pro team in the country.”
“Good. My grandson and I need a ride to Burlington. Will you take us?”
about the author
Sandra E. McBride is a native and lifelong resident of the Mechanicville, New
York area. She currently resides in a two century old farmhouse with her
husband, Tom, her cat Phoebe, and at least one resident ghost.
Mother of six and grandmother of sixteen, recently retired, she is the author of a poetry collection entitled “Mist Upon the Pond.” Her writing has appeared in five anthologies by June Cotner, as well as in NEWN, Once Upon a Time, Mail Call Journal, Magic Lark Journal, and online at historyonline.net. She has won numerous awards for her writing, both poetry and short fiction, for children as well as adults.
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