Second Chances

I could hear her muttering to herself. "I am doing this for Karen. I'm doing this for Karen. I'm doing this for Karen." Her knuckles were white.

Memories from the past, one's I'd avoided for seven years came unbidden to me. Macy loved dolls. She played with them fully up until she was thirteen. In her teen years, she just graduated to 'artistic' china dolls.

I remember her when she broke up with Gary Dodson. He seemed like a nice boy, but when I asked her about it, she said "He's not nice to kids." I recall when she used to beam at me with her daddy smile. This was going to be unbearable to her.

"Macy Banks!" the receptionist shouted.

Her hand grabbed mine and I swear my bones ground against each other in her grip. Her voice came low and fast "Promise me! Promise me that you'll do what you said you'd do. Swear to me that this erases...erases all the pain I caused you. Tell me that this isn't in vain! Make me believe it. I don't care what the others do. Swear to me...swear to me that this...this is over. Please...just tell me that I'm a good girl, Daddy." She broke down and wept.

While this was going on, the receptionist watched and then picked up a phone quickly. I was torn. I reached over and grabbed her hand with both of mine. "I..."

"What is this?!?" shouted a woman in a white doctor coat. She looked at me with my face like death and my daughter who probably looked worse. "I was told that she'd already made this decision. I am NOT going to operate on this woman. Not in this state. Until I get a psychological profile from a psychologist stating she is alright, we're done here."

"Of course. Send me the bill." I said with a gravelly voice as I helped Macy to stand.

"NO!" Macy screamed. "You HAVE to do it! My sister...Don't ...you need to do it!" she said almost hysterically.

I pulled her toward the door while the doctor muttered about security.

"Daddy! This isn't my fault! I'm sorry! We can find another doctor! I swear I'll do it but it might take me some..."

"Shh shh." I was a broken man. "Do you know the funny thing about sacrifice?" I barely choked out. "Sometimes it's enough to just be willing to...do the hard thing. You paid in full."

In the car, she finally stopped her sobbing. "What now?" she asked leadenly.

"Now, I go to the hospital."

There was no outburst of gladness. There were no smiles or joy. I don't think either one of us had that much emotion left inside of us.

Like an old woman, she reached into her purse and pulled out a sheaf of papers. "Here. These are the name change forms. I filled them out and filed them before I came to the doctor's office. I...I don't deserve to be your daughter and frankly right now, I don't WANT to be your daughter."

I absorbed this and I couldn't blame her. "It is to my eternal regret that I didn't take you from that doctor's office before the doctor refused us service. You have no reason to believe me, but I was wrong."

"And yet we still have the scars." She said.

"Yes, scars. Marks for lessons learned. This is a second chance for you. When you have your babies, make sure...make sure you raise them right. Make sure they can't do what any of us did to each other. Tabula rasa. Help your kids do better than we did!"

We drove into the future.

**

Epilogue:

I was sitting in a café in St. Maarten. That damned mermaid hadn't shown her face yet, even after 10 years of looking. Still, I gazed up and down the French beach. There were consolation prizes.

The angry young man sat across from me uninvited. "What can I do for you son?" I asked mildly.

"I'm not your son."

"No. I recall my boys. Mostly good men, I suppose. Made some serious mistakes but they paid them off. They learned what's important in the end, and that's all a body can do. Would you like a drink?"

"No. You're a hard man to find." He glared at me some more. Then his eyes started examining instead of prosecuting me.

"So who's looking?"

"My name is Harold Weiss." He didn't offer his hand and he fell silent.

I offered mine instead. "Okay Mr. Weiss. You obviously already know me, though I don't know how. Now how can I help you?" He didn't take my hand at first, but finally shook it.

"I need a favor. A large favor. And only you can do it for me."

"Mr. Weiss, I've never laid eyes on you before in my life. Maybe you need to tell me your story."

He sighed and motioned to the waiter. He waited until he had his drink. "This is just too weird. I expected someone more..."

"More what?"

"Hateful."

"Ah." Time and the Karen incident had baked a good bit of hate and bitterness out of me.

He regrouped when I didn't go on. "I married Macy Arnold. I'm sorry. You remember her as Macy Banks."

"I knew her both ways. She showed me the name change forms, though I never thought of her as an Arnold."

Macy disappeared after I donated the kidney. In fact, I donated it that same day that I faced the family. In the end, Marion browbeat James into signing the forms, though from the looks on their faces, it had been a particularly ugly battle. Marion thought that Macy went off to do something harmful to herself. But I didn't think so. I think she was working through a lot of issues.

Yes, I stayed in their house during my convalescence. For the first three days, I had a nurse look over me and I spent my time snooping into stranger's lives. They seemed happy in the pictures. But I wasn't part of this life.

When I was feeling better, I spent my time going through their files. Any picture of Mr. and Mrs. Paxon went into their grand fireplace. Any picture of Mr. or Mrs. Paxon AND Karen was left intact. Any picture of a relative I didn't recognize I destroyed. All his trophies, diplomas, his toys and her frilly undergarments became ash and twisted metal. It seems that Mr. Paxon used to be quite good at high school baseball.

I considered destroying all her clothes too, but two things stopped me. One, I remember my mother. I remember her church dress and her apron and her 'visiting' suit. They were major memories for me. Additionally, there was the picture at the bottom of her dresser. It was of the five of us when we went to Disney World, back when we were a happy family. I spared them in honor of my mother and for Karen.

The rest of the month was spent contemplating the future and drinking up their cases of wine and a special bottle of 25 year old Laphroaig in a wooden case. Meh. It tasted like Scotch. When I needed the money, I hawked one of her pieces of jewelry. I certainly wasn't going to dip into my funds. His clothes, both cars, her remaining jewelry as well as some select heirlooms I knew she valued were donated to the National Kidney Foundation. I left them the receipts on the kitchen table. This wasn't about money.

I decided I wasn't going to try to destroy a little girl I had nothing against except for her relatives. I looked at her swing and noticed a little gap in the bushes. There was a small headstone with the name 'Frodo' scratched on it with a little circle of rocks and a withered flower. No. I was willing to burn this place to the ground if it was just Marion and James. It was the only other gift I could give to a daughter I would never know. I called Hughes and had him reverse the paperwork.

Why did I wait a month? Well, I wanted them to work hard to establish a new household, with deposits, furniture and appliance purchases. Yes, this was petty at this point, but while Macy and Marion had shown a sense of remorse, more or less, well, I owed James a little something. And recovery is a slow process.

Since Marion showed she was still a reasonably sensitive individual, I left her little notes. 'She's a beautiful girl. Too bad I never knew her' I wrote in their photo albums. I left a few other notes where she'd find them over the years.

But all in all, I was done with this family...AGAIN. Family illness, moving, a fire: all of these things are stressful on a marriage. They got the equivalent all in one go. Let's see if good old James could keep things going when it was raining as easily as when it was sunny. I wished him no luck at all.

But now I had this young man whom I'd never seen before asking me for a favor.

"Mace was in therapy a long time." Another glare. "She's better now. She said you were the hardest son of a bitch on the planet." He waited for me to comment in vain. "Anyway...when we started to go together, she wanted to make sure that her husband understood the meaning of sacrifice." Again he watched me, but I didn't have a clue. I hadn't seen her for three years.

"So she told me up front that any children we had would be named Banks. This was non-negotiable."

"So have you had any children?" I asked, a lump in my throat.

"Greta and Alois Banks. She let me name them. He's less than a year old."

"And where do I come in here?"

"My brother just died and he didn't have any children, though he was married. I want to continue the family name, but my wife refuses. I think you are the only man who can get her to change her mind. You're my last hope."

I mulled this as I finished my Carib Lager. "Could you give me your phone?"

He handed it to me. "Just hold number one. Her cell is connected to that one."

I gave him an approving look. "As it should be." I hit the button.

It took a while to connect. "Hi Sweetie. How are you?" There was warmth and affection in that voice. She was happy to hear from him. I remember when someone felt that way about me.

I tried to put some gruffness in my voice, though it was hard. "You still don't seem to learn your lessons very well."

A gasp came over the phone. "Da...Mr. Banks...what's this all about? What lesson? How did you get this phone?" Her voice sounded stunned.

"The lesson was of sacrifice AND grace. Your young man...your husband came down to give me a piece of his mind about how badly I treated you. I think...I think you have a fine young man here. It took a lot of courage to risk so much for this. Family goes both ways. Can you see your way to giving him title to his children?"

Her tone came back in a forced light and breezy tone. "You know what? I think I'll keep him." There was silence. "Was there anything else?"

"Yes." There was an unclenching in my chest and my voice was hoarse. " I'm sorry and I'd like to see my grandchildren. If you'll let me."

There was a long silence which was only slightly less painful then the seven years of Purgatory I spent alone. "I think Banks is a perfectly good MIDDLE name. What do you think?" There was another pause only slightly less stressful. "When can you come?" It was as if a weight I hadn't realized I was carrying suddenly fell away. Macy had, after all, learned about sacrifice and grace.

Everyone deserves a second chance. Even me.