Do Over

It was so terribly cold. Snow was falling, and it was almost dark. Monica stepped out of her dealer’s tenement building and flinched as a gust of wind cut her to the bone. She wore only a thin purple sweater and baggy jeans cinched to her hips with the drawstring from an old hoodie. She sniffed loudly and dragged a forearm across her upper lip. Every instinct told her to go back inside and get high in the stairwell, but Tony had given her the money and was expecting her back right away. She coughed the ice out of her lungs in silvery clouds that turned to rust under the sodium-vapor streetlamps. It was eight blocks back to the apartment she shared with Tony; she hugged her thin arms to her body and started walking. 

She met Tony at rehab. He introduced himself by handing her a coffee cup with a crack pipe inside and tilted his head toward the door. He wasn’t her usual type, but he was always holding and he looked at her like guys used to look at her, back before she was an unwed mother with a drinking problem and a casual flirtation with crystal meth. He saw her as she had been before her life had gone to hell, and she needed that more than she needed to get clean. In a month’s time he had moved into her apartment and Monica’s parents stopped taking her calls. After that, Monica relinquished her amateur status and went pro with her addictions.

The snow was ankle-deep on the sidewalks and Monica’s sneakers did nothing to keep her feet from getting soaked. She shivered violently—where was her winter coat, anyway? It had been a Christmas gift from her mother five years earlier. Warm and heavy, it had a fur-lined hood and was long enough the seam skipped off her knees. She had actually bought that exact coat for her mother that year; when they opened their gifts and found they’d gotten each other the same thing, her mother laughed until tears ran from the corners of her eyes. “Great minds,” her mother said. In all likelihood Tony had pawned the coat, Monica thought. That was usually the answer when something turned up missing. She’d give him hell about it when she got home.

The storm dropped snow in great gouts of white, like feathers shook from a down pillow. Monica stumbled clumsily through drifts that came halfway up her shin, one hand tucked in her armpit, the other stuffed in her front pocket where she clutched a baggie of chemical glass. The thought of Tony stealing and selling her coat had ignited the addict’s paranoia that everyone was a meth head out to rob her and coming home empty handed was not an option. The last time that happened, Tony accused her of smoking it all and chased her to the homeless shelter with her left eye swollen shut and one of her teeth lost underneath the fridge. He apologized and took her back, he always did, and she forgave him. He’d been right, about her smoking it all, and the tooth was falling out anyway. 

Monica tongued the gap in her smile and thought about how she’d have to get it fixed once she got cleaned up if she ever wanted to get on television. She just needed a fresh start. This brought to mind a recent conversation she had with Tony. They had been geared up for two days and were finally coming down, like falling leaves coming to rest on the surface of a quiet pond. Monica was starfished on the bed, Tony and the sheet knotted together at her side in a tiller’s hitch. Both were enjoying the placid window of time when they were closest to the most civilized versions of themselves.

“If you could go back in time and change one thing about your life, what would it be?” It was a question he was prone to asking in these quiet moments, a tacit acknowledgment that she wasn’t the only one who wondered how a life could get so far off course. She’d posed the same question to herself a thousand times before. Her gaze drifted to an empty space where the crib used to be and gave him the only answer that ever came to mind: she would go back and stop herself from getting pregnant with Kayla.

It was all Bobby McCormick’s fault. Monica graduated high school with a scholarship to play soccer and a smile that was made for television. She wanted to be on ESPN one day. All she had to do was get out. Then she went to one stupid graduation party and ran into her ex, who was only her ex because he wasn’t going anywhere and long distance wasn’t going to work, and sure enough they snuck down to the basement of whoever’s house that was and made up on a musty futon. A month later she puked on her birthday cake and failed a piss test. Scholarship gone; dreams gone.

It was fully dark now. Monica stumbled and fell trying to climb over a snowbank to cross the street. “Goddamn you Tony, sending me out in weather like this.” She bent and dug slush out of the top of her sneaker with an index finger. “Today I would go back and make sure I never met you!” No longer under the watchful eye of the sun, the snow had tightened into hateful little seeds, like flowers blooming in reverse. A headwind peppered Monica with icy buckshot that sent her scurrying for the shelter of an alley. She swore she could hear Tony’s voice on the wind, howling at her for taking too long.

“Oh, shut up, you baby, it’s only until the wind calms down.”

She slid down between a pair of garbage cans and took the baggie out of her pocket. The bricks at her back were cold as a mausoleum slab. Her whole body shook so violently anyone who bothered to look might have mistaken it for a grand mal seizure. In her lap, the bag’s contents looked like winter sky smashed and swept up and bagged for consumption.

“I’m not gonna,” she said to Tony, wherever he was. She put the baggie down in her lap and blew into her fists, then she picked it back up and clutched it to her chest. She brought out her lighter—for warmth, she told herself. She snapped a flame to life and felt the heat bleed into the tip of her nose. She didn’t remember pulling out the glass pipe; the muscle memory triggered by the sparking of that flame ran its course without need of her consent. 

She just wanted to remember what it felt like to feel good. 

The glass bulb burned orange and white like a miniature sun. Christmas music playing on an outdoor speaker colored the trajectory of her thoughts. In the burning star cupped in her palm Monica could see a memory of her mother cradling baby Kayla in her arms. It was Kayla’s first Christmas, and her parent’s house was littered with wrapping paper and half-forgotten gifts: there’s the three-in-one nesting crib; the packages of diapers stacked like hay bales; the stroller with better suspension than her car; and of course, those matching winter coats. Standing at a distance, Monica’s younger self stared at the baby with resentment as she texted someone who wouldn’t text her back. She remembered how overwhelming it was to be surrounded by so much evidence that the life she wanted was dead for good.

All those things were gone now: the crib, the stroller, and now the coat. Each one sold or traded for drugs. Monica lit up again, fished for a happier memory. This time she saw her father playing with Kayla in her parent’s back yard. Kayla was walloping her grandfather in the head with an inflatable hammer, to which he would respond by falling over with his eyes crossed and his tongue sticking out. This was the highest form of comedy to Kayla, who giggled until her face turns red. Monica and her mother watched from the back deck.

“I got you something.”

“Mom, you spoil her rotten.”

“This isn’t for her, it’s for you.”

Her mother led her inside, to her old room. It was much the same as she’d left it, except for the wooden chest sitting next to her old bed. It was low and wide and had a padlock on the latch.

“What is it?”

“It’s a hope chest,” her mother said. Monica groaned.

“Mom, you aren’t seriously pressuring me to get married, are you?”

Her mother knelt and removed the padlock with a key. “Just open it,” she said.

Instead of some old dishes and musty blankets, Monica found memories. The chest contained every piece of evidence to the life she had wanted before getting pregnant: every soccer trophy and certificate; every grade school assignment in which she declared her intention of becoming a sports reporter; photos from a succession of six Halloweens when she went an ESPN news anchor; home videos where she pretended to interview famous athletes (always played by her dad); every copy of “The Monica Sportspaper”, her homemade childhood newspaper stacked neatly next to every copy of the high school paper that featured her weekly column; the amateur headshots she got for fun that turned out even better than she hoped; and finally, sitting on top was her college letter of acceptance. 

“I know that setting this aside has been hard on you,” her mother said. “This is here to remind you that, when you’re ready, you can come back and pick up where you left off.” 

She placed the key in Monica’s hand. It was attached to a thin silver chain by a small hoop at the top of the head. In the head of the key was a picture of Kayla.

“She’s just a detour baby, she’s not a dead end.” 

Monica watched her younger self fall into her mother’s arms. One of her hands fluttered at her bare neck. 

“Where is my key? When did I lose you, Kayla?” 

She refilled the pipe with fumbling hands fully expecting to hear Tony’s protests, but his voice did not come. All she wanted was to see that again, something nice from before, to see Kayla. 

“Ask me again,” Monica muttered, voice thick. No response. “Ask me again!”

“Why?” Tony said. “You always give the same answer.” 

“Just ask.” 

The star blazed to life once more. Monica gazed into the fire tried to get back to that last memory but instead felt herself tumble downward; every dark moment of her life unspooled before her in reverse order. Every arrest, every overdose, every indignity she committed or was forced to endure—each moment representing a time when Monica lay the blame at the feet of her daughter rather than take responsibility for her own actions. Time continued to unwind: there she was getting fired from an internship at the local paper, there was her mother throwing her out of the house for good, there was the day Kayla—

“Fine,” Tony said. “If you could go back in time and change one thing about your life, what would it be?”

Sunlight flooded the alley. It was a gorgeous summer day, the kind of day that made you smile inspite yourself. Monica stood and stretched, momentarily at a loss for where she was. Then she saw her younger self talking to a guy in a food truck. Kayla is busy trying to poke a stick into a sidewalk anthill, momentarily forgotten. Behind the food truck the street is busy with mid day traffic.

“No no no, please, not this.” 

It was an accident. She looked away for only a moment, that’s all. That’s what she kept repeating, afterward, until even she believed it. It was just that she was always so hungry for attention after Kayla was born, and the boy in the food truck had said something sweet to her in a way that reminded her of when she was beautiful, and desired, and free. Monica watched her younger self flirt shamelessly for far longer than a single moment, past Kayla’s ability to find amusement in an ant hill. She watched the little girl pull on the hem of her mother’s shorts, watched her younger self absently swat her daughter’s hand away. Monica watched Kayla wait, and wait, and wait. Such a patient little girl. But she was bored, and before long something underneath the food truck caught her eye…

“Kayla, no!” 

Monica broke out of the alley in a sprint. She crossed the space in four long, athletic strides and took Kayla’s hand just as she was about to step down off the curb. Kayla looked up in surprise, and then she beamed a smile that shattered and remade Monica’s heart a thousand times over. Monica smiled and scooped her daughter up into her arms. It was a beautiful summer day. The sun was high and bright, and the sky was clear. Monica set Kayla down and clenched her daughter’s tiny fist in her own, and together they left behind food truck and the unhappy girl and the narrow alley where snow continued to fall like summer diamonds.