Forty Years Later

~ Chances Are…, by Richard Russo ~

In the first chapter of Chances Are…, the reader is introduced to classic Russo.

When the [SAT] results came back, his mother met his father at the door. “Have a look at this”, she said, pointing to their son’s score, which was in the top 2%. “The kid’s brilliant.”

Since Mickey was the only kid in the room, his father looked around to make sure another wasn’t hiding somewhere. “Which kid?”

“This one”, his mother said. “Your son.”
His father scratched his head. “This one right here?”

“Yes. Our Michael.”

His father studied the SAT results, then his wife, then Mickey, then his wife again. “Okay,” he said finally. “Who’s the father? I’ve always wondered.”

This short interaction encapsulates many of Russo’s themes: sons and fathers, an unconquerable abyss between parents and children, wry sadness in the hindsight of memory, beautifully framed scenes, and a wonderfully dark humour.

I should admit at the outset that I am a huge Russo fan. Empire Falls, which won the Pulitzer, was brilliant. Straight Man was delightfully, hilariously entertaining in its portrayal of life in academia. The three early novels — Mohawk, The Risk Pool, Nobody’s Fool — and the followup, Everybody’s Fool — were wonderful images of dying upstate New York milltowns, with enduring characters that felt like imperfect, realistic friends. And let’s not forget Paul Newman as a pitch-perfect Sully in the film of Nobody’s Fool.

Russo’s subsequent books, though, have left me less moved. That Old Cape Magic reiterated the absent-father theme without seeming to say something new, and the short stories were interesting without being captivating.

Chances Are…. initially seems like a return to the best of Russo. Three old college friends — Lincoln, Teddy and Mickey — in their sixties (Russo tends to write characters of the same age as himself) return to Martha’s Vineyard for a weekend. Hanging over them is the ghost of their fourth Musketeer, Jacy, the girl who all three were in love with, and who vanished after a weekend at the same house right after graduation in 1971. For decades they have been thinking about her, off and on, while their lives continued in various directions.

Lincoln is married to Anita, lives out in Arizona, and has six grownup children. Teddy has a history of medical or psychological problems and a fascination with religion and monastic life. Mickey lives large on his Harley and plays in a rock band. They occasionally mention Jacy in their infrequent phone conversations, but have never made much of an attempt to figure out what happened to her.

Until this weekend. Lincoln starts the investigation with a search through the local newspaper archives and a chat with the retired police chief. He suspects Mason Troyer, the unpleasant neighbour who lies on his deck naked, has a history of violence against women, and had laid his unwanted hands on Jacy the very weekend that she vanished.

The mystery is an unexpected departure for Russo, whose mysteries in most books revolve around why the protagonist is so self-destructive. It changes the tone of the novel. Is it going to be an exploration of friendship, or watching the changes in the lives of the three men, or will we see bodies and pathologists in the next chapter?

Luckily, Russo deals with the thriller part quite summarily. Lincoln’s investigations tell the reader more about Lincoln’s own thoughts and reactions than provide many new facts.

“Please, have a seat while I look for that file.”

Sit where, exactly? Clearly the recliner was Coffin’s usual spot, so not there. On the other hand, the couch — a sleeper sofa, by the look of it — bore the shape of a heavy man, and a pillow, not a decorative one, resting on one arm. Unable to resolve the conundrum, Lincoln perched on the sofa’s other arm, from which he had an unobstructed view of the bedroom, which his host had converted into an office. Against the far wall was a metal desk, on top of which sat an ancient computer that had, unless Lincoln was mistaken, an external disk drive. Did they even make floppy disks anymore? Along another wall stood a row of filing cabinets, beneath framed photographs of uniformed policemen. Not a single civilian.

Russo’s male characters, as always, are fascinated but faintly bewildered by the women in their lives, who appear all-knowing and are resigned to their male idiocies and idiosyncratic behaviour.

She’d no doubt observed […] that with each passing year he was, goddammit, becoming more like his father.

“Right”, Lincoln said, these details coming back to him now, as they so often did, on the wings of Anita’s certainty.

Nothing new to see here, and neither Jacy nor Lincoln’s wife Anita is as interesting or well-fleshed out as Ruth in Nobody’s Fool.

The resolution, when it comes, is hurried and a little melodramatic, involving adoption, money, abuse, genetic diseases, Vietnam, and more, and is laid out in a descriptive monologue that is not totally convincing. This is not to suggest that it’s uninteresting, but mystery-resolution is not why we read Russo. We soon return to introspecting the everyday lives of our three main characters, and that’s what the author does best.

The friends of his youth? He loved them, too. Still. Anyway. In spite of. Exactly how he himself had always hoped to be loved. The way everyone hopes to be.

Chances Are.. , by Richard Russo. Penguin RandomHouse, 2019