A Chance in the World

Steve and Tonya go to Colonial Park. Steve feels naïve about his efforts to reconnect with his family and change the past. He asks himself, “How do you overcome something like this? How do you live a meaningful life when you know for sure that your mother and father didn’t want you? How do you become a man?” (203).

His job in college admissions is rewarding, and he enjoys reading the applicants’ essays. The stories remind him that his own heartbreaks are not unique. The details of his story are unique, but everyone experiences loss and hardship.

Steve has begun to give talks about his experience. Audiences find the story compelling, and they keep asking him how he survived. This is the question that Steve keeps asking himself, both onstage and off. At a conference of foster parents, he talks with a woman who tells him, “God is not done with you yet” (206).

In the fall of 1996, Steve receives a call from his missing brother, Bernard. Bernard is searching for answers the same way that Steve was. He asks about their mother, and Steve tells him that she died. He took his adoptive family’s name, Sanchez. As a first name, he chose Steven. The coincidence is uncanny. He tells Steve his terrible memories of childhood and some of the things he remembers about their mother.

After the call, Steve thinks: “Our mother had failed at everything, but her greatest failing was motherhood” (210). She was responsible for six lives, and all six of them suffered because of her neglect and abandonment. 

Steve proposes to Tonya in January of 1997. He begins to feel conflicted about his mother. The more he thinks about her story, the more he pities her. He does not want to hate her or condemn her. On Mother’s Day, he visits her grave with Josie and her husband, Ben, Tonya, and Loretta. Marian’s tombstone has the word DAUGHTER on it. As they share memories, Steve realizes that, while he has been on a quest to reclaim his past, the Murphys have spent just as much effort trying to forget theirs.

Loretta tells Steve that she and Joseph tried to find him. No one at the social agencies would release information about him. Steve is surprised to learn that he was wrong about them. He was not found, but he wasn’t as abandoned as completely as he thought. Before they leave the cemetery, Tonya and Steve invite the family to their wedding, and they accept the invitation. 

Steve and Tonya get married. Steve’s uncle Greg tells him that Kenny would be proud. Steve tells them all that, for how many times he has heard that, he has never felt that Kenny had the right to be proud of him. Josie tells him that they need to take a family photo together; it is the first family photo Steve has ever posed for. 

Months after the wedding, Tonya starts to have heart problems, but the irregular, quickened heartbeat soon steadies. Her pain continues, and a doctor diagnoses her with fibromyalgia. A week later, she calls Steve to tell him that it isn’t actually fibromyalgia—her symptoms are those of pregnancy. Eight years later, Tonya has given birth to Quinn, Vaughn, and Kennedy. Being a father gives Steve a new perspective with which to view his parents. He cannot imagine abandoning his children.

As a father in a reflective mood, he requests his case file from the agency and reads about his mother. He learns the history of Starla’s death and of how squalid their living conditions were. As he reads, he realizes that Joni was the child in the car with him the day his mother left him. He also learns that Betty and Willie knew about his traumatic years before they started fostering him, and they abused him anyway.

Steve finishes reading with a more empathetic view of his mother. As an adult, he knows that plans change and that people are weak in ways that they don’t always understand. People can be mysteries even to themselves. He understands that no one would have chosen his mother’s life. 

In December of 2010, Steve receives four letters written by Kenny Pemberton. The letters were written in June of 1969 and were addressed to a man named George Carmo. Kenny wrote the letters to George from prison. The letters give Steve the only version of Kenny’s story that he has, in Kenny’s own words. Kenny tells his story differently than those of his friends and family.

Kenny became a suspect in the murder of Manuel DeSylvia, Jr. The cause of death was beating with fists. Kenny turned himself in and spent eight months in prison before his trial. He maintains his innocence in the letters to the Carmo family, who became Kenny’s surrogate family after his own fell apart. 

The jury finds Kenny not guilty. Afterwards, he returns to boxing under a trainer named Jerry Huston. At the Las Vegas Golden Gloves competition, Kenny dominates his first two opponents, then loses a controversial decision to a white fighter named Larry Woods. Kenny blames the decision on racism.

In the summer of 1970, riots erupt in New Bedford, resulting from racial tension. During the riots, Kenny helped keep the neighborhoods under control. His status as a boxer and a supporter of the African American community granted him credibility with the neighborhood. Despite his local stature, he was not ready to be a father when Marian got pregnant and did not want the responsibility.

In 1971, Kenny’s father, Joseph Pemberton, died of a heart attack. Kenny lost all hope in correcting his course, regaining his boxing career, and getting off of drugs. He began robbing drug dealers and gained a reputation as a street enforcer who would not obey the codes that other street-level criminals adhered to.

On July 30, 1972, Kenny was almost killed in a drive-by shooting. On August 2, a man shoots and kills Kenny outside a club in Fall River. The shooter escapes. Over the next two days, a series of fights and shooting erupts as men from New Bedford and Fall River lash out as a result of Kenny’s death. As Steve already knows, someone then broke into the funeral home and burned his body. 

Steve has only had one dream about Kenny in his life. In the dream, Kenny looks at the Robinson house. He turns around and sees Steve watching him. They shake hands and say that it’s good to see each other. Kenny admits that he knew about Steve. Steve says he needed him and wants to know why he didn’t come save him. Kenny says, “I thought I had more time” (251). 

Quinn wakes Steve up. While they are reading a story, Quinn asks him if he had a father. When Steve says no, Quinn says, “Maybe next time you will have a daddy” (254).