Lucky

by Marissa Stapley

  She raised her hand to her chain and cross pendant, and the shaking stopped. It was always in moments like this one, the bad, lonely moments, when she wished the hardest for the mother she had never managed to find.

  Lucky leaned down and took the few bills she had left from her shoe. A flash of yellow paper in the brush nearby caught her eye. Lucky walked forward, bent, and scooped up her lottery ticket, caught on a tiny branch.

  She crumpled the ticket in her hand. She didn’t want to think about her father right now, locked up in prison, unable to help her, either. It just made her feel even more alone. The piece of paper she held was worth nothing, and she knew it, but she still shoved it into her pocket and felt the effervescence of hope as she did, for just a second. It was enough to keep her moving forward.

  March 1993

  NOVI, MICHIGAN

  “Happy birthday, kiddo,” her father said. “It’s a lucky year for you. You’re eleven years old. And eleven is a lucky number. This is going to be your best year yet.”

  He handed her a small box, then sneezed. He’d been battling a cold that week. She opened the box to reveal a pair of dainty earrings, rose gold with glinting diamonds. “Those are real diamond chips,” her father said while Lucky gazed at them.

  “They’re pretty,” Lucky said. “But… my ears aren’t pierced.”

  “Oh. Right.” He blew his nose. “They were the only thing I was able to palm in the jewelry store.”

  She could tell she’d hurt his feelings.

  “Well, I guess I better go out there to earn a bit more for someone’s birthday cake and birthday dinner,” he said, standing and starting to get ready to leave for the day.

  Lucky felt her stomach curdle. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean I didn’t like the earrings. Just maybe…” But she didn’t finish the sentence, because the material things she wanted—a Discman; a brand of shirt she’d seen other kids wearing when she went to the mall—she could acquire on her own easily enough. What she really desired, though, was to actually be one of those normal kids, a dream that felt more impossible by the day. She watched her father carefully in the morning light streaming through the curtainless window on the main floor of the house they were renting in Novi. Then she shut the lid of the earring box.

  “Maybe I should work alone today, Dad. Instead of you.”

  “Ah, no, it’s all right.”

  “I think I’m ready. People don’t always trust you, but I’m a kid.”

  Now he was nodding, looking at her in a new way. “People always want to trust a kid. Okay, birthday girl. You’re on.”

  * * *

  She decided on a watermelon drop. It was a con she’d helped her father with a few times, but she’d never tried it alone. She got a drinking glass from their kitchen, which she placed in a thick plastic bag and smashed with a hammer in the sink. At the sound of the breaking glass, her father looked up from the newspaper he was reading on the couch but didn’t say anything.

  She found a shoebox and poured the broken glass into it, then wrapped the whole thing in brown paper. Using a pink marker, she wrote To Mom on the paper. She added a heart, then a flower, then decided that was enough.

  “See you later, Dad,” she said as she walked out the front door. “I’m going to the mall.”

  “That’s my girl,” he replied. “Good luck.”

  As she walked, she held the package in her hands with reverence, as if it contained a Fabergé egg or a valuable jewel.

  Her father’s age-old advice rang in her head: You have to believe it yourself or it won’t work. And she did. She did believe it.

  At the shopping mall, she stayed in the parking lot, positioning herself at the edge of the curb. Shoppers rushed past her and she watched them all carefully, examining their faces. No. No. She won’t do. Not him. Aha. Yes. Her.

  She stepped down from the curb and into the path of a mother rushing along with her sullen teenage daughter a few paces behind her. It was the daughter who had attracted Lucky’s attention first. This woman would long for the days when her daughter used to draw her pictures, carefully wrap her gifts, desperate for her mother’s approval. Not so anymore…

  Lucky knew all of this in an instant, and the knowledge made her feel like she was floating. The woman was looking back at her daughter, asking her to hurry up while the teenager rolled her eyes and moved even slower. Lucky didn’t like that girl, because that girl had no idea how fortunate she was. It wasn’t fair.

  Lucky got into position. The woman slammed into Lucky, and Lucky hit the ground. She’d have a bruise on her backside for sure, but there was always a price to be paid. Her dad had taught her that, too.

  The package hit the concrete, and the glass inside made a shattering sound.

  The woman turned to see Lucky sprawled on the sidewalk in front of the mall. “Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry,” she exclaimed. “Are you okay?” She bent down to help Lucky up. But Lucky stayed where she was and thought of the saddest thing she could imagine: her own mother, Gloria, being absent from her life. How that teenage girl didn’t have a clue. Her eyes filled with bitter, angry, heartbroken tears. Lucky sat up, took her head in her hands, and started to rock back and forth on the concrete.

  “My mother,” she sobbed. “That gift is for her birthday. I spent all my money, I’d been saving for months. It was a surprise for my mom. She’s sick, oh, oh, oh, what am I going to do now?” Another gasping sob. She slowly got onto her hands and knees and reached for the box a few feet away. “Listen,” she said, shaking it. “It’s broken. It’s ruined!”

  The mother was in a state of despair. She looked from Lucky to her daughter to Lucky again. The daughter just rolled her eyes and muttered something about her mother being so clumsy and embarrassing, which made Lucky cry harder.

  “Hush, hush,” the mother said as she took a packet of tissues out of her handbag and gave one to Lucky.

  “Thank you,” Lucky said, and wiped her face with it. The woman looked at the box in Lucky’s hands, took in the heart, the flower, To Mom.

  “What was it?” she asked in a soft voice, while her sullen daughter stood with her arms crossed a few paces away.

  “Mom,” the teen said, “I’ll meet you at the food court in an hour, okay?” She walked away without waiting for an answer.

  “What was the gift?” the woman again asked Lucky.

  “A f-f-figurine. R-r-royal D-d-doulton. The one of Princess Diana. My mother is a b-big fan. I saved all year. Oh no, oh no no no.”

  “Did you buy it here? At this mall?”

  “N-no. I just came here for a card. I got the figurine at a special antiques dealer downtown. He said they’re very hard to find.” Another sob. “I can’t believe this. I have the worst luck, the very worst. I just wanted to make my mommy happy.”

  The woman reached out and touched Lucky’s arm. Perfect. It was working.

  “How much did the figurine cost?” she asked.

  “A hundred and forty-five dollars.” Lucky’s heart was pounding in her ears. “I sh-should get home. Mom’s waiting for me.”

  “Come with me,” the woman said. “It’s going to be all right.” Lucky followed the woman through the front doors of the mall and to an ATM, where the woman took out $160 and gave it all to Lucky. “A little extra,” she said. “So you can get her a nice card. And maybe a little treat for yourself. You’re such a sweet little girl. Your mother must be so, so proud of you.”

  Lucky knew the woman was thinking of her sullen daughter, mourning the past that would never be again. The sticky hugs and kisses. The unconditional love. How could you not love your mother, if you were lucky enough to have one?

  “Thank you,” Lucky said as she pocketed the money. Then she turned and walked away fast, hoping the woman would think she was eager to get home to her mother.

  Once she left the mall, the soda bubbles that had been coursing through her went flat. The bills were safely stowed in her pocket, but Lucky felt terrible.
She had started to suspect after the Sagamore, after Steph and her mom, that every mark was going to leave its mark on her—but she hadn’t wanted it to be true. Today proved it. She had swindled that woman, and the woman hadn’t deserved it. She didn’t deserve the shoddy way her daughter treated her, either. She didn’t deserve any of it.

  Lucky was crying when she got home, tears that were true and real, that came from that dark and lonely place inside her that just seemed to get bigger every day.

  When she walked in the door, her father jumped up from the couch. “Lucky, my God. You were gone a long time. What happened?”

  She handed him the money. “I did it,” she said. She climbed onto the couch and pulled a threadbare blanket around herself. Then she kept crying while her father stood by, mystified and helpless.

  “Where is my mother?” she asked when she could finally speak. “Can we try to find her? Like really try, not just say we’re trying?”

  Her father looked at her for a long moment, then sat down beside her. “You want a mother,” he said. She nodded. “And a life that isn’t like this one. Something different. Something more… conventional. It’s all you really want, isn’t it?”

  She wiped her nose and nodded again.

  “And you’re still upset about that friend of yours, that girl, Steph, and her mother, Darla. You wish we hadn’t done that.” Should it have bothered her, the way her father was reading her in the same fashion he read his marks? Maybe. But it didn’t. She felt relieved she didn’t have to explain herself to him.

  He was silent for a moment, watching her carefully. Was there anything else he would see, anything about her that she herself didn’t know? “Pack your bags” was all he said. “Pack up everything.”

  “Why? Where are we going now?”

  “Bellevue, Washington. We’ll go see Steph, and Darla. You’re right. I need to give you a proper birthday present. The one thing you really want.”

  “But they’re not going to want to see us,” Lucky said. “Not after we stole from them.”

  “They have no idea we stole anything. And they’re going to be thrilled to see us, trust me. I should have thought of this a long time ago.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Lucky was in a twenty-four-hour diner in Tusayan, sitting at a corner table, nursing yet another coffee refill. Her feet still ached from walking to the Arizona town she was now in, all the way from the Grand Canyon. It had taken two hours. Her hand was stinging from where the man’s blade had cut into it, but it had stopped bleeding, at least.

  Outside the grimy diner windows, it was the golden hour. Even the dust on the street looked special—but Lucky knew it wasn’t, that it was just plain old desert dust, the same that now coated her skin and her clothes after her long walk.

  “More coffee?” The waitress was beside Lucky’s table, one hand on a skinny hip, coffeepot in the other. She wasn’t looking at Lucky; she had her eyes on the row of televisions behind the diner counter. Each of them was tuned to a different news station. There was that woman again, the Manhattan DA Lucky had seen in the Vegas hotel room with Jeremy. Lucky wanted to stand, get a closer look at the woman, who strangely felt like someone she knew, but she couldn’t do that. She had to look away from the televisions, stay inconspicuous as her face and Cary’s appeared on one of them, above the words GRIFTING BONNIE AND CLYDE COUPLE STILL ON RUN.

  “Yes, thank you. And I’ll have the all-day breakfast. Over easy. Wheat toast.”

  “Alrighty.” The waitress poured the coffee, eyes still on the televisions. When she was gone, Lucky stared down at the table, wishing she had a book, anything to keep her hands and her mind busy. A woman’s voice at the table beside her cut through her thoughts.

  “Hear about that young couple taking money from all those old folks? What is this damn world coming to? Young people today just take, take, take. They don’t want to have to do the actual work.”

  Lucky scowled. All those old folks. It had hardly been all old folks. Yes, okay, some of her clients had been seniors. She had been going over it in her mind. There had been Harry and Faye Alpert, who were in their eighties, and Burt Martinson, an elderly widower—and yes, recalling this fact, and how little it had mattered to her at the time, made her feel guilty and ashamed. But what about the other clients, the young, wealthy ones with far more money than they needed, than anyone needed? What about the people who probably weren’t going to miss the money, ever?

  A different voice now: “Did you hear that one man had to cancel heart surgery because he can’t afford it anymore? All his money is gone. Apparently they’re having a benefit to try to help him out. Poor man. I plan to donate.”

  Lucky chewed her lip and glanced at the screens again, but her face was gone. Heart surgery? Which client had been sick? All his money was gone? Had they really taken all of it? She had never seen it that way, like cleaning someone out. All her clients had to be at a certain income and asset level. These were the kind of people with an endless supply of family money. They would all be fine, no matter what. Wouldn’t they?

  “Hope they catch them soon.”

  Lucky had nothing to say to that. Her eggs arrived. She swirled the yolks around with her fork, too galled by a combination of shame and indignation to eat anything now.

  “Hey,” said the female customer’s voice she had heard talking a moment before. “Look at that. The Multi Millions jackpot ticket got sold. Three hundred and ninety mil, holy geez.”

  “Where, here in Arizona?”

  “Nope. Idaho.”

  Indeed, on two of the screens, Lucky could see the interior of a gas station convenience store, where a man stood holding one of those big novelty checks. She squinted at the screen, but it looked like any convenience store. Still, she kept watching. Her heartbeat quickened. Did the store look familiar? Was it the Idaho store she’d been in, where she’d bought her lottery ticket? That was the beauty of it. That, right there, was the grift itself: that moment of hope, that quickening of pulse, the what if, what if it’s me, what if it’s my ticket, what would I do with all that money, who would I become?

  Lucky took the lottery ticket out of her wallet and smoothed it on the greasy table. Her numbers stared up at her.

  “You all good here?”

  She covered the ticket with her hand. “Just the bill, please,” she said to the waitress. A moment later, the waitress dropped it on the table. Lucky put the ticket back in her wallet, counted out enough money to cover what she owed and a tip, and stood, feeling dazed, like a person abruptly awakened from a dream.

  Outside, the golden hour was over; the specks of dust had lost the light and gone back to being the dirt Lucky had always known them to be. She walked slowly. Her plan had been to go to the bus station after she ate, where a bus to Williams—which had a train station, and could get her wherever she decided to go next faster than a bus—was scheduled to leave in half an hour. But now, all she could think about was checking her lottery ticket.

  She saw a sign ahead for the Daisy Mart convenience store and picked up her pace.

  “Can I get a printout of the winning lottery numbers for this week’s Multi Millions draw?” she asked when she was inside, at the front of the line.

  “Sure thing.” The cashier picked up a sheet beside the register. “Lots of people have been asking. I printed a bunch out. Here you go.”

  Lucky glanced at the sheet, then looked up. 11-18-42-95-77. She knew those numbers. Those were her lucky numbers.

  “Are you sure these are the right ones? For this week’s draw?”

  “Positive, lady.”

  Lucky rushed from the store and out onto the street. She stood, heart racing, palms sweating. She needed to go somewhere private and check the ticket against the printout, needed to see for herself that the numbers did indeed match.

  There was a McDonald’s up ahead. Inside, she caught a glimpse of a television in the seating area, tuned to CNN. $390 MILLION LOTTERY TICKET SOLD IN IDAHO CONVENIENCE STORE STILL
UNCLAIMED read the banner on the screen.

  Lucky made her way to the restroom at the back of the restaurant. She closed and locked the door behind her and leaned against it, her breathing ragged, her body shaking.

  She took the lottery ticket out of her wallet. There it was, an artifact from a world she had believed to be long dead, staring her in the face. You’re special. You’re magic. You’re lucky. There’s no one like you.

  11-18-42-95-77.

  She took the printout from the Daisy Mart out of her pocket and compared them.

  11-18-42-95-77.

  She had the winning ticket.

  Lucky wanted to scream—but not in the way a person who had just discovered they had won the lottery normally would. If she came forward, she would be arrested. What good would the lottery ticket be then?

  She folded the ticket and put it inside her shoe. Then she stood, staring at herself in the mirror in that familiar stance, the one that meant she had to think of something: a new identity, a new plan, a new path toward this glittering dream, something, anything.

  Think of a name. Think of a story. Think.

  But all she could do was stare at her own face. “Lucky.” She spat it at the mirror. She walked out of the restaurant and back onto the dark street, trying to move as if she had purpose—even though she felt more lost than she ever had before.

  March 20, 1993

  BELLEVUE, WASHINGTON

  Her father’s Buick backfired as it pulled up in front of Steph’s house. It was a roomy split-level ranch-style home with a manicured lawn and a long driveway, exactly how Lucky had pictured it. There were mountain peaks in the background; the sky was a watery blue, fading into dusk. The streetlights flickered to life and the kids who’d been playing catch or throwing sticks to dogs began to make their way inside—but a few of them stopped to look at the Buick, wary of its size, its rust, its rattles and booms. When it backfired again before her father turned it off, Lucky wanted to crawl under the back seat and hide forever—except crawling under the back seat would mean missing this: the way the setting sun reflected off clean windows; the way the butterflies meandered toward bushes, then rocketed back as if that were the last thing they had intended to do; the good cooking smells in the air, not onions and lard like the rooming houses she had lived in, but instead the scent of steaks on the grill and pies in the oven.