Windfall

by Jennifer E. Smith

  “I bet,” I say with a smile, because I do know, of course I know, and it’s such a relief to see it in Teddy now too.

  “And here’s the thing: it wasn’t just about the money. It’s that I got to hear her story, and I know exactly what that money could do for her. And the best part is that she had no idea. She wasn’t some jerk leaving a thousand messages asking me for cash, or my idiot teammates wanting handouts. And she wasn’t some big, faceless charity—”

  “Yeah,” I say before he can go on, aware of the defensive note in my voice, “but big, faceless charities get money to small, helpless people.”

  Teddy holds up his hands. “I know,” he says. “I do. They obviously do amazing work. But ever since I got this money, I’ve been having a hard time getting excited about a cause. Because I know I’m supposed to give a bunch of it away—”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “And I also want to,” he adds quickly. “I mean, this is more money than I ever dreamed of. And more than I know what do with. And besides…” He sits down next to me with a smile. “You’re the one who bought the ticket, and I know how important this stuff is to you. So of course I want to use it to help people. Of course.”

  I nod, my heart swelling, because this is what I’ve been waiting to hear, and I was starting to doubt it would ever come. “So what’s the idea?”

  “I want to give it to people like her. People who need it but aren’t expecting it. Can you imagine what her face must’ve looked like when she saw all that money? I would’ve loved to see that. I know it’s not life-changing the way other things can be. But there’s something pretty cool about giving people a boost when they need it, just a little here and there to make their lives easier.”

  “Random acts of kindness,” I say, and he smiles.

  “Exactly.”

  It seems obvious now that he’s saying it. Teddy is a people person; he lives for connection and thrives on being around others. He wants everyone around him to be happy—he always has—and now that he’s armed with such a crazy amount of money, that instinct could actually make a real difference.

  I think again about that woman, and how unlikely it was that we’d be the ones to step up to her booth at just that moment, when so many people probably could’ve used a helping hand in that crowd and so few were probably in a position to offer it.

  As soon as the thought flashes across my mind I feel a quick spark of excitement. This could work, I think, struck by the possibilities of it, the potential. Because right then it doesn’t feel the way it so often does, like an inheritance or a legacy.

  It feels like something closer to magic.

  “So?” Teddy asks, sitting down with a hopeful expression. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” I say quietly, “that it’s brilliant.”

  His face lights up. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But?”

  “But it would be a lot of work,” I say. “A lot to figure out. It couldn’t just be you wandering around giving out really big tips.”

  “I know,” he says, though the way he says it, so uncertainly, I can tell that’s exactly what he had in mind. “I haven’t worked everything out yet.”

  “Right,” I say, nodding. “Like, would you have a team out there looking for people, or would they write in to ask for help? And would it be a nonprofit? Would all the donations come from you, or would you make it a foundation so others could get involved too? And would—”

  “I don’t know,” he says, slightly irritable now. “I literally just thought of this tonight.”

  I bite my lip, studying him in the dim light from the desk lamp, and I realize with a sinking feeling that I already know what’s going to happen. It’s what always happens with Teddy. It doesn’t matter whether it’s cardboard boats or college applications or even girls.

  He gets swept up in the moment, caught up in the idea of something.

  And then, just as quickly, he loses interest.

  Sitting here, I feel a bitterness rise up into my throat at the thought. Maybe it’s because it’s late now and I’m jetlagged, my head swimming and my eyes burning. Or maybe it’s because we’re sitting here together on a hotel bed in the dark, and the idea of kissing me couldn’t be further from his mind.

  Or maybe it’s because I’m one of his abandoned projects too. Because he kissed me like he meant it. And then it turned out he didn’t.

  He’s still waiting for me to stay something, and I study my hands, trying to collect my scattered thoughts. “I really do think you’re onto something here,” I say eventually. “And it could be completely amazing. So I hope you’re serious about it. But if you’re not, can you please just tell me now so I don’t get my hopes up?”

  My voice wobbles as I say this, and Teddy frowns at me, confused.

  “Al,” he says, shaking his head. “C’mon. It’s the middle of the night. Can you maybe cut me a little slack?”

  “That’s the thing. Everyone’s always cutting you slack.”

  “So let me get this straight: you’ve been annoyed at me for ages because I wasn’t doing enough with the money, and now that I think of something I actually want to do, you don’t think it’s good enough?”

  “I told you,” I say more softly. “I think it’s brilliant.”

  “Then why are you being so hard on me?”

  “Because it could be something really special.”

  “So you’re trying to bully me into it?”

  “I guess maybe I’m trying to challenge you into it.”

  “Well, you’re being kind of mean about it.”

  “Someone has to be,” I say with a smile, and he rolls his eyes.

  “Really nice of you to volunteer.”

  “It’s the least I can do. Especially since this is all my fault.”

  “What is?”

  I shrug. “That you’re in this mess.”

  “What mess?” he asks, looking genuinely confused.

  “This,” I say, and gesture at the hotel room, with its soft carpeting and heavy drapes, its crystal chandelier and bland oil paintings.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call this a mess,” he says, but there’s something forced about his smile.

  “Yeah, well, none of this would’ve happened if it hadn’t been for me,” I say, and my tone is unmistakable: we both know I’m not talking about the five-star hotel or the first-class plane ride or even the building he’s buying for his mom. I’m talking about all the rest of it: his dad coming back and the guys at school and the reporters outside his house and the incessant messages on his phone. I’m talking about the blogs and the talk shows and the extra lock on the door to his apartment. I’m talking about the curse.

  “Well, you,” he says finally, “and the good folks at the Powerball lottery.”

  “Right,” I say. “But those guys are a lot less likely to hassle you about your work ethic in the middle of the night.”

  “That’s true,” he says, and his eyes linger on me a moment. “I guess it’s pretty lucky I have you, then.”

  I smile. “You have no idea.”

  We drive down to Stanford the next morning. It takes a little finagling before we’re able to head off in the small silver sedan—you’re supposed to be at least twenty-five to rent a car here, but it turns out being really, really rich works too.

  We decide to take the scenic route, though it’s twice as long, and for most of the trip the car is silent. Teddy doesn’t mention his late-night visit to my room and neither do I. Even the memory feels pulsing and dim this morning; there was an idea, and there was a discussion, and now all we’re left with is this:

  Teddy, afraid he might have gotten my hopes up.

  And me, worried I might’ve put too much pressure on him.

  This isn’t our usual dance; we’re not normally so delicate with each other. Nevertheless, awkwardness fills the car, and after a few miles I open the windows to let it stream out, watching the ocean scroll past, bottle-blue
and flecked with white.

  When we see the first sign for Palo Alto, my heart picks up speed, and as if he can sense it, Teddy glances over at me. “You okay?”

  I nod, not quite trusting myself to speak, and without a word he reaches out and takes my hand. I give him a grateful smile, and just like that the tension from last night disappears. Just like that we’re a team again.

  When we pull into the parking lot, Teddy steps out of the car and raises his arms in a stretch and I put on my sunglasses, surveying the campus—this thin slice of my past, this possible piece of my future—through the amber-tinted lenses.

  “No tours,” I say, thinking of all those even sets of parents and kids I saw marching across the quad at Northwestern.

  “Just wandering,” he promises.

  As we start to explore, I realize I don’t remember very much of my last trip here, and what I do might just as easily have come from all my many visits to the website. It’s so perfect it’s almost hard to focus: the red-capped buildings and impeccably cut grass, the leafy trees and California sunshine.

  “Does being here change your mind at all?” I ask, and to his credit Teddy doesn’t even bother to pretend he doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

  “Not really,” he says, looking around. “I mean, it seems like a perfectly nice place to spend four years. But it’s not for me.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I say, amused. “Because I doubt even 141.3 million dollars would be enough to make up for your transcript.”

  He jabs me with his elbow. “I meant college in general.”

  “I know,” I say, and it takes a great deal of effort to leave it at that.

  The paths are crowded with students, bags slung over their shoulders and books in hand. I try to imagine myself here next year. It doesn’t seem like such a leap. But then it also doesn’t seem so wildly different from Northwestern or any of the other colleges I’ve seen along the way. The backdrop changes from one place to another—red brick or white stone; parkas or flip-flops—but they’re all pretty similar underneath.

  It’s not a lot to go on when you’re choosing where to spend four years of your life, where you’re meant to learn and make friends and figure out who you’re going to be once you’ve been spit back out into the world.

  If you pick one place, your life might go one way.

  If you pick another, it will be completely different.

  It’s better not to think about it too hard or else the uncertainty will wreck you.

  As we weave through the sun-soaked buildings, my head begins to pound, a tiny metronome just behind my temples.

  “You’re probably just tired,” Teddy says. “I shouldn’t have…” He trails off. I shouldn’t have come to your room last night. This is what he says without saying it.

  We come to a stop before an enormous bell tower, and I tip my head back, deep in thought. There’s a fountain in front, low and wide and empty, the blue tiles baking in the sun. When I walk over to it a memory rushes up: sitting here when I was little, eating a half-melted candy bar while my parents talked nearby.

  Only they weren’t talking. They were arguing.

  I sink down onto the edge of the fountain, and Teddy sits beside me. “Al?”

  “I’m fine,” I mumble, dropping my head into my hands as the world buzzes around me. I don’t know what it is about this spot, this memory. But it’s different from all the others that have climbed up and out of the past on this trip: flying kites at the beach or watching the sailboats on the bay, wandering the farmers market or taking evening walks up and down the steep hills of our old neighborhood.

  Those happened, all of them.

  But so did this: my parents standing just a few yards away, both of them upset, their voices lowered so I wouldn’t be able to tell they were arguing.

  I close my eyes. Is it that I have so few memories of them fighting, or that I never let myself think about them?

  This one snaps into focus all at once.

  “Maybe you can wait till next year,” my dad said that day, looking pained as they stood in the middle of it all, the campus right in front of them but also somehow out of reach. “We just can’t afford it right now.”

  “We could if you—”

  “What? Got a real job?”

  “I was going to say a better-paying job,” she told him. “Just for a year. Just while I do this program. Then I’ll be more qualified, which means I can get more funding, expand the center. Maybe we could even work on it together.”

  “Why is it that your causes are always more important than mine?” my dad asked, throwing his hands up in frustration.

  “Because I’m trying to save children.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “And I’m only trying to save trees.”

  “Well,” she said with a shrug.

  The fight followed us back through the campus, into the car, and all the way home. But it’s hard to remember what happened after that. My mom got sick just a few months later, so she never made it to grad school after all. And my dad had to get a better job anyway, to cover her medical expenses. When his car was struck by a drunk driver a year after she died, he was still passionate about saving the trees. But he was spending his days working at a call center where he answered people’s questions about their malfunctioning coffeemakers.

  All this time, I thought she’d missed out on Stanford because she got cancer—not because of anything as ordinary as finances, as mundane as a disagreement with my dad. And something about this shakes me.

  Teddy bumps his knee against mine. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Al,” he says, and for a moment, all I can think is: Leo. I wish Leo were here so I could tell him this story and not have to explain what it means. Leo would understand in an instant, and would know exactly the right things to say.

  But then I look at Teddy, the way he’s watching me, his eyes full of concern, and I remember what he said that night in his room: You go to Leo when you want to remember. You come to me when you want to forget.

  Right now, Teddy is the one here, but I don’t want to forget. Not this. So I take a deep breath. And then I tell him.

  He listens quietly as I explain what happened—what I didn’t until this very minute remember had happened—and when I’m finished, I expect him to say something like wow or oh or maybe just I’m sorry, Al.

  But instead he says, “So they weren’t perfect.”

  I blink at him. “What?”

  “They were just people,” he says, tilting his head to look at me sideways. “Really good people, but still just people.”

  “I know that,” I say, but even as I do, I realize I’m not so sure. I’m still reeling from the force of this memory, wondering what else I’m not remembering, what else I might’ve missed.

  “I think,” he says slowly, cautiously, “that you sometimes see your parents as these completely selfless martyrs. You have them up on this impossible pedestal, and it’s not really fair—to them or you. I know they did a lot to make the world a better place, which is really cool…”

  I lift my chin, waiting for him to continue.

  “But they also did those things because it was their job. Even people who are working to save the world are also still working for a paycheck. And at the end of the day, they’re still just people.”

  I know he’s right. They weren’t perfect. They were just like anyone else. They fought and failed and disappointed each other. They were frustrated and tired. They snapped and groaned and muttered.

  But they also laughed and teased and joked. They felt deeply and cared hugely. They tried to leave their mark on the world, with no idea they’d have so little time to do it. And they loved me. They loved me so much.

  They were just people.

  But they were also my parents.

  “Yeah,” I say to Teddy. “But they were pretty amazing people.”

  He gives me a long look. “Do you know how many people there are in the w
orld who would’ve turned down tens of millions of dollars?”

  I shake my head.

  “Nobody,” he says. “The answer is nobody. Just you, Al.”

  “Right, but you think I’m crazy.”

  “Maybe a little,” he says with a smile. “But I think you’re pretty amazing too.”

  I rest my head against his shoulder, the sun warm on my face. “I thought it would be different. Coming back out here. I thought it would feel more like coming home.”

  “It was only ever home because of your parents,” Teddy says quietly. “Without them, it’s just a museum.”

  I sit up to look at him, and he smiles at me, but there’s something sad in it.

  “I went to visit my old building the other day,” he says, answering my unspoken question. “I had this crazy thought that I’d ask the architect to keep our old apartment the way it is.” He shakes his head. “It was a dumb idea. It would mean the rest of the place would be brand-new, and then there’d be this one unit that’s kind of a dump.”

  “Then why…?”

  “I got cold feet after seeing my dad,” he says with a shrug. “That’s where all my memories of him are, you know? I just couldn’t imagine tearing it down.”

  I nod. “That must’ve been really hard, going back.”

  “It was,” he says. “And it wasn’t. It was like walking into a time capsule. The owners haven’t done anything to it. Remember that crack in the ceiling that looked like an alligator? That’s still there. So are all those tiles we broke in the bathroom.” He pauses. “But it was good too. Seeing it. Because it didn’t feel the same as when we lived there. I didn’t feel the same. And now we can build something better in its place.”

  Somewhere along the way, we’d angled ourselves toward each other, our eyes locked, and now, slowly, almost involuntarily, Teddy tips his head to one side. Around us, the trees are moving in the wind, and the students are calling to each other, and the clouds are scudding across the too-blue sky. And all the while we remain like that, our heads tilted in opposite directions, watching each other intently.