Her footprints were clear where she had crossed the wet beach. You could see where at the end she had gone up on tiptoe. Then the next wave filled them.
Edward John Moffat
1DENISE I TOTALLY ACTUALLY LOVED YOU [BUT YOU JUST FUCKING USED crossed out] IT KILLS ME I COULDN’T EVEN FACE THAT SO IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT.
CHRYSA I’M SORRY
I CAN’T DO ANY MORE HOPELESS SHIT FOR NO REASON. I’M GOING TO DROWN MYSELF SO THAT’S WHERE TO LOOK IF I CAN EVEN MANAGE THAT.
2“Yeah, I had a lot of shit on this tape I won’t mention. So this is like my thirtieth try to do this, and I’m almost, like, running gag territory.”
(A long space of silence. Then a match struck. A few seconds later:)
“I guess I only wanted to say I love you, Chrysalis. I mean, totally I pray I don’t get hit by a car and you listen to this while I’m still alive. But I always loved you more than anyone else, not like that’s saying much. I just kind of, I mean, this is not like every time I did this this is what I said, I’m maybe just wasted.
“Oh, fuck. I’m going to have to tape this fucking thing again.
“Oh, fuck.”
(A long space of silence. The tape breaks into the middle of “Stayin’ Alive” by the BeeGees.)
3When I was packing Eddie’s ashes into our bag, wrapped in a shirt for safe-keeping:
3.1The urn rattled. I shook it and it rattled again. Because I’d already broken the wax seal the day before, when I’d had to peer in at the fine grit which meant nothing, the stopper came out easily. I carried it to the lamp.
3.2The ashes were gone, and in their place was a stone; smooth, egg-shaped, white quartz. It had a crevice that glittered when you held the urn’s opening to the light, and could be made out to represent a rounded E.
3.3The stone was too large to have fit through the slender neck of the urn. It was a ship-in-a-bottle puzzle.
3.4Now that it was in, it looked completely ordinary. It didn’t look like a miraculous stone.
3.5The whole was conveniently portable: unsettlingly like a souvenir.
34. Heathrow International Airport, London, England, 2000
We sit in the boarding lounge, waiting for our connecting flight. We’ve been talking all night, on the flight from Singapore, and our eyes feel like felt from wakefulness and dry air. We’re not tired, though: we both keep mentioning that we’re not tired. We just look very pale, and we’re oddly clumsy.
They call to board disabled people and mothers with small children, and a flood of able-bodied adults streams past us. We watch them curiously, as if they’re our first people.
Then Ralph says:
“Going back.”
I wince. We both look at the crowded gate as if we’ll see California. It strikes me that our lives might not change. Then I realize Eddie won’t be there, and I look away.
“We could just stay here,” I say. “After all, you are British.”
He smiles nervously. “Actually, I’ve been putting off telling you this, but they may not let me back into the U.S. I overstayed my last visa by twelve years.”
“Oh. That’s pretty bad.”
We laugh irresponsibly. Ralph won’t be let in! Ha ha! Life down the drain! I say, laughing:
“Well, I’ll come back to England with you. We’ll get married! Obviously!”
“Obviously,” he says, not laughing.
I continue, improvising: “We’ll get married and go back to California. We’ll sell the mansion and use the money to open a pottery shop. Then we’ll have two children.”
He says, “I couldn’t have a pottery shop. It seems like going backwards.”
“A furniture shop, then. We’ll sell top-quality tables at a fair price.”
I think of the furniture shop as salvation. From now on, things will be ordinary and good. Then Ralph says,
“You seem to have my whole life mapped out for me.”
“Oh,” I whine, wronged: “But I was trying to map it out in the way you would map it out, so that’s actually ungrateful. Anyway, I don’t know what we’re going to do in the next ten minutes, as you’re well aware.”
They call to board first class. A few first-class people lurch to their feet. They don’t even look rich, and I glare at them sulkily. They should make an effort, I think, forgetting that I’m rich.
Then Ralph says, anxious: “Well, let’s try to stay together.”
“Sure,” I say, thinking, Oh, of course we won’t stay together, what garbage.
They call to board rows 65 to 45. We stumble to our feet, noticing again our absurd tired demeanor in the absence of any tiredness. We join the unmoving queue. Ralph drops our only bag heavily and I stop myself from dropping to the floor and embracing my hurt brother. We move forward a little bit.
Then over the tannoy, they call: “Would Miss Moffat please come to the Assembly Point. Miss Moffat, please come to the Assembly Point.”
A man behind us says, “Where your spider is waiting,” and his friends all laugh.
“It’s not me,” I whisper to Ralph. “I don’t –”
“No, of course,” Ralph says, hoarse. “It’s a coincidence.”
We look at each other with a bleak superstition. We both smile although we’re not tickled.
“I hope that was the last gasp,” Ralph says, tense.
“Of coincidences?” I clarify unnecessarily. We stand thinking. We move forward a little bit. I bring the bag along with a loving, herding motion of my foot, and consider that although the sudden appearance of a spaceship seems to prove a sly coherence in events, it is in fact just another odd event. Perhaps at random. Then my mind quits suddenly before I understand anything.
“Oh, well,” I sigh. “We made it from Singapore, after all.”
Ralph shrugs and turns away. Then he thinks again and takes my hand.
We move forward a little bit. I remember dressing for a Halloween party as Miss Moffat, with a large googly-eyed stuffed spider. My date stood me up and I sat all night on the couch with my spider, eating Orville Redenbacher popcorn and watching Carrie.
Then Ralph squeezes my hand. He says, “All right.”
“All right?” I bend and pick up the bag with my free hand. “I don’t like Eddie on the floor,” I say kind of reproachfully.
He bends way way down and kisses my forehead. He says, “I want to marry you and open a furniture store.”
“Oh, right,” I say stupidly. “I hope we survive, then.”
Then we’re at the front and hand over our passports and get them back. We start down the bouncy tunnel. We go boing boing along. It’s a happy-couple walk: I think officiously that this is what they should show in love montages in films, instead of people eating Chinese food and riding bicycles. Perhaps at the register of the furniture store, I could write screenplays. They would be innovative and thoughtful without sacrificing dramatic interest.
It’s then, as we hand our tickets to the stewardess, that I first think of writing an account of our experiences, in the hope that others might learn from our mistakes. It would be highly fictionalized, of course, to save time on fact-checking. The idea grows, and I already feel successful. Busily inventing a cool name for myself, I forget our worries. As I edge into my seat, with my fiancé’s hand tender between my shoulderblades, I’m euphoric. The glee mounts and I can hardly sit, I press my hand to the scratched window.
Then, alongside the plane, in the sickly, wind-beset grass, I see a jogging white towel. I start, nonplussed, but when it stops, it’s a cat. It crouches, looking up at the mammoth plane, inspecting it left to right, its tail alert. As it meets my eye, I guess, I am already looking up in the sky for God. Then a loathed thing drops behind me, I’m unsheathed:
The city courses on the deeps of the earth. Trees reach and fountain. The clouds and their mother lakes enter the powerful stone, the grass drinks them with its frail heels. This knowing is participation in its seamless play. It’s a gladdened, headlong, adamantine life.
The clouds peel away from the blue to let me go
My name is Rosa Espuelas. I was born in Guatemala. When I was three years old, my life was saved by a stranger. He took me home with him and gave me a new name. I have no memory of my former life.
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Pro Blackjack
Basic strategy
The following table shows what total you should achieve in your hand before you stop drawing to it:
DEALER SHOWS
If your hand includes an ace, the figures change as follows:
DEALER SHOWS
Those hands on which the player can “double down” should be doubled when the dealer shows:
YOU HAVE DOUBLE AGAINST
A, 7 3–6
A, 6 any card
A, 5 4–6
A, 4 4–6
A, 3 4–6
A, 2 4–6
A, A 5, 6 (unless aces can be split)
11 any card
10 2–9
9 2–6
Pairs should be split when the dealer shows the following:
A, A any card
10, 10 never
9, 9 2–6 or 8, 9
8, 8 any card
7, 7 2–8
6, 6 2–7
5, 5 never
4, 4 5
3, 3 2–7
2, 2 2–7
Card counting
Although pro players have devised an array of complex counting systems, the basic high-low count will pay as well as most. Likewise, while it is possible to alter your strategy according to the count, this pays so little, percentage-wise, that it would take hundreds of years of play for it to be felt.
When this is taken into account, card counting is insultingly easy. The principle is simple: because of the rules casino dealers play to, high cards give an advantage to the player and low cards give an advantage to the casino. By keeping track of how many high/low cards have already been dealt, we can know how rich in high/low cards the remaining decks are. Then, when there are many high cards remaining to be dealt, we place a very large bet. At all other times, we place the minimum bet. Because all these low- or no-count minimum bets are (statistically) losing hands, the “spread,” or difference between the minimum and maximum allowable bets, is key in judging the value of a game. A large spread (e.g. 1–100) will pay much more than a small spread (e.g. 10–100). One counts as follows:
The cards 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 are counted as +1.
The cards 10, J, Q, K, A are counted as –1.
The cards 7, 8, 9 are not counted.
For example, the dealer deals:
J, 2, 6, A, 5, 7, 9, 2
The running count is now +2.
The running count, however, must be changed into a true count. One does this by dividing the running count by the number of half-decks remaining to be played. The game of blackjack is usually dealt from a 6-deck or 8-deck shoe: however, it will take some time for a significant running count to develop. Therefore, one is typically dividing by 5 or 2 rather than 12.
For every single point of true count, one may bet 1% of one’s bankroll. No more. This is why a large bankroll is crucial: it is not worth beginning a counting game with less than (roughly) 20,000 dollars.
Shuffle tracking
Basic shuffle tracking involves keeping track of areas of the deck which have very negative running counts (i.e. are rich in aces and tens). Then, when the cards are shuffled, one watches where those sections go. One can then bet for them as they are dealt.
Shuffle tracking is practiced by many but with little success, as it is nearly impossible to perform with accuracy.
Ace tracking
Ace tracking depends on the fact that, if the player’s first card is an ace, he/she immediately has a 52% advantage. That is, for every dollar the player bets, he/she will earn 52 cents. A player, therefore, who can predict when he will be dealt an ace, can earn money at a rate far in excess of a mere card counter.
In casinos, dealers pick up cards at the end of a hand in a predictable fashion: they sweep them up in a sort of reverse-domino effect, from right to left, each card sliding underneath its neighbor. Then they are put into a box, awaiting the shuffle when all 6 decks (for example) have been dealt.
The trick of ace tracking is to memorize the sequence of the last two cards which are slid underneath each ace. That is, if the two cards lying to the right of an ace are the Queen of Hearts and the four of Diamonds, one can memorize this and when, in the next deal, a Queen of Hearts is dealt, closely followed by a four of Diamonds, one knows an ace is likely to follow. Since the shuffle separates the cards out, and sometimes (but not very often, depending on how many times the cards are split and shuffled) entirely breaks up a sequence, the game is not exact. However, it is a higher percentage game than any counting game, and can be played with a smaller bankroll (say 10,000 dollars) for that reason.
It is generally easier to memorize sequences by assigning code names to all of the cards. For instance:
Four of Diamonds: FORD
Four of Clubs: FUCK
Three of Hearts: MOM
Three of Clubs: MICK
Queen of Clubs: QUACK
et cetera.
Appendix B:
What Happens To You After You Die
Withheld.
About the Author
Born in America, SANDRA NEWMAN has lived in Germany, Russia, Malaysia, and England. Her professions have included copyediting, gambling, and typing. A student of the late W. G. Sebald, she now devotes herself to writing full-time. Sandra Newman lives in New York City. A finalist for the Guardian First Book Award, The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done is her first novel.
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Praise for The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done
“A brilliantly wicked assessment of human nature.”
—Dallas Morning News
“Newman has fashioned a first novel that is anything but by-the-numbers. . . . Full of false turns, fake names, and jaw-dropping coincidences, all slotted neatly together in Newman’s blunt, wry prose. A virtuoso performance [that] more than proves Newman a writer worth watching.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“The labyrinthine, profound perceptions around the bend of every page are small, writerly gifts used to bait the reader, just as the characters are baited into finally understanding something big: Their lives mean so much more they could have ever thought possible.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“If you liked Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, you’ll love The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done, which mixes prose, poetry, lists, and outlines in an engagingly eccentric story about identity and seeking the truth in one’s past.”
—Austin American-Statesman
“David Lynch and Dave Eggers aficionados will find much to admire in this edgy, strange, and dazzling first novel.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Sandra Newman may well be theVonnegut of her generation. The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done is a smart, big hearted, hysterical, and gorgeously rendered novel. Newman writes with the soul of a deadpan angel and the eye of a seen-it-all savant. Some books entertain, and some enlighten. The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done does both—and more.”
—JERRY STAHL, author of Permanent Midnight and Plainclothes Naked
“Breathtaking writing. . . . The dialogue is pitch-perfect, with laugh-out-loud lines. . . . An exhilarating read.”
—Independent on Sunday
“Exactly the kind of book I like—funny and moving, quirky and intelligent, and written in a fresh, original voice.”
—KATE ATKINSON, author of Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Emotionally Weird
“Original and powerful.”
—Times Literary Suppleme
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Credits
Cover design by Rodrigo Corral
Cover photograph by Tamara Staples
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Chatto and Windus.
The first U.S. edition of this book was published in 2003 by HarperCollins Publishers.
THE ONLY GOOD THING ANYONE HAS EVER DONE. Copyright © 2003 by Sandra Newman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Perennial edition published 2004.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Newman, Sandra.
The only good thing anyone has ever done / Sandra Newman.—
1st American ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-06-051498-1
1. Inheritance and succession—Fiction. 2. Swindlers and swindling—Fiction. 3. Identity (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 5. Adopted persons—Fiction. 6. Young women—Fiction. 7. California—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3614.E66 O5 2003
813'.6—dc21 2002038737
ISBN 978-0-06-051499-0 (pbk.)
EPub Edition August 2017 ISBN 978-0-06-283416-4
The Only Good Thing Anyone Has Ever Done Page 26