The Good Luck of Right Now

by Matthew Quick

  Father McNamee was unraveling fast.

  I remembered what Father Hachette had said about bipolar disorder.

  Whenever I get depressed I go to the Water Works behind the art museum and watch the river flow, which helps.

  I had some money in my pocket, so I hailed us a cab, stuffed Father McNamee in, pulled Father McNamee out, and we watched the river flow for a very long time, just looking at the water and listening to its roar.

  Around noon, I broke the silence, saying, “Father, are you okay? I’m worried.”

  “Did God speak to you about Wendy?”

  “No,” I said, and it was true. I looked around for you, Richard Gere, but you were nowhere to be seen.

  Father McNamee peered at the sun and said, “Maybe Wendy wasn’t part of the plan after all. What do you think?”

  “What plan?” I asked.

  “God’s plan. For you. For us. For right now. What your mother’s death began. This. Right now. The cycle we are in. The tangent that has led us away from the past and into the now.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Do you believe He has a plan for all of us, Bartholomew?”

  Mom used to say that God had a plan for everyone, but I didn’t respond, because I wasn’t really comfortable answering Father McNamee’s questions about God.

  “What do you hear, Bartholomew?” Father McNamee asked me, cupping his ear and tilting his head. “Right now. Listen. Do you hear anything? What is it?”

  “The river flowing?” I said, squinting.

  He raised his ear a little higher before he said, “Is that the voice of God? I wonder.”

  “Is what the voice of God?”

  “The river. What does the rush say?”

  I shrugged.

  “Could it be our burning bush, Bartholomew?”

  I still didn’t know what to say.

  We listened for an hour, but only heard the constant roar of the river.

  I felt like Father was waiting for me to say something profound, and the whole time the little man in my stomach was calling me a retard and telling me to keep my big fat mouth shut. I was stuck somewhere in the middle between Father’s hopes and the little man’s doubts.

  “We’re lost,” Father McNamee finally said, and then began to walk.

  I followed him in silence for hours, and it was dinnertime when we arrived home, but neither of us went to the kitchen.

  Father McNamee dropped to his knees in the living room without even taking off his coat. He folded his hands and bowed his head, but then he said, “What’s the use?” climbed the steps, and locked himself in Mom’s bedroom.

  I went to my room and wrote you this letter. I kept hoping that you would appear to me again so that we could talk, but you didn’t.

  Your admiring fan,

  Bartholomew Neil

  10

  DID YOUR MOTHER TELL YOU ABOUT HER THEORY?

  Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

  Did you ever realize that Tibet’s troubles with China escalated the year you were born?

  1949.

  The exact year you—Richard Gere, friend of the Dalai Lama and defender of Tibet—were born.

  That’s when China became a Communist country; they invaded Tibet shortly after, perhaps as you were speaking your first words.

  What do you make of that fact?

  Coincidence?

  Synchronicity?

  What would Jung say?

  Do you believe in destiny?

  Or that the universe has a rhythm?

  You must if you believe in the Dalai Lama, who was reincarnated and destined to be a spiritual leader.

  Two completely unrelated events—your birth, China’s conversion to communism—that no one could have known would turn out to be linked in a very important and perhaps even fated way.

  What does the Dalai Lama have to say about this? I wonder.

  Have you ever asked him?

  Back before she got sick, Mom always used to say, “For every bad thing that happens, a good thing happens too—and this was how the world stayed in harmony.”

  Whenever too many good things happened to us, Mom would say, “I feel sorry for whoever is getting screwed to balance all of this out,” because she believed that our good meant that someone else somewhere in the world was experiencing bad. It actually depressed her when our luck was very good. Mom hated to think about others suffering so that we might enjoy life.

  Do you believe that?

  That in order for someone to win, someone else has to lose; and in order for someone to become rich, many others must stay poor; and in order for someone to be considered smart, many more people must be considered average or below average intelligence; and in order for someone to be considered extremely beautiful, there must be a plethora of regular-looking people and extremely ugly people as well; you can’t have good without bad, fast without slow, hot without cold, up without down, light without dark, round without flat, life without death—and so you can’t have lucky without unlucky either.

  Maybe you cannot have Tibet without China?

  Bartholomew Neil without Richard Gere?

  Mom often used to say she was thankful when something bad happened to us, because it meant that someone else was experiencing good.

  Like the time she lost her wallet and the week’s food money with it, when the pension check was still several days away. She said, “Well, we’re going to be a little hungry this week, Bartholomew, but whoever finds my wallet will eat well. Maybe they needed the money more than we did. Maybe the mother of a malnourished child will find our money, and the kid’ll eat fresh fruit this week. Who knows?”

  Or like the time when Mom and I were eating dinner at a seafood restaurant to celebrate her sixtieth birthday. She loved soft-shell crabs cooked with ginger, and so we would always splurge on special events—like milestone birthdays—making a night of it, getting dressed up in our best clothes, eating at an expensive restaurant, using our emergency credit card even, which we never did regularly, because we didn’t have the funds and Mom always said that the interest rates could cost us our home if we weren’t careful. But while we were dining, pretending to be rich for a night in the restaurant situated on an old-fashioned boat docked in the Delaware River, while we were pretending that life was grand and wonderful and posh, that we were rich important people who, without a second thought, could order waiters to bring us food originally found underwater, a pack of menacing, degenerate teenagers broke into our house. They spray-painted disgusting phrases and pornographic images on the walls—things like BIG HAIRY COCKS! next to a cartoon of a giant penis and testicles covered in pubic hair, and CUM-STAIN SHITBALL over Mom’s headboard with an arrow pointing down to her bed, where one of these boys had done number two and then apparently ejaculated on top of his own feces.

  It didn’t make any sense.

  It was perverse.

  Disgusting.

  Horrible.

  Beyond imagination.

  They also clogged up all of the sinks and left the water on so that each overflowed. And they smashed every mirror, dish, and glass we owned. Squirted mustard and ketchup all over the couch. Poured milk onto the carpets. Threw circles of lunch meat at the ceiling so that it was dotted with bologna and ham and salami, which rained down on us later. Dumped our crucifixes into the toilet and pissed on our Lord and Savior.

  Why?

  I remember coming home from dinner, seeing the edge of the wooden front doorframe splintered, the door slightly ajar, and knowing that something horrible had happened.

  It was like looking down and seeing a gaping hole where your stomach used to be and knowing your legs were gone—like Mom and I had somehow each swallowed a live grenade.

  Once we saw the damage, Mom simply sighed and called the police, but they didn’t come right away, and asked only a few general questions when they arrived hours later, before saying, “We’ll file an official report.” Father McNamee, however, arrived within minutes of M
om’s calling him, armed with a phone book and several bottles of wine. He organized a dozen members of the church and a cleaning party began. The water was mopped up, the glass was swept away, the beds were washed and sanitized, and the walls were even painted over with paint and brushes someone miraculously found in our basement. Father McNamee washed our crucifixes in holy water, using a Q-tip to get in between Jesus’ spine and the cross, saying, “Lord, I hope you like your back scratched!” I remember the men and women of the church working through the night—drinking wine the whole time, talking, singing even.

  It was almost fun.

  When the sun came up, Mom cooked breakfast for everyone, and one of the neighbors brought over plates for us to use. Before we ate, as we all held hands in a circle, Father McNamee prayed and thanked God for the chance to prove that people are good and often take care of each other when the right sort of chance arises; he asked God to burn this night into our memory as an example of what true disciples of Christ are and can be when called upon—people who help their neighbors with compassion in their hearts and wine in their bellies, ready and willing to overcome any sort of ugliness (no matter the magnitude of the tragedy)—and then we ate like a family.

  Mom and I had never entertained so many people at once.

  When everyone left, Mom said, “Wasn’t that a beautiful birthday party!”

  “How do we know it won’t happen again?” I asked.

  “Didn’t you enjoy yourself, Bartholomew? I’d love to have another party like that. Such a treat having all those people here to celebrate my sixtieth birthday!”

  “How do we know horrible thugs won’t break into our home again?”

  “We don’t!” Mom said, almost like she wouldn’t mind if they did—maybe like she even wanted it to happen again. “We don’t know anything. But we can choose how we respond to whatever comes our way. We have a choice always. Remember that!”

  I remember feeling scared—as if I couldn’t be like Mom and never would be. That maybe I was a bad Catholic. A subpar human being, even. That maybe even Jesus thought I was a retard. Because I found it hard to celebrate what had happened to us. I didn’t necessarily believe the clean-up party made up for the violation we were forced to endure.

  “What have I been telling you since you were a boy? Whenever something bad happens to us,” Mom said as she tucked me into my new bed, insisting that I needed some sleep after staying up all night, “something good happens—often to someone else. And that’s The Good Luck of Right Now. We must believe it. We must. We must. We must.”

  She kissed me on the nose, pulled the blinds, and shut my door behind her.

  I could smell the paint drying, and I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking about people breaking into my bedroom and urinating on my pillow.

  Why would anyone do that?

  How could Mom be so unaffected by it?

  Would it happen again, even though Father McNamee promised to install a new door with a heavier deadbolt?

  Was it my fault somehow—like maybe because I was in my midtwenties and I still hadn’t managed to do anything with my life except live with Mom, I deserved to have my home raped? If I had a job, maybe we’d live in a better neighborhood. If I were a normal person, maybe I wouldn’t attract negative energy and bad luck.

  Was God punishing me?

  These sorts of things happen only to morons! the little man in my stomach screamed. Of course it’s your fault! Smarter men don’t have these sorts of problems!

  But then I decided to take Mom’s advice, and so I thought about every single bad thing that had happened that night, breaking it down into individual acts.

  1.Someone targeted our house.

  2.Someone suggested a plan of action.

  3.The door was kicked in.

  4.Dozens of curse words were profanely spray-painted (each one counted as an individual bad thing).

  5.More than a hundred pieces of glass and mirrors were smashed (each counted).

  6.People went to the bathroom outside of the bathroom dozens of times (each movement counted).

  7.Milk and condiments and lunch meat were wasted (each piece and ounce counted).

  8.I’m sure they swore while doing all of the above (each cuss counted).

  9.They ashed their cigarettes on the floor and left beer bottles all over the place (each drink and cigarette counted).

  10.Pissing on Jesus must have counted as multiple bad acts, maybe one for every ounce of urine? (Also, maybe this counted as nudity?)

  When I estimated the number of individual evil acts done by each person who trashed our house, the sum of bad things easily topped two hundred, and so maybe if Mom’s theory was correct, it meant that more than two hundred good things had happened or would soon happen all over the world to strangers, or a few incredibly really lucky things (worth more than multiple bad things) had occurred or would eventually occur to even out the many terrible events that had happened in our home.

  And I tried to think of what those good things might be: maybe a sick baby girl in Zimbabwe would receive donated medicine just before she was about to slip into a fatal coma; maybe a hungry beggar in San Francisco would find a warm steak in a trash can behind a five-star restaurant and dine under a full moon; maybe a young woman in Tokyo would meet the love of her life when she jogged into the driver’s-side door of a slow-moving car because she was singing with her eyes closed and her future soul mate would be driving and feel so bad about the bizarre accident, he would ask her to have coffee; maybe an elementary school student in Paris would suddenly remember the mathematical formula he needed to pass a test, and therefore would avoid getting grounded for a bad grade; maybe a Russian woman in a Siberian prison would think of her kindly grandmother taking her sledding just before she was about to kill another prisoner by sticking a fork into a bulging neck vein and would have a change of heart; maybe a man in Argentina would find his lost car keys in the meadow where he was sunbathing and could therefore drive home in time to pick up his six-year-old son from soccer practice as a would-be kidnapper cruised the field for stray children; maybe a sun-sized asteroid headed for Earth would be pushed off course by an exploding star and would no longer end humankind seven thousand light-years from now . . .

  I don’t remember if these were the exact examples I came up with when I was in my twenties, but you get the idea—and as I sat in bed thinking of the many good things that had to happen all over the world in order to even out and nullify the horrible bad things that had happened to Mom and me, I started to see why Mom believed in The Good Luck of Right Now. Believing—or maybe even pretending—made you feel better about what had happened, regardless of what was true and what wasn’t.

  And what is reality, if it isn’t how we feel about things?

  What else matters at the end of the day when we lie in bed alone with our thoughts?

  And isn’t it true, statistically speaking—regardless of whether we believe in luck or not—that good and bad must happen simultaneously all over the world?

  Babies are born at the exact moment as people die; people cheat on their spouses, climaxing in sin, just as brides and grooms gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes and say “I do”; people get hired while others get fired; a father takes his son to a ball game just as another man decides he will never return home to his son again and moves to another state without leaving a forwarding address; a man rescues a cat from certain suffocation, removing it from a plastic trash bag, just as another man halfway around the world tosses a sack of kittens into a river; a surgeon in Texas saves the life of a young boy who was hit by a car while a man in Africa kills a child soldier with a swarm of machine-gun bullets; a Chinese diplomat swims in the cool waters of a tropical sea while a Tibetan monk burns to death in political protest—all of these opposites will happen whether we believe in The Good Luck of Right Now or not.

  But after our home had been raped, it was hard for me to believe and pretend happily like Mom—maybe because I have always
been a skeptic, maybe because I am not as strong as she was, maybe because I am stupid, retarded, simple-minded, moronic.

  The next day I felt very anxious, and so I went to Saint Gabriel’s and found Father McNamee in his office writing personalized birthday cards to every church member born in the upcoming months.

  I asked him to promise that no one would ever break into our house again.

  “You know your mother’s theory, right? The Good Luck of Right Now?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe it’s true?”

  “I tried to pretend I did last night.”

  “And?”

  “It helped. I admit it. For a few hours. But I still worry that—”

  “Pray.”

  “For what?” I asked. “That our house will never be broken into again?”

  “No. What happens to things is not important. Pray that your heart will be able to endure whatever happens to you in the future—your heart must continue to believe that the events in this world are not the be-all and end-all but simply transient unimportant variables. Beyond the everyday ins and outs of our lives, there is a greater purpose—a reason. Perhaps we don’t yet see or understand the reason—maybe our human minds are incapable of understanding fully—yet it all leads us to something greater nonetheless.”

  “What do you mean, Father?”

  He laughed in this good way, licked and sealed an envelope, and said, “Wasn’t it nice seeing our flock rise to the occasion last night? They had other things to do, you know. But when they heard what happened to you, their hearts instructed them, and they immediately sprang into action and simply helped.”

  “So?” I said, wondering how that could protect me from future home invaders.

  “You wanted to sleep in a urine-soaked bed last night, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, those people made sure you didn’t.”

  “I’m not sure I understand how—”

  “That’s also The Good Luck of Right Now. That’s also part of your mother’s philosophy.”