But the Children Survived

by A. L. Jambor

  Joe took a deep breath. “Yeah, I'll help with the boys. Mindy is too self-conscious in front of me. Boys don't care.” He stood up and went to the middle of the playground.

  “Hey, guys, can I have your attention?” The kids turned to look at Joe. “Can I have all the boys line up over here?” Seven little boys walked over to the imaginary line Joe pointed to. “All right, fellas, it's bath time. I want you to go over to that lady over there and she’ll tell you what house to go to for your bath.”

  The boys complained but they did as they were told. It was nice to have someone in charge. Dani lined them up again and waited for Jenny. Jenny ran out to her and said the house they had parked at had two full baths and running water, but it was cold.

  “Guys, we have to give you cold baths. I promise to make it shallow and we’ll just use it to rinse you off. Okay?” Dani said.

  The boys made faces but followed Jenny into the house with Joe bringing up the rear. Then Dani had the girls line up and follow her into the house next door. She’d found two baths in there, too, and she would get the girls washed up in that one. They should have some clean clothes in their respective houses.

  It would be a long evening, but once they were clean, they could sleep and be on the road first thing in the morning. She and Jenny would stop at a store and fill the car with food while Joe waited with the kids in the bus. He would then follow Dani as she followed the “E” in the rearview mirror.

  *****

  The school bus was quiet. By some quirk of fate, all the kids had fallen asleep, and Joe was enjoying the peace and quiet. The road ahead was empty of cars and bodies. It was a rural highway, with a farm here and there. The lack of distractions gave Joe a chance to reflect on the moment that changed his life, and how you never really know what’s around the next bend in the road.

  Chapter 49

  St. Petersburg, Florida

  Gladys Stemple was putting her prescriptions in the car when the latch on her purse opened. The lottery ticket she had placed in it was sitting on her wallet. She had taken it out of her wallet so it would be easier to find when she went to Granger's to check the winning lottery numbers.

  Gladys had been buying lottery tickets for years, always using the same numbers. She knew her odds of winning were low, but watching those numbers come up every week gave her a small thrill, which at her age was all she could handle.

  Gladys didn’t have the internet and had stopped the paper coming to the house when Fred died. She had fallen asleep in the chair last night and missed the drawing, so now she had to go to Granger's to check them.

  Gladys looked down and saw her purse open. She snapped it closed without noticing that the ticket had fallen out. It had been picked up by the wind and was wending its way down to the 7-11 on 16th Street North, where Joe Lane sat with his back against the front of the store.

  Joe had decided to sit there until he died. It was better than going home and facing Dani and Mindy without the promised pizza. In the meantime, Gladys Stemple was cursing herself at the lottery counter of the Granger's Supermarket for not buying a new purse.

  Joe had been sent out to pick up a pizza. He was supposed to take $20 out of the ATM, go to the pizza place and pick up the pizza Dani had ordered over the phone. She would’ve paid for it over the phone, but Joe said he could get the soda cheaper at the dollar store so, against her better judgment she gave him her ATM card. She made him promise not to stop at the 7-11. She threatened death if he did. So Joe had promised, as he always did, to go straight to the pizza place after buying soda at the dollar store.

  As soon as Joe hit the car, he remembered 7-11 was having a sale on soda. He began to think about the scratch-off lottery tickets. Joe loved the scratch-offs. He loved the feeling he’d get as he scratched off each little box revealing a winner or a loser. More often than not, Joe had losers.

  But Joe couldn’t stop buying scratch-offs. Even when an investigation proved that most of them were losers since there were always more tickets printed than prizes awarded, Joe would still pay a dollar for a worthless piece of cardboard.

  Gamblers get their thrills from the anticipation of the win to come. The pursuit of the prize is their reward, and the odds favor the house every time. Joe had worked himself into a frenzy thinking about those tickets. He couldn't get to the 7-11 fast enough. He put the card in the ATM and entered the numbers. He then drove away leaving the $20 bill hanging out of the machine.

  When he got to the 7-11, he parked the car at an angle and ran into the store. He knew he had to get to the pizza store before the pizza got cold. He had to wait behind one person at the counter, and while he stood there, he pulled out his wallet. Then he remembered the money hanging out of the machine.

  “Shit,” he whispered. He ran back to the car. The bank was three blocks away. Maybe it was still there, but he thought there had been another car behind him so the odds were pretty bad.

  “Shit,” he said again, out loud this time. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Joe walked back to the store and sat down on the pavement. He wished someone would drive by and shoot him. It was better than facing Dani. She was gonna kill him.

  It was Mindy’s birthday and she wanted a pizza. It had been the last $20 they could spend until Dani got paid on Friday, and this was Wednesday. If it hadn’t been Mindy’s birthday, they would have waited to get a pizza until the weekend.

  Dani had specifically told Joe not to go to the 7-11. But if he had gotten a winner, he reasoned, they may have had $100, or a $1,000 to spend on Mindy.

  Joe always imagined Dani's face as he walked into the house with $1,000. He imagined her smiling and hugging him. She might even laugh. Mindy would jump up and down and daddy would be a hero instead of a loser. Now Daddy sat in front of the 7-11 like a panhandler. He couldn't go home without a pizza.

  As Joe was contemplating the various ways he could kill himself, a lottery ticket blew by his legs and landed on the pavement next to his feet. Joe looked at the ticket. It was a Florida Lotto ticket. Obviously, someone had lost and thrown it away. But you never knew.

  That thing that rose up in every addict began to rise up in Joe. Joe had to pick up that ticket and look, he just had to. A teacher of his liked to say, “Anticipation is greater than realization.” Joe never quite understood what she meant by that. If he had, he wouldn't be a gambler, and he probably would have left the ticket on the ground.

  Joe reached down and picked up the ticket. He turned it over. No one had signed it. Joe got up off the ground. He walked into the 7-11 and scanned the ticket to see if it was a winner. The machine said “Call Lottery Office.” That had never happened to Joe before. He asked the guy behind the counter what that meant.

  “Must be a big one, man. You want me to call?”

  Joe thought about it.

  “No, I'll do it when I get home. Thanks.”

  Joe left the store and ran back to his car. He sat in the car looking down at the ticket. How big does it have to be to not register on the scanner?

  He pulled out his cell phone and dialed the 800 number for the Florida Lottery. He input his numbers and it told him to wait. He was connected to a pleasant-sounding woman who asked for his numbers again.

  “Well, sir, I’m happy to tell you that you have won one of our big jackpots.”

  “Really? I really won?” Joe's blood was rising in his body. He could feel himself twitch. “How much?”

  “The prize is $5,000,000 sir.”

  Joe sat with the phone stuck to his ear. He couldn't move.

  “Wha...what did you say?”

  “$5,000,000, sir.”

  Joe was having trouble breathing. “Uh...how...do I get it?”

  “You’ll have to come to Tallahassee to the Florida Lottery Headquarters. We’ll need a valid photo ID and a bank account to wire the money to.”

  Joe was speechless. She was serious. He had won $5,000,000 dollars. As he sat there, he could hear her giving Joe more instructions. What she was
saying wasn’t registering. He then heard her say he could go on the Internet and find all the instructions. Joe thanked her and hung up the phone.

  His biggest worry was he would lose the ticket like the unfortunate person who had purchased it. He took out his wallet and carefully placed the ticket inside. He then put the wallet in his pocket. Then he recalled that that pocket had a hole in it and took the wallet out again. He felt the inside of the other pocket. It seemed intact so he slipped the wallet in there.

  Joe was still in a daze. He, Dani and Mindy were millionaires, millionaires without enough gas to get to Tallahassee and claim their prize.

  Joe's mom, Mimi, lent them the money to go to Tallahassee. Normally it was Dani's mom, Linda, who helped them out, but she’d met a man named Hector who swept her off her feet, married her, and moved her to Puerto Rico. Dani kept calling her, but Linda was in Europe on an extended honeymoon and hadn’t answered her phone.

  When they got to Tallahassee and the money was being transferred into their bank account, they decided the first thing they would do is take a vacation together. They hadn’t gone anywhere alone together since Mindy was born. It was Joe's idea to go to Vegas. Dani had protested that Vegas was the last place Joe needed to be.

  At that moment, Joe decided to give her 2/3 of the prize and he would keep his 1/3 in a separate bank account. If he lost it all, at least Dani's and Mindy's shares would be safe. He also agreed to go sightseeing and not spend every minute in the casinos.

  *****

  Joe thought about the kind of man he had been. He thought about his foolishness in thinking it would be okay to gamble away 1.7 million dollars as long as Dani and Mindy had theirs.

  Their present situation made money obsolete, and Joe was beginning to have strange thoughts come into his head about how his wife and daughter's lives were worth so much more to him than he had ever imagined. He knew he loved them, he had always known that. But what he hadn't understood was how hard he tried to push his family away.

  The time on the bus was just what Joe needed. He tried to understand his motives, and what had made him run away all those times when things got hard. There were little fissures forming in his old thinking patterns. Instead of rationalizing his behavior, he was beginning to see it for what it was - cowardice.

  Joe had been a coward unable to face the realities of his life, unable to be truthful in order to avoid the consequences of the truth. This dawning realization was causing Joe so much pain that he tried to turn it off, but he couldn't, and over the next few days, it would manifest into a new Joe, a Joe who was able to empathize with other people's pain; a Joe who could be proud of himself for not running away.

  There was something else Joe thought about as he rambled over the highway towards Florida; it seemed every time they stopped for food or to look for gas, they would find another kid. It was as if some divine hand were guiding them.

  This happened to Joe all the time, though he had never recognized it as a guiding hand, so to speak. He just thought it was luck. It had happened to his mother and father, too. His mom was always finding something just when they needed it, like $2 Stride Rite shoes for her son's huge feet when he was a toddler, or $2 shirts on a rack at J.C. Penney's just in time for the new school year.

  Joe's relationship with the Almighty had never been much to write home about. He had gone to church with his mom but it never made much impression on his character. It was easier for Joe to lie than to deal with the disappointment on his mother's face. It was easier to lie than to hear his father yell at him. Joe learned early that avoidance was easier than responsibility, and once he learned that lesson, he never looked back.

  Joe got into trouble a lot when he was in high school. He took a joy ride to Philly one day with some friends, hoping to score marijuana. The car was old and not in great condition. The kid driving the car was inexperienced and when the car failed on the road, he couldn't get it out of the way of a truck barreling down on them.

  Joe was in the left-hand passenger seat and when the truck hit, and he was thrown to the roof of the car suffering a severe head injury. It took a long time for Joe to come back. He was never really himself again after that, not the kid his parents knew growing up. But his tendency to lie had remained intact. He parlayed this ability into a sales position at an appliance store. If you didn't know Joe, you believed him. He was very persuasive.

  When Joe met Dani, he was 20 years old. He liked girls. He liked girls a lot and they liked him. He wanted to be monogamous, but when those 16-year-olds came onto him, what was he supposed to do?

  “Stay away from them, Joe.” His mother would say. “We're talking statutory rape. These are minors. You’re an idiot if you mess with that. I'm not gonna bail you out. Maybe your father will, but I won't.”

  Mimi knew Joe would never survive without two showers a day, so the threat of jail had real meaning for him. She also knew that her son hated to be confined somewhere he couldn't get out of.

  Mimi was hoping Dani would straighten him out. She was a nice girl and Mimi liked her. When she became pregnant, Mimi worried because she knew her son well. She knew he would run away from hard things by gambling or smoking pot, or even actually running away.

  When Dani lost the baby, Joe did run away. He took off for Jersey, where he had lived before coming to Florida. Dani went after him and brought him back. She loved him and believed he would change. Most young girls believe that if a guy is loved hard enough, he will eventually “see the light.” Dani was no exception.

  Dani finished college while Joe dropped out and drifted. He worked sporadically and borrowed money from his father, Fritz, on a weekly basis. They were living with Dani's mom now and things were tense. No matter how much Joe wanted to change, he just kept falling back into his old bad ways.

  Dani had a good job and was able to pay their bills, but Joe kept taking the money out and buying scratch-off lottery tickets. He would drain their bank account trying to score a big win so he could go home and throw the money in Dani's face. It never happened, and Dani's checks would bounce. It was as though he wanted to push her away, make her leave him.

  Joe would accuse her of sleeping with other men. He fought with Dani's mom and ran out in the middle of the night to drive around aimlessly. He flirted with women who came in to buy appliances and took their numbers.

  Dani would go to Mimi to find out why he was like this. Mimi would try to give her some answer, but the bottom line was that Joe was Joe. If he was going to change, it would have to come from within himself.

  Dani had troubles of her own. When she was 14, her brother Brandon had died in a motorcycle accident caused by a drunken driver. A settlement was made and Dani had been given a great deal of money. It could never make up for the loss of her brother. Dani mourned him for many years.

  She married when she turned 18, but the marriage failed. As it was ending, she met Joe. She fell hopelessly in love with him. The more she loved him, the worse he got. But she persevered. She believed that somewhere in Joe was a good man, a man she could be proud of.

  The loss of the baby had a devastating effect on Dani. She had longed for a little girl, a daughter she could bond with. She was very excited about having a baby, even though Joe was so unpredictable. She looked forward to doing all the things with her daughter that Linda had done with her.

  Dani had a close relationship with Linda and hoped she would have the same with her daughter. When she lost the baby in her second trimester, the doctor told her she had cervical insufficiency and may never be able to carry a baby to full term. Dani hated him and decided to find a new doctor.

  Three years later, when she found herself pregnant again, she was scared to do anything. She was scared to move around, and she was scared to go to work. One of the doctors she worked for suggested a colleague by the name of Tomlinson. He told her Michael Tomlinson had had great success with cases like hers. In fact, they seem to be outright miracles. Women who had lost two or three babies were carr
ying to full term. He made a phone call and got her into see him.

  Tomlinson looked like Santa Claus. She smiled when he walked in the door. He was gracious and shook her hand. He made Dani feel instantly at ease. He assured her she had nothing to worry about. He had a drug called Fetura that would tighten her cervix, allowing her to carry the baby.

  Fetura was very expensive. When she returned to the doctor’s office, he gave her a bottle of purple solution, which she drank in the office. He then sent her home. Dani used the settlement monies to pay Tomlinson's inflated fees. This guy better produce or she would sue, she thought.

  Dr. Tomlinson did produce, and Mindy was born right on time. Dani was ecstatic, and Joe tried his hardest to seem enthusiastic. But he left the hospital and went straight to the 7-11. He bought 20 scratch-off tickets without one winner. Joe couldn't handle responsibility, and a big one had just been dropped in his lap.

  He began to have fantasies that Mindy wasn't his. After all, Dani had gone to the doctor's office and then had a baby. How did he know it was his? Joe's inability to accept responsibility had always caused him to create an alternate universe wherein he was the victim of everyone else's plots. Dani was usually the perpetrator of these plots.

  Now she had a baby, another human being who would force Joe to go to work every day and change diapers and make sure there was food in the house. This was all her fault; his failures were always her fault. The belief that the whole world was against him, seemed to color all of Joe's decisions.

  Now Joe had had another big responsibility dropped into his lap, one he couldn’t run away from. He silently prayed that he wouldn’t let Dani down this time.

  Chapter 50

  Joe was listening to the kids as he drove the bus. In this world where money was useless, who was Joe Lane? What kind of man was he?

  His excuse for buying the tickets had been to try to turn $1 into $1,000. His excuse for chasing women had been that Dani was always nagging him about money. His excuse for sleeping late and missing work was that he was trying to find junk to sell to make money. All the excuses he used for his bad behavior were no longer valid.