One Good Hustle

by Billie Livingston

  “You’re my two-thirty,” he says. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot.” He sounds like he gargles Drano and sand every night before bed.

  Once we’re both buckled into the test car, he sets the clipboard with my scoresheet in his lap and tells me that first we will do a pre-trip check. He gives me a minute to familiarize myself with the vehicle and then asks me to show him the left indicator, the right indicator, the high beams and the handbrake. There’s a kind of bored fatigue to the way he talks, as if assessing me is just one more in his long list of ass pains. He tells me to demonstrate my hand signals and all I want to do is flip him the bird, but I do the right thing.

  Eventually he has me drive out onto Willingdon Avenue, change lanes and change back. I turn on the indicator and carefully check my mirrors and my blind spot both times. Just like in driver’s ed. So far, so good.

  He gets me to take the ramp onto Highway One, do some more lane changes and get off at the next exit. We drive up the steep hill on Boundary Road, the street that marks the division between Vancouver and Burnaby, and I imagine myself making a right turn and heading west, driving until I hit the beach, sand flying up from the back wheels.

  Just before we reach Kingsway he gets me to hang a right onto a side street, then asks me to parallel park behind a blue Cadillac that is so clean and new, the glare off it is blinding. It’s the flashiest car on the block. Why couldn’t he pick an old beater for me to park behind?

  Nerves are zipping through my guts and my face feels sunburned.

  In order to parallel park I should pull up alongside the Cadillac and then back up slowly, turning the wheel toward the curb, but my brain keeps saying no, that I’ll hit the perfect baby blue shininess of it and then some pissed-off rich bastard will come out of nowhere and beat the crap out of me. Actually, this car looks like the one Sam used to drive except Sam’s was a two-tone.

  As I ease into reverse, Sam’s car keeps flashing through my head—royal and baby blue—and I can’t help but steer away from the Caddy, pushing my car’s back end back into the road.

  “Oops. Sorry, that’s not what I meant to do.”

  The assessor guy scribbles. “Try again,” he says with his cranky toad delivery.

  I put the car in reverse—and do the same thing all over again.

  “Sorry. I’m just nervous.”

  He exhales through his nose and scribbles again. Did he just deduct points on both of my attempts?

  He reaches over and pushes the car into park. “Think about what you’re doing,” he says. “Try again.”

  I flip my signal on, and reverse, telling the scared voice in my head to shut the fuck up. Sam is not here. And if he is, and I rip into his car, it serves him right.

  I ease my foot off the brake, give it a little gas, and the car slips back alongside the curb just the way it’s supposed to. The Cadillac’s silver back bumper is directly in front of me now. It’s perfect. I did it!

  Why can’t it be Sam’s car in front of me? Why doesn’t Sam come out of that white clapboard house over there and say, Holy shit! That’s my kid!

  The test guy doesn’t remark. He doesn’t scribble any more either, though.

  “Pull up to the end of the block where there are no parked cars and make a three-point turn.”

  His voice really reminds me of Froggy from The Little Rascals show. Calm down, I think, he’s just Froggy all grown up. Harmless.

  I signal, carefully pull out, and head down the road, wondering why I’m such a jerk. Three tries, that took me. I know how to parallel park for fuck sakes. I know it. Froggy knows it. Sam would know it too if he took a friggin’ look.

  At the end of the block, I make a three-point turn. No mistakes.

  Froggy has me drive us back out onto the main road and then up to Kingsway. You’d think I’d be nervous being on a busy street like Kingsway, but it’s a relief after the parallel parking. All I have to do is stay in my own lane. Just watch the bumper in front of me like the driver’s ed guy used to say: “Look in the direction you want to go and the car will follow.”

  We roll along, and for a minute or two I feel just the way Lou said, like an old pro. Even Froggy can see that I know what I’m doing now. It was only nerves back there.

  He tells me to make a left turn at the next light and I sail into the intersection just as the light turns amber, and then effortlessly steer the car onto Willingdon Avenue again.

  I am in the zone now. I am acing it.

  “Why did you make that turn back there?”

  I squeeze the steering wheel. “You said—”

  “You should have anticipated that light would turn red. Should’ve stopped.” He scribbles on his clipboard.

  I don’t get it. It’s not illegal to turn left on an amber. Most of the time, that’s what you have to do. Isn’t it? I want to argue this point but I hear Marlene in my head: “You’d argue with your big toe if there was no one else in the room.”

  “At the next intersection, make a right-hand turn.”

  With the long line of traffic, it takes a while to make it to the corner. But when I do, I have just enough time to make a smooth right before the light changes and traffic starts coming from the other direction. It looks as if we’re heading back to the test centre.

  “Check your rear-view,” he tells me.

  “Okay. I did.”

  “Why do you think those cars are so close behind?”

  I glance in the mirror again. “Because … because they’re tailgating?”

  “Try again.”

  My chest is starting to bang. “I’m going too slow?”

  “Because you made that last turn just as eastbound traffic got a green light. You should have anticipated the light would turn and waited. Anticipate!”

  Anticipate? I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Anticipate. If I could anticipate every friggin’ thing that might happen, my life wouldn’t be the bowl of turds that it is right now, would it.

  My hands start to tremble and I grip the wheel harder.

  At twenty past three, we drive back into the test centre parking lot. I put the car in park and pull on the emergency break.

  Well, that’s it. I failed. I suppose I have to take the whole damn test over again.

  The test guy scribbles some more and circles something. He opens the clip on his board, and tears the top sheet off before he opens his door.

  “Driving’s not that hard, kid. Practise. Anticipate.” His voice is all snark—as if he thinks I’m some lowlife, a dirty little cockroach. That’s what he thinks, I bet.

  He tosses the scoresheet on the seat and slams the door behind him.

  I pick up the paper. Pass, it says with a circle around it. I passed by one point.

  I should be happy. But my throat hurts. Tears blur my vision. What a baby. What a goddamn baby I’ve turned into.

  I open the car door and watch that cranky old reptile head back to the building. His thin, sinewy arm yanks open the door and he stands there, waiting for me.

  SIXTEEN

  WHEN LOU, JILL and I got back home, we told Ruby that I passed the driving test and she nearly wet her pants. She grabbed hold and gave me one of her octopus hugs before I could even finish my sentence. She’s going to make me enjoy the hugging stuff if it kills her so I have resigned myself. Actually, I’ve discovered that when I relax—if Ruby feels tension, we’ll be there all day—it’s over quicker. I’ve also started to hug her right back. Good and hard. She giggles and squeals and lets me go.

  Now we’re sitting at the kitchen table. Just finished supper—spaghetti and meatballs—and Ruby sets a chocolate layer cake down in the middle of us. It says, Congratulations, Sammie! in red icing. There’s a little Matchbox car on top: a red Mustang.

  I stare at the cake now and I don’t know what to say because it’s just so goddamn nice of her. What a classy thing to do—that’s what Marlene would say. God, look at it! Two layers and—and it’s just so pretty and cute, the way the ic
ing is, and the little car and the chocolate, and the way my name has a big exclamation point! My eyes are welling up again. Jesus, what’s wrong with me? I bawl when I’m sad and bawl when I’m happy.

  “I waited for Lou’s call before I finished the icing,” Ruby confesses.

  “What if she’d flunked?” Jill wants to know.

  “In that case, I thought I’d go with At This Difficult Time, Stuff Your Face.”

  “Our Hearts Are Saddened,” Jill suggests, “But Our Bundt Is With You.”

  Lou laughs. Me too. Feels good to be laughing. I’d told them about Froggy, the test guy, at dinner and they’d cracked bad frog jokes: What’s red and green and goes two hundred miles an hour? A road tester in a blender. What kind of shoes do road testers wear? Open-toad sandals.

  It cracks Ruby up every time I croak out, “Anticipate!”

  Lou tells me I can borrow his truck whenever I need it. “Same goes for Jill if she ever gets her licence,” he says. He forks some cake into his mouth.

  “I have boobs,” Jill says. “I don’t have to drive.”

  Lou looks at his kid with dismay as he chews.

  Jill giggles her ass off. “What, Daddy?”

  “What, Daddy?” Ruby mimics. She’s trying to savour the sliver of cake she cut for herself. On the fridge there’s a magnet that reads, A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips. Another one says, Growling is your tummy’s applause for a job well done!

  “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Lou says to Jill. “Your mother drive, Sammie?”

  “Yup. She drives,” I say.

  “I don’t enjoy it,” Ruby says. “I’d rather Lou drove.”

  Marlene used to say that too. It used to bug her when Sam expected her to drive. She preferred to be “the lady,” she said. This was back when we were a family. We used to go on these big road trips and stay in motels and hotels all over the United States. Sam said that south of the border there was ten times the money and ten times the suckers.

  There was this one hustle called the Pigeon Drop where Marlene had to drive because of the character Sam liked to play. A good hustle is like a good movie: everyone’s got a character to play and that’s what makes the scene work. You can’t break character either, from the time you arrive until you leave.

  Marlene and Sam must have pulled this scam a ton of times but I can only remember the once. We were in the state of Florida, in the area where they keep Disney World. Marlene drove, Sam road shotgun, so to speak, and I sat in the back.

  The set-up worked best in a busy shopping plaza with a bank. So that’s where we were, window-shopping in some plaza in Orlando.

  It was January and I was happy to be escaping winter and missing school. I think I was about six. Young enough that they didn’t tell me much ahead of time; young enough that it didn’t matter whether I had a poker-face or not.

  Marlene had on a flamingo-pink pantsuit. She held my hand and I remember looking at her blonde ponytail and her thick bangs and thinking that she was the prettiest woman in the world.

  “You look like TV,” I told her. “Like I Dream of Jeannie.”

  She winked at me. Just like Jeannie would have.

  I had a paper bag in my hand. That was my only job, to hold on to that paper bag and keep it shut.

  We strolled along the plaza sidewalk, stopping at each window, peeking past the reflections into the shops. Sam dawdled, his jaws working, cheek muscles scrunched into the left side of his face. Marlene was still my mother, but Sam was playing my uncle now, my mother’s brother. Sam loved to play a mentally retarded guy he called Farmer Lug. He loved spazzing the muscles in his face as if he had no control. He used to say, “If my face don’t hurt afterward, I didn’t do it right.”

  My mother and I were looking at a pair of Buster Browns in a shoe store when she turned her head. I followed her gaze to a bald man in a green sport coat who was walking in our direction. I used to wonder how she picked her suckers, but when I got older I knew who she would choose, by the way the guy moved, the way he dressed. This bald guy had a smarty-pants look on his face. He walked along in his green sport coat as though nobody in the world could look as good in that coat as he did. I felt the tension come into Marlene’s hand. She turned from the shoe-store window and cleared her throat.

  “Excuse me,” Marlene said. “Do you know what time it is?”

  His eyes slid over my mother’s pantsuit, as if he wanted to swallow her. “Time to get a watch, sweetheart.” He winked and then smiled as he glanced at his own. “It’s twenty past one.”

  “Oh shoot. Thank you.”

  Marlene called to Sam in a sweet voice and told him that we had better hurry up.

  The guy in green gave her another smile before he went on his way.

  Pulling me by the hand, Marlene stepped off the curb as if we were heading for the car. I glanced back, looking for my father, and then stopped when he bent down to do up his shoelaces.

  Sam let an envelope drop from under his arm and yelled, “What’s this here?” as he picked it up. Gawking into his hands he turned in a circle, looking all around him. The man in green glanced back and paused.

  Sam called out to him. “Hey! Mister, is this yours?” Sam opened the envelope. “Holy cow!”

  The man turned and took a half-step toward Sam. “Whaddya got, pal?”

  “Holyyyy … it’s a million dollars … ha ha.”

  The man looked each of us up and down.

  “There’s nobody’s name or no pictures,” Sam said, his mouth ticking and twisting.

  The faces he made! As if he was made out of Silly Putty. I started to laugh and my mother squeezed my hand.

  “Honey, give me that.” Next to Sam now, Marlene took the envelope. She counted the money inside—her lips moving so we could all see the total: three thousand.

  The man in the green coat came a little closer. He was ours now: our big green pigeon.

  I stayed close to my mother and held on to the paper lunch bag. I remember wondering if they were still alive in there. I brought the bag up to my ear and listened. The brown paper rattled suddenly as bugs batted the insides. I twitched my head away. They were so ugly—flying cockroaches. The thought of them crawling on my skin made me shiver.

  “No ID or anything, huh?” the pigeon said, eyeing the money in my mother’s hand.

  “Nothing.” Marlene stuffed it back in the envelope, as if the sight of all that cash made her nervous. “Oh, wait. Here’s a little piece of paper. Lucky Lady, 3–5; American Joy 5–7 … No winners. I don’t know what that means.”

  “Sounds like a bookie,” the man told her.

  “It’s mine,” Sam said and pulled it out of my mother’s hands.

  She took the envelope back from Sam. “Come on now, that doesn’t belong to you. We have to find the rightful owner.”

  “It’s mine!” Sam stomped. “I found it.” He wrapped his arms around his head, pulling the kind of tantrum I’d have gotten a smack for.

  “A bookie,” the man repeated. “Loot he made taking bets. Dog racing, probably.”

  Marlene looked dubious.

  The man’s gaze dropped to the envelope. “Don’t imagine that’d last too long in a lost and found.”

  “I expect not,” she said. “I feel bad. This is a lot of money.”

  The man pushed his hands into his pockets. “Maybe it’s our lucky day.”

  “It’s our lucky day!” Sam shouted, and hugged himself.

  “My name is Louise.” Marlene offered the stranger her hand. “This is my brother, Teddy, and my little girl, Tina. We’re not even from here. We’re in town visiting my oldest brother.”

  “Orin.” The man shook her hand. “I’m not from here either. Atlanta. Just here on business.”

  Marlene’s eyes lit up as if she’d just stumbled on royalty. “An Atlanta businessman probably knows just what to do! I swear to God, as soon as I see cash, I get confused.”

  That’s actually sort of true abou
t her. When you work a hustle, it’s good if you can incorporate your real self a bit. Within limits.

  Orin started to shift around; he couldn’t take his eyes off that envelope. “If you want my advice …”

  “I would be grateful,” Marlene said in that light smooth voice she used to be so good at. “Actually, you know what? My brother, Brian, is a lawyer. I should just call him. Maybe you could talk to him?” She started toward a phone booth. “He’s right in town here.”

  Orin followed. “When you’re dealing with cash—”

  “It’s my money!” Sam’s tone see-sawed.

  Marlene looked back. “If the people don’t come back for their money then we’ll split it. How does that sound? One thousand five hundred dollars just for you.”

  Sam clapped his hands.

  My paper bag rattled a little and I flinched.

  Waiting for my mother to put her call through, Orin smiled at me. “What you got in that bag, sweetie? I bet you’ve got some palmetto bugs.”

  “They’re my pets,” I said quietly. That was what Sam had told me when he gave me the bag.

  On the phone, Marlene explained the situation. It was actually Fat Freddy at the other end, feeding her all the lines, my mother preparing him to talk to the pigeon should the pigeon insist.

  “Brian,” she said into the receiver, “we’re leaving town, I don’t have time for all that … Well, what’s a bond? I don’t understand what that means.” She sighed as if she was exasperated. “Brian, why don’t you explain it to Orin, the fellow who … all right! I’ll try to do that … goodbye!”

  She hung up the phone and turned to Orin. “He gets so impatient. He had a meeting to get to. Brian says to make it legal, we have to put up a bond for an equal amount and that we have to run an ad in the paper. If no one claims the money in thirty days, it’s ours. Brian says he’ll take care of the ad and he’ll draw up the paperwork but we have to put the money in his safe if he handles it. What’s a bond?”

  Orin smiled patiently. “A bond is a kind of promissory agreement. When a bond is issued, there must be a deposit made and that insures both parties.”