by Shawn Stout
Then a man in a suit tells me he wants to talk. He looks like he might be from NASA, but when I ask him if he’s on alien business, he says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about and would I please sit down on the couch. This is code for Yes I Am. I’m pretty sure.
“Do I have to?” I say, because I’ve got an old lady out in the street by herself with non-working legs, and it’s not really a good time for alien talk.
The man almost smiles, but my mom doesn’t at all. She tells me she wants me to sit down and answer this man’s questions, Right Now. I look toward the front door, wondering what Nila Wister must be thinking. Now that the Bad Luck has found me and she’s out there alone.
I sit down, facing the door, and the man sits beside me. He says his name is Martin, and he has a regular-size nose that isn’t very stand-out at all. The kind that you wouldn’t notice if you saw him on the street, and that’s really too bad.
He says he’s Portwaller’s Blessed administrator and wants to know what I did with Nila Wister.
“You mean you’re like the Boss?”
He nods. “I guess you could say that.”
“I was a Boss for a couple of days,” I tell him. “It’s hard work.”
He says it sure is. And then maybe because he’s a Boss too or because I’m so tired after pushing Nila in her wheelchair, or because I’m kind of relieved I don’t have to go through with helping Nila escape, I take a deep breath and tell him everything. About the Bad Luck, about the charms, and about Nila Wister.
Martin says he’s mostly interested in the fact that Nila Wister is safe and sitting in her wheelchair just around the corner. He doesn’t so much want to talk about the charms or the Bad Luck. But if he doesn’t know that the Bad Luck is out there somewhere, ready for the sneak attack, then I guess I’m not going to be the one to tell him.
Then, when he sends somebody outside to bring back Nila Wister, I tell him that she wants to go home. “She doesn’t have any friends here,” I say. “Just me.”
“Nila Wister?” says Patsy Cline. “The fortune teller?”
Vera Bogg says, “She’s an old person?”
I nod and Patsy Cline crinkles up her nose like she’s trying to remember everything that I said about Nila and trying to figure out whether or not I made it all up.
“Do you think she would tell me my fortune?” says Vera Bogg.
Good gravy.
After that, Mr. Rodriguez tells Patsy Cline and Vera Bogg that whatever is going on is not their concern and then he leads them back to the mural party. Which is where I would very much like to be.
“Why did you do this?” Mom asks, with a look on her face that says, This Is a Hundred Times Worse Than a Note from Miss Stunkel.
“Nila asked me to,” I say. “She needed my help. And I am her Favorite.”
“Favorite what?” asks Grandpa Felix.
But before I can answer him, Nila Wister comes rolling in through the front door. And she looks like a fish that’s been reeled in too close to suppertime.
“Nila,” I say, going to her. I kneel beside her wheelchair and in a low voice tell her I’m sorry, very sorry, she didn’t get to go home but that everything is going to be okay because she can still be my Favorite, and now that she’s here we’ll still be able to see each other. And I say it’s going to be okay over and over and that I’m sorry I didn’t have my charm.
She doesn’t look at me, and her fingers are wrapped tight around her acorn charm. She’s wishing I would just go away, that we all would, or that she would. I’m pretty sure. Finally she says, “I told you not to come back.” And she says it in a way that I know I’m not her Favorite anymore.
Martin comes over to us and taps me on my shoulder. He tells me he’s done with me, and that he wants to talk to Nila alone.
“Is she in trouble?” I say.
Mom pulls on my arm before he has a chance to answer me, and the next thing I know, I’m in the car and we’re going home.
It takes me the rest of the day to find the butterfly charm in the Heap. But I do find it, thank lucky stars, and when I do, I make a wish on it. For Nila.
21.
Days later, Grandpa Felix is knocking on our door. When I open it, he says he has a surprise so gather around. On Regular days, I like surprises, but I haven’t had a Regular day in a while, so I tell him I’m not so sure I’m up for it.
“Nonsense,” he says and tells me to follow. He hollers for Mom and Terrible and when we’re all here in the kitchen, Grandpa Felix slaps a copy of The Portwaller Tribune in the center of the table. “Page C-three,” he says.
Mom quickly opens the newspaper, fumbling through the pages, and then gives a squeal and lays the paper out flat. There, on the page, is a picture of the mural and us in front of it. “Look at that!” she says.
Grandpa tells Mom to read the article out loud. She does. It says all about me and the rest of the kids wanting to paint a mural that the residents of Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aging can enjoy and about how Mr. Rodriguez organized the whole thing. “Oh,” says Mom, “Penelope, your name is right here!”
My face gets hot. “It doesn’t say anything about me trying to steal Nila Wister, does it?”
Mom shakes her head, and Terrible says that information would be in the police blotter in a completely different section of the newspaper. Then he laughs.
“But that’s not all,” says Grandpa Felix. He turns the page, and there, staring back at me, is Nila Wister. And beside her picture, the picture that I took of her, there’s a whole other article: “Fortune Teller Charms Portwaller.”
Grandpa Felix says when he got to looking at the pictures he took for the mural party, he saw the ones I took of Nila Wister and then talked to the reporter at the newspaper. “I told him a little bit about her, as much as I knew, and I guess he was interested in doing a story. He must have interviewed her this week and wanted to run the stories together.” Then Grandpa reaches into his pocket and pulls out an envelope of money. “Here’s your share,” he says to me, handing it over.
“She gets paid?” says Terrible.
I don’t know what to say because my first thought is that now I can have orange Popsicles any time I want. And my second thought has to do with Nila Wister.
Grandpa says, “Okay, moneybags, are you ready to go? The wedding is across town, so we’ll need to get going sooner than later.”
I look from Terrible to Grandpa. “Do you think he could be your assistant today?”
Grandpa raises his eyebrows at me. And Terrible does the same. They almost look alike. “Okay by me,” says Grandpa, smiling.
Terrible says, “I just have to get my jacket,” and then he’s up from the table. He pulls on my ponytail as he goes by me and says, “Even for an old lady stealer, you’re okay sometimes.”
I give him a look that says, Even for an Alien, You’re Not the Worst Sometimes. Then I ask Grandpa Felix, “Is Portwaller’s Blessed Home for the Aging on the way?”
Grandpa says that it is and that he’ll take me there as long as I promise not to try to kidnap any more old people and as long as he doesn’t have to go inside.
“It’s not polite to call them old, Grandpa,” I say. And then I ask if we can stop at Ernie’s Go-Mart first. “There’s something I need to buy.”
Arlene at the front desk is not very happy to see me. She gives me the Stink Eye when I come in and says, “I’ll be watching you, young lady. So no funny business.”
I tell her okay and that I’m just here for a visit, that’s all. I swing the plastic bag I got from Ernie’s Go-Mart and say, “Honest to goodness.”
She says, “Humph,” and then nothing else. I head down the hall toward Nila Wister’s room. Her door is partway open, so I knock and peek my head in.
Nila is in her wheelchair with her back to me. I set down the plastic bag and
then whisper her name. When she doesn’t answer, I whisper her name again and tiptoe up to her chair so as not to scare her to death. She doesn’t move, not even a little, so I get my finger ready to poke her in the face. “Don’t you dare,” she says, making me jump.
“You’re awake.”
“Of course I am,” she says. “And you need to work on your tiptoeing. I heard you coming before you even got up this morning.”
I go around to the front of her chair. She looks tiny, like the world is getting ready to swallow her down. “I’m sorry you didn’t get to go home,” I say.
“I know you are,” she says. “You told me a dozen times when they brought me back.”
Then she flaps her lips at me and says, “Yes, well. That’s how luck would have it, I guess.”
“The Bad Luck,” I say.
“The very same.”
Nila Wister looks at me for a long time with those dark eyes, looks deep inside me for the reason that I’m here. I know I’m not her Favorite anymore, if I ever really was, and since I’m not, I reach into my pocket and pull out the butterfly charm. “Here,” I say, holding it out to her.
She cocks her head to the side. “You don’t want it?”
“You should keep it,” I say. “Since you’re still here and all.” And because if that was the only thing I had from my dead sister, if I had a dead sister, I’d want to hold on to it. Not so much for luck, but just because.
Nila Wister closes her hand around the butterfly and maybe makes a wish to go home again, I’m not sure.
So I ask, “Are you going to try to leave again?”
She flaps her lips at me. “Not today. I’ve had my fill of leaving for now.” Then she looks at the poster of the Fortune Lady, the one above her dresser, and she says, “This isn’t how I wanted to end up.”
“You mean here in Portwaller?”
She shakes her head, and then I know she means she didn’t want to end here, like this.
“But you’re not alone,” I tell her. “There are an awful lot of people here who didn’t want you to go. Me, for example. And I know you don’t have your sister anymore, but even without your Favorite, that doesn’t mean you’re all alone.”
She smiles at me, that Nila Wister does, and it’s a smile that makes me understand even if I’m not someone’s Favorite, I’m not alone. Grandpa and Mom and Terrible and Patsy Cline were all here to see the mural, here to find me when I took Nila, here with me now. And Favorite or not, that is lucky. I’m pretty sure.
Then I pick up my bag from Ernie’s Go-Mart and pull out the newspaper article. “Look,” I say, pointing to her picture. “It’s all about you.”
Nila holds the newspaper close to her old eyeballs and squints. When she’s done reading, she places it on her lap and says, “Well, that’s something.”
I tell her that it is something, it’s a lot of something actually, and before I can say more, two old ladies are at Nila’s door asking if she wants to come down to the ice cream social in the activity room.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” says Nila.
“It’s ice cream, Nila,” I whisper.
The ladies smile at me, and then at Nila, and then at me, like they’ve never heard anybody turn down ice cream before and therefore don’t know what to say. And after a while of nobody saying anything, I take charge and say, “She’ll be down in a minute.”
They smile and nod and shuffle away.
Nila says now look who’s being so bossy. I raise my eyebrows at her and say, “You’ve got some new friends.”
“They must’ve seen my picture in the paper.”
“That’s the picture I took, you know,” I tell her. Because even if she has new friends, she shouldn’t forget about me.
“I know it,” she says. “And it’s not a bad one. Even for an old lady.”
“A fortune lady.”
“How about that,” she says, rubbing her thumb over the butterfly.
“Oh, and there’s something else,” I say. I hand her the plastic bag.
Her old, bony fingers pull open the bag and she gives me a look that says, What Are You Up To? before sticking her nose inside. Then she looks up at me, and when she does, she’s got on such a grin. She pulls out a chocolate bar, one that I bought with the money from her newspaper picture.
“I can bring you one every time I come to visit now,” I tell her.
Nila Wister holds the candy bar up to her nose. When she does, her eyes go closed for a long while, like she’s remembering a dream, or maybe remembering her sister, or something else.
And when she finally opens them, they sparkle like butterfly glass. Then she whispers, “My Favorite.”
“I thought orange was your Favorite,” I say.
She scrunches up her shoulders and says, “Ah, that was before. This is my new Favorite. Things don’t always stay the same, you know.” Like that could be a good thing.
I tell her I know, but that the way things are now is okay by me.
She winks at me, that Nila Wister does, and she says, “I have something for you, too. In the first drawer of that bedside table over there.”
I go over to the table and pull open the drawer. There’s nothing in it except for my paintbrush lying on top of my crinkled paper bag. I give my paintbrush a quick squeeze and slip it into my back pocket. Then I take out the bag and unfold it. Somehow the stain doesn’t look so much like a foot with a missing toe anymore. If you look at it a certain way, and make your eyes go kind of squinty, it looks almost like a star. And when I tell Nila this, she says, “Maybe you just found yourself a good-luck charm.”
I fold the bag real carefully, because it’s not every day you find that a stain changes from a foot to a star, not every day you find some luck. And as I grip the handles of Nila Wister’s wheelchair and push her out the door, I wonder if maybe after all this, maybe the Good Luck found me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am middle-of-the-road superstitious: I throw salt over my shoulder when I’m cooking and never ever walk under ladders, but I will let black cats cross my path (on occasion) and often step on cracks without thinking twice. But I do one hundred percent, wholeheartedly believe in luck and am in constant pursuit of finding the good kind.
My efforts in this pursuit so far have been fruitful, as I have had the great fortune of gaining the friendship and encouragement of some amazing people, in particular the DC VCFAers: Mary Quattlebaum, Jessica Leader, Winifred Conkling, Tami Lewis Brown, Abigail Calkins Aguirre, Jan Lower, Lori Mattingly Steel, Helen Kemp Zax, Erin Hagar, Erin Barker, and Barbara Crispin. Debbie Gonzales, Annemarie O’Brien, Erin Loomis, Amy Cabrera, Caroline Smalley, Yasmine Kloth, Jill Santopolo, and Sarah Davies, I am lucky to know each one of you.
Many thanks also to my family, of whom I feel quite lucky and proud to be a part: my mom, Patricia Beard; Heidi and John Potterfield; Sam, Anna, and Lily; Troy Beard; Nate, Olivia, and Ella; Jerry and Shirley Stout; Lori and Kirk Thibault; Janie and Jon Mills; Rachel and Alan Thibault; Jeff and Tammy Stout; Josh and Megan; Mary Ann Mundey; Carol Dowling; Kristin Spenser; and Aunt Julie Over.
I consider myself the luckiest of girls to have met my husband, Andy, and to be blessed with our daughter, Opal. All of this is for you and because of you.