Good Luck

by Whitney Gaskell

  Emma suddenly brightened. “Anyway, I’ve already decided I’m going to talk Daddy into not counting my wedding dress as part of the budget,” she said breezily, getting up from the bed. She went over to her closet and began riffling through the truly impressive amount of clothing packed in there. “I’m having lunch with Christian’s mother today. What do you think I should wear?”

  Irritation and exhaustion—both emotional and physical—competed within me for top billing. I dropped my head into my hands and massaged my temples. Ginger shifted next to me to lay her golden-red head on my thigh. I stroked her ears, and the old dog closed her eyes in bliss, sighing deeply.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” I muttered.

  Emma turned and stared at me, frowning. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

  “I had a bad day yesterday.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  “For one thing, I was fired.”

  “No!” Emma gasped.

  “And, on a somewhat related note, I was accused of sexually propositioning a student.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Then…” I took in a deep breath, as sharp stabs of pain hit me. “Then I walked in on Elliott having sex with another woman in our bed.”

  Emma was so overcome by the magnitude of this announcement, she forgot about her wardrobe concerns and sat down heavily next to me on her bed. Her round eyes were wide with shock, and her mouth gaped open a little. And then, unexpectedly, she put an arm around me and pulled me into a hug. Emma was not a physically demonstrative person, so this impulse first surprised me—and then moved me to tears. I hadn’t thought I was going to cry any more. At least not over Elliott. But then, I don’t think the tears were for him. Rather, I was crying for my old life, which was now suddenly, irrevocably, gone.

  “Are you okay? No, of course you’re not okay,” Emma said, patting my head. “But you will be.”

  “You think?” I sniffed.

  “I know,” she said. And she sounded so sure, I almost believed her.

  Five

  I ASKED MY DAD TO DROP ME OFF AT THE CAR-RENTAL agency on his way in to work, and twenty minutes later I drove myself home in a dark-blue Honda Accord. I hadn’t told Emma about the lottery ticket, nor had I tried to convince my parents that I wasn’t joking. In a few days I’d take them all out to a celebratory dinner and tell them then. Surely the lottery commission would provide me with some sort of paperwork I could use as evidence. Maybe they’d even present me with one of those giant cardboard checks. I pictured myself showing up at the next family dinner with it tucked under my arm, and even in my current state, I couldn’t help a small smile.

  I needed to focus on getting myself together, cashing in the ticket, and figuring out what the hell I was going to do with the rest of my life. My late grandmother—my mother’s mother, and one of my favorite people of all time—was fond of saying, “When a door closes, a window always opens.” I wasn’t sure what lay ahead of me, but eighty-seven million dollars should open a hell of a lot of windows.

  First things first. I’d have to collect the money. And deposit the check. And hire a financial adviser. Maybe more than one financial adviser, in case one was a screwup or decided to run off to the Caymans with my money. The very idea was so weird. Having your financial adviser flee to the islands with your fortune was something that rich people had to worry about. It was not the sort of issue that comes up much when you’re a high school teacher living paycheck to paycheck. What would I be fretting about next? That my new Brazilian playboy boyfriend was only trying to marry me for my money in order to fund his polo hobby?

  When I got home, I greeted Harper Lee, who leaped and bounded around me as though it had been weeks since we’d last seen each other. Then I headed back to the office, which now looked depressingly bare with all of Elliott’s belongings cleared out. Despair began to well in my chest, but I forced it down. I am not going to think about Elliott, I told myself sternly.

  I sat at my desk, switched on the computer, and waited for the chiming sound it made when it was up and running. I pulled up the Internet browser, Googled the Web site for the Florida Lottery, and, once I’d found it, navigated to the frequently-asked-questions page. I began to read.

  The rules were clear: In order to claim my prize, I had to go to the Florida Lottery headquarters, which was located across the state in Tallahassee. It was a six-hour drive from Ocean Falls to the state capital. Forget that, I thought. I was in no condition to tackle a road trip. But such was the beauty of the modern world—with just a few more clicks of the mouse, I was able to purchase a ticket on Continental Air lines, leaving that afternoon for a nonstop flight to Tallahassee.

  I sat back in my seat. My hangover was starting to fade, or at least the nausea was going away. My head was still throbbing. And, when I allowed my mind to wander, the events of the previous day would start to flash into my thoughts, bringing back a surge of anger mixed with grief and disbelief.

  Just focus on the next task in front of you, I told myself sternly.

  So I showered. I shampooed and conditioned my hair. I brushed and flossed my teeth. I rubbed sunscreen on my face and applied mascara to my lashes and balm to my lips. I dressed in a short-sleeved rose sweater and khaki pants. I packed an overnight bag. Finally, I called Maisie.

  “Would you mind watching Harper Lee for me tonight?” I asked when she answered the phone. The background noise of her house sounded chaotic, as usual—the boys were whooping, Fang was barking, the cable news was turned up to full volume.

  “Sure,” Maisie said immediately. Then, suspicion creeping into her voice, she added, “Why? What are you doing?”

  “I just have to go out of town for the night,” I said evasively. My mom would have been happy to babysit Harper Lee—what was one more dog among the pack—but I knew Maisie would ask fewer questions. I had considered telling Maisie the truth about where I was going and why, but I felt a little weird about it, knowing the financial strain she and Joe were under. I’d tell her eventually, of course…just not now. Better to wait until I’d had a chance to fully absorb the news myself.

  “You’re not suicidal, are you?” she asked sharply.

  “What?” I was so surprised, I laughed. “No, of course not. Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because you just lost your job yesterday. And now you sound a little out of it.”

  “Sorry. Hangover.”

  “I don’t blame you. I’d have gotten drunk too,” Maisie said. “Where’s Elliott? Why can’t he watch Harper Lee?”

  My thoughts were so tangled up, I’d forgotten that Maisie didn’t know about Elliott. “He’s…well. I’m not sure where he is. We broke up last night.”

  Maisie gasped. “What? What happened?”

  I knew there was no way around this one and that, if I tried to evade her, it would just bring out the prosecutorial pit bull in Maisie. So, even though it was the last thing I felt like talking about, I told her about walking in on Elliott and Naomi going at it in my bedroom.

  “Bastard! The fucking bastard!” she shrieked. “Whoops. Boys, you didn’t hear what Mommy just said, did you?”

  “Bastard!” I heard the twins yelling in the background. “Bastard!”

  “Oh, crap,” Maisie muttered. “Hold on, Lucy. Hey, guys, if you go in the other room and forget that you heard Mommy say that word, I’ll let you have some cookies.” There was a rustling sound and shouts of exultation, and then Maisie was back. “Sorry, hon. I just bought them off with sugar. Am I the Mother of the Year or what? Look, why don’t you come over here. Put off your mysterious trip for a few days, and let us take care of you. We have cookies! And red wine!” she said temptingly.

  Despite the nauseated lurch that shuddered through me at the mention of alcohol, I felt a rush of warmth for my friend. “I love that you asked, but I can’t put this off. It’s sort of…important.”

  “Important, hmmm? Well, clearly you’re not going to tell me, but at l
east promise me you’re not hiring a hit man to take out Elliott. Not that I’d miss him, mind you, but I don’t want you ending up in jail for the rest of your life. He’s so not worth it.”

  “I promise I’m not hiring a hit man,” I said, laughing again. This was another thing I loved about Maisie: She could make me laugh, even when my heart was breaking. “And I will tell you all about it when I get back.”

  “Okay, then. Drop off Harper Lee. The boys will be thrilled to have her, as will Fang,” Maisie said.

  “Thanks, Maisie. I owe you big,” I said.

  “I know,” she said cheerfully. “And someday I’ll make you pay by forcing you to babysit the two horrors while Joe and I take off for a romantic weekend.”

  “You’ve got it,” I said sincerely. “Anytime.”

  Maisie just laughed. “Lucky for you we can’t afford it, or else I’d hold you to that.”

  The Florida Lottery headquarters was housed in a nondescript state-government building in downtown Tallahassee, which I found fairly easily, aided by the map the car-rental agency had given me. I don’t know what I’d expected—dollar signs etched on the glass doors or a burbling champagne fountain—but when I got inside it looked a lot like the motor-vehicles office in Ocean Falls where I went to file my car registration. Industrial-tile floor, pale-green walls, indestructible gray plastic chairs in the waiting area. A receptionist sat behind a faux-wood desk, working on a sudoku puzzle. She looked up when I came in.

  “May I help you?” she asked, peering up at me through purple-framed bifocals perched on the end of her nose.

  I drew in a deep breath. “Yes, I think so. I…well, I…won the lottery last night,” I said haltingly. And I held out my ticket to her.

  It all happened quickly. The receptionist escorted me to a conference room, where she deposited me at one end of a long table surrounded on all sides by black chairs, then left to find someone official to take care of me. A few minutes later another woman, a pretty redhead with milky white skin and wearing a charcoal-gray suit, came in.

  “Congratulations, Ms. Parker,” she said. Her lipstick was dark red, and there was a beauty mark just to the right above her lip. “My name is Mary Sylvester. I’ll be walking you through your claim procedure today.”

  “Hi,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Yesterday must have been a very exciting day for you,” Mary Sylvester said.

  “Well…” I was about to explain that I hadn’t found out about my winning ticket until that morning, but suddenly my mouth felt unusually dry. Too dry to launch into a long, drawn-out explanation about lost jobs, harassment allegations, cheating boyfriends, and champagne binges. I distantly realized that my hands were shaking. I folded them in my lap, nodded, and said, “Yes,” in such a faint voice that Ms. Sylvester smiled.

  “Don’t worry. This is pretty painless. And at the end we’ll be handing you a check for an enormous amount of money, so it’s worth your while,” she said.

  I smiled back at her and felt foolish. “At least one of us has been through this before,” I said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I feel so freaked out. I mean…this is a good thing, right? An amazing thing.”

  “That’s right. And you’re doing great,” she said. “Some people cry. I’ve even seen a few faint. One man had chest pains when he received his check. We thought he was having a heart attack and had to call an ambulance.”

  “Oh, no! Was he okay?”

  “Yes, he was fine. And you will be too,” Ms. Sylvester said reassuringly.

  It was the second time that day someone had told me this. I wondered if I looked like as big of a wreck as I felt. I just wasn’t used to having this much drama in my life. And in the past thirty-six hours, I’d been doing emotional loop-de-loops. At least I wasn’t having a heart attack; that was something.

  While I filled out the paperwork, Ms. Sylvester took down the details from my driver’s license and then explained that I had two choices: I could take the payout in thirty yearly installments or I could opt for a one-time adjusted payment that would come out to roughly thirty-four-point-four million dollars after taxes. I thought about it for a minute, but my head was so woolly I was finding it hard to do the math.

  “The one-time payment,” I finally said, although I wasn’t sure if this was the better of the two options. I wished I’d thought to bring my dad with me. He’d have known which I should choose.

  “Fine,” Mary said. “This one last paper is a release form for publicity purposes.”

  “Publicity?” I asked. Unease pricked at me.

  She nodded. “We’d like to put a photo of you receiving your check on our Web site. And some of our former winners, especially big-jackpot winners like yourself, have agreed to be featured in television commercials. Most of them have had a positive experience with it, I think. It’s a lot of fun.”

  But I didn’t need any time to think this one over. “No, I definitely don’t want to do any of that,” I said firmly. “I’d like to keep all of my information private.”

  “Well…” Mary hesitated. “We’re legally obligated to disclose your name and hometown to anyone who requests it.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, although I really preferred to keep that private too.

  “Are you sure?” Mary asked. “We wouldn’t use your picture in a negative way. Our publicity people are always very respectful.”

  I distinctly remembered a commercial for the Florida Lottery that had featured a jackpot winner jumping feetfirst into a pool filled with dollar bills instead of water, a look of crazed glee stretched across her plump face.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  “All right, then. We just have to verify the authenticity of your ticket before we can give you your check,” Mary said.

  “Okay,” I said, wondering how they went about doing this. Images straight out of the crime-scene TV shows Elliott had been so addicted to flashed through my head—men and women dressed in immaculate white coats peering at my lottery ticket through complicated stainless-steel microscopes before running it through some sort of genetic spinning machine.

  I waited for a long time while they made sure I hadn’t forged the ticket. When Mary Sylvester finally returned, there was a man with her. He looked like a politician, with his carefully groomed dark wavy hair, yellow tie, and navy-blue suit.

  “Hello, Lucy,” he said. When he smiled, a dimple appeared in his right cheek. “I’m Bob Newton, the Florida Lottery secretary. And this”—he handed over a check to me—“is for you.”

  I stared down at it. The check had my name on it—and was made out for the amount of $34,438,521.82.

  Holy shit, I thought, staring down at it. $34,438,521.82.

  “Congratulations,” Bob Newton said.

  “Congratulations,” Mary Sylvester echoed.

  “Thanks,” I said. My lips felt dry. I licked them, but it just seemed to dry them out even more.

  “Any plans on what you’re going to do with all that money?” Bob Newton asked.

  “No,” I said. “No plans at all.”

  And as I spoke, I had the sudden sensation that I had jumped from a very high altitude and was free-falling through the air.

  I didn’t sleep much that night. After I left the lottery headquarters, I checked in to a hotel I’d noticed on my way in from the airport. It was a standard business traveler’s hotel—corporate and anonymous. The carpets and matching drapes were an ugly sea-foam green. The bed was comfortable; the pillows were not. I’d finished my book on the plane, so I sat up in bed, propped against the lumpy pillows, and watched a movie on TV. It was entertaining in a mindless way, which was all that I was up for. And afterward, when I finally did fall asleep, it was fitful and unrestful. I was already awake and dressed when my wake-up call came in the morning.

  The flight back to West Palm—the nearest commercial airport to Ocean Falls—was mercifully short. And when I finally got to Ocean Falls, driving north in the blue Honda Accord rental, I he
aded straight to my bank.

  I thought about going to the drive-through but then decided that depositing a thirty-four-point-four-million-dollar check probably called for a visit to the counter. Or maybe even one of those managers’ desks lined up on one side of the bank.

  The bank was quiet. There was only one person queued up ahead of me, an elderly man in golf clothes who had liver spots covering his shiny bald head. I glanced over at the desks, off to the right of the lobby. They were empty.

  “May I help the next customer,” the single cashier said in a bored voice. The elderly man shuffled slowly over to her window.

  I waited while they transacted his business. A young mother came in, accompanied by her two young sons, and lined up behind me. The younger boy began hanging off the velvet ropes that marked off the area.

  “Quit it,” the mother said. “Wyatt, you’d better behave yourself or no Backyardigans when we get home!”

  “You always say that,” the older boy muttered. “But you never mean it. You always end up letting him watch.”

  “Well, I mean it now,” the mother said menacingly. The younger boy, evidently not believing her, continued to hang off the rope.

  “I’m a monkey!” he chirruped. “Look, Ma! Oo oo oo!”

  His mother looked pointedly in the opposite direction.

  “May I help the next customer in line,” the teller said.

  “I think she means you,” the mom said to me, her voice sharp. I started and realized she’d caught me watching her.

  I turned and quickly walked over to the teller. She was a bit older than me and was carrying an extra forty pounds on her short, square frame. Her features were small for her fleshy round face, although she had lovely eyes—blue and slanted with thickly fringed lashes.

  “I have a check to deposit,” I said. “But—”

  “Into checking or savings?” she asked, cutting me off.

  “Savings,” I said. “But—”