With a Little Luck: A Novel

by Caprice Crane

  “He has his demons,” I admit. “But you’re right. I need to distance myself from his way of thinking.”

  Natalie exhales a gigantic breath. “I gotta admit, I never thought I’d see the day. I’m proud of you.”

  “Okay, come on.”

  “I’m serious, Ber,” she says. “You’ve been like an emotional cripple.”

  “That’s a little extreme.”

  “I was putting it nicely.”

  “Thank you?”

  “Look,” she goes on. “This is good. This is growth. The first step is admitting you have a problem. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “If I was an alcoholic,” I say.

  “You’re a something-ic.”

  “I’m something ick?”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  “This is big,” she says, with an encouraging smile. “I sense a change in you. A real one.”

  “Yeah, so now what?” I ask.

  “Now you be opposite Berry.”

  “Bizarro Berry,” I offer.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” I say.

  “It means take charge. Do things you’re afraid of. Take your life back.”

  “Yeah, I don’t need to do a bunch of shit that’s just tempting fate.”

  “You’re not tempting fate,” she says. “You’re trusting yourself. You’re not living in fear.”

  Her words are taking root. A self-confident, self-reliant me? I can almost picture it.

  “That would be nice,” I admit.

  “What’s your biggest fear?” Nat asks.

  “That’s kind of a heavy question. You mean my biggest fear based on superstition, or …”

  “Whatever—just your biggest fear.”

  “What’s your biggest fear?” I ask her, eager to get out from under the microscope.

  “Easy,” she says. “I fear that I will one day be hospitalized and unable to use my arms, or worse, in a coma and nobody will be there to pluck hairs out of my face.”

  “Oh, I know,” I say. “I’m in the mirror, tweezing my freakin’ eyebrows like every single morning.”

  “No,” she says with a grave look as she grabs my arm. “This goes beyond eyebrows. I grow hair in my mustache area like a wildebeest. And on my chin I have about seven hairs that require plucking at various times.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “It’s an albatross,” she goes on. “When I was young I was afraid of heights … and spiders … and my parents dying. Now I would eat a tarantula on top of the Empire State Building while my parents swan-dive off the deck in exchange for no facial hair.”

  “That’s not true,” I say.

  “It would be a toss-up,” she says.

  “Look, let’s not talk about tarantulas and swan dives.”

  “If I’m ever in a coma, will you pluck the hair from my face?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Every day?”

  “If you require it, yes.”

  “I require it!” she says vehemently.

  “Then I will.”

  “Can I get that in writing?” Nat asks, completely serious. “I mean, at some point this was going to need to come up, like a living will or something. I need to know that I can count on you.”

  “Wow, did we just switch bodies?” I tease. “I thought I was the crazy one.”

  “You’re the superstitious one. I am an ape descendant—the missing link. One is a mental case—I mean a choice—the other is an unfortunate existence.”

  “Got it,” I say. “And calling me a mental case? Not gonna bode well when you’re in a coma.”

  “Don’t go there,” she says.

  “I’m just sayin’ … do me wrong and you could wake up with a goatee.”

  “I will cut you.”

  Nat’s right. It’s time for me to take my life back. But back from when? I’ve been this way since I was born. Now I have to start over? Learn to not be afraid? Not think I’m jinxing myself if I do this, that, or the other thing? I don’t even know what a life like that looks like.

  We make a list of my fears and basically create tasks that will force me to face them. I start sweating at the thought of it, but Nat calms me down and assures me that nothing bad will happen. And that once I start and see that the sun still rises and sets, it will be freeing.

  “We’re gonna test this right now,” Natalie says triumphantly.

  “How so?”

  “Go get an umbrella,” she says.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “I’m serious,” she says.

  “You’re going to make me open an umbrella in my house?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “You have to,” she says.

  “Come on, Nat,” I whine, even though I know she’s right about me getting past this stuff. But it’s still terrifying.

  She ignores my whine and goes on. “You have to do an about-face, Berry. Open an umbrella indoors, break a mirror, adopt a black cat, and see that nothing bad will happen, and if it does, realize that it has nothing to do with the cat or the umbrella or the mirror.”

  “I’m a dog person,” I say. “And besides, I don’t think Moose would appreciate sharing his space with a cat.”

  “Go get an umbrella,” she repeats.

  I sigh as I get up and walk to my closet. I know this is supposed to be a meaningful ritual. I know I have to take these steps. But I’m not a hundred percent ready to do this. Hell, I’m not fifty percent ready.

  I take the umbrella out of my closet and walk over to Natalie. I know I can’t think about it for another second or it’ll never happen. I’ll just stay locked in my patterns.

  So I just open it. And … it feels good. I feel relieved.

  “Ta-da,” I say, twirling the umbrella.

  “And look,” she says. “The sky isn’t falling.”

  “It’s not like every bad reaction happens immediately.”

  “Bad shit is gonna happen,” she says. “Whether you open umbrellas indoors or not.”

  “I know.”

  “But it’s not gonna happen because you opened the umbrella indoors.”

  “Says you,” I tease.

  “Well, we’re testing the theory.”

  One week and three tests with Natalie later, nothing bad has happened. In fact, I get a job offer at another station without getting a manicure in my lucky color. I’m still wearing my horseshoe necklace because … some things are sacred, but all in all, I feel liberated. It’s a process, damn it. They don’t make heroin addicts go cold turkey. It could kill them. Or something like that. I don’t know, it’s been a while since I tuned in to Dr. Drew.

  I don’t want to complain, because I know compared to most I’ve lived a very fortunate life. I have two parents who love me, a brother who’s now back in my life, and a roof over my head. I was raised in a loving household. For all of my dad’s issues, he cared for me. There was no abuse, and my parents did love each other the best they knew how. I had a good childhood. I was loved and nurtured. I was safe. I was protected.

  But beyond all of my safety precautions was a cage. An impenetrable wall that was, yes, meant to keep me safe from harm but also keep me safe from life experience. I wasn’t taught to trust, I was taught to be on guard—always. From the most benign to the most intrinsic life experiences, all would come with consequence if A plus B didn’t equal C. If I did this wrong thing, said this wrong phrase, knocked on wood this many times instead of that many times … something would break, someone would leave, someone would die.

  Being with my brother somehow put everything in perspective, brought it all home, and when I think about it, it all comes down to one moment—the root of it all—the thing that made me believe if I didn’t do some random thing, nothing would work out right. A silly little girl, watching my mother pack up our suitcases in Vegas as I cried and begged her to stay so we could be a family, I betrayed my fa
ther’s habit of tapping the door frame twice whenever leaving a room for good. We were leaving, but my hands were occupied and my mom was upset and I wanted to touch the wall to make things right. I thought if I could touch the wall like my dad taught me then we’d turn around and check back in, that my mom and dad would make up, that we’d stay a family intact.

  But I didn’t tap the door frame. And my parents barely spoke from that day on. And I never stopped wondering if things would be different had I done that. If I had just tapped that wall two times. Was that superstition? Obsessive-compulsion? Maybe a combination of both, so deeply ingrained into my psyche from my father and his frightened way of life that while safe from harm, I lived a life that was entirely too safe.

  There were no carefree moments; there was no living on the edge. Everything I did was calculated and measured and with the implicit understanding that for every action there is a reaction. My father may as well have been Isaac Newton, and I was his prize pupil. Except in place of physics was fear. And in place of logic was insanity.

  Why did it take me so long to wake up?

  “Had I been more aggressive in pointing this stuff out to you,” my mother says as she sips her tea, “you would have thought I was pitting you against your father.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “And I knew you’d ultimately figure it out.”

  “I blew it so bad with Ryan,” I say.

  “I don’t think so, honey.”

  “I did. He made a mistake. He teased me for something that anyone in their right mind would find ridiculous. And I was defensive and cold and freaked out, and I blew it.… I totally blew it. He even sort of apologized the last time I saw him and did I say anything back? No …”

  “Have you tried telling him any of this?”

  “No,” I say.

  “Maybe you should.”

  “I don’t see what difference it would make.”

  “That’s not a very good attitude. You won’t know until you try …”

  “Spoken like a true mom.”

  “Isn’t that what I am?” she asks.

  “Yes.” I nod. “You are indeed that.”

  “Well, as your mom, I am responsible for at least fifty percent of your DNA. So if you’ve spent the first twentysomething years of your life mimicking your father, maybe you can try it my way for the next twentysomething.”

  I’m listening to Ryan’s “Dr. Love” show. They do a “mailbag” segment, where a handful of emails get chosen to be read on-air. Sometimes they’re genuine questions, but usually they’re complaints and hate mail. There’s an abundance of crazy rants, too. I’m listening to Ryan read a furious missive from someone whose girlfriend refuses to shave her armpits when I get an idea: I’ll write him a thinly veiled email to gauge his feelings. It’ll be up to fate whether or not it gets picked.

  The following Thursday, Ryan’s reading my email out loud. I’m driving in my car, and as soon as he starts, I pull over and roll my windows up. I’m clutching the steering wheel like a panicked fifteen-year-old about to take her driver’s ed test, hands locked at ten and two. Or nine and three. Whatever the rules are these days. And this had better go better than that did, considering poor Mr. McElhenny had to retire after I took out two stop signs and made his airbag deploy.

  Hearing my words read in his voice … Well, it’s hot. It’s just hot. Not my words per se, but his voice. God, I miss that voice. Not that I can’t hear it on the radio whenever I want to, but who wants to listen to their ex on the radio with no hope of reconciling? Hearing him read my letter makes me think there’s a chance. Even if he has no idea that he’s reading my words. He chose my letter. They get lots of letters and choose only a few. He chose mine. That’s gotta be a sign. He reads aloud:

  Dear Ryan,

  I made a mistake with my boyfriend. Actually, he made a mistake first, but I overreacted and ended things. If someone did this to you and then realized that they’d screwed up … that maybe they were being unreasonable and they were sorry … would you consider giving them a second chance? And if you would, what would it take to get you back?

  Signed,

  Screwed Up and Sorry

  “Did you hear that, callers?” Ryan asks. “That was the sound of me rolling my eyes. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t roll my eyes because I think all women are crazy … I roll them because—wait, I take it back: You are all crazy. But … maybe that’s why we love you? You need a little bit of the crazy to keep things fun. Note: I said a little. What do you think, callers?” Ryan asks, and suddenly my heart is in my throat. “I don’t know. I mean, I can relate to the guy in this situation all too well. Heck, I think every man has been through this one.”

  Okay, so far, so … I don’t know what to think. Does he know? Did he figure it out?

  “Look, Screwed Up: Of course you’re screwed up. We’re all a little screwed up, some more than others. But you kicked this guy to the curb because of something minor and just now you think you overreacted? Guys get hurt, too, babe. How do you think he’s been feeling all this time?”

  Okay, that’s all fair. Maybe he’s projecting a bit? Does that mean he was really hurt by our breakup? That makes me feel wonderful and horrible, all at the same time.

  “Hey, it’s great you can recognize your mistake after overreacting. But maybe if you’d take the time to think things over first, you wouldn’t be in the position of having to write in to someone on the radio.”

  Duh.

  “But yeah, if you’re asking me? Of course I’d give you a second chance. Because I’m only human, and so are you. People make mistakes.… And what separates us from monkeys is our ability to give second chances.”

  “Is that what separates us from monkeys?” someone from the studio peanut gallery chimes in.

  “That and not flinging poop,” Ryan says.

  Enough with the jokes, Ryan. Back to the good stuff.

  He refocuses. “As for how you can get him to take you back, that’s a good question. We’re not exactly used to women admitting they made a mistake, so part of me thinks I’ve stumbled upon a letter from a mythical being. But, hey, that makes it all the more special when you do. Just talk to the guy. Do you have an inside joke or some kind of white flag you can wave? Try that. If it works, great. If he doesn’t take you back, hell, pop on over to the studio. We love women who can admit they were wrong. It keeps us from having to do it. Anyway, good luck. I hope it works out.”

  With a little luck, we can help it out.

  We can make this whole damn thing work out.

  —PAUL MCCARTNEY

  Chapter Twenty-four

  The morning I’m set to do a walk-through at Indie 108, the station where I’m about to start my new gig, does not kick off the way you’d hope at a new job. Granted, today is just a “get acquainted” day, but I still want to put my best foot forward.

  And as Murphy’s Law would have it, my alarm clock doesn’t go off when it’s supposed to and I cut myself shaving in the shower. My ankle, right on the bone. It’s the same place I always cut myself, so you’d think I’d be careful, but I’m bleeding like the shower scene from Psycho even though it’s just a tiny cut, but it’s a full-color cut, damn it, and when I step out of the shower and reach for my towel, I remember I didn’t take my laundry out of the washing machine last night. Awesome. So I will not only have to rewash everything in order to de-mildew it, I won’t have time to do it right now because I’m running late, thanks to my alarm-clock fail.

  I tiptoe into my kitchen—why I’m tiptoeing, I have no idea—and commence towel drying from head to toe via … Brawny. Half a roll of paper towels later, I get dressed and go downstairs into my laundry room to find that not only did I not move my clothes from the washer to the dryer … every towel, sock, and white shirt I own is now a lovely shade of pink—my least favorite color.

  I let out a guttural roar and fling garments out of the washer one by one, trying to find the asshole red piece of clothing that someho
w got mixed in with my whites. Lo and behold, I find it.

  Underwear.

  Red underwear.

  Red men’s underwear.

  Red men’s underwear that do not even belong to me.

  My blood is boiling, racing through my veins. I feel it throbbing in my head, and I half expect it to come spraying out of my poor wounded ankle like a fucking fire hydrant. Whose red underwear are these? sounds in my head like “No wire hangers!” as I stomp back up the stairs with my wet pink towels. I make a mental note to myself that I’ll need to go to Bed Bath & Beyond—or as I call it, due to the state of my wallet every time I leave the store, Bloodbath and Beyond.

  Oh, and by the way, Bed Bath & Beyond: Beyond? Really? Beyond? There is no Beyond! There’s Kitchen! Beyond is Kitchen! You’re Bed Bath & Kitchen! That’s what you are! I don’t give a crap if it’s not alliterative!

  Back upstairs, I get dressed and go to the beyond—ahem, the kitchen—to pour my cup of coffee. (Thank God for coffeemakers with timers.) Now, though, I’ll have to take it in my travel mug due to time constraints. But when I move my favorite ceramic mug with the frog face and buggy eyes aside, I push a little too forcefully, and the next thing you know there are green shards of frog scattered all over my kitchen. It looks like Leatherface just wiped out Kermit’s entire family in here.

  However, I take one good thing away from this: that that was Bad Thing Number Three. I cut my leg, my laundry was ruined, and I broke my mug. Now my day can turn around. (What? Old habits die hard. Like heroin. Okay, so I have been watching a little more Celebrity Rehab.)

  I get in my car and make a conscious decision not to listen to Ryan on my way to work. Turning our old morning show on will only depress me, and this day is turning around. But of course, running late, I end up stopped at a very long red at the very first traffic light.