by M. O. Walsh
ALSO BY M. O. WALSH
My Sunshine Away
The Prospect of Magic
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2020 by M. O. Walsh
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Walsh, M. O. (Milton O’Neal), author.
Title: The big door prize: a novel / M. O. Walsh.
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020010820 (print) | LCCN 2020010821 (ebook) | ISBN 9780735218482 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780735218499 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3623.A4464 B55 2020 (print) | LCC PS3623.A4464 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010820
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010821
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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For my family:
my readout
and
for the still-singing heart of John Prine
CONTENTS
Cover
Also by M. O. Walsh
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Question
Chapter 1: The Hubbards
Chapter 2: Jacob
Chapter 3: Douglas
Chapter 4: Cherilyn
Chapter 5: A Crooked Piece of Time
Chapter 6: Level on the Level
Chapter 7: Father Pete
Chapter 8: Oh My Stars
Chapter 9: Slide of Hand
Chapter 10: Home on the Range
Chapter 11: I Hate It When That Happens to Me
Chapter 12: I’m Taking a Walk, I’m Just Getting By
Chapter 13: They Ought to Name a Drink After You
Chapter 14: Things That Go Bomp in the Night
Chapter 15: Up in the Morning, Work Like a Dog
Chapter 16: My Picture in a Picture Show
Chapter 17: There’s Flies in the Kitchen, I Can Hear Them A‑Buzzin’
Chapter 18: The Caravan of Fools
Chapter 19: Never Will Go Out of Fashion, Always Will Look Good on You
Chapter 20: Practically Everyone Was There
Chapter 21: We Ate Turkeys and Pistols
Chapter 22: You Forgive Us and We’ll Forgive You
Chapter 23: The Yield Went Around, and Around, and Around
Chapter 24: We’ll Record It Live, That’s No Jive
Chapter 25: Got the Windows Rolled Up, but My Mind’s Rolled Down
Chapter 26: Little Pictures Have Big Ears
Chapter 27: Ain’t It Funny How an Old Broken Bottle Can Look Just Like a Diamond Ring
Chapter 28: You’re Up One Day and the Next You’re Down
Chapter 29: Saddle in the Rain
Chapter 30: Souvenirs
Chapter 31: You’ve Got Gold
Chapter 32: You and Me, Sitting in the Back of My Memory
Chapter 33: Your Boy Is Here
Chapter 34: That’s What Happens, When Two Worlds Collide
Chapter 35: How Lucky Can One Man Get?
Chapter 36: If You Need a Fool Who Loves You . . .
Chapter 37: . . . I Know One
Chapter 38: In Spite of Ourselves
Answer
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Against all odds, honey.
We’re the big door prize.
—JOHN PRINE,
“In Spite of Ourselves”
Question:
How can you know that your whole life will change on a day the sun rises at the agreed-upon time by science or God or what-have-you and the morning birds go about their usual bouncing for worms?
How can you know?
And why would you think there’s another life for you, perhaps another possibility inside of you already, when the walk that you take each dawn is so lovely and safe? When the roads are all paved and the sidewalks just swept and those who move along them, like you, seem so content to re-tread the worn path that they’ve made?
Why would you think it?
After all, this is only Deerfield: a town so simple it is named for what you might see and where you might see it.
It is a place where storefronts hang flowering baskets, where the rocking chairs gently set on friendly porches look fit for rocking gently the friendly people who own them, as they rocked gently their friendly parents before them. And such quiet on a morning like this one, such quiet on every stormless morning in Deerfield, that the only sound above you is the rustle of venturing squirrels in the branches. Maybe, to your side, the huff of a familiar dog at a familiar fence line who muzzles your hand as you pass. And if this were not enough to comfort you, not enough to seduce you into believing that today is just another in the easy procession of days you began so long ago, the first words you hear spoken on this morning are also the first words you hear spoken on most mornings, from the manager at the grocery store you walk to for coffee who says, “Good day,” and to whom you reply, “Isn’t it, though?”
So, how could you know?
Perhaps you might know on this particular morning in Deerfield, in this small part of South Louisiana, because you see something new at the store. It is a simple-looking machine, sitting next to the customer service desk. It is large enough to enter through curtains, as one would a photo booth at the mall or parish fair, and promises to tell you your potential in life, what your body and mind are capable of doing, based on the science of DNA. Some people in town have already tried this machine, you’ve heard, and to surprising result. A neighbor opened up a new business after getting her readout. An old friend quit pills and got clean. Another person you know left town entirely, off on some long-dreamt-of vacation they never would have booked before. This kind of talk is enough to make you curious, to make anyone curious, the way word of a simple and miraculous new diet might do, and it costs only two dollars to try.
Today, tucked safely in your pocket, you have exactly two dollars. And you, tucked safely into your life, haven’t much else to do. So, you draw back the curtains and enter the booth. You give it your money. The screen brightens.
You read a message that instructs you to take one of the Q-tips provided, to remove the plastic and gently swab the inside of your cheek, and so you do this as well and why not? No one can see you. What would anyone care? You then deposit this into the slot as directed and can’t help but grin at the disclaimer, which reads there is a 1 percent margin of error in a pursuit like this, and that the company, DNAMIX, is not liable for any stress your new potential may cause.
Yet still you carry on. You wait for the result. But why?
That is the question.
Perhaps it is because people like you, people like us, when we are joking, say, “What is the worst that could happen?�
�
But when we are honest, and when we are alone, we wonder, “What is the best?”
1
The Hubbards
After thirty-nine years and eleven-plus months, Douglas Hubbard had finally had enough of being Douglas Hubbard. So, for his fortieth birthday, just last Friday, he bought himself a trombone. It was a thing he’d long wanted and, now that it was purchased, Douglas felt this object made him an entirely new man. He was so excited, in fact, he spent his entire weekend polishing the instrument until it nearly glowed, standing in front of the full-length mirror in his and his wife’s bedroom, spinning aloud out magical phrases like Dizzy Douglas, Herbie Hubbard, and Thelonious Doug. He dreamt up enough jazzy nicknames in the first few days alone to sustain several impressive careers and yet had not even put lip to mouthpiece. Why bother? When a person finds as much joy as Douglas did in simply imagining themselves to be someone else, the actual work required to change, along with so many other things they hold dear, can be forgotten.
But tonight, after clumsily blaring his way through his first trombone lesson at a friend’s apartment, Douglas Hubbard returned home to his wife, moved aside the wooden birdhouses she’d been building those past months, and set his trombone case down on the table. “Well,” he said. “It’s official. I can’t play a note.”
“Don’t be silly,” his wife said. Then she began to cry.
This was unusual.
Cherilyn Hubbard was typically warm and upbeat at this hour, which she called their wine time, and Douglas always looked forward to seeing her. Through fifteen years of what they would both call a happy and uncomplicated marriage, she had remained redheaded and faithful, busy and beautiful in her unpretentious way, and as quick to offer love and encouragement to Douglas as she’d been on the days he first fell for her. But, on this night, she stood alone at the far end of their modest kitchen and, instead of greeting Douglas with a hug at the door, wiped at her eyes with the undersides of her wrists. She then leaned heavily against their blue-and-white countertop, which was covered in flipped-open magazines. Beside her, a pot of water boiled quietly on the stove. Near the sink, a box of macaroni and cheese stood unopened. Next to that, Douglas knew, because the day was Wednesday, two hamburger patties sizzled over low, greasy heat in the skillet.
Douglas said nothing. He instead removed the blazer he had draped over his arm and placed it on a chair, hung his keys on a hook screwed into the wall for that purpose. He then took off his hat, a brown woolen beret he’d taken to wearing since he bought the trombone, and arranged the wayward hairs on his balding head. He knew Cherilyn hadn’t been feeling well. Some powerful headaches, lately, a dizzy spell or two. He’d been meaning to talk to her about this. The amount of aspirin bottles he’d found about the house, the antihistamine nose spray she’d taken to cupping in her palm those past mornings. The naps she took at odd hours. These are the minor changes to a marital landscape that can worry a thoughtful husband like Douglas. Yet he’d chalked most of it up to stress.
Cherilyn was busy of late in atypical ways. She’d signed up to sell her own handmade birdhouses at the Deerfield Bicentennial that weekend, would have her own booth on the square both Saturday and Sunday, and so had spent the past few months turning their home into a sort of avian sweatshop. There were probably a hundred of the little houses always in eyesight, each in some incomplete phase of construction, with not much time left before the event. That could make anyone nervous. Still, Douglas knew she enjoyed her crafts, had signed up for this booth herself, and so he did not press her.
There were other things it could be, of course, besides bird homes. The oncoming heat of a southern spring. The exhaustion from dealing with her elderly mother, who they both worried was losing her mind. Cherilyn’s trips to check up or take her shopping had become daily. She’d therefore quit working her temp jobs around town, cut back on her volunteering, and so maybe that was it, Douglas figured. Maybe she felt her world was shrinking a bit, becoming too predictable, and, as the pre-trombone version of Douglas knew, that could get anyone down.
Still, seeing her cry at wine time was new. He tried not to overreact.
Douglas understood to take his time with the curveballs of marriage. He was a good husband, after all, a kind man, and wanted to gather what information he could before trying to brighten her mood. So, he simply approached the kitchen counter, watched Cherilyn dog-ear a few of the magazines’ pages, and listened to her breathe in through her small and freckled nose. After a moment, he touched her arm.
“What’s going on in here?” he asked. “You feeling okay?”
“I dropped my phone in the oil,” she said, and took to her soft crying again.
“The oil?” Douglas asked.
“Olive oil,” she said. “A full cup of it. Our last of it. And then when I picked it up it slipped out of my hand and hit the ground and broke. I mean, completely. I’m afraid it’s totaled.”
“The cup?” Douglas said.
“No, Douglas,” she said, “not the cup.”
Cherilyn pointed over to her phone, which stood propped and shattered in a bowl of rice like an unfortunate sculpture. “I was trying to find this recipe,” she said. “I wanted to try something new and it just slipped.” She rubbed her palm as if trying to remember the feeling, to re-create the scene. “And then I got to looking at these magazines and there are just so many different dishes out there, Douglas.” She paused to keep from crying again and said, “So many things I’ve never tried. I mean, have you ever heard of baba ghanoush? It’s made with tahini, of all things. Who has tahini, Douglas? What is tahini? That’s what I want to know. And eggplant, too. You know, it turns out that, in certain parts of the world, a lot of things are made with eggplant. We’re talking about beautiful parts of the world! Why don’t we ever have eggplant, Douglas? Why don’t we ever have eggplant?”
Douglas rubbed her arm to calm her.
“I can’t say I’ve ever been asked that question,” he said.
“And then I saw this one for beef Wellington,” Cherilyn said. “Have you heard of that? I thought, I have ground meat. I have beef. Maybe we have a roast in the freezer. But I apparently need some sort of pâté to make beef Wellington. Is there a pâté aisle at Johnson’s, Douglas? Is there a pâté aisle at Walmart?”
Douglas had no idea where any of this was coming from, and so, instead of asking if she’d started wine time a bit early, instead of trying to calm her with a simple joke, moved his gentle hands to her shoulders. They were as warm to the touch as if she’d been jogging, as if she were coming down with a fever, and as Douglas began his light and practiced massage he saw that the magazines she’d been reading, at least twenty of them, were indeed all opened to recipes. He recognized the magazines from a subscription they’d received as a gift a few years ago for which they made their own little shelf in the kitchen but never read. They looked to have a rather gourmet agenda, all splayed open before him now, with high-quality photos of skewered meats and bright vegetables at the top, ads for products like pomegranate juice and organic cereal along the margins. He continued to rub Cherilyn’s shoulders as she closed and stacked each of the magazines carefully without ever leaving his touch, constructing a pile that reached from the countertop to her soft chin, which she then rested on it.
Douglas took a deep and obvious whiff of the air. “I love Burger Wednesdays,” he said. “Who needs eggplant?”
“I know,” she said, and turned to face him. “It’s not that. It’s not you. I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’m sorry about the phone. I know they’re expensive.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ll get you a new one. In the meantime, maybe we can string together a couple of cans.”
“I just don’t know what’s gotten into me,” she said again, and turned back to the stove. “Anyway,” she said. “How was your lesson? Tell me
everything.”
“You sure?” he said. “Because all the evidence here suggests you’re pretty upset. Exhibit A, I’d posit, is anxiety over beef Wellington. Exhibit B, I’d say, is the water leaking out of your face.”
“Stop it,” Cherilyn said, and flipped over the burgers. “I’m fine. I’m serious. I know you have to be excited. Your very first trombone lesson. How’d it go?”
Douglas walked around the stove so she could see him. “Okay,” he said, and waved his arm as if painting the scene. “Imagine, if you will,” he said, “the sound of an elephant being kicked in the balls.”
“Quit that,” Cherilyn said. “Did Geoffrey say that to you?”
“No,” Douglas said. “Geoffrey’s great. It’s not him. It’s just a little overwhelming, you know. I mean, that man can play twelve instruments. He’s a genius.”
“Well, so are you,” Cherilyn said. “But enough of all this down talk. Let’s have some music.”
“Your wish,” Douglas said, “is my pleasure.”
Now, the first thing one should know about Douglas Hubbard is that he has always been, since his youth, an amazing whistler. A true wonder, really. Douglas Hubbard can whistle in any key and at any tempo he desires. The man is like a bird in the forest. He whistles confidently, whistles constantly, yet bothers no one. Not even the slouched-over high schoolers in his History classes, checking text messages beneath their desks. Not even his exhausted colleagues, sitting through another depressing faculty meeting. Not even the testy parents at the grocery store, trying desperately to keep their kids from wreaking havoc on the candy selection. And most importantly, of course, his whistling doesn’t even seem to bother his wife, who, for the last twenty years of her life, has been perpetually immersed in the sound of him.
So, when Cherilyn said she wanted some music, Douglas knew where she was coming from and whistled for her “When You’re Smiling” by Louis Prima, a man who had been on his mind all day. Cherilyn quietly opened the macaroni and cheese and fiddled with the knobs on the stove and, while he whistled, Douglas walked back to the kitchen table and took his new trombone out of the case. He ran a small cloth over the bell of it and reattached the slide. He handled it as carefully as one does a secret because, for many years, that’s exactly what it was.