by Kelly Harms
“Aunt Midge?” her drowsy voice calls, and then grows closer and closer as she descends the stairs. “I left a message with the lawyer’s answering service. They said they’d buzz Mr. Moss, whatever that means. Oh! And someone found our truck! Remind me to call the police and tell them to stop looking. If they’ve actually started.” By the time she finishes talking, she’s in the living room looking at me with a narrow stare. I try not to look as doomed as I feel. “I see you’ve found the perpetrator.”
“Morning, Janey,” calls the old woman. Aunt Midge, I guess that’s what we’re calling her, walks past us both to the three-seasons room and disappears from view.
Janey—she really is more of a Janey than a Janine—tilts her head at me. “Are you all packed to go?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going anywhere. The house is mine, and I’m going to live in it.” I give her a big smug smile. “But thanks for calling the lawyers—just saved me a step.”
Janey looks appalled, but before she can get a word in edgewise, Aunt Midge chimes in from around the corner.
“I thought we should feed her before the lawyers kick her out on her criminal little heinie. Everyone deserves the Janey Brown treatment at least once…”
While I wonder what the Janey Brown treatment is, exactly, she twists her mouth around and chews things over, looking from the kitchen to me and back. “Fine. Hang on.” She turns around and disappears to the kitchen, and the atmosphere of the room clears in her wake. What a Debbie Downer that one is.
Aunt Midge sighs and calls out, “This sure is some view,” in a way that indicates I am to come appreciate it alongside her. Obediently, I move into the three-seasons room and see she’s gotten good and comfortable on the striped loveseat. She’s got her legs propped up on its enormous ottoman and is slouched down enough that it’s not clear whether she’s actually even sitting up anymore. I sit down on an equally cushy armchair, but remain in an upright position so as to gaze out at the water. I like the view just slightly to the north, where you can see a constant cycle of waves bashing their brains out on the cliffs and then regrouping to do it again. Sort of reminds me of myself.
“It’s a lot prettier than the Jetway at Waterloo Regional,” I say, thinking of the view from Geoff’s place, then immediately regret my words. I don’t want to sound pathetic. I want to sound like the sort of person who wins million-dollar houses.
But she seems to ignore my comment. She’s probably lost in some wise old lady thought. Thinking about all the friends she’s known and lost, each a swelling wave on the sea of her life … or something like that.
“Is it too early for a drink, do you think?” she asks me out of the blue.
My eyebrows pop up like they’re on springs. “Well … shoot. It’s got to be at least eight a.m. by now.”
She growls a little and sneers. “You’re just like my niece, always disapproving the slightest bad behavior.”
That’s a laugh. “I am nothing like your niece, I promise you,” I say bitchily.
“No,” says Janey, who has suddenly appeared behind us, the hurt apparent in her voice. “She is nothing like me.” We both whirl around guiltily.
Standing there in her pj’s holding a tray of elegant mugs, with brown cubes of sugar and nondairy creamers set out in pretty matching bowls, I feel a pang for this poor woman. Look at her waiting on us hand and foot. She may be a bit of a drag, but she is nothing like me, and that is a compliment.
“Ooh, coffee,” I gush a little too eagerly. “Where’d you find the creamer?” I know there wasn’t any in the house—I was looking for something to make a white Russian with a few nights back and came up empty.
“My purse,” supplies Aunt Midge, sounding quite pleased with herself.
Janey looks at me a little wearily as she sets down the tray and hands us our mugs. “She got us kicked out of a Dunkin’ Donuts in Pennsylvania yesterday when she emptied the entire bucket of creamers into her tote bag. God knows why she does this. I think it’s a Depression thing.”
“You’re depressed, Aunt Midge?” I ask nosily, and get a snort in response.
“As if,” Aunt Midge huffs.
“The Great Depression,” Janey clarifies. “It’s still going on in her mind.”
“Huh. Too bad she didn’t get stuck in Prohibition,” I say.
“A fine criticism from a woman who managed to drink her own weight in wine in less than a week,” Aunt Midge says. “Anyway, those creamers are looking pretty good right now, aren’t they?”
They are, and I’m about to say so, but before I get a chance there is a loud banging at the door. Even without looking, I know, in my bones, exactly who it is.
* * *
Mike Moss, attorney at law, looks less like a rainmaker and more like a grandpa. He’s wearing a tweed suit coat over Dockers, and I definitely catch a glimpse of suspender when he reaches out to shake our hands. The handshake is warm and doughy. I feel sure my fate is in good hands with this guy.
“My answering service tells me you were having some car trouble, so I just thought I better swing on by, get our business taken care of so the network bigwigs would stop their caterwauling. Hope it’s no imposition, Ms.… er, which one of you two is Janine Brown?” he asks, because Janey and I beat Aunt Midge to the door by a mile.
“I am,” I say confidently, while I hear her stutter out “we both are” in the background. Rube.
“Nice to meet you, Ms. Brown,” he says, since he heard only me. “This is my secretary Sharla,” he says, gesturing to the frumpy woman next to him on the porch. “She’s a notary, and she’ll witness the signing of your deed—”
“Now hold on one fat second, Mr. Moss,” I hear Aunt Midge say from behind us. She pushes up between Janey and me and grabs the lawyer by the arm, pulling him inside. “There are a few things we need to discuss before any deed gets signed. A little matter of mistaken identity.”
Mike Moss looks mystified, but he lets himself be ushered through the door and gestures for Sharla to follow. “Mistaken identity?”
I resist the urge to push the old lady out of the way. “Not exactly,” I say. “I won the house. It’s my name on the winning entry. I got here first, fair and square. These two”—I gesture with the top of my head to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dotty—“are trying to swipe it out from under me.”
Aunt Midge makes an outraged coughing noise. “Actually, my niece here is the real winner,” she tells him with so much confidence that if I were him, I might believe her. “We’ve spoken to the sweepstakes producer in person. The house belongs to us.”
Mike Moss looks from her to me and back again. “Why don’t we all sit down,” he says, as though this sort of thing happens every day. “Do I smell coffee?”
“Janey,” says Aunt Midge. “Go get a couple more mugs, would you?”
I look at Janey. If anyone ordered me around like that at a moment like this I would be pitching a fit, but she looks only grateful to be sent out of the room. That girl is some kind of shy around strangers.
When we are all settled around the coffee table, coffee at hand, Mike Moss opens his worn leather satchel and pulls out a thin manila file. “Well, Ms. Brown, Ms. Richardson, Ms. Brown,” he says with a tip of his head to each of us. “This is all very easily solved.”
“It is?” I ask in surprise.
“Of course. I have a copy of the winning entry form right here.” He closes his file with a flourish. “I just need both of you to tell me exactly what you put on your contest entries and we’ll have our answer just like that.”
Janey begins to stutter frantically. “I didn’t … I mean, I don’t…” she stammers. “I mean…” She looks near tears.
Aunt Midge puts her hand on Janey’s shoulder. “I’m the one who entered her name. I did it online, using my own address, since I can never remember hers. So her entry form would have said something like, Janine Brown, in care of me, Maureen Richardson. And my address is—well, was—7411 Bradwood Driv
e, Cedar Falls, Iowa, 50613.”
My face breaks into a wide grin. Surely this is hard-and-fast proof that I’m the real winner of the house. After all, Janey’s entry wasn’t even really hers.
“And your entry, Ms. Brown?” Mike Moss says, and it takes me a few seconds and everyone staring at me to realize he’s speaking to me.
I rattle off Geoff’s old address. “It was a postcard, by the way, and I know I used plenty of postage.”
“Right, then,” says Mike Moss. And then his face turns somber and he reopens his file wide on his lap. “Ms. Brown,” he says, looking more at me than at Janey, “My client, the Home Sweet Home Network, provided me with this notarized copy of the winning Sweepstakes Entry, as chosen by random integer generation by the folks at Price Waterhouse. I am at liberty to tell you that the winning entry was submitted online, not by postcard, and belonged to a Ms. Janine Brown in care of Maureen Richardson, 7411 Bradwood Drive, Cedar Falls, Iowa, 50613. As the publicly posted rules of the contest delineate, the winning entrant was notified in person by an employee of the Home Sweet Home Network—heretofore the Network—as well as by certified mail to be posted on the evening of the drawing or no later than three p.m. on the following day. I take it you were not notified in person, Ms. Brown?”
I stop listening after he gives the address. I know he is handing me something important, a sheet of paper on which he is pointing something out, but my eyes are blurry, covered, as they are, with swelling salty tears.
“You’re lying,” I tell him, taking the paper and wadding it into a ball. “It can’t be true. This is a trick.”
“I am sorry for the misunderstanding, Ms. Brown,” Mike Moss says to me with a wave of a hand, but I can tell he doesn’t care one bit. He doesn’t care that I have nowhere else to go. He doesn’t care that I’m homeless. “I’ll just need to see your passport or other government issued ID, uh, Ms., uh…”
“Call her Janey,” says Aunt Midge.
“Very good, Janey. Your passport and then we can get that deed signed.” It is as if I’m not even there anymore. As if I never happened.
“Wait!” I call frantically through my tears, standing to stop Janey’s progress toward her purse. “This isn’t fair. Possession is nine-tenths of the law!”
Moss shakes his head at me piteously. “I’m sorry, Ms. Brown, but it really isn’t. The house belongs to this Janine Brown here,” he gestures to Janey. “Her entry was chosen per the rules stated online at Home Sweet Home dot com. Participation in the contest qualifies as acknowledgment and agreement to the posted rules.”
“Tell it to someone who cares,” I say to him lamely. “I’m getting my own lawyer.” Right. What lawyer wouldn’t jump at the chance of a sixty-eight-cent retainer?
“In that case, I will wait to be contacted by your representation,” says Moss. He is as cool as a cucumber. That’s because he can see right through me.
“Good!” I shout. I sound like I’m seven. “Because you will be!” Shut up, Nean. Just shut up. “And you’ll be sorry! You’ll wish you never messed with me! I’ll take you for every penny you have!” Frantically I start tearing up the copied contest entry. “There! Now you have no proof!”
I start to look for more things to destroy, grabbing at nothing, spinning around desperately, knocking things off shelves. Sharla looks a little scared, and I realize just how wild-eyed and hysterical I am acting when she asks Janey, “Maybe we should call the police?”
While Janey looks from Aunt Midge and back I blurt out, “Yes, do call the police, and tell them you are involved in a scam to rob me of my rightful winnings!” Now I know I sound like a lunatic. What am I doing? They’re going to haul me away in the padded wagon.
But Aunt Midge, through the deep-set frown she’s been wearing since the moment I stood up, stops me, puts her hand on my arm just the same way she did with Janey a few moments ago. “That won’t be necessary. Nean is just going to calmly collect her things and move along. Aren’t you, Nean?”
I look from the lawyers to Aunt Midge. They are all looking at me like my head could start spinning in circles at any second. Ashamed, I nod. “I’m just going to collect my things,” I hear myself say robotically.
Everyone looks so relieved. And what did I expect? Of course they don’t want me here. Of course I didn’t win the house. Why would I have believed something so good could happen to me, even for a second? What a total idiot I’ve been, thinking I would win, thinking I did win, dropping everything and spending every last cent I had to get to a place where I have no real right to be.
What an incredible fool.
I head up the stairs and grab everything I can carry and shove it in my bag, violently, wildly. I leave some of my crappy old clothes behind in favor of the big, soft, multicolored quilt that covered “my” bed. It’s not technically stealing, I think. They won’t want it anyway, now that it’s been tainted by me. Wherever I go next, I can keep this quilt as a reminder of that short magical time when something good seemed to have happened to me.
Wherever I go next. I just wish I had some idea of where that would be.
I wait to go back downstairs, until I know the lawyers are gone. I find Janey and Aunt Midge still around the coffee table where I left them, but now they have stacks of documents in front of them. Janey is still holding a pen. They look a little worn, like this ugly business of winning has been too much for them. And they look wary of me, like I am a criminal, and not simply the unluckiest woman in the world.
“So…” Janey’s voice starts strong when she sees me, but then it begins to trail off.
“So when am I leaving?” I bark back. Even as I say that I am looking around, glancing around the room like I might find within it some last-ditch way to stay here. I don’t know what the point is. It’s time to face facts.
“I know when you’re leaving. As soon as possible. Sooner. But, uh … what’s your plan?” Janey asks.
“I don’t have a plan,” I admit. “Maybe I’ll go find that Noah guy and see what he can do for me.” I say that just to make her jealous—she obviously has the hots for this guy—but then instantly feel guilty. “I mean, where he’ll drive me. If he can drop me off in Damariscotta, or what.”
Janey’s face seems to twitch a little. “And from there you can make your way back to Iowa?”
I decide to spare them both the little details. They already find me pitiful enough. “Yeah, sure.”
But Aunt Midge won’t leave it at that. “How are you going to do that exactly?” she asks. “You can’t rent a car without a credit card.”
“Same way I came. Greyhound bus.”
“Don’t you need some money for that, too?” she asks.
“How do you know I don’t have any?” I shoot back. I don’t, but that’s not the point.
“Because I looked.”
“God, have you been rooting through all my possessions?”
“Of course,” Aunt Midge says. “After you stole ours, I didn’t feel you were entitled to any privacy.”
That shuts me right up. I cross my arms in front of my chest and sulk.
“Maybe we could lend you some money,” Janey suggests. “Just bus fare to get you back to Iowa.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I say, taking a gulp of the lawyer’s leftover cold coffee for fortitude. “I’ll be just fine.” But I won’t be fine, and they probably know it. My next stop will be some crummy shelter. And then after that, if I’m really lucky, another Geoff.
Geoff. I think of him, lying slumped on his apartment floor, the shards of pottery around him, as my name flashes across the television screen. I think of that sweet, sweet feeling in the moment when I first thought I’d won this house and truly believed I would never see him or anyone like him ever again. When my old life seemed to be over forever. When I was free.
And that’s when a lightbulb goes on in my mind. A big one. The sort of lightbulb that only turns on when you are looking down a really nasty tunnel and you are trying to fin
d any possible way to avoid going into that tunnel (because there are probably bats in there) even if it means telling a colossal whopper and probably damning your eternal soul to hell in the process.
For a moment I hesitate. Despite everything that’s happened, this Janey person has been generally nice to me. She even offered me money, even after I stole her truck and threw a tantrum and threatened to sue her for everything she’s worth.
And her aunt is a defenseless little old lady. If I go down this road, I am pretty much the most despicable human being ever.
But if I don’t … I think of the uncertainty that waits for me the minute I walk out these doors. And for the first time in a long time, I feel scared. I do not like feeling scared.
“Before I go … there is one thing you could do. A little favor.” I say in my sweetest, meekest voice.
Janey furrows her eyebrows at me. “What kind of favor?”
“Could you … throw the police off my trail?” I ask as innocently as possible. “I know it seems weird, but if they follow up about the U-Haul, maybe you could tell them you made a mistake, and I was just taking it out to be washed or something, so that they don’t put me into the system? I mean, if it’s not too late…”
Janey looks at her suddenly very interested aunt and then turns just her eyes to me. “Why would we do that?” She sounds very suspicious. Good.
“I…” I pretend to stutter. “I can’t tell you. Just trust me. I really can’t let the police find me, no matter what.”
Aunt Midge sits up straight at this. “Are you on the lam?” she asks.
I say nothing for a moment, for dramatic effect, and then pinch my lips together, as if I’m holding in a secret. A horrible secret. “Please don’t ask any questions,” I say in a distraught voice. “It’s too awful to speak of…” My eyes start getting glassy with tears. Yes! I am the master. I should think about a career in the thee-ay-tah.
