The Good Luck of Right Now

by Matthew Quick

  I understood what she meant, but I also understood that Mom’s philosophy was a powerful weapon, and I thought that maybe I could harness it here, so I said, “I’d love for you to live with me, Elizabeth. We can make it work. I choose to believe this because the alternative”—I shook her bottle of pills—“is so, so unattractive. Why not try to believe with me at this point? What do you have to lose? We can get a cat for Max! He could work at the movies, you could keep volunteering at the library, and I could . . .”

  I didn’t know what I could do, and that started to make me feel anxious. All I had ever done was take care of Mom and be her son. And yet here I was promising to be so much more than what I was—pretending again.

  “I’m not well,” Elizabeth said. “Neither is Max. We’re damaged goods. We’re problems—and nothing but. You do realize that by now, right? We’re not easy.”

  “I’m damaged goods too! And I’m also problems! I’m a mess! It’s perfect!”

  “It’s not perfect,” she said in what was very close to a yelling voice. I could tell that she had been struggling for a long time—too long—and didn’t have much left in her hope tank. “None of this is perfect! I’m not going to allow myself to hope for perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist for people like us, Bartholomew. Passable. That’s what I want. Just simply passable. If I could have a passable existence, I think I’d be very grateful.” She shook her head and stared at her lap. I saw her lips moving behind her curtain of brown hair, and I could tell she was arguing with herself again. Then suddenly she looked up and said, “I don’t think I could have ever executed my exit plan, anyway. I could never do that to Max. And now I’m putting my problems on you.”

  Elizabeth shook her head, looked up at the ceiling, and then stared at her lap again.

  We were silent for some time, as we sipped our martinis.

  And then I had an idea that seemed sort of weird, but I went with it anyway, because I felt like the moment required me to be something more than I usually am. “Pretend I’m you,” I said to Elizabeth. “Here’s how you would answer right now if we were in a movie—in response to my offer for you and Max to live with me in Mom’s home like we were a family.” Then using a girlie falsetto, overly dramatic Vivian Ward/Julia Roberts Hollywood voice, I said, “If we do take you up on your kind offer, do you actually think we could make it work, Bartholomew? Do you really? We wouldn’t ask for much. We wouldn’t dare. But do you think that maybe we could just exist together passably, because that’s all I’d ever hope for—a passable existence.” My voice started to quaver here. I wasn’t sure why. “That’s all I’d ever dare to ask. We’re not greedy—but life, it really hasn’t been generous to Max and me. So you have to be honest with me here, Bartholomew. Do you actually believe a passable existence is possible?”

  Elizabeth drained her glass.

  “I wasn’t really abducted by aliens.” She moved the hair away from her face. She was trembling. “The doctors called Max in Worcester when I was recovering in the hospital, because he was listed as my next of kin in my insurance information. He took a train to Philly that night and went crazy when he saw me. Max is simpleminded, but he has a huge heart. He really does. He doesn’t understand that awful things happen every single day to people all over the world. Horrible things. Like being . . . like . . .” Elizabeth looked down at her lap, and the curtain of hair fell over her face once again. “They were drunk and subhuman and were never even brought to justice. Max’s mind couldn’t accept that, because how can you protect your sister from something so horribly random as being attacked near the Delaware River on the way home from an afterwork drink on a crisp fall Wednesday night? Attacked until your thighs are covered in blood. So Max and I made up the aliens story together in the hospital—almost like we were kids again—and I went along with it just to keep him calm. He insisted on moving in with me so that he could protect me from aliens, and it just escalated from there. But it’s really kind of a beautiful brother-sister story if you can manage to look at it the right way, and . . .”

  Elizabeth gave me a look that was half happy and half on the verge of tears.

  When she forced a smile, I nodded, because I knew that’s what was required of me even though I was terrified on the inside, and I didn’t even know who was paying the bills associated with Mom’s house, and maybe I never would, now that Father McNamee was dead, and I also wasn’t sure a passable existence was actually possible for me, let alone the three of us together.

  I didn’t really know anything for certain at all.

  But I believed I could pretend again for Elizabeth, pretend to be stronger than I really was, because that’s what the moment required of me, and so I did. I pretended to be strong, and I tried to show Elizabeth compassion. As I did, I wondered if Father McNamee and Mom would be proud, Richard Gere. I’m pretty sure the Dalai Lama would be happy with my actions that night, because Elizabeth began to cry right there and then, not just little tears either, but she sobbed and sobbed until I reached out and held her in my arms, and then I began to cry too, because I missed Mom so much and Father McNamee was gone and I was just starting to understand the finality of it, that I would never get to have a father ever, that there was no mystery anymore, it was all solved and certain and over, and Elizabeth hadn’t been abducted by aliens but had experienced something even more terrible than the teenagers who broke into Mom’s house and pissed on my bed and shit on Mom’s and put our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the toilet . . . and how did we end up in Canada, and why were our lives so much stranger than the lives of regular people?

  Was there any hope for us?

  As Elizabeth sobbed into my shoulder, I decided—whether it was true or not—to believe in The Good Luck of Right Now enough to take action, even to find a job if need be, so that I could give Elizabeth the fairy tale, like you did so many times in your movies, Richard Gere.

  Mom would never have the fairy tale, but maybe Elizabeth could.

  Maybe.

  “Are you two okay?” the bartender asked, and when I looked up, a strand of Elizabeth’s hair was caught in my mouth, and the several people in the hotel lobby bar were staring at us.

  When she saw everyone looking, Elizabeth ran out of the bar, and I followed.

  In the elevator, I didn’t know what to do.

  Elizabeth was still crying, but much more softly now—and yet I got the sense that she didn’t want to be touched or comforted or spoken to.

  Her face was bright red and snot was running out of both nostrils, even though she kept wiping it with the sleeve of her coat.

  I kept my mouth shut.

  When we arrived at the door to our room, she composed herself and said, “I don’t want to wake up Max, okay? And I don’t want him to know about any of this. Tomorrow is his big day. Let’s make it beautiful for him. Agreed? It’s what we have left. Let’s make it beautiful for all of us. Okay?”

  I nodded.

  She put the card into the slot and the little rectangle turned green, but she didn’t open the door.

  “If we sleep on opposite sides of the bed, will you promise not to roll over? Will you promise to keep at least a foot of space between us at all times?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Can we really live with you until we get our lives together?”

  “Yes. I’d like that very much. And there’s no time limit either.”

  “You promise? You won’t change your mind?”

  “Never.”

  Elizabeth nodded again and sort of winked both eyes at the same time, which I caught, even though she was hiding behind her hair again.

  It was like she was maybe making a wish and sealing it with a double blink—or at least that’s what I imagined.

  We entered the room, but we didn’t put the lights on.

  She changed in the bathroom, and I slipped into my pajamas while the door was closed.

  I dumped her bottle of pills in the toilet and flushed; I didn’t want her to have an exit s
trategy.

  She picked the right side of the bed, so I hugged the left edge all night long.

  I didn’t let myself sleep, because I wanted to keep my promise—I didn’t want to risk accidentally rolling over and touching Elizabeth in the middle of the night.

  So I listened to her and Max breathing and stared at the electric alien-green numbers of the alarm clock.

  At 4:57 Elizabeth whispered, “Bartholomew?”

  “Yes?” I whispered back.

  “I’m sorry if I weirded you out tonight.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  At 5:14 Elizabeth whispered, “Thank you.”

  “Thank you too,” I said, and then we just lay there in the dark for two hours, until Max woke up, started jumping between us on our bed while screaming, “CAT FUCKING PARLIAMENT!” over and over.

  I have to admit, in spite of all that had happened, Max’s unbridled childlike enthusiasm lifted my spirits considerably.

  It was nice to have friends.

  And I started to think I understood our fortune cookie messages better than I had originally thought.

  Your admiring fan,

  Bartholomew Neil

  17

  THE STRAY CATS OF PARLIAMENT HILL

  Dear Mr. Richard Gere,

  Max told us everything we needed to know about Cat Parliament as we walked through Ottawa to the main event.

  According to local legend, the Parliament Buildings were kept rodent-free by a supremely talented colony of hunting cats until the 1950s, when poison became the preferred method of mouse and rat extermination. Out of the kindness of their hearts, people who took care of the Parliament Buildings and their surroundings continued to feed the cats for decades, and then some locals got together and created a special space for the stray cats of Parliament Hill to live together as a family—or a colony.

  Now you can see two mini-houses lined by iron bars spaced wide enough apart for the inhabitants to sneak through as they please. The white mini-houses each have a shingled roof and four doorways under an awning of sorts, which doubles as a place for the cats to stretch and be lazy. A mini red-and-white Canadian flag flies from the top of the left house.

  There is a boardwalk for the cats to strut across, and this is kept clear of snow—my guess is that the caretakers shovel it as necessary.

  Bowls of cat food are placed at various spots around and on the mini-houses, and according to Max, volunteers take care of the colony on a daily basis.

  The area around Parliament Hill really does look like England; I have decided it’s true, even though I have never been, nor will I ever be likely to go, to England.

  The back of the Parliament Buildings is round like a cathedral with many pointy spirals and also sort of looks like a spaceship, although I didn’t say that to Max.

  When we arrived early in the morning, the day after Father McNamee went to join Mom in heaven or purgatory, Max explained much of the above, and then he took off ahead of Elizabeth and me—he started running like an excited little boy just as soon as he saw his first cat in the distance.

  “Cat Fucking Parliament!” he yelled, and skipped a few times as he ran. “Cat Fucking Parliament! I’m finally fucking here!”

  “Have you ever been that happy?” Elizabeth asked me, and I honestly don’t think I have ever once been that elated, never in my entire life.

  Max grabbed the bars when he reached the cat sanctuary and he studied the few cats that were out in the morning sunlight.

  Elizabeth stopped walking, and so I stood with her, maybe twenty or so feet away from Max, allowing him a private moment.

  When we finally approached him, his cheeks were striped and tears were freezing to the bottom of his chin like a small beard.

  His lips were trembling.

  He kept sniffing and snorting.

  “Are you okay?” Elizabeth asked Max.

  “It’s so fucking beautiful.”

  “The cats?” I asked.

  “Fuck, yes! But also the fucking fact that people take care of stray cats. Cats! For all these fucking years. They feed them. They fucking give them shelter. They didn’t forget about the cats when they no longer served a fucking function. These cats are completely useless to society now, but people feed them just because. Isn’t that fucking beautiful? Isn’t it just so fucking—humane? Do you even understand what I’m fucking talking about here, hey? Cat Fucking Parliament is the most beautiful place in the world, hey! You do see it, right? The fucking beauty?”

  Elizabeth and I nodded as we watched a calico and a gray tabby eat breakfast, nibbling on tiny pieces of cat food.

  “Look at them! Just fucking look. Beautiful! Fucking beautiful! This exists!”

  After twenty minutes or so, Elizabeth and I retired to a nearby bench, and we watched Max enjoying his stay at Cat Parliament.

  A few children accompanied by their mothers stopped to look at the cats, and as they stood next to Max, the juxtaposition was striking. For a man who said the word fuck at least once in almost every sentence he spoke—even the sentences that contained only two or three words—his heart was definitely childlike.

  “It was my life goal to have a drink with you,” I said to Elizabeth.

  “Max told me,” she said. “That’s why I asked you to have a drink at the bar last night. To maybe help you feel better about losing Father McNamee so suddenly. I thought, at least you could cross off your life goal as completed. Sorry I ruined it by sharing my exit strategy. It wasn’t a very good first date, was it?”

  My heart leaped at the word date, but I played it Richard Gere cool and said, “You can share whatever you want with me. I mean it. Don’t ever hold back. I think we need to be honest with each other, if we are going to help each other out.”

  “I agree. Thank you.”

  “I have a new life goal. Do you want to know what it is?”

  “Sure.”

  “Someday—and it doesn’t have to be soon, so please don’t feel pressured—but I’d like to hold your hand for a short period of time. Maybe just a minute—and maybe behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art, near the Water Works, while we listen to the river flow. It’s my favorite place in the world. You’d like it, if you’ve never been.”

  I couldn’t believe I was saying this—my heart was pounding so hard.

  But I was now extra Richard Gere cool on the outside.

  Fairy-tale suave.

  Elizabeth smiled and said, “Maybe someday we can hold hands behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but not today, obviously, because we’re in Ottawa. And it may have to be a long way in the future, if at all, because I have a lot to work through. I’m pretty sure all three of us need help, and I think we should get some when we return to Philadelphia. Okay?”

  “I understand,” I said, and I did. “We should get help. We will get help.”

  Elizabeth and I sat there silently for hours as Max admired the residents of Cat Parliament.

  It was cold, but we weren’t about to make Max leave, because we didn’t know if he or any of us would ever make it back to Canada’s capital city, let alone this very spot, and even if we did, somehow we knew it would never be the same as right then. There would be different variables, if we came back, a totally different equation made up of wildly different circumstances; it just couldn’t be helped, because life was always evolving and changing, and therefore, no matter how much we’d like to, we would never, ever have that moment again—even if we tried with all our might to re-create it, going so far as wearing the same exact clothes even, we would fail, because you cannot beat time; you can only enjoy it whenever possible, as it zooms by endlessly.

  At one point a big black cat began to curl around Max’s legs, making the infinity sign. When Max bent down to pet it, the cat raised his head to greet Max’s hand, so Max gave him a big scratch behind the ears. The cat closed his eyes in appreciation. Max did the same. And they seemed to be communicating. I w
ondered if Max was practicing his cat telepathy.

  “Did you even fucking see that? How that cat picked me to fucking commune with?” Max yelled at us when the cat moved on. “What the fuck, hey?”

  Elizabeth and I both smiled, because Max was so high.

  Smiling didn’t really make sense, considering the grander picture. No money, not a “real” job between us, and no idea what we would do when we returned to Philadelphia, nor who was even paying the bills that kept arriving at Mom’s house marked paid in full—and to be frank, all three of us were a tragic mess emotionally.

  But somehow just seeing a grown man enjoying the company of a feral cat on a cold winter’s morning in Ottawa, to the wild degree that Max was living and fully appreciating that very moment—well, somehow it was enough for that time and place.

  Enough to feel good about.

  More than enough to make us smile.

  And that’s all I feel like sharing with you, Richard Gere, even though there is much more to the story—like how we got Father McNamee’s body back into the United States; and how his family wouldn’t speak to me at the funeral, even though we never told anyone the truth about him being my biological father; and how a tall man in an expensive-looking suit walked up to me, shook my hand firmly, and, while holding my shoulders and looking directly into my eyes, said, “Dicky was very proud of you,” and when I failed to respond, he added, “We grew up together, eh? Best friends all through school. And where I come from, you take care of your best friends, so don’t worry about anything—just between you and me only, eh?” and then he winked and I double-winked back my promise to tell no one, not even Max and Elizabeth; and how Father Hachette helped the three of us find a therapist who would counsel us individually and also as a group, or what she called a “family unit,” at a nominal cost we could afford; and how Elizabeth goes to Saturday-evening Mass with me now even though she still doesn’t officially believe in God; and how Wendy broke down sobbing when, wearing her large sunglasses again, she applied for financial aid at Temple University, hoping to escape Adam once and for all, and a handsome financial aid adviser named Franklin consoled her, took her to dinner, and eventually put together a fantastic financial aid and loan package for her, winning her away from abusive Adam—I know all this because Franklin and Wendy now attend Saturday-night Mass at Saint Gabriel’s, and sometimes we all double-date afterward at the local pizza place, where I inspect Wendy’s face and arms happily, because bruises no longer appear on her skin; and how I got promoted to manager at my new job, working at the fast-food restaurant Wendy’s downtown—synchronicity?—and Elizabeth was officially hired part-time by the Free Library of Philadelphia, and Max even got a raise at the “fucking movies,” so we are now finally able to pay our bills without any help from my new well-dressed and tall Canadian friend who calls me every once in a while to say, “Dicky’s looking down from heaven with a smile on his face, eh?” which always makes me feel good—like I’m finally a grown man capable of making his father proud.