by Tammar Stein
“Yeah, I do.” Her knuckles turn nearly white as she clutches the edge of her desk. She almost looks frightened, except that makes no sense at all.
“Why are we even talking about this?” I ask, exasperated, trying not to raise my voice. “I don’t have a choice. Mom and Dad are expecting that money. Let me rephrase. They’re counting on that money. It’s not mine to keep.”
“Lenore,” my sister says harshly, letting go of the desk and lurching forward, clutching my arm and stepping so close that our bodies nearly touch. She has to look up to meet my eyes. She’s been wearing heels for so long, I never realized I’m taller. “That money is cursed.” Her voice is low and hoarse as she enunciates. Her breath is sour in my face. “Get. Rid. Of. It.”
First of all, I hate it when people call me Lenore. She knows that. Secondly, her sharp nails dig into the tender skin of my arm and the small hairs on my nape rise, that prehistoric response to danger.
“Natasha,” I say, as if to a child. “It’s just money. We can do whatever we want with it.” I try pulling her fingers off.
“Listen to me.” She tightens her grip. “It…it was rigged, okay? That’s all I can tell you. We never should have won that money in the first place.”
Okaaaay.
This argument, this fight, whatever this conversation is, has devolved into a farce.
“Excuse me?” I ask, as if checking she’s still there. My sister has never had troubles with reality, with sanity, but Mom has an aunt that was institutionalized. “Are you on something? You’re not making any sense. And you’re freaking me out.”
“Leni.” She takes a shaky breath, visibly fighting for calm. “I know this sounds insane. I know you don’t believe me. But I’m telling the truth. The only reason Dad won the lottery was because of me, because I made a deal.” She lets go of my arm and uses her hands to rub her face, like she’s trying to wake up. “A really, really bad deal.” She covers her face, hiding her naked emotions as she starts crying.
I let her cry for a bit as I follow the logic.
Logically, I don’t see how what my sister is saying could be true. It’s not possible to rig the lotto; they have insane safeguards to make sure of that. Even assuming that it was somehow true, who could Natasha have possibly known who would do that for her when she was in high school?
“Tasha,” I say, asking the third thing about this that doesn’t make any sense. “Why would you even want to win the lottery badly enough to mess with some badass hacker people? Our life was fine.”
“I thought Emmett would stay if I was rich. So stupid.” Her voice cracks. Long black streaks of eyeliner and mascara have turned her face into a gruesome mask. “I was so stupid.”
Out of Natasha’s whole ridiculous story, that’s one thing that rings true. Natasha would have done anything to keep Emmett. She was never good with boundaries, and when she fell in love with him in high school and they started dating, nothing he ever gave her was enough. She didn’t want him to spend a second without her. Emmett put up with Natasha’s craziness longer than a lot of guys would but when he graduated, he enlisted in the army. Natasha almost went insane. He was going to leave her, leave St. Pete, and who knew when or if he’d ever be back. I barely saw her during that period. I was a tomboyish ten-year-old, obsessed with marine biology, out on the beach every second I could be. It wasn’t until I was fifteen and in the midst of an ugly breakup with my first boyfriend that I even thought about how painful and heartbreaking it was to have someone you love say “no thank you.” But it never occurred to me to question the timing of winning the lottery and Natasha’s bad breakup.
“A deal works both ways,” I say, pretending this is real, pretending what she said could be true. “What did you promise?”
“I promised that I would do what he asked,” she says, taking a shaky breath. “One thing. Whenever he asked it.” She swipes at her cheeks, smearing the black lines across her face. It is surreal to see my perfect sister ruined with tears and paint.
“That’s pretty open-ended,” I say. What could she possibly do for a Mafia hacker that was worth millions?
“I told him I wouldn’t do anything that hurt our family or anyone we knew.” She crosses her arms defensively.
“And when is…is…” It’s hard to say it out loud. Like a joke. “…is this hacker person getting his one favor?”
“He just did,” she says, her skin matching her dress as she swallows convulsively, greasy with a film of sweat. “He cashed in his chip this morning.”
A nervous tremor runs through me despite my skepticism. “What did he want?”
“It’s none of your business,” my sister says in an empty voice. She turns away, returning to her earlier position, back to the door, hunched over her desk, her vertebrae jutting in a skeletal column through skin and indecipherable Japanese characters. “Get rid of that money, Leni.”
I walk over and place a hand on her back. Her skin is oddly chilled and clammy.
“Natasha, what hap—”
“Get rid of it, Lenore,” she snaps as she turns to me, her spittle flying and hitting my face. I stumble back. “It’s got blood on it.” She touches a hand to her lips, as if to take back the words, but I see the truth in her eyes.
“Natasha,” I whisper. “What did you do?”
But she won’t say anything else.
As they left the shop behind, she couldn’t shake off the uneasy feeling lurking heavy in her chest. She checked on the baby, lifting the canopy for a quick peek, to see that sweet little sleeping face again. To make sure she was okay.
Motherhood had had all sorts of surprises for her. The fierce mama-bear love, the constant need to see the baby, to hold her, to feel her tiny chest rising and falling, was a huge one. Sometimes she would slip out of bed at night and creep down the hall, only to ease down silently next to the crib and watch the baby in the dim light from the blue-moon night-light.
She glanced at Craig: husband, father, laid-off accountant.
He wore his now-familiar look of stress and worry. Everything had happened together. The baby was born and a month later, Craig was out of a job. They had said it was a blessing; he could spend this time with his new daughter. So many fathers didn’t. They figured he’d find something within a couple of months, and it was wonderful to have another set of hands when spit-up came out of one end while the other end squirted impossibly foul matter and the baby screamed like someone was performing surgery without anesthesia on her. They’d laughed in drunken, sleep-deprived jags, going through baby boot-camp together, and she’d pitied other couples who missed out on this. Gazing over their sleeping newborn together, melting over those fleeting, toothless sleep-smiles.
Except the weeks turned to months and there were no interviews, no job offers. Craig began applying for jobs below his previous level, willing to take salary cuts. And still, no job offers. It wasn’t about them anymore. They were parents now. It left her with a hollow feeling of panic. What kind of parents can’t provide for their child? Even though they’d agreed she’d stay at home for at least a year, she started submitting her résumé, not that she had any better luck. They even discussed moving in with his parents, just until one of them found a job. When they drove by the Powerball billboard and saw someone had won the jackpot, both of them couldn’t help thinking how much they could have used that money. It was hard to stop the daydreams about how they could use that money.
Fantasy aside, they needed to decide what they were going to do. But all she could think about was that woman who had come into the tea shop after them. She shivered again, though the day was blazing hot.
“She was weird, right?” she said.
And Craig, bless him, knew exactly what she meant.
“Yeah,” he said. “Freaky.”
“She really scared me. When I see people like that, I get scared that they want to hurt Libby.” She shivered again, feeling so off-kilter she had to stop and peek through the sun visor on the stroller to ch
eck on the baby again, as if some evil spirit could have snuck into her little carrier and spirited her away.
“We would never let anything bad happen to her,” Craig said firmly, her practical and pragmatic sweetie.
They were silent after that, he pushing the stroller, she walking at his side, both taking occasional sips of their teas. They walked all the way to the pier and then to its end, where Tampa Bay stretched out and the fishermen fished with their endless patience.
“We have to let the house go, don’t we?” she finally said, leaning against the railing, her back to the million-dollar view as she looked at her husband and daughter.
“Yeah,” he said. “We do.”
“And then it’s off to Illinois. And your parents.”
“Yeah. At least, for a little while.”
She felt an aching sadness at the thought of leaving their bungalow with its beautiful views and happy memories. But it was the right decision. They were parents now.
“I love you,” she said, and leaned over to him, touching her lips very gently to his cheek. “And Libby is lucky to have you for a daddy.”
Craig smiled, his eyes sad and sweet. “Right back at you.” They hugged each other, leaning into each other’s strength.
Then Libby woke up, hot and fussy, and soon they were busy changing a soiled diaper and fixing a bottle, and then the heat was too much. They pitched their drinks into the trash and headed home.
Chapter Three
Natasha refuses to answer any questions. She cleans up and paints her face back on, though she still looks forlorn and haunted behind the counter. I hurry out into the bright, punishing heat, leaving the dark shop behind like a bad dream.
We have electricity and running water at home this month, but still the house is an awful, depressing place that I’m in no hurry to return to. The quiet headache I’ve been ignoring all day has sharpened. Wicked pain drills through my right eye and I squint against the sharp brightness of a Florida afternoon. It’s difficult to credit the things Natasha has told me, not because she’s a liar, it’s just impossible to believe. And it’s Natasha.
My mom says that the three of us were born with our personalities fully in place.
My older brother, Eddie, was born tired. “Born tired and lives to sleep,” my mom always says. It was three days until she knew the color of his eyes, because he wouldn’t open them. He even fed with his eyes closed.
Natasha was born screaming. She didn’t stop for five months. My parents thought she had colic, but it was just Natasha letting everyone know she was here and pissed off about it. When she was young, our acquaintances thought she was the sweetest little girl, though really what they meant was that she was cute and pretty. My mom would get compliments about her adorable girl at the mall and the grocery store. Babysitters, on the other hand, hated watching her. It was hard to find one who’d come back a second time. Natasha was a biter.
As for me, according to my mom, I was born with an old soul. I had big, solemn eyes. I rarely cried and my mom said that I stared at her like I was trying to figure everything out, like I was trying to read her thoughts. I learned to talk earlier than either my brother or sister, and my first word, at nine months, was “ish,” which meant fish. Every morning I would wake up and shout from my crib, “Ish! Ish!” My favorite thing to do was to go to the pier and look at the fish.
So maybe my mom’s right. There’s Eddie, back at the house, twenty-seven, unemployed and probably buzzed even though it’s barely four in the afternoon. Natasha at the tea shop, too thin, strung too tight, saying those crazy things. And me, still obsessed with fish, still trying to figure everything out.
Nothing changes.
But that’s not true, because things did change for our family. After we won the lottery, everything changed.
At Lenny’s Restaurant, my favorite breakfast place, the ceiling tiles are painted with all sorts of funny sayings. One that always makes people snort is: Lord, help me prove to you that I can win the lotto and stay humble. They also post the winning lottery numbers next to their Sunday-morning specials. It’s cute. People dream about winning the lottery and how it’ll change their lives. The fact that the change will be for the better is taken for granted. Since when did copious, ridiculous, Monopoly amounts of money not fix everything? No more fretting about that tight race between the checking-account balance and the bills in the mail. No more envious longing for someone else’s cool crap. Being rich is like being famous without the stalking paparazzi. It means you’re important and powerful. Of course that’s a better life. Of course you’d be a happier person. Duh.
But the thing is, after the shock, after the giddy dizziness fades, after you wake up and the money is still there and after you finally come to believe that this isn’t the most vivid, amazing dream you’ve ever had, that this is real—after all that, you’re still you. There are still traffic jams. You still get bored. You get pissed when people are rude and thoughtless. You barely miss being in a horrible crash when some texting idiot runs a red. You have bad morning breath and pimples. None of your friends are millionaires, and suddenly you’re this weird creature, an evolutionary mutant with no genus to belong to. Within a year, our friends split into two basic groups: those who were jealous of us and those who were uncomfortable and awkward around us. And that was the problem, really. Once we won, the money didn’t change who we were, it changed how people saw us. And once that happened, nothing made the sense it used to.
When I was eight, two years before we won, my siblings and I pooled our money and together with help from my dad, we bought my mom a Le Creuset pot for Mother’s Day. She’d wanted one for years. Not a cheaper knockoff you could find at T.J.Maxx. She always wanted the real thing from France, but at the same time, she felt it was ridiculous to spend $150 on a pot, even a brightly colored, guaranteed-to-cook-amazing-dinners, enameled cast-iron pot.
On that Mother’s Day, we drove to the Ellenton Premium Outlets and found her a cerulean-blue Dutch oven on sale at the Le Creuset outlet.
My mom loved that pot. Every time she used it, she made a point to say something about her adorable children buying it for her. She loved to carry it to the table, set it down and lift the lid like a magician presenting a delightful surprise. The fragrant steam, curling with promise, always backed her up.
A couple of months after we won, when I was almost eleven, my mom picked me up from school and said, “Let’s go!”
We drove to the Williams-Sonoma in Tampa’s Old Hyde Park Village, a posh shopping district. My mom was in the grips of this weird joy. There was nothing in that fancy store that we couldn’t buy. We didn’t need to wait for a sale. We didn’t need to drive to the outlet. We didn’t need to compromise on color or shape or choose only one. The salesladies picked up on the energy like a contact high. We were all giggling.
My mom ended up buying every type of Le Creuset they had in stock: the braiser, the stockpot, the gratin dish, all of it. A saleslady talked her into buying a complete set of silicone cooking utensils, a red stand mixer and a doughnut maker. I begged for a cake mold in the shape of a giant cupcake. The total bill was close to $4,000.
We needed help carrying it all to our car, and they tromped along to our brand-new Lexus SUV, a little parade of happy consumers. We were giddy from the power, the potential, the promise of all the good times to come. We could buy it all.
Then we got home and unloaded the boxes. They piled higher and higher on our little kitchen counters. We hadn’t built the new house yet. There was nowhere to put all the new cookware, so we ended up storing it in the garage. A tower of bright orange boxes next to the old TV, computer boxes and sound system that took up most of the space our car used to park in.
She never used the doughnut maker and we tried out the giant cupcake mold once, but really, who wants to eat a giant, cake-sized cupcake? The Le Creusets she liked but she hardly used most of them. Her favorite was still the blue one we got on sale for Mother’s Day. Her first Le C
reuset, the one her children bought for her.
Because it turns out you can’t buy more of that feeling you get when the people you love show you how much they love you back. Not even at Williams-Sonoma for $4,000. That’s what winning the lotto felt like. A big initial thrill, followed by the dawning realization that most of its promises were hollow.
Then, over the course of seven insane years, even the hollow promises were gone. There was no money left. Except for my trust fund, which matures next week.
I come to my favorite part of the St. Pete bay walk, a bend that turns in to make a little nook with a couple of palm trees shading the cove from the sun. I lock my bike and hop down to the sand. The impact jostles my headache, making it flare into bursts of lightning crackling behind my eyes and temples. A migraine. I haven’t had one since leaving St. John’s. Tucking my hair behind my ears, I ease down, settling in with my back against the seawall to watch the waves and the birds and anything that might swim by. With a light breeze off the water, it’s fifteen degrees cooler in the shade.
When I leave for college next year, I won’t be able to see the water every day, something I can’t imagine. My dream school is Stanford. Forty-thousand-dollars-a-year Stanford. I want to study marine science, get a doctorate and do everything I can to take care of the most amazing ecosystem in the world. Ten to twelve years of higher education. My trust fund would go a long way toward covering that.
I shift uncomfortably at the thought of the money. I try not to think about it. I try not to think of it as mine. Because if I start thinking about it that way, it’ll be very hard to hand it over to my parents and see them spend it on more crap. And then there’s Natasha’s story about how we shouldn’t have won in the first place, messing me up even more. I shake my head, as if plagued by mosquitoes. My headache pulses in protest and I immediately stop.
Without even realizing it, I slip into my meditating position, learned in one of the endless sets of classes my parents bought for me. Slowly the soft breeze and the sound of the wavelets lapping at the shore work their usual magic. Two seagulls cry to each other. My foul, messed-up mood starts to smooth out. Because I’m tucked against the bottom of the seawall, walkers up on the sidewalk never notice me.
