Win for Love

by Isabelle Peterson

  But now, I feel as though those dreams are foolish. The fantasy of my mom and me getting out of this hell together is gone. She won’t change. She doesn’t want to.

  I try to study for my history class, but my mind keeps wandering to the winnings and how to move forward.

  I run some rough calculations. I’ve been doing my own taxes for the past several years, but what are the taxes on $5,000 a week? I run a quick search on the Internet from my phone, careful not to spend a lot of time online because I don’t have a generous data package on my outdated, refurbished mobile phone with its bare-bones plan where I pay for every minute of data I use. Again, I wish that we’d had enough money in the budget to have Internet and cable in our home. Soon enough though! I tell myself with a smile.

  Finding a quick answer, I exit the app and run some numbers. After taxes, I would get to keep roughly $3,500 a week. The thought has me almost dancing like a lunatic. I don’t bring home that much in a month from my job at the electric company, let alone a week.

  I start to wonder what kind of attention I would get for winning this kind of money. I think about the newspaper and magazine articles I read about lottery winners after the recent Mega Millions jackpot of more than half-a-billion dollars back in January that sent everyone lottery crazy. The lines had been out the door and down the block at Joe’s Newsstand. One article I read was talking about winners from years back who are now flat broke having spent their winnings irresponsibly. Almost every winner talked about long, lost family members, friends, and even strangers looking for handouts.

  I already knew I needed professional advice but what kind? An accountant? Maybe. Definitely a lawyer, I decide. One who would know what to do with money like this. The only interaction I had with legal advice was with the public defenders assigned to my brother’s cases. And I don’t really trust the goofball billboards and park benches. I need a trustworthy, upstanding lawyer. And, hey, I can now afford it. But how do I find one?

  It’s almost midnight, and I’m tired of waiting for my mom to come home. I know she said not to wait up, but this is a habit I formed so I could make sure she got into bed okay, and that the front door is closed and locked. Often, she’d leave her keys in the front door. I also like to make sure that when she’s alone, she sleeps on her side with a pillow wedged behind her back in case she’s drunk enough to make herself sick, and I set a bucket next to her bed. If she comes home with a guy, many times I’ll go in and do all that after he’s left.

  I put my history book and notebook in my school bag and head to bed but am unable to sleep, so I pull down another book on my shelf. It’s Little Women. Like my copy of Alice’s Adventures, these pages are all dog-eared. I often feel like Jo March, the tomboy, and working outside the home to support the family but more with the temperament of Meg. I long for sisters. I am just at the part where Meg is off to spend a couple of weeks with her friends going to parties and dances “with boys” when I hear a car door open and close outside.

  I glance at my alarm clock, and the amber lights tell me that it’s 1:18 a.m. The front door opens and closes. Someone stumbles in.

  I wait. Will it be one person? Or two? I don’t hear a second set of feet. That’s a good sign. She didn’t bring home her ‘friend,’ not that she always brought someone home, just a lot of the time. Then I feel guilty that I assumed she was with a guy ‘friend.’ Maybe it was a girlfriend she’d gotten together with. Maybe she wasn’t with a random guy tonight.

  I hear the clank of the safety chain on the door and the jingle of keys on the table. When I hear my mom plop down in her squeaky bed, I take a breath feeling like I’m off the clock and drop off to sleep.

  3

  A Weekend with Possibilities

  CRYSTAL

  I wake late the next morning, around ten, grateful not to have to work the Saturday morning shift like I do two weekends a month and check on my mom. She is snoring and has the covers pulled over her head, but the blankets don’t block the stench of booze and B.O., but at least I don’t smell vomit. I set up the coffee maker and dress in jeans and a t-shirt, pulling my hair into a ponytail while it brews. I eat a power bar for my breakfast and pour a cup of coffee. While I ‘feast’ on my breakfast, I’m overwhelmed by the thought that skimpy breakfasts like these are about to be a thing of my past.

  But how to get that future? I know that protecting myself and my winnings is paramount, but I have no clue where to start. I think about the lovely older couple who live a few homes down from us, the Schwarzkopfs. They’ve kind of taken me in as an honorary granddaughter from time to time. They always give me a Christmas present, and when I was younger, they’d tell me that Santa Claus accidentally left my gift at their place or suggested that it fell out of Santa’s sac on their lawn. They never forget my birthday despite my own mother’s inability to remember exactly which day it is. They even came to my high school graduation. Maybe they could be of some help?

  With a plan in mind, I pour my mom a cup of coffee and check in one more time on her noting she has not moved. I jot down a quick note telling her I’d stepped out but would be back soon, and set it with a cup of coffee on the table next to her bed.

  As I walk down the gravel path that served as the street for our park, I try to figure out what I am actually going to ask the Schwarzkopfs. How much could I tell them? I trusted them probably more than anyone I knew, but one never knows, do they? And should I ask for a lawyer or an accountant? Or was there some other professional I should seek?

  Since the morning is warm and sunny, I find Mrs. Schwarzkopf in the small square that serves as her front yard. I smile when I see her in her broad-brimmed straw hat, green apron with a daisy decorating the front and flower-printed gloves that she wears while gardening. She is just finishing up tending to the spent tulips and daffodils, and in that tiny patch of green that is her lawn, there are flats of colorful annual flowers that she will be planting in the border where her proud tulips and daffodils grew. In my mind, she is always like a character out of a book with costumes to boot. When she cooks, she wears an apron, although that one has fruits and vegetables decorating it. When she reads, she wears glasses. And when she gardens, she wears all the gear—hat, apron, gardening shoes, and gloves. Mr. Schwarzkopf sits on the narrow, front porch that he and his son built a couple of years ago, complete with a porch swing, reading the newspaper and drinking coffee in his hallmark plaid shirt.

  “Hi, Mrs. Schwarzkopf,” I call out. “Mr. Schwarzkopf.”

  Mr. Schwarzkopf waves, and Mrs. Schwarzkopf spots me and stands. “Oh, Sugar-Crystal, sweetie. How are you?” I loved her nicknames for me, Sugar-Crystal is one of my favorites. She slips off her gloves and tucks them into the pocket of her gardening apron then walks up to me smiling her warm smile.

  “I’m good. You look well. Your garden is still the loveliest in the whole park,” I tell her.

  “Aww, but thank you. I think I bought too many impatiens this year,” she says almost excitedly. “Oh well, the more the merrier, right? Unless you’d like some for your place?”

  “Oh, um… maybe?” I reply. We’ve never planted flowers on our lot before. “Do you need any help?” I hadn’t planned on gardening this morning, but Mrs. Schwarzkopf is so inspiring.

  “Sure! I’d love it, dear!”

  She walks to a cupboard under their coveted carport where she grabs a pair of gloves and a small shovel for me. I note that Mr. Schwarzkopf is back into his newspaper world. Mrs. Schwarzkopf and I kneel down, side by side—me on the grass and she on her kneeling stand—and I mimic her by digging small holes. We pop the small, brightly-colored flowers from the pockets in the plastic tray and put them into the holes. It’s a peaceful and satisfying process.

  “You’re contemplating something important. What is it?” she asks.

  Well, that didn’t take long. Mrs. Schwarzkopf always seemed to have a sixth sense, or maybe I was always that transparent. I take a breath and just go with it. “Um, I was wondering if you knew
a good lawyer.”

  She stops and looks at me, her face blanketed with concern.

  “Oh. No! It’s all good. I promise,” I quickly say, hoping to assuage her concern. “The only lawyers I know are for… bad things. I need a lawyer for a good thing. A very good thing.”

  “Oh?” she says, still not fully convinced.

  How could I convince her? Could I tell her? Trust her? Her face reveals that she wants to believe, but she’s fully versed in my family’s drama—my mother and my brother. She knows about the fiasco with Leo. She’s always told me that she admired that I was so loyal to my mother. That said, what I was planning to do at the moment wasn’t one-hundred percent loyal to her.

  “Well, I… uh… actually… um…” I stumble, searching for the right words. I decide to go with, “I won some money, and I want to make sure that everything is protected. Maybe it’s not a lawyer I need. An accountant? Or is there someone else I should look for?”

  “Please tell me you’re not gambling, honey,” she says. Being that we are so close to the riverboat casinos of St. Louis, we often hear about gambling problems.

  “No, ma’am,” I say. “Not gambling. Just a scratcher ticket. A total fluke. With some found money. A one-time deal.”

  “Oh, honey! That’s wonderful! If you don’t mind me asking, is it a lot? I mean, a lawyer seems kind of extreme for some winnings.”

  Dang it all, I scold myself. I should have kept it a bit more ambiguous. “Well, yeah. It’s kinda substantial,” I concede. I have known the Schwarzkopfs for years, and they’ve always been solid and true for me. I know I can trust her, but at the same time, I’m afraid of talking about the winnings for fear they’ll disappear. Irrational, but emotions are emotions. Not that the Schwarzkopfs would take them, but if they mention anything to my mom, well… “For me, at least,” I add, lowering the expectation.

  “Well, then, yes. I think for protection, you’ll need a lawyer. An accountant next year come tax time. Let me think…” she says, her eyes darting as though she were looking through an imaginary phone book. “Oh! I know just the woman. A delight. And trustworthy as all get out,” she adds, sensing my hesitance over this whole issue. “She was our attorney when we were setting up the trust funds for our grandkids. Jerry,” she calls to Mr. Schwarzkopf. “Do we have any business cards for Rose… Rose…” She taps the tip of her nose as if that’ll help her remember. “Oh! Mitchell! Rose Mitchell!” Apparently, it helped.

  “Is everything okay?” he asks, looking at me with a grandfatherly love and concern.

  “Everything is great, Mr. Schwarzkopf. Thank you.”

  “Okay. I’ll go check,” he says dutifully and heads inside.

  “This is so exciting, Sugar-Crystal. And… your mother? Does she know?” A new concern is written on her face. Somehow, I can see she’s worried that my mom will spend it all before the ink on a giant check is dry. And maybe she’s already put together that the protection I’m looking for with the attorney is from my mother.

  “She doesn’t know yet,” I say, feeling ashamed, ashamed that I’ve told a neighbor about my good fortune before my own mother.

  “All in good time. You are being smart setting things up first,” she says in a reassuring hushed tone.

  I breathe a sigh of relief. I wasn’t being judged harshly. If Mrs. Schwarzkopf were to find my plan of withholding information from my mother a bad thing, I would have been crushed.

  “Got it right here, Crystal-Ball,” Mr. Schwarzkopf says, calling me by the nickname he’s used for me since I first met him and his wife sixteen years ago when I was eight years old. Mrs. Schwarzkopfs ‘Sugar-Crystal’ came a couple of months later, then Crystalline, Crystal Eyes—a play on Crystalize—Crystal Clear, Crystal Chandelier, and Crystal Light as if they were in a strange competition. I’d never known a more perfectly matched pair.

  I thank my pseudo-grandparents and finish helping Mrs. Schwarzkopf plant the rest of the impatiens before heading home. I’ll call Ms. Mitchell on Monday.

  When I get back to our place, I look in on my mom. She’s still in bed, but she’s home and sleeping. Not out and drinking. Or home and drinking. I walk into her room quietly to see if she drank her coffee. I’m surprised to see that she drank it. And that the bucket is still empty. Maybe she didn’t drink as much as I’d suspected last night.

  “Mom?” I say quietly, so I don’t wake her if she’s sleeping.

  “Hmm?” she moans, pulling the covers tighter over her head.

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “No. I’m good, baby. I just need sleep,” she whispers.

  “Okay, Mom.” I tiptoe out of her room and close the door trying to make as little noise as possible.

  Quietly, I duck into my room and pull out the Alice book. I examine the lottery ticket once again to confirm that I’d played the game correctly and that it was, indeed, a winning ticket. The winning number ‘13’ is clearly in the top row. And the number ‘13’ is still in the Prize section. My hand starts to shake. What am I going to do with this money? Again, I imagine a life for my mom and me—a better, new life—a life in a new town and being a family. Jude is set for release from jail in a couple of months. Would he be coming home? I’d love to include him in this. We could all use a fresh start.

  Yet, I also imagine a new life just for me. A fresh start just for me. A life being able to buy a shirt at the mall when I find it and not waiting for it to go on sale or deciding to look for something close enough at a more affordable store or at the Goodwill. A life with a college degree. A life without staying up until all hours of the night waiting for my mom to come home or nursing her health after a night of partying.

  I hear my mom get out of bed and then her bedroom door opens. Quickly, I stuff the ticket back inside the book and shove it back on the shelf. The bathroom door closes, and I breathe a sigh of relief that my secret is still safe.

  I tuck myself on the sofa in the living room and pick up my history book and notebook. Mom exits the bathroom and goes back to her bedroom. I can’t decide if this is good or bad.

  The rest of the day is spent quietly. I hear my mom try to puke but only dry heave, but she doesn’t put in an appearance.

  My best friend, Heather, calls around four that afternoon.

  “Hey, Crys! What are your plans tonight? Everyone is coming to Ben’s.” Ben is Heather’s on-again-off-again boyfriend. The two have been together since high school and are either madly in love or ready to kill one another. Heather has maintained our friendship all through her college years, even though I didn’t go, and beyond, and for that, I’m eternally grateful. Heather went to school for business so that she could help her dad with his grocery store. Ben went to a vo-tech school for HVAC. Even though Heather made more money than he did, the two never seemed to make it an issue. Except when it was.

  “Sounds like fun, but…” I start, feeling like a shitty friend knowing I need to tell her that I plan on leaving Harton. She doesn’t need to know the details, just that I’m leaving. If I were to tell her that I’d won a Win-for-Life scratcher, the entire town would know in a matter of minutes. She’d be Ground Zero for the gossip mill. The girl couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it. And right now, I need this ticket to be a secret. My life depended on it.

  “Mom’s sick again? I don’t know how you put up with that shit, Crys. Seriously. Admirable that you look out for her, but you have to look out for you, too. If she wants help, she’ll get it. Don’t let her drag you down.”

  “I know. I know you’re right,” I reply defeatedly. Heather’s always been a straight shooter, and I truly do appreciate her for that. And at least she understands that I need to do what’s right for me. I was feeling better that she’d understand when I pack up and leave town. And maybe once I was established wherever I was headed, I could tell her.

  “Listen. I’m sure you’ve already set her up with a bucket and water. Make sure she has her phone. Call Austin. Come out and hang! You’re t
oo young to be tethered the way you are.”

  “I’ve just got some other stuff going on, too, and my final exam is in less than two weeks.”

  “Suit yourself,” she says dejectedly, not hearing my enthusiasm for a party. “Later, chica!” and just like that, hangs up.

  Yeah, maybe ‘best’ friend is pushing it.

  Sunday morning, I wake up and hear the shower. It’s a good sign. Mom is up and about. I get out of bed to make coffee and figure out what to do for breakfast. If Mom is up, she’s probably starving. She didn’t eat anything yesterday. The water stops, and a few moments later, Mom exits the bathroom with a towel on her head and one wrapped around her body. I’m stunned at what I see.

  “Mom! Ohmigod! What happened to your face?!” I ask, rushing up to her. The whole right side of her face is purple, and there are even a couple small cuts, one on her eyebrow and the other on her cheekbone.

  “It’s nothing, honey. I’m fine.”

  “You are not fine, Mom. Who did this to you? This happened the other night? You said you were out with an old friend,” I remind her. If she were, then she would have a name and charges could be pressed.

  “Not worth it, baby. I’ll heal.” She ducks her head and pushes past me to walk to her room. She turns and looks at me, her eyes now shiny with tears that she is clearly fighting to hold back. “And, baby doll. I’m sorry about dinner. I’m done.”

  “Wh-what?” What is she telling me? Done with what?

  “No more late nights. No more looking for Mr. Right. I’m gonna sober up. Yeah. I’m gonna do it this time.” Her voice shakes at the end. She nods again as if that’s the handshake of the deal.