Julie and Romeo Get Lucky Page 14

  “How could I have bought the ticket?” Nora said. “You know exactly where I’ve been all week.”

  Sarah just kept her eyes down. I didn’t think she was capable of holding out against too much pressure for very long, but I found it admirable that she was trying.

  “I bought the ticket.” While I knew I wasn’t supposed to, it seemed possible, just possible, that what I had done could be considered a good thing.

  “I know it wasn’t you,” Sandy said dismissively.

  “Why?”

  “Because we talked about it. I asked you not to.”

  “But I did it anyway. I went behind your back. Why would I lie about it?”

  “To protect Nora.”

  “That’s great,” Nora said, throwing up her hands. “I didn’t do it, I have the perfect alibi, there’s a credible confession, and still I’m getting blamed.”

  “It’s a winning lottery ticket, not a parking ticket,” Alex said. “I would think you’d be fighting each other to take the credit.”

  “I bought it,” Little Tony said. “Sarah made me.”

  “Grandma bought it,” Sarah said, then she ran over to me and held my arm. “I’m sorry.”

  I petted her hair. She would be the only eight-year-old in history punished for bringing millions into the house. “It’s okay. Don’t you remember? I made you promise not to tell, and you said you’d have to tell if you won. So you won. That was the deal.”

  “How could you have done that?” Sandy said.

  “Really,” Big Tony said in the alliance of son-in-laws, “I’m with Alex on this one. This is good news. I don’t think we can even absorb the level on which this is good news.”

  Sandy had no intention of letting me go so easily. “But I specifically asked you not to. You knew it wasn’t what was best for Sarah, you knew how I felt.”

  “Give it a rest,” Nora said. “You bought her plenty of tickets yourself even after you knew you should stop. You were telling us not to buy her tickets, and you were still buying them. We all did it because it made her happy, which made us happy. Sarah, when Grandma bought you that ticket at the store last week, did it make you happy?”

  Sarah was thoughtful, remembering that happiness and comparing it to what was happening now. She was extremely cautious. She was half-afraid her mother would take the ticket away from her or rip it up to prove a point. “It really did.”

  “And Mother, did it make you happy to buy Sarah the ticket?”

  I nodded. “She had come home sick from school, and I just wanted to cheer her up. I loved buying her the ticket.”

  “There you have it: a child’s happiness and a grandmother’s happiness,” Nora said, holding out her hand in Sarah’s direction. “I rest my case.”

  Plummy sighed. “This is too much excitement for me. I’m going to go home to get some sleep. No matter what happens, I have a lot of flowers to get out in the morning.”

  “Don’t you want to stay and see how the drama unfolds?” her brother asked.

  “I’m sure I can find out tomorrow. Sarah?”

  Sarah looked at Plummy and blinked.

  “Do you mind if I borrow your movie? I want to watch the rest of it over at Dad’s.”

  “Sure,” Sarah said.

  Plummy walked over to the VCR and punched the EJECT button as if this were the most natural thing in the world. “Thanks,” she said. “I’ll bring it back. Be sure to give Dad my love whenever he wakes up. Tell him I’ll come by and see him tomorrow.”

  And with that, we witnessed the most remarkable event of the day: Willie Wonka left the building. Without Plummy, without the never-ending chorus of Oompah-Loompahs, the house seemed remarkably empty.

  “Where’s the ticket?” Sandy said.

  “In my shoe.”

  “It’s still in your shoe?” I asked. I couldn’t believe that all this time had passed without anybody asking to see it, without anybody, including Sarah, checking to make sure she was right.

  Sarah nodded. Sandy held out her hand, and Sarah dutifully unlaced her shoe and pulled out a flattened piece of aluminum foil—which couldn’t help but call to mind if not a golden ticket, than at least a silver one. She gave it to her mother: then Sandy, without so much as opening the foil to see if there was a ticket inside, walked across the room and handed it to me.

  “Why?” I said.

  “You bought it. It’s your ticket.”

  “It’s Sarah’s ticket. I bought it for her.”

  “Children can’t play the lottery, and if they can’t play, then they can’t win, so you’re just going to have to figure out what to do with it.”

  I tried to give it back to her. “You’re Sarah’s mother. If she can’t have it, then it’s your ticket.”

  Sandy held up her hands. I had a feeling she wasn’t going to budge on this one.

  “This is perfect,” Nora said. “It’s classic. We’ve raised good fortune to the level of Greek tragedy. Now, I want to go to bed. Go, all of you. I’ve had enough. Good night, family.”

  “Okay,” Sandy said. “Tony, Sarah, go upstairs and brush your teeth. I’ll be up in a little while to read to you.”

  “But this isn’t a regular night,” Sarah said.

  I have to say I thought she had a point.

  “The lottery won’t protect you from cavities. Go.”

  So Tony and Sarah said good night, good night, good night. They kissed Alex and Nora and Big Tony. They came to kiss me. Sarah squeezed my neck for a minute and whispered in my ear. “Don’t lose it.”

  “Promise,” I said. They were slow to climb the stairs. They both kept looking back at us until finally Sandy pointed a finger, and they disappeared.

  Alex came back in the room holding the newspaper. “Just in case anybody’s interested, if that ticket is the winner and the only winner, it’s worth seven and a half million dollars.”

  I had an overwhelming desire to get rid of the thing in my hand. Seven and a half million should not be masquerading as an oversized stick of chewing gum. “Sandy, please.”

  I saw a little bit of sympathy cross the face of my youngest daughter. “I don’t know what to do. It’s scary. I feel like everything’s going to change.”

  “It is,” Nora said quietly. “For the better.”

  It was all Sandy needed, a little bit of compassion from her sister. I could almost see the tension dropping out of her shoulders. “Just keep it tonight,” she told me. “We’ll figure out what to do about it in the morning.”

  I walked upstairs holding on to the silver ticket, pinching it tightly by one corner. Romeo was out cold when I went into the bedroom. His face was relaxed, painless in its deep, chemical sleep, and I leaned over and kissed him gently on his sweet, slack lips. Nothing in him stirred.

  I went around and sat down on the other side of the bed and very carefully peeled back the edges of the foil. There it was, the Massachusetts State Lottery, Mass Millions, and a row of numbers that either were or were not the ones that Sarah had seen on TV—although if I had to guess, I would say that this was a child who did not make mistakes where the lottery was concerned. Behind the ticket was a piece of cardboard cut out from the side of a box of Kix cereal. Wisely, she had thought that such a flimsy piece of paper would need a little bit of additional support. I thought of how this ticket had spent the week between her sock and the sole of her shoe, how it stayed with her through every step, down the hallways of school, out to the playground, walking home from the school bus and up the stairs to her room. It looked worn but not faded, and she was smart for wrapping it up.

  Seven and a half million dollars.

  Charlie Bucket had never dreamed of such a fortune.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I WAS DREAMING OF TICKETS, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of tickets blowing around me in every direction. I was walking down the street in front of my house, and the tickets were coming straight toward me. They stuck between the branches of trees and clotted up underneath the shrubs. The wi
nd pushed them into my clothes and tangled them in my hair, but they weren’t frightening or overwhelming. They were like butterflies, harmless and light.

  Then Sarah was there in her nightgown, following me out into the street. She was twirling around in the snowstorm of paper, and she said, “Grandma, Grandma, where’s our ticket?” And at that moment I realized I was holding the winning ticket in my hand, and as soon as I saw it, I startled and let it go. The winning ticket spun away among all the thousands of identical losing tickets, and Sarah started running after it and I started running after Sarah, then Romeo came limping down the street, wanting me to wait for him. He kept calling me, “Julie! Julie!” and I didn’t know what to do—run for the ticket or the child or the man with the bad back.

  “Julie?”

  “Hm?”

  “You awake?”

  “I am.” I rubbed my eyes, and the tickets vanished. “Are you? Are you okay?” The room was dark, and I reached over and caught his hand. I slid my other hand into my pillowcase and patted around until I felt the sharp edge of tinfoil. Safe.

  “My back is killing me.”

  “I bet it is. I’ll get you a pill.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was dreaming.”

  “No, what happened before that?”

  “Last night?”

  “All I remember,” Romeo said, his words still fuzzy with Demerol, “is some terrible screaming. Horrible screaming. I thought that someone had broken in or the house was on fire. I ran downstairs and someone tackled me, then I woke up back here.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  I looked at the clock—4:00 A.M. “Sarah won the lottery.”

  “That’s so weird. I had exactly the same dream.”

  “No, she really won. She was screaming and you ran downstairs and she jumped on you.”

  Romeo was quiet for a minute, trying to put it all together. “Right,” he said finally.

  “Let me get you a pill before things get worse.”

  With all the progress Romeo had made in his recovery, we had outgrown the bendy-necked straws. They had made their way back to the kitchen, so I put on my bathrobe and went to find them. It felt like old times. I went down the stairs in complete silence. It was an old house, but it was my old house, and I knew where every creak and groan was waiting. I stepped from right to left, left to right, and passed over the fifth step altogether.

  When I passed the living room, there was enough light coming in from the streetlight that I could see Nora and Alex asleep in the hospital bed, his arms around her shoulders, her head on his chest, any trace of an argument long forgotten. They made a very sweet picture. I crept off and found the straws and made it upstairs undetected. I felt like an especially nimble domestic superhero.

  “How much?” Romeo asked, when I came back into the room.

  “Seven and a half million if there are no other claims on the ticket.”

  He tried to whistle, but he lacked the fine motor skills. “That’s the mother lode of Barbies, all right.”

  I laughed at this, trying to picture what seven and a half million dollars of Barbie flesh would look like. One thing’s for certain, they’d all be wearing fur coats. “I don’t think we’ll just turn all the money over to her right away.”

  “How will Sandy do it?”

  “I have no idea. We didn’t talk about it. First, we had to make sure that you weren’t dead, and Dominic came over and gave you a shot, then Sandy got mad at me for buying the ticket.”

  “You bought the ticket?”

  “I was on strict orders not to, but then, I don’t know, I just caved.”

  “I hardly think it’s something to feel bad about. I’ve bought her lots of tickets. I’d be pretty pleased with myself if one of them had won.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t buy them after the No Ticket Edict had been issued.”

  “Sandy will get over it.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. And after that, we’ll figure out what we’re going to do with the money.”

  Romeo opened his mouth like a dear little bird, and I dropped the pill down his gullet and gave him a sip of water. “It’s very good,” he said.

  “Try to get some sleep.”

  “I guess I’m not going anywhere for awhile.”

  “That’s the good news.”

  “Really?” He was turning his head in quarter-inch increments, trying to see me, so I leaned forward until my nose was directly over his nose.

  “Really.” I kissed him good night. Again.

  Romeo was right. In the morning, I met Sandy in the kitchen, and she came and put her arms around me first thing. “We didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”

  “No,” I said. “Neither did we.”

  “Tony and I talked all night. He thought I behaved badly to you, and he’s right. I wasn’t looking at the bigger picture. You broke the rule, but certainly something very good came out of that. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “It was a lot to take in. And I should have listened to you.”

  “I actually don’t think this is going to turn Sarah into a gambling addict.”

  “Well, if we’re operating on the Wonka principle, Charlie Bucket didn’t come home asking for a second golden ticket.”

  “And seeing as how our entire life operates on the Wonka principle, I guess we pretty much know what to expect.”

  Sarah and Little Tony came into the kitchen quietly. Everyone was quiet in the morning now, and everyone shut the doors behind them. We all knew that Nora asleep was easier to manage than Nora awake, so we wanted her to sleep for as long as possible.

  “Good morning,” Little Tony said.

  “I’m rich,” Sarah said. The smile on her face was enormous. Clearly she had had some time to think about it, too.

  “Is this the way it’s going to be from now on?” Tony said resentfully. “I’m rich, I’m rich, I’m rich?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said.

  “No,” Sandy said. “Listen to me, both of you. You are to tell absolutely no one at school about this. Do you understand me? No one. We don’t know what we’re going to do with the ticket yet. We don’t need every news channel in the state camped out on our front steps.”

  “You think I’ll be on television?” Sarah gave a frightfully coy smile.

  “Here it comes,” Tony said.

  “No,” Sandy said, trying her best to sound stern, but I could tell she also wanted to laugh over the whole thing. “You will not be on television. We’re going to handle this with as much dignity and privacy as is humanly possible.”

  “Where’s my ticket?”

  “I have it,” I told her.

  “But where is it? It’s mine. I want to see it.”

  “Sarah, you’re on thin ice here. Don’t talk that way to your grandmother. As far as I’m concerned and as far as the law is concerned”—she tried to make the idea of law sound as threatening as possible—“that ticket belongs to her, so be respectful.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “May I see it, please?”

  Actually, the ticket was conveniently located in the pocket of my bathrobe. I hadn’t thought of the absolutely best place for it yet, and until I did, I planned to keep it on my person. That dream had shaken me up. I handed it to Sarah, tinfoil and all.

  She took it carefully between two fingers, as if it might be hot, or as if I might try and snatch it back from her. “I just want to show you in the paper.”

  Alex had left the paper folded on the table to the page that ran the lottery numbers. Sarah carefully unwrapped the foil and removed her ticket. She placed it on top of the paper and read the numbers aloud. “They’re 1-17-33-39-44-46, Bonus number: 7.” And then she screamed again.

  I leapt on her in a split second and clamped my hand over her mouth. “Don’t scream! You’re going to have Romeo running down the stairs again, and this time it might really be trouble.”

  Sandy slumped down in a chai
r and then dropped her head onto the table. Every number matched. The bonus number matched.

  “Do I have to go to school today?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes,” Sandy said.

  Tony leaned over to look at the paper, and Sarah grabbed up her ticket like he might try and touch it. “Wait a minute,” Tony said. “That’s a Mass Millions ticket. You never play Mass Millions. You only play Mega Millions.”

  “I know. Grandma bought it.”

  “And those aren’t your numbers. Not one single one of them. You’ve never played those numbers before in your life.”

  “Grandma got a quick pick.” She didn’t see where this was going.

  “So you aren’t lucky! It isn’t your game, and they aren’t your numbers! If you’d had your way, you would have kept losing forever. It is Grandma’s ticket, and she doesn’t owe you a dime of the money.”

  “It’s mine because she bought it for me. It’s totally mine.”

  Sandy plucked up the ticket and handed it back to me. Sarah looked poised to wail, but her mother cut her off. “Both of you, voices down, now. We’ve got a houseful of sick, sleeping people, and what they’re going through is a lot more important than any scrap of paper. My peace of mind isn’t worth seven and a half million dollars, so don’t push me. You will eat your breakfasts quietly, you will take your lunch sacks to school, and you will keep your mouths shut all day. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes,” Tony said quietly.

  Sarah waited a beat. There was a glimmer of real defiance in her eyes, the kind I used to see in Nora when she was little. Sandy just stared her down. “Yes,” Sarah said finally.

  “I’m glad we understand each other.”

  It was snowing outside, not a hard snow but a pretty, dusting snow that caught the light and shone. I made the oatmeal, and Sandy made turkey sandwiches.

  “Remember, no mustard,” Sarah said.

  Sandy turned around holding a slice of bread in her hand. “You’ve never eaten mustard. In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never even tried mustard. I’m your mother. Do you think I would have forgotten that fact?”

  “I was just reminding you,” Sarah said sullenly.