Julie and Romeo Get Lucky (17 page)

Then Plummy started to laugh. The redder Sarah's face became, the more viciously she attacked the flowers, the harder Plummy laughed. “Daddy,
I
want an Oompah-Loompah,” she said in a strange British accent. “Get me an Oompah-Loompah
NOW
.”

Sarah stopped shredding the flowers and looked up at her. “What?”

“Daddy, get me the golden ticket!” she said. Then she started laughing again.

“Why are you laughing?” Sarah said suspiciously.

“Because you're perfect!” Plummy said. “You're the perfect Veruca Salt. She was my favorite character.”

Veruca Salt was the awful little rich girl who wore fur coats and ran her father ragged with her shrieking demands. To be Veruca Salt was a very, very low thing to be.

“I'm not Veruca,” Sarah said slowly. “I'm Charlie Bucket.”

Plummy smiled at her, a smile so generous and true that one could think that nothing but good things could come from it. “No, my darling. Charlie was a poor, generous boy who loved his family. Veruca was a smart, stylish girl who loved her money. Did you get to see all of the movie? Did I take it before you had the chance to see the whole thing?”

“No,” Sarah said, puzzling hard over what she was hearing. “I saw it.”

Plummy leaned over the counter and locked Sarah in with her great, dark eyes. “So tell me now, and really think about it—which one are you?”

And Sarah did think hard. She thought so hard, you could almost see her letting go of the mink bedspread and the chauffeured limousines and the Mickey Mouse waffle iron. You could almost see her reaching back for the people she loved. She dropped the few stems she was still holding and wiped her hands against her skirt. She straightened up her shoulders. “I'm Charlie Bucket,” she said.

Maybe all of us are connected to our better selves by a strong rope, and if we get too far away from the person we used to be, we can use that rope to pull ourselves back. It's easy to get lost in distractions, especially when you're eight, and maybe when you're eight it's also easier to find your way back to your essential goodness. After all, there isn't enough time to fall too far away from what's right.

Sarah left the flower shop that day the girl I knew before, a person who was mostly just herself and slightly modeled on the better aspects of Shirley Temple and an impoverished English boy who got a lucky break.

We held a family conference that night in the living room, with Romeo joining in on a little speakerphone that Nora plugged into her cell. And while Mort and Lila and Nicolette were not invited, they weren't left out, either. Nicolette's education was a topic of discussion. It was agreed by a unanimous vote that Alex would be in charge of operating the trust that would look after the money, and because only one person could sign the back of the ticket and claim the prize, we also agreed that that person should be Sandy.

“But Mom bought the ticket,” she said. “She should have to do it.”

“But then she has to gift the money to Sarah and the rest of the family, which creates another layer of taxes,” Alex said. “This way it stays directly in your family.”

And while it was decided that everyone on the board of the trust, which was all of us, should agree on how the money was spent, it was also agreed that Sarah, who was the owner of the ticket, should get to choose a few things she wanted without having to get anyone's okay.

Sarah closed her eyes and thought about it. She thought like Charlie Bucket. “I want my mom to have a house. I want Nicolette to go to college, and I want both of the Tonys to be doctors.”

“I don't want to be a doctor,” Little Tony said.

“Tough. I say you have to be.”

As for Big Tony, he put his face in his hands so we wouldn't see him cry.

Then Oompah-Loompah wandered into the room and rubbed her back against Sarah's legs, and so it was decided that there should also be a very nice donation to the animal shelter where Oompah-Loompah had come from.

It took Alex a week to finish the paperwork, then on a Thursday one week before Thanksgiving, Sandy and I picked Tony and Sarah up after school so that we could all go to the Lottery headquarters in Braintree together and turn the ticket in. The kids were practically hopping up and down in the backseat.

“It isn't like we're going to walk in there and they're going to hand us all the money in a sack,” Sandy explained.

“I know,” Sarah said, “but it's so exciting!”

“I just need to make a quick stop at the bank,” I said, and turned the car into my little branch office. Everyone piled out with me; it was too cold to wait in the car.

“Hi, Sally,” I said. “I need to get back in the lockbox.”

“Sure thing,” she said. Sally came back with a big loop of keys. “Hey, Sarah, are you here to open up a big account?”

“Maybe later,” Sarah said.

“Well, we're still waiting.”

I picked up the piece of tinfoil, right on top where I'd left it, and handed it to Sandy.

“That's what you came to get?” Sarah said.

“I didn't like carrying it around.”

“But it's not in there.”

We all looked at Sarah, then Sandy peeled back the tinfoil. It was the top panel of a Cheerios box, cut down to the size of a lottery ticket.

“Sarah,” Sandy whispered. “Where's the ticket?”

“It's in my shoe.”

“You switched it?”

She nodded. “I thought it would be safer with me.”

Sarah unlaced her left winter boot and produced yet another piece of tinfoil from underneath her sock.

“I'm feeling a little ill,” I said slowly, and sat down in a chair at the long table used to sort through important family papers. I had locked away a Cheerios box top, while the winning ticket continued to pound the playgrounds of Somerville backed by a piece of a Kix box.

“Did anyone know the ticket was in your shoe?” Sandy asked.

Sarah shook her head.

“So all that time you were telling kids that you'd won, and they didn't believe you, you never took out the ticket and showed them?” Little Tony asked.

Sarah rolled her eyes, the last vestige of her now all-but-forgotten bad behavior. “Really,” she said. “I'm not stupid.”

K
NOWING WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE HAS
never made the future get here any more quickly. Nora's stomach continued to rise at an alarming rate, until finally she lost the privilege of sitting up in bed and had to spend her last two months ruling her empire while flat out on her back. She said that any cervix would be incompetent when it came to holding in so much baby.

She valiantly managed to keep them with her until two weeks into her seventh month, at which time she gave birth to two girls and a boy, all of whom were healthy and tiny. They named one of the girls Ella for my mother, and another girl Rose for Alex's grandmother, and the boy they called Charlie for no reason at all. Nora said she'd just gotten used to hearing the name.

She came home a full month before the babies, who slept in warm plastic incubators back at the hospital until they grew to more respectable sizes. In that month Nora spent her days at the hospital, but at night she and Alex kept coming back to our house to sleep in the hospital bed that was still in the living room. I never asked why, nor did I ask if she planned to bring the babies back to live with me as well.

They were so cute, those babies, and as crazy as it would have been, I would have given it a try. I was finally discovering what Nora would know someday herself: Your children leave soon enough, and all the time you have them around you is actually a wonderful thing.

Tony and Sandy and Little Tony and Sarah found a house that was halfway between my house and Romeo's in Somerville, and on the day they finally left, which was the same week that Nora and Alex and the rental bed had gone, I stood in the driveway and cried.

Tony was working on his applications to medical school, Sandy had become the star florist after Plummy's return to New York, Sarah had taken up the cello, and Little Tony, after many questions and badgering, finally admitted that what he'd really like to have were tap-dancing lessons. I still see them almost every day, but it isn't the same as running into them in the kitchen in the middle of the night, which is a good thing and a sad thing, too.

As for Romeo, in the time that it took him to finish
Moby-Dick
he made a full recovery. One day I came home from the flower shop (I had started going back for a couple of hours in the afternoon) and found Romeo sitting in the armchair, dressed and reading the newspaper. All of his belongings, which had slowly migrated over to my house these past months, were folded neatly into three paper bags, which were sitting by the door.

“I'm ready,” he said.

“Ready for what?” I asked, but it was only a hopeless stall on my part. I knew what he meant. I also knew that I wasn't ready at all.

He put his hands on his thighs with a light slap and stood up. It was so elegant and effortless a gesture, anyone would have thought he was a man who stood up by himself all the time.

“I'm ready to face the stairs. Dominic came by today and gave me a clean bill of health. He says I've been loitering, actually. He thinks I could have gone a long time ago.”

“But what did Al say?” I always knew the priest was on my side.

“Al said it was about time I started making you sandwiches for a change.”

I closed my eyes, hoping to keep back the big tears that were welling up there, but eyelids can only do so much.

“Hey,” he said, and came and put his arms around me. “Are these tears of joy?”

I shook my head. “I just didn't think it would be today,” I said.

Romeo kissed one eye and then the other, then he took my hand and led me to the top of the staircase. “Sarah's not down there waiting for me, is she?”

“Nobody's home at all,” I said miserably. Wasn't this all I had ever wanted: A place of my own? A little quiet? Every step we took felt like a foot placed exactly on top of my heart.

But Romeo didn't hesitate a bit. In fact, it all seemed so easy for him that I suspected something was up. “You've been down here before, haven't you?”

He smiled and squeezed my hand. “I practiced a little bit on my own. I didn't want to be a nervous wreck in front of you when it was time to go.”

I wiped my eyes with my free hand. “It would have been a little bit easier if we'd both been wrecks together.”

When we got to the foot of the stairs, Romeo kissed me. “You've been as good to me as any one person could ever be to another person.”

I hugged him, careful not to press too hard. “You're easy to be nice to.”

He kissed me again, then stopped and looked up the stairs. “One minute. I forgot my stuff.” And with that he shot right back up again and came down holding all three of his bags, not needing me or the banister at all.

It was then that I realized Romeo had waited as long to go as he possibly could, as a way of helping me. I drove him the ten blocks back to his house, but I didn't go inside. I just waved and blew him a kiss. Then I cried all the way home.

Everyone had predicted that Romeo would get better, that sooner or later he would get back his strength and leave the nest. I knew as I walked from empty room to empty room that what had happened was only right and natural, even if that knowledge brought me no comfort whatsoever. I tried to make myself a nice dinner, but I couldn't eat it. I tried to read a few pages of
Moby-Dick,
but I couldn't concentrate.

The only thing that could have brought me any comfort from missing Romeo was Romeo himself, but I didn't want to call him. He deserved to have a little time with his family. After all, we had been together almost every minute of every day since he hurt his back, and I could certainly wait until tomorrow to talk to him, the very thought of which set me off crying again.

When I dried my eyes, I took to staring at the phone like a lonesome teenaged girl. Because I was staring at the phone, I didn't see him coming up the back steps. He tapped on the glass, and I gave a small shriek.

“I didn't meant to scare you,” he said once I let him inside.

It had been weeks, months, years since he left, I had never been so glad to see anyone. “I was waiting by the phone.”

“And now it turns out you should have been waiting by the door.”

He kissed me, and I pressed my face against his cold neck.

“Did you forget something?” I said hopefully.

“You could say that.”

“Do you want your copy of
Moby-Dick
back? I haven't finished it yet.”

Romeo shook his head. “I was there in my house with my mom and my kids, and when I went upstairs to go to bed I thought, this isn't my room.”

“That's strange.” I pulled out a chair for him, and we sat at the breakfast table with our knees touching. My heart was beating like a hummingbird in double time.

“I've been sleeping in that room for almost forty years, but when I went back there tonight, I don't know.” He shook his head. “It was all over.”

“So you're looking for a place to stay?”

Romeo nodded and pulled out his wallet. “I went by the CVS on my way over.” He took out a slip of paper and put it on the table between us. “I bought us a lottery ticket.”

I picked it up and looked at it. It looked exactly like Sarah's ticket, just a tiny white slip of paper. “Nobody wins twice,” I said, but I didn't believe it.

Romeo took my hand and pressed it against his cheek. Never was I so glad or so grateful for anything. There were not enough winning tickets in the world to come anywhere close to this. I closed my eyes so that I could remember everything exactly the way it was, right at that moment at my own kitchen table. Romeo had come back. It was the happiest moment of my life.

When I opened my eyes, I was wearing a ring.

“Romeo?”

“It was really late,” he said. “CVS was the only place that was open.”

The ring was very sparkly and not so big that it couldn't be believable. Besides, I didn't have my glasses on. I gave the band a squeeze until I had adjusted it to my size. A little hiccup of a cry caught in my throat. Zsa Zsa Gabor had never had a ring as fine as this. “It's beautiful.”

“You can't just buy a ring at CVS, you know. It was a free gift. I had to buy three tubes of lipstick to get it.” He reached into his pocket and put three blue shiny tubes down on the table. “I wasn't sure which color you'd like.”

“I'll wear them all,” I said. I wagged my fingers to make the light in the little stone dance. “Do you really want to get married?”

Romeo shrugged. “I feel like we're already married. We can get married or we can have a long engagement. We can do anything you'd like. I just want you to know—” His voice broke off and he shook his head. “There's nobody for me but you,” he said finally.

I handed him a tissue from the box I was working my way through. Then Romeo and I started to kiss, a kiss not unlike the one that had gotten us into so much trouble in the first place.

“I'm experiencing déjà vu,” I said.

“We were on our way upstairs,” he said.

“That's right,” I said. “But this time I'm carrying you.”

He laughed, and we made our way up the stairs together, equal and side by side, dropping our clothes like a trail of bread crumbs, just in case we ever decided to go back down again someday.

From that day forward, Romeo would go to the store and work on arrangements, go and see his mother in the evenings, read to her and get her settled into bed at night, and when everything was finished, he would always come back to me. Lucky me. The house was too huge and too empty for one person. Even Oompah-Loompah was gone. I was, as I had always been these past three years, extremely grateful for Romeo.

The lottery ticket Romeo bought for me didn't win, but I kept it anyway as a reminder of what it means to get lucky. As for Sarah's ticket, it took forever to get the money. Sandy and Tony took out a bank loan for the down payment on the house while they waited for the Great State of Massachusetts to pay up. A major investigation was launched after it was discovered that certain lottery tickets might be fakes. The one that had spent such a long time in Sarah's shoe was fine, but the one that was turned in by Ms. Jo Gottschalk of Lancaster, Ohio, had never been real at all—which meant that an eight-year-old who had found a way to cut back to three million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars was restored to her full seven and a half million. Sarah said she wanted to send us on vacation. We're still waiting to hear the decision of the board.