The Stories of Richard Bausch (7 page)

The idea had framed a corollary in his mind: people with money had problems he didn’t have to think about. It was all
over there,
in that other world, the
world of unfathomable appetites and discontents; the world of corruption, willfulness, and greed. He had worked his way up to supervisor at the Coke factory, after starting there as a stock boy, and he didn’t mind the work. His wife was a lovely dark-haired girl from Tennessee, who had been a flight attendant for a year or so before walking into his life at a dance put on by the local volunteer fire department. They had gone into debt to buy the little rambler, and for the first year she had worked as a temporary in the front offices of the factory so they could make the payments on the mortgage.

She was home now, and for the last couple of years their life together had come to an awkward place regarding her failure to conceive: there were hours of avoiding the subject, followed by small tense moments circling it with a kind of irritability, a mutual wish that the problem would go away, the irritability fueled by the one suggestion neither could come out and make: that the other should go in for tests to see if something might be wrong. They were in love, they had begun to doubt themselves, and they were not dealing with any of it very well, and they knew it.

This was the
situation the day he purchased the lottery ticket. He had walked into the convenience store and bought an ice cream bar and an apple on his way home. The ice cream bar was for Sibyl—a little peace offering for the words they had exchanged in the morning. He was standing at the store counter waiting to pay, his thoughts wandering to their trouble—they had argued about plans for dinner, but of course the real argument was about the pregnancy that hadn’t happened—when a man stepped in front of him.

This was the sort of thing he usually reacted to: he had a highly developed sense of fair play, and he believed with nearly religious fervor in the utility, the practical good, of graciousness, of simple courtesy. Because, like his father, he expected these virtues of himself, he also tended to require them of others. He might have said something to this rude man who had butted into the line. But he merely stood there, deciding on the words he would use to apologize to Sibyl, feeling low and sad, worried that something might really be wrong with him, or with her. The man who had stepped in front of him bought a pack of cigarettes and a lottery ticket. So as Mattison stepped up to pay, he asked for a ticket too and dropped it into the bag with the ice cream and the apple.

Sibyl ate the apple. She didn’t want the ice cream bar and expressed
surprise that he had considered she would, anxious as she was now about her weight.

“I bought a lottery ticket,” he told her. “Here, maybe it’ll bring some luck.”

That night, late, after the magnitude of his winnings had been established, after the calls to friends and family (several of whom thought the excitement was that Sibyl was pregnant), after the celebrating and the visits of the news media and the hours of explaining what he felt, he lay in the dark, with Sibyl deeply asleep at his side, and fear swept over him, a rush of terror that hauled him out of the bed and through the little rooms of the house—the kitchen, littered with empty bottles of beer and unwashed dishes; the nursery, with its crib and its cherubs on the walls; the spare room, the room they planned to put her mother in whenever the baby came. The only light came from the half-moon in the living room window. He looked out at the lunar shadows of the houses along his street; everyone in those houses knew by now what had happened to him. His life was going to change, no matter what. He fought the idea, walked into the kitchen, poured himself a glass of milk, and tried to think of anything else.

Sibyl found him there an hour later, sitting at the table, trembling, his hands clasped around the base of the half-empty glass of milk. “Honey?” she said, turning the light on.

He started. “I’m scared,” he said. “I feel real scared.”

She walked to him and put her arms around him. “Silly,” she said.
“Now
you’re scared?”

He had been
right to be scared. He understood this now. At work, he couldn’t take a step without someone approaching him for money or reproaching him—with a look, a gesture of avoidance—because of the money. Everyone had changed, while he remained essentially the same. Even Sibyl had changed.

She wanted a new house, a bigger house, and the new Lincoln; all new clothes. She yearned to travel and said he should quit the Coke factory. And worst of all, she’d decided to stop trying to get pregnant. “Let’s see the world,” she said. “We can just spend the whole year going around to all the places in the magazines.”

“Maybe I’ll take a long leave of absence,” he said, without being able to muster much enthusiasm. He was worried that he might be getting an ulcer.

“Honey,” he said one evening, “you really don’t want to start a family now?”

“We could do that,” she said. “But just not now. Come on, baby. We’ve got all this
money.
Let’s use it.”

“I thought we weren’t going to let it spoil us?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “That stuff about getting spoiled by money is what rich people say to make poor people think it’s better to be poor. We’re rich, and I don’t feel a bit different, except I’m a whole hell of a lot happier.”

“Are you?”

“Oh, don’t be cryptic, Benny. Yes, I’m happy as a clam. Come on, let’s spend the money the way we want to.”

“And what way is that?”

“Gee,” she said, “I don’t know. Duh, I’ll try to figure it out, though.”

She bought a Lincoln for her father, a Cadillac for her mother, and another for her grandparents, who then decided that they wanted one each, since they were not getting along all that well. They already had separate bedrooms, and to them it seemed reasonable, since there was so much money in the family now, to ask for separate cars. Sibyl’s grandmother said she would settle for a smaller one—a BMW, perhaps, or a Miata. Something like that. Something sporty. Sybil, worried about her in traffic with a smaller car, said, “You’ll take a Cadillac and like it.”

Mattison said he’d have to keep his job because the lottery money would run out, paying as he was for a corporation-sized fleet of luxury cars, and Sibyl accused him of being sarcastic.

“I’m not being sarcastic,” he said. “You forget—we gave some money to charities.”

They were in the bedroom, moving back and forth past each other, putting their clothes away before retiring for the night.

“I know,” said Sibyl, hanging her new blouse up in the closet. “And the whole family thought you were crazy for doing it, too.”

He had just put his pants on a hanger, and he paused to look at her. “You—you said you wanted to—you said you were proud of me—”

“I’m tired.” She crossed to the bed, pulled the spread back, and stood
there in her slip, such a pretty young woman. “I don’t see why we have to give money to anyone outside the family. This room is so damn
small.”

“You’re the one who wanted to give an expensive car to everybody.”

“No—you started that. With your father.”

“My father asked for the damn thing.”

“And you gave it to him.”

“I did. And then you asked for five cars—five of them—and you got them. Now who’s crazy?”

“Are you calling me crazy?” she said.

“You said everybody thought I was crazy.”

She got into the bed and pulled her slip off under the blankets, then dropped it on the floor.

“Honey,” he said. “Listen to us. Listen to how we sound.”

“I’m going to sleep. The whole thing’s silly. We’re rich and that’s all there is to it. There’s nothing complicated or threatening about it.”

“You don’t see the unhappiness this is causing us?” he said.

She didn’t answer.

“We were going to start a family. We were in love—”

“Stop it, Benny. Nobody said anything about not loving anyone. We all love you.”

“I’m talking about you and me,” he said. “Look at us, Sibyl. You don’t even want to have a baby anymore.”

“That has nothing to do with anything. Come to bed.”

He went into the bathroom and cleaned his teeth. She’d bought things for the walls. Prints, mostly, in nice frames, which they could never have afforded before the lottery. And even so it was all junk. Cheap department store crap.

“Are you going to stay in there forever?” she said sourly. “Close the door, will you? You’re keeping me awake.”

The rooms of
his house had grown so discouragingly quiet, even as possessions and outward signs of prosperity and warmth were added, he no longer felt comfortable there. He no longer felt comfortable anywhere.

Over the next few days, Sibyl kept talking about where she wanted to go, and she had evidently dropped the assumption that he might wish to accompany her. He went to work and got drubbed every day with veiled
insults, bad jokes about money, hints at his failure to be the friend he ought to be if only he were inclined to spend his treasure on something other than what he w
as
spending it on, meaning the charities, though one coworker, a woman whose husband had a drinking problem and was inclined to violence, had made a comment—jokingly but with a stab of bitterness nonetheless—that Sibyl was certainly loading up with all the trappings of the well-to-do.

This woman’s name was Arlene Dakin. And one morning, perhaps a week after she’d made that remark, she asked him for enough money to buy a one-way ticket on a plane bound far away, so she could start over. She spoke so directly that it threw him off and caused him to hesitate.

“I was only half serious,” she said sadly. Something in her eyes went through him. He tried to speak, but she turned and walked away.

Thanksgiving, Sibyl insisted
that both her parents be flown in from their separate cities; her mother had a new beau (Sibyl’s expression), and this person was, of course, also invited. Her father would rent a car at the airport and drive everyone in. He wanted to do some touring in the area. Mattison was miserable, his favorite day ruined with these elaborate and costly arrangements. In mid-morning, Sybil looked up from a phone conversation with a friend and said, “Benny, for God’s sake go do something, will you? You’re driving me crazy.”

He drove to the firehouse, where the local Red Cross chapter had used his donated money to set up a turkey dinner for the elderly. There didn’t seem to be anything for him to do, and he saw that he was making everyone uneasy, so he cruised around town for a while, feeling lost. He ended up at Arlene Dakin’s house. The day was sunny and unseasonably warm. Yesterday he had taken two thousand dollars, two packets of fifties, out of the bank, intending to give it to her when he saw her at work. But she had not come in on Wednesday.

Her house was at the end of a tree-lined street (he’d attended a cookout there, a company function, last summer. The husband had been sober, then. A gregarious, loud man with a way of rocking on the balls of his feet when he talked). Mattison pulled along the curb in front and stopped. In the front yard, a bare tree stood with all its leaves on the ground at its base. He wondered how he could give Arlene Dakin the money without her husband
knowing about it. Then he imagined himself trying to talk through or over a drunken man. He did not get out of the car but drove on, then turned around and came back. The windows of the house reflected daylight sky. He felt odd, slowing down to look. Finally he sped away.

A rental car
and a caterer’s truck were parked in the driveway at home. Mattison pulled in beside the rental car and got out. He had no legitimate reason to remain out here. His father and brothers were sitting in the living room watching a football game. Sibyl’s father was with them. He’d drunk something on the airplane, and held a cold beer now. In the kitchen, Sibyl and her mother stood watching the caterers work. The caterers had arrived with the almost-finished meal under metal lids. Her mother’s new friend sat drinking a beer of his own. Sibyl introduced him as Hayfield. “Nice to meet the winner,” Hayfield said, rising.

Mattison shook hands. Sibyl’s mother put her arms around his neck and kissed him, then stood aside and indicated him to Hayfield. “Can you believe this boy? Never gambled a day in his life. Buys one ticket. Bingo. Come on, Hayfield, you’re the math teacher. What’re the odds?”

“Something like one in fifty-three million, isn’t it?” Hayfield said.

Mattison had lain awake nights with the feeling that since this extraordinary thing had happened to him, he was open to all other extraordinary things—the rarest diseases, freak accidents. Anything was possible. He recalled that the frustration out of which he’d bought the ticket in the first place was the difficulty he and Sibyl had been having over not being able to get pregnant.

The jackpot had ruined that for good now, too.

He was abruptly very depressed and tired. He looked at the careful, sure hands of the two Arabic-looking men who were preparing the meal, slicing a large breast of turkey, and wished that he could find some reason to be elsewhere.

Sibyl said, “Let’s go on into the living room and get out of these people’s way.”

In the living room, the men sat in front of the TV. Mattison’s brothers argued in angry murmurs about the relative merits of foreign and American luxury cars. Chip, the middle brother, wanted a motorcycle, and spoke rather pointedly about how he’d been saving like a dog for the last three
years. Recently he’d had his left eyebrow pierced and was wearing a stud there; it looked like a bolt to keep parts of his skull together. Mattison saw it and felt a little sick. “What?” Chip said. “Did I say anything? Did I ask you for any more money?”

Sibyl’s mother said, “Who mentioned money? Don’t you know that’s vulgar?”

Apparently Chip hadn’t heard the joke. “I think people expect too much,” he said.

And Mattison found himself telling them about Arlene Dakin and her bad husband. It was odd. He heard the urgency in his own voice, and he was aware that they were staring at him. “It’s hard to turn each individual case down,” he said. “When only a little money would help.”