Lottery (33 page)

They are the ones confused. I am not.

I do not need to do Power, I tell them. I will sell the lottery payments to Mike. He does not have Hershey’s Kisses today. John does not either. That is okay.

Families are important. Even Gram said that. If you can help your family, then you do it. I sign my name fifteen times.
Perry L.
Crandall.
Mike hands me each paper to sign. The pen is heavy and silver. The ink is black like at the police station.

“What’s the L stand for Perry?” Mike asks.

“Lucky,” I say. “The L stands for Lucky.”

He does not laugh. He does not even smile.

Palmer Financial Planning Services is Mike Dinelli’s company. They buy the rest of my lottery payments. I tell them the money can go into the family trust. Managed by the trustee.

They cannot agree on a trustee.

Trust.

That is another word for David now. He is the trustee. It is for the family. Not me.

I do not tell them about my savings account and they do not ask.

I hear John and Elaine still arguing in the background as I sign more papers and talk to Mike. They talk about putting money in the trust. Taking money from a laundry. Mike is using all the money from the lottery and giving them other, different, dirty money. I do not care about that.

Keith and Gram are quiet in my head. They know I can make this decision. It is mine to make. This is my good idea. My family tells me they are handling things so I do not have to, but I know there is nothing to handle. I am calm. I am very calm. My hands are not shaking and I hold them out in front of me. They are good hands I think. I have good hands.

A trust. I remember. Gram said my father set up a trust once. She said this to me: “A trust is something you don’t, Perry. You remember that.”

After all the papers are signed, the money is gone and I am free. They do not need me anymore. Louise and John are arguing with Mike. Elaine is sitting at the table with a calculator, smiling.

David is the only one who hugs me good-bye. He holds the trust papers in his hand.

“You take care of yourself, Per,” he says, and pats me on the back. “It will be okay.” Then winks.

It is the first time he has ever called me Per. That is so cool. He walks me downstairs and calls me a cab.

The taxi takes me back to my apartment. The driver’s name is Gary.

“Hey, I know a Gary!” I say.

The bill is twenty-eight dollars. He waits in his cab with the engine running while I go upstairs. I did not bring enough cash. I find two twenty-dollar bills in a bowl on the dresser. Gary takes the money and starts to drive away.

“I need my change,” I say. He stops and hands me twelve dollars and I give him five back as a tip.

“Thank you,” I say.

He did a good job. You should always give people tips and thank them when they do a good job.

I walk back upstairs to my apartment.

What goes around comes around,
I hear.

Life goes on.
It is Keith’s voice. Like the song, I think. It is Keith. It is what he used to say.

And now I hear Gram.
You’re a lucky boy, Perry L. Crandall,
I hear her say.
That L stands for Lucky!
I know she is right. And I know two other things. Two true things. Two
echt
things.

I am not retarded.

And if you can give people what they want, you should. It is good to give people what they want. This is a great day. No one in my family will bother me anymore. They have what they want. And so do I.

I have Cherry.

I stand by my window and watch
Diamond Girl
bounce against the dock. She looks lonely. She looks like she wants to go look for Keith out into the Sound where he is floating. I wonder where his ashes have gone.

I hear footsteps on the stairs. Cherry comes through the door.

I open my arms wide and she walks right into them. I can still see
Diamond Girl
over her head.

“Are you okay?” I hear her ask. She has wrinkles on her forehead and I kiss them away.

I say nothing.

I am so okay, I cannot speak.

Our door swings open again and it is Gary.

“Are you all right?” he asks. “What did they want?”

“The money,” I finally say. “They just wanted the money.”

He has wrinkles on his forehead too, but he does not need to worry. There is no reason for wrinkles. He did not knock on our door before he walked in, which is rude, but he is my friend, so I do not tell him this.

“It’s okay now,” I say. This is true. This is
echt.
It is okay. It is.

59

I have an interview on TV. That means they ask you questions. After Gary found out about what happened, he called Marleen. He suggested she might do a special story on lottery winners. Her bosses, the television guys, thought it was a good idea.

Before the program starts, Marleen gives me a hug.

“I’m sorry about your friend Keith,” she says.

“I am too,” I say. “He would have really liked to be on TV. He always wanted to be famous.”

A man named Roy clips a microphone to my neck. It scratches.

“When that green light comes on, there’ll be over a million people watching you,” he says.

That is so cool. I squint my eyes and try to see them through the big shiny camera lens. There are six of us sitting onstage with Marleen. She has the biggest chair and talks to me first.

“So your father is G. J. Crandall?” Marleen wears a blue suit, high heels, and dark red lipstick. She looks totally different. TV is so cool. She reads words off a card. That is such a gyp. I always thought they had to memorize the stuff they say, but they do not. It is all written down for them. If I had known it was all written down, I would have tried to be a TV guy.

“I guess,” I tell her. “I did not know my father, but he is famous too. We are both famous. He is famous for stealing money and I am famous for winning money.”

Marleen looks into the camera. “Investors want to buy the annuities from the lottery winners. Organized crime uses lottery winnings to launder money.”

She sounds like she has just figured this all out, but I know it is written on a card in front of her.

She turns to me. “So, Perry. Is all of your lottery money gone? Is there anything left after you sold your lottery annuity?” She has very white teeth. Her makeup has rubbed off onto her shirt collar. I did not let them put makeup on me. That would be gross.

“Did your family take it all?” she asks.

“Yeah, I guess. It was a trust. They said it was a trust for investments. ” I tried to remember all the words they used, but I cannot.

I do not tell her about my savings account.

Marleen moves to the lady sitting next to me. Her name is Lucille. She won twenty million dollars. Her money is all gone. She tried to invest and her friends and family helped her.

“I said I was going to share it with my family. I didn’t realize they could sue me for it if I said that. I sold my annuity and divided it up, but that wasn’t enough. They came back for more. I still owe taxes.” She starts crying. Marleen hands her a Kleenex and she blows her nose hard. I hope she does not have a cold. You can catch someone’s cold if they blow their nose right next to you. I turn my face away from her.

Other people lost their money even faster than Lucille did. Five months. Eight months. A year.

All the people are sad. They won money and they are sad.

We lost everything,
they say.

We had it all
, they say,
and we lost it
.

“So you’re worse off. You’re all worse off now, after the lottery,” Marleen says.

“No,” I say. “No. I’m not.” But nobody listens.

Nobody hears what I have to say.

I am a partner in Holsted’s. And I have Cherry.

I do not tell them about my savings account.

I do not have Keith, Gram, or Gramp. That is the hard part, but like Gram always said, life is tough. It is full of surprises. It is full of obstacles to overcome, like when the people you love die.

Sometimes misfortune just smashes you upside the head. It is difficult. Most things in life are difficult,
Gram says in my head.

Marleen asks again about my family.

Gary told me it was important to tell the truth on TV. But I have no reason to lie. The reporter says that my family took all my money. I tell him that they did not take it. I gave it to them.

“You gave it to them? Why?” Her mouth is open. She does not look like she believes me.

“Because they asked, because it was fair, and because they were my family,” I say. “Because people should get what they want.” Those were the reasons.

Then I say something that she does not understand. Not one bit. Nobody does.

I have to say it twice.

“Because I didn’t need it,” I say.

“Because I didn’t need it, and they did,” I tell her.

“What? Why?” Marleen’s eyes are all squinty. That distracts me. It is hard to explain to someone who will not understand.

Gram used to say I was suggestible. I may have been. Maybe I still am. But letting my family have the rest of the money was fair because they seemed to need it and I did not.

When I get back to the apartment, Cherry says I looked real good on TV.

That is so cool.

60

How about the name Holsted and Crandall Marine Supply, Perry? How does that sound?” Gary asks me.

"I think it sounds fine. I think it sounds pretty good,” I say.

We are partners, Gary said. We are a family. We are Holsted and Crandall Marine Supply. He says I have good ideas, like the time I told him to have a coffee place. People like to drink coffee when they shop. We make a lot of money from people buying cookies, brownies, and coffee. We sell fancy takeout picnic lunches for boat people.

We have a fishing corner in the store that is bigger now. I tell Gary about a retired friend of Marty’s, named Rick, who sits on the dock every day. He knows a lot about fishing. He talks to people in our store about how to catch fish. He teaches fishing the same way big hardware stores show people how to lay tile. I know this because Gram and I watched at Home Depot one weekend when we wanted to fix our bathroom. I tell Gary this is what we need to do.

“So, what? We need to have workshops each weekend?”

Gary wanted to call them workshops.

“No,” I say. “People like to play. They work all week. We need to be different. We need to call them playshops.”

“You’re fucking brilliant, Per. You know that?” Gary hardly ever says the F-word. When he does, I think that he hears Keith’s voice. I think that Keith is in there with him.

“You make a good partner,” Gary says. “A really good partner.” It is still not nice to say the F-word. I will never let anybody say that word in front of the baby when it is born.

We have playshops on caulking teak decks and filling in bung-holes. We have them on patching fiberglass and sail repair. We have them on anything that a person might need to do on a boat. We have people who sail around the world come in and sign their books.

Cherry organizes the playshops and schedules them. She is a good people person. She is the best people person. Our playshops are a success. Success is doing well when everyone thought that you would not.

I am a success.

Holsted’s is getting an award for having big ideas. That is what Mr. Jordan from my bank says. Cherry will wear her new dress. It is long and red. Her stomach is huge. She will have Keith’s baby any day now. She likes red. You can only see one small tattoo when she puts it on. That is okay. Her hair is brown now and very short. I get mine cut and buy a new suit. Gary helps pick it out.