Mrs. Million (7 page)

“Now, Pooh dearly loved to be dropped in on, and he believed that the only thing more welcome than an Uninvited Guest was an Invited Guest. Of course, he allowed all of them to sample his Lifetime Supply of honey.

“It wasn’t long before things got out of hand…Yes, Adam?”

“You should buy all the yellow paint in the world.”

Although she was curious, Barbaraannette refrained from asking why. “I’ll think about that, Adam. So, one morning Pooh looked out his front door to find a long line of his friends and acquaintances and their friends and relatives, and so forth, and each of them was carrying an empty jar, and Pooh realized that his Lifetime Supply of honey would not last a week if he gave everyone what they wanted.”

Barbaraannette stood up and wrote the numeral one followed by six zeros on the green chalkboard.

“Who can tell me how big this number is?” she said.

“I
THINKYOU GOT MAIL FROM
every Cadillac dealer in Minnesota,” Toagie said, tossing another envelope into the wastebasket.

“A couple dealers from Wisconsin, too,” said Barbaraannette, lifting another letter from the pile on her kitchen table. She had arrived home from school to find a corrugated cardboard bin marked U.S.P.S. on her front steps. It was filled to the top with letters. She and Toagie had been working their way through the mountain of mail for more than an hour. “Everybody’s so happy for me I just can’t hardly stand it. I even got a note from the governor.”

“Asking for money?”

“Not yet, but you can bet he’ll be begging come election time.”

“Well you can’t hardly blame ’em, Barbaraannette.”

“It was all my students wanted to talk about. Adam Berg asked if I was going to buy a limousine.”

“Are you?”

“No. But I might need one of those electric letter openers.” She reached into the box and extracted another letter. “I feel like I’ve got to read every last one. I like the ones that just flat out ask for money. At least I know where they stand.” She slit the envelope with a paring knife and unfolded the letter inside. A photograph fell into her lap.

Toagie polished off her third Pepsi, dropped it into the waste-basket.

“That goes in recycling,” Barbaraannette said.

Toagie emitted a short belch, picked the can from the waste-basket, and tossed it in the direction of the recycling bin. It fell short, bounced, and rolled under the sink. Barbaraannette frowned at the errant can, then returned her attention to the letter and photograph.

“So, you’re not buying a limo. You gonna buy a Cadillac?” Toagie asked, tearing open another envelope.

“Not on your life.” Barbaraannette handed her sister the letter. “Take a look at this one, Toag.”

Dear Mrs. Quinn,

I recently saw you on t.v. and it changed my life.

Previous to seeing you I was deep in a Clinical Depression. My doctor prescribed Prozac but it made me sick. Also it was expensive. But the fact that I still have the use of my arms after the motorcycle accident where I ran off the road to avoid hitting a bus filled with innocent schoolchildren is a good thing. Life was very hard for me after they amputated my legs, but all the innocent children survived!!!

After my accident I struggled hard to find a purpose in life to go on living. The Clinical Depression made me extremely suicidal so I decided to take an overdose of drugs. But then I saw you win the Powerball. Once I saw that I knew that life was worth living. You are so lucky!!! Maybe you know that already. I am inspired to enter the lottery myself. Unfortunately, I am on an extremely limited budget. No one will hire me as I am a cripple now and the amount of money I get from also getting wounded fighting Saddam in the Gulf War is very poor. I hardly have enough for food and rent and to support my mother who has Alzheimer’s.

Do you have any extra Powerball tickets? I would be extremely grateful if you could spare some to give me the same chance as you had. Or if not, if you would send a donation in any amount, I could afford to buy them myself.

Admiringly,

Your biggest fan!!!

Jonathan James Morrow

W
HAT FASCINATED ANDRÉ ABOUT
Jayjay Morrow, aside from his obvious physical charms, was his purity. Jayjay had somehow escaped the taint of original sin. He never looked back, never criticized himself, never examined his own actions. He lived entirely in the present. He did whatever he wanted to do without a second thought. He had no self-consciousness, no conscience, no guilt. He was pure and simple—an animal in human form.

Jayjay had been completely forthright with André regarding his recent address at the Minnesota Correctional Facility at St. Cloud where he had served one year for assault and battery. He had severely beaten a man who, he claimed, had molested him. Jayjay had mentioned this to André at a most awkward moment, then laughed. André did not ask for details. The thrill of the unknown, in this case, appealed to him. Like owning a large and dangerous pet, this walk on the wild side added a bit of spice to his otherwise uneventful academic life.

André watched Jayjay shovel the last of his smoked salmon omelet into his wide mouth, drop his fork on his plate, grin, and leave the table. No “thank you,” no offer to help with the dishes, no recognition that André had prepared yet another free meal for him. Just that smile, huge and guileless. A few seconds later André heard the sound of the television coming from the guest bedroom—the theme from
Jeopardy.
In anyone else such behavior would have been inexcusably rude, but coming from Jayjay it was simply part of the package. The boy wasn’t rude. He was simply oblivious.

André set about clearing the breakfast table, humming along with the
Jeopardy
theme.
Dee-doo-dee-doo, dee-dooo-dee.
He was finishing the breakfast dishes when Jayjay reappeared wearing the leather jacket André had purchased for him the day before.

“That jacket looks very nice on you,” André said.

Jayjay grinned, grabbed an apple from the fruit basket and the keys to André’s car from the counter, and headed for the door.

“Are you going out?” André asked.

Jayjay said, “Post Office,” as he opened the back door.

“I have a class at eleven o’clock. Will you be returning by then?”

If Jayjay replied, his words were cut off by the slamming door. André blinked, then smiled ruefully. The
Jeopardy
theme was still coming from the guest bedroom, and he was sure that the bed remained undressed. A bit like having a teenage son, he supposed.

He thought of his mother, sitting in her little house in Diamond Bluff, Wisconsin. He had not called her in two days. If Mother could see him now, what would she think of Jayjay? He could almost hear her dry voice: “Someone ought to take a switch to that child.” Shortly thereafter, she would find occasion to remark upon André’s unmarried status. He had tried to tell her that marriage was not likely with him. He had even, once, come right out and told her he was gay. If the words had entered her ears, they had died before entering her conscious mind. She could not or would not hear him.

But if she
could
hear, if she understood who and what he was, then how would she feel? Would she be happy for him? Watching him serving breakfast to a young man—a child, really, who could not spell the word “unfortunately,” who had once by his own admission nearly beaten a man to death, who treated him like a servant? How would she feel to see him teaching Sophocles to farm kids at the barely accredited Cold Rock College for sixteen thousand four hundred dollars a semester? If she understood who he really was, would she accept him? Would she be proud?

André felt his eyes filling with warm tears. Of course she would. She would be as proud as any mother. He had achieved a great deal.

He had a well-stocked wine cellar, a comfortable home, a tenured teaching position, and an exciting new house guest. He was a good person and a respected member of the academic community. He had money in the bank, a roof over his head, his health, and Jayjay Morrow. What else could a woman want for her only son?

All things considered, in the first year of his second half-century, André Gideon was a happy man.

“What’s the matter, honey bun?” Phlox asked. “You keep slowing down. Something the matter with the truck?”

Bobby shook his head and brought the speedometer back up to sixty. “I guess I’m just not looking forward to Cold Rock.”

Phlox gazed out at the passing snowbanks, gray with road grime. A lone billboard, brown with yellow lettering, stood in a sodden field a few hundred yards from the highway:

Taxidermy & Cheese Shoppe

8 miles

Suppressing a shudder, she said, “Just keep thinking about the money.”

“That’s what I’m doing. But I’m thinking about Barbaraannette, too. The woman scares me, and that’s no lie.”

Phlox rested a hand on his thigh. “Pookie, I just can’t imagine a big strong man like you being scared by a little girl like that.”

“She’s not so little.”

“I saw her on TV, sweetie. What’s so scary?”

Bobby pushed out his lips, saying nothing.

Phlox said, “She funny in the head?”

“It depends what you call funny. I ever tell you what she did to me that New Year’s?”

“You never even told me you were married, Pook.” Phlox dug her nails hard into his thigh.

“Ow!” Bobby swerved and slapped at her hand. “Jesus! You want me to have an accident?”

“What did she do?” Phlox asked.

Bobby rubbed his leg. “The New Year’s before I left, we go to this party? You know, having a few drinks, a good time. Anyways, we get separated, right? I go off with some other people and lose track of Barbaraannette. I finally get home about three or four and Barbaraannette’s already in bed, and I get in there next to her, pretty loaded, and she doesn’t say a word, so I go to sleep. Next thing I know, I feel something hot on my face and I open my eyes and she’s holding a lighter over my mouth close enough to burn nose hair. She says, ‘I just wanted to see if you were flammable drunk, or just regular drunk.’

“I sit up and go, like, ‘What the hell you doing?’ And she starts going on about me and Tanya McElliot and all this other stuff, and finally she lets me get to sleep again, and then something hits me in the face and I wake up and she’s sitting there in bed with a knife slicing up a zucchini squash. Staring at me and cutting slices off the zucchini and throwing them at me. I had to go sleep in my Jeep.”

Phlox said, “Who’s Tanya McElliot?”

“Just this girl.”

“You don’t plan on seeing her, right?”

Bobby frowned. “Anyways, it was more than just that. One time she got the idea I’d had this other woman in our bed and she hauled our mattress down to the river and threw it off the bridge.”

Phlox said, “Was she right?”

“She ruined the damn mattress! What’s right about that?”

“I mean, was she right about you messing around with somebody on her bed?”

“Her bed? It was
our
bed, and what difference does that make?”

“It made a difference to her.”

“No shit. But forget about Barbaraannette, I got other things to worry about, too. I had a business go sour on me, too. Some folks might not have forgot about that.”

“What sort of business?” This was the first Phlox had heard of it.

“We were gonna start up a dude ranch, me and these other guys. I had my eye on this property out in Wyoming, and I got these guys to go in on it with me. Actually, they were the ones putting up the money.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“That’s
the problem. See, I kinda-sorta didn’t get around to buying the land.”

“Oh. But you kept some of the money?”

“I didn’t keep it, I spent it.”

“Oh.” Phlox stared out at the landscape of dirty snow and frozen mud. Somehow none of these things about Bobby’s past surprised her. “So you owe a few people some money. What are we talking?”

“Just a few thousand.” Bobby’s cheek twitched. “About twenty, actually.”

“Pookie! How many guys do you owe it to?”

“Two. Three, counting some I got from Barbaraannette, only she doesn’t need it now.”

Phlox laughed. “Punkin, you are a case.”

Bobby pointed. “There, you see that little blue thing sticking up there? That’s the water tower.” The pale blue globe with white lettering peeked above the horizon for a few seconds, then sank below the horizon as they entered a dip.

“What’d it say on it?” Phlox asked.

“You’ll see.” The highway followed the base of a low hill, then began to climb. The engine pinged as the truck strained for elevation. Bobby down-shifted and muttered, “Goddamn gasohol.” They crested the hill; the town of Cold Rock lay below them spread across a broad valley. A glittering gray river sliced through the town, which was stitched together by a series of six low bridges. “That’s the North Rock River, where Barbaraannette threw our mattress in. Use to have a couple mills on it, I guess, but now it just looks good and every few years it floods all of downtown and everybody threatens to move their businesses away. But they never do.”

The water tower, Phlox could now see, read,
Home of the Crockettes.

“Crockettes?”

“Women’s softball. They won the state championship back in eighty-something.”

“It’s bigger than I thought.” Phlox could pick out at least three church spires, a small downtown area straddling the river, and a complex of grain elevators a mile or two upstream.

“Twelve thousand people. Maybe fifteen by now. They even got a college here.” Bobby pushed in the clutch and let the truck coast down the long hill into town. They passed a McDonald’s, a Pump-n-Munch, and a Taco Bell. “The Taco Bell is new. You hungry?” Bobby asked.

“No,” Phlox said, still recovering from the Taxidermy & Cheese Shoppe concept. “How about we just get this over with? We go to your wife’s and I collect the reward and we get the hell out of town. You can eat all the way back to Tucson.”

Bobby looked longingly at the Taco Bell as they drove past. “She might not let me go so quick. Don’t forget, she’s shelling out a million bucks.”