Everything You Want Page 6

  Of course, she starts to cry. “You’re already giving me an apartment,” she wails. “Now you’re giving me money, too? Dad, I’m grown up. I’m supposed to be taking care of myself.”

  “Calm down,” he says. “Will you? And listen to me. We’re rich, okay? All of us. Your mother and I just expect you to be sensible with what you have, that’s all.” He looks at me. “Both of you.”

  He launches into a lecture about how seventy thousand dollars a year might seem like a lot, but it’s easier than you’d think to go through that kind of money in no time flat. Then, suddenly, he stops. “Oh, fuck it,” he says, grinning. “We’re Scrooge McDuck! We’ve got money out the wazoo! I don’t give a damn what you do with it.”

  “Within reason,” Mom says.

  “Absolutely! Within reason.” Dad grins. Then he goes to the kitchen and brings back a bottle of champagne, apparently purchased for this moment.

  He pops the cork. Jules lifts her glass toward me. “Maybe we should go live in St. Maarten,” she says.

  “Maybe,” I say. “A nice little villa could be very groovy—set up like we used to set up the backseat of the car on the way to Michigan: one side yours, one side mine, and nobody crosses the line. On the other hand, why stay in one place? I’m thinking, why not take a whole year and follow the sun all over the world? Better yet, follow the snow! Skiing in New Zealand in August. Would that be cool, or what?”

  “Hey!” Dad says. “I’d sign up for that!”

  Late that night, sleepless, still heady with all the possibilities, I get up and head for the kitchen, thinking I’ll make myself a turkey sandwich and top off the perfect day. But I hear Mom’s voice coming from the living room and stop in the hall to listen.

  “But why now?” she says. “I can’t help thinking about what it might’ve been like if we’d gotten the money when we were younger, when Julie and Emma were still at home. We could have given them so much more.”

  More what, I think? I mean, we weren’t rich before we won LOTTO CASH, but I can’t remember anything I really, really wanted that I didn’t get because we couldn’t afford it.

  Dad, ever practical, points this out to her now.

  “I know that,” she says. “It’s just—” her voice wobbles. “I always wanted a big, wonderful house for them to grow up in. With window seats in their bedrooms and a screened-in porch for reading away summer afternoons. It’s dumb, I know. But sometimes I think of all the things I meant to do better with Julie and Emma and wonder if it would’ve made a difference raising them in the house I always imagined we’d have. If I’d have been different. Better.”

  “Jules and Emma are great kids,” Dad says. “I don’t see how growing up in a different house could have made them any better. It wouldn’t have made life perfect.”

  “I know that,” Mom says. “I know. I just—worry about them, that’s all. Julie all by herself in New York. And Emma’s been so miserable in Bloomington. Sometimes I want to tell her, ‘Just come home.’ I can’t stand to see her feeling so lost. So not like herself. But she has to—”

  This is the trouble with eavesdropping, I think. I can’t say, “What? I have to do what?”

  Still, I know. I have to grow up, is what she means. I have to learn how to have a life away from them.

  “She’ll be fine,” Dad says. “She’ll figure out what she wants to do and do it. And making a living isn’t a factor anymore, so she can do anything.”

  “Mac,” Mom says. “Can’t you see the money makes it harder? I mean, it’s hard enough just being young. Trying to figure out who you are. But to have no limits! To be able have anything you want, do anything you want?”

  “It’s a high class problem,” Dad says, dryly.

  Which would be funny, except Mom suddenly bursts into tears.

  “Abby,” Dad says, alarmed. “Jesus. Abby.”

  “It’s just so confusing,” she wails. “Ever since we got the money, it’s like I can’t remember who I am. I don’t know what to do with it. Or myself.”

  “Listen,” Dad says. “We just have to make a few decisions together in the next few weeks, that’s all. Then I’ll do the money like I always have. Just think of me as your Yoko Ono, okay? She managed John Lennon’s money, why can’t I manage yours? What’s the big deal here?”

  “I hate being stupid about money,” Mom says. “I hate it that you just assume I can’t—”

  “I don’t assume you can’t understand money. If you decided you wanted to understand it, I’m sure you could. But—”

  “But I’d rather go back to work on Monday,” Mom interrupts. “Like a crazy person.”

  “Whoa!” Dad says.

  Instinctively, I take a step backwards. My body wants me to keep going, every muscle is telling me I don’t need to hear this. I shouldn’t hear it. But I keep listening.

  “You lost me, Abby,” Dad goes on. “What are we talking about here? What do you mean, you’d rather go back to work like a crazy person?”

  “Crazy as in, ‘Anybody who wins fifty million dollars and doesn’t quit his job is crazy,’” she says. “You said it. The day we won the money, you said it to the guy in the lottery office.”

  “I didn’t mean you,” Dad says. “Jesus, I was just talking to the guy. Joking. We’d just won fifty million dollars. How the fuck did I know what I was saying?”

  “Well, you said it.”

  “Fine, okay. I said it. What I don’t understand is why you’re bringing it up now. I just meant—come on, Abby, you know what I meant. I liked practicing law. I was good at it. But it was never anything but a job to me, a way to make a living. Teaching isn’t like that for you. It’s all hooked up with your painting, all of a piece. All I’m saying is you didn’t choose your work based on how much money you would earn doing it.”

  “Oh?” Mom says. “Like you had to do to support us?”

  “Abby,” Dad says. “This is getting to be a really stupid conversation.”

  It’s quiet a long time. I really should retreat now. I shouldn’t have stayed as long as I have. But I can’t not listen. And when Mom finally speaks, her voice low and full of tears, I take a step closer to the living room so I can hear her.

  “I just keep thinking about what you said to the guy in the lottery office, and the more I think about it the more I think you were right. I mean, I can do whatever I want, and I’m going back to school on Monday morning? It does seem crazy.”

  Dad wisely doesn’t comment on that.

  “There must be something I’m supposed to do because of the money,” she goes on. “Like, maybe, quit teaching and just paint. See how good I could be.”

  “You should do what you want to do,” Dad says. “Whatever that is. The money’s not a sign or an omen. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just—luck. We were lucky. That’s all. If the money means anything, it just means we never have to think about money again.”

  “Mac,” Mom says. “Money is all we think about now. We’ll always have to think about it. It’s going to change us, it already has.”

  Her voice sounds harsh, like a warning, and I don’t stick around to hear where the conversation will go from there. I don’t want to know. I just slink back to bed and lie there, still sleepless, washed in moonlight, the happiness I’d felt for the last twenty-four hours collapsing all around me.

  Eight

  I sleep till eleven the next morning, then curl up on the couch in Mom’s studio trying to read, but she ranges around, moving this, dusting that, glancing now and then at the unfinished painting set on her easel, as if hoping it might somehow surprise her. Finally, she sinks into the easy chair and stares at me until I look up from my book.

  “I’ve had two epiphanies about the money,” she says. “Well, so far.”

  “Number one?” I ask.

 
“The cosmos remains the same,” she says, grimly. “You can have all the money in the world, and you still have to do things like go to the grocery store. Or at least think about food. You still have to exercise, if you don’t want to get fat. That sort of thing.”

  “Okay,” I say. “And number two?”

  “All those people who win the lottery and say they’re just going to keep on doing what they’ve always done? If anybody ever bothered to track them down and see what came of it, I’d bet what they’d find out is that people who have to work, which is virtually everyone, are never going to forget that you don’t. Even if they’re your friends, they can’t help resenting you, at least a little. Honest to God, Emma, every time I walked into the teachers’ lounge those few days before your dad and I left for St. Maarten, conversation just stopped.”

  “They were talking about you?”

  “Yes,” she says. “They were. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m pretty sure that what they were talking about is how pissed off they are, because I’m making them look bad. Choosing to stay when I don’t have to—well, it’s as good as saying all the petty rules, all the stupid, asshole things administrators do to make your life miserable don’t really matter. The work itself should be enough.”

  “Well, isn’t it?” I ask. “I mean, for you?”

  She sniffs, blinking back tears. “I don’t think it can be anymore. That’s the worst part. Because the work isn’t the same. My students were so thrilled by what happened to me, it was all they wanted to talk about. What was I going to do with the money, they wanted to know—and expected me to tell them something wonderful and romantic. They wanted it to be like TV.”

  “The girls in my dorm are like that,” I say.

  But she’s up, pacing, again; I guess she doesn’t hear me.

  “It’s so boring,” she rattles on. “Thinking about money all the time. And it’s not going to change. How could it, when I’d always be taking time off to go…wherever? I’m going to quit,” she says, abruptly. “Really, I have no choice. The truth is, I don’t want to teach every day. I can’t. Your dad and I—” She waves her hand vaguely, to indicate … plans.

  Okay, here’s the moment I could tell her that I’m kind of a mess myself. Scared, like she is. Struggling to figure out who I am. But Jules comes bouncing in to remind me it’s time to take her to the airport. There’s an audition Monday morning and she absolutely has to get back to New York so she can work with her vocal coach to prepare for the singing part of it.

  “Do you think Mom’s acting weird?” I ask in the car. “You know, about the money.”

  “Mom’s always weird,” she says.

  “Has she shared any of her … epiphanies with you?”

  “’The cosmos doesn’t change, people do?’” Jules asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, she’s right,” Jules says. “You know how Mom is like a dog with a bone trying to figure out how to think about certain things. Then she gets them worked out. Like, when I decided I wanted to be a cheerleader and she freaked out until she realized I’d probably hate it and quit. Which I did. Problem solved. She’ll figure out how to deal with the money, don’t you think?”

  “I guess.” I consider telling her about my eavesdropping on Mom and Dad the night before, but why worry her? Anyway she’s probably right. Mom will freak out, then figure out how to think about it, what to do.

  We ride a while in silence, and I wait for Jules to grill me about my social life, like she usually does. To advise me in her big-sister voice to get out more, meet people. To suggest the theater department again. Not acting. Certainly not singing or dancing. I could be a stagehand, or a props person, she always says. In Jules’ view, the theater is a perfect world in which there’s a place for everyone, no matter how geeky or weird. Theater people would embrace me; they embrace everyone. I’d find one friend, then another. But theater doesn’t really interest me. Books are what I love, the problem with them being that they’re the perfect escape from the real world in which I’m supposed to be finding my place.

  But Jules doesn’t try to tell me what to do. She just leans back, her eyes closed, breathing in the music on the radio. She gives me a quick hug when we get to the airport.

  “Love you. Buck up,” she says.

  Then she hops out of the Jeep and strides away from me, back into her life—and even while she’s still in sight, I’m sucker-punched by how much I miss her.

  God. I thought I was over that. It’s been ten years since Jules left me behind for high school—a totally normal, reasonable transition, I remind myself. She discovered theater and dance. Who wouldn’t rather be in that world than hang out with her little sister? It wasn’t her fault I was so dependent on her—or that I screwed up in high school so much I don’t have a life now.

  I beat myself up mentally about that for a while, high school, worrying every little moment of the Josh fiasco like you’d worry a broken tooth, moving from there right into a litany of fresh embarrassments about college that take me to the coffee “date” with Gabe Parker and the potential for a variety of humiliations in the near future.

  I am in no mood to go to the party Lisa Cochrun is having tonight, that’s for sure. In fact, just thinking about it makes me feel like I’ve got a light case of the flu. Josh will be there, I know. Plus all the others in the group I used to hang around with—until I screwed things up with Josh and made everyone so uncomfortable they started avoiding me like the plague.

  It’s tempting to call with some excuse, or just not show up. But I don’t want to hurt Lisa’s feelings. She was the only one who stuck by me, even when the things were at their worst with Josh. Over time, she actually managed to create an uneasy peace among us so that, by commencement, we were all at least speaking again—Josh and me included, though barely.

  Ever the peacemaker, she babbled on over the phone last week when she called to congratulate me for being rich, filling me in on everyone she’d seen Homecoming weekend. Meredith was in heaven at Purdue, where there were about ten boys for every girl; one semester at Antioch had turned Heather into a hippie. Cara loved Smith. Lauren wished she’d gone farther away than DePauw, because her parents kept coming down to visit her. Sara was in love with a grad student. Ryan Farber actually had a girlfriend.

  “We missed you,” she said. “I’m having this party the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend. You’ll come won’t you? Please? Everyone’s dying to see you.”

  Stupidly, I said okay.

  What I think now is, Ha! If it’s true they’re dying to see me it’s because they want the scoop on me suddenly being a millionaire. Probably, they’re wishing they’d been a lot nicer to me when Josh was being such a jerk last year—this little satisfaction somewhat balances my dread about seeing Josh tonight, and makes me remember what Mom used to say when they were being so awful to me about him: “You’ll see, Emma. They’ll be punished! They’ll grow up and have to spend the rest of their lives being themselves!”

  But if their terrible suffering has begun, it’s not apparent to me.

  Stepping into Lisa’s rec room is like stepping right back into high school. Barenaked Ladies blasting on the stereo. The girls cloistered on the sofas, gossiping. The boys playing pool.

  Josh isn’t among them, I notice with relief.

  Lisa jumps up from the couch to give me a big hug, and the other girls follow. They actually do seem glad to see me, which makes me feel guilty about hoping they were unhappy. Because the truth is—yeah—they were bitchy and mean when I got sideways with Josh last year, but I was, still am, my own worst enemy. Like my favorite English teacher Mrs. Blue used to say, wryly quoting Mark Twain when someone did something truly idiotic, “‘Be yourself is the worst advice you can give to some people.’” Trouble is, I’ve never been able to figure out how to be anything else.

  Even now, I
can’t resist doing a comedy routine about winning the lottery. I tell about Jules flying in from New York to go shopping at the mall. About Dad calling in rich, Mom’s meltdowns and epiphanies, Gramps’ intention to hit the road in a new Winnebago.

  When I tell about my new Jeep, Ryan Farber says, “Your old man says you can have any car you want and you get a Jeep? Man, you should have hit him up for a Ferrari.”

  “You would want one of those dick cars,” I say.

  There’s a moment of shocked silence, the kind I’ve been expert at creating all my life. Then Ryan laughs, gives me a bear hug. “I love you, Emma. No shit, I do.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say. “Everybody loves me now I’m rich!”

  I try to sound nonchalant, but I’m embarrassed by what I’ve said. And as if that weren’t bad enough, there’s Josh standing at the foot of the basement stairs, watching me with a look on his face that makes me wish I could just vaporize myself to a whole other dimension. It’s not pity, not quite. But it’s close enough to make me avoid talking to him, to get the hell out of there as soon as I can, claiming I have another party to go to.

  A bald-faced lie.

  I’m home, feigning sleep, by the time Mom and Dad get back from dinner with some friends. And thinking about something else Mrs. Blue once said: Everything’s a story. “Your life is one story,” she told us. “You’re the main character in it. But you’re a character, major or minor, in the stories of dozens of other people, too: parents, siblings, relatives, friends, enemies. You may even play some part in the stories of people you don’t know, people who notice you or know of you for some reason.”

  It blew my mind at the time. I’d walk past some poor bag lady downtown and try to imagine her imagining me, hours later, while she lay sleepless in some awful shelter. I’d spend whole evenings wondering whether I was a major or minor character in whatever scene my friends and I were living, whether I was a major or minor character in each one of their lives.