Julie and Romeo Get Lucky (8 page)

“I didn't think I'd have to spell this out for you, but stay away from all amorous activity,” Dominic said. “No kissing.”

After they left Sandy gave me a mildly horrified look. “What have you done now, Mother?”

But I had other things on my mind. Sarah and the two Tonys came back with their loot, and still there was no Nora, no Alex. I called them at home and on Nora's cell phone, but I didn't get an answer.

“She's going to miss the drawing.” Sarah had taken off her blueberry husk and was now wearing only the blue tights, turtleneck, hat, and gloves. Every shade of blue was slightly mismatched. She looked like a little blue worm.

“The same numbers will come up if she's here or if she's home,” Big Tony said logically. “Nothing's going to change.”

But Sarah was a gambler and gamblers, especially the eight-year-old variety, are impervious to logic. “You don't know that,” she said darkly.

Little Tony was going through the stash of candy in his pockets. He ultimately wound up with so much that at one point in the evening he had tightened up his belt and started dropping candy down the front of his shirt, so that now he wore a little potbelly of undigested sweets. “I got almost as much as Sarah did, and I didn't have to dress up like a blueberry.”

Sarah switched the television on and sat back to peel a Star-burst fruit chew. “Feeling very lucky,” she said.

“I don't like this one bit,” Sandy whispered to Big Tony.

I wondered if she didn't like it for the same reason that I didn't like it. It felt too scary to get caught up in the possibilities of Sarah's hope. With that kind of money, I could pay off the mortgage on the house and the one I should never have taken out on the store. Sandy could pay off her credit cards, and Big Tony could go to medical school, and they could all have a house of their own and go to private schools and take cello lessons and go to the Cape for two weeks in the summer.

With all that money, we would all be freed from all our financial worries. Think about all the time we'd have then. We'd never have to waste those hours feeling nervous over stacks of bills, and we'd never have to rush to make a matinee instead of going to the movies for full price in the evenings. We wouldn't have to pick one thing over another—not that we needed to have everything, but wouldn't it be lovely not to waste so much time trying to decide? Adults knew better than to allow themselves the luxury of pinning their hopes on crazy schemes, but watching Sarah do it, it was hard not to get swept away by the moment.

“Quiet!” Sarah said, though no one was talking. “This is it.”

But it wasn't it. Ball after ball shot up and came to nothing. Even though she had managed to hustle eleven tickets from various sources, none of them had more than one of the numbers necessary to win.

Sarah stared at the television set after it was over, waiting for Dawn to come back on and say that she'd made a mistake, that she wanted to call the numbers again. “It's all Nora's fault,” she said. “She promised she'd be here.”

Sandy crouched down in front of her blue daughter and brushed the loose springs of hair back with the flat of her hand. “It isn't Nora's fault, sweetheart. It's just bad luck.”

“I'll win next week,” Sarah said, in a voice so tired I wasn't even sure if she believed it herself. “Next week the jackpot will be bigger, and it will be even better to win then.”

“There isn't going to be a next week for the lottery,” Sandy said quietly. “This isn't the place you need to look for a golden ticket.”

Sarah was crying a little, making muddied streaks in the eye shadow on her cheeks. Sandy picked her daughter up in her arms and carried her up the stairs like she was still a little girl, then washed all of the blue from her face and make her brush the candy out of her teeth before putting her in her bed.

Sandy was right about the bad luck. At eleven o'clock that night, Alex called from the hospital to tell me that Nora had started to bleed.

“She didn't lose the babies,” he said. “She didn't want me to call you until we knew for sure, but the doctor says they're all still there. She's going to have to go on complete bed rest, but he thinks if she stays really still, she might be able to hold on to them.”

“Them?” I said. “Alex, is Nora having twins?”

“Triplets,” he said.

I was no stranger to counting to three. It was something I had managed easily even as a very young child, but now the skill completely eluded me. One and one and one. I couldn't make the numbers add up. I tried to see three babies in my mind, three babies sitting in a row, but each time I put that third one in the picture, the other two fell away. I couldn't even make myself
see
three babies, much less make myself think about what three babies would mean. I couldn't tell what was good luck and what was bad luck anymore. The two concepts had collided in my mind.

But for Sarah, the concepts were perfectly clear. The next morning it was announced on the radio that Kay Bjork from Stamford, Connecticut, had won the Big Game Mega Millions, all 234 of them.

“Be Jork?” Little Tony said. “What kind of a name is that?”

Sarah started to cry fat tears. “It isn't fair! It isn't fair! She isn't even from Massachusetts.”

But the numbered Ping-Pong balls that blew up from the long, clear throat of the lottery machine knew no state loyalty. The pot, at least for the present moment, was again empty.

“I
HAVE AN INCOMPETENT CERVIX
,” N
ORA SAID WHEN
she called the next morning.

“Are you still in the hospital?”

“Do you think there's any insurance plan in this country that would allow me to stay overnight in a hospital for an incompetent cervix? They told me basically I wasn't allowed to walk until after the babies were born, and that I should see myself out.”

“So what does this mean, exactly?”

“It means that my cervix is lazy. It's slothful.”

“They called your cervix slothful?” I pictured a cervix that lay around the uterus all day smoking cigarettes, never picking things up.

“Maybe not in so many words, but you could tell that's what they were thinking: She has an indolent cervix, an insubstantial and unreliable cervix. Everything they said seemed very judgmental to me. Frankly, I don't think it's right. I'm forty years old, and I've never asked my cervix for anything. It's had a free ride all my life, and now that its moment has come, it's turned
faineant.
”

“
Faineant?
I don't know that one.”

“It's an irresponsible idler.”

“That's a medical term?”

“No, actually, it's French.”

My daughter was carrying triplets, and as long as they were the size of hairless mice, we could make jokes about how they were going to stay put, but once they got to be proper baby size, I could see that you'd want vigilance in a cervix.

“So what are you going to do?”

“Alex and I have been talking about it, and we both think it would be best if I came over there.”

“Should you be riding around in a car? I can certainly come and see you.”

“I thought about that, but you don't know how much longer Romeo is going to be stuck up on the second floor. It would be a hard time for you to leave.”

“Don't be silly. I can leave.”

Nora was quiet for a minute, then she made a little hiccupping sound.

“Nora?”

She was crying. “I just didn't know you'd be so great about everything.”

“What are you talking about? Did you really think I wasn't going to come and see you?”

She sniffed, then inhaled sharply. “I'm sorry. It's all the hormones. I have four human beings worth of hormones coursing through my veins. It's just that, well, I know you weren't so crazy about the idea of my having a baby.”

“That was before I understood that you actually wanted one.”

“And so I imagined you'd be less than thrilled that I'm having three babies.”

“We haven't even talked about that yet. I'm really not able to think in terms of three.”

At this Nora laughed, and I laughed with her. “I just want to tell you I appreciate it. Your support, your help. You've been so nice about everything. The truth is I really do want to come over there, so that's that. Alex is going to drive me.”

“You do whatever makes the most sense to you,” I said, my voice brimming with motherly love. I was feeling good; I'll admit it. Nora and I didn't manage many warm moments and I was glad that she had turned to me and I had been there for her.

“We'll wait a couple of hours. I'm going to call now and have the hospital bed delivered.”

“Hospital bed?”

“The doctor said they're a lot more comfortable for the long haul, being able to put your legs up and down, things like that. Have them put it in the living room, okay? I'm going to go tell Alex what to pack. I love you, Mom.”

She hung up the phone and as soon as I heard that long dial tone, everything stopped. It stopped, and still I had the presence of mind to parrot back the sentence, “I love you, too,” but she wasn't there to hear it. She was already packing to move home.

This is nothing a mother should admit, but I will say the happiest day of my life was the day that Nora left for college. The very fact that she was admitted into college with her wildly uneven grades, frequent delinquencies, and regular suspensions seemed like a miracle in itself. She scored in the top one percent on all the standardized testing and came up with a very poignant essay about choosing to walk away from a liquor store robbery that one of her boyfriends had encouraged her to participate in. That was enough to land her a spot at the University of Colorado.

She insisted on driving out in a U-Haul with a girlfriend, and Mort and I knew better than to argue. We stood there in the driveway as she pulled away, and I waved and looked sad, but really I was experiencing an enormous sense of lightness. Nora had gone off into the world. Nobody in the house was fighting. I went upstairs to take a nap and didn't wake up until noon the next day.

My life was transformed by Nora's absence, and for all I know, her life was transformed by my absence. When she crossed the Continental Divide, she managed to leave her old ways behind her. She was a new girl in the Rocky Mountain time zone. She arrived in Boulder a top-flight student, a mover and a shaker. Everything she touched was golden.

Why didn't I think that this was the girl who was moving back? The successful real-estate broker with the good marriage and the Kelly bag? Why did I think that if Nora spent the night in this house, she'd be that seventeen-year-old hellion again, the kind of girl who'd skip town and leave her mother to raise triplets?

I felt dizzy. I looked at my watch. A couple of hours, she said. Did that mean I had two hours left, or was she being loose with time? Could she have meant three or four? It didn't matter. I went upstairs to lie down.

Romeo was in bed with a set of headphones on, staring at the ceiling. When I came in the room he clicked off the tape player and smiled at me. “Al brought me
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
on tape. He's been trying to get me to read it since we were in school. It's actually quite good.”

I lay facedown on my pillow. “Nora's moving home.”

“What?”

I turned my face to him. “Nora. She has a problem with her cervix, and she has to stay on complete bed rest until the triplets are born. She has to stay on complete bed rest, right here in my living room.”

Romeo mulled over this information. How could he be sure about which part was so upsetting to me? Triplets? The possibility of losing triplets? The part about the living room? How could he know, when I wasn't completely sure myself?

He opted for the safe response. He told me he was sorry this was happening.

“Thank you,” I said.

Romeo reached down and took my hand. “One day,” he said, “we're going to go away to an island, just the two of us. And when we leave we won't tell anyone where we're going, and when we're there, we won't speak about any of our relatives at all. We'll still love them, but for a week or so we'll manage to forget about them completely.”

“Will we drink margaritas and dance in the surf and make love every day at sunset?”

“Twice at sunset.”

“Will this happen before or after the triplets are born?”

“I don't know for sure. It will depend on whether or not we're completely bankrupt by the time I get out of bed.”

Downstairs I heard the doorbell ring, but I didn't care who it was. All I knew was that it was too soon to be Nora. I heard a brief flutter of voices, then feet on the stairs.

Sandy tapped on the door. “Mom? There are some men here who say they have a bed for us. Do you know anything about a bed?”

Nora, it seemed, had been planning on coming home all along.

Sandy moved in with me six years ago, when Sarah was two and Tony was six. She had meant to stay a couple of months, just until her divorce was final and she could get back on her feet. But nothing in life turns out the way we think it's going to, and instead of the three of them moving out, she married Big Tony and upped her number to four. I thought that because of the way her life had gone, she'd be sympathetic to the plight of her sister's cervix. I was mistaken.

“She can
hire
someone to take care of her in her own house. She doesn't need to come over here.”

Two men wearing matching baseball caps and sweatshirts that said
HOME HEALTH EQUIPMENT
wrestled a monstrously large metal bed frame covered in gears and levers and different hydraulic contraptions, through my front door. It looked menacing, depressing. It was the kind of bed that made the neighbors think that hospice could not be far behind.

“Sandy, help me move a couple of chairs. We have to figure out where we're going to put this thing.”

She locked her arms in front of her chest as if to say they were closed for business. “No.” She sounded every bit like her eight-year-old daughter. I rolled my eyes at her, and she came over and picked up the other arm of the easy chair I was holding. The last thing we needed in this house was another back injury. “Nora will run us into the ground,” she said. “We'll be spending all our time cutting up limes for her Pellegrino.”

We lugged the stuffed chair backward toward the window. “Don't you have any sympathy for her? After all, she has a real problem. It's like she's trying to hold in triplets with a piece of Scotch tape.” Far be it from me to make a case for Nora moving in.

“Triplets!” Sandy cried. “Nobody said anything to me about triplets!” She dropped her side of the chair, and so I dropped mine in sympathy.

“I'm sorry. That really is a shocker. I only just found that part out myself.”

While Sandy wept in the easy chair, the two men came back with the mattress and used X-Acto knives to strip off the endless yards of extra heavy plastic wrap before hoisting it onto the frame. They were big men with thick, bulging arms, and still they leaned against the bed and panted for a minute when it was done. The bed was exactly in the center of the room. No concessions were made for trying to work it into the decor.

The shorter of the two men held out a clipboard and a pen. “Sign,” he said.

“Don't feel too bad,” the big one told Sandy. “My brother's wife had triplets, and they all turned out just fine. They're just like any other kids, only there're three of them.”

Sandy didn't look up or stop crying, and so I thanked him for the tip and handed back the clipboard. I asked them to take the plastic wrap with them, but they said they didn't do that.

I looked at Sandy and then at my watch. There wasn't time for everything. I trudged up to get some sheets and pillows and blankets, and Sandy came along behind me, airing her complaints.

“Why does she get everything?” she said.

“Meaning what, exactly? That you wish you had triplets?”

“No, of course not. It's just the abundance of it all. She has to do everything bigger and better than everyone else. It wouldn't be possible for Nora to just have one baby.”

“Did everything go okay?” Romeo called out from his room.

“Oh, it's great,” I yelled back, looking to see if there was an extra mattress pad somewhere.

“Sorry I couldn't help,” he said.

“Very funny.”

“The thing is,” Sandy said, trying to sound a little bit more rational, “with all respect to you, it's hard to live at home with your mother. It's hard not to fall into those old roles that you had growing up.”

“Tell me about it,” I said. The pink sheets were old, and all the flowers had faded off, but they were the softest. I noticed that Sandy had that hurt look on her face again. “All I mean is that the things that are hard for you are probably the same things that are hard for me.”

“Julie?” Romeo said.

“Yes, love?”

“If you could bring a ginger ale up, I'd really appreciate it. No hurry at all, just the next time you're coming.”

“You've got it.”

“Okay,” Sandy said, “so it's hard for you, too. I accept that. But we've come a long way. We respect each other. We have a good dynamic. I feel like with Nora here…”

“You're going to be twelve again and she'll be sixteen and never letting you in her room.”

Sandy cocked her head to the side. “Something like that.”

I took the bedding down and the ginger ale up. I brought the lunch plates down and the read newspaper down and the bendy straws (which I had forgotten) up. Sandy followed me like a tail follows a dog, talking and talking about the family dynamics she had endured as a teenager and how she wasn't interested in enduring them again in her thirties.

“Don't you need to go to work?” I said, as she helped me pull the top sheet tight over the hospital bed.

“I do. I know I do.”

But what did it matter? Five minutes later the doorbell rang, and there stood Alex holding Nora in his arms like a bride.

“This is the new preferred mode of transportation,” Nora said.