His voice comes out hoarse. “Shit! You’re kidding, right? Shit! You know what to do? Shit! You have to get some financial advice. Is that the only check they gave you? I mean did they give you a smaller one? They did, didn’t they? Can I see it? You’d better put it right in the bank. Shit! We have to take him to the bank, Keith!” Gary has never said that many S-words in a row. His eyebrows are moving and he looks sick. Maybe he has indigestion or a heart attack. People can die from a heart attack.
“You need a Tums, Gary? I got a Tums.” I always carried them for Gram. “You want Pepto-Bismol? I got Pepto-Bismol.” I have everything. Even Listerine and Ex-Lax. “You need Ex-Lax, Gary?”
My big check is fixed high on the wall behind Gram’s couch. The little one that Margery gave me is folded up tight in my wallet. Gary puts his head between his knees and takes deep breaths. Keith has to help me fill out my deposit slip there are so many zeros. I write big, but very neatly. Gram taught me. I have to make the zeros skinny so all of them fit inside the lines.
Gary refuses to ride in Yo, so we ride to Everett Federal in his Jeep Cherokee. Keith and Gary are in front and I sit by myself in the back. I feel important like I am a sports guy just like Tiger Woods, except I am not brown and I do not know how to play golf.
I like going to the bank. I usually walk and it takes twenty minutes. It is cool to ride. They know me at my bank. Every second Tuesday I deposit my check from Holsted’s in Everett Federal. Judy, the teller, always smiles and gives me a red-and-white-striped mint along with my receipt. A receipt is a piece of paper that says the bank has your money. Gary gets a parking place right in front, which is very lucky. I watch cars circling around and around trying to find an empty space. Of course, if we had Yo, we could park in handicapped because Yo is a disabled vehicle. That is what Keith says.
The lobby of my bank is crowded, but we do not have to stand in line. Gary whispers to a teller and we cut right to the front. A lady I do not know leads us through a door. I look for Judy behind the counter, but I do not see her.
Maybe this is her day off.
People talk to each other and point. The lady, whose chest tag says
Norma,
gives me five mints. She takes us into a big room with a brown leather couch. It is soft and fluffy, but I am too nervous to bounce. We wait only a few minutes for Mr. Jordan. He is the president of the bank and I am just a little bit afraid.
I wonder if he is related to Michael Jordan.
When he shakes my hand, I have to look up at his face. I think he is just like the basketball player. He is tall, but does not wear Nikes. He has a huge stomach and curly blond hair like Mrs. Callahan’s poodle Sparky. Mrs. Callahan lived next door to us before she went to a nursing home. After that, Gram died and I moved away. I do not know what happened to Sparky.
“Well, Mr. Crandall.” Mr. Jordan sits down in his chair and leans back. He makes a steeple with his fingers and says, “Well . . . Well . . . Well . . .” over and over.
I sit in a chair across, and Keith and Gary are on either side of me. They are like bodyguards from that movie with the gangsters. This is so cool. I try to decide whether the bank president looks more like a priest or a spider. He smiles like Father Jacob at St. Augustine’s. Like he knows me very well. It is spooky. He talks about what the bank can do with all my money. When he uncrosses his legs, I think he looks like a spider.
“We have some excellent and fiscally responsible ideas that would be to your benefit. I can recommend that you—” he says, but does not get to finish because Keith stands up.
“He’s not interested,” Keith interrupts.
He tells Mr. Jordan that I am considering my options. I like the sound of that. I decide to say I am considering my options, if anybody else asks me about what I am going to do with my money. It sounds really smart.
“Yeah, I’m considering my options,” I repeat under my breath so I will remember. I wish I had known those words when the reporters talked to me. Maybe I can call them.
I deposit half of my money into my checking account and the other half into my savings account. That is what I do. Half in checking, half in savings. Gram told me always to use half and save half. Mr. Jordan does not quite look as happy when I leave as when I came. That is okay. I get one hundred dollars cash in ones, fives, and tens from the teller. This makes me feel rich. I have never had that much money at once. Mr. Jordan looks disappointed. He wanted me to buy CDs and T-bills, but I do not know what those are.
Gram said, “If you don’t know what something is, don’t buy it. Look at this, Perry! All these fools losing their money!” She would laugh and point to the newspaper. “They deserve what they get buying what they don’t understand!”
Keith will not tell me what to do. “It’s your call, Per, it’s your call. You’ll have plenty other people telling you what you should do with the money.” He shakes his head. “Better you than me, Per, better you than me. I’d just spend it on booze and Mexican babes.” Mexican babes cost a lot of dollars.
On the way back to my apartment, we swing by Gilly’s and pick up sandwiches for everybody at the store. Keith runs into Marina Handy Mart for beer. Gary does not even frown. All of it is my treat. It makes me feel good that I get to buy beer and sandwiches for everybody.
“This is the best feeling in the world!” I tell them.
15
Keith drinks beer while I straighten my bank papers in a pile on the kitchen counter.
I will need a desk, I decide. Rich people have desks. I chew on a sandwich, sit at my kitchen table, and do my words. I am careful not to spill crab and mayonnaise on my dictionary or in my journal.
“This is the first day that I am rich,” I write. Then I remember I was so excited this morning I forgot to do any of my chores. I have to finish my laundry. I look over at Keith. His mouth is open wide, but he is not talking. I hear him grunt. He is stretched out sideways on my couch and his eyes are closed. I get up, remove the can of beer from his hand before it spills, and cover him with Gram’s orange and brown knitted afghan. While Keith sleeps, I clean my bathroom and move clothes from the washer to the dryer. While it rumbles CHUG CHUG CHUG, I make a list of what I can buy with my lottery money:
1. Big flat-screen (twenty-seven inches) TV
2. Cable with Animal Planet
3. New jacket (green) with hood
That is as far as I get. My phone rings. I try to grab it fast before it wakes Keith, but he does not stir. His mouth is moving, like he is chewing. He grunts louder and turns over. He sounds more like a pig than a motorcycle. He keeps snoring on the couch. It makes it hard to hear. I put the receiver to my head and cover my other ear.
It is John. I am surprised. I hear the sound of traffic behind his voice.
“I’m in Everett. Where do you live?” He never asked where my apartment was when I moved. John thinks so fast he cannot keep details in his mind. That is what Gram used to say.
“That boy’s mind is like a steel trap with the hinges hanging half off,” she said.
“My place is above the store,” I tell him.
“Where’s the store?” He has never come to see me at Holsted ’s. I tell him it is next door to Gramp’s boatyard. He hangs up on me.
My phone rings again right away.
“Oh darling! I just saw the news on the television! Lucky, lucky boy! How is my precious?” I do not know who this is. I do not recognize the voice.
“Miss Elk?” It might be Miss Elk.
“No! Silly! It’s your mother! When can I come see you? Tomorrow? ” I can hear her breathing through the line. It sounds like she has been running.
“Louise? Are you running?” She has never called me on the phone before. Gram said she was allergic to consideration.
“Only her own feelings, Perry. That’s all she ever cares about. She’s allergic to anyone else’s but her own. I don’t know what my son was thinking,” Gram said. “The only thing she’s considerate of is someone else’s bank account.”
Louise’s laugh sounds like a tinkling bell. “Sweetie, don’t be silly. It’s just our little joke. You can call me Mother now. In fact, it’s probably better if you do. People might get confused.” She hangs up only after I promise to write her a check.
My phone rings again. It is my other cousin-brother, David. He says he is on his way.
“Where are you?” David’s voice is hard to understand. He talks low. I hear his wife in the background.
You’d better get your ass over there. Get over there now!
“Home,” I say.
“I’m coming right over.” David does not know where I live either.
Ask your brother if John is there.
That is what his wife says.
I look over at Keith. He is still sleeping on Gram’s couch. My couch now. When John sat on it at Gram’s he said it smelled like cat pee, but it does not. It smells like Gram. That is why I like it. Keith snorts again. I cannot decide whether he has passed out or is just taking a nap. It can be hard to tell sometimes. Seven beer cans are scattered on the floor. Seven is nothing for Keith. I have seen him drink more. I do not drink.
“Has John been there yet?” David asks. I think that is funny.
When John called he asked, “Has David been there?” And when Louise called she asked, “Have your brothers gotten there yet?”
I tell him they will have to talk to each other because I cannot remember where they all are or where they are going. I hear Elaine yelling at him through the phone and he takes a long, loud breath. Gram said that is what my brothers do when they want something and don’t want anyone to know it.
“You listen to them breathe, Perry. That’ll tell you all you need to know,” Gram said.
“Where exactly”—David’s words are slow—“is your apartment?”
After I tell him, he hangs up.
My dryer buzzes, so I fold the clothes and put Keith’s in a separate pile. I go get my Sears catalogue and page through to see what kind of televisions they have. I do not find flat screens, but my catalogue is five years old.
After our TV broke, Gram and I would take the bus to Kmart and watch
Wheel of Fortune
on the new televisions.
“It’s the only goddamned thing worth watching on TV, now that
Let’s Make a Deal
is off the air,” Gram said. We would pretend to choose which one to buy. I wish I won the lottery when she was alive. She would really love having a TV again. Flat screen. A big twenty-seven-incher. Gram liked
The Price Is Right
and
Days of Our Lives
even though she would complain when she watched them.
“No, you’re bidding too high!” she would yell.
“Lower! Lower! You’ll go over!” She would motion with her thumb.
“Can’t you see he’s lying to you? Goddamned! They’re all so ignorant!” She would shake her head, disgusted. Gram said most people have no common sense. “They just have no sense, Perry!”
She got so loud one time the Kmart guy asked us to leave. I was embarrassed, but Gram was not.
“Never feel bad when you have to leave somewhere,” she would say. “The other person is only showing their lack of consideration. ”
Consideration is when other people want you around and do not ask you to leave. Even when you are loud. That is consideration. I do not have time to think about that anymore because there is a banging on my door so loud my teeth rattle.
“It’s me. John! Open up!” I recognize John because his voice has a growling shout. I laugh because it is funny when people tell you things you already know.
“Ha!” I laugh. “Ha! Ha!”
“Don’t play games!” John calls out through the door. “Open up!” I count to five then turn the knob. John sounds angry, but the kind of angry that he does not want me to know about. Like the time he found out about Gram’s house.
Keith tells me I should be more careful of John.
“He’s like a junkyard dog, fine until you have him trapped in a corner,” Keith says.
I laugh to imagine John a dog.
“His wife, CeCe, has a dog,” I said to Keith. “A tiny pink poodle named Gigi.”
Keith snorted when I told him that. “It figures!” he said.
I hear Gram say
be careful
and
junkyard dog
in my head.
“Well, my brother is quite the lucky one.” John’s breath comes hard like he has been exercising. His smile reminds me of the piranha I saw on Discovery Channel, all pokey with teeth. “You need to pack a suitcase. On the other hand, don’t bother. We’ll get you new clothes. Yours smell like that old couch.” He paces across the floor as he says this and chews on the end of one finger.
This surprises me. He has never offered to buy me anything. Gram always said when a person offers to do something it is usually to their advantage. I wait.
“We have the spare room all set up, you can stay with CeCe and me. You can’t stay here. People are going to descend on you like a swarm of flies.” He looks at his hand. Picks a finger and starts to nibble the nail.
When Gram died, John’s spare room was torn up. I am happy for him it is fixed now.
“I’m okay.” I stop speaking when I see John’s face move. His eyebrows go down and his lips get small like they used to when he talked to Gram. Small and tight like when she told him she would not invest her savings in his projects or lend him money. Right now, I would rather decide which TV I want to buy than talk to John. He does not look like he is interested in what I want to do.
“Who’s he?” John points to Keith asleep on the couch.
“My friend Keith.” I tell him.
“See, they’re after you already! You’ve got to be careful,” John warns.
“Hey! That’s what Gram said!” But he does not seem to hear me. I am uncomfortable. My neck itches. I do not know why John is here. He has never come for a visit before.