The Higher Power of Lucky (9 page)
Mrs. Prender went on, “I was in the hospital with quadruple pneumonia. After the doc told me I’d die if I didn’t quit smoking, I snuck out the back and lit a cigarette. I coughed so hard I broke a rib, so I had to quit for a while until they let me go home. Next day I dropped a cigarette on the couch and set it on fire, and then I set my
hair
on fire. I called the fire department and went outside to wait. Well, it was raining, so I stood there in the road bawling and trying to smoke a sopping-wet cigarette. But that wasn’t rock bottom.”
Mrs. Prender’s story, Lucky decided, was even better than the Captain’s.
“It was my grown daughter. I knew she’d been sneaking cigarettes since she was a girl, but I never done nothing about it. Figured, what could I say, a smoker myself. Couple years ago I get a call from the police in L.A., can I come pick up her little boy. She’s been arrested for selling dope.”
Lucky frowned. The little boy had to be Miles. But Miles’s mother was supposed to be in Florida, nursing her sick friend.
Mrs. Prender went on. “I go on down to L.A. for my grandson. My daughter gets a long jail sentence. So I figure—this is it. I’m not bringing up
another
kid with myself setting a bad example.” Mrs. Prender blew her nose loudly. “Once I decided to quit, it was like turning off a light switch. I just did it. That was almost two years ago.”
Lucky had the same jolting feeling as when you’re in a big hurry to pee and you pull down your pants fast and back up to the toilet without looking—but some man or boy before you has forgotten to put the seat down. So your bottom, which is expecting the usual nicely shaped plastic toilet seat, instead lands shocked on the thin rim of the toilet bowl, which is quite a lot
colder
and
lower
. Your bottom gets a panic of bad surprise. That was the same thump-on-the-heart shock Lucky got finding out that Miles’s mother was in jail.
After dinner, Lucky stood at the sink washing the dishes. She was still thinking a little bit about Mrs. Prender, but mostly about parsley. Before Brigitte came to Hard Pan, Lucky had never imagined that parsley could be so important. Usually if she even noticed it, it was because of being in a fancy place like Smithy’s Family Restaurant in Sierra City, where a hamburger came on a plate with a frizz of parsley for decoration.
You noticed Smithy’s fanciness right away because of how the waitress, Lulu, neatly rolled up everyone’s fork-knife-spoon set in its paper napkin, like a little present. This made you feel especially welcomed. Another excellent quality of Smithy’s was that, if you asked her, Lulu would bring two extra lemon wedges for your fish sticks
at no extra charge
, on a tiny plate especially made for that type of delicacy. Some people’s tiny plates had olives speared by toothpicks with cellophane ruffles. Or the sprig of parsley with your burger, which Smithy’s Family Restaurant probably realized wasn’t
necessary
, the way ketchup was, but which gave a certain elegance. Lucky noticed that most people in Smithy’s didn’t actually
eat
their parsley—it was there just for the fanciness of making a pretty green decoration and also because it looked healthy and made health-conscious people not worry so much about the bad cholesterol teeming around in their juicy hamburger.
To Brigitte parsley was
essential
, but not in the same way as at Smithy’s. She chopped it into tiny bits and sprinkled it over practically everything, including food that regular people don’t even realize
goes
with parsley. She fanned it over cucumbers, noodle soup, beans, and garlic toast. She added it to gravy, eggs, melted butter dip, and especially to free Government food. And deep down Lucky had to admit that it gave everything a cleanness and an herb-ness, without being show-offish or making you think,
Oh, parsley again
.
Since Brigitte was so crazy about parsley, Lucky should not have been surprised that in France there is a special little hand grinder for it, where you stuff the parsley into a funnel and turn a handle and presto, perfect tiny fresh flakes come out underneath. You didn’t need a knife or cutting board or anything—you could just go right up to the dish and turn the handle—no fuss, no muss. Of course, Brigitte’s old mother had sent her a parsley grinder right off the bat when Brigitte told her how much she missed having one. And Brigitte had cried and acted like it was the best present she ever got in the world.
It was the parsley grinder’s fault that Lucky hit rock bottom on Sunday after she came home from the Smokers Anonymous meeting. Brigitte made melted-cheese-and-sliced-tomato open-faced sandwiches with flecks of parsley on top for dinner. Lucky ate only half of hers because she wasn’t too hungry, and she let Brigitte think this was because of the heat, instead of because of Short Sammy’s Fritos-and-chili. But Lucky did have room for a piece of
clafouti
, which is a pancake-ish type of pie with fruit in it—this one had Government Surplus canned apricots, but you couldn’t tell they weren’t regular canned apricots.
It was the parsley grinder’s fault, because the only thing Lucky did was to clean it in her usual thorough way after dinner. While she was at the sink, Miles came by—making screeching tire sounds—to forage for cookies. Brigitte ruffled his hair and said he could have a piece of
clafouti
. As she washed the grinder, Lucky bent one of the little spokes a teeny bit. She did it completely one hundred percent by accident and didn’t even realize.
But when she put the two clean parts together, snapping the spokes back into the funnel, she discovered that the handle wouldn’t turn.
She showed Brigitte.
Brigitte said,
“Oh, la vache,”
which means, as Lucky had learned, “Oh, the cow.” But she said it the way you would say, “Oh, what a pain,” or “Oh, good grief.” It was never really about cows whatsoever when Brigitte said,
“Oh, la vache.”
Brigitte tried to bend the spoke back to its normal position. She made a
pfff
sound of being frustrated.
Miles swallowed a mouthful of
clafouti
and said, “You should get Dot to fix that parsley thing. She has lots of pliers and little jewelry tools.”
“Wait a sec,” Lucky said. “Let me try first.” She got a table knife and very carefully wedged the spoke back in place. But she bent the next spoke in another wrong direction.
Brigitte sighed and went to the phone. “’Allo, Dot?” she said when she’d dialed. You mostly didn’t need a phone book in Hard Pan because everybody’s phone number began with the same first three numbers, so you only had to remember the other four. Dot’s were 9876—easy. “Can we come over with a little thing to fix? We need to borrow those pliers with the tiny end.”
Lucky and Miles watched Brigitte talk. She used one hand to hold the phone and the other to show the tapering ends of the pliers, even though Dot couldn’t see her doing it. “You are not too busy?” Brigitte said to Dot. “Okay, yes, right now.” She hung up.
“Lucky, I am going to wrap some
clafouti
to take to Dot. Can you look for the keys of the Jeep—I think on my desk. Miles, we drop you home on the way.” As Lucky went to Brigitte’s bedroom trailer, Miles began making screeching tire noises again.
The keys were not on the table. Lucky looked all around the room. “I can’t find them,” she called to Brigitte.
“Look in the drawer,” Brigitte called back.
Lucky opened the drawer. Scissors, a tape measure, stamps, pencils, rubber bands. No keys. She closed the drawer and noticed Brigitte’s little suitcase on a chair beside the table. It was closed, but the lid wasn’t zipped.
“Never mind, Lucky!” Brigitte shouted. “I find them in here!”
Lucky had a bad feeling about that suitcase, which had
always
been stored at the back of Brigitte’s closet.
“Lucky, are you coming to Dot’s?”
Lucky stared at the suitcase. “No,” she called, backing away from it. She went to the kitchen doorway. “I’ll stay here and…work more on my ant report.”
“You should anyway get ready for bed,” Brigitte said. “School tomorrow. I come back soon.”
Miles tire-screeched all the way to the Jeep.
Lucky went straight back to the suitcase. It was a bit bigger and deeper than a laptop carrier. Brigitte had come all the way from France with that one small case, thinking she was staying only a short time—until Lucky could be placed in a foster home. Probably she brought just a change of clothes. Now she had plenty of cotton surgical outfits from the thrift shop, which Lucky knew she liked because they were loose-fitting and cool, and because Brigitte said they made her feel Californian. Plus she had the Jeep and the three trailers and the computer that Lucky’s father had given her. Plus she had Lucky.
This was the first time Lucky had seen the suitcase in two years.
Lucky lifted the lid. There were no clothes in it. Only a stack of papers, and, on top, something very precious that was usually kept in a safe-deposit box at the bank in Sierra City.
Brigitte’s passport.
Lucky didn’t touch it or look at the other papers. Usually she would have examined them all very thoroughly. But the passport was enough. The only reason people need a passport is when they travel from one country to another country. Now she realized what was going on.
Lucky trudged back to the kitchen trailer. She suddenly understood that she’d been doing everything backward. She’d thought you looked for your Higher Power and when you found it you got special knowledge—special
insight
—about how the world works, and why people die, and how to keep bad things from happening.