Luck

Grandfather Tolley had the bad luck to lose his wife to a shark. Anna grew solemn when she heard that, impressed by the notion of a swift, random, soulless agency at work in the world. Why was Grandma taken and not someone else? And why to begin with? This led her by degrees to a contemplation of luck: good luck, bad luck, no luck at all. She decided that she was a person to whom good things happened. In this regard, she’d not been tainted by the blood of the Tolleys. She had a sly, nimble, distracting beauty and a good brain in her head, and she was an Ison—even if her name was not—growing up on Isonville, once home to a merino stud second only to Showalter Park’s. And then she was undone by a string of frustrations, reversals and unfortunate reminders, all in the space of a year. She scored low in tests and exams, the other kids ganged up on her unaccountably in the playground, and she was a little ashamed of the public way in which her father was obliged to spend weeks racing around the countryside at the wheel of the Stock & Station Holden, usually at the beck and call of the Showalters. Anna referred to this run of misfortune as bad luck. It was a short step from that to overlooking all the good things in her life and seeing herself as a luckless person to whom more bad things would happen; from there to comprehending that she was bad luck, full stop. She transmitted bad luck to others, merely by existing. What if she were to replay the past, erasing herself from the story, and her parents’ meeting and marrying, and Grandfather Ison’s many sisters? Why, her mother would not have been cheated of Isonville land when Grandfather Ison died, that’s what. Anna was there the day her father lost the tip of his finger in the auger drive. It was a harvest-time of broken tailshafts, ruptured tyres and wheat fouled by star thistle seeds, and to top all that off he suffered cruel pain and fear, all Anna’s fault. Something went out of him after that. No one fondly called him a wild man again, as if Anna had bled the wildness out of him. Oftentimes a whole year could be bad. Anna told herself one December: This year Matt Heinrich broke my hymen with his finger, I lost Maxine’s friendship, they began to call me names. Maybe next year will be better. Anna dared not hope for a good year, only a better one, by which she meant that no bad luck would come her way during the course of it. And so her teenage years went by. She was ready to believe that fortune smiled upon her when Lockie Kelly stole her heart. She dared to hope. A year went by, then a second and a third, and he continued to adore her. But badness crept in, finally, staining everything that Anna touched. Anxious, confused, she cast about for its cause—and remembered her bad luck. Funny how she’d forgotten. Bad luck had left her alone for three years, and she had bounced back so thoroughly that she had forgotten all about him. He had a human shape. He was a colourless chill shadow moulded to her back. He poisoned everything. He leapt across lighted spaces and brought down her loved ones. Lockie need not have died like that, Anna sobbed. A damn shame, but these things happen, the family replied, consoling her, but Anna knew better. Before she married Sam she warned: I should let you know, bad things happen around me. I think I’m jinxed. She watched his open face closely, trusting that he would laugh away her fears. She was not disappointed. Sam was so solid and dependable, so lacking in an inner life, that he could not see the figure on her back. Sam repelled everything that bad luck stood for. He might lack grace, agility and swiftness, but not simple strength. Bad luck would fail to find a handhold on Sam’s broad back, would slide to the ground, wither and die. But oh, she should have been more vigilant. She should have known that bad luck was easily provoked. Her joy in her children provoked him, her joy in Chester Flood provoked him, and he undid all of her happiness in a moment’s inattention. Another mother might have overcompensated after the accident, erecting safety barriers around her surviving child and smothering her with over-anxious love, but Anna took a fatalistic step or two back. Sam didn’t. He hovered. And so Rebecca was the product of bipolar love. She’s had to learn to be her own warden. It has been twenty years since she landed a smacking kiss on Anna’s lips. But at least bad luck leaked away through that fractured side window, twenty years ago. Anna has maintained a wary watch over her loved ones since then and not seen him strike again. She cannot feel him on her back any more, and she’s certain that he did not slither through the wreckage of the car on to Rebecca’s back. Rebecca likes to read books about goddess medicine and goddess magic. There’s simply no comprehending, she says, all that’s carried in the head and heart of a woman. Meg, her lover, is apt to scoff. She’s more down to earth. She might state that Friday the thirteenth is lucky for witches, lesbians and the left-handed, then throw back her head and laugh. Sam attributes the attitude of the bank to a conspiracy of the Jews; Anna attributes it to the times they live in. Neither mentions luck. Anna would like to have been able to reassure the suicidal woman on Showalter Hill: You were not the cause of anything. You did not bring bad luck upon yourself, or others. Anna will have no time or patience for worriers, crystal gazers or the lessons of history. Even if certain events can be prefigured, she won’t waste time on searching for patterns in the bad memories or in depending for her happiness on the good. She knows that she is bound to die sometime but she’ll not look ahead to the day.