“The lottery?” I stretch out on the backseat. “You drag me out of bed in the middle of the night because you won the lottery?”
“Not me. We. What’s mine is yours,” she says as she turns the car onto the street.
“Of course it is.” I punch my pillow and jam it under my head.
“Once word gets out, we’ll get no peace.” The car swerves as she turns to glare at me. “You better not tell anyone.”
“Look where you’re going!”
Any other person might want to know how much we had won. When we’d get the money.
What she planned to spend it on.
I’d get more sense out of her if I asked her the meaning of life.
I have asked more than once why we can’t just live with my grandfather. All together. Like normal people. “If you have to ask, you’re dumber than I think you are.” Mom doesn’t mean to be cruel. It’s just that she can’t always censor what comes out of her mouth. Who knows what your grandfather’s secondhand smoke will do to my hair and skin, she said the last time I brought it up.
And when I asked Grand, he would sigh and say, Oh, pet. It wouldn’t work. It just wouldn’t.”
His house is small and dark, with fake wood panels on the walls. The furniture and carpet are all some combination of mustard yellow and olive green, steeped in cigarette smoke. We’ve never lived there. But it’s the only place I think of as home.
I drag my comforter over me and turn my face into the back of the seat. It will be another long night of driving through the dark.
I don’t know how much later it is when I’m woken by the car stopping. “Where are we?” It’s barely light out.
“I’m going for coffee.” Mom gets out and slams the door.
I clear the foggy window with my sleeve. We’re parked tight against a chain-link fence. I loosen my tangled clothes and wipe my face with my collar. My mouth tastes like a cat died in it.
I pull out my phone.
Grand answers on the fourth ring. “That you, Leni?”
“She’s done it again,” I tell him.
“Which is it this time?” He sounds tired. “Got into a fight over nothing? Or left town?”
“She’s taken off. We’ve taken off.”
“Where are you?” I can hear the rattle of his coffeepot. I imagine him shuffling around in his plaid housecoat, his veined feet shoved into old leather slippers.
“In an alley.”
“But where?”
“I have no idea, Grand. We drove. I fell asleep. I just woke up.”
“Let me talk to her.”
“She’s gone for coffee.”
“Ah.” I hear the longing in his voice. His coffee must have perked by now, burping bubbles into the glass lid of his old pot.
“You go have your breakfast. I’ll get back to you when I know where we are.” “Good girl. Before you go…what set her off this time?”
“She’s won the lottery.”
His bark could be laughter or disgust. “Seen the ticket, have you?”
“I haven’t, no.”
“Call me when you find it.”
“Then what?”
He sighs. “I don’t know, pet. I really don’t. But call me. I worry. You know I do.” He hangs up.
That’s been his line for as long as I can remember. I worry. You know I do.
This time I want to say, So why don’t you do something about it? Why is it me who has to go along with my mother’s crazy comings and goings? Put up with her highs and lows? Make sure she eats? Takes her meds?
I imagine him at the kitchen table, slurping coffee, scrubbing at his unshaven cheeks, pulling yesterday’s paper toward him.
And hear his voice saying, It wouldn’t work. It just wouldn’t. He does what he can, I guess. Always wants to know where we are, if things are okay. Tops up the bank account when it’s getting low. Pays for my pay-as-you-go cell phone.
He pays and we go. That is how it works.
Mom comes back with coffee as I’m shaking out my comforter. “Take one.” She holds out the cardboard tray. “I got you two honeys.” She thrusts out her hip so I can grab the little packets from her pocket. She read somewhere that honey is better than sugar.
“There’s nothing to stir it with.”
“Use your imagination.”
“Initiative, I think you mean.” She can’t see the look I give her.
The car is too close to the fence for me to open the front passenger door, so I climb into the back again. I root through the mess on the floor for something to stir my coffee with. All I come up with is a red-and-white-striped straw. “Where’s the ticket, Mom?” I ask.
“What ticket?”
“The lottery ticket that is going to make us the envy of all. And the target of every salesperson on the planet.”
“Somewhere safe.”
Her purse is leaning against the passenger door. “In here?” I reach for it.
“You know a lady’s purse is private.” As she yanks it away from me, it flies back and hits her shoulder. “Now you’ve made me spill my coffee!” She dabs at her pants with a tissue.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Richmond somewhere.”
“Richmond? It took all night to get just this far?”
“I made a few detours to throw everyone off the scent. Stopped when the gas light came on.”
“What time is it?”
“Time you figured out not to nag me before I’ve had breakfast.”
I pull my comforter around my shoulders and close my eyes. “Wake me when you’re done. I need a bathroom.”
Mom can sleep anywhere. Everywhere. But I can’t. The car gets colder and colder, and the windows get more and more fogged up. Next time I look, she is asleep with her mouth open, her empty coffee cup lying in her lap. Her purse bulges open beside her. I ease it toward me an inch at a time. When I have it in my lap, I tent my comforter over me to muffle any noise I might make.
I read somewhere that you can tell a lot about a woman’s life by what’s in her purse.
Mom’s is stuffed with her med bottles, a dozen empty vitamin bottles and a handful of full ones. She’s collected a bunch of tiny fast-food salt and pepper packages. Flyers about high-interest accounts. Credit-card applications. A reminder note for a doctor’s appointment I doubt she kept. A stuffed green elephant she found under a park bench. A single sock I’ve never seen before.
In her wallet is a five-dollar bill, more salt and pepper packages, a photo of me perched on my dad’s shoulders when I was about four, eighty-five cents in change and a little sachet of parsley seeds. Ah yes. Let’s plant a garden!
But, of course, no lottery ticket.
No doubt another of her many delusions.