Lucky for Good Read online

  Lucky sighed and considered calling Brigitte over; let her explain that the Hard Pan Café didn’t serve burgers like any old fast-food place; here you got something a little bit French. But she knew Brigitte was busy with a big order from table two.

  Lucky poured water and decided, since she herself liked fast food, not to go into Brigitte’s whole anti-burger-philosophy thing. She said, “Well, no burgers today, but we have two kinds of salads, mixed lettuce or vegetable, and some great spaghetti if you like garlic, and—wait, I’ll get the board.”

  But the man was already unfolding himself, standing, putting a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Listen,” he said to her. “I gotta go anyway. You still want to do this?”

  “Yeah, I’m staying,” the woman said in her high voice. “You keep in touch, okay?” She began to tap the heel of one boot rapidly against the ground, her knee jouncing up and down. “Thanks for the ride—for coming all the way out here.” Turning to Lucky, she said, “A large salad—I don’t care which one—and iced tea.”

  “Hang on,” said the man, leaning over the woman. “Listen, you sure?”

  The woman nodded. “Yes,” she said, “positive.”

  He began to gather up his stuff, setting aside a plastic grocery sack bulging with something that rattled. Lucky said, “Um, by the way, there’s no bus or anything here. Only the school bus to Sierra City on Monday, and they won’t let you on.” Lucky worried that it would turn out to be pretty inconvenient if the woman were stuck in Hard Pan, though at the same time she could hear Brigitte’s voice in her head, warning her not to interfere with the customers or get into conversations where it was none of her business. Lucky loved to chat with the customers and always had trouble with this rule, but this time she thought it was okay.

  The man was already adjusting his helmet, straddling the saddle of his motorcycle, gunning the engine loudly (which, Lucky noticed, caused Brigitte to frown). He’d fastened the second helmet to the back of his bike but left the woman’s other things in a little pile in the sand.

  “It’s okay,” the woman said to Lucky, reaching down for the grocery sack. “I’m staying here.” She picked at the bag’s tight knot, using her fingernails to try to tease open the plastic ties.

  “Here? In Hard Pan? You know there’s no hotel or motel or anything, right?” Lucky passed slowly beside her, hoping for a peek at whatever rattled inside that sack. She needed to find out a lot more about this woman, starting with why in the world she was staying here, and where, and who with. And what was in the bag. Looking down at the face frowning with concentration, Lucky was reminded of something, but she wasn’t sure what—it was like getting a whiff of a smell that made you almost but not quite remember a time or a place or a person. And the harder you tried, the more the memory wouldn’t let you grab it.

  As the lanky guy roared off on his Harley-Davidson, the woman got the knot untied and plunged her hand into the bag. Lucky managed a quick peek inside. It was filled with walnut shells.

  4. a boy named miles

  In the kitchen trailer, Brigitte rapidly lined up the trays of precooked vegetables and hard-boiled eggs. “We make the same salad for table four and table one,” she told Lucky. “Salade composée, the vegetables they are all ready. Can you plate them while I make the dressing?” Lucky had watched many times as Brigitte arranged the ingredients on plates in an artistic way, quick and perfect, like food photographs in a glossy magazine, and Brigitte had explained many secret professional tips about color and texture and placement. But Lucky was not at all sure she could make the salad look so delicious and inviting.

  “Pete just got here,” Miles called from Lucky’s bedroom trailer, where he was evidently still keeping watch at the window.

  Lucky and Brigitte both smiled. Pete was a geologist who so greatly loved what he called “the crust of the Earth” around Hard Pan that he drove two hundred miles, nearly every weekend, all the way from the San Fernando Valley to their little town in the Mojave Desert.

  “I bet he likes your cooking as much as he likes the crust of our Earth, Brigitte,” Miles remarked.

  Brigitte laughed, then rolled her eyes, then shrugged and said, “But of course he does!” And she winked at Lucky, as if they shared a little secret. Lucky smiled back, but in fact she didn’t know completely what the secret was. It could have been about Miles being too young to understand complex, mature, sophisticated things, like maybe there was more involved between Pete and Brigitte than just good cooking and geology. Or about how Pete had a cool way of gazing at something most people wouldn’t really notice, like a boulder, and saying, “Now that is dramatic.” (Lucky herself considered his general constant enthusiasm quite rare and excellent, especially for a fully grown adult.)

  There was a question about the wink that Lucky thought she wanted to ask, but before she could figure out what it was, Brigitte had tossed her whisk in the sink, set the dressing on the counter, and grabbed the water pitcher.

  “I am taking Pete’s order, Lucky. Maybe he will want the same salad, and you can just prepare one more.”

  “I don’t think I can plate them as good as you,” Lucky said.

  Brigitte clicked her tongue. “Certainly you can! Not yet the dressing, but you have a sense for the color and the placement.” She gave Lucky a quick one-arm hug. “Hands first, remember,” she said, nodding at the sink, and then she was out the door.

  Lucky washed her hands and went to work, starting with a fan of sliced mushrooms in the center of the plates, wondering what the walnut-shell woman was doing way out here in Hard Pan.

  Miles came into the kitchen waving a drawing of a fierce-looking T. rex beside a chart with lots of dinosaur names neatly printed on it. “Look at this—it’s a tree of life for Tyrannosauridae,” he said. “They’re all extinct now, but I really wish we could clone one. Or a couple of them so they could have a baby.” Miles found the idea of this so funny that he snorted with laughter. “A baby tyrannosaurus! It would be as big as this trailer!”

  “Very cool, Miles,” she said. “Cloning’s a good project for you when you grow up. Listen, I have to do these salads right now. I’ll meet you in the canned ham when I get time.”

  “I’m a T. rex,” Miles answered, and clumped heavy-footed toward Lucky’s bedroom, his hands chest-high and clawed, his head swaying back and forth in search of prey, full of tyrannosaurus teeth.

  “This is good, Lucky,” Brigitte said after she checked each plate carefully and drizzled dressing over the salads. “It will put the customers in appetite even if they are not yet hungry. Can you do one more for Pete?” And Lucky did, full of confidence, practically an expert on the art of plating.

  The woman smiled at the salad, and then looked at Brigitte with large dark brown eyes. “Have you heard the good news?” she asked.

  Lucky wondered if this news had something to do with the motorcycle guy’s departure. She collected his unused napkin and silverware as Brigitte said, “Non, we are busy right now”—she indicated the other customers with a sweep of her chin—“do you need anything else?”

  “Only a minute of your time. Do you go to a church somewhere?”

  Brigitte made her not-sure-I-understand-your-meaning face. “There is not a church in Hard Pan, but many in Sierra City—about fifty miles back to the main highway.” A customer waved to catch Brigitte’s eye and called, “When you have a minute!” Brigitte nodded at him, smiled at table four, and was gone.

  Lucky couldn’t stop staring at the woman, who seemed jittery. She still tapped the heel of one boot, and now she stuck a hand back in the bag of walnut shells on her lap, feeling around with a great deal of rattling until she brought out a small red pocket notebook. “I’ll go get your iced tea,” Lucky said, but she hesitated, watching as the woman fanned the notebook pages with her thumb. Despite the big rugged boots and short, chopped-off haircut, she looked delicate and feminine, and there was something familiar about her face, especially her eyes. She asked Lucky, “So, d
o you know all the kids in Hard Pan?”

  “Yeah, there’s only three of us—”

  “A boy named Miles?”

  When she said that, looking up with a tender smile, realization flew into Lucky’s mind with the exact precision of a cactus wren landing on a yucca branch without ever being stuck by the plant’s needle-sharp spines. “Hang on a sec,” Lucky said, and raced to her canned-ham trailer, flinging open the door.

  Miles looked up from his tyrannosaurus Tree of Life diagram. “Dinosaurs survived for one hundred sixty-five million years,” he said. “They lived on the Earth much longer than Homo sapiens has. Even longer than—”

  “Miles,” Lucky interrupted, her eyes wide. “Listen! There’s a lady outside at table four who asked me if I knew a boy named Miles.”

  Miles’s open, trusting face grew flushed. Sitting very still, he said, “Who is she?”

  Lucky grabbed his hands. “It’s your mom!” she said. “I’m sure it’s her. It must be Justine—she looks like you.” Lucky waited for Miles to act like a firecracker with its fuse lit.

  Instead he jerked his hands out of hers and turned back to his diagram, flicking a corner with his thumbnail. “No,” he said. “They told us her release date isn’t for another two weeks, so it’s probably not her. Besides, she’s not supposed to just show up like that; she’s supposed to call my grandma first. What’s she doing?”

  “Eating a salad and asking about ‘a boy named Miles’! Come on! Aren’t you going out to see her?” Lucky couldn’t understand why, after all this time of waiting for his mom to finish being in prison and come home, Miles was just sitting there.

  He folded his diagram, creased the paper forcefully, folded and creased it again. “What if it’s not her? Or what if she doesn’t recognize me?” He went over to stand by Lucky’s porthole window, but he didn’t look out. “Which one is table four?” he whispered, even though no one outside could have heard.

  Lucky groaned and crowded beside him. He could be so stubborn! “Check it out,” she said, and then drew back to give him room. “It’s the one with a person staring back at us right now.” Miles pressed his face to the window, unmoving, as if he were watching a very suspenseful movie of his own life.

  Lucky put her arm around his shoulders. She said, “Look, I’ll take you to her and I’ll be right beside you.”

  He shrugged her arm off. “No,” he said. “I can’t.”

  She sighed, ran for the iced-tea pitcher in the kitchen trailer, and rushed back outside.

  The woman who asked about Miles continued eating her salad and flicking her eyes up at the three connected trailers. She took small bites and ate quickly, like a bird. Lucky was too busy to keep watching constantly, but she did notice when the woman suddenly stood up and made her way with short, quick steps to the kitchen trailer door and knocked. “Go in, and to the left,” Brigitte called to her. Customers often went inside to use the restroom.

  Wanting to beam a message to Miles, Lucky stared at her porthole window. It was darker inside, so you couldn’t really see in, but she radiated an urgent telepathic bulletin to him anyway. She’s coming! She’s coming in to find you! It was unbearable not knowing what was going on inside, so as soon as she could, Lucky piled a tray with table three’s empty dessert plates and followed the woman she was sure was Justine.

  There are certain primates Lucky had seen on TV, where the young offspring clings to the mother so tightly that no matter how high she swings on the tree, no matter how fast she runs, her child stays put. This is what Lucky was reminded of when she went inside and saw the young woman standing in the middle of the kitchen with Miles in her arms. He’d wrapped his arms around her neck and his legs around her waist, clinging while she swiveled slowly from side to side, tilting back a bit to balance his weight. Their eyes were red, and both of their noses were running.

  Lucky knew it was a very private moment—she knew she shouldn’t stare—but she was also filled with a kind of inner triumph, as if this whole reunion was thanks to her. She almost couldn’t bear how huge it was, this actual second; it made her a little light-headed and shaky. She dumped her plates in the washtub and ran cold water over her hands for a few minutes. She cleared her throat.

  “Well,” she said at last, but then didn’t know how to go on. Normal conversation was not possible. “Well,” she said again, “we have homemade lemon sorbet and chocolate chip cookies for dessert.” Those were the words that came out, but her voice made it sound more like This, right now, is the incredible moment that Miles has been waiting his whole life for! She cleared her throat and got her voice less squeally and continued, “Um, so, do you guys want some?”

  Justine smiled and shifted Miles; he seemed too heavy for her. But Miles, the cookie-maniac of the world, shook his head into the curve of his mother’s neck. Then he looked at Lucky with big round orangutan eyes.

  Lucky saw that he wasn’t about to let go, not even for a cookie.

  5. triple T

  Lucky’s father’s name was Taggart Theodore Trimble, so Lucky called him Triple T. Not to his face—she never talked to him—only in her mind, when she thought about the subject of parents. Someone can father a child, but that doesn’t automatically make him a dad; you have to earn the title of dad by raising your child and by loving your child. You can’t just have a baby and look at your watch and say, “Well, that’s it for me! I’m out of here,” and then go away forever. That’s what Triple T had done, so he was her father but he was not her dad.

  Lucky had never lived with him, and she only knew a few tiny things about him. This is what she knew:

  He lived in San Francisco.

  He was not only her birth mother, Lucille’s, ex-husband; before that he had also been Brigitte’s ex-husband. So Brigitte and Lucky already had the same last name, Trimble, even before they adopted each other.

  Every month his bank sent money electronically to Brigitte’s bank to help pay for Lucky’s support.

  He was a translator specializing in technical and legal papers. She thought it was strange: He spent his whole life helping people to communicate with one another, but he wouldn’t talk to her.

  And here is what made Lucky think she would never forgive him, even if he were sick and suffering and friendless and poor and dying: He’d never given her his address or his phone number or e-mail. The one time she’d met him, during the days after Lucille died, he had worn dark mirrored glasses so she couldn’t see what he really looked like. And he hadn’t even told her he was her father! He’d handed her the urn filled with her mother’s ashes and he did not hug her and he let her think he was the crematory man!

  He never sent anything, not even a digital card, not even a wish, on her birthday.

  Except for her being born, something that he had caused to happen, certainly nothing she could be blamed for, she had never done anything to make him treat her like you would treat a person you hated.

  In the little movies that Lucky would play in her mind, her father was on trial for a terrible crime. Lucky was called to the witness stand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Her father’s lawyer tried to trick Lucky, to confuse her, and to make her look bad in front of the judge and the jury. But Lucky was filled to the brim with truth, and it made her skin shimmer and radiate light, it threw sparks from her eyes, and it enabled her to levitate, so that the lawyer had to lean back and lift his chin toward the high ceiling in order to look her in the eyes.

  And the first thing she did, when the lawyer asked if she could even identify the accused, smirking because he believed she could not, was to swoop down from the witness stand, moving effortlessly and swiftly with a little buzzing sound like a dragonfly, yank the dark mirrored glasses off her father’s face, and park them like a black plastic crown on top of her own head. Before anyone had time to react beyond gasps of surprise, Lucky returned to the witness chair, the question answered, the power of the glasses transferred to herself, the blinding truth
acting as a force field so that no one could touch her.

  In the mind movie, Lucky saw the jurors murmuring, nodding, smiling at her, the judge looking surprised and impressed that such raw power could be possessed by a mere girl, the lawyer frowning over his notes, shaking his head, at a loss. And her father bent over the table, his head on his arms, his shoulders caved in, unable to go on, defeated.

  Lucky levitated over to the judge, who handed her the gavel. Everyone realized she was now both the witness and the judge. She pounded the gavel on her father’s table, hard. The courtroom was silent, the jurors, judge, lawyers, bailiff, court reporter, and spectators all holding their breaths. He looked up at her, his eyes full of shame and regret.

  Lucky nodded; it was a look she’d waited her whole life to see. She reached for the sunglasses on top of her head, threw them on the floor, stamped on them with her special steel-reinforced shoes.

  “Guilty,” she said, and glided out into the sunshine, where she was suddenly alone, and she knew that the trial was over, but she hadn’t really won.

  6. courage

  The patio in front of the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center was crowded with old metal folding chairs and portable lawn chairs. Short Sammy, who was Lucky’s confidant—meaning they discussed many philosophical issues—contributed his wooden packing crate. This was the crate that his outdoor bathtub, situated near the entrance of his water tank house, had arrived in. The crate was on loan as additional seating for the occasion of a town meeting, and Sammy, in stained white cowboy hat, boots, and snap-front shirt from the boys’ department, was masterminding the seating arrangements.

  Most everyone was there, including the newest resident, Justine Prender, milling around and sipping homemade lemonade or sun tea out of jam jars. HMS Beagle and two other dogs lay in the shade beside the museum, and Short Sammy’s small dog, Roy, meandered in and out of the jumble of people as if to welcome them one by one. Since Sammy was the volunteer docent for the museum, he and Roy hung out there a lot, and Roy considered it his responsibility to make contact with each visitor.