Her mother had died of blood poisoning the year before and Dad thought it would be good to draw Marjorie out, salving the wound of premature loss. His idea, she thought in retrospect, was to draw them both out; such exodus being as essential to his emotional stability as to her own recovery and growth, a grandly dramatic gesture, the bold, father-daughter gesture of a lifetime, which she could never repay. (Revisiting their idyll was as close as she would come; sort of “interest” on the loan.) Marj knew he’d been to India twice before to buy fabric for the clothing and knickknack shop her parents owned in Massachusetts; the quality of Bombay silk was astonishingly good, the tailors like none others on Earth. In America, he could resell garments at a 10-fold markup. It was actually his wife who had the idea, and because he took Marj to places where the married couple had 1st shared so many intimate joys of discovery, the trip with his daughter was tinged with heartbreak. For Marj, though, it was the most romantic thing in the world. Now she knew better, but at the time, a widower’s frisson of pain and pleasure never crossed her mind: as they toured in private cars, he’d remark, “This is where your mother loved to people-watch,” “This is where Mom had her tea and watched the ships,” “This is the museum she adored,” “This is where your mother took her shoes off and prayed along with native worshipers.”
The trip had such a dreamy quality that she’d begun to think she had imagined it all, until she saw the marvelous little film. Bless dear Nigel for that! (She had lived with it in her head for so long.) Not only did the clangorous sounds and smells of India waft back to her but those of her father as well, the wind-chime laugh and the clearing of his throat, the cigar smoke that permeated his woolly, pleated three-piece, and clung like the most comforting cologne, the size of his hands and look of his fingers (a slight indentation on one of the nails), the kindness and almost mystical sadness in and around the eyes, the punctiliousness of his dress, his unadumbrated curiosity, and thirst for experience, his solicitous manner toward others — he never turned a beggar down, marveling in a most uncynical way at the ingenuity of their “coin extraction techniques”—but mostly, his tenderness toward her, his dearest child, green apple of his eye, sassy replica of departed wife, his sugarplum girl, his Marjorie Morningstar, one day to become Marjorie Rausch Herlihy née Donovan. From all the terrible things she heard on the news, she was beginning to think her dad was the best who’d ever lived, or that maybe fathers were just different now. She even remembered clutching him close when the driver took them to the section of town, high on a hill, where Parsis — Zoroastrians! — brought their dead to an open room to be devoured by vultures. (It was impossible to see anything though, but the very idea!) She thought of that poor boy, suddenly bereft of Riki, dear, innocent Riki, and the tears welled up. Soon she would have to go to the wretched store, that claptrap mausoleum with its soggy, decaying shrines and relics, to find him.
THE doorbell rang. It was a 30ish man in a stylish suit.
“Mrs Herlihy?”
She blanched.
Was it bad news about Joan or Chester?
“I’m Lucas Weyerhauser. Am I catching you at a bad time?”
“I don’t think so!” she said, slightly agitated.
“Good. This is something that’s a lot of fun for me — and I hope it’ll be fun for you! In fact, I know it will. May I come in?”
Instinctively, she closed the door a bit, narrowing the space between them, not to be rude, but to let the man know she was a savvy city dweller, despite her age.
“Well,” she said, with a small smile. “What is it?”
“I completely understand,” he said respectfully. “That’s fine. I can tell you from right here.”
He turned and curtly waved to a fellow in a chauffeur’s uniform who stood beside a dark sedan. On signal, the driver got back in the car.
“You play the lottery, don’t you?”
“Why, yes.”
“Now, how’d I know that?”
He winked. She was at a not-unpleasant-sort of loss.
“Because I work for Mega Millions, in New York, and it’s my business to know. May I?”
She thought the young man was asking to come in again but instead he handed her a vest-pocket card with LUCAS WEYERHAUSER in raised gold letters. Special Programs Division was inscribed below, with an elaborate blue-gold seal, also embossed — the official seal for the State of New York.
“I won’t take too much of your time, Mrs Herlihy. I know this is out of the blue but here’s how it works: the Los Angeles Super Lotto and New York lottery systems — New York’s is ‘Mega Millions’—are sister programs. Just like Cannes and Beverly Hills are sister cities. Not too many people know that Cannes and Beverly Hills are sister cities but it’s an official truth. Now, the joining of East and West Coast lottery systems is something that isn’t generally publicized but is of great and mutual benefit to the infrastructure of both states.” Marj smiled, uncomprehending. “I didn’t mean to make you dizzy! OK: let me put it simpler. For every hundred thousand Super Lotto tickets bought in LA, the state of New York buys, say, a hundred ‘sister’ or ‘mirror’ Mega Millions. What that means is, even if your ticket doesn’t show you to be a winner in Los Angeles, you might be a winner in New York. If you were to win in New York, part of those monies would be used for many, many things — school lunch programs, filling potholes, even buying computers for police and fire stations. The long and short of it is that you, Marjorie Herlihy, just became a hero.”
“Hero?”
“That’s right,” he said, grinning. (He reminded the old woman of a fresh-faced dancer from her favorite musical, Oklahoma!) “You are a hero because your Blind Sister ticket — that’s what we call them — from the pool automatically purchased by the State of New York, the ticket you bought…is a winner!”
“But they haven’t announced—”
“Nor will they. The Blind Sister lottos have ‘shadow drawings’—that’s exactly what they’re called — and the ‘heroes’ (such as you) are always named within 24 to 72 hours before home state winners. Blind Sisters cannot be publicized, Mrs Herlihy. That is actually federal law. And that’s why we ask you not to share this with the vendor of original purchase.”
“Riki?”
“That’s right. We’ve already been in touch — they are very happy campers — they’ll be compensated based on a formula not all that different from the one California currently has in place. Of course, they knew about the shadow program, all vendors and merchants do. Again, something mandated by federal law.”
Marj’s door was fully open.
“And now,” he said, with a deep sigh, “I have to disclose something that inevitably doesn’t thrill our winners, be they residents of the Big Apple or be they residents of Lala-land.” He leaned over to whisper. Marj felt strange and alive and discombobulated, as if all her senses were heightened. “Unfortunately, Mrs Herlihy, you won’t be getting the amount listed on the winning ticket. Let me tell you what your share is, after taxes.” He pulled out a small calculator. “Because you’re over 65—you look 45 if you’re a day! — the Blind Sister Superfund subsidizes half the IRS burden. Your piece of the pie is kind of a ‘finder’s fee,’ Mr Michael Bloomberg’s way of saying, ‘Thank you, Mrs Herlihy.’ All right now,” he said, focusing on the little machine as he punched its keys. “Let us now see. Let us now praise famous men and women. The formula is rather complex, but that’s why they give me the big bucks…as soon as you fill out the paperwork, you’ll be collecting approximately…Wow!” He playfully tapped the instrument, as if there was something wrong. “This looks like a Social Security number!”