“You’re right, Frankie, it’d just break her heart if LuAnn didn’t see your big old hairy mug on a regular basis,” Beth rejoined, while prying between her teeth with a swizzle stick.
“Hi, Frankie, how you?” LuAnn said.
“Just fine, now,” Frankie replied, the smile still cemented on his features.
“Beth, can you watch Lisa for a minute while I change into my uniform?” LuAnn asked as she wiped her face and arms down with a towel. She checked Lisa and was relieved to find her dry and hungry. “I’m going to make her up a bottle in just a minute and mix up some of that oatmeal. Then she should be ready to go down for the night even though she had a pretty big nap not too long ago.”
“You bet I can take that beautiful little child into my arms. Come here, darling.” Beth hoisted up Lisa and settled her against her chest, where Lisa proceeded to make all manner of noises and pull at the pen stuck behind Beth’s ear. “Really, now, LuAnn, you ain’t got to be here for hours. What’s up?”
“I got soaked and my uniform’s the only clean thing I got. Besides, I felt bad about missing last night. Hey, is there anything left over from lunch? I sorta can’t remember eating yet today.”
Beth gave LuAnn a disapproving look and planted one hand on a very full hip. “If you took half as good care of yourself as you do this baby. My Lord, child, it is almost eight o’clock.”
“Don’t nag, Beth. I just forgot, that’s all.”
Beth grunted. “Right, Duane drank your money away again, didn’t he?”
“You oughta drop that little sumbitch, LuAnn,” Frankie grumbled. “But let me kick his ass first for you. You deserve better than that crap.”
Beth raised an eyebrow that clearly signaled her agreement with Frankie.
LuAnn scowled at them. “Thank you both for your vote on my life, now if you’ll excuse me?”
Later that evening, LuAnn sat at the far corner booth finishing a plate of food Beth had rounded up for her. She finally pushed the dinner away and sipped a cup of fresh coffee. The rain had started again and the clattering sound against the diner’s tin roof was comforting. She pulled a thin sweater tighter around her shoulders and checked the clock behind the counter. She still had two hours before she went on duty. Normally, when she got to the diner early she’d try to catch a little overtime, but the manager wasn’t letting her do that anymore. Hurt the bottom line, he had told LuAnn. Well, you don’t want to know about my bottom line, she had told him right back, but to no avail. But that was okay, he let her bring Lisa in. Without that, there’d be no way she could work at all. And he paid her in cash. She knew he was avoiding payroll taxes that way, but she made little enough money as it was without the government taking any. She had never filed a tax return; she had lived her entire life well below the poverty line and rightly figured she didn’t owe any taxes.
Lisa was in her carrier across from her. LuAnn tucked the blanket more snugly around her sleeping daughter. LuAnn had fed Lisa parts of her meal; her daughter was taking to solid food real well, but she hadn’t made it through the mushed carrots before falling asleep again. LuAnn worried that her daughter wasn’t getting the right kind of sleep. And she wondered, Was putting her baby under the counter of a noisy, smoky truck stop every night going to mess up Lisa’s head years from now? Lower her self-esteem and do other damage LuAnn had read about in the magazines or seen on TV. That nightmarish thought had cost LuAnn more sleep than she could remember. And that wasn’t all. When Lisa turned to solid food for good would there always be enough? Not having a car, always scrounging change for the bus, walking, or running through the rain. What if Lisa caught something? What if LuAnn did? What if she were laid up for a while? Who would take care of Lisa? She had no insurance. She took Lisa to the free county clinic for her shots and checkups, but LuAnn hadn’t been to a doctor in over ten years. She was young, strong, and healthy, but that could change quickly. You never knew. She almost laughed when she thought of Duane trying to navigate the endless details of Lisa’s daily requirements. The boy would run screaming into the woods after a few minutes. But it really wasn’t a laughing matter.
While she looked at the tiny mouth opening and closing, LuAnn’s heart suddenly felt as heavy as the semis parked in the diner’s parking lot. Her daughter depended on her for everything and the truth was LuAnn had nothing. One step from the edge every day of her life and getting closer all the time. A fall was inevitable; it was only a matter of time. She thought back to Jackson’s words. A cycle. Her mother. Then LuAnn. Duane resembled Benny Tyler in more ways than she cared to think about. Next up was Lisa, her darling little girl for whom she would kill, or be killed, whatever it took to protect her. America was full of opportunity, everybody said. You just had to unlock it. Only they forgot to give out keys for LuAnn’s kind. Or maybe they didn’t forget at all. Maybe it was intentional. At least that’s how she usually saw things when she was more than a little depressed, like now.
She shook her head clear and squeezed her hands together. That kind of thinking wasn’t going to help her now. LuAnn pulled her handbag over and slid out the steno pad. What she had found at the library had greatly intrigued her.
Six lottery winners. She had started with the ones last fall and continued up to the present. She had written down their names and backgrounds. The articles had carried a photo of each winner; their smiles had seemed to stretch across the width of the page. In reverse order of winning they were: Judy Davis, age twenty-seven, a welfare mother with three young children; Herman Rudy, age fifty-eight, a former truck driver on disability with massive medical bills from an injury on the job; Wanda Tripp, sixty-six, widowed and subsisting on Social Security’s “safety net” of four hundred dollars a month; Randy Stith, thirty-one, a recent widower with a young child, who had recently been laid off from his assembly line job; Bobbie Jo Reynolds, thirty-three, a waitress in New York who after winning the article said had given up her dream of starring on Broadway to take up painting in the south of France. Finally, there was Raymond Powell, forty-four, a recent bankrupt who had moved into a homeless shelter.
LuAnn slumped back in her seat. And LuAnn Tyler, twenty years old, single mother, dirt poor, uneducated, no prospects, no future. She would fit in perfectly with this desperate group.
She had only gone back six months. How many more of them were there? It made for great stories, she had to admit. People in dire straits hit the jackpot. Old people with newfound wealth. Young children with a suddenly bright future. All their dreams coming true. Jackson’s face appeared in her thoughts. Someone has to win. Why not you, LuAnn? His calm, cool tones beckoned to her. In fact, those two sentences reverberated over and over in her head. She felt herself beginning to slide over the top of an imaginary dam. What was awaiting her in the deep waters below, she was not sure. The unknown both scared her and drew her, fiercely. She looked at Lisa. She could not shake the image of her little girl growing into a woman in a trailer with no way to escape while the young wolves circled.
“What’cha doing, sweetie?”
LuAnn jerked around and stared into Beth’s face. The older woman expertly juggled plates full of food in both hands.
“Nothing much, just counting up all my fortune,” LuAnn said.
Beth grinned and looked at the steno pad, which LuAnn quickly closed. “Well, don’t forget the little people when you hit the big time, Miss LuAnn Tyler.” Beth cackled and then carried the food orders to the waiting customers.