Short Bus Hero (9 page)

8. Cherophobia /
keerˈ-ə-fōˈ-bē-ə
/
fear of merriment

S
he doesn’t feel
like going to work. Again. The peach-colored capsules her mom makes her swallow every morning don’t change a damn thing: Stryker is still fired from wrestling, Doug at work still calls her a retard, and all she wants to do is sleep. She doesn’t see how the pills make anything better. But she takes them, like a good girl, to keep her mom off her back.

Finally agreeing to go back to work also shuts her mother up.

“Hey, ‘tard,” Doug greets her in the break room as Ally loads her Jonas Brothers lunch box into the refrigerator. The grin on his acne-riddled face reminds her of Batman’s enemy, The Joker. “Whadja bring for lunch? Powdered sugar doughnuts and cheese doodles? That’s why your ass is so ginormous, you know, idiot.” He sticks out his tongue at her and laughs.

Ally doesn’t see what Doug’s pretty cheerleader girlfriend could possibly find attractive about the guy. An ugly orange crew cut hovers above his evil
It
clown features, his leering smile made all the more sinister by the foodstuff encrusted braces on his teeth. Ally finds him repulsive. He is the starting quarterback on the Thomas Jefferson High varsity football team, though. Ally guesses that must count for something in the world of “normal” high school. She hadn’t noticed that sort of thing when she’d gone there, but she wasn’t “normal.” She supposes that being a star quarterback excuses one from exercising any form of social grace and means that one may act like a total butthead anytime, anywhere. Doug even had a football scholarship to Penn State all lined up.

Ally wonders why someone so ugly, in both the physical and behavioral sense, has so much luck in this life.

Oh, and, for the record, Ally is not retarded; she is mentally challenged, or, better yet, developmentally delayed. She has an IQ of eighty-five, which means that there are “normal” people out there of similar intelligence. People who work 9-to-5 jobs, people who live in their very own houses, people who have and care for families of their own. Ally thinks she could handle all of that, no problem, if only her mother would let her try. Her daily living, communication, and social skills are all highly developed. She plays Trivial Pursuit with average success, reads at an adult level, and has even completed several continuing studies courses at Duquesne University. She does not like being called retarded.

“It’s none…none…none of your…,” she sputters, getting stuck, jaw ratcheting, hands flapping, eyes rolling back. Totally embarrassed, she wishes she didn’t act like such a spaz, but it is beyond her control.

“None of my what, Corky?” Doug laughs. He calls her that because of some dopey movie he’d watched with his football buddies.

“None of your business, Doug!” she yells. One of the cashiers comes into the break room and gives Doug a quizzical look. He says, “Whatev,” and takes off.

“What was that all about?” Julie asks. Ally likes Julie. She is funny and friendly. They talk a lot. Julie has two daughters, aged eleven and fourteen, so she knows about all the cool stuff that Ally likes, even music.

“Oh, nothing,” Ally says. She doesn’t like to be a problem at work. She wants to get along with everyone and not make any waves. She thinks God will protect her from those who behave like Doug, anyway, so there’s no use in getting everyone all worked up about it. “What’s new with you?”

Julie lights up a cigarette, ready to put it out at the first sign of an approaching manager. They aren’t allowed to smoke in the building anymore, but it’s a major hassle to go all the way out to the back door just to smoke. “Oh, not too much. Kids want to go shopping this weekend and spend all the gift cards they got for Christmas. I guess we’ll be spending the weekend at the mall. Oh, joy.” She rolls her eyes and blows out a cloud of smoke.

Ally yanks her apron out of her purse. An envelope falls to the floor at her feet. She pulls the apron on over her head, then bends down to pick up the envelope. It’s the Christmas card from her Uncle Keith. She hasn’t opened it yet. She wishes he gave out gift cards instead of stupid lottery tickets. One Christmas, she won twelve dollars. It wasn’t even enough to buy a CD. She thought it was severely lame.

“That sounds like…like fun. They can buy lots of CDs and…and…and…magazines.” That’s what Ally would buy, anyway. She is a fiend for that stuff. She has over fifteen-hundred CDs and enough wrestling and teen magazines to wallpaper ten entire houses. “See you later, Julie. I have to get to work now.”

“Okay, Ally. See you out there.” Julie finishes her smoke, wondering why the Dougs of the world have to be so damn mean. That little shit, she thinks. She’ll be sure to call him for lots of unnecessary price checks tonight.

* * *

“I know, she could have gone to Carnegie Mellon or something, you know?” Mrs. Farley is a regular customer. Her daughter had recently finished her first semester at Skidmore and Mrs. Farley is still half-heartedly complaining about her choice of schools. “Well, it’s nice to have her home for the holidays, except, look at all this stuff—what’s this gonna cost me?” She makes a funny face. Ally laughs as she loads Kashi cereal bars and soy milk into a bag and piles it on top of the overflowing cart.

“Maybe you’ll win the lottery,” Julie says to her, scanning a box of brown rice. “Nobody’s claimed that three hundred and fourteen million yet.”

“God, I know. Too bad I never buy tickets.” Mrs. Farley pays her astronomical bill and rolls away, declining Ally’s offer of help out to her car. God forbid she catches something from Ally, as if Down syndrome was communicable. Wouldn’t that just destroy her perfect daughter’s perfect visit?

There are too many undereducated people in the world. It’s sad.

The evening drags on, different customers file by, all having the same conversation as they pay for their provisions. Julie pages Doug about seven times to check prices for her, letting Ally in on the joke. Then, mercifully, break time arrives.

Ally climbs the perforated metal stairs to the break room and finds her time card. She punches out and gets her dinner from the fridge. She sits down at the round table and pushes a newspaper aside to clear an eating space. She hates clutter. Her Jonas Brothers lunchbox contains a zip-lock baggie full of chicken nuggets, which she likes cold, a small bag of pretzels, and a banana. She opens the pretzels and begins munching. Her eyes glide over the OSHA posters that line the walls, the snack machine, the soda machine, and the refrigerator before coming to rest on the crumpled newspaper next to her. Crunching another pretzel, she pulls the paper over in front of her and flips over the front page. A smaller headline shouts: “$314 MIL — IS IT YOURS?” The story says the winning Megalo lottery ticket was purchased in Maryland just before Christmas, but no one has yet claimed the prize.

Ally thinks of the envelope that fell out of her purse earlier. She walks to the coat rack to get it. Once she has the card in her hand, she sits back down at the table and flips the newspaper to the winning numbers. She opens her envelope, skims the Christmas card, takes a second to think
aw, how nice
, and then looks at the lottery ticket. She sets it down on top of the paper, right next to the winning numbers and begins comparing the digits.

First number: 8.

Ally’s first number: 8.

Second number: 13.

Ally’s second number: 13.

Third number: 19.

Ally’s third number: 19.

The dry salty pretzels throw her into a coughing fit. She gets up to buy a cola from the soda machine, a bit giddy from reading the numbers, but trying not to get her hopes up. She pops the can, tips it to her lips, lets out a belch, and sits back down.

Fourth number: 32.

Ally’s fourth number: 32.

Fifth number: 2.

Ally’s fifth number: 2.

Ally giggles, positive that she is reading the numbers wrong. One more to go.

Sixth number: 38.

Ally’s sixth number: 38.

She doesn’t believe it.

One more—the super duper awesomely lucky mega power number: 23.

Of course she read it all wrong—come on, she is retarded, for Christ’s sake.

Only, she’s not wrong.

She slumps over the table, working the pretzel sludge off the roof of her mouth with her thick tongue. Her head seems completely empty of thought. Did she really read those numbers? She looks again. No, she never wins anything. Impossible.

I whisper to her to believe.

And it hits her.

Her scream echoes off the shining linoleum floor. She clutches her ticket and the crumpled page of the newspaper and jumps up and down. Spit and pretzel crumbs fly from her mouth as she stammers and grunts and hops. Julie arrives just in time to see Ally go down in a heap. She thinks Ally is having a seizure.

“Oh, my God, Fred!” Fred is the manager, and Julie screams for him, alarming the other cashiers and customers within earshot. “Fred! Somebody quick, get Fred!” Julie rushes into the break room and turns Ally over. She isn’t unconscious.

She’s laughing. And crying. Call it hysterical.

“What, baby? What is it? Are you all right?” Julie cradles Ally’s head. Fred wheels into the room, pale and sweaty, eyes wide.

“What? What is it? Oh, Ally.” Fred pokes his head out the door and shouts, “Someone please call 9-1-1.”

All Ally can do is laugh and cry and stutter. “Look!” She says it over and over until Fred finally understands what she is saying. He takes the newspaper and the lottery ticket from Ally’s sweaty hands. He squints at the numbers and his face falls in complete disbelief. He shakes his head and reads them again. And again. And then he whoops and laughs. He gets down on the floor and hugs Ally and Julie. “She won! She won! Hot damn, she did it!”

Doug and a couple of other cashiers filter into the room. Someone tells them what’s happening.

Though no one can see, I’m jumping up and down. High fives all around!

“That retard won the lottery?” Doug asks, looking like he just swallowed something particularly nasty.

I resist the urge to smack that little douche bag. (Excuse my language; I’m excited!)

Fred struggles to his feet and pulls out his cell phone. He dials Lois’s number and tells her to get to the store right away. After he hangs up, he realizes that Lois probably thinks something is wrong with Ally, there’s been some emergency. Ooops. He doesn’t call her back, though—he’s too excited. She’ll be there in a minute, anyway.

The paramedics beat Lois by seven minutes. When they show up, Fred launches into hysterics. “I’m sorry, I called you guys before I realized why my employee was freaking out. She just won the lottery! I’m sorry guys.” They are good-natured enough and take off without charging anyone a dime. They were just down the block getting a coffee from Starbucks, anyway.

Lois is a complete wreck when she arrives. She looks quite green when she appears in the break room doorway. But, once she sees Ally sitting at the table with a broad smile on her face, she is visibly relieved. She walks over toward Ally. Fred throws his arm around her shoulders and tells her to have a seat, because she’ll need one.

Lois sits next to Ally and Fred gives her the ticket and the paper.

The paramedics should not have left.

Lois faints and falls on the floor.

Ally won three hundred and fourteen million dollars.

Woo-hoo! Let’s get this party started!

9. Eleutherophobia /
ē-looˈ-ther-ə-fōˈ-bē-ə
/
fear of freedom

O
nce the absolute shock
wears off, the Forman family heads to Baltimore to claim the prize at the Maryland Lottery’s headquarters. Earl got as far as the Elizabeth Bridge (which is not far at all) before Lois is hit with “that feeling.”

“Ally, did you bring your Social Security card?” she asks. Ally has her skull plugged up with her iPod ear buds, of course, so she can’t hear a thing Lois says. Kevin elbows her in the shoulder.

“Ow! Wh-wh-what was that…for, pig?”

Kevin plucks out Ally’s ear bud. “Mom’s talking to you, snotface.”

“Did you bring your Social Security card?” Lois repeats.

“Yeah, it’s…it’s in my purse,” Ally says, pulling her ear bud back from Kevin.

“Can you just check to make sure?” Lois asks.

Ally hauls her enormous purse off the car’s floor and opens it up. She pulls out a fat black folder, stuffed with CDs (no one knows why, since the iPod replaced her Discman years ago), a thick paperback copy of some vampire novel, a handful of sanitary napkins, pens, pencils, a wrestling magazine, a small wire-bound notebook with a puppy on the cover…

“Christ, you got the Lost Ark in there? You’re as bad as mom,” Kevin says, pawing through her stuff. “Hey, how about my old retainer? I thought I lost it under the fridge, but now I’m not so sure.”

Ally ignores him and opens her wallet.

“I don’t ha…have it,” she wails. “Dad, we have to go back!”

Lois sighs. Right again. “It is what it is,” she says under her breath. And Ally thinks she could live on her own? Ha. Lois thinks they’d better hire a big full-time staff for the new group home.

Earl turns them around and they get the document.

On their way to Baltimore, the Formans all dream their separate dreams of wealth and luxury. Earl dreams of buying a local sports bar, while Kevin fantasizes about taking his garage band on a world tour to end all tours. Lois—practical, frugal Lois; Lois who is in charge of all things, everywhere, decides the money will finance the Cool People’s Group Home and the remainder of the money will be put into a trust to maintain the home for the rest of the kids’ lives.

No one considers the fact that Ally won the money, or that she might have her own ideas on how she wants to spend it.

Then, there is the cash option versus the annuity payout issue. Of course, Lois thinks it would be prudent to have the money paid out as an annuity. It works out to more than twelve million dollars per year for twenty-six years, before taxes. That would maintain a Cool People’s group home forever, with cash left over. Ally, of course, wants all the money, now. If she opts for the cash payout, she’ll get approximately two hundred and thirty-six million dollars. The family discusses this as they approach Baltimore. No final decisions are made. Not officially, anyway.

Have I mentioned Lois’s dominance and need for control? Perhaps, however, I hardly think it could be emphasized enough in light of what happens in the lottery office.

“Mom, I’m taking it a-a-all, now.” Ally’s face glows red, her eyes narrow to slits.

The young woman who works in the lottery office snaps her gum as she looks back and forth between Lois and Ally. You’d think she is watching a tennis match—or maybe a game of chess, since the banter is not all that vigorous. I lean on the credenza behind her and am shocked to see that she’s got some serious pornography going on her computer.

I’m not really shocked. Actually, I’m used to stuff like this. People do all kinds of weird stuff that you’d never even guess. You never know what lurks in the desperate hearts of humans.

But I know. Call it my disappointment.

Lois respects her daughter, of course, but they are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. And Ally is…well, Ally is developmentally delayed. Lois hates herself for thinking that, but it is the truth. There are some issues that Ally just could not be trusted to handle appropriately, and what to do with two hundred and thirty-six million dollars is one of them.

“Ally,” Lois says through gritted teeth, “you’ll get twelve million dollars every year for twenty-six years if you do the annuity.” She tries to speak gently, but she fails miserably.

Ally’s one-word crossed-armed reply: “No.”

If Lois does not diffuse the situation, she will light the full-on oppositional behavior fuse, and the family will be stuck in this lottery office for hours, if not days. She tries to be logical. Okay, what harm could it do to get one huge lump-sum? What is Ally going to do? Buy four thousand CDs and a dozen magazine subscriptions, maybe a new computer and some books? She pulls in a breath deeper than any she’s ever taken in her entire life. She thinks her lungs might catch on the tips of her ribs and pop like balloons. Okay, let her have the money. We’ll get some kind of investment specialist to help us decide where to keep the money, where we can earn interest off of it, after Ally buys a
Twilight
lunchbox or whatever. Nothing to get worked up over.

I whisper in her ear then; ask her if she is sure.

“Of course I’m sure. It’s okay, I’m a logical person,” she says with an irritated huff. Everyone looks at her, including the gum-chewing clerk. “What?” Lois asks everyone, looking from face to face.

“Who are you talking to?” Earl looks at her as though she might not be all right.

Realizing no one in the room had addressed her, she wonders herself to whom she’d been talking. She needs a drink. Maybe a nice glass of wine to relax her. No more of that boxed crap, either. They can afford the good stuff now. Now she’ll have to buy a corkscrew. No, wait, she thinks she has one in the cake box on the dining room table. “No one, Earl. I wasn’t talking to anyone. I was just thinking Ally should take the lump-sum if that’s what she wants.”

Earl, Kevin, and Ally all look at her as if she’d just sprouted another head.

Lois smiles at Ally. It is what it is.

It’s a crocodile smile, fraught with peril.

Ally steps over to her mother and wraps her arms around her. She is so happy. For the moment. The gum-chewing porno clerk rolls her eyes and gets out a giant novelty check. She fills it out with a fat Sharpie.

Then, the dreaded tax issue pops up. Maryland grabs six percent, while the U.S. government machine gobbles another twenty-five percent. That news is broken to Ally in IRS-ese after the gum-chewer had presented her with her over-sized check, just before Ally had her picture taken about forty times while people showered her with balloons and confetti. As flashbulbs explode in her eyes, Ally tries to do some math in her head. Math has never been her best subject, but she knows the jackpot is three hundred and fourteen million, and that’s what her giant check says, but a man in a shiny suit keeps telling her that she is going to get way less than that.

Stupid taxes. Her father had tried to explain taxation to her when she started working at the grocery store. She thought they were tremendously unfair. Call her “normal” in that regard. She does not like the idea of having to pay taxes on something she won fair and square. When Lois sees the wheels spinning in Ally’s head as she holds her enormous check, she calculates the time they have before Ally melts down.

Oddly enough, the melt down never materializes.

Ally’s too happy about her mom letting her take the lump sum, taxes or no taxes.

The family feasts on the stereotypically predictable lobster and champagne at a swank restaurant in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor before making the drive home. Ally has grilled cheese, fries, and Pepsi, but that is haute cuisine to her developmentally delayed palate. The celebratory feeling inherent in her meal is the same.

“So, Ally,” Kevin says, “What’s it feel like to be a multi-millionaire?” He speaks around a half-chewed lump of lobster tail, butter running down his chin in a fat oily string. He gestures for the waiter to refill his champagne flute. He is genuinely happy for his sister, whom he’d always felt more than a little sorry for. He also secretly hopes she’ll slip him a mil or two so he can get his own place and go on that tour with his band. A million dollars is nothing to them now. That is quite a concept to wrap your head around.

Ally smiles. She feels happier than she’s ever felt in her whole life. Except for maybe the time Jason had taken her to their high school prom, surprising her by showing up at her house in a stretch limousine. She wishes Jason was there, at the restaurant, with her. But, she also wishes the celebratory dinner, with just her family all doting on her, would last forever.

I whisper to her that nothing lasts, that she has work to do.

The slightest bit of apprehension pokes at her, dimpling the bubble of elation that envelopes her. She is not entirely sure she heard me.

“It feels pretty awesome,” she says, smiling over her cola-filled crystal goblet. Lois doesn’t allow Ally to drink alcohol, even though she is over twenty-one. She’d allowed it only once, and Ally had gotten so sick that she had thrown up on her bed, ruining an expensive quilt. Lois declared that was the last dance with the devil for Ally. Ally had never asked for another drink, in any case. She remembers the episode particularly vividly and has no desire to relive it.

“What are you going to do with the money?” Kevin asks through his gluttony. The restaurant seems to go silent around them, waiting for her answer. Ally feels her family’s eyes on her. She loves the attention, but it makes her face feel hot and she can feel her thoughts getting jumbled in her head even before they can tumble out of her mouth in a series of sticky syllables. Her breath catches and hitches before she speaks.

“I’m going to-to-to gi-give…it to Stry-Stryker Nash,” she stutters, grinning at her own brilliance.

Kevin’s mouth falls open, revealing a revolting grey mess of finely ground seafood.

Earl’s fork freezes half-way to his mouth, plopping a lump of crab cake in his napkin-devoid lap.

Lois looks as though someone has slapped her.

Saving Stryker has been all that Ally has thought about ever since she’d read those winning lottery numbers. She would resurrect his career, thereby restoring her own happiness and banishing the miasma of depression that has plagued her since the day he lost his job. Of course, she couldn’t articulate the last link in that chain of thought, so her family views giving all that money to a washed-up broken-down pro wrestler as a half-baked and horrendous idea. While Kevin and Earl fantasized about mansions and world tours and flash cars, and Lois assumed the money would go toward the group home and idyllic future that she and her friends wanted for their children, Ally had other ideas.

Lois should have known better than to make such an assumption.

* * *

“I bet I’ll get to go in the locker room after matches,” Ally says from the backseat, brushing Race Car Driver Barbie’s hair.

“You just want to see his schlong,” Kevin says, poking her with his elbow. “You know it’s all shriveled and tiny from all the steroids he takes.”

“Kevin,” Lois huffs from the passenger seat, “we don’t need to talk about that.” She is in no mood for childish bickering. As Earl guides the Volvo through the Pennsylvania night, she ponders the legalities of Ally being solely responsible for all that money. She is an adult, but Lois wonders if Ally’s limited mental capacity would somehow entitle her to some form of financial guardianship or something, something to protect Ally from doing something stupid with her hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Uh-uh, don’t be gross. I want to be a diva manager,” Ally says to Kevin, fluffing her hair and batting her eyelashes.

Lois calls their lawyer the second they get home, the one who had helped her and Earl draft their wills. It’s late, but she thinks this is important enough to warrant an emergency call. Ally heads to her room to e-mail Jason while Kevin and Earl settle themselves into the garbage on the couch in front of the soon-to-be-replaced television. (Earl has had his eye on one of those super-skinny LCD jobs. He doesn’t know how he’ll fit it into this pigpen of a family room yet, but he’ll find a way.)

“Hi, Tony,” Lois says into the telephone. “This is Lois Forman… I’m sorry to call so late, but we kind of have a situation here.” She speaks in little more than a whisper so her family won’t hear. “Well, my daughter, Ally, has come into some money. I mean, a LOT of money.” Not even Lois could conceptualize the amount. She tries, but she is conservative by nature. “She won the lottery.”

Tony Clifton had been drifting off to sleep when the phone rang, but the word “lottery” jolts him like three pots of coffee with an espresso chaser. He bolts up in his bed and fumbles for the lamp. “Jesus,” he says to Lois. He listens as Lois reminds him of her daughter’s Down syndrome.

“I, um,” Lois feels guilty, having such a sly conversation with a lawyer in the middle of the night, “I wonder if there’s anything I can do to keep her from…from blowing the money, you know?”

“How much money are we talking about?”

She tells him.

“Jesus.”

“So, can I be appointed her custodian or something?”