The Winners Circle (10 page)

“
I know you.” He saw her as she had been: harelip, normal breasts, regular clothes. She was a terrific therapist, top of her class, but she never missed the details that her egghead college mates disregarded. On Christmas Eve, she stuffed little stockings full of candy and toys for the kids in the neighborhood, and when Jacob Johansen caught a cold, she sent homemade pies and chicken soup. She was the most beautiful person he’d known on the inside. He wondered if she hadn’t turned inside out. That transformation was more astounding than anything a plastic surgeon might perform.

“
You’re making this hard on me,” she said.

He appreciated the glint of compassion. He was beginning to think that she’d stowed it away with everything else. “So I’m no good for you any more. Cogdon can do a better job?”

She took his hand in the old way. Her long fingers wrapped over his big hands, hooking over his knuckles. She always set their direction. He was helpless to run against it.

A tear formed in her eye, dangling in the corner. “We have to move on.”

Why, he thought but never said it aloud.

The judge slammed down the gavel, dividing Jerry from Chelsea on paper. Jerry left the courthouse. Frozen rain bounced off the steps like fragments from a shattered windshield. He was numb. Rattlesnake venom coursed through his veins. He felt it, tasted it in his mouth. It was pure poison.

On Tuesday nights, The Winners Circle gathered in room 201B at the Trenton JCC. Jerry studied the new faces. They were millionaire winners too. At the first meeting, he’d counted only five heads, yet by spring, a dozen men and women crowded the room. The place held a constant stink of coffee and donuts, and a haze of cigarette smoke hung in the air like the mist at dawn.

“
Let’s get started.” Dick Leigh led the sessions. The Circle was his brainchild. He was a certified psychologist and one of the first big jackpot winners. He dressed in a Gordon Liddy kind of way: sport coats, turtlenecks, hair increasingly shorter. He claimed to have adopted the style during the trial against his dead wife’s family. “Can we take our seats?”

Tucker, Dick’s bodyguard, assumed his customary position outside the circle of chairs. He leaned against the wall beside the kitchenette counter, digging jellybeans from the pocket of a kelly green windbreaker. The leather strap of his gun holster peeked beneath the nylon zipper. “Coffee’s ready.”

“
Did you use the French roast?” A bald man called over from the chairs. Jerry hadn’t learned his name yet.

“
Yes.” Tucker replied.

“
I brought it back from Provence. I hope everyone likes it.”

“
Smells good.”

“
I found it in a charming cafe by the sea.”

People politely acknowledged the offering.

“
Next time,” he said. “I’ll bring china cups.”

Jerry filled a styrofoam cup, like the others. The Circle broke the monotony in his routine. The company wasn’t bad either. He didn’t have to speak. He needed to have good ears and loads of patience for this crowd. He used to practice those skills with Chelsea, and now the silence at home was killing him.

Tom Veris lingered by the pastry tray, a dusting of powdered sugar on his lips. His sweater bulged at his waistline. “Try the Linzer Tort.”

“
No, thanks.”

“
Donut?”

“
I’m okay.”

“
You never eat the donuts, man. It’s un-American.”

“
I used to bake on Sundays.”

Tom dangled a jellyroll slice in the air, stopping mid-chew. “You did?”

“
I don’t have the patience for the measuring anymore.” Jerry listened to his own words. A man’s typical excuse for being impatient was a lack of time, but for Jerry, time piled up at home like old newspapers, yet he didn’t seem to have the patience for making even a simple meal.

A crumb tumbled from Tom’s mouth and caught on the shelf of his protruding gut. “That’s the beauty of baking. You measure, and it comes out just right every time.”

“
And if you don’t concentrate, you screw up. Tablespoons look like teaspoons, and so on.”

Dick turned from the circle. “Are you men joining us?”

Tom and Jerry returned to their chairs.

Dick checked his notes for an opening quote. He liked American Indian logic. He used to recite the Prayer of Saint Francis—something about giving yourself up to God and the will of things—but people asked Dick to stop. One woman admitted that she had enough money to buy and sell free will.

“
We are all poor because we are all honest,” Dick said. “That was Red Dog, an Oglala Sioux.”

During the minute of silence, Jerry considered the quote. Dick was proud of it. Jerry thought Dick was full of horse manure—stacked higher and deeper than any mound Jerry had plied with a pitchfork.

“
Who wants to start?” Dick searched their faces.

Arlene spoke first. She was a mutable woman with a permanent tan. She smoked Virginia Slims halfway down and stubbed them out with her heel. “Before the lottery, my biggest pay increase came from the Tooth Fairy.”

“
Good place to start,” Dick said. “Expectations.”

“
I went from a quarter to a dollar per tooth in one year. That’s a 400 percent increase.”

Dick held a notepad and pencil at the ready. He wanted to return to the therapy business so bad that he nearly salivated in anticipation of a genuine problem. “How did that make you feel?”

“
Euphoric.”

“
As good as winning the lottery?”

Jerry shut his ears from the conversation. He studied the posters from birthing class upon the wall. The stages of delivery plodded across the yellow plaster in cartoon replication. He imagined how his child with Chelsea might have arrived. Blonde hair and blue eyes, he hoped. His thoughts danced around that place in his mind where he’d promised to never go again.

“
Jerry?” Dick called. “Do you have a comment about that?”

Jerry saw the others staring. How long had he been daydreaming?

“
Why don’t you join the conversation?” Dick had been fighting for weeks to get Jerry involved.

Jerry frowned. Wasn’t showing up enough? He laughed and nodded with the others. He made small talk. Chelsea would be proud. He’d made friends on his own, sort of, if that’s what you called a ragtag group of Richie Rich’s who groped for affirmation and apologizes. “What would you like me to say?”

“
Arlene thinks that the money is a spiritual endowment to the truly deserving.”

Jerry balked at Dick’s conclusion. When did Arlene reach Zen oneness with a pile of cash? She’d been discussing the Tooth Fairy. “You think so?”

“
Look at the odds.” Arlene beamed. “It’s amazing anyone wins.”

“
I guess so.”

“
Don’t you agree? You have a better chance of getting struck by lighting.”

“
Does that mean we’re going to be hit by lighting next?” Jerry heard a few members laugh. He hadn’t meant to be funny.

“
No.” Arlene’s brown glow sank into her styrofoam cup. She lit up another cigarette.

“
I’m sorry. I think it’s dumb luck.”

“
Fine,” Dick interrupted. “Jerry’s a pragmatist.”

“
No, I don’t think I can take it to a higher plane like that. I’m not sure I was ever heading there.” Jerry tried to think where he’d been heading before the lottery. All roads passed through Chelsea, so he shut that part of his brain again, even though it refused to stay closed.

Dick perked up, pencil in hand. “Jerry’s just brought up an interesting point.”

“
What’s that?” Jerry waited for Dick’s next nugget of wisdom.

“
We haven’t examined the pre-lottery emotion. We seem to be dwelling on the after effects. Perhaps if we put them into comparison. Jerry?”

Jerry massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Dick was trying to run a can opener around Jerry’s head again. Jerry wanted no part of it.

Dick scribbled on the paper. “Do you acknowledge the impact that receiving an enormous check had on your life?”

“
I’m still the same person.”

“
Who is that?”

“
Jerry Nearing. Born in Chesterfield, New Jersey.”

“
Really?”

“
I wake up in the same bed every morning, the bed I was in before the lottery.”

“
Do you feel that makes you the same person?”

Jerry stopped talking. He wasn’t the same. He knew that. He drifted from sunrise to sunset. He didn’t work. He no longer cooked elaborate gourmet meals, opting for frozen dinners and takeout sandwiches. For the first time, he failed to live his life. He looked ahead to a time when he might restore things as they were, and every scenario involved Chelsea, at least a reasonable facsimile of her. The Chelsea in his dreams still smiled with that odd lip and strapped her arms across his chest at night. She reorganized his sock drawer on a whim. She curled up beside him after a successful meal and recounted the minutia of her day in gentle sweeping tones. He used to believe he was dreaming about better times then, when in fact he was living life to the fullest.

“
Jerry?” Dick leaned forward in the chair.

Jerry glanced at the door.

“
Jerry?” Dick called. “Are you with us?”

He was angry, as angry as he ever recalled in the past. The entire trip back from the JCC, Jerry cursed and muttered to himself. He tore up his driveway with the Ford, the gravel shooting from his wheels. He left the keys in the ignition and stomped inside the house.

Unsure of his target, he spun his sights around the room. His brain hummed, electric, a wonderful mind-numbing rage. He wanted to tear down a wall.

He sprinted upstairs and threw open the bedroom closet. Chelsea’s abandoned shoes were scattered about the baseboards like discarded betting stubs at a horse track. He gathered them into his arms and tossed them through the window. They plunged down upon the damp evening lawn. A pair of high heels pierced the soil and stuck in the air.

Chelsea’s old clothes hung in odd bunches beside his flannel shirts. He ripped them down. The wire hangers stretched and sprung like bows, shooting into the rear of the closet, recoiling toward his feet. He scooped up a shirt he’d bought for Christmas and a dress she’d found on their honeymoon, and he snatched the framed photo off the bureau. The bulk of it took flight after her shoes. He caught a glimpse of her bright white teeth in the moonlight, as the photo crash-landed and shattered in the dirt.

Jerry stood by the windowsill, shaking, sweating inappropriately for the season and time of day. His hands ached and tensed, and his head screamed for the blood of something that he couldn’t quite make out. He saw the safe in the back of the closet.

The five hundred pound, fireproof, waterproof safe had a double lock and was bolted to the floor. Two months ago, Jerry installed it and filled the top shelf with fifty thousand dollars. ‘Fun money,’ he called it, but he wasn’t having fun, so most of the cash remained inside.

He fisted the bundles of crisp bills still in their wrappers. It was the money—this very money—that had driven Chelsea mad. He hurled the bundles toward the lawn.

Outside, Jerry kicked everything into a circle. He clutched a five-gallon gas can from the shed and a book of matches.

Cortez lay beside the stump used for chopping wood. The black dog kept twenty yards shy of the action, silent, nary a whimper. He propped his snout on his front paws and watched his master. Every animal except man possesses the instinct to stand back from trouble and hold silent.

The pile ignited fast and hot. A mushroom cloud burst into the air, a carbon copy of the nuclear fusion in Jerry’s head. Atoms of thought collided and merged, blowing sky high with the flames and ash. He breathed harder, sensing the heat on his face. He stayed close, compelled to experience the change erupting both inside and out.

He stared through the flames. Snippets of US currency transformed into glowing red parachutes, rising into the air. They lifted up and over the old farmhouse and the deteriorating barn. They flew over the grassy fields and blooming thickets of wild roses. The hundred year oaks drew witness, as did the ancient stars above. Everything must go: the house, the clothes, the truck, the memories of love, the smells and the tastes of it. Purge it all. It’s poison. He needed to cut open a vein and bleed it free.

Jerry placed an ad in the paper, and on a chilly April morning, he kicked open the doors to the contents of his life. People roved throughout his house, hunting for bargains. He stood in the living room and listened to the footfalls of strangers. He didn’t care if they stole his stuff. He wanted it out of sight. He’d decided to reshape his world from the wallet on out.

“
What’s the price for this?” A petite old woman bent over Jerry’s coffee table. She looked down, baring her teeth like an irritated raccoon.