Good Luck (2 page)

It took me five minutes to drive over to the new subdivision where Maisie and her family lived in a small three-bedroom house. All of the houses on Maisie’s street were identical and packed close together in tight, precise rows. I pulled into her driveway, narrowly missing a faded red plastic tricycle lying on its side, and climbed out of my car. My legs felt stiff beneath me, as though my body had aged on the short drive over.

I could hear sounds of chaotic life inside the house while I was still five steps away from the front door. One of the twins was crying, the other was shouting something, and their dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Fang, was yapping loudly over the cacophony. I had to ring the doorbell twice before anyone heard it.

“Lucy!” Maisie said when she finally answered. She was still wearing her pajamas—red floral bottoms and one of Joe’s white V-necked Ts—and already looked exhausted. She hadn’t changed all that much since the first time I saw her. She had the same slim angular body, almost unchanged by puberty and pregnancy, the same short fluff of red-blond hair, the same pretty freckled face. Even though I wasn’t an especially tall woman—five-five in my stocking feet—I always felt like a giantess next to tiny Maisie. Fang sprang out the door from behind her, leaping toward me, his stubby little tail wagging furiously.

“Hi, Maisie. Hey, Fang,” I said faintly. I leaned over to pet the Jack Russell on his head, and he lunged at my hand, licking it in a frenzied display of delight.

Maisie’s smile of greeting quickly faded, and her face quirked into a frown.

“What’s wrong? You look
awful
. Why are you here? Come on, come inside, I’ll get you a coffee,” she said, rattling out the words without pausing for breath.

In what seemed like one motion, Maisie pulled me inside the house, closed the door, and slipped the tote bag off my shoulder. Her house was, as usual, a disaster zone. The debris of family life—toy trains, cars, puzzles, action figures, books, T-shirts, shoes, tissues, Fang’s chew toys—was scattered everywhere. There was a bench along the wall in the hallway, presumably a place for putting on or taking off your shoes, but it was covered in bags, toys, coloring books, and a mega-size package of disposable Pull-Ups, rendering it impossible to sit on.

Maisie steered me back to the light-filled, noisy kitchen at the rear of the house. It, too, was a mess. Several of the white laminate cupboards and drawers were half open, dirty dishes were stacked in the sink, cereal boxes and apple-juice containers were spread across the counters next to a messy stack of old newspapers that hadn’t yet made it into the recycling bin.

The twins were sitting at the table in matching booster chairs, taking turns blowing loud raspberries at each other and laughing raucously. Whatever storm had caused the upset I’d heard while ringing the doorbell had apparently already blown over. The boys had their father’s dark hair and hazel eyes but had inherited their mother’s playful, mischievous personality.

“Gus!” Maisie said sharply.

Gus, too busy horsing around with his brother to pay attention, had knocked over his juice glass. Apple juice puddled on the table and dripped onto the floor.

“Sorry, Mama,” Gus said breezily, while Leo chortled with delight at the mess.

“If you’re done eating, go play in the other room and let Aunt Lucy and I talk,” Maisie said.

The boys only then noticed that I, their honorary aunt (Joe and Maisie were both only children, so I took on the role gladly), was standing there behind their mother. I waved and attempted a smile.

“Hey, Wonder Twins,” I said.

“Aunt Lucy, Aunt Lucy!” they both shrieked. They jumped down from their booster seats and bounced Tigger-like across the kitchen. As they congregated at my feet, words tumbled out of them as they talked over each other in identical high, sweet voices.

“Aunt Lucy, come play with us!”

“Come play trains!”

“You can be Thomas!”

“No, I’m Thomas. She can be Salty.”

“Okay. You can be Salty, Aunt Lucy. I’m James, and James’s tender, and the circus cars, and Percy.”

“I want the circus cars!”

“No! I want them!”

“Mine!”

“Mine!”

“Boys!” Maisie yelled. She pointed toward the living room. “Go. Play. Now.”

The boys exchanged impish grins—as usual, the argument dissipated as quickly as it had erupted—and ran off to the living room, no doubt to hatch a plot that would involve serious injury to the house in some way. The smile I’d contorted my mouth into for the twin’s benefit slid away.

“Sorry about that, hon,” Maisie said. “Now, what was I doing? Oh, right, coffee. Hey…what is it? What’s wrong?”

I hadn’t been able to stem the tears any longer. They began to drip down my cheeks, and my breath seemed stuck in my chest. When I was finally able to inhale, it was shallow and gasping.

“Sit. Over here,” Maisie commanded, taking me by the arm and leading me toward one of the ladder-back kitchen chairs. She sat down beside me and peered intently into my face. “What’s going on? Did you and Elliott break up?”

This question startled me. Why would Maisie’s first thought be that Elliott and I had broken up? He had just moved in with me two months ago, and I thought he might finally be close to proposing. It had taken three years of on-again, off-again dating to drag him to this point, and I was starting to wonder if it was normal to feel victorious—as opposed to purely happy—that I’d managed to finally wrangle a semipermanent commitment out of him.

“No, of course not. Why would you think that?” I asked. My voice was soggy from the tears.

“I’ve never seen you this upset,” Maisie said. “I thought it must be Elliott-related.”

“It’s not. I just lost my job,” I said.

Maisie gasped and covered her mouth with her hands. “But…why? How? I mean…why?”

I wiped my tears off my cheeks with the back of my hands. Maisie quickly handed me a paper napkin, and I blew my nose into it.

“Apparently I sexually propositioned a student.”

“What? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Maisie exploded.

This is why I love Maisie—with no hesitation, no second-guessing, she dismissed the idea out of hand.

As we sat at Maisie’s kitchen table, sticky with spilled juice and festooned with soggy Cheerios, I told her about Matt Forrester and the accusation he’d made against me, and how Dr. Johnson had sided with Matt and his donation-heavy parents over me. The telling of the morning’s events didn’t make it more real for me. In fact, the more I talked about it, the more detached I felt from what had happened. Even my anger, which had been so hot and sharp-edged earlier, now seemed distant. Or maybe it was just that I’d managed to transfer it to Maisie. Because the more I told her, the more furious she became. Her pale skin bloomed red under her freckles, the way it always did when she was feeling a strong emotion, and her lips pinched into such a tight line, it looked like she was holding her breath.

“That little shit,” she finally said when I’d finished. “That horrible little cockroach of a child.”

“Hardly a child. He’s seventeen.”

“He’s a bastard. Okay, here’s what you do: First, you sue him and his asshole parents. Then you sue that godforsaken school.”

Motherhood had not softened Maisie’s lawyerly instincts. Before she had the twins, Maisie was a prosecutor with the state attorney’s office. The job had been a fertile source of anecdotes. Like the time Maisie was in court, prosecuting a burglary. After she finished her opening statement, during which she outlined the pretty much open-and-shut case, the defendant—hulking, tattooed, and nearly three times Maisie’s size—had burst out with an angry “Suck my dick, bitch.” Before the judge and bailiff could even react, Maisie eyed the defendant coolly and retorted, “Thanks for the offer, but you’re really not my type.” Everyone in the courtroom—even the judge—burst out laughing.

“What kind of case would that be? It’s my word against Matt’s. And the school has already made it clear that they’re taking his side.” I shivered suddenly. “You want to know the really creepy thing? If I didn’t know me, and I heard about this on the news—a story about a teacher seducing one of her students—I’d believe it too. What kind of kid makes up a story like that?”

“A really fucked-up kid,” Maisie said. She took an angry gulp of coffee. “So what is his story? Did you ever get a weird feeling about him before?”

“That he’d do something like this? Of course not,” I said.

“What’s he like otherwise? Did you ever get the feeling that he was disturbed? The sort to torture small animals or shoot his parents while they’re asleep?”

“No.” I shook my head definitely. “He’s basically a cartoon of a spoiled rich kid. Strong sense of entitlement, a belief that Daddy’s money can buy him out of anything. Hell, he’s right, it usually does.” I took a sip of coffee. It was awful—bitter and watery. Maisie had always been a terrible cook. She couldn’t even make edible instant macaroni and cheese. I set my mug down and nudged it to one side. “I’ve heard rumors that he’s a bit of a partier.”

“A drinker or a drugger?” Maisie asked.

I shrugged. “I’d guess both.”

“The little shit,” Maisie muttered darkly. “So, what are you going to do now?”

Icy fingers of fear gripped at my heart, and I shivered again. I liked it better when I was in shock. Shock has a nice muffling effect on your feelings.

“I have no idea,” I said. And then the fear really took hold, and it suddenly felt like I’d been ripped open and was falling inside myself into a deep, bottomless hole. “Oh, my
God
. What
am
I going to do?”

Maisie reached out and grabbed my hand. “It will be all right. You’ll be fine.”

“I’ll never be able to teach again. I’m going to have to find another job. A different career. I’m thirty-two years old. I’m too old to start over again.”

Maisie made a
pfft
sound. “You are not too old. People change careers all the time. And a lot of them do it much later in life than you. Think of all the people who’ve been down-sized and suddenly have to become…” Her voice trailed off as she struggled to come up with an example that would prove her point. Suddenly her face brightened. “A masseuse! Like Megan Frost’s husband. Remember? He did something over at Sunrise Bank but then started going to massage school at night. He ended up opening that day spa downtown.”

“But I don’t want to be a masseuse!” I said. My voice was shrill. “You know I hate touching strangers! It’s why I didn’t go to medical school!”

“I thought you didn’t go to medical school because the sight of blood makes you feel faint,” Maisie said. She had a maddening ability to remember everything anyone had ever said to her. “Don’t you remember when we were at track practice in tenth grade, and Kurt Shaw fell and got a rock lodged in his forehead? The blood was just pouring out of him—really, it was an insane amount of blood for a relatively minor injury, although I guess head wounds do bleed a lot. Anyway. You took one look at him and went all woozy. Coach Miller ended up sending you to the nurse’s office.”

I shuddered at the memory. “Can we please not talk about this now?”

“You brought it up.”

“No, I didn’t. I said I didn’t go to medical school because I don’t like touching people. Although, from where I’m currently sitting, I have to say: really bad move. Because if I was a doctor right now, I wouldn’t be an out-of-work teacher with a sexual-harassment charge hanging over my head,” I said miserably.

Maisie patted my hand consolingly.

“I guess it’s a good thing you and Elliott are living together. He’ll be able to help you out financially, right?” Maisie said this as though it was a small point in Elliott’s favor.

Maisie was the only person I knew who didn’t instantly like Elliott, who was an all-around nice guy and, in many ways, the perfect boyfriend. He’s kind, easygoing, faithful, hygienic, gainfully employed. The sort of man little old ladies ask to reach a can of soup off the top shelf at the grocery store and neighbors call when they need to move a piece of heavy furniture.

But Maisie had held a grudge against Elliott for the past two years, ever since he broke up with me on my thirtieth birthday. Unfortunately, he chose to do this an hour before the party Maisie and Joe were throwing for me was due to start, which meant that when I turned up at my own birthday party, I was alone and weeping. Even though we’d later gotten back together, Maisie had never really fully forgiven him.

I’d tried to lobby Maisie on Elliott’s behalf. Yes, the birthday-breakup trauma had been an especially low point in our relationship. I wouldn’t deny that, nor would Elliott, who had apologized profusely for it. He’d just that day missed out on scoring an exclusive listing for a waterfront mansion—Elliott was a realtor—and that was after learning his sales had been down twenty percent the month before. The combination of these two setbacks—along with his belief that my turning thirty would cause my biological clock to start clanging and turn me into a desperate baby-obsessed cliché—had propelled him straight into an old-fashioned panic attack. Suddenly he wasn’t just freaking out about how he was going to make next month’s payment on his condo; he was also worrying about how he’d pay for a wedding, the mortgage on a three-bedroom ranch house near a good elementary school, and the lease on a minivan with side air bags. His parents’ rocky relationship followed by an ugly divorce when he was ten had scarred him, he’d explained, and made him leery of commitment.

“It’s fine,” I had assured Elliott the day after the doomed birthday party, as he sat on my couch, clutching my hand in his. His thin face was pale and miserable, and his shoulders were hunched forward. “I don’t even want to get engaged right now. Lots of people put off marriage and children until their mid-thirties. There’s no rush.”

And Elliott had thanked me for being so understanding, had told me he didn’t deserve me, and then had asked me if there was any way I’d take him back. Without hesitating, I said yes. Although now, two years later, I was starting to think that It Was Time. Time to move forward—to get engaged, to get married, and, yes, to have children, before my ovaries crapped out. I’d been arrogant enough to think that I was in control of my biological clock. But lately, whenever I saw a baby strapped into a carrier at the grocery store or spent time with Maisie’s boys, I felt a pang that was getting harder and harder to ignore. When I’d brought this up to Elliott, he seemed open to the idea.