Jackpot! Read online

  I sat at my desk fuming. If only I could talk to my mother right now! Boy, would I let her have it. When Frankie got back from pampering herself, I planned on sitting her down and explaining exactly how I felt. If I loved my mother, I needed to make her understand how wrong I thought she was in her decision to force something both Danny and I clearly weren’t ready for. And she needed to know the price we were paying for her selfishness.

  I also wanted to ask my mother why she really did it, because in my heart I felt it was completely out of character. I needed a better explanation than the one Frankie had given me. I needed better justification than, “I have waited long enough for you two to grow up. It’s time for you to realize what’s important in life.” But talking to Frankie would have to wait until she got back. And that was frustrating. I had so much anger and rage pumping through my veins, and a serious need to vent.

  “You’re on in ten minutes,” Richard shouted as he walked by my office.

  Ten minutes till show time. Ten minutes to turn anger and bitterness into sweet and bubbly. Or not…

  I realized something right then. If I needed to vent, who better to listen than the general public?

  Chapter 36

  Walking into the studio, I felt like a prisoner on death row, walking to her execution. As angry and belligerent as I felt about so many things, I was really scared to see Drew. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since he left my place the day before. Now, not only did I have to be in the same room with him, but he would be looking at me through a big lens. In six minutes from now, he’d be shooting me, ironically something he probably wanted to do with a gun instead of a camera.

  Once on stage, the nervousness intensified. Drew’s face was hidden behind the camera and other than asking me to hold still so he could get a good focus, he didn’t say anything to me. Not even hi. He was cold and distant, acting like a stranger. Richard and the audio guy were giving each other looks, and I could tell they sensed the tension.

  “Three…two…” said Drew. Then he held up his index finger to indicate “one” silently. It was show time.

  “Good Afternoon, and welcome to WGB, the official station for the Illinois Lottery…” I was acting like my usual sugary, uplifting self, but normalcy was an effort, given the fact that every time I looked into the camera I was forced to look at the guy behind it, forced to look at a person with whom I’d just spent the best weeks of my life, and forced to look at a guy who didn’t seem like he was going to forgive me anytime soon.

  “There you have it,” I said with a smile, wrapping things up and still acting like the Jamie Jacobson everyone knew, “Once again your pick three is one nine two…the pick four…six six four three.” Then came the big shock. “Let’s be honest, though. Most likely, none of you will win tonight, but if you do happen to win, I have something to say to you. God help you!”

  I could feel Richard’s jaw drop, but still, I continued, “My mother won the lottery and you know where it got me? It ruined my life. Her money ruined my life. You want to be happy? Work hard and try to be a good person. And by the way, for those of you who think I’m evil, I’m not! You know what’s evil? Money! For WGB, I’m Jamie Jacobson.”

  “We’re clear,” yelled Richard.

  My microphone was immediately turned down and the credits rolled, as I stood there for a couple of seconds. Then we went to black.

  “What the fuck, Jamie?” Richard shouted.

  “Sorry,” I said, my tone calm and soft, “I quit.” Then I put the mic down and walked off the stage. As I walked out of the studio with my head down, I could hear people asking me questions like, “Are you okay?” and saying things like, “Jamie, wait…” I never looked at Drew. Instead, I headed straight to my office, grabbed my purse and exited WGB for the last time. I’d had it. I was done with this place.

  As soon as I was out the door, I knew exactly where I was headed first. There was somewhere I felt compelled to go. I didn’t know exactly why or from where the urgency came, I just knew I needed to get there immediately.

  I had to stop home to grab the key I needed to get into the door of the place where I was going. When I passed through my lobby, my doorman, Rick stopped me.

  “Hey Jamie, what’s going on with you?” he asked. Obviously he had just seen the lottery on the little TV that sat on his desk.

  “Nothing, Rick. Everything’s fine. I just have somewhere to go and I’m sort of in a hurry.”

  “Okay, girl,” he replied.

  Once upstairs, I desperately searched my kitchen drawers and cabinets for a key I hadn’t used in ages. I finally found it in a coffee mug, in the cabinet above the fridge. It was definitely the right key, because attached to it was a very old plastic key chain with the name Dr. Thomas Schneider, DDS on it. Underneath the dentist’s name was his address and phone number. Doctor Schneider was the dentist Ma worked with for almost twenty years. The key on the key-chain would open the door to Frankie’s condo. So, with key in hand, I dashed out the door, down the elevator and through the lobby again.

  “Are you sure everything’s cool with you?” asked Rick, as I ran by him.

  “Yeah!” I shouted, racing out the door.

  I hailed a cab. The ride seemed like it took forever. I knew what I was doing was completely crazy, but I felt like I couldn’t rest until I saw what I needed to see. I wasn’t going to my mother’s place to see my mother, since obviously, she wasn’t there. Frankie was still on her cruise and wasn’t coming home for a few more days. I was going there for something else.

  My heart began to pound when the cab started getting close. Then, I felt like I was in a movie because the cab driver accidentally drove past Frankie’s building and was heading toward a different address. By the time I told him to stop, we were a block away from Ma’s building. Instead of telling him to go back to the right place, I just paid him, got out of the cab, and then ran as fast as I could back to the correct address. I felt very overly dramatic, but in my defense, I was an obsessed woman on a mission, and I couldn’t wait another minute to get into Ma’s condo and see the object that now occupied my mind so fanatically.

  I ran up the two flights of stairs and put the key into 3G. It was a funny thought using Frankie’s key. In all the years Ma had lived in this place, not once had I ever been here without her. I walked in and headed straight for the third bedroom. Hesitating only for a second, I took a deep breath and opened the door. I looked around my mother’s new nursery and instantly my eyes filled with tears.

  I was in awe of its purity and beauty. The walls were painted mint green, and under the white chair rail there were stripes of powder blue, light yellow, pale pink and the same mint green. A few stenciled sheep were scattered on the walls and on the wood floor was a circular crème area rug with little sheep on the edges. Two pieces of white furniture were all that stood in the room; a changing table and a crib that had a mint green sheet and a bumper pad with white, mint green and pale yellow sheep on it. Inside the crib were several stuffed farm animals, all in pastel colors. A couple tears ran down my cheeks. I reached in and took out a stuffed giraffe. I looked at it for a second and smiled. Then I knelt down on the rug, hugged my little stuffed friend and began to sob.

  ‘This damned crib!’ I thought, ‘This damned room! Why did my mother do this to me?’ Frankie’s new money hadn’t bought her any pregnancies, but it had done something to me. Without meaning to, her whole scheme had caused me to fall in love and had given me the urge to have a child.

  Over and over again, John had made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of being a parent. Drew had said to me just a couple nights earlier, “You know you’d be a great mother,” and it had stuck. He was right! I would be a great mother. Drew loved me and he believed in me. And now I finally believed in myself. But at the same time, Drew wasn’t mine anymore. It was unbearably upsetting to think that the person who had changed me had given up on me. How bittersweet it was.

  I cried and cried for what seemed like a long tim
e. Yes, I was crying about losing Drew, but there was more. I also felt a tremendous amount of relief. I was thankful that I was finally able to realize what I wanted, and that I was worthy of it. And now I knew in my heart that there was a chance for me to have kids someday, with or without Drew.

  So I was divorced and carrying around a little baggage. Big deal. I deserved to be happy. I deserved to have a husband who loved me. Not John. I deserved to have a husband I loved. Not Max. I didn’t have to settle. John’s constant unkind and unsupportive words were now fading, Drew’s and Danny’s and my mother’s all taking their place. At this moment, I felt more at peace than I had in so long.

  I stood up, wiped my tears and placed the animal back in the crib. Everything was going to be okay, no matter how things turned out. I knew that now. I smiled at my good thoughts and my newfound attitude, feeling like I’d just been reborn, given a second chance, perhaps. I exhaled the breath I’d been holding in my whole life. Relaxed and ready to begin a new chapter, I gave the room one last look and turned around to head out. That’s the moment I heard the front door open.

  Chapter 37

  Upon hearing someone entering the condo, I immediately thought I was about to be killed by a burglar. The person was going to find me in the way of his heist, and he would shoot me dead so I wouldn’t be able to identify him. As he sat in his jail cell years later, convicted of another crime, he would regret what he’d done to me. But it wouldn’t make a difference because I’d be dead. And what a shame that this was going to occur now, just when I realized my potential for true happiness in life.

  My heart was beating out of my chest while I tiptoed out of the bedroom, made my way into the main area, and crouched behind an armchair. When I saw who had just come through the door, heart pounding panic changed to confusion. A heavyset black woman wearing a nurse’s uniform quietly closed the door behind her. She was carrying a little white bag. Her presence instantly made me feel safe, calm, and comfortable. She was hardly a thief with a loose trigger finger.

  I stood up. “Who are you?” I asked.

  The woman jumped and gasped so hard, she dropped the bag she was holding. She recovered quickly, though, kneeling down, picking it up and responding in a calm voice. “I’m sorry. You startled me,” she said, “My name is Rose. Are you…Jamie?”

  Now the wheels were spinning in my head and I knew something was very wrong. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Instead of answering me, she walked toward Frankie’s bedroom. I practically jumped across the apartment to meet her there. When Rose opened the bedroom door, I was so shocked I literally had to put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming. There was my mother, lying in bed asleep. Rose gently closed the door and put her arm around me.

  “Is she okay?” I whispered, my voice shaking.

  “She’s going to be.”

  A second later, I heard a frail voice coming from the bedroom. “Jamie, is that you?”

  I opened the door and walked over to my mother’s bed.

  “Come sit on the bed,” she whispered.

  Suddenly, I was frightened. Ma’s voice sounded so old.

  “Ma, what’s wrong with you?” I asked, sitting down on the bed, “Please tell me.”

  “I have breast cancer,” Frankie said, “My surgery was last week. I came home from the hospital yesterday.”

  “She got an excellent report back from the doctor today,” interrupted Rose, “They got it all. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Jacobson?”

  “Yes, Rose.”

  “Oh, Ma…” I said, my eyes rapidly filling with tears.

  She took my hand. “It’s okay. Really. I’m going to be fine.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” I asked.

  “I didn’t want you to worry,” she said softly.

  I hated myself for doing it, but I burst into tears. I knew Ma didn’t want that, but I couldn’t help it. I was devastated. My mother had cancer! Apparently, she’d been having radiation the past few weeks to shrink the tumor, and then she had an operation. And she went through it alone! All I could do was bawl, which I did for a few minutes.

  “I’ll go make some tea,” said Rose, leaving the room.

  “I’ll let you cry for a minute or two more, and then that’s enough,” said Ma, “There’s nothing to cry about. I’m good. I’m going to recover.”

  When I was finally able to stop blubbering, I looked at my frail mother, lying in her bed and asked, “Is that why you did all this? I mean, the bribing and the contract?”

  Frankie slowly nodded. “All I want before I die is…”

  I interrupted, “I know…grandchildren. I’m sorry, Ma. We couldn’t do it. Danny and I, we both tried, but…”

  “It’s okay. I was wrong to do that to you. I felt desperate, though. Being sick made me have some pretty strange thoughts, and one of them was that I didn’t want to die without having grandchildren.”

  I wiped my eyes with my forearm. “Ma, I was wrong too. About a lot of things. I was so bitter and so angry all the time. And I was afraid. Afraid to let myself be happy. I want to have babies. I’m sure of that now.”

  “It’s okay, even if you never do. I’ll always love you,” she said, a tear rolling down her cheek.

  I wiped it off. “I feel like I should thank you, Ma, for giving me the contract.”

  “Why?”

  “Because through this crazy time of trying to find someone to have a baby with, I fell in love. And so did Danny.”

  Upon hearing both her children had fallen in love, Ma, Miss Dramatic, began to cry, which made me cry again. We both sobbed until Rose came back with a tray with three cups of tea on it. She served us and then served herself. And then she sat on a chair next to the bed and demanded to know what was going on.

  Ma began telling her about the night she gave us the contract. What was so funny was that Rose began to laugh. Actually, she was howling. For some reason, she found our situation hysterically funny, which made me realize how right I was to believe it would make a great movie.

  The three of us sat there talking and laughing about it for a long time, and I told them all about Danny’s and my quest for fertility. And even though lots of the stories were extremely entertaining, what we did made me sad because we used people. And I was truly ashamed of that.

  “I want to hear about the man you love,” Ma exclaimed.

  I put my head down because I couldn’t even look at my mother. As if she didn’t have enough going on, now she had to hear about my broken heart? By telling her that both Danny and I were in love, I’d teased her. Ma was probably expecting to hear wedding bells. Now I’d have to tell her how the people we loved currently hated our guts.

  “What is it?” she asked, lifting up my chin to get a look at my eyes.

  “Ma, I do love him. It’s just…”

  “Oh my God, he’s married!”

  I giggled. It was good to see Miss Drama Queen getting back to normal. “No Ma, he’s not married.”

  “What then?” she urged.

  “He doesn’t love me anymore. I told him the truth about the contract, and how I began the relationship under false pretenses, and he just doesn’t believe I actually fell in love with him. He told me I was evil.”

  “That bastard!” shouted Rose.

  Ma gave me a big grin. “You, evil?” she giggled, “You, my sweet girl, are anything but evil. You’re filled with so much good, and you have so much love to give. And you’re finally sharing it with someone. I can tell by the look on your face. It’s the same enthusiastic, warmhearted expression I see when I talk about your father and I. You’ve finally let someone love you the way you should be loved.”

  “I know, but my heart’s breaking. He won’t even look at me.”

  Frankie sat up in bed and said with determination, “If you tell him how you really feel, you can get him back.”

  “I don’t know. He’s pretty angry.”

  “He’s also a man,” Rose piped in.

&
nbsp; “Go get him back,” Ma said.

  “Hey, Ma?” I said with apprehension in my voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “He’s not Jewish.”

  “Huh,” said Frankie with a smile, “Any chance he would convert?”

  I cracked up and then I hugged my mother tight.

  A few minutes later, she was ready for another nap. She told Rose to fill me in on more of the details of her condition, so the two of us went into the living room and sat on the couch, and Rose educated me on Frankie’s illness. She had stage two cancer, and the doctors were very optimistic that with the radiation, the surgery, and future chemotherapy she would fully recover. Rose gave me the names and phone numbers of all of Ma’s doctors so I could call them with the hundreds of questions I had.

  Frankie had been so stubborn, so hard-headed in not wanting us to know she was sick, that she had carried the burden all by herself. I wondered how she must have felt telling me she was going on a vacation and seeing the world, when in reality she was having radiation treatments and then a mastectomy. She had told me she had a limousine picking her up to take her to the airport, when in truth, the limo was taking her to the hospital.

  It all began to make sense. I now knew exactly why she put the demands she did on Danny and I. I wondered how I could have doubted my own mother’s character. Shouldn’t I have realized something was really wrong? All this time, I’d kept saying how selfish Ma was, how she wanted grand-children just because all her friends had them. Now I realized it was because Frankie felt like she was running out of time.

  While Ma slept and Rose watched the news, I decided it was time to call my brother.

  Chapter 38

  I answered my cell, “Hey, I’m really glad you called. I need your help. I’m in a flower shop. What color roses should I send? All red or half red half pink?”