Lucky(32)

Lucky’s heart sank a little as she looked around. It wasn’t just that it was dingy. There was no privacy here, and as she inched closer to adulthood, she was craving it.

“Did you leave the corkscrew at home?” she heard someone shout a few boats over.

Home. Her father went out to the deck; she opened her backpack and began lining the shelf in the kitchen with her books. She put the last one on the shelf and reached deeper into the bag. Her father poked his head in the door and she zipped the backpack shut, fast. “Sun’s setting,” he said. “It’s really pretty. A little chilly, though. Grab a sweater.”

“I’ll be there in a minute.” She put the backpack on one of the beds but didn’t unpack anything else.

When she stepped outside, he turned to her. “Hey, kiddo? You can have the room to yourself. I’ll just sleep on the kitchen bench, or out on deck when it gets warmer. You’re a young woman. I know you need a little privacy.”

“It’s okay,” Lucky said.

“No, it isn’t. Let me do this for you.”

“Dad, it’s okay.”

He said nothing more, just looked out at the San Francisco Bay. “Maybe this could be it,” he eventually said. The water was silver now, the sky above it a moody blue, streaked with garish pink. Houseboats lined the bay, hulking together in colorful clusters. Lucky looked down into the waves lapping against the side of the boat and thought she saw a sea lion swim by, grinning at her for a slip of a moment before diving down. She smelled grilled meat, and heard quiet laughter a few boats down. Maybe this could be it…

“It’s not exactly the dream house I always promised you. But it’s nice, isn’t it?”

“It’s very nice, Dad.”

A sailboat edged past them and docked. She heard a child call out, “Mom!”

Why are my eyes so green, and why is my hair so red? Who is my mother? Where is my mother? Lucky asked herself these questions all the time, but she never voiced them aloud anymore because her father didn’t answer her. Lucky would see mothers and daughters out in the world and understand that not always, but sometimes and really quite often, a mother was a soft, safe, beautiful thing. She didn’t have that. And she ached for it.

She thought of the stolen items in the bottom of her backpack: a Discman, a trendy watch, some dangly earrings. Why had she hidden them from her father? He knew she stole; he didn’t care. But these things felt like they were only hers. She didn’t want him to see who she really wanted to be.

She was hiding something else from him, too. But it was time to reveal it.

““I know I haven’t been in school for years, since we were living with… when we were in Bellevue,” Lucky began. “But I’ve been studying. I’ve kept up. I want to find out if it’s been good enough. So I want to take my high school equivalency—and then, if I do well, I want to take the SAT. And then… I want to apply to college.”

Her father nodded slowly. He didn’t seem surprised. “You’ve really thought this through.”

“It’s all I think about these days.”

“And I guess what you’re hiding in your backpack is more books.”

“Yes,” she lied.

“You didn’t need to hide this from me. I understand. And it’s fine. I’ll take care of things. You focus on studying.”

“I could still set up a tarot table, down at the wharf. Do that one day a week?”

“Nah, nah. That’s small potatoes. If you’re going to be attending college, I’m going to need some real money. But don’t you worry about it. Like I said, I’ll figure it out.”

She couldn’t believe it had been this easy. She had been sure he would say no, get upset and tell her she couldn’t just resign as his partner. But he didn’t seem bothered. And now she was going to start taking steps, on her own, to be a regular person with a regular life. That meant studying; that meant school. Diplomas and jobs.

Her father turned in a small circle on the tiny deck. “This place feels like it’s full of possibility,” he said.

And for once, Lucky had to agree.



* * *




John got a job at a seafood restaurant called the Sandbar, an iconic spot perched over an area of the beach littered with oyster shells glittering like broken and discarded treasure. He said his name was Johnny Starr, that he had wanted to be an actor, once—easy to believe, with his good looks, which never frayed at the edges the way his clothes did. He and his daughter, Alaina, had moved here from L.A. for a quieter life after a favorite uncle died and left him the boat.

It was still the low season, but the restaurant had a steady clientele of executives and local politicians. There was money to be made, John told Lucky, and as far as Lucky could tell all he meant was tips. He was working at a real job. She would sit on the deck of their boat, layered in sweaters, and study, and he’d go off to work. Maybe he had been right. Maybe this was it. Their home.

When she looked back on this time later, it was as one of the happiest in her life.

Her father would come home at night with bags of leftover food from the restaurant—mostly sandwiches, omelets, fries, and salads, but sometimes a prawn, a crab cake, a pile of steamed Manila clams hidden beneath a leaf of butter lettuce, or a decadent pan-seared scallop atop a tangle of pasta. He’d count his tips while they ate, then hide the money in a lockbox he kept in the berth of the boat. She knew it wasn’t going to be enough to pay for college tuition, though.