ponytail and her thick bangs and thinking that she was the prettiest woman in the world.
“You look like TV,” I told her. “Like I Dream of Jeannie.”
She winked at me. Just like Jeannie would have.
I had a paper bag in my hand. That was my only job, to hold on to that paper bag and keep it shut.
We strolled along the plaza sidewalk, stopping at each window, peeking past the reflections into the shops. Sam dawdled, his jaws working, cheek muscles scrunched into the left side of his face. Marlene was still my mother, but Sam was playing my uncle now, my mother’s brother. Sam loved to play a mentally retarded guy he called Farmer Lug. He loved spazzing the muscles in his face as if he had no control. He used to say, “If my face don’t hurt afterward, I didn’t do it right.”
My mother and I were looking at a pair of Buster Browns in a shoe store when she turned her head. I followed her gaze to a bald man in a green sport coat who was walking in our direction. I used to wonder how she picked her suckers, but when I got older I knew who she would choose, by the way the guy moved, the way he dressed. This bald guy had a smarty-pants look on his face. He walked along in his green sport coat as though nobody in the world could look as good in that coat as he did. I felt the tension come into Marlene’s hand. She turned from the shoe-store window and cleared her throat.
“Excuse me,” Marlene said. “Do you know what time it is?”
His eyes slid over my mother’s pantsuit, as if he wanted to swallow her. “Time to get a watch, sweetheart.” He winked and then smiled as he glanced at his own. “It’s twenty past one.”
“Oh shoot. Thank you.”
Marlene called to Sam in a sweet voice and told him that we had better hurry up.
The guy in green gave her another smile before he went on his way.
Pulling me by the hand, Marlene stepped off the curb as if we were heading for the car. I glanced back, looking for my father, and then stopped when he bent down to do up his shoelaces.
Sam let an envelope drop from under his arm and yelled, “What’s this here?” as he picked it up. Gawking into his hands he turned in a circle, looking all around him. The man in green glanced back and paused.
Sam called out to him. “Hey! Mister, is this yours?” Sam opened the envelope. “Holy cow!”
The man turned and took a half-step toward Sam. “Whaddya got, pal?”
“Holyyyy … it’s a million dollars … ha ha.”
The man looked each of us up and down.
“There’s nobody’s name or no pictures,” Sam said, his mouth ticking and twisting.
The faces he made! As if he was made out of Silly Putty. I started to laugh and my mother squeezed my hand.
“Honey, give me that.” Next to Sam now, Marlene took the envelope. She counted the money inside—her lips moving so we could all see the total: three thousand.
The man in the green coat came a little closer. He was ours now: our big green pigeon.
I stayed close to my mother and held on to the paper lunch bag. I remember wondering if they were still alive in there. I brought the bag up to my ear and listened. The brown paper rattled suddenly as bugs batted the insides. I twitched my head away. They were so ugly—flying cockroaches. The thought of them crawling on my skin made me shiver.
“No ID or anything, huh?” the pigeon said, eyeing the money in my mother’s hand.
“Nothing.” Marlene stuffed it back in the envelope, as if the sight of all that cash made her nervous. “Oh, wait. Here’s a little piece of paper. Lucky Lady, 3–5; American Joy 5–7 … No winners. I don’t know what that means.”
“Sounds like a bookie,” the man told her.
“It’s mine,” Sam said and pulled it out of my mother’s hands.
She took the envelope back from Sam. “Come on now, that doesn’t belong to you. We have to find the rightful owner.”
“It’s mine!” Sam stomped. “I found it.” He wrapped his arms around his head, pulling the kind of tantrum I’d have gotten a smack for.
“A bookie,” the man repeated. “Loot he made taking bets. Dog racing, probably.”
Marlene looked dubious.
The man’s gaze dropped to the envelope. “Don’t imagine that’d last too long in a lost and found.”
“I