Jessica
The author, Frances Welty, who lay on the yoga mat next to Jessica, was fast asleep. She wasn’t snoring but Jessica could tell she was asleep by the way she breathed. Jessica considered giving her a gentle nudge with her foot. She’d just missed seeing a falling star.
On reflection, Jessica decided not to bother her. It was the middle of the night. People her age really needed their sleep. If Jessica’s mother had a bad night’s sleep the bags under her eyes made her literally look like something from a horror movie, though she just laughed when Jessica tried to teach her about concealer. It wasn’t necessary to look that bad. It was stupid. If Jessica’s dad left her for his PA, Jessica’s mother would have no-one to blame but herself. Under-eye concealer was invented for a reason.
Jessica rolled her head and looked at Ben on the other side of her. He was staring up at the stars with a glazed expression, as if he were considering those Zen riddles, when really he was probably just counting down the hours until he could get out of here and back behind the wheel of his precious car.
He turned his head and winked at her. It made her heart lift, as if her crush had winked at her in the classroom.
Ben looked back up at the stars and Jessica touched her face with her fingers. She wondered if her skin looked bad without make-up in the moonlight. There had been no time to put on foundation. They were just dragged from their beds. They could have been having sex when that girl came into their bedroom, with just the gentlest knock on their door and without even waiting for them to say, ‘Come in,’ before she marched on in and shone a light in their eyes.
They hadn’t been having sex. Ben had been asleep and Jessica had been lying next to him in the darkness, unable to sleep, missing her phone so badly it felt like she’d had something amputated. When she couldn’t sleep at home she simply picked up her phone and scrolled through Instagram and Pinterest until she got tired.
She looked at her scarlet toenails in the moonlight. If she had her phone with her right now she would have photographed her feet, together with Ben’s feet, and tagged it #starlightmeditation #healthretreat #learningaboutkoans #wejustsawafallingstar #whatisthesoundofonehandclapping.
That last hashtag would have made her look quite intellectual and spiritual, she thought, which was good, because you had to be careful not to come across as superficial on your socials.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that if she didn’t record this moment on her phone then it wasn’t really happening, it didn’t count, it wasn’t real life. She knew that was irrational but she couldn’t help it. She literally felt twitchy without her phone. Obviously she was addicted to it. Still, better than being addicted to heroin, though these days no-one was sure about Ben’s sister’s most recent drug of choice. She liked to ‘mix it up’.
Jessica sometimes wondered if all their problems led back to Ben’s sister. She was always there, a big black cloud in their blue sky. Because, apart from Lucy, honestly, what did they have to worry about? Nothing. They should have been as happy as it was possible to be. Where had they gone wrong?
Jessica had been so careful, right from day one. What was that stupid thing her mother said? ‘Oh, Jessica, darling – this sort of thing can ruin people.’
She said that, all frowny-faced, on what should have been the most spectacular day of Jessica’s life. The day that split her life in two.
It was two years ago now. A Monday evening.
Jessica had come home from work in a hurry because she was going to try to make the 6.30 pm spin class. She rushed into the tiny kitchen with its ugly laminate benchtops to fill her water bottle and there was Ben sitting on the floor, his back up against the dishwasher, his legs splayed, phone held limply in his hand. His face was dead white, his eyes glassy. She got down on the floor next to him, her heart pounding, barely breathing, hardly able to speak. The uppermost thought in her mind was, ‘Who? Who?’ Her first thought was Lucy, of course. Ben’s sister flirted with death on a daily basis. But something told her it wasn’t Lucy. He seemed too shocked, and Lucy’s death was never going to come as a surprise.
He said, ‘Do you remember how Mum sent us that card?’
Jessica’s heart contracted because she thought it must have been his mother who had died, and she loved Ben’s mum.
‘How?’ she said. ‘How did it happen?’ How was it possible that Donna had died? She played tennis twice a week. She was healthier and fitter than Jessica. It was probably the stress over Lucy.
‘You remember the card she sent?’ Ben repeated obliviously. ‘Because we were so upset about the robbery?’
Poor Ben. He was obviously mad with grief and for some reason he was clutching on to this memory.
‘I remember the card,’ she said gently.
It came in the mail. It had a cute puppy on the front with a speech bubble coming out of his mouth, saying, ‘Sorry to hear you’re feeling low,’ and a lottery ticket inside. Donna’s message said, You two deserve some good luck.
Ben said, ‘The ticket won.’
Jessica said, ‘What’s happened to your mum?’
‘Nothing. Mum is fine,’ said Ben. ‘I haven’t told her yet.’
‘You haven’t told her what?’ Jessica’s brain couldn’t seem to keep up with the words she was hearing and she was suddenly angry. ‘Ben. Has anybody died or not?’
Ben smiled. ‘Nobody has died.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Everybody is in perfect health.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Well, good.’ As the adrenaline left her body she was suddenly exhausted. She didn’t think she could do her spin class now.
‘The ticket won. The ticket that Mum gave us after the robbery. That was the lottery office. We won the first division prize. We just won twenty-two million dollars.’
She said tiredly, ‘Don’t be stupid. We did not.’
He turned to look at her, and his eyes were red and watery and fearful. He said, ‘We have.’
If only they’d known in advance: you’re going to win the lottery tomorrow. Then they might have acted like proper lottery winners. But it took a long while for it to feel like a fact. Jessica checked and double-checked the numbers on the internet. She called the lottery office back herself to confirm.
It became more real with each phone call they made to their family and friends, and then they finally started doing the screaming and jumping and crying and laughing expected of lottery winners and invited everyone over to celebrate with the most expensive champagne they could find in the bottle shop.
They toasted those pathetic thieves, because if it wasn’t for the robbery they would never have won the lottery!
Ben’s mother couldn’t get over it. ‘It would never even have crossed my mind to buy you a lottery ticket before! That’s the first lottery ticket I’ve ever bought in my life! I had to ask the lady at the newsagent how it worked!’ She seemed to want to make sure that no-one forgot that she had bought the ticket. She didn’t want a share in the prize (although obviously they ended up giving her money), she just wanted everyone to know of her crucial role in this glorious event.
It was like a better version of their wedding day. Jessica felt special. The centre of attention. She smiled so much her cheeks ached. The money made her instantly more intelligent and beautiful and stylish. People treated her differently because she was different. When she looked at her own face in the bathroom mirror that night, she could already see it: she glowed with money. Instant wealth was like the best facial ever.
But even on that first night, even while Ben and his brothers argued drunkenly over which luxury cars to buy, Jessica could sense Ben’s fear growing.
‘Make sure it doesn’t change us,’ he slurred, just before they fell asleep that night, and Jessica thought, What are you talking about? It’s already changed us!
Then there was Jessica’s mother, who acted as if the win were a catastrophe.
‘You have to be so careful, Jessica,’ she said. ‘This kind of money can send people off the rails.’
It was true that there had been some unexpected difficulties with this new life. Some tricky situations they were still trying to unravel. Friendships they’d lost. One family estrangement. Two family estrangements. No. Three.
Ben’s cousin, who thought they should have paid off his mortgage. They gave him a car. Jessica thought that was generous! Ben liked his cousin, but he barely saw him before the win. In the end, they did pay off his mortgage, but ‘the damage had been done’. For God’s sake.
Jessica’s younger sister. They gave her a million dollars but she kept asking for more, more, more. Ben said, ‘Just give it to her,’ and they did, but then one day Jessica went out to lunch with her and didn’t offer to pay the bill, and now they weren’t talking. Jessica’s heart clenched as she thought about it. She always paid the bill. Always. It was the one time she didn’t and, supposedly, that was unforgivable.
Ben’s stepdad, because Ben’s stepdad was a financial planner and he’d assumed that he’d manage all their finances now that they had finances – but Ben thought his stepdad was an idiot and didn’t want him near their money, so that was awkward. Ben could have kept his opinions about his stepdad a secret forever if it wasn’t for winning the lottery.
And of course, Ben’s sister. How could they give her money? How could they not give her money? Ben and his mother had agonised over what to do. They tried to do it all the right way, the careful way. They set up a trust fund. They never gave her cash, but cash was all she wanted. When they bought her a car she sold it within two weeks. She sold anything they bought her. She screamed ugly words at poor Ben: You rich prick with your fancy car, you won’t even help out your own family. They spent thousands and thousands on expensive rehab programs that Ben’s mother had once dreamed about, assuming those exclusive programs would be the answer, if only they had the money. But once they had the money they found out that those weren’t the answer. It just went on and on. Ben kept thinking there had to be a solution. Jessica knew there was no solution. Lucy didn’t want help.
And it wasn’t just their family who thought Ben and Jessica should give them money. Every day they were contacted by long-lost relatives and friends, and friends of friends, asking for ‘loans’ or a ‘helping hand’ or wanting Ben and Jessica to support their favourite charity, their local school, their kids’ soccer club. Family members they hadn’t seen in years got in touch. Family members they didn’t know existed got in touch. The requests often had a passive-aggressive edge: ‘Ten thousand dollars is probably small change to you but it would mean a huge amount to us.’
‘Just give it to them.’ That was Ben’s constant refrain, but sometimes it got Jessica’s back up. The nerve of these people.
It was bewildering to Jessica that she and Ben fought more about money now that they had an abundance of it. It was impossible to even imagine they’d once felt so upset about the arrival of unexpected bills.
Becoming instantly wealthy was like starting a really stressful, glamorous job for which they had no qualifications or experience, but still, it was a pretty great job. It was hardly something to complain about. There was no need to ruin it, as Ben seemed intent on doing.
She sometimes wondered if Ben regretted winning the money. He told her once that he missed working. ‘Start your own business then,’ she’d said. They could do anything! But he said he couldn’t compete with Pete, his old boss. He was like his sister; he didn’t want a solution to his problems.
He said that he didn’t like their ‘snooty new neighbours’ and Jessica pointed out that they didn’t even know them and offered to invite some of them over for drinks, but Ben looked horrified at the idea. It wasn’t like they’d really known their neighbours back at the old flat. Everyone had worked full-time and kept to themselves.
He enjoyed the luxury holidays they took, but even the travel didn’t truly make him happy. Jessica remembered a night watching the sun set in Santorini. It was incredible, gorgeous, and she’d just bought a stunning bracelet for herself, and she’d looked across at Ben, who was deep in what seemed like profound thought, and she said, ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘Lucy,’ he answered. ‘I remember she used to talk about travelling to the Greek islands.’
It made her want to scream and scream because they could afford to send Lucy to Santorini and put her up at a great hotel, but that wasn’t possible because Lucy preferred to stick needles in her arms. So fine, let her ruin her own life, but why did she have to ruin their lives as well?
The car was the one thing about the lottery win that made him happy. He didn’t really care about any of the other things – not the beautiful house in the best part of Toorak, the concert tickets, the designer labels, the travel. Only the car. His dream car. God, how she hated that car.
Jessica realised with a start that people were standing, straightening their unflattering gowns, suppressing yawns.
She got to her feet and looked at the starry sky one last time, but there were no answers up there.