Cindy Chung (28:18)
Winner I hadn't returned the keys because the landlord hadn't returned my security deposit. That's how I remember it, though it'd been a long time since I'd moved out. I came across the keys again when I was rifling through a desk drawer one day, looking for something. Batteries, maybe. There were three in the set, one for the building entrance, another for the mailbox, and the last for the apartment unit itself. I would not have recognized the keys if not for the daisy keychain. I closed the drawer again, not wanting to touch them. The deposit didn't matter by this point. A week passed, then another, before I thought to return them. It was the most karmically clean solution, but maybe I just wanted to go back. Where I live and where I used to live aren't that far apart. The distance is less than a subway stop. If you took the train, you'd overshoot it. I don't remember the last time I was there. There is no time like the present is something my therapist tells me, although I guess that's a common adage. It was midday on a Friday. I put on my shoes and took a walk. My old neighborhood has become gentrified like anywhere else. The assisted living facilities and retirement homes, outdated even when I lived there, have been converted into luxury condos and rentals. The liquor store was still in business, repainted with a selfie bait mural of animals punching each other in a rainbow boxing ring. Inside, the inventory had been completely revised. There were shelves of celebrity tequilas and in the fridge section, wellness drinks replace the old mystic juices and Coke varieties, those thick Goya nectars. I took a bottle of mushroom infused water that was inexplicably $7.99, and when I went to check out, I saw that they had still not taken the banner down. There was a photo of me on it shaking hands with the owner as we both looked at the camera, my old bangs, my greasy skin. Winning lottery tickets sold here. $60 million. 60 million is Britney Spears estimated net worth, I read somewhere, maybe in an article about myself winning the Powerball. The amount was inconceivable to me, but for Britney Spears it somehow didn't seem enough. I hoped she would never have to work again if she didn't want to. I myself have not worked in years. There's a surcharge of 3%, the cashier said. Our policy for credit card purchases is under 10 bucks. Is that okay? It was unlikely that he would recognize me from the banner. The girl in the picture had ascended into lottery winner heaven. She was zip lining through a Colombian jungle or Birkin shopping in Paris. Or she had joined the fate of most lottery winners and fallen into destitution. When you are struck by the lightning of extreme fortune, there is no middle path forward, only the path of extremes. It's fine, thanks. Suddenly I wanted to get out of there. There's a feeling I have sometimes that, having narrowly escaped my life, I'm about to be found out. I brace for a blow that never comes. I don't know why. Being lucky isn't a crime. He rang up the water. You want a bag for this? He gestured toward a stack of black plastic bags with a wry smile. It's seven cents, but I won't charge you. No thanks. I took my water and backed away. I half expected the old apartment building to be raised and replaced with new construction, but like the liquor store, it was still there, different and only slightly recognizable. Walking down the block, I almost passed its new brick facade. The building had been repainted a neutral Dilbert gray that covered up its confusing fleshy yellow shade. Someone had planted hedges along the front. Only up close could you tell that they were plastic. I couldn't find the rental office where the landlord used to sit at his desk watching baseball on a small, goofy tv. Discarded fast food wrappers everywhere. When you went in to ask about repairs, he would only half listen, his eyes darting between you and the game. We called him Mr. B. We didn't know his surname, but it was just as well. He had inherited his family property and had mismanaged it into shambles. A management firm had mounted a sign with its contact details near the entryway. Mr. B had finally sold the building, I assumed, and the new owner had contracted the firm to maintain it. When I lived here, we heard rumors that Mr. B was going to sell it to a developer and retire, A matter of when rather than if. I thought to call the listed firm to return the keys, but the idea of leaving them with an anonymous company based out in the suburbs held no meaning. It was unlikely that the missing keys had been registered in the sale and transfer of the property. I stood on the sidewalk, gathering neck sweat. It had gotten hot. I had come out all this way, and I had no one to be accountable to. At the building entrance, I tried the keys. The door opened easily. I stepped inside. The musty smell of that foyer, the mail room, the hallways, was so familiar. Marine air freshener and faint secondhand smoke. Technically, I was trespassing, but it didn't feel like a crime. You can't trespass into what's familiar. I walked up the stairs to the second floor. It was a small studio at the end of the hallway, next to the janitor's closet. From inside, I always seemed to hear the elevator chiming in the night and early morning. I lived in that place through Most of my 20s, working at an insurance brokerage firm. The entire time, my supervisor was what we would call abusive and toxic. Now, when I wasn't at the office working, I was at home, blanked out, sleeping or watching tv. Those are the only two modes. The door had been repainted gray, a lighter shade than the building's exterior. All the doors had been. I recognized the dent along the bottom of my old door from having kicked it in anger. One night when I tried the key, the door opened just as easily as the one downstairs. Someone lived there, it looked like, but no one was home that night, lying in bed beside my husband, I couldn't quite slip into sleep. One trick to relaxing, my therapist advised, is envisioning a familiar space. You imagine yourself walking around, taking inventory of every detail. As my husband's breathing deepened into little snores, I thought back to my old studio that hours earlier I had broken into. The unit, had seen some updates and renovations, a development probably affected by the management firm. It was tidy and pleasant, if a bit impersonal, with its soft, muted tones. Ochre curtains, heather sheets, the framed photos of natural wonders, a cactus palm, a seaside cliff could have been stock images. The occupant had organized the space more effectively than I had. I respected that they had opted for a twin sized bed, which allowed for a desk and sofa within the 300 square foot space. The American choice would have been to sink a space like this with an extravagantly large mattress, so that all other functions eating, watching tv, sweet surfing online would have to be conducted from where one slept. It is not choosing the big things that is fundamentally American, but the blind insistence on grandiosity despite the reality of circumstances. It's not living beyond your means. It's the unceasing, headless insistence on the best, whatever that is. The biggest compliment my supervisor used to give me was, you're no American. It meant that I had a work ethic adapted to what is necessary, that I was not blind to circumstances. My supervisor often told me this in the evenings when I was staying late at the office. At her encouragement, or rather at her demand, it was typical for me to stay two, even three hours after everyone else left before returning to the studio to collapse into my small, hard bed. My supervisor was born and raised in the country of my parents. I wondered if that was why she had hired me. At times I conflated her approval with that of my parents. That may be the reason I stayed at the job for as long as I did, the only full time job I have ever held in my life. I thought her toughness, her demanding nature, would improve me. Not being American, according to her, was also being able to take suffering. It literally took winning the lottery to quit that job, and even then I stayed another month to ensure a smooth transition. You'll never make it, my supervisor said to me routinely, casually, at unexpected moments. Only toward the end did I question what it was. I didn't have ambitions to climb to the top of the company, and I wasn't committed to the field of insurance brokerage, which was ugly and corrupt, like all things health care related in the United States. What did it mean when I told my supervisor I had won the lottery? She was confused at first. We were in her office. She wanted me to explain how the Powerball system worked, something I didn't totally understand myself. She was both solemn and overzealously congratulatory, but I was tasked with working through her confusion. With her her continual, now incessant questioning began to feel exaggerated, pointed. Any good fortune could not have occurred unless she had personally verified it. Trapped. I had planned to give notice, but it would have to wait until another time. When she asked, why you? I said, I don't know. The next day was Saturday. Montessori was closed. We did family time. Some configuration of stroller walk, coffee shop, farmer's market and playground, maybe a brunch restaurant. A nice middle class family doing nice middle class activities. Then we returned home where my son took his nap while I played video games. My husband read the news in the other room. It began to rain in the afternoon. We took our son to the library in the children's area. I read him a picture book about a zoo filled with sad animals, which turned out to be about climate change. We were interrupted by an eerie snake synchronized beep, a flash flood warning on everyone's phones. When we prepared to leave, our kid protested with whimpers, then screams. We had to drag him out. He darted into the parking lot, splashing into a puddle before my husband grabbed him, wet and wailing. On the drive back, my husband fumed. We're doing it wrong, he said, echoing his mother's stance, which is that it is unnatural for our lives to revolve around entertaining a two year old. Whatever, I said. Drive to the toy store. Our son had been placed in the NICU after his birth, and for a while it was very touch and go. His thighs, the only puffins of fat left, were punctured with needles and IVs. I kept a notebook, a narrative of his condition, because I did not believe that the system, a scattering of nurses and doctors tending to multiple patients, would be able to keep it straight. I stood next to him reciting the narrative, making sure they didn't miss any details. At one point the doctor said they had done all they could. It's up to him now. Only at this crucial moment did they recognize his agency. It was winter. I looked around, trying to find something that would tip the scales in favor of living the paper cups of coffee, the linoleum tile flooring, the bouquet of spray carnations that had come questionably with a white condolences balloon My husband had taken the balloon out of the room and was looking for somewhere to throw it away. He had been gone for 20 minutes. Outside the window, the hospital parking lot was covered in a porridge of gray snow and slush. A cluster of coats waited at the bus station across the street. Street. There was nothing I could convincingly point to, but I spoke to my son through the plastic. I said that from his vantage point, the world might not seem like an inviting place, but if he was willing to wait, strange, spectacular things happened every day. Like his birth, for one, and everything leading up to it. I said that the chances of winning the lottery were extremely slim, but it had happened, and the money was what made his conception possible, the fertility treatments and so on. If anything, the extremely narrow odds leading to his existence meant that he was supposed to be here, that he deserved to be here. So I hoped that he would stay. I was surprised by this line of reasoning as I spoke, but his little face, closed up like an old fist, seemed to relax at the sound of my voice. Finally I said that if he could keep going so we could leave this hospital, I would use the lottery winnings to make his life great. The toy store was closing early when we got there due to the extreme weather, but the clerk opened it and I managed to grab a Duplo set along with a mock smartphone that played musical notes and something called a Papa Balls Push and Pop bulldozer. At the clerk's recommendation, rushing out into the rain, I put the shopping bag into the backseat instead of the trunk, which was a mistake. Wait to open the boxes when we get home, my husband instructed our son. Don't make a mess, I chimed in, getting into the passenger seat. You can hold the toys, but don't open them yet. In the rear view mirror, we watched helplessly as he tore into the boxes. He was surprisingly strong, with fast growing nails. I could barely keep up with trimming.
