Fortunate Son

“If you put your clothes outside the door I’ll wash ’em,” she added. “Come on, turnip. Let’s leave Lucky to wash up an’ rest.”

He hadn’t taken a bath since the days he lived with Monique and Lily in that one-room apartment on Hooper.

Thomas turned on the water and took off his clothes. He was about to step into the tub when he remembered Monique’s offer to clean his soiled pants and shirt. So he went to the front door of his hut and placed the clothes outside in a neat pile. On his way back to the bath, he saw someone moving in the room and he jumped — a natural reflex for a small boy among so many predators in the juvenile criminal system.

But there was no one there. What he had seen was his own reflection in the full-length mirror that hung from the bathroom door.

Thomas couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his naked image in a mirror. He knew that it had been years before, when he lived with Eric and Ahn and his mother.

Thomas was still short among boys his age. At his last visit to the infirmary he’d been told he was five foot five. He was slender and lopsided because of his shorter left leg. His face too had its abnormalities — a twice-broken nose, three scars, and a network of lines around his eyes from wincing at the light. There was the crater of flesh in the center of his chest from being shot in the drug bust, and then the various wounds he’d received in the street and at the facility. Thomas saw that his arms were long and that his hands were strong like Harold’s. His ribs were visible, and his skin was near-black, with ashen patches here and there.

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Wa l t e r M o s l e y

Thomas moved close to the silvered glass and stared deeply into his own eyes. Something about what he saw made him think that those eyes had something to teach him. He touched the mirror, outlined the contours of the face with his fingers.

He kissed the cold image of his own lips and placed his hands on top of his head in surrender to a fate not of his own design.

Th omas cam e to stay at Monique’s house at the beginning of summer. In the morning Thomas would walk Lily to the day-care center where she spent from nine to noon playing with other children and getting exercise.

It was a seven-block walk to the day-care center at Compton Elementary School. On the way, Lily was full of questions and declarations.

“I wanna be a bird when I grow up,” she said to Thomas one morning.

“What kinda bird?”

“A hummingbird or a dragonfly.”

“And where would you go, little bird?” he asked.

“I’d fly to the North Pole to see Santa Claus, and I’d fly to Disneyland right over the fence so I wouldn’t have to pay all that money that Harold don’t wanna throw away.”

“That’a be fun,” Thomas said.

He loved those walks with Lily. When he was in the facility he used to think about her and wonder if they’d ever see each other again.

“Why they call you Lucky, Lucky?” Lily asked. “Is that your real name?”

“No.”

“What is your real name?”

“Thomas, Tommy.”

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F o r t u n a t e S o n

“Which one is it?”

“Both, really,” Thomas said. “My mother named me Thomas Beerman.”

“Oh. Where would you go if you were a bird, Lucky?”

“I’d fly deep in the woods,” he said without hesitation, “to the tallest tree I could find, and then I’d sit on the very highest branch and look out over the forest until it became the sea.”

“And what would you look for?” the girl asked.

“What I’m always looking for.”

“What’s that?”

“My mother.”

L ate r that we e k , when Lily was explaining to Thomas how she made cookies in her lightbulb-powered play oven, the topic again turned to names.

“How come if your real name is Thomas or Tommy do they call you Lucky?” Lily asked.

“Your Uncle Bruno named me that,” he said. “It was the first day we met and I got to go stay at the nurse’s office, and he thought that was lucky.”

“Was it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe if it happened to Bruno it would be.

But I’m not very lucky at all. Really my name is kinda like a joke — they call me Lucky because I’m not lucky at all.”

“How come?”

“I don’t know. I think I was born like that. I fall down and lose things. Other people have a nice life, like you with your mother and Harold who love you. And others just end up on the street like me.”

“Could you die from not bein’ lucky?” she asked, worry filling her large brown eyes.

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Wa l t e r M o s l e y

“I don’t think so,” Thomas said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that. The main thing about being unlucky is that bad things happen to you and you feel bad. If you died, other people would feel bad, and then they would be unlucky.”

H arol d j u st d i dn ’t like Thomas; most of the time the plumber ignored his houseguest, even when he sat down to dinner with the family. After the first few weeks Thomas started eating in his room at night. He didn’t mind Harold’s cold shoulder, but the big plumber would also fight with his wife and adopted daughter if Thomas was there.