Find one thing. Just one. Something small. Something that’s just yours. And put your name on it.
I took a pen off the counter.
A ballpoint. Blue. With HIGHWAY 41 GAS & GO printed on the side.
And I wrote my name.
Not Patty Dunn.
Not Mrs. Gary Dunn.
My whole name. The one my mother gave me.
Patricia Ann Whitmire Dunn.
Whitmire. My maiden name. My mother’s name. My daddy’s name. The name I hadn’t written since my wedding day.
I looked at it.
Then I did one more thing.
Under my signature, in small letters, I wrote:
Week 1. For Mama.
Mr. Mehta was watching.
He didn’t say anything.
He just nodded.
Then I asked him something.
“Mr. Mehta,” I said. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Of course, Mrs. Dunn.”
“Would you initial it?” I said. “Next to my name. With the date. So somebody else knows I signed it. Here. At the counter. The day I bought it.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
He didn’t ask why.
He picked up the pen.
Next to my signature, he wrote:
A.M. — 3/24/06.
“Thank you,” I said.
I put the ticket in my purse.
I went home.
I stuck it on the refrigerator.
Under a magnet.
A pineapple.
Yellow and green. Plastic. Kind of ugly. My mother bought it at a gift shop in Tybee Island in 1987. On the only vacation she and my daddy ever took. It had been on her refrigerator for nineteen years.
I took it from her kitchen the day after the funeral.
The ticket didn’t win.
I didn’t expect it to.
That wasn’t the point.
Every Friday for nineteen years, I bought one ticket.
Same gas station. Same counter. Same Mr. Mehta. Same numbers.
3. 11. 22. 16. 14.
Two dollars out of the weekly grocery budget. Out of Gary’s two hundred.
I’d fill up the car. I’d go inside. Mr. Mehta would have the ticket ready before I got to the counter. He’d memorized the numbers by the second month.
I’d turn it over.
I’d sign the back.
Patricia Ann Whitmire Dunn.
And underneath, every week, the number.
Week 2.
Week 3.
Week 52.
Week 104.
And Mr. Mehta would initial it. With the date.
Every single time.
For nineteen years.
Some weeks, I wrote something else. Under the number.
Not always. Just sometimes. When something happened.
Week 87. Robby graduated.
Week 211. Tessa passed her nursing boards.
Week 340. Kyle enlisted. I’m scared.
Week 412. June’s second heart surgery. She made it.
Week 506. First grandbaby. Lily Rose. 7 lbs 4 oz.
Some weeks, I wrote things I didn’t tell anybody.
Week 133. Gary forgot our anniversary again.
Week 298. Gary said I was getting fat. In front of his brother.
Week 445. Gary went to Biloxi with the Moose Lodge for four days. Didn’t tell me until he was in the truck.
Week 617. Found a receipt in Gary’s jacket. Olive Garden. Chattanooga. Two entrees. I wasn’t there.
I’d stick the ticket under the pineapple.
I’d check the numbers on Saturday morning. With my coffee. In the newspaper. The Daily Citizen-News.
Nothing.
Never anything.
Once, in 2014, three numbers came up. Four dollars. I used it to buy two more tickets. Neither one won.
On Saturday afternoon, I’d take the ticket down from the pineapple.
I’d put it in a shoebox.
In the back of my closet. Behind my winter boots. Where Gary never looked.
Nineteen years.
Nine hundred and eighty-eight tickets.
Every one signed.
Every one numbered.
Every one initialed by Arjun Mehta.
Gary made fun of me.
Every single week.
