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Grandma helped herself to the mashed potatoes. “Pip swore by that bottle. He said it brought him luck.”
“How does it work?” Lula wanted to know. “Is it enough to own it? Do you gotta carry it around? Do you have to rub it like a genie bottle?”
“I don’t know exactly,” Grandma said. “I never saw Pip use it.” She looked over at me. “Didn’t it come with instructions?”
“No.”
“Bummer,” Grandma said.
“The bottle is a bunch of horse pucky,” my father said. “Pip was a nut. He didn’t know enough to come in out of the rain.”
“What about when he won $10,000 in the lottery?” Grandma asked. “How do you explain that?”
“Dumb luck,” my father said.
“Exactly!” Grandma said. “It was the lucky bottle.”
“What about taking a leak in a thunderstorm and electrocuting yourself?” my father said. “Was that lucky?”
“Probably he didn’t have the bottle with him,” Grandma said.
“What happened to my pot roast?” Lula asked.
“You ate it,” Grandma said.
Lula stared down at her plate. She looked in her lap and on the floor. “Are you sure I ate it? I don’t remember.”
“I saw you,” Grandma said. “It was the first thing you ate.”
“Do you think eating something counts if you don’t remember?” Lula asked.
No one knew what to say. And my father wasn’t going to touch it.
Lula looked down at her plate. She had a spoonful of mashed potatoes and a pea. “What’s for dessert?” she asked. “It better not be grapes.”
LULA AND I were back in my Jeep, heading for Stark Street to check out Sunflower’s funeral home. It was almost eight o’clock, and the sun was low in the sky. I’d stopped at my apartment to get a sweatshirt, and Lula had insisted we bring the lucky bottle with us.
“Uncle Pip would probably be alive today if he’d taken his bottle with him,” Lula said. “If nothing else, he could have pissed in it instead of on that wire.”
“Not likely,” I said. “I can’t get the stopper out. I think it’s glued in.”
“Let me take a look at that bottle. Maybe I can figure it out.”
I stopped for a light and pulled the bottle out of my big leather purse.
Lula worked at the stopper, but it wouldn’t budge. “You’re right,” she said. “This sucker’s in for good.” She shook the bottle close to her ear. “Don’t hear anything rattling around in it.” She held it up and looked at it in what little light was left. “Can’t see anything in it. The glass is too thick.”
I think luck is a weird thing. It’s hard to tell if you make it or if it just follows you around. And it seems to me it could just as easily be bad luck as good luck. It’s not like it’s a constant ability, like playing the piano or being able to cook a perfect omelet.
I cruised by the funeral home, and we scoped it out. There were several cars parked at the curb, and a clump of older men dressed in suits and ties stood talking by the open front door. Lights were on inside. Melon’s was having a viewing.
I pulled over and parked half a block away. “I’ll wait here, and you go look around,” I said to Lula.
“Why do you get to wait here?” Lula wanted to know. “I’m the one hates dead people. I should be the one to wait here.”
“You can’t wait here. You’re the friend of the deceased.”
“Fine, but I’m not going in alone. You’re gonna have to make yourself blend in. Just tart yourself up some, and everyone’ll think you’re a ’ho come to visit.”
