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Wheel of Fortune
It's September in the late 1950s. A cold, damp Sunday afternoon near the San Francisco Bay. A green and gold banner announces, "The Annual San Mateo County Fair and Floral Fiesta." Felicia, a woman in her early thirties, and her nine-year-old son Roger are making their way across the fairgrounds.
"Let's go on that." Roger is pointing at the Ferris wheel. Felicia glances upward, sees the seats rock back and forth, tells him she's afraid. On her left, thousands of white lights flash "Crafts 20 Great Shows," and Felicia shivers. Carnivals and circus clowns bring contrived thrills and forced laughter. Felicia can't remember when or where she learned this. Possibly another truism from Sister Mary Seraphia's third grade.
"Then I'll go. You watch from here." He starts toward the ticket booth.
She tells him about a woman who stood up on a wheel when it stopped. Roger turns back. She has his attention.
Felicia embellishes the tale, hoping to discourage him. "Then it started to move, and she was . . . decapitated."
Roger is taking a dollar from his Hopalong Cassidy wallet, money left over from a recent visit with his dad. He stops, appears to consider her story more seriously. "What's decapitated?"
"Her head fell off, that's what."
"Seriously?" He sees her smile, and they laugh.
Felicia backs down for the moment, thinking he knows how to get to her. "Maybe later you can go on it. Okay?"
Roger jams the money into his pocket, then turns and reluctantly follows her into a bright green Quonset hut. Inside the Fiesta Building, the smell of gardenias, roses, and carnations mingle with the fresh scent of pine.
Felicia stops to admire a miniature garden with a waterfall, a winding stream, and a tiny footbridge. The exhibit reminds her of childhood picnics in the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park.
The outing is Felicia's idea, an extravagance she knows they can't afford. Now watching her son trudge along silently beside her, she wonders if it was a mistake. If she should be home like other moms. Her hair tied back in a red-and-white-checkered bandana, bending over a greasy stove, a can of EZ-Off in a gloved hand. Later mixing a batch of molasses cookies in a brown bowl with a white rim.
Roger interrupts her thoughts to tell her he's hungry. She buys him a hot dog and a Coke, herself a cup of coffee. He doesn't think it's a healthy meal and says so.
Felicia is aware she often sacrifices nutrition for simplicity. Kraft Italian Dinners were a favorite. Spaghetti, a packet of herbs, an envelope of grated Parmesan. All in one box. A can of tomato paste, and she was in business.
She asks Roger if he wishes they were more like other families, she like other mothers, but he remains silent. He'd rather be with his dad and she knows it. Greg, Felicia's ex, has two Sundays a month. He called the night before to cancel. A major tournament, and he had to caddy. "You tell Roger. He'll understand." Felicia knew he wouldn't.
"Roger," she says, "let's pretend Daddy's home waiting for us, stretched out on the couch watching a game."
"Golf, probably," Roger says. Short and succinct. Like father, like Roger. "Can we really afford this?" Roger, the responsible adult to Felicia's spendthrift child.
Felicia considers the stack of overdue bills on the kitchen table: a pink notice from the Pacific Gas and Electric; a note from Bernice demanding a partial rent payment by Friday. She thinks if Greg sends his child support on time, they'll make it through the month.
"We'll be all right," she says, putting her arm around his shoulder, drawing him close.
Roger pulls away, reminds her they had to take bottles back for the deposit to make last night's dinner.
"Relax, everything will work out." Felicia wonders why he can't enjoy the small moments. Always an eye to the future. A born worrier like his father. "Remember he might worry if we stay out too late."
"Who's worried?" asks Roger.
"Your father, of course."
Roger shakes his head, rolls his eyes and walks on. He complains of the cold, and Felicia tries to ignore him. She wonders again about other moms, imagines them lining kitchen cupboards with yellow oilcloth and alphabetizing spice racks. She could be home now working on the bright, blue material with the sailboats and kites. She'd started cutting the pattern for his shirt last March. Roger was so excited then. Felicia thinks by the time it's finished, he will have outgrown it.
Roger says the flowers make his nose run. Felicia sees him wipe his nose on his sleeve, then sends him to the rest room. When he returns, she decides to skip the remaining displays. They move on to the rear of the building and pass a small trailer that reminds her of the funny Lucy-Desi film.
"Trailer brakes first. Remember, Roger?" She has a talent for memorizing movie dialogue, but as her son so often points out, there isn't much of a market for that.
Roger says he's tired and plops into a chair by a table of travel brochures. "At least Daddy lets me relax once in a while."
Felicia frowns, picks up a pamphlet that describes the joys of a home on wheels. She reasons one of these could put an end to complaining landlords and rent worries. She imagines another mom adding up figures, recording them in a ledger. Maybe if she kept to a budget, they might manage a down payment. Someday.
A woman asks Roger if he'd like a travel poster. She offers him one, and he takes it and walks away.
"What do you say, Roger?" Felicia's face reddens.
He unrolls the poster. "This is black and white. I wanted one like that." He points to a colorful Costa Rican beach scene taped to the wall.
"Roger!"
"That's all right," the woman says. "We only have the one in color. Sometimes black and white is more interesting."
"Not to me." Roger hands the poster back to the woman who makes the corners of her mouth go down and then returns to the display table.
Felicia glances at the poster. She pictures her son in the bright blue shirt, herself in a red beach hat and an orange-and-yellow-striped poncho. She remembers reading how inexpensive Central America is. Maybe, one day . . . She doesn't finish the thought. Roger is heading for the exit, and she has to run to keep up with him.
Outside, Felicia and Roger find themselves at the funhouse entrance. A large mechanical clown tips its hat and bows in her direction.
Carnivals and circus clowns bring contrived thrills and forced laughter.
Felicia's heartbeat quickens. Her breathing becomes irregular, and her throat feels dry like the whipped pink confection sold in the tented stalls.
The clown laughs, an exaggeration of human sounds, like a wire being pulled through a tin can.
They turn a corner and enter a narrow passage. The floor is covered with sawdust. Flaming wall torches partially illuminate a series of painted canvas scenes. Roger stops to examine a man with his head caught in a lion's mouth. He asks to see the ten-armed octopus. Felicia shakes her head, dragging him along, her concentration focused on a clickety-clack sound, a tangible beacon somewhere in the distance.
At the corridor's end, Felicia lifts a canvas flap. Flashes of daylight define a clearing with a cluster of stalls. On her right, people gather around a spinning wheel of fortune.
Felicia and Roger move closer and watch as the circular motion comes to rest on the number three. For some reason, Felicia is thinking, two's company, three's a crowd.
Roger points to the back of a man standing by the wheel. "Look, Mom. Daddy's come for us after all." He thinks his joke is hysterical, and his laughter echoes that of the clown.
Felicia pulls a handkerchief from her pocket and wipes her face. Roger sees her hands shake and stops laughing.
The man turns toward her.
She studies the thinning, brownish-blond hair, the hand resting under the chin. Felicia is thinking there's something familiar when a crowd erupts from the funhouse. She grabs Roger's arm and allows the forward momentum to carry them off, away from the sandy-haired man who returns his attention to the revolving wheel.
Minutes later, back at the fair's entrance, Roger is saying something, pointing to the Ferris wheel. His words enter her consciousness in fragments. "Don't worry . . . safe up there . . . ." He goes to a booth and buys a ring of red tickets.
A man pulls a lever and the rotation stops.
Roger leads his mother to an empty seat. A steel bar comes down and cages them in, lifting them high above the fair.
Felicia makes a ridiculous association. The Blessed Virgin ascending into Heaven.
The familiar notes from a circus calliope interrupt her thoughts, and Felicia drifts back to a small coastal town in Northern California. Roger is barely two, and she has left him with her parents in Redwood City. The nursing home is near a boardwalk with amusement rides and an arcade. A muffled tune from a glass-enclosed carousel mingles with shrieks and screams as the roller coaster dips and swerves along its rickety wooden path. The salt air seeps through an open window and stings her eyes. Late June and it's seventy degrees, yet the bleached sheets feel icy against her skin.
Felicia is not herself and won't be for some time. The doctor told her she'd lost the baby, but she doesn't believe him. She knows her child is alive, hidden somewhere, waiting to be given to some other woman. Not one who had an affair and destroyed her marriage.
A sandy-haired man is beside her bed, telling her he's sorry, saying he can't be around illness. Not ever.
Felicia wonders if the negative ions can leap from her brain into his. Then the man is gone, and she says to the door as it swings back in place, "What would you have done if I'd died?"
"Go live with Daddy." Roger's voice breaks through her reflection. She is calmer now, her breathing more relaxed. The wheel continues to revolve. Felicia shifts her gaze from the crowds below to a traffic jam on Bayshore Freeway, to bits of reddish-blue sky, to nothing in particular.
Roger reaches out and grips her hand tightly. "But it won t happen, Mom. Promise?"
Felicia pulls him to her, brushing his cheek with her lips. "No, it won't happen. Not ever."
The movement stops. A woman and a boy, about Roger's age, take a seat on the wheel. Felicia looks down from the top of the world and considers a mother and son, perhaps like them, together on a Sunday outing.
In the distance, the lights filter through a veil of early evening fog. Soon they will be home, and after her son's bedtime, she will find her sewing kit and finish the blue shirt. If she has to work all night. Whatever it takes.
"Wheel of Fortune" has also appeared in Artisan and Pebble Lake Review
Copyright by Paul Alan Fahey
