If Wishing Made It So Read online

  At that moment they reached the casino floor. Corrine made a beeline toward a bank of slot machines labeled SLINGO PROGRESSIVE. Flashing lights above the slots announced JACKPOT $3,405.00.

  ‘‘We’re not going to hang out here long, are we?’’ Hildy asked in a pleading tone.

  ‘‘No, not long. Unless I get a good machine,’’ Corrine said, sitting down and inserting her casino players’ club card with a practiced hand.

  Hildy slid into the seat of the machine next to her. Her voice turned a little whiny. ‘‘I thought you wanted to spend some time with me on the beach.’’

  ‘‘With my cellulite? Puh-leeze,’’ Corrine said. She peered at Hildy over the top of her glasses. ‘‘Besides, it’s only eleven o’clock in the morning, and all I really want to do today is see your summer rental and talk. I bet you’re just moping around all the time. I cannot believe you have not found one eligible bachelor on the entire Jersey shore.’’

  ‘‘I didn’t say there weren’t any on the ‘entire Jersey shore.’ I said the only people I’ve met in Ship Bottom are teenage surfers, old guys fishing for striped bass, and happy families buying hot dogs and Cokes at Woodies Drive-In up on the boulevard. Ship Bottom is residential; you know, quiet. It’s not a party town. Besides, I’m not looking for romance. I came here to think about my future, decide if I need a career change, that kind of thing… .’’

  Corrine knew her little sister Hildy better than Hildy did herself; she was sure of it. She looked at that sad little face and said, ‘‘That is utter and total bull, and you know it. You’re dying to find a nice guy. We need to come up with a plan to improve your social life.’’ She gave Hildy an appraising look and frowned as she noted the faded light blue hoodie, baggy capri pants, and beat-up flip-flops.

  ‘‘Your wardrobe can use some help too. You need to be wearing something cute and sexy.’’

  Hildy’s cheeks flared red. She knew Corrine was right, but she didn’t have ‘‘cute and sexy’’ clothes. She had staid suits and skirts for teaching, old clothes like these for hanging around the house, and not much else.

  Corrine shook her head at her sister’s attire. ‘‘I’ll figure something out. Maybe we can go shopping— oh, don’t start protesting. I know, you’re on a budget. My treat. Remember, I married well.’’ She smiled at that. Her marriage to Jack had been a love match when he didn’t have a dime, but he had worked hard and brought home a lot of bacon. ‘‘Just give me a couple of hours here first.’’

  Corrine turned away then, already sliding the bonus coupon from the bus excursion into the money slot.

  ‘‘A couple of hours? What am I going to do for all that time? I don’t gamble.’’ Hildy’s eyes roved dispiritedly around the huge room filled with clanging machines, gaudy lights, and little old ladies playing the slots.

  ‘‘Risk twenty bucks, why don’t you? Come on, sweetie, maybe you’ll get lucky.’’ Corrine’s index finger poised over the MAX BET button. She pushed down. The wheels inside the slot machine spun. Corrine’s rapt face was lit by the garish red and yellow lights of the Slingo marquee. She forgot Hildy existed.

  ‘‘Oh, okay.’’ Hildy sighed and stowed her canvas tote bag that said SAVE THE WOLVES on it between her feet. She then tried to set her coffee cup in the narrow space between the two machines. It hit something solid as she attempted to slide it back from the edge.

  Hildy peered into the dim space and spotted a brownish bottle in the way. Yuck, she thought, somebody left their beer. She gingerly reached in and pulled out the glass bottle using just her thumb and index finger.

  She planned to set the bottle on the floor to be picked up with the trash, but when she got it into the light—as much light as existed in the dimly illuminated casino—she saw it wasn’t a beer bottle. Instead she held a graceful, cut-crystal decanter of amber-hued glass, about seven inches high, and beautifully decorated with blue enamel and gold leaf. She guessed it was antique, and it looked expensive to her.

  ‘‘Hey, Corrine, somebody must have left this,’’ Hildy said, nudging her sister’s arm with one hand and holding up the bottle with the other.

  Corrine glanced over for the briefest moment before her eyes slid back to the machine. ‘‘Probably a souvenir. Leave it. If it’s worth anything, they’ll come back.’’

  ‘‘Maybe they don’t know where they left it,’’ Hildy said. ‘‘I’ll take it to the Lost and Found when we’re done. I think it’s valuable.’’ She put the bottle into her tote, cushioning it between a paperback novel and her wallet.

  Then Hildy looked long and hard at the machine in front of her and muttered to herself, ‘‘I’m not a gambler. I feel as if I’m wasting twenty bucks.’’ Thinking about how little she had to spend for the entire summer, twenty dollars seemed like a great deal of money. ‘‘Oh well.’’ She sighed. ‘‘I’ll eat peanut butter for a week.’’

  Thus Hildy resigned herself to the loss, and almost immediately scolded herself for the negative self-talk. She read a lot of self-help books. She believed in the power of positive thinking. It was self-defeating to focus on losing the money. What she needed right now was an affirmation.

  She ruminated for a moment, then came up with: I am fortunate in every way and I wish to be lucky today.

  Now, that was pretty doggone good for an instant affirmation, she had to admit. She repeated it softly, delighting in its singsong rhythm. A warm feeling struck her like a ray of sunshine penetrating the casino’s gloom. Her fingertips tingled. The slot machine in front of her seemed to glow for a brief moment.

  Hildy smiled. She just loved affirmations; they certainly did produce good vibrations.

  She chanted her little rhyme ten more times. ‘‘I am fortunate in every way and I wish to be lucky today.’’ She felt immensely pleased with herself. Then she slid her twenty into the money slot, waited for her ‘‘credits’’ to appear on the LED display, and then imitating what she had seen Corrine do, she hit the MAX BET button.

  She watched the spinning wheels. A single bar appeared on the first wheel, then a double bar lined up on the second wheel, and a triple bar came up on the third. Ten credits, Hildy read on the display above her credit total. Hey, I won! Of course ten credits only added up to a whopping $2.50 since this was a quarter machine, but at least she was in the plus column.

  She hit the MAX BET button again. When the spinning wheels stopped there were no bars, no sevens, nothing at all. Over the course of the next few spins she got a cherry (four credits) and another set of bars, but this time they were all triple bars and that meant she had won twenty credits!

  Okay, that’s five dollars in the plus column, Hildy thought, dividing by four in her head.

  But then she didn’t win for a while and her credits were back exactly where she started. She shrugged her shoulders; she was getting bored and a little depressed at the way the money dwindled away so fast.

  Hildy glanced over at Corrine. Her sister had told her to play for a while. Did five minutes count as ‘‘a while’’? Probably not. Hildy exhaled hard. She was ready to cash out and go for a walk on the boardwalk. But dutifully she hit the MAX BET button again.

  This time a funny oval icon with a laughing joker and the words SLINGO PROGRESSIVE on it appeared on the three spinning wheels, one after the other, starting on the left. A light on the top of the machine began flashing. To Hildy’s utter mortification a siren started howling. She wanted to shrink up and sink through the floor.

  Oh, Lordy, she thought miserably. I’ve broken it.

  Her sister stared at her with a look of astonishment.

  ‘‘Oh, Corrine, I’m so sorry—’’ she began.

  ‘‘Sorry? Little sister, you won! You won!’’ Corrine stood up and started waving her arms wildly in the air. ‘‘Over here! Jackpot over here!’’ she yelled, as if the uniformed attendants couldn’t spot the slot machine with a light going off on top like a police car’s.

  Other players started to crowd around behind Hildy’s seat.


  ‘‘How much did she win?’’ an elderly lady with large pink glasses and a flowered blouse asked no one in particular.

  ‘‘Only three thousand and change. Some jackpot,’’ a potbellied man griped. ‘‘These casinos don’t want to get off a dime.’’

  Three thousand dollars! Hildy thought. Oh my! I won’t have to worry for the rest of the summer! I can buy a new bathing suit. I’ll buy a tube top and shorts. Maybe I’ll get my own bicycle instead of using the funny one with the fat tires and wicker basket from the rental place. Hildy had never had such a stroke of good luck in her entire life. In fact, she had never won anything before. To her, three thousand dollars represented a fortune and an entire summer free from financial worry.

  After being escorted to the cashier by guards as if she had won a million bucks and needed protection, Hildy had to fill out tax forms before getting her winnings. Given a choice, she opted for a check, not cash. As soon as the cashier handed over the check, Hildy stuffed it in her hoodie pocket and hurried back to where her sister still sat at the slot machine, mesmerized by the spinning wheels.

  ‘‘I’m back,’’ Hildy announced. She felt dazed, probably from the excitement. She stood there near Corrine. The winning machine sat empty but Hildy had no desire to revisit it. The experience of hitting the jackpot had been exciting, but altogether, she thought, a bit odd, an anomaly that didn’t fit in her quiet, ordinary life. ‘‘I hope you don’t mind, but I don’t want to gamble anymore, okay?’’

  Corrine smiled. ‘‘Smart move, little sister. Me, I’d like to play for a while. I’m breaking even. How about you take a walk or something? Buy me some taffy to take home. Give me until’’—she paused, giving the matter some consideration—‘‘hmmm, lunchtime maybe to try my luck, then come find me, okay?’’

  That was just fine with Hildy. A light-headedness had overtaken her. She longed to be outside in the fresh air. She headed toward the nearest exit. She was pushing through the heavy doors that opened onto the Atlantic City Boardwalk when she remembered she meant to go to the Lost and Found with the odd brown bottle.

  She paused and decided to go to the Lost and Found later. Right now she urgently needed to emerge from the dark casino and get into the light.

  Gulls wheeled overhead as Hildy began walking. The rain had stopped but pearl gray clouds still raced across the sky as if trying to close up any small slice of blue that appeared between them. A brisk breeze caught Hildy’s long hair and threw it forward, making it a wild mess of tangles.

  Hildy didn’t care. She had just won three thousand, four hundred, and five dollars. She had been lucky—even luckier than she wished to be. She fingered the paper check deep in her pocket. She was grinning so hard, her cheeks hurt.

  Holding her hair out of her eyes with her hand, Hildy ducked into a store that sported children’s swim wings and fuchsia flamingos in its display windows. She quickly found a bright yellow cap with a visor that had ATLANTIC CITY in red on the brim. She looked at herself in the mirror on the counter. The hat was terrific.

  Then she picked a pair of wraparound sunglasses from a rack and tried them on. She peered into the mirror again. With the visor and sunglasses, she appeared kind of sporty, almost hip. She put the items together on the counter. She added a box of saltwater taffy for her sister to take home. She was rapidly accumulating a small pile of goods.

  Last, she splurged on a large beach towel. TODAY’ S YOUR LUCKY DAY IN ATLANTIC CITY was printed on the terry cloth between an orange sea horse and a purple starfish. It so perfectly described her experience that Hildy figured she just had to buy it.

  It felt good not having to watch every cent she spent!

  ‘‘You must have won today,’’ the young Asian clerk said as Hildy handed over three twenties to pay for her purchases.

  ‘‘How can you tell?’’ Hildy asked and retrieved the cap as soon as the clerk had rung it up. Standing in front of the mirror again, she twisted her hair into a knot and secured it with her new hat.

  ‘‘You have the look of a winner,’’ the girl replied. She leaned forward across the counter and whispered conspiratorially, ‘‘Don’t give it all back. Stay out of the casino!’’

  ‘‘I agree.’’ Hildy smiled so widely that a dimple appeared in her cheek. ‘‘I’m just going to take a walk. I feel lucky. Maybe this is the day I’ll meet my Prince Charming.’’

  ‘‘You go, girl,’’ the salesclerk said, and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Chapter 3

  Back outside the store, Hildy kept smiling. The sun was breaking through the luminescent clouds. Bright patches of light zigzagged down the wide wooden boardwalk. Open-sided jitneys rumbled past. Bicycle rickshaws filled with tourists traversed the distance between casinos. And with the sun, crowds had appeared as if from nowhere. Couples walked along holding hands. Mothers pushed toddlers in strollers.

  A swift flow of melancholy welled up inside Hildy. She had no lover to hold hands with and no baby to take for a walk. For a split second, she wished she could see Michael Amante again. She quickly pushed the thought away. That was just the kind of foolish longing she had left her hometown to escape. She needed to savor her good feelings, not get all maudlin and weepy.

  At the end of Michigan Avenue, she spotted a pathway to the beach. She thought she might find solitude on the soft sands that lined the shore. In any event, it would be a great place to sit down and think about the things she could buy with her winnings and still have enough money left to cover her expenses until September.

  Once she came up over the dunes that acted as a barrier between the eroding effects of the water and the casinos, she could see the sea. She kicked off her flip-flops and carried them in her hand. It was easier to walk in the warm sand without them.

  She strolled a short distance before stopping just beyond the tide line. She carefully put down her tote bag and spread out her new beach towel. She sat on top of the picture of the orange sea horse and folded her arms around her knees, gazing out at the Atlantic Ocean.

  Contented, delighted, she looked seaward, a smile playing on her lips. She thought of Shelley’s lines written more than a century ago: ‘‘I see the waves upon the shore / Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown; / I sit upon the sands alone.’’

  After a few minutes, the sun had warmed the air. Hildy peeled off her hoodie and stuffed it in her tote, mindful of the precious check in its pocket. Underneath the hoodie she had on a white Penn State T-shirt with a Nittany Lion in navy blue stalking across her chest. She looked down at herself. She had owned this shirt since she was a college freshman. It was definitely time for a wardrobe update.

  As she stared at the vast ocean, her mind wandered and stopped paying attention to the dancing waves. She calculated how much of her winnings she could use for new clothes. She figured that five hundred dollars should buy her some nice sportswear, especially if she stuck to the sales racks. Then she’d take another three hundred and buy a sleek, light trail bike that was brand-new, not used and scratched up like the one she had rented. Satisfied with her decisions, she forgot about shopping and daydreamed for a while.

  Keeping her eyes on the horizon, she thought how modern-day Rome lay about four thousand miles due east from where she sat. Strangely enough, Caesar’s sat a few hundred feet behind her. The thought tickled her. She giggled to herself.

  Suddenly she noticed how rough and wind-tossed the ocean had become. The tide must be coming in. She shivered. Murky gray green and filled with whitecaps, the Atlantic wasn’t the placid blue sea of her imaginings. It heaved and roared with an immense power. The waves rolled in and crashed without mercy onto the wet sand. Sandpipers nervously skirted the frothy spume, careful not to be caught by the retreating water.

  But the violent sea filled Hildy with a strange stirring. Everything was in motion around her: the rushing waves, the churning surface of the water, the gulls circling and crying overhead, the fierce wind that tried to pull the new cap from her hair. The sun went
behind another cloud and the air seemed almost cruel, but in the next instant the sun returned and the wind tugging on her hat became only mischievous, not malevolent.

  As the cap nearly flew off her hair again, Hildy laughed and grabbed the visor. This was life, sharp and tangy, filled with energy and possibility. Is there danger here by the ocean? she thought. Yes, she answered herself, but it intensifies the moments of joy.

  She sprang to her feet and ran impulsively to the water’s edge. A wave came up and encircled her ankles. Its coldness made her cry out. But the next wave felt warmer as it slapped against her feet. Like a child, she stamped up and down on the sand, watching the tan muck gush up through her toes. She moved deeper into the surf, letting the water soak the bottom of her capri pants. When a large wave receded, she bent over to pick up a pretty seashell—

  And the next thing she knew a huge wall of water knocked her down. Suddenly she was being tossed about, somersaulting in a crazy way underneath the surface of the water. She fought to find her footing, but which way was down? Which way was up?

  All at once, she found herself sitting on the bottom, her head and shoulders above the surface, the wave receding. She coughed and tried to catch her breath. She went to stand but her wet clothes were heavy and made it hard to get her balance.

  She had just gotten to her feet and started staggering toward the beach when another wave hit her hard from behind, knocking her down once more.

  Panic chased all thoughts from her mind. She flailed about, trying to get back to the surface. Suddenly, she was being pulled into deeper water by the undertow. Then, just as relentlessly, she was being swept back toward the beach. She was overpowered and helpless. Her luck seemed to have run out in a very frightening way.

  With a tremendous effort, she stuck her head up and broke into the air, gasping to fill her lungs. Facing the horizon, she couldn’t tell how far from shore she had come. She had also swallowed a great deal of water and was terribly afraid she wouldn’t make it back to land.