PLAYING THE NUMBERS

My mother, the gambler.

- VICTOR LODATO

The author as a baby, with his parents and his older brother in New Jersey.

“Give me three numbers, baby.” My mother made this request often so often, in fact, that when I try to remember her voice this is what I hear. I can see her, too. She’s in the kitchen, sitting at the white Formica table, the green wall phone behind her, the phone she’ll soon pick up to place her bet. She’s smiling, because this moment is capacious: everything’s possible. It’s a moment in which—unless you’re a pessimist, and my mother is not—Fortune is on your side.

She’s dressed for the occasion, in a f lower-print top and stretchy yellow slacks, as if to advertise her innocence before breaking the law. Of course, for a long time I didn’t know that what my mother was doing was illegal. She certainly didn’t look like a criminal, sitting there with her blond hair intricately coiffed. The stylist had made it look like a sfogliatella, a kind of Neapolitan pastry that we often had in the house. My mother’s hair possessed the same golden hue, the same artful construction of multilayered swoops. Plus, the glossy lacquer of Aqua Net was not unlike the sugar on the pastry. That this delectable human might want my advice made me feel giddy.

I don’t recall her ever asking my brother for numbers. My brother was older, more confident, more defined as a person. Perhaps, as such, he lacked mystery. So my mother looked to me, the quiet one.