And plus there’s the vote, which is all my fault. Or, to be more accurate, as Monday would insist, it’s River’s fault he told his father, and it’s his father’s fault Omar had to call a vote, but it’s my fault for telling River in the first place, and if I hadn’t, there wouldn’t have to be a vote.
Which could go either way. On the one hand, no one in this town but Omar and Nathan ever had an opportunity to say yes or no to Belsum. Omar was lied to, and apparently Nathan can’t say no to his father. Lots of us would very happily say no to Duke Templeton, but Duke Templeton never asked us. So maybe now that the question’s finally being posed, enough of us will answer it the right way. Not all of us—not Mama’s guys at the bar, not all the ex-employees who dropped off the lawsuit when they got the opportunity to be ex-ex-employees instead—but enough. Sure, some of us will choose jobs and another roll of the dice. But most of us—enough of us—will choose anger and comeuppance and what’s fair and what’s right and having learned our lesson the really, really hard way.
I say us, but actually it’s them. We can’t vote. We’re not old enough. So even though we’re the ones whose future’s being voted on, we don’t get a say, and that’s too bad because we’d vote the right way for sure. I remember the Kyles explaining they had to kick River’s ass because someone had to take up the cause when their fathers dropped it to take jobs. I remember Mirabel saying it’s our turn now.
It is, but no one’s asking.
Still, it’s my fault, and I have to fix it. Pay penance. Make amends. Propitiation, Petra says, for what I’ve done. I make her come with me, and we start campaigning.
* * *
When Pooh answers the door, we plunge right in with “You have to vote against Belsum.”
“Obviously.” She rolls her eyes. “But your pitch needs work.”
“They’re flagitious.” Petra’s counting off on her fingers. “They’re pernicious. Their specious claim that they’re innoxious now is a spurious one.”
“I know what you mean,” Pooh says, “and I have no idea what you mean.”
“How would you put it?” I ask. “Tell us from the heart. Why are you voting no?”
“My dotage, decline, and eventual demise will be much less depressing if I’m leaving a world without Belsum in it.”
I wrinkle my nose. “It’s a little wordy.”
She rainbows her hand across the air in front of her, imagining a billboard or maybe bumper stickers. “‘Belsum. Don’t die before they do.’”
“Pithier,” I grant her, “but you’re not dying.”
“Well not yet,” she says. “How’s your love life?”
“Miasmatic,” I admit.
Pooh makes a sympathetic face and promises to vote against Belsum. Petra makes a sympathetic face undercut with relief that even in the depths of my despair I’m still studying for the SATs.
* * *
We find Pastor Jeff at the clinic instead of the church, so we take a medical approach.
“You have to vote against,” Petra says, “because of your obligations as a doctor. First do no harm?”
“Bourne’s not a sick patient,” he says. “And many of its citizens who are wouldn’t be—or wouldn’t be as often—if they had health insurance and more providers.”
So we switch tactics.
“What about your pastoralism?” I ask.
“That’s not what that means,” Petra warns.
Pastor Jeff smiles. “My divine duties overwhelm my civic obligations.”
Petra looks confused.
“He’s too sacerdotal to vote,” I explain.
“Heavenly justice works every time,” he says.
I raise my eyebrows at him without comment.
“You look exactly like your mother,” he says. “It works much of the time.”
“What about your mother?”
“What about her?”
“And your dad. They were activists. They were freedom fighters. They’d want you to vote against. What would your mother say?”
“‘Eat something,’” says Pastor Jeff. “‘Get more sleep. Put on a sweater.’”
“Same thing,” says Petra.
“Probably true,” agrees Pastor Jeff.
* * *
We stay after school one day to talk to Mrs. Shriver.
“We’re here to ask you to vote against Belsum,” I say.
“Of course.” She nods, distracted though, not looking up from the essays she’s grading. “Just don’t get your hopes up, girls.”
“We’re campaigning inimitably,” Petra assures her.
“I’m certain.” She smiles at us, one of those smiles that somehow means sad. “But people move on.” I consider her husband who cannot work and her children who cannot be born and her life which cannot ever be what she had every right and reason to believe it would. I consider how “move on” is exactly what she cannot do. “Some things are terrible enough it’s better to forget if you can.”
We’re staring at her with our mouths open.
“What?”
“You teach history.”
That sad smile again. “History and memory are unreliable narrators.” I think back to that first assignment, how galled I was to have to write it over still-summer, how much everything has changed since then. “It’s hard to remember when it’s so painful. It’s hard to remember when you’re dead.”
“I guess, but if—”
“It’s hard to remember the past,” she interrupts, “when it won’t pass.”
“So what do we do?” I ask.
She takes off her glasses, holds my gaze. “Anything you can.”
* * *
We find Mrs. Radcliffe at home. She regards us on her front stoop over crossed arms, already mid-sigh when she opens the door, and does not invite us in.
When we finish our spiel, she says, “If you both come back to tutoring, I’ll vote against.”
We agree to these terms. It’s the least we can do.
Petra’s mother resolves to leave the house for the first time in five years to vote no. Leandra is going to have a hard time getting to the polls, but Chris says he will carry her if necessary so they can both vote emphatically against. Donna Anvers says she will vote for flowers so against Belsum. Omar will vote for Nora maybe or for Bourne or for second chances, but in any case, we know, he will vote against.
Nathan is campaigning too. All over town, he’s put up posters with his face looking trustworthy. Every time Mama sees one, she draws a mustache on it. She mustaches so hard she breaks her marker and stains my father’s favorite shirt with ink. But excepting this sartorial tragedy, I know how she feels: better to be distracted, better to be doing something. Petra and I feel it too. Maybe we can’t vote, but we can convince lots of other people to vote the way we want them to, so that’s even better. It feels good to say our piece, to tell our side, to be heard for once. It feels good to think that this time, maybe, it’ll be different. It’s not hard to go to everyone’s door because they’re our neighbors after all, our friends. They’re us, and there aren’t so many of us.