Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World: A Novel (10 page)

When the nurse was done Jerry wrapped up. “Thank you so much for that illuminating and thoughtful viewpoint. The floor will now hear an opinion from Mr. William Nixon.”

Chair legs scraped floorboards. I turned to see Bill towering above his plate of barren clamshells. Bill wasn’t much of an orator, but this didn’t matter because he embraced a solidly anti-intellectual style; his grass roots positions always won him a popular following. Today Bill kicked off, “The other night I was out sitting on the porch with my family, taking pleasure in the twilight sounds of birdsong. Well, what do you think we heard off there in the distance? High-caliber semiautomatic rifle fire is what. You know it’s that kind of a rapid cracking echo, like plinking but mixed with a coughing sound at the same time? My six-year-old Jeff said, ‘Daddy, are those AK-47s or M-16s?’”

He paused for a sip of water. What would it be like to be this guy’s kid? Dismal. Nixon was undoubtedly a stern disciplinarian. To be his child would be to endure intolerance in the guise of paternal charity. Bill cleared his throat and embarked on a protracted screed about target marksmanship, home ownership, the joys of gardening, and the Rule of Law. It wasn’t particularly coherent stuff. Or maybe it’s just my minutes that don’t make sense to me—Bill’s inflammatory town meeting speech is all but lost on one of those pages defaced by a water or soda glass. I guess I might’ve set my iced tea down on the notes without realizing it. After all I wasn’t, I’ll admit, paying especially close attention to Nixon. I was watching his wife, Barbara. I was, in fact, having a hard time keeping my eyes off her. I do not believe it was purely a sexual thing. Bill ranted, “I don’t want some animal lover telling me to put up a chain-link fence around my lawn-based defense cavity because he or she is afraid his or her dog or cat is going to run in there.” He chuckled at, I guess, this ironic image of a fenced-in trench or moat. Several men and women in the audience chuckled along. Bill puffed out his chest and finished, “Friends, little Jeff’s home with the sitter tonight, and let me tell you I feel a whole lot better knowing there’s a network of electronically triggered fragmentation bombs armed and ready in the nasturtiums outside his window.”

Thunderous applause, followed by Meredith’s mother’s reedy voice hollering to challenge Bill, red-faced and beaming and gesturing expansively with his hand in the air, gesturing to Claire smoking a cigarette at her waitress station adjacent to the service bar. It was a little drama: Bill waving at Claire, Claire exhaling smoke in a vertical stream past her upper lip, Bill waving again, Claire grinding her cigarette butt into one of Terry’s trademark clamshell ashtrays, and so on like that. Finally Claire gave in, grabbed her order pad, and ambled toward Nixon’s table, as, from the region of the jukebox, Helen Mooney’s voice trumpeted over the hooting of Bill’s supporters, “What exactly are you afraid of, Mr. Nixon?”

Well, you could hear a pin drop. I snuck a glance at Bill staring Helen’s way with his squinty eyes. It was a face-off. Nixon inhaled a wheezy breath. He leaned forward with his hands resting flatly on the tabletop, and said, “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“The hell.”

“Listen, I’m not sure what’s bugging you. If you have something to say I’m ready to hear it.”

“Are you?”

“Don’t be playing games here, we’re here to do town business, this is town business we’re doing here!” Bill’s face was a mask of red stress. You could see him struggling to contain his emotions. Meredith’s mother, on the other hand, retained her composure; she stood with arms crossed and head tilted to one side; she looked like the home economics teacher she had once been, thoughtfully appraising a child with an attitude problem. Meredith looked my way and rolled her eyes. How I loved her for that!—the bond of shared irony. I lowered my gaze and pretended to be busy scribbling minutes. Barbara Nixon peered down too, not acknowledging the antagonists; she dug around with her fork in her salad. After a moment she noticed me noticing her, and she put down her fork.

Then Claire was beside Bill’s table, flipping through her pea-green check pad. Claire held aloft her pencil and, in a voice kind and soft with waitressly forbearance, inquired, “Yes?”

It was Bob, not Bill, who answered. The anthropologist pointed to his open menu and said, “I’ll have the fish chowder dinner and a side order of hush puppies, please, and, um, a draft.”

Which gave Jerry an opportunity to move the meeting along by proclaiming to the room, “I think it might be wise to consider Tom Thompson’s earlier words about the interconnectedness of things, and in this spirit propose we move on to the problem of the library system. I now call on our volunteer librarian, Rita Henderson.”

“Thanks, hon. The situation is this. Current levels of funding prohibit comprehensive acquisition, and outreach programs like Story Time and the bookmobile will probably have to be discontinued. I’ve developed a plan to merge the neighborhood branches into our main, Southshore location. Redundant editions can be sold to raise money for one of those magnetic checkout devices, which I think we should have one of.”

“No doubt,” said Jerry, who proceeded to motion for a committee to assist his wife. Hands flew up and I scribbled down nominations: Barbara Nixon; Betsy Isaac; Simone, the art teacher (who’d get my vote any day); Ray Conover, obviously not present; and Chuck Webster, likewise absent; along with a host of other likely and unlikely candidates, including, of all people, Abraham de Leon, who nominated himself. Jerry grimaced when Abe raised his hand and said, “Me.” Was something up, after all, between Abe and Rita Henderson, and did Jerry maybe know or suspect? Or was the chairman merely appalled—and who could blame him?—by his buddy’s clear lack of diplomacy in throwing his own hat into the ring? Whatever the case, Abe wasn’t anyone you wanted overseeing any libraries.

Jerry motioned to close the floor to further nominations. Though not before Helen Mooney raised her hand and declared, “I nominate my daughter.”

“Second,” many people shouted.

So it was that Meredith came to be part of a select commission authorized to engineer social programs and allocate funds. She won more votes than any other candidate. I wasn’t jealous, exactly. After all, I already held a civic post. Though mine was, of course, voluntary, not elected. I felt, well, strange—a mild case of territorial anxiety mixed with healthy domestic competitiveness. Also, I was proud of Meredith’s new popularity. What can be said about that? A lot of folks were enthralled by her ability to become a fish.

Other worthies elected to the task force were Simone, Barbara, and, as luck would have it, Abe, who bellowed, “All right!” when his name was called.

“Order,” demanded the chair. I still hadn’t managed to get myself a clam roll, which was probably a good thing because another plate on the table would’ve made it very difficult to write minutes. I turned to a clean notebook page and scrawled down Jerry’s call for “ten-minute recess, after which we’ll reconvene to discuss interfamilial strife and also, if time allows, the matter of a multipurpose public school / indoor sports complex to be located at Freedom Field and headmastered by our own Mr. Scrivener.”

Down came Jerry’s gavel on the tabletop. Down plummeted my mood with it. What a rude turn of events. When had I consented to this? I turned to address Henderson but he was already up and gone. I spotted him leaning over the bar with a gaggle of town hall types. Was it time for the drinking to begin? Already? I heard Rita shout, “Could I please see the library task force over by the ice machine?”

I sat alone. Across the room Barbara and Meredith embraced, gently patting one another on shoulder and back, like chums or sweethearts—teammates! Barbara said something and Meredith laughed. Rita orbited Abe like a minor planet. Abe looked like a biker—if it weren’t for that golf shirt. Beyond de Leon: the sea, faintly, blackly visible through a decorative “porthole” installed near the men’s room door.

“Well, Pete Robinson.”

It was my mother-in-law. I rose, and, because form dictated it, we hugged. Helen’s bristly hair tickled my face, and I thought I might sneeze, when she said, “How wonderful, a new school. I’ve always found it so gratifying that my daughter should choose a husband who values education.”

“Our children are our future.”

“Indeed they are. Tell me, son-in-law, do you anticipate a traditional curriculum?”

“Uh, could be. Too early to tell. Lots of problems to be worked out and all.”

“It’s high time we got back to solid values of fundamental learning and common human decency.”

“I agree.”

“Do you? Do you? I believe evil has found a home in your heart, Pete.”

Before I could say, Excuse me? Tom Thompson came over and smiled. “Hi guys.”

At which point I finally sneezed, not once but serially, causing nearby people to pause in their conversations and take turns saying, “God bless you, God bless you.”

I have to admit, I kind of like Tom. His politics are unsophisticated but his heart’s in the right place.

Take his speech, once recess was over and the meeting resumed: “The Bensons and Websters are waging private war on public land!”

“That’s right, that’s the issue exactly,” observed assenting voices. Tom was well known for his enthusiasm. Crowds excite him. That night at Terry’s he gave a memorable performance, stepping into the center of the room and holding aloft his arms and claiming, “I for one am prepared to make a nonviolent gesture of protest and self-sacrifice. Who’ll join me on a walking tour of the park to locate and deactivate those mines?”

No hands went up. Jerry said, “Noble gesture, Tom, but I don’t think it’s that simple.” I sneezed again. “You’re catching a little bug, aren’t you?” whispered Barbara, and I felt her breath on my ear. Wow. I imagined the feeling of her mouth, its warmth. And I saw an opportunity to integrate a lot of issues into one action; I blew my nose into an oversized paper napkin, folded the napkin into a pocketable square, pocketed it, and said, “Okay. A Turtle Pond Park initiative is desirable. I deem it appropriate to take decisive action in the form of removing obstacles to enjoyment of the park, and suggest an alternative to walking through it, thus risking grave injury. What if Rita’s soon-to-be-redundant large-format library reference editions were simply hurled into park grounds? The
World Book, Columbia,
and
Britannica
encyclopedias could possess the heft required to depress the claymore’s trigger.”

After that things got out of hand. Why, I ask, should a mere suggestion incite divisive bickering leading to vehement altercation? A simple no vote is all that’s required, not yelling things like “You’re crazy, Pete Robinson, you don’t give a damn about education!” which was what Helen shouted at me, repeatedly, so that finally Bill Nixon got fed up and went steamrolling unsteadily across the room—nearly flattening a child who was roaming innocently between tables with a milk-filled jelly glass that wound up inverted—getting right up in her, Helen’s, face. Granted, Bill’s tactic of swatting at Meredith’s mother like a fly was imprudent. He didn’t appear to intend actual harm. The mother of the milk-doused child shrieked, “That man hurt my baby!” Which wasn’t true, because, after all, it was only milk. Blood did not flow until Abe, presumably resolved to uphold the peace, imposed himself between Helen and Bill. Abe counseled his friend, “Take it easy, chief.” Too late. Abe’s nose got whacked by Bill’s hand. It’s a good thing there was a nurse in the house.

And there was Meredith. The crowd parted to let her through. She stood bathed in Terry Heinemann’s Clam Castle’s amber mood lighting, cautioning, “Boys, boys.”

It was a thing to see, the way everyone fell quiet and turned to look at her. Even the little children stopped their crying.

Meredith offered Abe a napkin, then gave her right hand to the person on her right, her left to the person on her left. She said, “Let’s all join hands for a minute.”

Well, everyone did. It was kind of a chore for me, holding Jerry’s hand, but this was more than made up for by Barbara’s cool palm pressing mine. Meredith said, “Why don’t we go outside and breathe the night air.”

In the parking lot we all formed a large circle. People I knew held hands with people I didn’t: an unbroken chain beneath the Big Dipper. Light winds carried sweet ocean salt on a mist that rose from slow waves breaking against the jetty. Lifeguard stands loomed. In the harbor: moored day sailors equipped with aluminum masts and homemade cannon, clinking with tackle and line, making bell sounds; and the deeper, melancholy pitch of the distant bell buoy, rocking beneath the moon.

“Look at the moon,” said Meredith. We looked. It hovered yellow and large above the sea. Yellow moonlight skipped off white sand and turned the flickering wave tips silver-gold. Looking farther out, the eye followed a shining highway of moonlight traveling over deep water to the horizon. Meredith said, “The light of the moon makes a shining path to each of us. Wherever we stand, the path will cross the water to find us. Go up or down the beach, and it will follow.”

“Yes,” said people in the circle. And, “That’s right.” In this way, a vision we’d seen and taken for granted all our lives, simple reflected light, became miraculous.

Later, after the meeting was over and everyone had gone home, Meredith said to me, “Let’s go out on the jetty and take off our clothes, like we used to. Want to?”

How I did. How I wanted to get naked on the rocks with my moonlit wife. But I have to report that after what had happened that morning in the living room with her and Bob and the sound of drums rolling from the stereo, I didn’t think the jetty was anywhere I wanted to go.

What happened was this. It was midmorning. I’d endured a sleepless, ghoulish night in the rain. The foot was buried, I was bushed, and my coffee was cold. I mean, I was out of it, slouching in the big wicker chair and watching Meredith sway to the drumbeats and Bob’s cadenced breathing instructions:

“Easy, easy, slow, slow.”

Meredith’s eyes were closed. Her dress hung loosely about her legs and hips. I leaned forward to adjust the fabric. She inhaled and exhaled. I watched her toes twitch, and I noticed her head nodding; and my head nodded too, in time with hers, when the trance coach commanded, “Prepare to dive!”