One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

  “I am well, thank you,” my Voice says. “How are you?”

  “Can’t complain.” He drops his voice and winks at me. “Well, I could, but I won’t because I need a favor from your mother.”

  I wink back at him.

  “I’m not doing you any favors, Omar.” Nora has dog ears.

  “I thought maybe I’d catch you at the bar.” He sits on the very edge of the sofa. She stands in the kitchen watching the kettle.

  “Not working tonight.”

  “Yes, Frank told me.”

  She says nothing. Waits.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “To drink too much beer in my kitchen?”

  He smiles but then says anyway, “We have to talk, Nora.”

  She nods without looking at him.

  “Someone’s beating up his kid,” he says, and my heartbeat quickens.

  “Not me.”

  “Of course not you. But Nora…”

  “What?”

  “We have to make them feel welcome.”

  “Like hell we do.”

  “Sorry. I know.” Hands up like she might hit him. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “That’s exactly what you meant.”

  “It would be better if you could be nice to them,” he over-enunciates.

  “Better for whom?”

  “Better for everyone.”

  “Better for you and for them and for not a single other person in this—”

  “Jesus, Nora, enough.” He draws in a deep breath, lets it go. It’s shaky on the way out. “It’s time to move on.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “It is not easy for me to say.” Omar is standing now and loud. Omar is never standing and loud. Omar is always cowed before Nora.

  “Here’s a game the girls love.” She is so good at pretending to be calm. “Truth or dare?”

  “God, Nora, I don’t know.”

  “Well, just for variety, how about you tell me the truth for once? You’re the one who arranged for them to buy the library.”

  I have figured this out already but am surprised Nora has as well, having far less time than I do to dwell on the issue.

  He hangs his head. “Not arranged for. But yeah.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Not arranged for but yeah’?”

  “I didn’t offer it to them.” He throws out one hand, helpless, or like it doesn’t matter. “But I didn’t say no when they asked.”

  “No to what?”

  “They came scouting for housing. They didn’t tell me who they were, but they didn’t hide it either. I knew the last name of course, and then I took one look at the father, at the kid, and knew for sure who they must be. They flat-out asked if the library was available. Said they drove by and noticed it was empty.” He looks up from the ground at her, waits for her to meet his eyes. “I said I’d ask.”

  “And?”

  “And the person it turned out I had to ask was me.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because for what it’s worth, and it’s not much, I’m still mayor.”

  “I noticed.”

  “You want the job?”

  “You wish.”

  “Exactly.”

  In a town where irony literally flows right down the middle, this is perhaps the saddest instance of all: Omar Radison, once and future and eternal mayor.

  Twenty years ago, Omar ran on the Belsum platform. His opponent, Carl Castillo, moved away soon after he lost, and died—of old age, mind—soon after he moved, but before he did either of those things, he ran on a platform of tradition, staying the course, honoring the old ways, and keeping Belsum out. He wanted the town to stay as it was: small, historic, closed. Because he was eventually vindicated as Galileo, we don’t talk much about whether what Carl Castillo really was was a xenophobe and a racist. He wanted to keep Bourne for Bourne residents. He wanted to keep our money in our community. He wanted things to stay the same.

  Whereas Omar was twenty-five, back in the town where he was born and raised, armed with a brand-new college degree and the unearned optimism of quarter-centenarians. He campaigned for change, growth, increase; he ran for new citizens, new jobs, new opportunities. He painted a picture of a Bourne thriving with the influx of money from Belsum, money from clearing land and paving fields and building factories, from working at the new plant, from feeding Belsum employees and their families, entertaining them, getting them drunk, selling them things they needed and things they didn’t. There were tax incentives and growth incentives and investment opportunities.

  Think of our past, said Carl Castillo.

  Imagine our future, said Omar.

  He won by a landslide. I make the whole thing sound like a political maelstrom, which is how it’s been presented to me, but we aren’t a big town. Both candidates went door-to-door, sometimes together. In lieu of a debate, they played a couple friendly games of pool at Norma’s. We few thousand people went and voted for change. And change we did receive.

  Conventional wisdom says when the populace is angry, the incumbent gets voted out, whether or not he’s to blame. But Omar is more like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, doomed to live out an error in judgment for the rest of his days, endless witness to the suffering he’s wrought. After it all went to shit, no one wanted to be mayor of Bourne. There weren’t enough people left. No one knew how to clean up the mess. No one was willing to take on the burden of figuring it out. And besides, who volunteers to captain a ship with a hole in the hull so wide it could be a portal to another galaxy? If only.

  So Omar is stuck with the job.

  “The library is city property. As mayor”—he winces—“the decision as to what to do with the empty library was mine.”

  “So you gave it to them?”

  “Sold it to them, yes.”

  “Your pound of flesh?”

  “Not flesh.” He shakes his head, but not especially vehemently. “Money. We need it.”

  “How much can that library possibly have gone for?”

  “It’s a pretty building.”

  “In a moldering town.”

  “A pretty moldering town,” he says.

  “So you were just faking before?”

  “When?”

  “In the bar last month. When you had big news and the big news was Donna saw a moving truck.”

  “She did.” He shrugs. “I was trying to ease you in. Besides, I knew they bought the place, but I didn’t know when or even whether they were coming, what they wanted it for.”

  “And then it turned out you already gave them permission to reopen the plant two decades ago, so the library was just the gravy on the potatoes.” The fake cheery tone she’s wrestling into submission looks like it’s paining Omar physically. “And conveniently, of course, you’ve never signed on to the lawsuit, so no conflict of interest there either.”

  “We’ve been over this.” They have. Nora thinks it would send a strong signal to Bourners if they knew Omar was joining their fight, and to Belsum if they knew the mayor himself had added his name to the class action. Omar thinks that’s not his place as mayor and that he needs to be available to everyone as go-between should Nora and Russell ever get that far.

  “We have,” she agrees. “You like to be nice to them, and you’d like me to be nice too. Make them feel welcome and at home.”

  “Not make them feel welcome.” He throws out his arms, frustrated, begging her. “Just don’t go out of your way to piss them off.”

  “How am I doing that?”

  He gives her a look, arms still out. “We hold zero cards here. We’ve got no power at all. If these guys don’t come in angry and defensive, if they like us, that’s our best shot at them treating us right.”

  “We were down-on-our-knees grateful last time.” Nora gets down on hers to demonstrate. “We hailed them like war heroes. We were so happy-they-picked-us welcoming we were groveling. And that didn’t inspire them not to poison us. Now they’re back as if nothing ha
ppened, as if they didn’t ruin everything”—her voice breaks, and I can see it break something in Omar too—“as if we’ve all forgotten, and you’re asking us just to let it alone?”

  “Yes.” Clear but soft.

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yes, Nora.” He joins her on the floor so that they’re kneeling face-to-face, and he reaches out and takes her hands. And she lets him. “It’s not fair, and it’s not right, and God knows it’s not easy. But it’s happening anyway, so not kicking the man out of the bar is our best chance of making it happen well.”

  “Why should I want it to go well for them? Why aren’t my fingers and toes crossed that they’re burning in the flames of bankruptcy hell within a month of resumed operations?”

  “Not go well for them. Go well for us. Protecting our citizens, making Bourne as good as it can be, this is my job.”

  She wrenches her hands from his. “Congratulations on finally figuring that out, Omar.”

  He winces again but says anyway, “No, Nora, I’ve known it all along. You think any of this was my plan? My hope for this place?”

  “No, I think you were shortsighted and greedy, which is worse.” She stands, but he stays on his knees, so now it’s like she’s talking down to a child. “I think you went with a get-rich-quick scheme instead of doing the hard work to find the good and honest ways that would have shored us up instead of tearing us down. I think you failed to protect us.”

  “I did fail to protect us.” He sits back on his heels, hangs his head, but then looks back up at her. “That I did. But I’m not sure the rest of that’s fair. I didn’t foresee what was going to happen. No one did.”

  “They did.” Nora snorts. “You know Belsum knew GL606 wasn’t safe.”

  “Maybe they did. But I didn’t. I wanted to grow this place. New jobs, new opportunities.” He stands finally and ranges around the living room while he talks, the politician in him walking the stage. “I thought we’d start slow, open a handful of new places to eat, to shop, and the plant would grow, and new families would move in and good doctors to treat them and a movie theater, and eventually there’d be nice hotels and shopping centers and four-star restaurants, and Bourne would thrive and all of us with it. That was my plan. It wasn’t quick and shortsighted. It was the opposite of that. It didn’t work out that way. I’m not saying it wasn’t an unmitigated disaster. I’m not saying I wouldn’t change every single thing if I could. But you can’t say my heart wasn’t in the right place. I was wrong, and it was my job to be right, and I failed at it. Miserably. But I was trying to do the hard, right thing.” He stops in front of her. “I just didn’t know, Nora. They lied to me too.”

  She sighs and she waits and then she says, very quietly, “I know that, Omar. I do.”

  “And I’m still trying.” He reaches for her hands again, but this time she won’t let him, so he clasps his own in front of him, pleading, almost praying. “If I could keep them from coming back, I would. But since I can’t, I’m working with what I have here, and that’s treating them well in the hope they treat us well back, being nice so they’ll be nice in return. It’s not much, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  “How am I not being nice?” Nora’s palms are upturned like she’s not asking Omar, she’s asking God.

  “They’re beating his kid,” he says again.

  “That’s not me.”

  “You’re riling people up.”

  “I’m not,” she protests.

  “I hear different.”

  “From whom?”

  “Everyone.” His voice is rising again. “Everyone knows, Nora. It’s always you. You are the town crazy lady who just can’t let this go.”

  She looks at him, and her eyes fill, and of the three of us, I don’t know who’s most surprised.

  “And here I’ve been thinking it’s the rest of you who are crazy,” she says when she can speak again. “But maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s been me all along.” She balls her fists against her chest like she can’t decide whether to fight or to grasp her heart in her hands. “They poisoned us, Omar. And when they realized it—or realized we knew it—instead of stopping, they denied it so they could keep poisoning us because poisoning us was making them money. And when finally, finally they couldn’t deny it anymore, they just left. Didn’t try to help. Didn’t try to fix it. Just left us ruined. In ruins. In the face of that, is it crazy to chase after them for sixteen years, or is it crazy to just move on? Is it crazier to demand some kind of restitution, even though restitution is impossible, or to pretend all is well and everything’s fine when nothing is or will be ever again?”

  “I don’t know,” Omar says quietly.

  “You think I don’t know I look crazy?” She’s quiet too. “I know. You think I don’t know what this crusade is costing me? But what does it cost to think we never deserved any better, and this is just the way it is, and there’s no point in fighting?”

  “Maybe it’ll be different this time.” He wraps his fingers around her fists.

  “It’s too late.”

  “Only for us.”

  “Who else is there?”

  “Them. Unfortunately. And they don’t owe us anything.”

  “They owe us everything.”

  “All we can hope for is their good grace.”

  “Well, in that case”—Nora unclaws her hands from under his—“we are truly, truly fucked.”

  One

  The point my sisters ganged up on me to make in the hallway outside tutoring yesterday is the one it always is: it’s the least I can do.

  It’s not that Mirabel inspires me in some sparkly-disabled-sister-inspirational-rainbow way. More like she shames me in a regular-sister-who’s-both-smarter-and-nicer-than-I-am way. It’s the least I can do, not the way Mrs. Radcliffe says when she makes us tutor: I am blessed so I should serve. More like: Mirabel can’t, but what’s my excuse? If Mirabel could, she would shout down the kids kicking River’s ass, demand protection for him from the school administration, use her body to shield his, use her fists to give as good as River got. I guess it makes sense Mirabel feels a kinship with anyone at the mercy of bullies, circumstance, their own physical limitations, and shit they inherited from their parents that isn’t their fault, but the only way she can help is to make me do it for her.

  You know that saying “Easier said than done”? This is true even when you can’t talk.

  Still, I was convinced. Am convinced. Can you be reluctantly hell-bent? I am that. What I can do and whether I should do it for River Templeton may be in question, but anything I can do for Mirabel, I do, if not always gladly then resolvedly.

  So I submit that into evidence. Okay, yes, a part of me is thinking that if I help him, he’ll help me back, actually do what he said he would, spy harder on his father, get us proof we can use. But part of me—a bigger part—decides to help him because I love my sister. Petra would call this exculpating.

  Our last class of the day is English, and River’s knee bounces through the whole of it. He sits one behind, one over from me, and I can feel him through the floor. When he catches me looking back at him, he smiles then winces. His bottom lip is split again.

  The bell rings, and he’s up like Pavlov’s dogs, but I was prepared for that, so I meet him at the door and push him back into the classroom as everyone else files out.

  “You don’t look so good,” I tell him.

  He makes bodybuilder arms. “How about now?”

  Flirting with me. Because he likes me or because he wants me to like him? Because he likes me or because he doesn’t want to talk about how he’s getting his ass kicked?

  “Your arms look fine.” They do, actually. “It’s your face that concerns me.”

  “Fine?” Mock offended. “Feel these.”

  I do. Flirting back, I suppose, but what choice do I have really? And anyway, I don’t know what I’m feeling for—it’s the first biceps I’ve squeezed that I’m not related to—but I see his point. “Bette
r than fine,” I admit. “Nice.”

  “Nice? That’s even worse. We’re looking for mighty. Epic. Awe-inspiring.”

  “They make your head look tiny in comparison,” I offer.

  “That’s my only goal,” he says.

  “I think you should expand it.”

  “My head?”

  “Your goal. I think you should shoot for tiny and intact.”

  “I don’t want to get greedy.”

  “Let me help you,” I say.

  “Help me what?”

  “Survive high school.”

  “Depends how. Are you going to disguise me?”

  “A disguise will never work.” It’s hard for me to say because I don’t do this very often, but whether he’s flirting or evading, I think he’s pretty good at it. “You’re too distinctive. What with all those big muscles.” Me too, I’m pretty good at it.

  “True, true.” He pretends to stroke his pretend beard thoughtfully. “Will you fashion some kind of unbreachable transport for me to take back and forth to school? Like the popemobile?”

  “Not unless you’re the pope.”

  “Can you cast a protection spell?”

  “I don’t know. Let me ask someone who does magic.” I can feel my cheeks are flushed. “Hey River, can you teach me a protection spell?”

  His cheeks are flushed too, though whether we’re embarrassed or enjoying ourselves I couldn’t say. “I can teach you how to pull a really long scarf out of your armpit.”

  “Pass.”

  “Then I don’t think you can help me,” he says.

  “I have to.”

  “Why?” He’s suddenly serious. He moves a step closer to me—and he was pretty close already—looks hard into my eyes. “Why?” he says again, softer, and waits for me to say because I like him or at least because I care about him or at the very least because it’s the right thing to do. Instead I tell him the truth. Well, some of the truth. “I promised my sisters.”

  He blinks. “Okay.” Takes a step back, but only one. “For your sisters, I agree to let you try to stop everyone from beating me up.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “You’re welcome.” He puts a hand on each of my shoulders like he’s going to pull me in and kiss me. He does not. “So what’s the plan, fairy queen?”