One Two Three

by Laurie Frankel

“Sixteen.”

  “Yeah. Sometimes,” she says. “Sometimes it takes sixteen years. We’re making progress.”

  “We aren’t, honey.” Tom tries to match her calm, her pretend calm.

  “How would you know?” she snaps.

  “Forget gaining ground, we’re losing it.”

  “We aren’t.”

  “We are,” says Zach. “They’re back. They’re reopening the plant. That’s how not worried about this lawsuit they are.”

  “It’s a ploy, Zach. It’s all for show. Tell me you don’t see that.”

  “How do you figure?” Maybe he’s genuinely willing to hear what she has to say. Or maybe letting her lay out her case is the first step to poking holes in it.

  “That’s why they’re back. Because they’re worried about the suit. So they can show they aren’t worried about the suit.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.” Zach sounds like he’s talking to a small child or a scared dog.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Tom starts.

  Nora snorts. “Then what’s your excuse?”

  He shrugs, helpless, but raises his eyes again to hold hers while he answers her question. “They offered us jobs, Nora.”

  “In exchange?” she demands, even though she knows, even though Russell warned her.

  “Not in exchange.” Hobart winces. “But yeah, as a condition of employment, we had to take our names off the lawsuit.”

  “It’s blood money.”

  “Maybe,” Tom says, “but it’s still money.”

  She opens her mouth, but Zach starts in before she can say anything. They’ve been waiting to have this conversation with her, dreading it no doubt, but ready now and eager to have it over with finally. “They’re good jobs, Nora. Full-time, good salary, benefits.” And when she still won’t look at him, “Health insurance. Life insurance.”

  “You don’t need benefits.” Her eyes are wide, too much white. “Pastor Jeff—”

  “Could stand to get paid more for his services,” Zach says. “You too. I mean Mirabel’s doing a great job with the books over there”—he smiles at me, my tray piled with Frank’s receipts, not that I’ve looked at so much as a single number this evening—“but it can’t be enough.”

  “We’re fine,” Nora says, a statement so absurd, on so many fronts, Zach laughs.

  “You’re underpaid. And you’re overworked. If more of us had insurance, more doctors would come. More services, specialists. Maybe we’d get a hospital close enough to make a difference. If we had a choice—”

  “You have a choice,” she interrupts.

  “We don’t.” Zach stands then. So she can take his measure, I guess. Maybe to remind her how many legs he has left to stand on. Maybe to remind her how much he’s lost as well. “We don’t. They took that—”

  “Yes, they did. So why would you—”

  “Because what else can I do, Nora? Buy more buckets and more blankets and stretch the roof through yet another winter? Stay home all the time because it hurts like hell even limping with this piece-of-shit prosthesis? No offense, man.” He turns to Tom who’s keeping Zach’s leg functional with will, plumber’s tape, and a bike wrench.

  “None taken.”

  “Make my career at the Greenborough 7-Eleven? Cross our fingers the suit finally goes to trial and we win and the award is big enough for everyone and they don’t appeal and the judge upholds the award and we live long enough to see it paid?”

  “Yes.” She’s desperate.

  And he steps all the way up to the bar and reaches across and takes both her hands in both of his. “We can’t anymore, Nora. We’ve tried. We’ve tried for so long. We talked about it.” He waves around at everyone staring guiltily into their beers. “The whole town’s talking about it. The only reason anyone’s come up with to turn down these jobs is to not make you angry.” He meets her eyes again, takes in her face. “More angry.”

  That’s a good reason, I think. That, and we might finally be making some progress on the lawsuit. We have River getting us access to information we’ve never had before. We have proof that Duke and Nathan are up to something, even if we don’t know what yet. We have a sister pact and the resolve that comes with it. It’s not much, but it’s not nothing, and it makes everyone’s mass and sudden loss of faith that much more tragic. Nora doesn’t know any of that, but it doesn’t matter. For her, it’s tragic enough already.

  “They’re. Evil.” Nora’s own eyes look witchy, black and bottomless.

  “Maybe.” Zach steps back, away from her. “Maybe not. Maybe they’ve changed. Maybe Nathan is different from his father. Maybe mistakes were made, and it’s time to forgive and move on. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  She flings her arms wide to enter into evidence all of them, all of us, all of it—Bourne-that-was versus Bourne-that-is and our whole world.

  “Right,” says Tom. “The worst already happened. It can’t happen again.”

  “Of course it can!” She didn’t mean to be so loud. I can see it in her face. “You think they’re chastened? You think they’re sorry? They’re triumphant. They learned they can fuck us over with not a single repercussion. They learned they can fuck us over, and not only won’t anyone out there notice”—she waves around at the rest of the world—“no one here will notice either. Or if we notice, we’ll move on soon enough. They should fuck us over because they make a shitpile of money doing it, and when they’re done, we bend over and beg them to go again.”

  “They’re the answer to our prayers,” Hobart says, emboldened now because she’s yelling.

  “You prayed for death, poison, and destitution?” Nora spits.

  “We need jobs, Nora. We need money. We need something to do all day besides sit in here and drink. We can’t leave. We’re stuck here. Our property ain’t worth shit. Our houses. Our land. That ridiculous excuse for a school. What are my kids gonna do? Huh? Belsum is our last best shot. We have to give them another chance because they’re giving us another chance. If they come in and make good this time, it’ll be like they promised before. Growth. Opportunities. Our property values go up. Our town becomes less of a dead end. Our kids have a chance.”

  “But at what cost?” Nora is shaking. Or maybe it’s me. Probably it’s both of us. “What about the principle here?”

  “Well, now those are different questions.” Zach is making his voice sound reasonable. “We don’t know at what cost. Last time didn’t work out for them either. Must have cost ’em a fortune in lost revenue when they shut down. You figure they’d really rather not poison us if they could.” Weak smile. “They’ve worked out some kinks maybe. They’re less willing to take that kind of risk. They can’t afford to do it again. So probably no cost.”

  “You can’t know that,” she interrupts.

  But he keeps talking. “And we can’t afford to stand on principle, Nora. We literally can’t afford it. Only rich people get to stand on principle.”

  “And besides,” Tom begins, then stops.

  “Go ahead.” She knows what’s coming.

  “You’re right.” He shrugs. “We’re already ruined. They can’t ruin us again. They’ve taken our livelihoods, our dreams, our confidence, our prospects. What the hell else is there? There’s nothing. We might as well let them come back and try. We’ve got nothing left to lose.”

  She pauses, shakes her head, crosses her arms over her chest. “They’re not going to hire you.”

  “They are, Nora.”

  “They aren’t because you’re too fucking stupid. How are you going to work at a chemical plant when you’re this goddamn dumb? Frank wouldn’t hire you to mop the floors in this bar because you don’t have the brains for it. He wouldn’t hire you to carry rocks because the rocks are smarter than you are.”

  “Frank,” Tom appeals to a higher authority. They’re cowed in her presence, and they’re sorry, but they’d still like not to be abused by their bartender.

  “Don’t cry to Frank,” Nora sa
ys. “Frank’s the only one of you who’s not an idiot. Frank’s got sense and faith and isn’t about to let himself get fucked again by these assholes. Every goddamn one of you”—she’s calling out to the whole bar now—“dropped off the suit except me and Frank.”

  “Nora.” Frank clears his throat. Everyone stops and looks at him, and he clears his throat again and then again. He’s been quiet, listening to all this. He owns the place after all, so it doesn’t seem so weird he’s observing but not saying anything.

  She turns toward him, eyebrows raised, face open, completely unprepared.

  “Nora, I took my name off too.”

  “No you didn’t.” This is so impossible she doesn’t believe him.

  “I had to.”

  “What are you talking about? Why?”

  His hands rise then fall back against his sides. “I couldn’t stand in their way.” He waves at his customers, the guys at the bar, the couples whispering at tables and trying to ignore us, takes them in, me too maybe. It’s my future more than anyone else’s here, after all.

  “What about my way?” she hisses.

  “You have a job. Two actually. I have a job. I can’t stand in the way of someone else having one too. I get it. These folks need the money, the bennies, the whole thing really.”

  “And you get rich too,” she adds darkly.

  “Not rich.” He laughs, mirthless, forced. “But yeah, Norma’s needs Belsum’s goodwill and patronage to stay afloat.”

  “It hasn’t so far.”

  “’Cause these guys never get off their stools.” That mirthless laugh again. “When they go back to work, think of the hit. And think of the business from execs just out of their last meeting, managers at the end of a long week, new wives in town, new families. I can’t just tell them they’re not welcome here.”

  “They’re not,” says Nora.

  “They’re not,” Frank agrees, “unless they’re coming anyway.”

  “Russell said there were two names left on the suit. And one of them’s me.”

  “I’m sorry,” Frank says.

  “I just assumed—”

  And then, out of the darkness by the door where the lights don’t reach, “It’s me. Okay? It’s me. I’m the other one. I’m sorry, guys.” This to the barflies. “You know—I hope you know—I’ll do whatever I can to support you. But I owe her. And I … believe her. It’s me.”

  I didn’t see Omar come in. Nora obviously didn’t either. She looks not just stunned but like she might actually fall over. In fact, apparently no one noticed Omar’s entrance, everyone too busy arguing, stating their cases, standing up to Nora’s dressing-down. Now he’s standing behind me, behind all of us, and everyone’s turned to look at him.

  “You can’t not have taken your name off the suit,” Nora sputters. “You were never on to begin with.”

  That he understands this, which even I don’t follow at first, is saying something. “I signed on a couple weeks back. I told Russell not to tell you. Didn’t want to make a big deal. But it was time.”

  There has been attrition over the years as people died or moved away. There have been abstainers, like Pastor Jeff, who believes in heavenly justice rather than the earthly variety. But it’s always been Omar’s holding out that’s most rankled her. He’s the one whose name and title seem like they would lend the whole thing weight and import. He’s as wronged as anyone. But he’s always refused, claimed he has to remain impartial, be available to appear as a witness instead should it ever come to that.

  “Why?” She has actual tears in her eyes. “I mean, why now?”

  He walks straight toward her like he honestly can’t help himself. Stops a few feet away and looks awkward and embarrassed. Smiles nervously around at everyone. Decides he doesn’t care and not only comes up to the bar but ducks under the flap and right over to her, inches away. Holds his hands out toward her then pulls them back in fists then tucks them in the back pockets of his jeans. “You were right. We can’t just let them back like nothing happened. Everything happened. They have to know we know it. They have to know we’re watching this time, paying attention.”

  “What happened to ‘We have to be nice to them because it’s our best shot at being treated well’?”

  “We tried that already. It didn’t work out that great. So I’m standing with you. We’ll try something else this time.”

  “Tried that too,” Hobart grunts. “We’ve been suing them sixteen years now.”

  “Omar has a job too, you know,” Tom says.

  “You want it?” Omar’s standard response, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off Nora.

  And I see why. She glows, like her face is lit up from inside. She stands looking at him for a while, letting him look back, letting him stand close, their eyes holding, but neither of them saying anything more. Then she points at a place on the other side of the bar with her chin, and he ducks back under and doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes—never mind every single one is on him—and slumps onto the stool she picked for him, battered, like he’s swapped the weight of one world for another, but unbeaten as yet.

  She brings him a beer and a bowl of pretzels, a meager offering maybe but an offering nonetheless.

  “Thank you, Omar.”

  “Anytime, Nora.”

  She raises an eyebrow at him.

  “Well,” he hedges, “at least this time.”

  One

  “So!” Petra says, eyes shining, an unmeasurably small amount of time after River gives me the folder with the emails and leaves the cafeteria. “Read them!”

  “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean ‘Not yet’?!” Shrieking.

  “You sound like Monday,” I inform her.

  “I DO NOT SOUND LIKE MONDAY!” she disagrees.

  “I have to wait for her.”

  “Who?”

  “Monday.”

  “Why?”

  “And Mirabel.”

  “Who drove you all the way to and from Greenborough?”

  “We studied on the way,” I say.

  “Compendiously,” she says.

  “They’re my sisters.”

  “So am I.”

  “Tomorrow,” I promise, because she’s right about that part. “Tomorrow I’ll tell you everything.”

  * * *

  Pooh also opens with “So! Read them!”

  “I’m waiting for my sisters.”

  “What about me?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

  “What if I’m dead tomorrow?”

  “Then you won’t care anymore.”

  “Nothing exciting ever happens in Bourne.”

  I nod. She’s not wrong.

  “And when it does, it’s because everyone’s being poisoned,” she allows, “which is almost worse.”

  I nod some more.

  “Why did you even come by if you weren’t going to let me see?”

  “To give you incentive not to die before tomorrow,” I tell her.

  * * *

  On the way up my own driveway, I run into Apple Templeton. She’s on her way out of my front door. She looks surprised to see me, but not half as surprised as I am to see her—I live here, after all—and I worry that if she looked at me closely she would see at once that her son picked me, picked us, that he betrayed her family to help mine, that I hold in my hands a thing he gave me which might break open the lawsuit, bring Belsum to its knees, and change everything forever. But as soon as her eyes meet mine, she looks away.

  Inside, I find Monday reorganizing the periodical section, which lives under the bathroom sink. It’s mostly old magazines from the eighties, many missing covers, most missing pages, all water damaged and molding. Usually she arranges them by topic. Sometimes by color. Today, though, she seems to be going for alphabetical by the first name of the issue’s first contributor.

  “So things didn’t go well with Apple?”

  “We played Truth or Dare and a Lie.”

  Well, one of them
did probably. “Why was she here?”

  “She wants River to leave Bourne.”

  “Leave?” My chest feels strange.

  “She does not want him settling in. She does not want him to forget his plan to go.”

  “Was she here to see me?” I knew it from her face in the driveway.

  “Why would she be here to see you?”

  Because she knows he’s helping us, knows what he told me at the dam, knows what he delivered in the cafeteria. She knows we’ve spent time together and everything’s changing, and she wants it to stop.

  “I don’t know,” I lie.

  “She came to borrow books about how to get your son into college when his grandfather is rich but evil and his parents steal other people’s libraries.”

  Oh. Strange as this sounds, it actually makes more sense than what I was thinking (though even for Monday, this would be a hard title to find).

  “He gave us something.” I show her my folder.

  “What is it?”

  “An email thread.”

  “What does it say?”

  “I haven’t looked yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “We should do it together. Mirabel went to work?”

  “Yes, but you and I can—”

  “Not without her,” I say. “We’ll just have to be patient.”

  “But I am not patient,” Monday points out.

  * * *

  We just manage to wait until Mama and Mirabel get home, but then they have news. Over a dinner Mama makes but cannot eat, she tells us what happened at the bar, what happened with the lawsuit, what happened with Omar.

  “Does that mean everything is dead?” It’s unlike Monday to speak so figuratively, but she’s right. It feels like everything is dead.

  “No,” Mama says.

  “What does it mean?” Monday asks.

  “I don’t know,” Mama says.

  When we finally get back to our room, I don’t even have time to open the folder before Mirabel’s Voice launches into a paragraph she’s been saving all afternoon. It doesn’t seem like there could be yet more news, but there is. “Apple came to therapy. She wants to leave Bourne as soon as possible. She knows River is hiding something. Nathan forced them to move here. She said it isn’t safe. She said risking their lives. He said the whole family had to come. He said there was no point otherwise.”