The Off Season

by Amy Hoffman

  “We had to get a map to figure out even what state Provincetown was in. But that old gal was so right. Once I got here, I never wanted to leave. And I never have.”

  “Never?”

  “Nope,” said Baby. “Not if I can help it. I used to visit my folks on Christmas, but since they passed I just hunker down here all winter.”

  “What about Sally?”

  “Living on lesbian land out in Oregon!” Baby said proudly.

  “I didn’t know that still existed.”

  “Oh, there’s a few of the old communes hidden away in the woods. Sally couldn’t take P-town. Too many people in the summer, not enough in the winter. Too much male energy—she said that was what started up her migraines. She and the girls out there went off the grid a while ago, and Sally’s the one who figured out how to install the solar panels. She’s great. When we were running around together she was a slip of a thing, with this long blonde hair that was always getting in the way when we kissed. Now she’s a big-ass old butch with a gray crewcut. I have to write her actual letters, stick them in the mailbox. They don’t believe in patriarchal computers.”

  “What about the patriarchal US postal service?” I said.

  “They got themselves a woman letter carrier.” Baby caught my eye, and we both started laughing. At the moment her story seemed hysterically funny: from the snakes and the demons to the mail lady and the lesbian communards. “I’ve found my place, my people,” she told me, wiping tears from her eyes. “And how many can say that?”

  False Pretenses

  Miss Ruby stuck her head in the door. “What are you kids getting up to out here?” she asked. Since her health regimen had begun to have an effect, she no longer waited until events caught up with her to satisfy her curiosity.

  “Miss Ruby!” said Baby. “Look at you, out and about! I’m confessing my sins.”

  “You’ll never guess what Baby gave me,” I said.

  “You’re right, I won’t,” said Miss Ruby. “I hate guessing.” I handed her the sheaf of petitions, and she started flipping through them. “These are great,” she said, surprised. “Look, here’s Cha Cha Olivera—I forgot his name was Joseph. Theresa Cook, the old bat. How’d you get her interested in all the ecology stuff?”

  “Oh, I didn’t get into that,” said Baby. “The old timers don’t relate to it. I told them it was about raising the parking meter fees in the pier lot. Town decals exempted, of course.”

  “You’ve always been a smart one, Baby.” Miss Ruby nodded approvingly. She turned to me. “Why didn’t we think of that? Everybody likes sticking it to the tourists.”

  Baby said, “I told the gay guys it was to fly a rainbow flag over Town Hall.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I said. “Did you lie to everyone? Our petitions will be invalidated instantly!”

  “No they won’t, Nora!” said Baby. “Nobody ever reads anything. When it comes up at town meeting they’ll just think they misremembered.”

  “I’ve seen it happen,” Miss Ruby agreed.

  “I don’t think so.” I shook my head, newly discouraged and annoyed at both of them. “I don’t see how I can submit these signatures. They were obtained under totally false pretenses.”

  “You worry too much,” said Baby. “Just try it.”

  She was right, to an extent. When I handed in the petitions at Town Hall, the clerk took them from me without suspicion, licked his index finger to turn the pages, and told me my item appeared to be in order and would be included on the STM warrant.

  “The what?” I asked.

  “Sit down, sit down.” He waved at a chair next to his desk. “The special town meeting agenda. Haven’t lived here long, have you? You haven’t been in here before. I’d know. I remember everyone.” A round, tan person with a bald head and shortish arms, he looked like a gingerbread man. He held out his hand for me to shake. “Chuck Pina. Pleased to meet you, Nora. Usually it’s the same people, same signatories. Same issues too. And look, you’ve got some surprises here.” He pointed at a scrawl on one of the pages I had handed him. “I never knew Cha Cha to set foot on dry land long enough to put pen to paper. Last I heard he was living on a houseboat he slapped together himself from junk he found on the beach. Moored it in the harbor. Good old Cha Cha!”

  “He signed it Joseph,” I pointed out.

  “I know, I know, don’t worry. It’s all A-OK. You’ll get your mosquito spray, or whatever you’re trying for here.”

  “No, we don’t want the spraying!” I explained.

  “It’s all in order,” Chuck Pina reiterated. “Good luck to you.”

  The official Provincetown Charter starts with the words “We, the people . . . ,” just like the US Constitution. Children in civics classes all over the country learn about direct democracy as still practiced in the New England town meeting, and the registered voters of Provincetown were proud to continue the tradition, although even they would quickly concede that it wasn’t always the best way to make important decisions, with some attending just to speechify, some to disagree with every proposal, and some thoroughly baffled. Still, it was entertaining and a good opportunity to visit with the neighbors. The town moderator, chosen for her stentorian baritone and indifference to whether anyone liked her, ran the meetings, which mostly meant fielding amendments, and amendments to amendments, and banging her gavel furiously when the speakers flouted Robert’s Rules of Order and wouldn’t stop interrupting each other.

  I, too, appreciated the democratic ideal as practiced in the town meeting, and if it sometimes got a little nutty, that was only appropriate for Provincetown. So leaving the building with a receipt for my falsified petition in hand, I felt like a turncoat, about to sabotage the people’s vote.

  The Special Town Meeting

  Janelle didn’t feel good about the signatures either. I had taken a deep breath, called her number—which I knew by heart, of course, since I had once shared it—and with some difficulty persuaded her to meet me for coffee at the Green Teddy, nothing personal, just to discuss the next steps in the anticancer campaign.

  We had had a stretch of freezing weather, so much so that temperatures in the forties felt almost balmy and the sun painfully bright. Squinting customers in coats and hats sat outside on the Teddy’s patio, and Janelle and I grabbed a table. She was warily pleased that I had taken the initiative with the town meeting, but I felt I had to warn her about how Baby had gotten the petitions filled out, since despite the reassurances from her and Miss Ruby, it seemed inevitable to me, at least, that some people would feel exploited. Predictably, Janelle became furious. “Did I ask you to do this?” Janelle fumed. “Call this meeting? Thanks to you and that person, this is going to totally discredit my campaign.”

  I sighed. “Baby’s on your side, Janelle. Just like I am!”

  “I don’t know you anymore,” said Janelle. “Vandalism and now lies.”

  “Right, and who chained herself to the Stop & Shop?”

  “That was civil disobedience, in case you’ve never heard of it! And the cops didn’t even give me a warning. Anyway, I was feeling so pissed off that day, the action was very satisfying!”

  “Oh, sorry, Dr. King!” I knew this was stepping over a line, but it felt so unfair that Janelle completely rejected all my efforts on her behalf. “So what you do is civil disobedience, but what I do is vandalism and lies?”

  “I’m not having anything to do with it,” said Janelle, standing up.

  As she stalked down Commercial Street I could see Broony, who usually busied herself in the back when I came in, gloating at me from inside the store, but Bob bustled out with a complimentary latte. Pulling Green Teddy from his vest pocket, he danced him around on the table to cheer me up. “GT say, don’t let it get you down,” Bob said in a squeaky-toy voice. “He still love you.”

  “Thanks, Bob,” I said. “I guess you’re right. She’s having a hard time.”

  “No, thank GT!” he squeaked insistently, holding the toy up
to my face.

  “Kiss, kiss,” I said and pursed my lips. Sometimes Bob got a bit too literal about Green Teddy.

  On the day of the meeting, sleet was blowing in horizontally off the bay, and I was half-hoping that too few people would show up to make a quorum, but no such luck. Tony gave Miss Ruby and me a ride, and I thought we would be the first to arrive, but quite a few old hands were already waiting in the cavernous foyer, stomping the slush off their boots, pulling off their hats, and hanging their dripping slickers on a wobbly coat rack. Town Hall was a historic and venerable building. The wide planks of its dark wood floor creaked loudly as the early birds wandered the room, greeting each other with a kiss or a handshake, and congratulating each other for braving the weather.

  “Wouldn’t send a dog out on a night like this!”

  “Yeah, but how about an old fisherman? A little snow don’t stop us.”

  “Us Portagees are made of the tough stuff.”

  The room grew humid and crowded, and people began filing upstairs to the auditorium. I was surprised at how many I recognized. Chuck Pina and an assortment of selectmen and other town worthies sat in the front, and right behind them, Reverend Patsy had grabbed a row for her congregants. My manager from the Stop & Shop waved at me, and sitting a few seats away from her was Margot in her leather miniskirt, although wearing wooly tights and big green wellingtons, as a concession to the storm.

  Tony leaned over to instruct me. “These old queens,” she said admiringly. “Nothing keeps ’em at home.”

  Baby had snuggled in beside me, and I was glad to see that Broony was sitting with Bob up in the balcony, not even within kiss-blowing distance.

  “Where’s Janelle?” asked Baby. “I mean, isn’t this all about her?”

  I shrugged. I hadn’t told Baby about our latest argument. “The weather’s kind of daunting. She’s still recovering.”

  “Sorry, of course you’re right,” said Baby, squeezing my hand and crediting me, I could tell, with a measure of sympathy and tact that Janelle would have disagreed with her about. “I hope she can make it, though.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said, and although that was true, it felt hypocritical to say it.

  The moderator had been banging her gavel for a while, and finally the noise in the room subsided, although it never really disappeared all evening. Most of the agenda was frankly boring, changes to budget lines and such. People looked around to see who was voting for which proposals, and stuck their hands up when their friends and allies did. Finally it was our turn.

  “Resolved: that the Provincetown selectmen ask the Massachusetts Department of Public Health to rescind its plan for preventative mosquito spraying in our area,” announced the moderator.

  Rev. Patsy leaped up, along with her contingent. “Objection!” she called.

  The moderator banged her gavel furiously. “Who do you think you are, Perry Mason?” she said. “Wait your turn!” She turned to me. “Ms. Nora Griffin! Tell us a little about your resolution.”

  I stood up. “We all know someone with breast cancer,” I said, and I saw people around the auditorium nodding their heads. “Why should we introduce more harmful substances into our environment that will seep into our groundwater—which is already polluted enough? They don’t even know if there will be a mosquito infestation this spring. And there’s other stuff we can do to prevent that—getting rid of standing water, etcetera.” I wasn’t sure exactly what I meant by “etcetera,” but I figured there must be other ways to prevent mosquitos from breeding.

  Baby, Miss Ruby, and Tony burst into applause, and Patsy jumped up again. She pointed at the woman standing next to her, who was leaning on the chair in front of her. “This lady has Lyme disease,” she said. “It’s a terrible affliction. She can’t work, she can barely stand up in this meeting to tell you her story herself, and we know exactly what caused her illness—while this supposed cancer-insecticide link is totally theoretical. Don’t we as a community have a moral obligation to take action that will prevent suffering right now?”

  Around us there was some confused murmuring. “But Reverend,” a man called out. “All due respect, but you get the Lyme from tick bites. You all know I’d like to cull the damn deer—”

  “Christ, there he goes again.”

  “He’d shoot anything that moves. The poor deer.”

  The man shouted over his critics, “—the girl here’s talking about mosquitoes! Different bug altogether.”

  “All I can say is, keep your kitties inside. He’ll be gunning for them!”

  I heard the floor creak in the back of the auditorium and looked around. Janelle and Roger came in and sat in the back row, and Janelle raised her hand.

  The moderator pointed at her, and Janelle stood up. “I have cancer,” she said. “Or had. Who knows.”

  “But—” said Rev. Patsy.

  “You had your say!” said the moderator. She turned to Janelle. “Go on, dear. I hope you’re recovering well.”

  “I’m doing okay, thanks,” Janelle told her, then continued. “I’m worried about the spraying, just like everyone else. But the people who signed the petition, they didn’t know what it was all about. That troubles me too!”

  Roger stood to support her. “Yes and on top of that—”

  Irritated, the moderator interrupted him. “Wait a minute, young man, who are you? Are you a voter?”

  “Not exactly, but—”

  “Then sit down!” The moderator turned to address the audience. “Now, is this true? Are we all wasting our time here?” I squeezed Baby’s hand, waiting for her subterfuge to be exposed, but no one spoke. A few people looked around and shrugged. “Okay, enough of this.” The moderator banged her gavel. “I’m bringing this item to a vote. All in favor?”

  Chuck Pina stood up and began counting, whispering the numbers to himself as hands popped up around the room, waving the cards that showed they were registered voters. There was a gap where Reverend Patsy and her people were sitting, but even without them it became clear that our motion would pass by a large majority.

  Most of the voters didn’t know or care about the insecticide spraying, but they hated it when some government agency tried to come in and tell them what to do—even when it was for their own good. They had been bickering with the National Seashore since its founding in 1961, although they were perfectly well aware that without the national park designation, their view of the sunset from Herring Cove Beach would have been obstructed by a block of condominiums, extending uninterrupted from the Sagamore Bridge to the traffic circle at the P-town Inn. I twisted in my seat to see what Janelle was doing, and my voter card floated to the floor. Her hand was in her lap. I bent over and scrabbled around to retrieve the card.

  “Carried!” said the moderator. “The Provincetown selectmen shall request that the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection hold off on spraying this spring!” Baby, Miss Ruby, and Tony jumped up, pumping their fists and whooping. “What’s this?” the moderator yelled. “No demonstrations!”

  They sat down. Miss Ruby leaned over to me. “I can’t believe we won!” she said. “I never win anything!” But I was less elated than I had expected; in fact, I was annoyed. Of course you never win anything, I wanted to tell her, with these kinds of tactics. Janelle herself, for whom I had done all the work, had spoken against it, and I myself had begun to doubt that forgoing insecticide spraying would do anything to prevent breast cancer. Uncomfortably, I wondered if Reverend Patsy and her parishioners had a point, about the immediate prevention of harm.

  “That was great!” Baby said. “How come you didn’t vote?”

  “Of course I did!”

  “I don’t think you got counted. You were fidgeting around in your seat, and then it was all over.”

  I hadn’t gotten my hand up in time. Janelle’s abstention, of course, had been deliberate. People around the auditorium stood and began layering on sweaters and slickers and boots to venture back into the storm.
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br />   Outside, though, the wind had died down after pushing aside the clouds, and the sleet had stopped. I took Baby’s arm in the bitter cold. “Look up, sweetheart,” she said, pointing out the constellations. “Orion. The winter hunter.”

  Living in the city, I had never paid much attention to the sky, which stayed a kind of rosy color even at night, but in Provincetown, the pattern of bright stars seemed terribly close to us, and I thought, That will go in my mural. “I just hope we have a dry spring,” I said. “To keep the bugs down.”

  All Other Boxes

  When Reverend Patsy called to tell me I had to move my boxes out of her office, I assumed she was evicting them because of our disagreement over the mosquito spraying. “Not at all,” she said. “Like the Christians say, turn the other cheek!” Quickly, she added, “Of course, we’re not Christians, but we do believe Jesus was a great teacher.

  “But my board doesn’t like the clutter. The president came by the other day, and she had a fit. She says I have to learn to create a more professional impression.”

  For decades, on the church’s signboard, below the title of the Sunday sermon and the posters for drag bingo, had appeared the motto Everyone Welcome! Come as You Are. “What about your signboard?” I asked Patsy. “Doesn’t a little clutter make people feel more at home?”

  “My board president says not if there’s no place for them to sit. I really can’t afford to get into any more trouble. You understand, Nora. The volunteers didn’t do a great job cleaning up after our blessing of the animals, and the regular janitor was furious, I guess pretty reasonably, so I already got a big warning about that.”