November Surprise

by Laurel Osterkamp

  Wanting an unobtainable man is dangerous, and I don’t want to turn into a Monica Lewinsky type, convinced that a casual encounter is actually significant, or analyzing what the meaning of the word "is" is. But I see how it’s possible to lose your ideals when you’re with someone who makes you lose your breath, simply by kissing you on the cheek.

  Chapter 8. 2000: Al Gore vs. George W. Bush

  I’m staring at the ceiling. His breathing is so close and I want to turn away, but I can’t. I stretch out my legs and curl my toes instead of rolling my head to the side, like I’m so tempted to do. The gesture provides little relief because his fingers are still in my mouth and my jaw is aching from being forced open for so long.

  He speaks in a sigh. “You’re in trouble.”

  My stomach sinks. Naomi, my boss, promised me he wasn’t the type to use guilt, but this is like the third or fourth time he’s shaken his head while examining my mouth.

  “What were you thinking?” he asks.

  Why do dentists ask you questions when it’s impossible to answer back? It’s one of the many reasons I hate going to the dentist. But last week I was eating a raw carrot and I heard something crack, and that something was definitely not the carrot.

  The next day Naomi and I were having lunch when she offered me a slice of apple dipped in caramel.

  “I’d better not,” I said. “Something’s up with one of my back teeth.”

  “Are you going to go see a dentist?” she asked.

  “I know I should,” I said, “but…”

  “Lucy!” she said, “If your tooth is hurting, you need to go in. Otherwise it will only get worse."

  So I confessed it had been years since I’d had my teeth cleaned, and my fear had snowballed. Whatever dentist I end up seeing will blame me for staying away too long.

  And I don’t do well with blame.

  “You should see Dr. Rudolf,” she said. “He’s great. So funny. You’ll love him.”

  It was time to bite the bullet, so to speak, especially since I was having trouble biting anything else. I called Dr. Rudolf, and the first time he could see me was today, Tuesday, November 7th at 5:30 PM.

  Now I’m sitting here, dying to get out of this chair, if for no other reason than that I could be home watching the news, and the election returns.

  “Suction,” he says for the umpteenth time, his voice resigned and slightly annoyed.

  He and his hygienist exchange looks, and she suctions out my mouth. Was that an eye roll that passed between them? Does my mouth need to be suctioned out more than average? Do I have a drooling problem?

  He tinkers around in my mouth for a few moments more, and then he presses the button on the side of my chair and raises me up.

  We are now sitting eye to eye, and his face is full of bad news.

  “You are in trouble,” he says again.

  I almost answer back in an adolescent tone, “You already said that.” But shame is smoldering all the way from the bottom of my chest up to my top molars, and I stay silent.

  “You have three cavities, and two additional problem areas where we will need to keep watch. That back tooth where you heard a crack will most likely need a root canal. And your gums are in terrible shape.” He shakes his head at me and I swallow hard.

  “Okay…” I say. “So what do we do?”

  “You will come back in a week,” he says. “I will need to do fillings. Marta will schedule the appointment.”

  With that he lifts up the chair arm and I am relieved to climb out.

  I get my appointment card from Marta, exit the coral-colored office located next to PetSmart in the strip mall, and run to my car. It’s close to 7:00, late for a dentist to be open, and I know I should be grateful for him seeing me at all. As I rush through the parking lot, the wind slips its icy hands through my thin jacket. I climb into my car and turn the ignition; NPR is already on my radio.

  I haven’t been on the road long when it’s announced that Florida is going for Gore.

  The pain in my jaw, the memory of Dr. Rudolf’s reproaches, and the dread of facing him again in a week dissipates. Gore won Florida! Now I’m confident it will be a great night.

  I get home, turn on the television, heat up some polenta with cheese and tomato sauce (soft food), and settle in on the couch.

  But things don’t go the way they’re supposed to. Gore isn’t declared the winner early in the evening the way Clinton was both four and eight years ago. After I finish my polenta I sit up, legs crossed, biting my nails and staring at Dan Rather, listening to him and his ridiculous similes. I wish he’d keep his enjoyment of the evening’s events under the surface. But he doesn’t. Instead he’s joyful and milking each moment for all it is worth.

  "This race is shakier than cafeteria Jell-O," he says with a smile jumping from his eyes.

  Then later, "This race is tight like a too-small bathing suit on a too-long ride home from the beach."

  I am inclined to agree with him. My back and butt are aching from sitting in the same position for close to two hours. I get up to stretch and Dan comes back from a commercial break.

  “Smelling salts for all Democrats please. Al Gore has his back to the wall, shirt tails on fire with this race in Florida." In other words, Florida has been retracted as a Gore win, and put back into the “undecided” category.

  “No!!!” I yell, to the walls, my ceiling, and into my pillow. I stop when I start to worry that my neighbors can hear me.

  How can this happen?

  "Florida is the whole deal, the real deal, a big deal."

  “No shit, Dan!” I yell at the television, but Dan Rather doesn’t seem phased by my lashing out. He continues to babble on, and (as he might put it himself) he looks happier than a pig bathing in a vat of mud on a sunny Sunday afternoon after he’s escaped the slaughter.

  I turn the channel to NBC, where Tim Russert is using a whiteboard to explain how many electoral college votes either Bush or Gore will need to win, and how it will all break down.

  But I know this already.

  It’s approaching 11:00, and I have an early morning meeting tomorrow. “I can go to bed,” I tell myself. “I’m not so obsessive that I have to stay up all night. I can find out the results in the morning.”

  Somehow I find the strength to turn the television off. I brush my teeth and wash my face. I put on pajama pants and a t-shirt. I climb into bed. Once again I’m staring at the ceiling.

  Sleep comes, but slowly, and my dreams are a mixture of Dan Rather, Dr. Rudolf, and Florida. Then my phone rings. I look at the clock before I answer. It’s 3:45 in the morning.

  I pick up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Lucy!”

  “Yeah…”

  “Whassup!” A punchy male voice I don’t recognize is doing an overdone imitation of that Budweiser commercial.

  “Who is this?” I ask, not trying to hide my impatience.

  “It’s Monty.”

  “Monty?” The last time we spoke was nearly a year ago, at Christmas. He asked for my phone number but never called. I suppose I didn’t exactly encourage him when I was so skeptical about giving him my number in the first place. Instead, we’ve exchanged a handful of emails, mostly political and sent to multiple recipients.

  “Did I wake you?” he murmurs.

  “Um, sort of,” I say.

  His voice is louder now, and it startles me. “Sort of?”

  “I was only sort of asleep.” I state this as my mind is racing in confusion. Why is he calling? Why is he calling me? Did something bad happen to Jack? Or is this about the election? Or maybe he’s calling to say that he’s madly in love with me, and the night’s events have made him realize how fragile life is and he can no longer live without me, so he’ll move to Minneapolis, where he can surely still work as a lawyer for the ACLU.

  Somehow I’m able to silently recite these theories inside my mind in the space of a second or two, because I’m done by the time he responds.

 
“So you weren’t watching! What’s with that? You are the last person I thought would have gone to bed. As obsessive as you are!” He yells this and I’m sleepy enough to be confused. Is he actually angry, or is that mock indignation in his voice?

  “Don’t yell at me,” I say.

  “Sorry. I’m just worked up. You would be too, Lucy, if you’d been watching. I really thought it was safe to call you, of all people. I was sure you’d still be glued to the TV.”

  “Monty… I went to bed a few hours ago because it looked like things were going to be dragging on for a while, and Dan Rather and Tim Russert were driving me crazy.”

  I can actually hear him shake his head at me. “Well, you missed the most historical few hours of news coverage we’re ever going to see in our lifetime. What were you thinking?”

  I sit up and rub my temple. I kick off my covers because now I’m flushed and not at all chilly.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “Well,” Monty heaves a sigh. “A couple of hours ago Bush was declared the winner of Florida and Gore privately conceded the election to Bush.”

  My stomach sinks. “Oh no!”

  “Wait! But then Florida was undeclared again, and Gore took back his concession.”

  “No way!” I jump out of bed and stumble in the dark towards my living room, cordless phone in hand. In the dim light I locate my remote and turn on the television. I plop back onto my couch.

  “What channel do you have on?”

  “CNN.”

  I turn it to CNN, which is what I probably should have been watching the whole time. Just a few commentators sitting at a desk, with occasional cuts to Candy Crowley or John King on location.

  “Lucy, what are we going to do?”

  “Huh?”

  “We can’t let Bush win. I could tell you stories of all sorts of wrongdoings…” His voice tapers off, and I wait for him to finish the thought.

  “Monty, are you still there?”

  “What? Yeah. Sorry. I just got distracted by Judy Woodruff. She’s really kind of hot, in a sexy librarian way, you know?”

  “I guess I never thought about it.”

  “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t call you to talk about other women.”

  “Why did you call me?” I hold my breath for a minute, and remind myself that cool people don’t care too much.

  “I called you, Lucy, because we need to figure out a plan. We can’t let Bush win.”

  I bite my lip, which already feels dry and chapped. “Don’t you think it might be out of our hands?”

  “No. We could mobilize people. You talk to your friends; I’ll talk to my friends. We’ll start a movement.”

  “A movement?”

  “A Democratic movement. Democracy will win.”

  I’m still too sleepy to form a good response. “That makes no sense.”

  Monty grunts a little. “Nothing tonight makes any sense. It’s almost 5:00 a.m. here, I haven’t slept, and I feel like the world has become some bizarre alternate reality.”

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I forgive you.”

  “For what?”

  I exhale with exaggerated exasperation. “Waking me up, yelling at me, and comparing me to Judy Woodruff.”

  “I didn’t compare you to her. If I had, you’d know that I think you’re far sexier.”

  I feel my cheeks flush at his compliment, and I can’t help feeling pleased even though I know he’s punchy, sleep deprived, and I shouldn’t take anything he has to say seriously.

  “Thank you,” I say. “I’d tell you that you’re far more attractive than Tom Brokaw, but I hate it when people return compliments for compliments. It always sounds so empty.”

  “I don’t mind empty compliments. Do you really think I’m hotter than Tom Brokaw?”

  “Totally.”

  “Good,” he says. “Why aren’t you here?” His question is rhetorical, and I don’t answer. Instead I stretch my legs out and lie down on my couch. My eyes are pointed toward the ceiling now, instead of at the television. For the first time all day, I feel comfortable.

  A week later we still don’t know who is president. I have heard nothing from Monty since our early morning phone call on the eighth, and although I’m not surprised, I feel like I planned a picnic for a beautiful day in February, and now I’m bummed that it’s actually cold out. Anyone could have seen that coming, I tell myself. Get over it.

  What’s worse is I have my second appointment with Dr. Rudolf to look forward to this afternoon.

  “Lucy, did you call the mayor’s office and clear the plans for Teen Week?” My boss, Naomi, is standing at my desk and staring down at me; her eyes are squinted up like she has a headache. Naomi is super-tall and she used to model around twenty years ago, back in her late teens/early twenties. She has a lot of nervous energy, so I find it hard to imagine her ever standing still long enough for the pictures to be taken. She’s gorgeous though, which makes her intimidating when you first meet her, but I’ve known her for close to ten years, so I’m past that. Now she’s like a good friend who gets to tell me what to do.

  “Not yet,” I respond.

  She grabs my stapler and starts to open it and close it, open and close it. “Well, could you do that today please? Before you go.”

  “Actually, no. I have my second appointment with Dr. Rudolf this afternoon. I have to leave in a few minutes.”

  Click goes my stapler. Click again as she swings it open and shut, open and shut. I resist the urge to swipe it from her only because she is my boss.

  “Dr. Rudolf? Isn’t he great? Tell him I say hi.”

  I grunt out a sarcastic little laugh and she raises her eyebrows at me.

  I respond to her silent question. “He’s not nice! You told me he wouldn’t yell at me, and he totally did! ‘You’re in trouble!’ he kept saying. Over and over! And his nurse rolled her eyes because she had to suction my mouth so much. They were silently making fun of me for having so much drool. It was awful! Now I’m stuck going there, and he’s going to give me several fillings, and possibly a root canal.”

  “Wow. Your teeth must be in really bad shape.” She’s swinging my stapler now, and I stand up and snatch it from her.

  “You’re going to break my stapler.”

  Naomi holds both hands up in mock surrender. “Sorry. Is something else wrong, Lucy? You seem really tense.”

  I suppose I am. After a week of being glued to the television, radio, and internet, trying to find whatever news coverage I can, and hearing about Florida recounts, hanging chads, and the biased leadership of Florida Attorney General Katherine Harris, my endurance for this election saga is beginning to wane. Add to that my increased confusion over whether or not I should call Monty since he hasn’t called me, and my growing dread at this afternoon’s appointment with Dr. Rudolf, I think tense is an appropriate description for myself.

  “This has been a challenging week.”

  Naomi nods her head. “Have you stepped away from the news coverage?”

  “Of course!” I inhale deeply and make a conscious effort to keep my voice lower and steady. “I’m not always watching the news…”

  “I don’t mean when you’re at work,” says Naomi. She points a well-manicured finger at me. “You are obsessed. It’s time to gain some perspective.”

  “I have perspective, Naomi. I don’t need any more.”

  “Lucy, other than when you’re sleeping, showering, or sitting at your desk, how often have you had the news turned off?”

  I think for a moment. She didn’t include going to the bathroom, but I doubt that time really counts. Besides, since I live alone I can leave the lavatory door open, and with the volume turned up on my television it’s completely possible to hear everything they’re saying on CNN.

  My shoulders sag. The first step is admitting you have a problem. “I have to go,” I say. “I’ll give Dr. Rudolf your regards.”

  I get home a little past 6:00. My appointment started earli
er in the afternoon than last week’s had, but it lasted longer since I needed three fillings. Dr. Rudolf gave me a fluoride capsule where I cracked my tooth, and he pasted it back together as best he could without doing an actual root canal.

  “I don’t think this will work,” he said. “You’ll probably still need the root canal. You’ll be very lucky if you don’t. Don’t be so careless in the future.”

  I know he was talking only about cavities, but I start getting all philosophical. Where would I be if I wasn’t so careless, so complacent? Several years ago I thought I was invincible, eating sugary candy and having one night stands with my best friend’s brother, like both my teeth and my heart would sustain no injuries. And when I heard about George W. Bush, this rising star in the Republican Party who everyone wants to sit and have a beer with, I wasn’t worried because life was good, and I had gotten used to success. Now I’m trying to get Dr. Rudolf’s scolding out of my head, and I’m casting off all future Tootsie Pops and Starbursts. But I can’t quiet the voice that is telling me over and over: It’s too late. The damage is done.

  I check my voice mail. One new message.

  “Hi Lucy, it’s Naomi. I feel bad about Dr. Rudolf, and I have an idea for how to make it up to you. Give me a call.”

  My entire body sags. Calling Naomi often takes a long time, and I’m not in the mood. I’d rather curl up with some scrambled eggs and CNN, but she’s my boss, and if she says to call her, I call her.

  She answers on the first ring.

  “How are your teeth?”

  “Fixedth, for now. But the novaciane sthill hasn’th worn off, tho iths thort of hard for me thoo talk.”

  “Right, okay. I’ll keep it short then. What would you think…” she pauses for emphasis, and when she continues talking her voice has raised an octave. “… about going to New York with me?”

  Naomi has been planning a trip to NYC for several months. We got a grant to visit and observe some of their more successful community organizations so we can copy their methods. She’s been super excited about it, planning both her work and her shopping itinerary.

  “I don’ understhan. There’th money for tha?