The Week from Hell

Everybody has one. This was Brenda’s. Her candidacy was to be a big surprise. She was allowed to tell no one, not even her children. It made her feel like a criminal.

She was constantly updated on the phone by Adele, Chauncey, Nat and Mitchell, which meant her phone was always ringing. She had to change that ring-tone. It attracted too much attention. Finally she switched it to vibrating and kept it in a pocket.

She had to make plans for the children. Jason’s aunt ran an overnight camp not far from them. They were considering this, but they hadn’t yet told the kids. It would make life so much easier if they weren’t around.

Oh, how could she think that? It hurt her to think it, but it was true. Her schedule was filling up in advance with dinners, meetings, and visits to senior citizen centers and town library forums. If she could only be free, and not have to worry about getting dinner for the family, getting home at a reasonable hour, having people in the house, and the phone ringing day and night. That was already happening, and she hadn’t yet been announced.

Jason was moping around like an ignored puppy. She tried to make up for it at night, but he would have none of it – kept turning his back on her. He didn’t want her to get any good points, only bad ones, and she could see him chalking them up.

The dresses arrived with too much fanfare. They were delivered in a bright white truck on Saturday. The name of the boutique was scrawled in violet on its sides and back. Everyone saw it. They received three last minute invitations to Sunday barbeques, from curious neighbors, all of which they declined, rather than have to a lie. The use of the lie was presenting itself like a bad joke. Every little thing seemed to demand one – or its cousin, the evasion, in which you don’t answer the question, but instead put forth some tangentially related information that stops all but the bad-mannered from asking again.

They had to tell the kids something when the dresses came. They’d been out in the back yard and run around the front when the chimes played. They thought it was an ice cream truck, and were disappointed, so they already saw the dresses as an enemy.

Jason didn’t help. He told them, before she had a chance to say anything, that Mommy was trying out for a part in a play, and these were her costumes. Sheba was thrilled, and Jason was excited, and she had to be the bad guy and tell them it wasn’t true, offering them nothing in exchange.

Then Jason said it was true, but it was a secret, and Mommy was practicing keeping the secret with them. Zeke loved this, and rolled around on the floor with great glee, holding his sides. Sheba was disturbed at the notion of her mother lying to her. “How do I know you’re telling the truth about anything?” she asked. “I thought you said lying was a sign of weakness, that you should never let anybody make you tell a lie.”

“I’m not lying,” she stated. “I’m keeping somebody’s secret. That’s not lying.”

“Whose secret?”

Jason took pity on her. He raised a wise finger in the air and said, “Ahh, that is the biggest part of any secret.” This was profound; it shut everybody up.

Jason was acting very strangely. His bad humor was interspersed with short bursts of great levity, during which he’d laugh at nothing, throw Zeke up into the air, tell Sheba a scary story to make her squeak… but never did he include her in the fun. She only got the mopey face.

In the last couple of days, he’d been spending more time at the computer. He’d never done much web-surfing. He said he looked at a screen all day; why should he do it at home? Now he’d meander over to his desk instead of hanging around with her and the kids. He’d sit down and apply himself to something. She didn’t know what, and she was not about to find out. His computer was his livelihood. She didn’t touch it. Or the laptop he carried back and forth. And he didn’t touch hers. In Cyberspace, they lived in different worlds.

Mitchell Wagman had been calling her all week, letting her in on his every thought. He kept coming up with positions for her to take on non-national issues, like Walmart. Wagman was thoroughly opposed to them on the grounds that he didn’t like the way they treated their workers.

She knew some of these workers through their kids. (Their school didn’t draw only from the privileged sections of town.) They needed those jobs, and were glad to have them. For some of the mothers, it was manna from heaven, being able to work however few and whatever hours they could.

They shopped in a Wal-Mart, too. Everybody did. You could buy what you needed and have money left over for what you wanted.

No, no, no, no, Wagman had said over the phone. “I don’t care what you want personally; politically you do not support Walmart.”

She hadn’t liked the tone he took with her, and the phone call had come when she and Jason had been talking about what their life was going to be like now. He was listening. She had to stand up for what she believed. “If you want a schizophrenic, Mr. Wagman, go look someplace else.”

It must have been the “Mr. Wagman” that showed him he was making a mistake. He said, “I’m sorry, Brenda. Sorry. I didn’t mean to tell you what you believe. Of course, you’re right. But you have to remember the greater good. You have to get elected to do any good at all. We’ll have to figure out a way for you to say both things at once. Like Obama does.”

She didn’t think it was funny, but she laughed. That’s when he told her to bone up on what Obama thought about everything, because that’s what she thought too.

He’d worn her out, with Jason taking it all in. She didn’t want him to know Mitchell had made further demands. “I think we understand each other,” she said, satisfying both men at once.

Chauncey Donahue, the big, blonde, polite, former football hero, wanted to talk about “edjicating the young.” He practically groveled before her because she understood math. His cause was pre-school, which he hadn’t attended. He blamed his lack of academic fortitude solely on this one biographical fact. “You gotta get ’em when they’re defenseless,” he said. “Before they can put up their dukes and fight you off.” It was quite an image Chauncey Donahue had of edjication. “Cradle to career,” he signed off, adopting Obama’s promise as his slogan.

Nat Grogan, that parody of a political hack, gave her five minute lectures, no matter where she was – in the supermarket, in the bathtub – on foreign affairs. That was the worst. There was no give and take. He picked a topic and filled her in. A lot of it she knew, a lot of it she didn’t. It scared her. She actually felt sorry for Sarah Palin.

The only bright spot was Adele Delicia, her shopping mate, who called at least once a day and assured her that she didn’t have to say what anybody told her to say. When the time came, and she was up on the stage, or in front of the cameras, whatever came out of her mouth was it. Cameras! She hadn’t realized she’d be on TV. What could she have been thinking? That this thing was going to take place all in her mind, or at most in posh restaurants and stores, with a small coterie of friends?

She had to get used to it. Her Coming Out party was this weekend. It was going to be a big bash, and she was the center of attention. While she watched Jason mope, she let her mind wander among the dresses, deciding what she would wear. In the end, she wasn’t the decider. Adele selected the dress. It was the first of many decisions Brenda would agonize over and ultimately not make.