First Base

It’s Sunday. The family’s at home having breakfast. An early breakfast, because Brenda has four appearances – this is the first Sunday after Labor Day – the first Sunday of the school term. The first day a lot of working parents will have the energy to pay attention to their kids.

Brenda has not gone to school yet. She didn’t look good enough after her table-surfing, to go outside. But today, without seeing her, Mitch has decided she’s good to go, and can begin keeping her scheduled appointments again.

Brenda isn’t exactly going back to school. The Party has been deemed more needy than her students. The greater good was invoked. Brenda still has a chance. She’s still popular. It’s only that her opponent is more popular than she is.

Fortunately, our lady is a dedicated teacher who did not like to miss school. Over the years, she has accrued enough sick days and personal days to stay out until November, when she will either be a congressman-elect or a teacher, but not both.

She has secured a real mathematician to take over her class. A woman (it had to be a woman for the women’s vote) with a PhD in Mathematics rather than Education, who has become a high school teacher because the pay is better than college wages. She had to go back to school for the equivalent of a master’s in Education, but it was worth it.

Elenora Stapleton. A horsey face with buck teeth and a laugh like a hyena. Brenda doesn’t think she will distract her mentor. So conscientious is the Democratic candidate for congress, that even though she does not have to, she will show up at her school three times a week to confer with the new teacher, and while she is there, even meet with her old principal.

Who just happens to be her new campaign manager. This allows Wagman to discharge his political obligations on school time.

But it’s Sunday, and there’s no school today. Jason has made pancakes for breakfast, while Brenda dressed for her power brunch at the Holiday Inn, with the pharmacists.

He is feeling dutiful. He took a long lunch hour on Friday. So did Danielle. They’re not behaving well. The pheromones are flowing, and now they can’t keep their hands off each other, even in public.

Once he leaned into her from behind, in the elevator, inserting himself between her buttocks. If it weren’t for his pants and her skirt, it would have been a home run. Jason was employing a skill he’d learned in his tantric yoga lesson.

Another time, when she walked past his desk to go into Clyde’s office, Jason reached out and grabbed a boob through the naked slit in her jacket. Jason knew Clyde wasn’t in his office. But he didn’t know that he had come down the hall in back of Danielle, and catching sight of what was going on, just continued down the hallway and came back later.

They think nobody notices. Everybody does. The whispering has begun.

Inwardly, Jason knows he is living dangerously. He’s glad of this chance to do something for his family.

Sheba and Zeke are talking non-stop about school. Their parents are listening to them take turns. Zeke is in fourth grade. He has a man for a teacher. This has never happened to him before. His teacher likes to hear him talk about cars. His teacher says he’s going to show them a Smart Car. His teacher has a friend who has one, and they are all going down to the parking lot to meet him and see what it’s like. His teacher says no rides – the school’s insurance doesn’t cover that. But they’re going to be able to sit in it.

Sheba is in her last year in Middle School. She’s in an honor’s program in Social Studies, and so has the fertile Ms. Marshall once again. She’s full of information about high birth rates, the planet running out of food, the life expectancy of women who have too many children … on and on she rattles, a good student absorbing the psyche of a charismatic teacher.

Sheba’s school, like Brenda’s, was speechless on opening day. But Ms. Marshall had obtained a copy of Barack’s talk to the children, and since it was an honor’s class in Social Studies, read it to the class. Then they discussed why anybody would not want their child to hear it.

“Because they’re Republicans,” said one little girl. “Republicans don’t want their children to worship President Obama.”

“Why not?” asked the teacher.

“Because then they’ll keep electing Democrats.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Then the Republicans won’t have any jobs,” she explained.

Sheba raised her hand. “It’s not good to worship anybody but God.”

“Why not?” Teacher is having a ball.

Sheba shrugged. “Maybe it’s because God isn’t here.”

Social Studies does not include religion until you get to college, so that part of the discussion ended there, as it looked to become dangerous. Sheba has new ideas. She gets a lot of them from Phoenix. She hasn’t seen him, but have you forgotten the web page?

Phoenix has been thinking a lot about his rights. He’s tired of being a kid. He doesn’t like being told what to do. He doesn’t like the idea of having to watch the same thing as every other kid in the country, and at the exact same time. There was something creepy about that.

He took a serious tone on the website and wrote a poem:

Don’t tell me who to love and hate
Let me figure it out for myself
Don’t fashion my mind
I’m one of a kind
A psychedelic red-haired elf

He might have liked what Obama said, but he didn’t want to find out by obeying. He opted out in his school, where there was a choice, and cleaned library shelves instead. At least it wasn’t the toilets.

Jason knows nothing of the boy’s influence, and he feels proud of his daughter for challenging what he sees as a power grab on the part of the Obama administration, if not Obama himself. To go for the children, behind closed doors, without their parents present, seems like a dirty trick. To distribute lesson plans asking children to ask themselves how they can serve – not their country, but their president, smacks of despotism. A leader is one thing. A master is another. Jason doesn’t take to masters any more than Phoenix does.

Even Brenda thinks it was a bit over the top, making such a federal case out of it. There was something very pushy about those lesson plans. But her line is, “The President can’t help himself. He’s a teacher at heart. He wants to raise everybody up the way he was raised up, and that was by doing well in school.”

She often wonders what kind of a president Hillary would have been, but she knows Obama is better than a Republican. Mercy Alexander embodies Republicans for Brenda. The party of the individual doesn’t seem to give a hoot about individuals. Some will make it, some won’t. There is no compassion for the ones who don’t. The Republican Party is for superheroes. As long as you’re strong and on top, it’s fine, but as soon as you slip, and everybody does, you’re trampled to death by the uncaring strivers.

After her drug meeting, Brenda is going to a Health Care rally of people who want single payer health care, the sole payer being the government. Brenda is going so she can put into the ears, and hopefully the mouths, of the people, the notion that any health care plan must cover abortions.

You may wonder how a teacher of children can be so anxious to prevent them from coming into the world. Brenda would say that unwanted children have a lower quality of life, and in addition, lower it for the wanted ones. The unwanted are usually poor, and even if they aren’t, they are often problem children, psychologically damaged before birth.

Clyde has been looking forward to seeing Brenda again. He feels involved with her through her husband. He enjoyed that hug outside the diner, and feels Brenda is entitled to some consolation for Jason’s bad behavior, even though she doesn’t know about it.

He’s a bachelor. An old-fashioned bachelor. Never had much to do with women. He’s a shy man, who does what he’s supposed to, and not much else. But something has clicked inside him, and he now has the mentality of a thirteen-year-old boy. He plans to do about this the same thing most thirteen-year-olds do, and that is, nothing. But remember, folks, the little head. Clyde never had to reckon with it before, and he doesn’t know how to control it, bargain with it, make deals with it.

It’s not Brenda who has put nasty thoughts in his head. It is, in fact, Danielle. He found himself embarrassingly aroused when she punched her finger at his picture and called him a murderer. He has not been able to forget it. Or her.

The last woman he held in his arms was the candidate. Outside the diner. Under the influence of caffeine. He’s primed, people. He thinks he’s arranged this breakfast for his business. And he has. But it’s the little head that spurred him on.

There is good food at the power brunch – eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, butter, syrup …. Mmm. Another good meal shared by Brenda and Clyde, albeit in the company of three men from pharmaceutical giants farther afield, all of them with the same hope – that the government will include their reproductive products on their good list.

A large community of these products is represented – condoms, birth control pills, sponges, IUDs, all known methods of preventing the taking up of space, time and money, by people who can be stopped dead in their tracks before they start. It is Clyde’s hope that by bringing all these birth control methods together, he can slip in his morning-after pill, which does not prevent the coming together of a sperm and an egg, but terminates a life already embarked upon. An individual, you might say.

At the single-payer rally after the drug brunch, Brenda feels very much alone. The people gathered outside the medical concession near the supermarket, are not receptive to her message. They are single minded about single-payer. They’re afraid the issue is a wedge that will doom the entire plan.

“Leave us alone with this abortion crap,” one fat lady in Spandex called out. “Take care of your own damn brats!” A non sequitur, for sure, but it went over big with the crowd, who cheered her, and jeered Brenda when she tried to reply.

But she is once again full of coffee and good food. She fights back. “Who do you think is going to pay for the education and health care of all these extra people? You are! Where do you think the government gets its money? It gets it from you! One small procedure and society saves hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dollars wasted on the unwanted.”

Whoa, Brenda. Your enthusiasm is causing you to say terrible things. Things you might regret when you hear them on the evening news or read them in the local paper. In fact, Mary Steele is here. The baseball cap can be seen bent over her pad, at the side of the make-shift stage, little bigger than a soap box. Her head comes up with a frown at that last remark.

Brenda catches her eye and winds up her appearance. She wants to get out of here. “Vote Democrat!” she yells. She knows how to raise her voice without being shrill, a skill she developed on the way to becoming a good teacher.

Even Mary Steele doesn’t get a shot at her. She’s outta there. Moving quickly to her car. She gets in. Turns the key.

Nothing.

Turns it again.

Nothing.

Again.

Oh, no! Not in the parking lot behind all those hostile people. If they turn around, they can still see her.

She puts her head down on the steering wheel, preparing to weep. Just a little.

There is a rap on the window. Her head flies up. She’s looking into a pale face with wispy hair and big, sorry-looking eyes. Why, it’s Clyde! Clyde Waters to the rescue!

Is she happy to see him! She opens the door, pushing him aside, and gets out.

“Oh, thank God, thank God!” (Have you ever noticed that people who don’t believe in God invoke him all the time?)

The knight in shining armor (he’s dressed for the drug meeting) escorts her to his car and the happy couple takes off. The little head is resting quietly. He’s done good work.