Amaretto

Folks, it’s time to gather the clan. The battle’s about to begin. What we’ve seen so far is skirmishes. The battle is called Election Day, and it’s coming up soon, almost immediately after Halloween.

It’s been a gorgeous fall with golden leaves and spring-like air. People are at their peak, their muscles still intact, their tans still glowing. The Sun’s energy has been building in them all summer.

This sunny Sunday morning Brenda answered the last of the questions she solicited from Sheba’s conservative classmates. You can guess the questions and you know the answers by heart. Brenda has become proficient at the party line.

Did someone say party?

The party is at the Wagmans. Just friends. Mary Steele is invited, as she’s proven to be one. She’s been on the trail with Brenda ever since the Saving of the Swan, the title of her feature article. Barack has MSNBC; Brenda has Mary Steele.

There she is, in her baseball cap, talking to Nat Grogan about the mess in Afghanistan. He’s “if onlying” her, and she’s nodding. Reporters know how to be polite. It’s their bread and butter. Today’s bore may be tomorrow’s source. We hear the tail end of “war we can’t win,” as we leave Mary with her international instructor, and go on to a more fruitful conversation.

Over by the window, where Adele had hoped to escape for a few minutes, Chauncey is going on about Halloween. He wants Brenda to dress as a football player and give a speech about the importance of sports. A lot of schools are cutting their sports budgets, and Chauncey wants her to say that for some kids, school IS sports. It’s what they’re good at. Why should the scholars count more than the jocks? That’s what Democracy is all about. Something for everybody.

Adele is thinking about whether or not the candidate should appear in a Hillary mask and give a fake speech as Hillary, endorsing Brenda Shapiro, and extolling her virtues and ideas. It’s Halloween. They can get away with something, so they ought to think of something to get away with.

She’s tired of the same old things all over again. There must be another angle. Something nobody can see that’s just sitting there waiting to be discovered. Something that would make a difference.

Nina is sitting on the couch facing the big windows, looking out at the water. She sees Chauncey and Adele as silhouettes, and hears them only as part of the buzz of the room. In front of her is a big bowl of scorpions. Not the insect, the drink. The flavor is almond, in a blend of orange juice, lemon juice, and a hint of orange liqueur. What is hidden by the aromatic mix is the payload of rum, gin and brandy. Don’t have too much of this, folks. It’s deadly. Before you know it, you’re passed out in the bathroom of the master bedroom, where you’ve gone for comfort and security, and the hostess has walked in and found you there, coiled around the toilet.

But don’t worry, that’s not going to happen to Jason. Jason is a good boy now. A teetotaler. He’s got the personality of a rabbit, always sniffing for danger, his ears perked awaiting it, or laid back till it passes on by. The approach of a female signals retreat. He’s through with babes, boobs, and bonking. He hasn’t seen his little head in weeks, except when he takes it out to do its more mundane duty. It got him in big trouble.

Nina’s watching him sulk at the far end of the window, hunched over, looking out. Yearning to be free, she thinks. Free of the campaign. Maybe free of Brenda. Certainly Mitchell has nothing good to say about her anymore. And she’s sure he used to like her.

Jason’s staying as far away from Nina as he can. Doesn’t even want to acknowledge her presence, and so far, hasn’t. He’s back in the house of shame. Double shame. Finding his daughter in bed with the pothead son, vowing he’d never set foot in the place again, then coming back and not only entering the house, but entering its owner. Who was that inhabiting his body back then? Why did he have no self-control? Well he’s got it now. Nobody’s going to budge him.

He checks around the room for Brenda. She’s his root. He doesn’t want to stray too far from even the thought of her. He feels loss and panic when he does.

Here comes Zeke! Whizzes right by his father, on the heels of the little dog. He’s so happy to be reunited. And so is the dog. Zeke is the best play-date he’s ever had. He’s already taken him for a romp around the grounds, and now they’re going into the back rooms to see what they can dig up there.

Brenda is nowhere in sight. Where is she? Wagman’s not here either. Suspicious of himself, Jason is now suspicious of everybody. He can’t even tell himself Brenda is spoken for by Clyde. After all, he was spoken for by Danielle when he came for his tantric yoga lesson with Nina.

The guests are on their second drinks now. There’s a lot of laughter. The groups are getting bigger, and some new people have arrived. Brenda and Mitchell are at the door greeting the latest.

Why, it’s Clyde!

He hasn’t seen Brenda since he took her home from the diner and fled down her back staircase. Wagman insisted that he come to this party, that he’s part of the campaign, that he’s done so much work for it on the abortion front, he deserves recognition as a true friend of the candidate.

He’s a surprise Mitchell is holding out on Brenda, who doesn’t know he’s been invited. Mitchell had noticed she seemed partial to him, and he knows the value of a happy candidate. If he couldn’t make her happy, he’d invite the man who could.

We’re always just a little behind the time, aren’t we? Our view of the universe has to be obsolete; it’s based solely on the past. There’s a speed-of-light delay.

Mitchell opens the door and steps aside, happily presenting Clyde to Brenda, whose face once more goes white. The two stare at each other. Then Clyde’s mother saves the day by appearing in his head and telling him to shake hands. Brenda takes the extended appendage gratefully. Pumping each other’s open palms, they renew their relationship on the old grounds. They are once more political cronies. Their moment of passion has come and gone, a memory they can both do without.

In the living room, the party is picking up. Drink number three for some. That’s all folks, I’m warning you. You’ve already had too much.

Nobody quite knows what they’re saying anymore, but they are very much into it. The jabbering is earnest – a mixture of politics and personal. The circles have loosened up; people are sailing in and out of them. Adele and Mary Steele are with Zeke. Now they’re all talking to the little dog, and the little dog, never having had so much attention, is yapping it up.

Clyde’s not the only late guest. Elenora, Brenda’s substitute math teacher arrives just after Clyde. She is not happy to see Brenda and Mitchell coupled as host and hostess at the door.

Elenora is not here for Brenda. She’s here for her own self. She insisted upon coming, and Wagman had no choice. Brenda was wrong; Elenora’s minor physical flaws did not stop Mitchell from trying to charm her, and once charmed, she became voracious, coming to his door between classes, snapping her thong underwear at him. Who does she think she is? Well, we know who she thinks she is, don’t we? She thinks she’s Monica Lewinsky. If the chubby intern can make it with the real Bill Clinton, the horse-faced teacher can make it with his local look-alike.

We skipped it, being interested in more high-minded issues. It was a re-enactment. We’ve all been there – don’t tell me you haven’t – under the desk in the oval office… or sitting in its seat… well, Mitchell has a desk too. Not the President’s, but the Principal’s. Good enough. Close enough. First he laughs, but he can’t resist the offer. Can’t resist the opportunity.

His secretary is guarding the door with orders not to let anyone in; he is having a math lesson, and needs absolute quiet and no interruptions. Poor Miss Moneypenny.

Elenora went home with semen on her blue dress. Yes, she wore a blue dress. Yes, she’s got the blue dress in her closet. Yes, she’s subtly threatened Wagman with disclosure. Subtly enough to get herself two free periods at the end of the day. Subtly enough to get herself invited to this party. Subtly enough so the two still appear to be friendly. These less appealing ladies are cagey. They have a disadvantage to overcome. They’re usually up to the challenge.

Elenora is sitting next to Nina on the couch, making up for lost time. She’s been here ten minutes and she’s on her second drink. They’re so delicious, so sweet. They slide down so easily.

There’s a commotion in the big foyer with the fireplace, as the kids come in. They’ve been outside at a neighborhood bonfire. They tumble into the hallway smelling of smoke. Two kinds of smoke. The whole crowd is here. Phoenix has a lot of sway over his mother. She sent special invitations to Rosalind and Rowena, for them to show their parents.

Now people… you know, don’t you… in every development there is that wooded lot off to the side that serves as green space. In that wooded lot there can usually be found a log, and on that log, anywhere from one to fifteen teen-agers passing a joint.

The teens are far away from the little kids at the bonfire, but they’ll have a good time with them when they get back, having had their childish wonder at the flames renewed, and their social tension eased. When they return to the Wagman house and the adult party, they’ll disdain the messy alcohol, the loud, out-of-control shrieks and gross out-of synch gestures. The doors of their perception will have been opened, and they’ll see the grown-ups for what they are.

God forbid. These are still kids. The adults are of no interest to them. Only they matter. If someone offers them a drink, what the hell, they’ll take it. Nobody does, and they aren’t looking for it. They’re full of robust, out-door, red-cheeked youth. Oh – who’s that with them? Is that Phil? Didn’t recognize him without his beard and suit. He looks like a kid again.

Mary Steele and Adele are slumped back on the couch perpendicular to the windows. They can see the whole room. They’re talking about clothes. Mary Steele, whose signature wardrobe item is her baseball cap – nobody notices anything else – reads Vogue in the dentist’s office. She knows everything, and the girls are having a grand old time.

Watch that, Elenora. That’s your third drink. That is not good. Your blood alcohol is going up and your liver is way behind.

Even Clyde has had a drink. He needed one. He’s looking sheepishly over it, out of the tops of his eyes. A bit morose. Jason is the only unenhanced person in the room.

He watches the kids pile into the big space. The other two girls hover under Sheba’s wing. And that boy – who is he? He acts like he’s her date. Phoenix has disappeared with the girl Sheba calls “the professor.” Jason has an insight. They’ve gone up to Phoenix’s room. He can see them there.

And he’s right. Up to a point. They are not, as he suspects, sitting on the bed with a bong. They are taking some pamphlets out of Phoenix’s printer. Then they come back downstairs and settle down on the floor, in a corner, way across the room from Mary Steele and Adele, looking at the crowd from a different point of view.

Brenda and Nina are sitting together on the couch, played out from talking and drinking. They look like two old girls in their sweaters and skirts, legs out in front of them, leaning back on the cushions. He’s grateful that they’re not speaking, but terrified that any moment they might.

Then Phoenix, his red hair still wild with the wind, rises and comes toward him. But he stops before he gets there, and turns to face Brenda. “Mrs. Shapiro,” he says, in a surprisingly deep voice that, in fact, has come upon him just this moment, “can I ask you a question?”

She fights down the desire to correct him and say, “May I” like her own mother always did, but she’s exhausted. And used to this. Everybody always wants to ask her a question. By now, she’s got all the answers.

“Go ahead,” she says.

Phoenix asks, “Have you stopped smoking pot?”

All those people who were paying no attention suddenly stop in mid-conversation.

It’s the “Have you stopped beating you wife?” question. If she says yes, she’s confessed to past crimes. No, and she’s off to rehab.

But Brenda’s had her three scorpions, and even though she had them half filled with ice, that ice melted and she drank the water. “Yes,” she says. “I married out of it.”

Mary Steele can not stay where she is. She jumps up a little hastily, knocking over her glass – but it’s empty – and sits down next to the candidate.

“As long as this has turned into a press conference, can I ask what you think of the administration coming down on the side of medical marijuana?”

“Of course you can. It’s about time. Everybody knows that. Clinton should have done it. ”

“No!” comes a voice from the passageway to the back, from which Phil and Sheba have just emerged. Phil hurries forward till he’s standing in the middle of the room. “Medical marijuana is a cop-out. It’s safe and it’s beneficial. It should be legal for everybody.”

Brenda stands up, with a swish of her skirt. “Ladies and gentlemen, if elected to congress I will introduce legislation that classifies marijuana as a food. Head food. Legal to grow, smoke, eat, drink, buy and sell.”

She plunks back down on the couch and instantly falls asleep. Mary Steele, invited to the party as a friend, is scrabbling in her bag for her notebook. She may be a friend but she’s also a reporter.

Every drunk guest goes home clutching a copy of the pamphlet that Phoenix wrote and manufactured. On the front it says, “Think Green”, on the back, “Legalize Marijuana”.

Long chapter. That’s a party for you. Time flies when you’re having fun.

And by the way folks it was Elenora, the substitute teacher who was discovered – thankfully, not by Nina, but by Zeke and the little dog, on their tour of the upstairs – keeping cool, coiled around the toilet in the bathroom of the master bedroom.