3.
Will's strategy for finding out who his de Bourgh relatives were planning to vote for and persuading them to vote for Trump was simple, get himself invited over to his aunt's house for dinner and talk to them. Since the toughest restrictions had been lifted, Aunt Cathy was always trying to get Will to come over, to pretend that nothing had changed between them. He supposed it was time to see his aunt in person again and reestablish some kind of relationship between them and the election bet provided him a valid excuse to do so.
There had been a good deal of friction between Will and his aunt since Cathy had summoned him to a Zoom family meeting in May on the pretext that there was some new development on Anne's health, only to declare when Rick, Rick's dad (Uncle Matt) and Anne were all on the screen, "We are all very concerned about you Will. This sudden engagement and setting a quick wedding date isn't like you. Your parents must be turning over in their graves. This 'Lizzy' isn't even new money, she's no money at all. I suppose I can see the appeal of roughing it every once in a while, but after you've sowed your oats you don't stay with someone from the gutter. We have so many friends with eligible, marriageable girls."
As Will listened he quickly became furious, vein popping in his forehead ready to have an aneurysm or strangle his aunt kind of furious. He was so furious in fact that he hadn't trusted himself to say even a word. Instead he had clenched his jaw tight, got up from his desk in his home office and started walking away from his computer, rather than taking the time to disconnect Zoom when he heard Rick come to his defense.
"Elizabeth's a wonderful woman," Rick said. Will had paused from opening the door then, slowly turning around. "I am behind you Will, all the way." Then to the other relatives Rick added, "They may be very different from one another but they love each other all the same and this family needs some new blood."
Then Rick's father had added, "Cathy, did you really get us on this conference call under false pretenses just to criticize Will's lady love? I, for one, am not ready to judge any woman solely on her pedigree. It is not like she is a thoroughbred or a shih tzu. Will's a smart guy and we should trust that he knows what he is doing; it is his life, after all."
Then Anne began to speak in her quiet, delicate voice and Will had to walk back to the screen to make it out. "I like Elizabeth," she was murmuring. "If Will is happy, then we all should be happy for him."
"Thanks," Will had responded, bending into view of the camera but not sitting back down again. He was just about to disconnect when it occurred to him to ask, "Are you okay, Anne? Your mom made it sound like something was wrong."
"I'm okay physically, but these days a lot of times it feels like I'm a prisoner in my own house. Mom's too scared that I will get the virus to let me go anywhere but to my medical appointments that can't be virtual and she won't let hardly anyone in the house and if she does they all wear masks. I miss going out to eat or to a movie. You know, the simple things I used to do."
"That's hard, Anne. The virus is actually part of why Elizabeth and I are getting married now," Will explained. "During the hard lock-down we had to be apart, she's a stickler for following the rules, and if we should be locked down again we want it to be together."
"Why don't you just live with her then?" Cathy, who he knew was usually highly critical of unmarried couples living together, asked. Will had tuned out her image as he had been focusing on the Anne part of the screen.
Will's whole body tensed up as he shifted the focus of his eyes to his aunt and glared at her. "Frankly, my choices are none of your business, but it is because I love Elizabeth and want to be with her through thick and thin and marriage rather than a potentially temporary situation. It just feels right."
He looked at his other relatives as he named them, "Rick, Uncle Matt, Anne, we'll talk later. Goodbye." He disconnected just as Aunt Cathy began to say something.
"Hanging up" on her wasn't all that satisfying. Will remembered his mom smashing down a corded phone so hard that it cracked the plastic base, when talking to Cathy in fact. All this modern technology had ruined the angry "hang up."
Will went to his bedroom and called Elizabeth on his cell phone. He told her all about the strange encounter with his aunt over Zoom. "I am done with Cathy," he told Elizabeth. "For years I have put up with her nonsense and tried to be helpful to her because she is my mother's sister, but no more, no more."
"I can understand how you feel, especially right now," Elizabeth responded. "Your emotions are running high, but you've got to know that however misguided your aunt is, I am sure she thinks she is doing what is best for you. Yes it hurts, but it is coming from a place of love. Don't forget that you similarly tried to interfere with Chuck and Jane when you thought she didn't really care for him and you were wrong. Don't write her off. Family is important and your cousin Anne needs you."
Still, Will hadn't talked to Cathy until after the wedding and she was most specifically not invited, not even to watch it on Zoom as most everyone was. The only people who attended in person were Elizabeth's mom, dad and little sisters, Jane and Chuck, Rick, Gigi and the minister. In the five months since the wedding, there had been a gradual rapprochement between Will and Cathy, with Will insisting that he would not tolerate any insults to his now wife. Cathy had tried to act as if nothing had ever happened, and went back to inviting him over as often as before the pandemic hit, but he had yet to accept any invitation to her house.
On October 30th, when Will called and said, "I am free tonight and thought we might get together; Elizabeth has other plans," Cathy was elated.
Cathy immediately replied, "Well then you must come over for dinner. Anne and I have missed you. We can dine at the long table to maintain our distance. Enter through the front door and follow all instructions.
Will arrived at 5:23 and parked behind two cars on the circular drive, recognizing the red Corvette as Rick's. He didn't recognize the other humbler one, but he didn't think it belonged to Uncle Matt.
Just before the front door was a round table with a giant bottle of hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes and a basket of masks, with a large step operated waste can beneath. A large poster board sized sign on a pole, planted in a basket of mums, read in professionally imprinted font:
Instructions for Entry:
1. Take wipes, sit down and clean your shoes, purse/wallet, phone etc. Throw away wipes.
2. Take a new wipe and clean the chair, then throw it away.
3. Sanitize with two squirts and rub your hands together for two minutes.
4. Put on a mask. Double up your mask or use two here.
5. Check that you have done all of the above and then text this number _ to be let in.
Will dutifully followed all instructions, putting the blue surgical mask over the Star Trek Captain Kirk mask which was command gold with the stitched insignia. Anne was a fan and he had a more whimsical "Trouble with Tribbles" mask for her.
A gloved and masked maid escorted him to the smaller dining room, the one with the eight foot long table, rather than the twenty foot by eight foot long one. It was not set for dinner. Instead Cathy sat at one end and said, "Hi Will, go ahead and sit down at the opposite end of the table."
While Will wanted to talk to Aunt Cathy about politics before dinner, his agenda was immediately upended when she almost immediately finagled him into looking over her stock portfolio, sliding thick stacks of quarterly reports down to the far end of the table where he sat at the foot, and giving her other investment advice. Specifically she asked, "Should I be buying gold or silver? I am always seeing these commercials."
Will considered the matter. He wasn't even sure that his aunt wanted any advice, or whether it was more about just finding something to talk to him about. "I think you are doing well enough as is. The stock market is making you plenty of money. You have bonds and while you are storing rather than making money that way, that money is very secure. Obviously you've suffered some hits with your rental houses while evictions have been prohibited, but you can well weather that storm. If you get coins and such, even if you store them in a safe, there is always the risk of theft."
"No one would ever dare steal from me!" Cathy declared, gripping the edge of the table hard, as if she could rip off chunks of the wood, her eyes narrowed. Will knew he wouldn't want to be on her bad side again.
"You may be right," Will conceded. "But still, I wouldn't advise you to buy and store vast amount of gold here."
"Yes, what if a mob of rioters broken into my home and ransacked the place. That would be truly awful!"
"Well, you know if you are worried about things like that, there is only one candidate to vote for and that's Trump," Will told her, confident that at least one of the people on his list besides Rick was in the bag. Not only had his aunt voiced her concern about law and order, but she typically voted Republican.
"Actually," she said, "I am thinking about voting for Biden this time."
"Really? Why is that? You know that he wants to raise taxes on people like you and the rest of the family." Will hoped that line would be more successful on his aunt than it had been on Chuck.
"Yeah, I know. It is just this virus really has me worried, not so much for me although I am in a higher risk category as I am close to sixty, but for Anne. With her being so immune-compromised, I really want a national mask mandate, for her and for people like her."
Darcy nodded. It made sense. Anne was always going to be a priority for her mother. He quickly started to rearrange the arguments in his mind to appeal to why Trump would be best for Anne.
"You know, though, that what Anne really is going to need is a vaccine. Trump is breaking all records in vaccine development."
"I suppose . . . but I am worried that by cutting so many corners that whatever vaccine receives emergency authorization isn't going to be safe and I don't want to get Anne first in line due to her medical condition and then have her be harmed by it." Cathy was wringing her hands. Her fingers had so many rings on them that they kept hitting each other with a "clink, click" as she worked out her distress, but from the distance the noise was barely noticeable to him.
"The vaccine approval process does not rest on Trump," Will noted. He felt like he had to shout across the table through the two masks to be heard. "It will be scientists establishing that it is safe and effective, not the president. Don't you have faith in our administrative agencies?"
She shrugged.
"Well then what about pure self interest? The drug companies want to be lauded and paid, not ruin their reputations. It is in no one's interest to come out with something that doesn't work as it should. We aren't like one of these crazy countries rolling out vaccines without completing large phase three clinical trials, like China and Russia, who are then selling these on to other parts of the world. Those kind of countries may be able to gamble and cover up if things go wrong, but we aren't like that in the U.S. We pause trials when we have adverse reactions to figure out what is going on."
"Perhaps you might be right," Cathy admitted, " but all I can tell you is that I won't be in a hurry to sign Anne or me up for a vaccine. I want them to take the time to test it plenty until it is just right. I trust Biden not to push it out too quickly.
"I also worry, if the vaccine is supposed to work by getting our bodies to mount an immune response, will it even work for Anne? That's why we need everyone to wear masks in the meantime."
Darcy regrouped and noted, "Even if you don't want to get the vaccine for the two of you, if it does become widely available and administered, that will cut down on the number of potentially infected people around you both. That herd immunity might be key."
"Perhaps, but how can I trust a president who couldn't keep himself safe to protect us?"
"Well," Will tried again, "people who always wear masks can get infected, too. Heaven forbid that something should happen to Anne, but Trump has made sure there will be plenty of ventilators for anyone who needs them. You can't say that Biden would have necessarily done the same."
"I don't know, but now that they've been made, it is not like anyone can take them away."
A few minutes later they moved into the larger dining room. Rick, Anne and the Collinses, still wearing their masks, were already at their seats, waiting. Anne was placed at the end with a plexiglass compartment surrounding her end of the table. Will hadn't seen it before and believed it must have been added sometime after the pandemic began. Even with that protection, Rick was still seated six feet away from her on one side with an empty seat which Will took, on her other side. Cathy seated herself at the head of the table with Bill Collins beyond Will and Lottie Collins across from her husband. Normally the dishes of food would have been brought to each person and served up table-side, but this time an already full plate was brought to each person by gloved, masked and face shield wearing servants.
Will, seeing a chance to use Rick to influence Cathy, immediately began talking to him about how good Trump had been to the military and the police. Rick, who was a retired marine, said "Trump has built up our armed forces, got our troops safety equipment that they need. He wants to keep cops safe and let them do their jobs."
"Are we really going to talk politics at the table, especially so close to the election?" Lottie asked Cathy. She was a dark woman of mixed heritage. She had a white father and Afro-Haitian mother.
Cathy consider, "While it is true that speaking about politics at dinner is typically considered rude, we are practically all family here, so I don't see the harm. Will is trying to get me to vote for Trump, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to vote for Biden."
"Biden?" Bill Collins spoke up. "I've been on the fence myself, but if you are voting for Biden, Ms. de Bourgh, well that's good enough for me. You are the wisest person I know! If only it could be you running for president. You would sort out all that needed to be done in a jiffy. Imagine how wonderful it would be to have Miss de Bourgh as the first daughter. The whole country would fall in love with her!" Bill nodded at Anne.
"Bill, voting at its heart is a personal matter," Cathy declared. "There is a reason that we have a secret ballot after all. It should just be God and your conscience in there with you."
Will observed Lottie lifting the bottom of her mask and telling her husband in a loud whisper (but one unlikely for Cathy to hear, she was a bit deaf), "Vote Biden like I told you to!" Then Lottie lowered her mask back over her mouth.
Cathy showed no evidence of hearing Lottie's order to Bill. She started to remove her mask, but then put it back on. "Before we eat, Bill, would you lead us in a prayer?"
Bill's prayer was long and disjointed. Will's mind wandered during it and he wondered how Elizabeth was faring at convincing her family.
Afterwards Cathy announced, "Let's eat." She took off her mask which everyone seemed to use as a cue for removing their own.
Lottie turned toward Rick and said, "I don't see why anyone would vote for a man who called our fallen soldiers idiots and losers and refused to visit their graves in Europe."
"Never happened," Rick replied, setting down his fork, thereby abandoning his first bite of food. "All his closest aides denied it. And results speak for themselves. President Trump fixed our VA."
"Well Trump publicly called Senator McCain a loser for being a POW," Lottie noted, "but let's say he didn't dishonor our dead. How is it that Trump believes in good healthcare for our troops but no one else? We are going to need good healthcare to weather this pandemic."
"Our troops served our country and deserve good health care. Medicaid for all wouldn't be good." Rick told her.
A quiet voice said, "I worry about people with preexisting conditions." It was Anne, speaking from behind her barrier.
"Me, too," Lottie encouraged. "Tell us more, Anne."
"Well," Anne said in a hesitant tone, "we have money for my treatments, but what about people who don't? I want protection for those people. A public option should be part of the safety net. I also worry about the environment and the health of the planet. Those two reasons are why I voted absentee for Biden."
No one wanted to challenge Anne's opinion, when she so rarely voiced one, so that ended that conversation after a parting comment from Bill Collins. "That is a very thoughtful argument, Anne. I respect it very much. You care so much for the downtrodden, which does not surprise me at all as your mother is so generous with the foundation."
As Will ate and minimally participated in the conversation around him, he wondered if he was going to end up wearing a Biden shirt. Surely Lizzy had fared better at convincing her family than he had done with his.