Initially I planned to write a note to anonymous reviewers that don't like the story, but then it occurred to me that they probably aren't actually reading past the title and description. So instead, to those of you who are actually reading (whether you review or not), thanks!
I wrote this story to remind myself that no matter who someone votes for, most everyone believes they are acting in the best interest of our country. I hate the vilification of each other as I have people I love that are on both sides of this debate. This story is not meant to favor either side.
5.
Will returned home after coffee with Caroline and tried to watch some mindless TV. What he really wanted was to talk, or better yet snuggle with Elizabeth and talk to her about the whole Lou situation. Or he would have settled for giving Gigi an abbreviated version of the meeting, but she wasn't home. No one was home. Elizabeth was out with Lottie for what was likely to be hours and Gigi was gone for the weekend.
Gigi was staying with Uncle Matt and Rick's little sister Cassidy (who was just a few months younger than Gigi). Uncle had picked Gigi up straight from private school on Friday. Will had been a bit disappointed that Gigi wanted to be gone the whole weekend as he keenly felt the impending loss of Gigi going to college next year, but she explained when working out the arrangements with him, "We've barely enough time to do the final editing of our movie if we're going to post it on Halloween."
Will didn't know too much about the movie's plot, despite being one of her actors along with Elizabeth, but for what Gigi had said, "It is a short scary movie, probably only about five minutes long with some political satire." The lines she and Cassidy had written for them didn't make any sense out of context and he didn't even know who he'd be speaking them to as they were splicing everything together later. Gigi had promised to text him the link when it was up.
Will was worried that Gigi'd be lambasting Trump for part of it, but he was trying to respect her artistic expression. As someone turning eighteen on December 2, who had come out as an ardent Democrat after Elizabeth and he started dating (Elizabeth was more than free in sharing her opinions and as he'd expected, it had been good for Gigi to be around a strong, independent woman that unlike Aunt Cathy would listen to what other people had to say), but he had been surprised by what Gigi's true political leanings were.
Gigi loathed the fact that she wasn't old enough to vote this go-round. She kept saying, "It'll be up to my generation to pick up the pieces when the U.S. can't grow crops anymore and we are left to import most of our food from Canada and Russia. Your lot has also run up the national debt and besides covid relief (which shouldn't have gone to all taxpayers) I don't even see what we have to show for it."
"Careful, Gigi," he responded with a wry grin, "you are letting your inner Republican show. Fiscal responsibility is more in our camp."
"That's not true when it comes to military build up and I'm willing to go into debt if it means that our planet is saved and people are treated as they ought to be."
Will had given up trying to convince Gigi she was wrong. He, too, had been young and naive once. He did admire her for being willing to voice and defend her positions. She was nothing like the little mouse she had been, afraid to disagree with him about anything.
Will watched to the end of the show and then clicked the TV off. He felt restless and he paced a bit, trying to figure out something to do until Elizabeth got home.
Will knew he should be following up with people on his bet list, trying to convince Bill to vote for Trump, but he didn't have the stomach for the boot-licker just then. He could, perhaps, reach out to Lou, but if he did it wouldn't be about the election. What did her vote really matter if her life was falling apart around her? But as he didn't know Lou all that well, hadn't talked with her for months, it felt awkward. He cast back in his mind to try to remember when he had last seen Lou. It was before the pandemic, he was sure.
The last real conversation Will could remember having with Lou was at Chuck's and Jane's New Year's Eve party. They'd had a destination planned elopement to Jamaica and Mr. and Mrs. Bingley had come back just in time to host his annual party. Their house had been filled with Bennets.
Will had been distracted by watching Elizabeth from the moment she had arrived without trying to be too obvious about it. He hadn't seen her in weeks. He had missed all their friendly political bickering. He had known before the Bingley wedding that he was attracted to her but after seeing her in her fitted burgundy dress he knew he had to ask her out, but he was still considering how to go about it when Lou had come up to him and started chatting.
Will had done his best to focus on the conversation with Lou, but he felt cross when a man who was evidently Elizabeth's date came up to her, kissed her cheek and led her to the dance floor. What had Lou been talking to him about? Will struggled to remember. Something about Hank's drinking and wanting to start a family. His mind unhelpfully wanted to focus on the way Elizabeth's skin and dress looked as she fast danced under the disco lights to some rap song. And then, the music had changed to something slow and her date had pulled her tight and they swayed together in each other's embrace.
"Are you even listening to me?" Lou asked. "I know you've got it bad and I don't know how many times I've had to hear Caroline whine about the unfairness of it all. I mean Elizabeth wants to clobber you half the time when you defend Trump."
"I'm sorry," Will remembered saying, eyes still darting from Lou to Elizabeth. He'd felt a biting envy that he was not the man who currently cradled Elizabeth in his arms, that he was not the man who had her head tilted sideways against his neck and clavicle, although he noted that against his own taller body her head would rest just about over his heart. Would she hear his heart thump rapidly if her ear was pressed to it?
"Forget it," Lou had said and wandered off, leaving Will to murmur another "sorry" while he stared at Elizabeth.
Now, though, Will wondered if Lou had been trying to tell him something important. He had barely thought about Lou at all in the intervening months.
For something to do, Will started looking through the cupboards. Elizabeth always said cooking relaxed her and while he wasn't up for following a lengthy recipe, maybe there was something he could make.
Will found the cupboard with the cake mixes and pulled out a lemon flavored one and a canister of lemon frosting. He set them on the quartz counter and then set off to look for the other ingredients. He had no trouble finding the eggs and oil. Locating the measuring cups, mixing bowl and whisk were not too great of a challenge, and he mixed everything up for the directed number of minutes. It looked a little lumpy to him, but he hoped it was okay.
Will hit a snag when looking for the cupcake tins. He had to rummage through several cupboards before he found them but then he debated how to fill them and whether he needed to find paper or foil liners. Will decided that non-stick tins didn't need anything else. After pouring batter directly into a couple of cups he gave that up as too messy and inexact and switched to using a ladle to fill each cup. Still when Will finished he noticed the cups were rather unequally filled. He opened the oven only to figure out that he hadn't turned the oven on.
However, despite the challenges, Will was certain he would have a yummy treat for his wife when she came home and was congratulating himself on being an attentive husband. The oven was still preheating when his cell started ringing. The name came up as Bill Collins.
Will was tempted to let it go to voicemail, but as he really wasn't doing anything he went ahead and answered. He barely got in a hello before Bill exclaimed, "Mr. Darcy, I need your help."
Elizabeth and Lottie ate outside the cafe even though it was too cold even with their on coats to do so comfortably. The tomato soup which was too hot when it first arrived, quickly turned cold. They watched leave swirl off the trees across the street and one leaf even tried to land in Elizabeth's soup, but settled for her hair instead.
Despite the cold, Elizabeth felt at ease being with Lottie and talking politics with her. Elizabeth had known Lottie her whole life and while Lottie had started out as her baby sister, gradually she morphed into almost another sister and eventually her close friend.
Elizabeth knew that Lottie wasn't conventionally pretty. It wasn't her skin tone that was the problem but the particular combination of features that she had inherited from her parents. While some persons with mixed heritage look exotic and incite envy, Lottie did not. She had her mother's generous nose, wide face and deep brown eyes and her father's thin eyebrows, sparse eyelashes and thin lips. Each feature individually was fine, and her mother was quite lovely in her own right while the best that could be said about her father was that he was "pleasant" looking. Lottie's features did not form a pleasing whole by conventional beauty standards and her hair was thin and broke easily. She had an extensive collection of wigs in various shades of brown, preferring ones that had thick bangs.
It was her sister Maria who'd won the genetic lottery, ending up with pale green eyes framed by generous lashes which stood out against her cafe au lait skin, full pouty lips and a smaller version of their mother's nose and "good" hair with only a bit of kink that reached her shoulders and was easily tamed with a flat iron. Their brother John looked very similar to their dad, but for being taller, having a permanent tan and dark eyes.
During the last few months, Lottie had marched in many local protests to decry the deaths of brown people at the hands of the police and had protested outside of elected officials' houses. Elizabeth had joined her for a couple of the daytime protests, but hadn't stayed nearly as long as Lottie. While Elizabeth thought the issue was important, she didn't want to be out when things might become violent and still felt that she had to keep living her regular life. Her graduate work wasn't going to do itself.
When Elizabeth asked in the midst of a whole week of protests a couple of months earlier, when they had finally managed to schedule a lunch together, take out which they ate in Lottie's and Bill's back yard, "Lottie, how do you have time for all this? Why are you compelled to attend protests almost every day?"
Lottie had explained, "We're on the cusp of major progress. It is a new civil rights era and I feel compelled to do all I can. There have been so many events in my life that have led me to this point and you will find that it is much the same with many other people who look like me. The things that have happened, at the time I just felt shame, like I had done something wrong. But no more.
"There are lots of stories I can tell you. Do you remember a few years back when I was dating Theo?" Elizabeth nodded. That had been Lottie's last serious boyfriend before Bill Collins.
"We were only on our second date when the police pulled us over. They said it was for lack of license illumination but they acted like we were wanted criminals. We were ordered out of the car, told to put our hands on it and were frisked. Then they marched us some distance away and made us wait. We didn't know what was going on, but eventually maybe a hour later another police car showed up and a cop walked a dog around Theo's car."
Elizabeth's eyes grew wide and her Lo Mein sat abandoned on her lap as she listened.
"It was awful, Eliza. They treated us like criminals. I know it was a pretextual stop but technically it was a violation. Fortunately we had nothing and Theo isn't a hot head. But imagine if he had questioned what they were doing or reached for his wallet or registration without permission?"
Elizabeth, aghast, had shook her head in astonishment. "But the law says they can't delay a stop like that for a drug sniff, not without probable cause."
"Yeah, that's technically right," Lottie acknowledged, "but when they have you they can do anything they like. Say Theo had pot in the car, they could have made up afterwards that they smelled pot smoke on him. People will believe cops over criminals."
Elizabeth had not liked thinking about how ugly a world they lived in where something like that could happen to Lottie, but Lottie was far from done.
"Afterwards, I asked how Theo was able to keep so calm as once they let us go I was shaking. He told me, 'this has happened to me three or four times. I'm not going to do something stupid and let them win. Here they can hassle us, but that's nothing compared to what my parents went through.' I really admired that in him.
"When we went to the City to see a Broadway show in 2015, Theo was stopped and frisked by the police right after we exited the subway tunnel. They didn't touch me but I worried about him because I knew he was anxious that if we were late we couldn't get in. We had tried to get a taxi when it was clear the subway train would be delayed and empty cabs wouldn't stop (you can guess why) so we were hoofing it. Theo just took it, was even pleasant to the NYPD cops. The one seemed almost apologetic, the other seemed eager to prove we were doing something wrong and questioned why we were in the city at all, said 'You really should go back to Philly, where you people belong.' We made it to the show, but neither of us could properly enjoy it.
"It is completely different dating and then marrying a white man. But things have to change in this country. Even if Bill's white privilege eases things for me when I'm with him, people like me shouldn't feel like we are being judged all the time. Trump makes me feel like I'm not safe in my own country."
That conversation had given Elizabeth a lot to think about. She wanted to support her friend, but worried that Lottie might see her as just another white person who didn't get it.
At lunch on Halloween, Lottie told Elizabeth about her effort to turn out the vote for Biden even though she didn't exactly like him. "Biden's okay I suppose, much better than Trump, but what I wouldn't give to have Obama again rather than an old white guy who got along with segregationists."
Elizabeth recalled, "Didn't Biden recently say something about 'If you don't vote for me you ain't black'?"
"Yeah, that was a pretty stupid thing for him to say," Lottie acknowledged. "While most of us are in Camp Democrat, we are just as diverse of a group as the Latinos and we are all entitled to our own opinions and motivations. I mean take me, mixed but considered black, mom's people were slaves before she immigrated (on a fiancee visa to marry my dad) but not in the American South but in the Caribbean and she grew up speaking Haitian Creole and French. Theo's parents were political refugees from Sudan and was raised in public housing. I went to mostly white schools and grew up comfortably middle class in the suburbs."
Lottie added, "I was probably the only black kid that most people around here knew; but if they thought I was representative of 'my people'," she gave air quotes, "they didn't know anything. Just because we fit into the category of 'black' doesn't mean we are all the same. And some people seem to think I am a traitor to my race (and that my mom was, too), because we married white (even though it is not like a lot of black guys were knocking down my door wanting to marry me). And I can't tell you how many times my father had to endure jokes about his 'jungle fever,' as if he was crazy to fall in love with my mom and want to marry her."
Elizabeth commented, "I just always saw you as you and no one else. It wasn't strange to me that your parents were a couple, because I never knew any different. They were just the Lucases. Did you know that it wasn't until I was about ten that I learned your mom had an accent? That was just how she talked."
Lottie gave a nod and then continued, "What really worries me about the upcoming election is that some of the people who support Trump would like to go back to segregation and keeping to one's 'own kind.' What is my own kind anyway? I can't say that I really know."
They were both silent for some moments while they considered that. Then Elizabeth noted, "It seems like 'Agent Orange,'" that was one of their nicknames for Trump, which had morphed from President Orange for his skin to the Orange Menace and then Agent Orange because he was worse than the deadly defoliant, "is setting things up to claim voter fraud even before they start counting votes."
"Yeah, when the blue wave hits he won't know what hit him and then the talk of fraud and lawsuits will begin," Lottie responded. Neither Elizabeth nor Lottie noted the irony that they were making fun of Trump for the color of his skin.