6. Always a snoop herself

 

6.  Always a snoop herself

She detected evidence of planning.  A parcel wrapped in coloured paper sat unopened on the table, its birthday card signed with a flourished “W.”  Six days hence, he’d said, not really a November baby at all.  The bicycle stood against the wall by the door, a startling metallic green.  “Oh, this is lovely,” she said, and it was, spacious for a single person in the way that her tiny campervan was not.  Though only a single room, the cottage had a separated bath, a bed behind a full screen.  Two closets!  Jason seemed anxious for her approval but it was genuine.

 “This is perfect,” she said, using his term.  “I love it.”  I don’t know how much you sleep around, there’s always this tendency to mix up the person with the place.  I’m getting better, Glynda winced, even though his folks will be home any minute.  But instead of feeling that way, she just sat down. 

“It’s okay.  Sorry about all the fossils.  I’ve lived in this room since I was twelve.  It’s about time I let the dust settle.”  They were everywhere, a nice collection of specimens in heavy cases.  “I was planning to become a paleontologist,” Jason apologized.  He reminded her in a way of Greg.

The sex was reassuring too.   Certainly the sleeping chamber of the campervan hampered movement and a lot of marijuana had been involved, but one so missed passion sometimes.  You don’t necessarily think of librarians as skilled mouth wrestlers, though why not, but Jason put on quite an exhibition.  And the knock on the door did not come until somewhat later, after which it opened immediately as the parents burst in.

“I think we all need a strong drink,” Jason’s mother said.  “We won’t find out about the propositions until later.  What a disaster!”  Her eyes, brown like Jason’s, flicked across Glynda inquisitively.

“As soon as those rural Georgia counties started coming in,” Jason’s father said.   “They just can’t bring themselves to vote for a woman.”  He peered uncertainly at Glynda.  “Sorry, Wendy.”

“How did South Dakota go?”  Jason interceded.   “This is Glynda,” he said.   His father jerked his shoulders.   “Fucked,” he said succinctly.

Dad and Mom still had a lot of friends back home, Jason explained.  South Dakota.  “Was abortion on the ballot this time?”  “Hi, Mr. Pierson, Mrs. Pierson,” Glynda said.

“Jason!  It’s been illegal since Dobbs.  You know that!”  The four of them stood there, flabbergasted by the sheer grimness of the political situation until Jason’s dad finally said, “I’ll make us some martinis.”

“Glynda’s from New Jersey, Mom,” Jason said.  “Oh really, I was going to say Britain or something.”  “Yes, I get that a lot.  From my early years to my teens we lived in Cornwall.”

“What do you think will happen?” Glynda asked Jason’s Mom.  She was wearing a nice dark jacket over a sweater and skirt, she was tall, like him, a little like him in the eyes.  Which met Glynda’s thoughtfully.

“That’s what I’m terrified of, the nationwide ban,” Clarice said, “My name’s Clarice, I’m Jason’s mom.  Now that they have the Senate and it looks like they’ll keep the House.  Mike Johnson can’t wait to get started.”

“Johnson’ll do what Trump tells him to do,” her husband interrupted authoritatively, rattling ice cubes.  “Remember what Trump said about the people wanting the states to make the decision.”

“There you go believing what comes out of his mouth again, Clyde.  I’m telling you, he’ll sign it in a foetal heartbeat.  Those Pro-Life people were going crazy even before the election, there’ll be no stopping them now.”

“Whatever,” Clyde Pierson agreed, giving his aluminum bottle a last vigorous shake.  “It’s the mass deportations that have me freaked out.”

“What was your family doing in Cornwall?” Clarice asked Glynda, trying to change the subject.  Glynda took a drink of gin, her cue.

“I don’t bloody know!”  Truthfully she recalled those teen-aged years as drearily normal, and it was the memory of that angst that gave her line its zing.   Usually she’d launch into “Teatime” at this juncture, tonight, well, maybe later.  “My father was an aircraft engineer, my mother was a movie actress.”  She explained to Clarice how her parents had divorced after they had moved to New Jersey in 2006.

“Just so you know,” she said, hooking Mr. Pierson in with her usual line, “I’ve applied for deportation, but they turned me down.  It’s all a bit ludicrous, isn’t it?  Where are they going to start?  By calling in the army to stop people from eating cats?”

She could see the same dismissiveness that Jason showed towards the cockamamie results that came up in their library searches.  “Do you know how many verified cats have been eaten?”  Zero.  Where she’d been perhaps a little more inclined to wander down the back alleys of Springfield Ohio looking for strays.  “That’s my point exactly,” she said.

“We met an old activist from the American Indian Movement yesterday,” Jason told his dad.  “Marquez Murillo, do you know him?”  Oh my God, she heard Clyde Pierson say bitterly  “that sellout.”

Strangely, even though everyone was drinking and talking, no one was drinking much except Glynda.  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, pouring her third gin.  “When I drink excessively I sometimes sing,”  she cautioned.  The ice cubes reminded her.  “Tell them about the glass path,” she urged Jason.

“Remember where we used to buy our Christmas trees?  It’s right there!  Amazing!  Broken glass everywhere!”  Jason described to his parents the part I haven’t mentioned before, how the glass path begins/ends at the base of the large willow, the carpet of fragments swelling to encircle its massive trunk.

“They’re planning to turn that property into a park,” Clarice said.   For some reason the statement hit Glynda hard, maybe it was that extra drink.  “Who?  What?”

“EBRP, the East Bay Regional Parks District.  They own all that land down there, thanks to Sylvia McLaughlin.”

“Wait, I thought that the City…”