Election

by Tom Perrotta

  That's when I get bitter, when I start wondering how it is that Bill Clinton got to be President and Clarence Thomas got to sit on the Supreme Court, while I ended up here, surrounded by men who have nicknames for their penises, and talk about them like they're old friends. The only difference was that Bill and Clarence lied and I told the truth.

  Mostly I keep a low profile around the lot, try to get along with everyone and not make waves. I even kept my mouth shut the other day, when Stan and Rudy defended the rapists from Glen Ridge. The boys were convicted, but the judge gave them such light sentences that the whole process got reduced to a joke. People do more time for possessing a bag of pot than shoving a broomstick up the vagina of a retarded girl. It just makes you crazy to think about it.

  “Hey,” said Rudy, “she shouldn't have been down there in the first place. What did she think? They wanted to play Monopoly?”

  “I hear she had big tits,” Stan added, as if this had anything to do with anything. “A major pair of hooters.”

  I could have said something, but what difference would it have made? Stan and Rudy are grown men. It's too late to shape their minds, to teach them values and a sense of compassion. You have to do that when kids are young, before their personalities harden and they come to love their own ignorance. And besides, what right did I have to be holier-than-thou with anyone? My only consolation was that Frank junior walked away from the conversation, shaking his head in disgust. He was one of mine, and maybe that had made a difference.

  TAMMY WARREN

  SO MOM WAS WRONG. They don't whack us with rulers at Immaculate Mary. The school's so broke they probably can't afford rulers to whack us with. They also can't afford computers, a gym, or chalk for the blackboards. We even have to supply our own writing paper, believe it or not.

  The teachers don't get paid much and sometimes it shows. We have a couple of good ones, fresh out of college, but everyone knows they'll be gone in a year or two, as soon as something better comes along. To make ends meet, my English teacher drives the van that picks us up in the morning. I teased him about it once, and he told me to shut up.

  Even though I'm not a Catholic and have no desire to become one, they still make me take the religion class. It's not much of an advertisement for Catholicism, let me tell you. We don't have textbooks and we don't really discuss anything. When the Monsignor's in a bad mood, he just rants and raves for forty-five minutes. When he's in a good mood he runs the class like a quiz show, tossing off easy questions like Alex Trebek in a backwards collar.

  “What did Joseph do for a living?” “Was Jesus Christ a man or was he God?” The girls laugh behind his back, but no one dares to disagree with him, even when he talks about abortion or premarital sex, subjects that at least a few of my classmates know a lot more about than he does. (Homosexuality doesn't even come up, believe me.) It's almost enough to make me nostalgic for Winwood.

  I mean, what was I thinking? Nothing's like what I expected. Wearing my Catholic school uniform to public school was such a statement. Wearing it here is just dull. Every day, the same compulsory skirt, blouse, and knee socks. The dopey shoes. Pretty soon I'm going to have to shave my head and pierce my nose just to relieve the boredom.

  Dana was my other big disappointment, but I have only myself to blame for that. I got starry-eyed and built her up into something she wasn't. It's a bad habit of mine. I mean, just because someone's sexy and has a cool-looking birthmark, that doesn't mean she can't also be petty and shallow. Madonna, Madonna, Madonna, that's all she ever wants to talk about. Madonna and boys. Mention anything else and she just zones out.

  My only good friend is Alice, the freckly redhead I met that first day when I came to visit Dana. Alice is great. I told her all about Lisa a few weeks ago and she didn't freak out or anything. She just asked lots of questions and listened carefully to my answers, like she really wanted to understand. When I explained what happened between Paul and Lisa, she got all indignant on my behalf.

  “She was confused,” I said. “She didn't know what she wanted.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “A guy is one thing. But not your brother. That's as low as it gets.”

  I haven't had any contact with Lisa for over a year now. Paul told me she's going to Drew next year to study Political Science. He's going to Rutgers for Liberal Arts.

  I'm so jealous of both of them. I wish I could go away too, start all over again someplace better, far away from everyone I've ever known in my entire life.

  Because I don't see how I'm going to stand another year of high school.

  15

  TRACY FLICK

  I'D BEEN THINKING about it for a long time, but it took me a whole year to work up the nerve. About a week before graduation, I put on my red dress and drove my mother's beat-up Nova out to the Chevrolet dealership on West Plains Boulevard. The day was blue and balmy, the kind of weather that made me wish I could be a different person, fun-loving and carefree, ready to embrace the moment.

  I don't really know what I was after. Revenge, I guess. Maybe an apology. Or maybe just a chance to look him in the eye without my mother present, to let him know I was an adult now, no longer the schoolgirl he'd humiliated and tried to injure. All I knew for sure was that Mr. M. was one of the loose ends I needed to tie up before leaving Winwood for Georgetown.

  The approach of graduation had saddened me in a way I hadn't anticipated. The prospect of moving away from my mother, a change I'd craved for as long as I could remember, suddenly filled me with sorrow. We needed to separate, I knew that much, but did the separation have to be sudden and complete? What would she do without me? And where would I find another friend like her?

  Brooding over my future, I also found myself second-guessing my past. I grew haunted by the suspicion that I'd let high school slip through my fingers, that for all my accomplishments, I'd missed out on the essential core of the experience.

  This revelation had descended upon me a couple of days earlier, at a yearbook-signing party in the cafeteria. Like a tribe of celebrities, the Class of ‘93 had gathered to swap autographs, reminiscences, and pledges of undying friendship. I arrived with my brand-new Winwoodian tucked under my arm, three fresh pens, and a pleasant sense of premature nostalgia.

  A half hour later I was devastated. I swear to God, I never felt so empty in my life. Hardly anyone asked me to sign their yearbooks. And when someone did, I was usually stumped, unable to dream up anything the least bit personal or special to say. I'll never forget Geometry, I would write. You were a valued member of the Student Council.

  Other kids didn't seem to share my problem. They wrote to each other in a secret code of friendship, a breezy, intimate language that was as foreign to me as Polish or Swahili: Don t forget the beanballs, buddy … Hey Trish, you really know how to dance!… Catch you on the boardwalk, dude.

  I mean, maybe it wouldn't matter. Maybe two years would pass and no one would remember the beanballs, Trish would be pregnant and miserable, and once inseparable friends would have fallen completely out of touch. But so what? These yearbook sentiments were real, the products of actual friendships my classmates had shared and wanted to preserve, a far cry from the hollow, distant praise hastily composed in my honor: I'm sure you'll be a great success… You were a good President … and the ever-popular, I wish I'd gotten to know you better.

  Late in the party, Paul Warren sat down next to me and we traded books. I opened his to the page with my picture on it, only to find that Mark Fawcett had gotten carried away and scribbled the second half of his long, semiliterate message right over my face in bright green ink. You could hardly recognize me beneath his jagged, nearly illegible, exclamation-studded scrawl.

  I turned to the cover pages, both front and back, but couldn't find any blank space there, either. Paul had so many close friends, each one with a unique style of penmanship and a different color ink.

  So I ended up writing my note on a full-page color picture of the school, as if that squat, ugly
building were a better emblem of me than my own face. Paul, I wrote, we really should have been better friends. I thinly we have a lot in common, don't you? You're one of the most impressive people at Winwood. I'll never forget our election. Will you call me this summer? My number's in the book. And then I did something that surprised me. I signed it, Love, Tracy.

  Paul finished writing in my book the same moment I finished writing in his. We traded back and he rushed off to collect another signature without even bothering to read what I'd written. I was nervous and hopeful when I opened my book to the page with his picture, but all he had to offer was a string of platitudes and generic good wishes, capped off by his full signature—Paul Warren. That's it. Paul Warren. No hove, no Your friend, no nothing.

  MR. M.

  IT WAS a slow Tuesday. Instead of hanging around the showroom listening to Stan and Rudy speculate as to which actresses would give the best blow jobs, I drifted over to the Parts Department for my daily chat with Ray Feldman.

  Parts is an oasis of calm in the dealership, a dim cubbyhole office separated from the shine and dazzle of the showroom by a plain wooden door. Ray sat at his desk behind the counter, logging in a delivery on his Mac. Classical music hovered softly in the background.

  “How was lunch?” he asked, gazing intently at the luminous screen, clicking away at his mouse.

  “Not bad. We ordered subs from Nino's. What about you?”

  “Tuna salad. Nothing special.” He rolled his chair away from the computer and swiveled to face me, a stocky bear of a guy with a neatly trimmed reddish beard. “So how'd it go last night?”

  “Not bad. He slept from midnight until close to five.”

  “Hey.” Ray saluted me with a clenched fist and a grin. “All right. How's his appetite?”

  “Good. Maybe a little too good. Diane's nipples are still pretty sore. She's thinking about switching to formula.”

  Ray tugged thoughtfully on the short hairs of his beard. “That's okay. There's no law that says you have to breast-feed.”

  “She wants to, though. She says she loves it, even when it hurts like hell.”

  He ran a hand down the wrinkled front of his shirt, pausing to caress his belly.

  “It must be amazing, Jim. Feeding someone with your own body.”

  This is what we talked about every day, Ray and I. How much Jason ate and how often. Cloth diapers vs. disposables. Did we put him to sleep on his back or stomach? Everyone at the lot knew about the birth of my son, of course, but only Ray treated it as a subject of enduring interest. Stan and Rudy just wanted to know if I was getting any nooky yet.

  “Oh, by the way,” he said, “I was wondering if you had a picture.”

  “Yeah,” I laughed. “I showed it to you yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.”

  “Not that one,” he said. “One I can keep.”

  “Oh,” I replied, not quite able to conceal my surprise.

  “I have pictures of all my friends’ kids,” he explained, a bit defensively. “I put them up on the fridge with magnets.”

  All at once, I felt like a fool. Ray was right—we were friends; the least I could do was bring him a picture. It seemed crazy that he'd never met my wife and child—people we discussed in detail every day—and equally crazy that I knew next to nothing about his personal life, except that he lived alone and read a lot of mysteries. I had no idea if he had a girlfriend, or was gay, or someday wanted to have children himself.

  “Sure,” I said. “I'll bring you one tomorrow.”

  Just then the door burst open behind me, flooding the cubbyhole with light. My colleague Rudy stood grinning in the doorway, a hatchet-faced man in an iridescent blue suit. He cleared his throat and sculpted a sweet pair of hips in the air.

  “Mr. McAllister,” he said, “there's a customer here to see you.”

  “Isn't it Stan's turn?”

  “She requested you by name,” he told me, his voice dripping with insinuation. “If you're busy I'll be happy to attend to her … automotive needs.”

  “It must be the woman who looked at the Camaro last week. She was supposed to get back to me yesterday.”

  I glanced at Ray on my way out the door. He'd already rolled his chair back up to the computer and resumed his life's work, assigning inventory numbers to air filters and side-view mirrors. Stepping into the showroom, I made a mental note to remember the baby picture.

  She was standing with her back to me, admiring a pale green Metro convertible, so I saw the dress before I saw her face. The red of it jolted me like an electric shock. I reached up to straighten my tie, and she turned around in the same instant, smiling in a puzzled sort of way, as if a stranger had spoken her name.

  TRACY FLICK

  WE MADE an aimless circuit of the lot, stopping every now and then to admire another car—the unreal shine of the paint, the glossy tires, the computer printouts attached to the back windows, each one cluttered with gibberish and a picture of a gas pump.

  “This is a Cavalier,” he'd say, as if he thought I might secretly be interested in making a purchase. “Basic transportation at a basic price. But a little sportier than you might expect.”

  I'd nod solemnly, doing my best imitation of a serious customer, my mind suddenly empty of the insults and accusations I'd been hoarding so long for just this occasion. It all seemed irrelevant now—the election, Mr. M.'s treachery, all those nights I'd spent wide awake, dreaming of revenge. I was about to graduate. He sold Chevrolets. High school was over for both of us.

  “This is the Lumina,” he told me. “It's a midsized family sedan. We sell a van in the same model line.”

  Mr. M. swept his arm in a wide arc over the hood of the car, like Vanna White drawing your attention to more fabulous prizes. He looked older than I remembered, grayer around the temples, more tired in the eyes. I liked his suit, though. It was gray and fashionably cut, and it made him seem like a more serious person than he'd been as a teacher, someone with weight and stature in the adult world.

  “Where do they get these names?” I asked. “Who makes them up?”

  His eyes crinkled into a squint. “People in Detroit, I guess. Engineers. Marketing types.”

  “You'd think they could do a little better than ‘Lumina.’ It's not even a real word.”

  He nodded. “Cars used to be named for animals and places, but now they've got these crazy made-up names. The Japanese are the worst. I mean, what the heck's a Camry?”

  “I don't know,” I admitted, wishing that I could impress him with the correct answer.

  I looked up and something connected between us. I guess we both realized how absurd it was, after everything that had happened, for the two of us to be standing in a parking lot, surrounded by new cars, wondering what a Camry was. But instead of smiling he suddenly turned serious, the way Jack used to right before he kissed me.

  “So tell me,” he said. “How was your senior year?”

  “Okay.”

  “That's it? Just okay?”

  “Not that great, actually.”

  “Really?” He licked his fingertip and rubbed at a spot on the Lumina's hood. The car was cherry red, a sexy lipstick color. Sunlight flared off the glass and metal. “Why was that?”

  “I don't know. I guess I just wanted it to be over. These last couple of months really seemed to drag.”

  Mr. M. jingled some change in his pocket and studied the ground. I had a feeling he was going to ask me about Jack.

  “Did you go to the prom? ”

  I shook my head, a little irritated by the question. It really wasn't any of his business.

  “I used to chaperone,” he told me. “I always enjoyed it. Seeing all these kids turning into men and women before your eyes. It's really something.”

  Well, thanks a lot, I thought. Thanks for letting me know what I missed out on. I'd really wanted to go, but nobody asked me. I even called Larry DiBono at Lehigh to try and convince him to be my date, but he said his girlfri
end would kill him if he went out with someone else, even as a friend.

  My mom tried to lift my spirits. She insisted that we get all dressed up on prom night and go out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, but the whole thing turned out to be a disaster. We had a stupid argument and both ended up crying in the car on the way home.

  “Do you miss teaching?” I just blurted it out, apropos of nothing, in a voice too loud for the distance between us.

  He twisted his head and looked over his shoulder for a couple of seconds. I followed his gaze, but there was nothing behind him except for more new cars, impossibly bright and clean in the afternoon sunshine, and a line of these goofy pennants flapping in the breeze. When he turned around, his face revealed nothing.

  “Every day,” he told me.

  After that, we didn't say much. On our way back to the showroom we wandered past the Geos, and I couldn't help stopping to admire those little convertibles. I had this vision of myself cruising through town on a summer evening with the top down, giving people something new to remember me by.

  “That's the Metro,” he told me. “The most affordable convertible on the market.”

  “It's so cute. I just want to hop in and drive away.”

  “No problem,” he said. “I'll go get the keys.”

  MR. M.

  “WHERE TO?” she asked.

  “Anywhere you want,” I told her. “Just as long as we're back in a half hour.”

  She grinned. “I can't believe we're doing this.”

  She worked the shifter into first gear, and we lurched out of the lot into the flowing afternoon traffic. It was perfect convertible weather, warm and bright, with just enough breeze to ruffle your hair.

  “I wish I'd known,” she said, raising her voice to compete with the noise of the wind and the engine. “I would've brought my sunglasses.”