Legislative
Awareness Day
By
Erika Jahneke
Ned
Corner(R-IN) liked to think of himself as a Fair Man. He pictured
that sentence in a history book, or in his eulogy.
“Kelly!,”
Corner yelled for his smartest page, “I need you to do some
research for me.”
“Sir?”
Kelly
was prompt, reliable, female, and too serious to have dirty thoughts
about. In short, she was the perfect staffer for the post-Foley era.
This was a good thing, because whether or not Corner was a fair man,
he was a lazy one, called Cutting Corner by his generous House
colleagues.
“Fire
up The Google.”
“Of
course, sir, but it’s not as if I need a secret password. You
could
do it too. Show the folks at home you could keep up.”
“I’ll
think about it.” Embarrassed, he looked for a
distraction.”What
else is going on today?”
“The
auto-rescue package and some constituents concerned about
entitlements.”
“Entitlements?”
“Yes,
you know…Social Security and whatnot.”
“I
know what they are…what about them?”
“Some
constituents are concerned about them, sir.”
He
made a sour face and Kelly shook her head no, politely yet firmly.
She would make some man a fine wife someday.
“Couldn’t
you do it?”
She
smiled that crooked smile that made his heart flip over, despite his
best judgment, and told him, “That’s why your name is on
the
door, Chief.”
He
stood tall then and tried to think important thoughts. He followed
Kelly into the lobby where he was met by a motley assemblage of young
people, some with crutches, some in wheelchairs, and one young man
sitting on the couch running a tiny blue toy sports-car over the nap
of the fabric, despite having the gangly legs of a boy in his
mid-teens. Corner felt shy among all of those people who seemed to
have lost life’s lottery, and it made him think of returning to
his
home district after being in Washington all winter, trying to connect
to his own children through the noise of loud music and the disgrace
of wet can rings on antique furniture, as the late Mrs. Corner was
too sweet to be much of a disciplinarian. They didn’t have it in
them; estrogen made them soft. He did what he did at home and butted
into things he didn’t understand.
“Young man,” Corner scolded,
“I’d
prefer if you kept your feet off my furniture,”
“Oh,
I don’t know, sir,” Kelly answered. “I don’t
think he’s
hurting anything.”
Corner
got closer to the boy and said, “I have an image to maintain, Ms.
Quarters…hey, son, are you in there?”
He
snapped his fingers. “Feet on the floor.”
As
the congressman’s stubby finger snapped in his face, the boy
screamed long and hard. Only then did Corner remember why so many of
his own family dinners had ended in tears. He had spoken so often of
the importance of discipline and a father’s firming hand at the
dinner table that his memories had become like beloved images in a
photo album. He was then free to leave stupid things he said, and
Abby and Cathy’s door-slamming tantrums, out of the shot, so to
speak. Abby and Cathy did not have the strong lungs or staying power
of this crippled boy, however, which made Ned Corner feel very
frightened. He considered rushing back to his inner office and
pretending to do classified stuff all day, but he was already at the
last table at the Interfaith Prayer Breakfast. If he got a reputation
for racing past crippled people, he’d probably end up on the
patio
and Rahm Emanuel would make him hide the President’s forbidden
cigarette butts. He’d never stand for that. Not twice, anyway.
The
boy’s scream was as inexorable as a caveman’s car alarm
until,
finally, a pause for breath, a moment of silence. Corner rubbed his
assaulted ears.
“He
hates to be startled,” an acerbic female voice offered, as the
teen
crawled under the table in the reception area, barking all the way.
Corner was surprised to face this critic, as the tiny redhead in the
wheelchair and the green sweater looked too delicate to contain so
much scorn. She faced him down, indifferent to Corner’s Time
magazine cover, which had been mounted in a nice frame on the wall
behind her head. He considered calling her attention to it, but he
doubted it would matter much.
“He
hasn’t even been coming to Disability Coalition meetings for
three
months and I know that…God.”
She
didn’t want to admit that the only reason she noticed him was
that
he had the faraway good looks of a teenage idol. If she could somehow
manage to be fourteen again, she would put a poster of him on her
bedroom wall and smother it with kisses before she went to sleep. She
couldn’t tell Corner that even if she wanted to, but he
didn’t
stay still for her to, withdrawing into some inner office and closing
the door behind him. For a moment, she was angry and thought about
following him to the doorway but a flash of white paper caught her
eye.
“Young
lady, please don’t use the Lord’s name in vain in front of
me,”
he told her, with the door open a crack, again the aggrieved father
of a mouthy teen.
“I
wasn’t; I was praying for you…you seem like you could use
the
help.”
He
couldn’t tell if she was teasing and it made him uncomfortable.
Stella was pushing thirty so hard it was pushing back; she was in no
mood to be lectured, and his discomfort made her smile.
“What
should I have done instead?” He generally didn’t like to
ask for
help, but it wasn’t as if he would have to face her like she was
someone.
She
shrugged. “How should I know? I know two things about that guy.
His
name is Stefan and he doesn’t like to be touched… I know
three
things if you count Stefan being a car freak…does that little TV
get the Speed Channel?”
“Mostly
we use it to watch news or C-Span. I don’t know…”
Corner
waited a moment, as if she were going to soothe him by saying that of
course he was too busy to pay attention to details, but if he waited
to be soothed by this gruff little person, he’d be waiting a long
time. She used the remote with a practiced hand and soon the sounds
of auto racing filled Corner’s outer office.
The
congressman tried a different tack. He knelt and offered her his
hand. “Hi, I’m Ned Corner.”
“I
know who you are… I’ve seen you on the news.”
”And
you are…”
“Me?
I’m Stella Stevens. Retro and embarrassing, right?”
Corner
smiled briefly and walked away satisfied he had done his best with
the less-fortunate.
Stella
smiled and her cheeks were pink. She watched intently as Stefan
reached his hand up to touch the televised face of the racecar
driver. His look of longing was so intense, Stella felt some dust in
her eye, and lowered her head. When she looked down, she saw a scrap
of paper, crammed with tiny, old fashioned looking handwriting.
“Is
this yours? It looks like something.”
She
rolled over and attempted to give it back, her open hand reminding
her of feeding the goats at the petting zoo, but unlike the goats,
Stefan seemed reluctant.
“That’s
okay,” she told him. “Maybe I’ll just hold on to it.
But we
don’t want it to get lost…it looks like you worked really
hard
on…whatever this is.”
Maybe
she was making a big deal about fantasy baseball, or D&D. Other
people got to keep their nerdy stuff without somebody throwing it
out.
She couldn’t read it well; it made her think of math
classes and the way that preparing for exams had made her bite her
nails and feel queasy. She called her brother and told him what she
brought home and he sounded intrigued. Of course, business had been
down a lot so there wasn’t much to absorb his attention. He
sounded
psyched when he saw the calculations though.
“As
far as I can tell,” he told her “It looks like a way to run
cars
on vegetable oil.”
“Wow,”
“Damn
right, wow.”
“I
picked it up when we went to Corner’s office.”
“You
had your hands on a gold mine…we should try to make this happen
as
soon as possible!”
Stella
nodded, swept along by the fact that her brother hadn’t looked
that
excited about anything since they stopped making Star Wars men. He
was psyched about this auto thing, and, for that reason, more than
any overwhelming political or environmental concern, Stella resolved
to track it down.
Stella
was relieved to find that she and Stefan’s family were close
neighbors; not that Stefan’s mother made it easy at first.
“Forgive
the mess,” she told Stella. “It’s been a rough
morning,”
As
his mother guided Stella through the house, she began to see what the
older woman was talking about. It looked like there had been a riot
in a video store as books, CDs and videos were flung from their
cases.
“Your
message wasn’t very clear. What do you want with my son?”
“Well,
Mrs. Kaminsky,” Stella told her. “Your son may have solved
an
engineering problem that’s haunted us for a hundred years.”
“Again?
I wish I had a dollar for every time some therapist came down here
making crazy claims about Stefan…I love my son, but my job is
hard
enough.”
“Mrs.
K, trust me, if this works out the way I think it will, you’ll
get
your dollars.”
Stella
looked intentionally downcast. “Although I am hurt you think I
look
like a therapist.”
Stella
took out the grainy photocopy she made of Stefan’s scrap.
“Your
son will revolutionize the auto industry. This may hold the key to
saving the environment, getting our country off foreign oil, and, um,
lots of stuff.”
Science
had never been Stella’s best subject and some of what her little
brother had said had left her head entirely, but she knew it was
important enough to keep hammering away. Mrs. K. put on reading
glasses and studied it for a moment, but seemed nonplussed.
“What about this?” she said,
pointing to a notebook that looked to be full of similar formulas.
“I
don’t know,” Stella admitted. “They say it took
Edison over a
hundred tries to get a working lightbulb…maybe school kids will
be
looking at this notebook in a museum someplace.”
This kind of optimism made Stella
feel
like a doofus, but the potential of the new enterprise made her feel
too naked for irony.
“When
he was ten he took apart our Taurus and put it together again…it
took him a week, but he did it. We thought we would wring his neck
first, though.”
“Your son is a genius,”
“We’d
settle for not having to watch that movie about Dale Earnhart again,
darling.”.
* *
It’s
getting close to winter when Corner finally remembers the matter that
brought Stella, pink-cheeked and earnest, back to his district office
after a half-hour ride on the bus. He hated to remember that he’d
kept her waiting, after reading what an advantage it gives executives
in business books. She took it like a trouper, though, and her
passion for what she was saying animated Stella’s face so much
that
she was almost pretty. After that fifteen minutes, although she did
give him a rather token handshake, it seemed that Corner finally
understood what he stood under all that bunting for and why he ate
all that chicken with the indefinable, gelatinous gravy on it. He
decided then and there that he had found something worth working for,
but it had been so long since he had thought that much, he had a
headache above his eye for a week after he wrote the document that
was now in his briefcase.
Some
people did say that he did it to placate two tiresome (and broke)
constituencies in one shot; it had started there, but he had become
proud of the Community Reinvestment Initiatives Project (CRIP). He
liked the thought of Americans working in those factories again, even
if they were halt and lame while they did it.
The
Speaker of The House barely looks at Ned as she asks if there is any
new business, but Ned hasn’t been this enthusiastic since his ant
farm lost the science fair in the fifth grade. Speaker Pelosi is
initially puzzled, but she treats him like one of her many
grandchildren and tries to anticipate the source of his question.
“Mr.
Corner,” she reminds him, gently, but with a keen look over her
reading glasses, “we agreed, owing to the large amount of
business
on the calendar this week, we’d work through lunch.”
“No,
Madam Speaker, I have something.”
“Really?”
She was moderately successful at keeping the surprise out of her tone
and off her face.
“Yes,
I have a Bill.”
He
looked as though he expected her to stick a gold star upon it, but
even a broken clock was right twice a day. Corner usually wrote Keep
America Beautiful-style resolutions so his style was rusty, but it
really was an ingenious thought combining the disability jobs funding
with a green auto initiative. Ms. Pelosi hoped she wasn’t being
too
obvious in looking at the bill and looking at the man who cost the
Republicans the House Pictionary tournament, although she did hear
her granddaughter’s voice in her thoughts saying
something…what
was it? Oh, right, “No way…” the Speaker of the
House breathed.
It wasn’t his, probably, but
that
woman who wrote Twilight didn’t invent vampires either, just left
her sparkling and moody stamp on them. And look how many copies
she’d
sold. Of course, that didn’t mean the books were actually good,
but
they were page-turners, and a page-turning administration needed a
page-turning domestic initiative. It had come from a very unlikely
place.
Corner
waited impatiently, wishing it weren’t so cold and grey out. The
unaccustomed mental activity created a craving to be on the move, but
the sky looked almost pregnant with cold so he paced the hallway.
Instead of the House leaders, or fellow Republican congressmen, he
saw Kelly.
“Lunch
is on me today,” she told him, showing him some Chinese take-out
containers. “We have to talk.”
She
leaned in so close he could smell her cherry-vanilla body lotion.
Corner’s heart beat so fast he thought he would pass out.
“Are we celebrating my
bill…or
something else?” He tried not to sound too goofily hopeful.
“I’m
really proud of you for that…that’s what makes this so
hard,”
He
thought, “You’re telling me,” but tried to keep a
neutral look
on his face.
Kelly
nibbled a won ton and then took a deep breath.
“Look,
I’ve been trying to be graceful about saying this, but I’ve
met
someone…we’re in love and we’re moving away.”
Corner
tried to joke. “Anyone I know?” He raised his eyebrow in a
way
that would get him in trouble with the Baptists back home.
If
she noticed, the thought of it didn’t seem to make her happy so
he
chose to think of himself as very subtle.
“No,
I don’t think you know her…she taught me yoga in
Indianapolis
when I threw my back out, and…”
And
she went on to tell some story about meeting this same woman in a
salad restaurant in Union Station and what a small world it was, and
how funny, and how she looked at this Gloria and “just
knew,” and
Ned felt like he was watching himself listen while fiddling with his
peapods.
Kelly did notice his face fall, if
only for a moment, and said “My God, Ned, I thought you
knew…it’s
not like I’ve made it a big secret. Although it’s true I
didn’t
mention it at work…but I think you know why, right?”
“What
am I going to do without you?”
He
hated that this question made her laugh, but if she were really in
love, everything made her happy.
“I don’t know…learn
how to
Google? I could have Simon train you on the data bases and voter
file.”
“Forget
the damned voter file. This has nothing to do with the voter
file.”
This
was the most unscripted moment he’d had in at least ten years,
and
he had never really been good at them. He liked the certainty of
knowing the response he set off by filming a flag unfurling on a
windy spring day; emotional, yet dependable. Not messy like this.
Kelly’s green eyes were wide.
“This
is way more intense than I thought it would be, Ned. But you might as
well get it off your chest. Anything else?”
Corner
was not a hip man, either, but he had seen enough recent movies to
not say, “Well, you don’t look like a gym teacher,”
although he
did think it to himself.
“No,
that’s okay. I really do want you to be happy.”
“You’re
a great guy. You’ll find somebody. If I liked great
guys…”
“You don’t have to finish
that.”
“It’s
true enough.”
Without
her ideas spurring him forward, Corner lost interest in presenting
his bill, or anything else. He stayed home for about a week moaning
about bad cream sauce until his bill was torpedoed by some of his
nuttier constituents. He took up watching judge shows and went back
to reading comic books.
Stella and Stefan never really knew how
close they came to having the door of opportunity swing back on its
electronic hinges, but they are born to survive, and that’s what
they do, taking some pride in the installation of two automatic doors
and the public library’s new lowered water fountain. The
Community
reporter must have found Stefan beautiful in the same way that Stella
does, because the photo of him wincing as the cold fountain water hit
his face has made the front page of the Local section.
He
is on his fourth notebook of the year. Stella still collects the bits
and pieces that fall out of them.
Erika
Jahneke is a writer and blogger who has written about subjects as
diverse as the city of Baltimore in pop culture and women’s
reproductive health. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Smile
Hon, The
November 3rd Club Journal
and Kaleidoscope,
among other publications. She believes that her writing can almost
make up for the physical power she lost when she developed a brain
injury at birth and became a life-long wheelchair user. She lives in
Phoenix, where she sometimes considers herself the Drama of the media
and publishing world, although she has no immediate plans to change
her calves. Feedback, flames, and tempting assignments can be left at
ejahneke@yahoo.com.
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