Divided House

1.

Megan’s work was su ering. e scholarship les were mislabeled, she was taking 15-minute bathroom breaks, and she answered the phone with “What?” Diane knew she had to say something: it was impossible to supervise someone who didn’t give a shit. Today, Megan returned from a 30-minute bathroom break and lay down on the oor behind the work study desk, arms spread like she was trying to make a snow angel on the carpet.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Diane had been practicing that sentence in her head so it would come out stern yet friendly. “You’ve been a mess all week.”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Megan. She peeled herself from the oor and stood, all six feet of her. When Diane was in college, in the ’80s, students weren’t nearly so tall. Megan was 20 years old. History major. She’d been a reliable employee for the rst three weeks of the semester. “I just have a headache. Don’t you ever get a headache?”

Diane gave her a look like, Really? “Seriously, what’s going on? Is it a case of the love sickness?” She was aiming for sarcasm, but it came out sounding like something a witchy fortune teller would say.

Megan laughed, then burst into tears and fell into Diane’s arms. It was very dramatic. She was heavier than she looked.

Diane pushed her upright. She didn’t say, “Oh, spare me.” She said, “It’s almost noon. Let’s go somewhere for lunch. I’ll treat, and you tell me all the gory details.”

She didn’t think of Megan as the daughter she never had; she’d never wanted kids or dogs or cats. Her brief marriage two decades ago felt like a movie somebody told her about once. He was a car salesman from Tupelo. ey’d met at a truck stop outside Boston where she was waitressing, and two weeks later she followed him to Mississippi. Now here she still was, 45 years old, business manager in the history department of a small religious college, even though she wasn’t religious. is town was full of churches and bars and boutiques selling wedding and prom dresses.

But she was young once; she remembered heartbreak. Also, she was nosy. She was bored. She took Megan to a café on College Avenue and ordered a glass of chardonnay and ignored Megan’s raised eyebrow. Megan, she’d learned last week, belonged to one of those churches where if you drink alcohol, you go to hell.

Diane asked gently: “What’s his name? Let’s start there.” But who was she kidding? She knew exactly who he was: maybe not speci cally, but generally. One of the khaki-pants-wearers, ruddy and pale-haired, wore Dockers, drove a white pickup truck, business major, grew up in Mississippi but once went on a mission trip to Guatemala or Bermuda, drove home every weekend to see his family. Maybe he was sexually repressed, secretly gay, or already involved with a girl back home. at was still no excuse for Megan to be a terrible worker.

“Well,” said Megan. “I suppose it’s kind of a secret.” She pursed her lips, suddenly prim. Two girls walked a schnauzer down the sidewalk, and they waved at Megan, who waved back.

“I suppose you’re red then!” Diane said, irritably. She took a big sip of wine. “All I can say is get over it. Boys are idiots.” She wanted to be helpful, but Megan was making it di cult to be helpful.

“He’s older,” Megan said. “ ere. I’ve probably said too much.”

“Dear God. Not one of your professors?” Although this would be more interesting than a khaki-pantsed boy.

“No! I didn’t meet him on campus at all.” Megan stabbed her lemon with her straw, ignored the veggie burger deposited in front of her. “He’s married, so I guess it’s a little not-ideal. And that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want you to re me. I need this job.”

Diane didn’t say: “You’re a fool.” She said: “ en do your work and answer the damn phone.” But she said it kindly. e girl’s situation was unfortunate, but in the way a kidney stone was unfortunate. It was painful, and it would pass. Someday Megan would forget about it. Of course things could get worse before they got better. Diane would monitor the situation. at was all she could do.

2.

Haley’s parents bickered in the front seat as they drove down sun-spackled country roads. “No wonder you wanted to take my car,” her mother said as the Toyota jounced along. e road turned from gravel to red dirt; the trees rose up thick and twining on either side, turning all the light to shade.

It was her mother who’d insisted she come with them to the candidate meet-and-greet, even though Haley was 16 and couldn’t vote. “But you can be informed,” her mother said. “Also, it’s on a farm—you can see baby lambs!”

Haley did want to see baby lambs. e canopy of trees opened like the exit of a tunnel, and Siri told them to continue for a mile, then turn left.

“ anks, Siri!” said Haley’s father. ey were 15 miles from home, but this part of the county was country-country: tiny brick houses with a mess of tireless cars in the yards. Confederate ags. Little white trailers and rusty tricycles. ey turned at a mailbox with two white balloons tied to it and crunched over a circular driveway that went past a pen of yellow chickens, a pen of goats. Cows lowed and chewed in a eld beyond a wooden fence. e promised baby lambs were not in evidence. Haley’s father pulled up behind a Volvo plastered with the candidate’s bumper stickers. e late afternoon sun painted everything gold; the sky was cloudless. Her parents paused at a folding table and signed their names to a sheet of paper, then they all continued around the side of the house to a wooden patio where a gray-haired man was playing guitar and a lot of middle-aged people were holding wine glasses. It was like one of those commercials for men who can’t get it up.

“Where are the lambs?” Haley asked her mother, who ignored her. en she was being introduced to people she’d never seen before— smiling while they said how nice it was that young people were getting involved in politics these days: “You’re the future, you know!” said far too many of these not-young people, until Haley wanted to turn and run across the elds.

e candidate was schmoozing his way around the porch, tall and smiley and silver-haired, in a blue button-down shirt and jeans. “Oh, there he is,” said Haley’s mother, squeezing her arm. “Hubba hubba.”

“Behave yourself,” said Haley’s father. “Your mother thinks he’s a silver fox,” he added.

“Here I go,” Haley’s mother said. “Don’t come looking for me.” And she was gone; Haley heard her say, “Why hello, I don’t know if you remember me!”

“I’m going to check out the food inside,” said her father. “You want to come inside?”

A wrinkle-faced woman with gray braids said, “When you’re in there, try the meatballs. Made with their own beef.” As if in response, a brown and white cow lifted its head and mooed.

“Are there lambs?” Haley asked, and the woman said, “I know they’re around someplace. I’ve had the lamb stew and it’s delicious.” And she wandered o .

Haley felt her stomach churn. It had as much to do with the lambs as it did with everyone grabbing her and telling her she was the future. Her father had gone inside. Her old babysitter was here, for some reason: Megan, standing with Haley’s mother and the candidate, laughing and tossing her hair like she was determined to out- irt everyone.

“Hey.” Haley turned and a skinny red-haired guy stepped in front of the sun. “Have a sticker. Here, have two.”

His name was James, and he was in the college Democrats club: “Or I was, until I unked out of college. But I’m still a Democrat. How old are you?”

“Sixteen,” she said. She lifted her chin a little, as if he might challenge her. e boy smiled. James. His eyes were amber.

“It’s great that you’re getting involved,” he said. “Did you go to the march last year?”

She didn’t know which march he was talking about, but she nodded. She had never marched, or canvassed, or walked out of class, or shouted in the cafeteria, or made videos, or handed out stickers. Her parents would yell at the TV or shake their phones and say things like, “ ank God for kids

like you, Haley,” as if it were up to her to solve the problems of the world, when she was just a girl with a C average.

Once her father had asked her, “What are your big goals?” and she said, “To have a normal life.” He seemed disappointed by this, so she added, “Far away from here,” and he smiled.

“Come nd me for more stickers before you leave,” James said, saluted, and disappeared through the crowd. e group of fawning women surrounding the candidate had grown even larger. Megan saw Haley and waved. Haley waved back, then went through the screen door into a dim dining room. Her father was holding a plate heaped with meatballs, nodding at something an African American man was saying, and he waved her over so the man could tell her she was the future. “She’s a good egg,” her father said, beaming. She felt a twinge of pity for him: so chubby and bald, his khaki pants both too baggy and too tight. His shirt was stained with sauce.

She extricated herself and traveled through the house to the front door and out onto the lawn, which was full of long shadows. e air was growing cooler. James was putting signs into a red truck. He smiled as she approached. “So hey,” he said. “Give me your number. You can help me canvas sometime.”

“Okay,” she said.

3.

On Monday, Megan was all smiles, greeting the professors with a cheerful “good morning!” and asking them about their conferences as if she really cared. “I’ve never even been to Toronto!” she said to the new hire, a young woman who taught Civil Rights and the Media. She told a retiring curmudgeon that he didn’t look old enough to retire, even though he absolutely did. “What are you ladies smoking in here?” he said, and winked. Jesus Christ.

When Diane and Megan were alone, Diane shut the door and said, “So what’s going on?”

Megan provided a very graphic description of what went down the previous evening with her boyfriend—she called him that—in his car, in the parking lot of her apartment complex.

“He’s very careful about not being seen,” she said. “Plus, it’s so exciting!”

“A blow job in a car is not careful or exciting,” Diane pointed out. “And this was something you enjoyed?”

“I loved it,” said Megan, in a tone that implied: Who wouldn’t?

Diane was never a blow-job-in-the-car kind of person. How could that be anything but uncomfortable and humiliating? “He’s treating you like a hooker,” she said.

Megan leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “And? What if that’s exactly what I want? We bring out each other’s fantasies, Diane. He can’t be himself except with me. You don’t have to understand it, but don’t give me that look like you’re judging me.”

“Of course I’m judging you,” Diane said, and then the phone rang and Megan plucked it up with a cheerful, “Hello history department can I help you?” and a student knocked on the door looking for a stapler.

When Diane was 20 she was involved with an older man, too. He wasn’t married, but he was an asshole. When he told Diane he was seeing other women she said it was ne, even though it wasn’t ne. Had women made so little progress?

For the rest of her three-hour shift, Megan kept her headphones on and sat at her desk dutifully licking mailings, then she stacked them up and took out her homework. She answered the phone when it rang. At noon, she gathered her backpack and said, “See you on Wednesday,” very politely, and left.

At just before ve, Cecile from the French department called Diane to cancel the dinner they’d planned for two weeks—Cecile, whom Diane had comforted during her divorce, whose dog she’d walked when Cecile had back surgery. Cecile had promised Diane a girls’ trip to Paris, but then she met a man online, and that was the end of talk of trips, and apparently now the end of meeting up for dinner. “Everything okay?” Diane asked sharply, so Cecile would have to lie: “Just feeling a little under the weather.” She gave a very fake-sounding cough.

Annoyed, turned on, and lonely, Diane went home and masturbated, thinking of that parked car, the windows steamed up, the married man crying out, the girl smiling.

4.

“We should have him over for dinner,” Haley’s mother said. She meant the candidate. e silver fox.

“You mean him and his wife?” said Haley’s father.

“Oh, her. Sure, she can come, too.”

Haley wondered if she should tell them that James texted her and asked her to a movie. Her mother would say: “Isn’t he too old for you?” and her father would say, “Delete his number.” And then she wouldn’t have to talk with James about all the canvassing she’d never done, all the protests she never joined.

But her father said, “He’s a good kid. I used to work with his father at Extension.” Haley’s father traveled around the state and talked to farmers about their crops. Haley could not imagine anything more boring. “Anyway, you should go.”

“But he’s a college dropout,” Haley said, and her mother said, “You can’t be so judgmental, honey. Everyone has their own path in life.” Her mother was an optometrist who spent all day shining bright lights into people’s eyeballs so she could see their optic nerves.

Later, in her room, Haley took o all her clothes and stood in front of her mirror. She turned right and left and around, trying to see herself from the perspective of a college dropout. e only boy she’d ever made out with had stuck his tongue down her throat, his hand down her pants, then sighed and shuddered and cried a little on her shoulder. He was still crying when she went downstairs, where his mother was frying spam in a skillet.

Her phone dinged and dinged and dinged. Ashley was texting her about a boy she liked; Katelyn was texting about the Spanish test. ey were not impressed when she told them about James. Ashley texted a poo emoji and Katelyn wrote what a loser u can do better!!!

Haley had once broken a boy’s heart by accident in the seventh grade. She’d once ridden a horse in Tennessee. She’d sung the National Anthem in a fth-grade assembly. She got a 74 on her last Spanish test. She had a Twitter account but there was nothing she wanted to say: she didn’t want to tweet about her teachers or her stupid parents or the cafeteria food, or the latest celebrity feud.

She stared at James’s text: Wanna go see a movie? A movie? Who the hell went to movies anymore? Her parents might be idiots, but she wasn’t. A movie meant he’d come pick her up in his truck and they’d drive somewhere, maybe back to wherever he lived. He might have beer.

Still naked, she sat on her bed and crossed her legs, feeling like a grown woman, as if this was something grown women did: texted while naked. Nude, that was the word. Nude, she wrote: A movie sounds fun! anks! en she changed the exclamation marks to periods. Keep it chill. A movie sounds fun. anks.

5.

Megan called in sick for two days. Which was bullshit. On the second day, Diane found her address on the hiring paperwork and drove to her apartment after work. It was 90 degrees at 5 p.m., the leaves wilting and crisping on the trees. Students rode their bikes in the bike lanes, walked in pairs down the pavement, staring at their phones. Diane felt a ash of nostalgia for the northern shopping malls of her youth, the stacks of records at Sam Goody’s, the black velvet posters at Spencer’s Gifts. Why did the past seem like another planet? On Megan’s second day of work, she’d pointed at Diane’s watch and said, “How can you tell time on that?” And Diane listened, stunned, as Megan explained that nobody her age used an actual clock. “So you have no idea what the big hand and little hand mean?” Diane asked, and Megan laughed: “Big hand, little hand, that’s hilarious.”

Megan lived behind the Walmart, in a brick apartment complex with tiny balconies. She opened the door in her sweats, wearing glasses. She didn’t ask Diane what she was doing there. She just let her in and sank onto the sofa and crossed her arms. Diane went to the kitchen and stacked the

dirty dishes, poured some curdled milk down the sink. It was easier to think when you weren’t surrounded by lth: that was her mother’s mantra.

Diane asked: “Did you eat today?” Megan was huddled under a blanket like the survivor of a sea disaster. “Did you go to class? I know you’re not actually sick.”

“I’m in hell,” Megan intoned.

“I guess hell hath no fury,” Diane said, trying to sound cheerful. She stood in front of the TV: a show about a big man trying to decorate a tiny house.

“It’s nor hell a fury,” said Megan, perking up a little. “Everybody gets that wrong. Everybody thinks it’s Shakespeare but it’s William Congreve.”

“Fine, whatever,” said Diane. “I’m going to run get us something to eat.” She drove to McAlister’s for chicken salads and the Food Max for a sixpack of Guinness, and when she returned and let herself in, Megan was still on the sofa, but her eyes were bright with rage.

“Goddamn that motherfucker, give me one of those beers.” ey ate on the living room oor like picnickers.

“Did you tell your mother about him?” Diane asked, even though she knew the answer.

Megan laughed. She seemed thoroughly revived now, her cheeks ushed. “About blowing a married guy in my car? Or the time we fucked at the Comfort Suites on game day, or met up in Jackson and went to the zoo?”

“ e zoo?”

“I know, right? For some reason—” She paused. “For some reason, I thought that meant he loved me.”

“Oh, you poor thing,” Diane murmured. She wanted to reach out and hug Megan, but she also wanted to slap her, so she did nothing. Instead, heart pounding, she asked, “What’s the most fucked up thing you ever did with him?” Her mind spun with scenarios. She couldn’t stop thinking about scenarios.

Megan chewed, stared into space, swallowed. “Besides the blow jobs in the car?”

“Does he go down on you in the car, too?” Diane asked. “I mean, it’s only fair.” at was just one of the scenarios. Her heart was lodged in her throat. e chicken was too dry.

“Well, it doesn’t work like that,” Megan said, as if Diane were a small and stupid child. “I do drink sometimes anyway,” she added, as if remembering this for the rst time. “Don’t tell my grandmother that. She thinks if I drink, I’ll end up like my mother.”

“What does that mean?” Diane asked.

But Megan didn’t seem to hear. “He knows a lot about wine. His wife likes champagne.” She rolled her eyes.

“I dated a terrible person once,” Diane said, because she wanted Megan to say, “Oh, really?” or “What happened?” but she said nothing. Megan had never asked Diane a single thing about herself.

“Sometimes,” said Megan, “I think the only way out of this is to tell his wife. Like, I’m on a crashing plane and that’s the parachute, or something.”

“Yes.” Diane nodded. “ at’s de nitely an option.” She wanted to say: But not yet. She wanted to say: is is the most excitement I’ve felt in years, but what did that say about her? She didn’t want to know.

Megan’s phone buzzed.

“Don’t,” said Diane, but Megan ignored her.

“He misses me.” Megan downed the rest of her Guinness, texted furiously,—oh, these young people and their quick thumbs. “He’s coming over. Shit.” Megan was rising to her feet, grabbing up her plastic salad bowl, the packet of salad dressing. “I’ve gotta throw this stu out and get dressed. And can you take the rest of the beer with you? I don’t want him to know I was upset.” She stared down at Diane, still cross-legged on the oor, still chewing her chicken salad.

Diane said: “Yeah.” She felt foolish, banished. She pulled herself to her feet, knees cracking. She waited for Megan to say thank you, but when this didn’t happen, she found her purse on the kitchen table, put the two remaining beers in their plastic bag. “Have a good weekend.”

Megan said, “Yeah, you too.” Still staring at her phone, she opened the front door for Diane, shut it behind her.

6.

e candidate and his equally silver-haired wife arrived with a bottle of champagne and Haley’s mother said, “Oooh! Fancy!” and giggled like a fool. e candidate wore a sports coat and jeans, like Haley’s father; his wife wore a summer dress, like Haley and her mother. Her mother had made fried cat sh and hush puppies; she lled water glasses, she o ered wine, she o ered beer. “I’d love one a those ipas!” said the candidate. “Crack me open one of those, too,” said Haley’s father, beaming. When they were all seated at the dining room table, Haley’s mother said to the candidate, “Will you do the honors?” and Haley stared, shocked, as her atheist parents bowed their heads while the candidate murmured: “Dear Lord, bless this meal and these ne people. Keep us in your loving grace in these trying times, and may we continue to do your work here on earth, amen.”

Her mother’s Amen! was loudest of all. e sh was too salty; the hush puppies too doughy. Haley was sitting next to the candidate’s wife, who seemed shy. She smiled at Haley and asked, “So what are you studying at school?” and Haley said, “Oh, the usual,” and stared at her sh. e candidate was talking about education, gun control, health care, getting out the Black vote. And Haley’s parents were nodding and chewing, nodding and chewing. “My opponent calls me a liberal like it’s an insult,” said the candidate, “but I think it’s a compliment!” He winked at Haley. “Speaking of which, may I have another liberal helping of hush puppies?”

She wondered what James would be doing if he were here: probably telling them about the movie he and Haley had seen last night—he actually had wanted to see a movie. He’d picked her up in his red pickup and said, “You look nice,” and she felt her heart pounding, but then he just drove down Highway 12 to the Cineplex. e movie was a depressing documentary about civil rights in Mississippi. She’d listened enviously to the mu ed sounds of explosions and laughter coming from the next theater. He didn’t try to hold her hand. As he drove her home, he chattered on about something so boring she couldn’t even pretend to pay attention, and when he pulled up in front of her house he said, “I hope that gave you a lot to think about,” like he was her goddamn social studies teacher.

By then, her rage had solidi ed into a ball. A bowling ball, perhaps, heavy and smooth with holes to jam your ngers into. She felt it gaining momentum. Maybe that’s why she did what she did—reached over and squeezed his crotch with her left hand. ey were parked outside her house; she could see the light on behind the front curtains. I hate us both, was what she meant, but he thought she meant something else. “Oh, okay,” he said, and unzipped and there didn’t seem to be any way to not keep doing what she was doing.

He still didn’t kiss her. He laughed, said, “Well, that was unexpected,” and pulled some Kleenex from the glove compartment.

Now, the dining room seemed too bright; her mother was laughing too loudly. Haley had seen her drink two—or was it three?—glasses of wine before dinner. She knew her father had splashed on aftershave. ey were nervous, insecure people who wanted to make a good impression: they just wanted to be liked. She felt like she suddenly had X-ray vision. e candidate said to Haley’s father, “So you want to meet us down in the Delta sometime for dove hunting?” and Haley’s father said, “Sounds fun!”

“You hunt?” Haley said. “Since when do you hunt?”

“I grew up hunting, honey,” said her father. “You knew that.”

Did she? e candidate’s wife turned to Haley. She smelled of roses. She had smoker’s lines around her mouth. She said, “You’re so lucky to be young right now. It’s an exciting time. Your mom said you’re interested in politics?”

Her mother was beaming, as if she believed it. Her father and the candidate had stopped talking and now everyone was looking at her, smiling at her, or some version of her. Maybe that’s all politics was: letting people believe what they wanted to believe, see what they wanted to see. Maybe she was already involved in it, just by sitting here calmly and not ipping over her chair and telling everyone to go to hell.

“Of course I am,” Haley said. “I feel like I can make a di erence.” She smiled. “ is was delicious, Mother. Let me clear the plates and check on the dessert.” She left them talking about what a wonderful young lady she was. In the kitchen, she opened the champagne and poured two slugs down her throat, wiped her mouth, and set about cutting the pecan pie.

7.

On Saturday, Cecile texted Diane to say, “Let’s have a girls’ night!” Diane ignored her, and ignored her mother calling from New Hampshire to say she was getting that knee replacement after all. She ignored her brother’s email: How bout Disney for Christmas? She ignored the divorced math professor who wanted to know if Diane would “like to grab a drink,” and she didn’t bother looking up the Bible verse after his signature.

On Sunday night, she drank half a bottle of merlot and then drove, buzzed and stupid, back to Megan’s apartment. Her windows were dark. Her parking spot empty. Diane’s wristwatch—that anachronism—said it was 9:55, and that she should not be here. Big hand, little hand. Diane remembered being 20 years old, waiting for her boyfriend to call, the slow ticktock of the clock by the bed in her dorm. Time went in a circle; everybody knew that. Or so Diane thought. What did waiting feel like for someone like Megan, accustomed only to the digital ash of now now now? e next morning, Megan showed up to work on time, smelly and sullen, like she was daring Diane to re her. Diane didn’t ask where Megan was last night; she didn’t say anything when Megan started crying over the mailing labels. She shut the door and waited.

Megan lifted her head and stared at Diane, mascara-streaked. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “He never showed up that night. After you left? And now I’ve screwed this guy from my biology class? I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“ is has got to stop.” Diane wasn’t sure if she was talking to Megan or herself. She wondered what Megan would say if she knew Diane had sat in her car outside Megan’s apartment until midnight, the big hand and little hand on top of one another, brief and tender, like lovers.

“I know,” Megan said. She swiped at her eyes.

When the phone rang, Diane answered it: “History department, please hold!”

Someone was knocking. A voice outside the door called, “Is anybody in there?”

Megan lowered her voice. “You know what? He’s all into like social justice and doing the right thing, but he won’t even keep his word.”

Diane pulled her chair around so her knees were touching Megan’s. e phone was still ringing. Her desk was piled with paperwork, travel forms, hiring forms, so many fucking forms. She said: “When I was your age, I was dating an older guy, too. When he hit me, I thought I deserved it.” She had never said this out loud before. “When he called me a slut, I thought it was true.” She reached for one of Megan’s hands, but Megan turned away.

Diane waited for Megan to say something like: “I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” but instead she leaned even farther away from Diane, her eyes hard. “Jesus,” Megan said. “Did you call the police on him when he hit you?”

“Of course I did,” Diane lied. She had continued to sleep with him for another month or two until one day he said, “Yeah, I don’t think this is working out.” She cried for weeks, unked out and retook her classes and unked out again.

Megan had turned back to the envelopes, stu ng and stamping, stamping and stu ng. e tears were gone. “Well, I’d obviously never put up with something like that.”

Diane wanted to say: You have no idea what you’d do. Later, she would wonder if she wanted to humiliate Megan or help her, and then decide it didn’t matter. e following week, Megan would quit without notice; Diane would interview fourteen eager students with resumes on thick old-timey paper and hire a shy business major, a khaki-pants-wearing boy who would leave at the end of the semester to go on a mission trip to Guatemala.

“Tell his wife,” Diane said now.

Megan stamped and licked.

“You said it yourself. It’s the only way out. Don’t just send an email. Let her see you.”

Megan looked afraid, and Diane realized that this was what she wanted. “She’ll hate me.”

“Who cares? She’ll hate him more.”

And then Megan was crying again, and Diane hugged her and said: “I’ll drive you. You have to be brave. You don’t want to end up like me, do you?” And she was grati ed and ashamed when Megan sni ed and said, “No, no, you’re right, I don’t.”

8.

Canvassing, it turned out, was a lot of standing around feeling stupid. It was waiting on porches while dogs barked; it was sticking iers on doorknobs and watching them blow away; it was saying, “Have a nice day!” when people slammed the door in your face. And yet here Haley was, waiting for James to come pick her up to do more of it. It was a windy Saturday afternoon; the heat of the summer had broken; the ginkgo trees outside her bedroom window were like yellow ames. Her father had gone to the Delta to hunt doves with the candidate, and her mother had just come back from the grocery store, and her Spanish homework was spread out neatly on her desk, as if she intended to do it.

Last weekend, she and James had gone to a neighborhood behind the hospital, tiny clapboard houses, swing sets. He had an app on his phone that showed what registered voters lived in each house: reds meant Republicans, so they avoided those. Blue was Democrat, and they were generally nice, taking the iers and saying, “Good luck!” A blue and a red was a divided house. e man, James said, was usually the Republican, and the woman was the Democrat. If you got the woman to answer the door, she’d probably at least listen.

Sometimes they didn’t, though. One woman said, “ ere’s no way,” but took the ier before she slammed the door. Another one actually looked afraid, her eyes darting around her own yard as if she was seeing it for the rst time. “You shouldn’t be here,” she murmured, and shut the door gently.

James said they were doing great service for the Black community, which made Haley squirm—especially when he said it to the Black people who answered the door. “We’re blessed to be able to help spread the word,” he actually said. en later to Haley: “It’s important to be able to speak their language.”

After two hours of this, James had said, “I think we’ve done our civic duty,” and took her back to his house, a duplex on College Avenue. Someone was playing guitar next door. He kissed her this time, but that’s all they did. His lips were chapped and sticky. When he dropped her o at her house, he took out his phone and showed her the app. “Isn’t that cute?”

he said. “Your parents are both blue dots.” She got out of the car before anything could happen, and when he drove away she had the feeling like when you wake from an annoying dream.

So why had she agreed to canvas again? What the hell was wrong with her? His last text had seemed desperate—Would love to save the world with you again tomorrow!!! Pick u up at 1? She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She didn’t want to be rude. He was probably on his way right now, his truck full of signs with the candidate’s name in big blue letters, iers that would litter the yards.

Before she could talk herself out of it, she texted: Turns out I can’t, sorry! Spanish test! and a frowny face, because that was kinder than the truth, that she didn’t like him and didn’t give a shit about saving the world, only saving herself from another insu erable afternoon.

Downstairs, her mother was singing loudly over the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Outside, a blue car was pulling into the driveway. Haley watched from her window as her old babysitter Megan emerged from the passenger side, her hair blowing in the wind; a blonde woman sat frowning behind the wheel. e doorbell rang; the vacuum cleaner stopped. Haley heard her mother saying, “Why, hello!” in a loud, surprised voice.

Haley had the odd thought that Megan was also canvassing; that she’d forgotten who lived here. She thought there might be laughter: Oh! I don’t need to tell you who to vote for! But there wasn’t. Later, Haley would nd bright yellow ginkgo leaves that had swept into the house with the wind: she would nd them under the kitchen table, and in the corner of the living room, and in the hallway outside the bathroom. ey would seem beautiful but dangerous, as if they actually were made of ames, as if they could burn everything to the ground.