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Kate
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THE PINK AND green rose-painted bus full of the Civil Diss River Valley Contingent rumbles toward St. Paul. Inside, Mark Fox, the chipper skipper of this merry band, sings falsetto to Bronski Beat’s “Small Town Boy,” which pipes from a battered boombox. His passengers attempt to sing along with their driver even though half of them weren’t even born when the song came out.
Kate steals a glance at the back of the bus, where two young women they’d picked up in Woodbury sit canoodling. One of them catches her eye and she turns back around, feeling like a peeping tom.
Anita was right, this is an away game: stuck in a sweaty bus, on someone else’s schedule, everyone trying to be popular at seventy miles per hour without seatbelts. And here Kate sits with a Tupperware full of protest snickerdoodles on her lap when she should be at home, taking part in the last weeks of her son’s high school years and monitoring her daughter’s’ love life. Poor Erik. He probably thinks she’s completely lost it. He’d never say. Maybe he’s got better things to do. Maybe she should ask. Maybe he’s sneaking around with Jennifer Turnquist. Maybe it doesn’t matter. He’s never home anymore. And that’s less disappointing than it used to be.
Across the aisle, Ray smiles and offers a knowing sigh, then returns to gazing out the window at the outlet mall passing by. He doesn’t know shit. At least not her shit.
Kate stares at him. What must he be thinking? What sorts of arguments go on in their house? From Puerto Rico via New Jersey, Ray had come to Wicasa Bluffs for some peace and quiet. When it came to his and Mark’s belated nuptials, he seemed more interested in discussing power of attorney than where the honeymoon might be. He’d gladly stayed here, put up with life in the “banal canal” as Mark called it. Their years of range-free monogamy, seemed more a testament to marriage than any extravagant ceremony Mark could whip up.
Would she really be fighting so hard for gay marriage if it wasn’t for these two? If it weren’t for those years of idle chitchat and bonding, while complaining about her mother-in-law? If Kate hadn’t known anybody gay, wouldn’t she be just another person who wanted peace, love, and harmony but left it to the activists? Or maybe even left it up to the Bible?
And isn’t this trek also a mission of spite? Because way back when Claudia told toddler Brace that the dinosaurs died off because there wasn’t any room for them on Noah’s ark and Kate has never let that go. Truth is though, Claudia was always there as a mother-in-law, through the good and the bad. The simple things: phone calls, birthday cards, Christmas presents. She babysat many times during those early years, even though she was working long hours as a city council member and trying to launch her career. The woman was so much more present than Kate’s own mom, who had stayed long enough to see her oldest safely married and then packed off for Florida as soon as her youngest graduated.
Maybe it is time to truly make Claudia a quilt. A peace offering after all this is over.
She’ll probably throw it back in Kate’s face.
She sneaks another glance at the two women. The bus rocks and jostles, pressing her thighs against one another, the seat tugging at her jeans, friction warming her inseam. She can’t help but recall making love to Lucy in last night’s dream, transposed upon the real Lucy smirking in the deli booth, Lucy wandering lost atop the bluffs, Lucy wrapped up in her new quilt and reaching out to draw Kate in with her. Kate can nearly feel herself slide into Lucy’s arms before the Leap crumbles and they tumble into molten lava.
Isn’t this journey also something to burnish and bring back to Lucy like a prize? Lucy might have been a great manipulator once, but Kate has learned a few tricks too. Imagine that. So, isn’t it convenient, this large-scale thwarting of parental authority, a skill she had once royally failed at in front of Lucy, now recoverable by tenfold?
Maybe there would be a photo in the paper. This time with Kate on the other side.
And to what end?
You see, Lucy, I have prostrated myself before the holy mother-in-law. For Mark. For Ray. For Jamie. For you. How do you like them apples?
“Hey sad sack,” Anita blurts into her ear.
Kate gulps and stares forward.
Anita scoots into the seat. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, pfft.” Think. “Sam and I had a little tussle last night. Really wanted to come.”
“Yeah? Why didn’t you let her?”
“I’m not taking her out of school for this. Besides I can’t do that to Claudia.”
“Are you kidding? She dragged Samantha into the last one.”
“Okay, let me rephrase. I can’t do that to Erik.” Kate slumps further into the seat. “Honestly, he and I are hardly speaking. If I had taken Sam today? No way. The press is searching for any crack in Claudia’s veneer.” Kate looks out the window and mumbles, “They have no idea.”
Anita throws an arm around her. “I think that’s why I never thought to come before. It’s civil war, isn’t it? Family against family. Rob’s family are rabid conservatives. But now I’m thinking that if the average person doesn’t take a stand, Mark and Ray are never gonna see this thing happen.”
Kate forces a smile and raises her fist to limply shake it. “Yay newly politicized friend.”
“Are you going to say anything to Madame Senator today?”
“Don’t see how I can. What am I supposed to say? Break a nail?”
Anita clicks her tongue. “Mmm.”
“So,” Kate says, “how’s it going with Christophe?”
“Who? Oh, the teacher-boy sandwich? He got cold feet. But we’re going to try Craigslist.” Anita grows thoughtful. “We’ve got to do something soon or Rob is going to throw out his back pretending to be our third every time.”
God bless Anita Funk-Abel.
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INSIDE THE CAPITOL rotunda, each side prepares its well-worn case. A representative of Civil Diss speaks first about the strengthening of gay and lesbian families through marriage.
The crowd is much more somber than last year’s hooligans in animal costumes. There are claps of approval, but no yelling and no boos from the other side. The hushed echoes throughout the Romanesque building induce reverence and the curved marble walls have herded the opponents so close, the Minnesota Nice is as viscous as syrup. Under one of the dozen archways supporting the gallery, a group of teenagers holds signs, smiling with the sort of exhilaration one does when changing the world. They are dressed not unlike Samantha and Jamie, black at war with rainbows, lips glittering with fairy dust. But there’s no time for guilt.
Across the circular room, Claudia Larson has yet to blanch at the sight of her daughter-in-law carrying a placard that reads, Equality for All God’s Children. She stands studiously framed by an archway, smile on medium wattage, and shakes the hands of passing gay marriage opponents, whose signs read things like LEVITICUS—LIVE IT OR BURN and LOVE THE SINNER, HATE THE ACTIVIST JUDGES.
Bert Larson, however, has plenty to say. He slips over, pulls Kate away from Anita’s side, and calmly escorts her to one of the outer columns.
“How could you do this, Kate?”
She lowers her sign. “How could you? What do you care if Mark and Ray want to make it official?”
“You might as well hand my grandchildren over as party favors. The next generation is at the mercy of gay propaganda.”
“You should know by now that whoever my kids chose to love—”
A cameraman turns to them and they reflexively lean into each other and smile.
When the man moves away, Bert calms. “Did you forget everything you’ve heard in church for the past decade?”
“No. It used to be that our church didn’t get involved in politics. It used to be that we did unto others as we wanted done unto us.”
“You’ve twisted God’s word to your own purposes, Kate. Do you know where your husband is while you’re gallivanting around in that bus?” Bert says. “Do you? He’s working hard to put food on your table and take care of his children. Do you think he wouldn’t love to have a fling? Do you think he wouldn’t love to go on a month-long hunting trip with his buddies? Do you think he wouldn’t love to spend his money on whatever strikes him?”
“Erik and I have both made compromises.”
Bert waves comfortingly at Claudia. “Because you’re married.”
“Yes. That’s exactly my point. Everyone deserves this chan—” Kate can’t even hear herself finish for the reverberating applause throughout the dome.
The Civil Diss representative steps away from the podium and the foreman announces Senator Larson. Kate returns to her friends as Claudia crosses the velvet rope with a companion in tow. It is a woman in a black skirt and white blouse, with Clinique counter flawless makeup, and long, dark hair, which is layered, like a . . . like a morning show host.
“Oh no she dint,” Anita says with a groan.
Mark gasps loud and long.
“Shiiit,” Ray whispers.
High above, the ceiling of the dome wants to turn and tilt. Kate tries to focus on something, anything that will alter this moment in her life. Claudia’s clipped, you-betcha speechifying begins and Kate finally takes a breath. She stares—she glares—at Lucy Van Buren, willing her to look at her, but Lucy just gazes straight ahead, at the glowing red exit sign on the other side of the rotunda.
“Our friend Lucinda here once led a lesbian lifestyle. But with the help of Sojourn Reclaimers she’s starting a new life. What if she had entered into one of these domestic partnerships? She would now be saddled by a false family, always unsure in the back of her mind whether she simply had not met the right man yet.”
Kate tries to turn then, to leave—to run. She’ll call a taxi, or call Erik. But she is blocked by a phalanx of wide-angle lenses and boom mics. When she turns back, Mark hooks her arm and supports her. He glares at Lucy, growling.
Lucy turns to him, smiling benevolently.
“What. The. Fuck. Was that?” Ray asks.
“She’s high,” Anita whispers. “The senator pumped her full of something fer sure. Maybe some of her buddy Limbaugh’s oxycontin.”
“Do you see now?” Mark hisses at Kate, “Do you see? This is revenge Kate. If you don’t think this is payback, you are blind.”
“Thanks to Sojourn, I have definitely seen the light,” Lucy says. “Without the help of Bert and Claudia Larson, I would never have made it back”—She turns to her dazed smile on Kate—“back home. I mean, not that there aren’t temptations—”
“Thank you, Ms. Van Buren.” Sojourn Reclaimer’s president, Henry Cleaver, takes the podium quickly and somberly plugs his mega-church. But his pre-packaged speech raises no more cheers or boos than anyone else.
It strikes Kate as an afternoon of eulogies rather than final arguments.
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OUTSIDE THE CAPITOL, Mark refuses to wait for the vote and stomps down the broad capitol steps to the bus. The River Valley Contingent skitters after him in fear of being left behind.
Kate waits by the doors for Lucy to emerge. When Lucy does, she’s flanked by Mr. Cleaver and Claudia, Bert holding up the rear.
Kate walks backward in front of them. “What the hell is wrong with you?” The granite stairs are twice the depth of normal steps, causing her to stagger and look behind herself.
Lucy stares at the ground as if carefully measuring her own steps.
“The hell is exactly what is no longer wrong with Ms. Van Buren,” Cleaver says.
“Kate, do not make a scene,” Claudia sings with a smile.
“Yeah, that’s your job.” Kate lets them pass.
Lucy glances back over her shoulder. “It’s for the best, Katie. You’ll see.”
Claudia descends the steps confidently and gazes out at the St. Paul skyline. “Doesn’t the cathedral look lovely today?”
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IN THE BUS, everyone drops the windows down, below the do-not-lower-window-past-this-line mark.
“That bitch.” Anita falls into the seat next to Kate.
“That idiot,” Mark says. He drags his Second Class Citizen! sign wearily up the stairs like Linus with his blanket and plops down in the driver’s seat.
“Maybe they hypnotized her,” someone says.
“It doesn’t matter. One ex-gay can’t hurt us.”
“Oh, great Foxtradamus,” another says, “what do we do now?”
Kate stares out the window at the video lights brightening the twilight and at the crowds dispersing. The sweet scent of lilac blows into the stuffy bus and Kate lays her palm on the window. Her fingertips search for a pulse against the glass. Lucy looks out from the cluster of pundits and toward the bus, her stare washes over the thorny, twisted rose stems Mark had painted along the side.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Kate says. “Part of her has been erased where it should have evolved.”
Mark grumbles and the bus roars to life. He slams the door shut and jerks the big wheel left. “I’m sick to fucking death of these people and their ridiculous obsession with their stupid marriages, their hallowed institution telling me how I have to live.”
“If it’s such a ridiculous institution,” Ray says, “why the hell are we fighting to enter into it?”
Mark glares into the broad rear view mirror and the bus lurches forward.
Anita grimaces. “I hate to say this, but he’s got a point.”
“Easy for you, you’ll be married forever.” But Mark continues to balk at Ray. “So, what exactly are you saying?”
The bus rolls away from the capitol and toward the onramp to the spaghetti junction interchange.
“I’m saying that I moved to Minnesota a decade ago to be with the man I love.” Ray sits with his legs in the aisle, looking around at everyone. “I didn’t sign up for a war. If I wanted a battle, I could go back to my old family.”
“Don’t you want your son’s parents to be married?”
“I want my son to come into the least stressful environment we can give him. Maybe we should move to the Bay Area and forget this war with the Snow Queen.”
“Wait,” Anita says. “Back up a second. The Great Foxtradamus says Rob and I will be married forever?” She seems genuinely puzzled by this.
“Of course,” he grumbles. “Your wrinkles mirror each other.”
Anita grabs her face. “What?”
Ray rolls eyes. “Mark thinks if you sleep facing each other, you’ll stay together. You get wrinkled more on the side you sleep on. Husbands always sleep by the door, so—”
“This is your science?”
Wind picks up inside the bus and the windows go back up to slits. A rumble fills the interior. Kate watches the city fall away to suburb and then to bean field. She opens her purse and pulls out a mirror.