“Truth,” I say.
“We will tell everyone what we have learned and hold another vote.”
“That’s not how it works,” I tell her. “When you don’t like the outcome of a vote, you don’t just get to ask again.”
“But they voted wrong.”
“So they have to live with it.”
“Me too,” she points out. “And that is not fair.”
“Truth.”
“But they did not just vote wrong,” she says. “They voted with incomplete information because they were lied to and tricked, so they deserve to know the true and complete information and then have another chance to vote the right way.”
“It’s too late,” I say.
“For what?”
“For everything.”
And then Mirabel’s Voice out of the black darkness pricked only by faded, stapled-on stars. “The lawsuit was never the way. The vote was never the way. Nora’s way was never the way.”
“What way?” Monday says.
“Forward,” says Mirabel’s Voice.
“What is the way?” Monday says.
We wait while Mirabel types. “The dam needs repair because it is cracked and leaking already.”
“Truth,” Monday agrees.
More typing. “What if we help it?”
“Help fix it?” Monday asks.
“Help crack it,” Mirabel’s Voice corrects. “Tear it down. Open it up.”
“Who?” Monday asks.
“Three.” She does not mean herself. She means we three. She means us.
“How?” Monday asks.
Mirabel types. “Dynamite?”
“We do not have dynamite,” Monday says.
“Demolition equipment, backhoe, bulldozer, jackhammer.” This must be a folder buried deep in her Voice app for the toddler set, and she’s just going through and tapping each picture.
“We do not have a backhoe or a bulldozer or a jackhammer,” Monday says.
But I sit up, blow my nose, and turn the light back on again. Because it’s true we don’t have any demolition equipment. But I know where we can get some.
Two
When I first found the newspaper photograph of the pretending-to-fish Santas, I thought it was just Bourne.
Then I realized it was Bourne of the past.
Now I realize it is Bourne of the future, Bourne to come, the river—and everything—back where it belongs.
Very, very carefully, I cut around the edges with a utility knife, cutting the photograph from the article and caption and cutting through the glue and cutting through the extra-thick scrapbook paper the glue has glued the photograph onto. I feel bad about defacing library materials, but a scrapbook is not officially a book, and the back of a newspaper clipping is more newspaper whereas the back of this scrapbook page is blank for writing on.
I leave the Santa-postcard in the middle of the kitchen table for Mama to find when she wakes up in the morning and comes downstairs to start baking yellow things.
It would be nice to give her a nice surprise. But we do not know what will happen. So in case it is a not-nice surprise or one that takes a long time to come, I do not want her to worry. She has already worried enough.
Dear Mama,
It is okay. We are taking care of it.
One, Two, Three
Three
Remember I told you this at the beginning.
That I can tell stories but slowly, more dripping faucet than rushing flow, more drizzle than hard, cleansing rain, but letter by letter I can get us there. And I was not in a rush, I said. I had plenty of time, I said.
That is no longer the case.
* * *
The metaphor is always David and Goliath.
Goliath is big and strong and well funded. He’s made so much money, either off your suffering or off not giving a shit about your suffering, that he can buy whatever and whoever he needs to ensure that his profiting off your suffering remains allowed or at least overlooked, which Monday would point out are not the same thing, but Monday would be wrong.
And then there is David. He is poor and small. He is weak, overmatched, underfunded, outclassed. But he is right and he is righteous, quick of wit, fast of finger, pure of heart, helping those whom Goliath has destroyed. The good guy.
And so it’s done in an instant. One well-placed rock, quick as a tick, and it’s over.
I hate this metaphor. It’s offered all the time, but it’s apt as balloons at a funeral, suggesting, as it does, that if only you were more nimble or more right or more good, you would prevail. Suggesting, as it does, that you are destroyed not by other people’s shortsightedness, other people’s greed, or other people’s deciding you’re disposable, but by being yourself too slow, morally compromised, wicked, and weak. Goliath is not at fault in this story. Goliath is just a giant, following his giant nature, laid low by nothing more than a lucky shot. And David, David’s just a boy with a sling and a stone, kind of whiny and moralistic, a little bit of a pissant.