Because I love him.
That is why.
Support on this point comes from an unlikely party.
* * *
The doorbell rings just as we’re finishing dinner—Caesar salad and spinach quiche because it’s pouring. Mab answers then steps back without a word so Nora can see who it is. Monday sees too and scampers back to our bedroom. Among the many things Monday does not like is conflict.
Mab forgets her manners. “What should I do?” she asks our mother.
“Let him in.” Nora sounds tired already.
“Enter.” Mab makes a gallant sweep with her arm. “At your own risk.”
Omar Radison comes in and drips on our threshold.
“You have homework,” Nora says to Mab, but me she ignores. I have more than done my homework.
Nora puts on tea. Omar takes his jacket off in the front hallway and hangs it on the doorknob. It won’t dry—there’s no heat in the entryway—but it won’t drip on our kitchen floor either.
“Hey Mirabel.” He walks over, takes my hand, squeezes it, an act of generosity—not many people touch me just casually. “How’s tricks?”
“I am well, thank you,” my Voice says. “How are you?”
“Can’t complain.” He drops his voice and winks at me. “Well, I could, but I won’t because I need a favor from your mother.”
I wink back at him.
“I’m not doing you any favors, Omar.” Nora has dog ears.
“I thought maybe I’d catch you at the bar.” He sits on the very edge of the sofa. She stands in the kitchen watching the kettle.
“Not working tonight.”
“Yes, Frank told me.”
She says nothing. Waits.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“To drink too much beer in my kitchen?”
He smiles but then says anyway, “We have to talk, Nora.”
She nods without looking at him.
“Someone’s beating up his kid,” he says, and my heartbeat quickens.
“Not me.”
“Of course not you. But Nora…”
“What?”
“We have to make them feel welcome.”
“Like hell we do.”
“Sorry. I know.” Hands up like she might hit him. “That’s not what I meant.”
“That’s exactly what you meant.”
“It would be better if you could be nice to them,” he over-enunciates.
“Better for whom?”
“Better for everyone.”
“Better for you and for them and for not a single other person in this—”
“Jesus, Nora, enough.” He draws in a deep breath, lets it go. It’s shaky on the way out. “It’s time to move on.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“It is not easy for me to say.” Omar is standing now and loud. Omar is never standing and loud. Omar is always cowed before Nora.
“Here’s a game the girls love.” She is so good at pretending to be calm. “Truth or dare?”
“God, Nora, I don’t know.”
“Well, just for variety, how about you tell me the truth for once? You’re the one who arranged for them to buy the library.”
I have figured this out already but am surprised Nora has as well, having far less time than I do to dwell on the issue.
He hangs his head. “Not arranged for. But yeah.”
“What do you mean, ‘Not arranged for but yeah’？”
“I didn’t offer it to them.” He throws out one hand, helpless, or like it doesn’t matter. “But I didn’t say no when they asked.”
“No to what?”
“They came scouting for housing. They didn’t tell me who they were, but they didn’t hide it either. I knew the last name of course, and then I took one look at the father, at the kid, and knew for sure who they must be. They flat-out asked if the library was available. Said they drove by and noticed it was empty.” He looks up from the ground at her, waits for her to meet his eyes. “I said I’d ask.”
“And?”
“And the person it turned out I had to ask was me.”
“Why you?”
“Because for what it’s worth, and it’s not much, I’m still mayor.”
“I noticed.”
“You want the job?”
“You wish.”
“Exactly.”
In a town where irony literally flows right down the middle, this is perhaps the saddest instance of all: Omar Radison, once and future and eternal mayor.