The Difference Between You and Me Read online

  At the meeting, before I handed them the presentation, I gave Mr. Willette and Ms. Rinaldi a little talk introducing them to Vander as a school. I told them about Vander’s past, present, and future, and I talked about our college statistics, which are some of the best in the state, and I mentioned our several famous alumni, like best-selling author of the Soul Searchers self-help books Marcy Kirby, nationally known cancer researcher Dr. Ernest Chang, and of course, Channel 8 meteorologist Don Storme. I made sure Mr. Willette and Ms. Rinaldi understood that investing in Vander is investing in the future, not just of our town and of our state but of our country.

  Then I handed them the presentation.

  I hate to say it, but they loved me. They were so into every word I said. They went nuts over the proposal—Mr. Willette had Ms. Rinaldi run off a bunch of color copies right then while I was sitting there. By the time the meeting was over, not only had Mr. Willette agreed to underwrite the Fall Formal—everything about it! food and entertainment and supplies and roving photographer and everything! all we have to do is use their name somehow in the title of the event!—he had also agreed to partner with Vander’s athletics department to improve the facilities and fields for our teams, and—this is the craziest, most amazing part—he had offered me an unpaid internship with the corporate communications department of NorthStar Enterprises. Seriously. Six to eight hours a week. He offered me a job, just based on my professional performance in this meeting.

  I can safely say that this was one of the greatest afternoons of my life. And I wanted to tell Jesse about it so, so badly—it was all there, right on the tip of my tongue. This whole thing has made me feel so hopeful about everything, and I could see that hope was what she needed to feel right then, in the bathroom, more than anything, and I was just dying to tell her about it.

  But at the last minute I kept it general, and just talked about my hope for the year without going into specifics about NorthStar. We don’t exactly have a great track record when it comes to talking about things from the real world, me and Jesse. We have the most amazing connection two people could possibly have, it’s almost spiritual what’s between us, but we don’t really have that much in common outside of that connection. A couple of times I’ve tried to talk to her about real stuff, and each time I’ve tried to explain about something I’m doing that I really care about a lot, she’s said something totally hurtful and negative to me about it. I know she’s not trying to be hurtful to me, she just doesn’t have the broadest mind of anyone I know, put it that way.

  An example I could give is when I got involved last year in student council’s campaign to bring healthier snack options into school to combat obesity, which is a killer. It wasn’t my idea, it was Heather Hughes’s idea, because her mom has diabetes and she has seen firsthand what the obesity epidemic can do to a person. But as soon as Heather proposed it in session I got on board, and I spearheaded a proposal to the school administration to petition Handi Snak, Inc., the company that owns and maintains the snack machines in the cafeteria, to increase the selection of snacks they offer in the machines. I did all this research about what kinds of healthier options they could be offering the students at Vander, and this one Tuesday I was trying to tell Jesse how excited I was about the whole thing, and she had barely heard like three words from me before she interrupted and was like, “Why are you letting a corporation like Handi Snak tell you what’s healthy and what’s not? Why don’t you work with the people at the farmers’ market and bring in actual fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms, which would be organic and healthy and cheap?” And in my mind I was like okay, A) that’s a totally impractical idea because there’s no way to store the fresh fruits and vegetables, and also in the winter there aren’t any and also who’s going to be in charge of preparing and selling them, and B) thanks a lot for being totally negative and dismissive about this plan I worked on for like two months to do something positive for our school. I guess, like a lot of people in our town, Jesse has a tendency to just criticize things that she thinks are wrong—she doesn’t have any actual ideas or solutions for changing things she doesn’t like in the world. Personally, I’m not a whiner. I don’t believe in complaining about something if you don’t have a realistic plan for how to fix it. Organic fruit in the vending machines at Vander is not a realistic solution. Plus, that day when we got into the fight about the healthy snacks, we barely got two minutes of make-out time total, and I was just like, Okay, this is so not worth it. This is the last time I try to talk to her about anything from real life.

  I’m sure she would have some crazy, weird objection to the NorthStar thing. I don’t even know what it would be, but I can just feel that she would be like, This violates the separation of church and state, or whatever. And I just didn’t feel like dealing with that from her right then.

  That’s one thing I’ll say for Michael—I can talk to him about anything. If I come to him and tell him I just want him to listen to me while I work out a problem I’m having, he’ll do it. He’s the most perfect sounding board. I always hear girls complaining that their boyfriends don’t listen to them when they talk or don’t care about their lives or their feelings or their dreams, and I can’t help but feel bad for them. In this way, Michael’s one in a million. Most girls aren’t nearly as lucky as me when it comes to their boyfriends.

  When I called Michael after the NorthStar meeting, I told him all about it, every single thing, what I was wearing and what kind of fizzy water the receptionist brought me to drink while I waited and all the amazing things Mr. Willette and Ms. Rinaldi said to me during our discussion, and how productive it all was and how great for Vander. And Michael just listened supportively to me, and when I was done he told me that he admired me so much, and that he thinks it’s amazing how much I care about our school. As good as I was already feeling, I felt a million times better after I got done talking to him. That’s what real love does—it makes you feel like Wonder Woman, like you can achieve superhuman feats. Not everybody has real love in their life, and I know how lucky I am to have it with Michael. It’s not something I would ever want to give up.

  9

  Jesse

  When Jesse gets to the parking lot behind the Town Hall on Sunday it’s ten minutes before noon, and Esther is there alone. She’s bent over, facing away from Jesse, and muttering to herself as she rummages through a messy heap of cardboard signs on sticks. By her feet is her lumpy black tote bag, a thermos, two folding chairs, and what looks like a giant, rolled-up fabric scroll on two two-by-fours. Jesse recognizes this as demo equipment—it’s familiar to her from years of accompanying her parents to marches, around town and in DC, for nuclear disarmament, women’s rights, various wars—whatever injustice was currently lighting a fire under Fran’s and Arthur’s asses.

  One of Jesse’s earliest memories is of sitting on her father’s shoulders, both arms wrapped around his balding head, looking out over a sea of people all walking in the same direction and shouting in unison. It was a march to raise awareness about the genocide in Rwanda, and Jesse was three years old. She remembers having a peace symbol painted on her cheek by a beautiful lady with long, curly hair; she remembers when the big kid wearing a NO HITTING: USE YOUR WORDS T-shirt stole her box of raisins, just swiped it right out of her hand while they were stopped at a police blockade, waiting to cross an intersection. She remembers the nasty fight her mother got into with the boy’s hippie mom over the stolen raisins, remembers her father begging her mother to please stop fighting at the peace rally.

  Now, watching Esther mutter and rummage by herself here in this deserted parking lot, Jesse suddenly wonders whether her description of the vigil as a fun, big-group affair was actually all in Esther’s mind. What if “Margaret” and “Charlie” are actually Esther’s imaginary friends, and this whole thing is some weird, loopy setup? Jesse stands, not moving, twenty feet away from Esther, and doesn’t say anything. It’s not too late to slip away before she’s seen. Esther would never eve
n know Jesse was here.

  But suddenly, Esther lets the armful of signs drop to the ground with a clatter and stands up, muttering, “Typical, typical, typical!” She turns, plants her balled fists on her hips, and surveys the parking lot critically, squinting as if looking for something lost. When her eyes light on Jesse, her glowering expression resolves into a look of sweet pleasure. She smiles so big her tiny teeth show, top and bottom.

  “Hey!” Esther says.

  “Hey.” Jesse can’t help but smile back at Esther. Then she blurts out, “I thought you said there would be other people here,” before she can stop herself.

  Esther doesn’t seem perturbed by her concern. “Oh yeah, there will be. It’s only a few minutes to twelve, still—Margaret and Charlie come on Access-a-Ride so they’re always here right at noon. And the rest of the group, whatever. They’ll be here when they get here. A lot of them have kind of a loose relationship with time. Hold this.”

  Esther hoists the rolled scroll with the two-by-fours off the ground and hands it gingerly to Jesse, who takes it and bobbles it—it’s way heavier than she expected.

  “Careful with that, careful, careful!”

  “Sorry.” Awkwardly, Jesse shifts the scroll around in her arms until she has a firm grip on it.

  “It’s okay, it’s just, that banner is an artifact. Someday they’re gonna put it in the Smithsonian museum.”

  “What’s so special about it?”

  Esther gets her things together while she explains, stuffing the thermos into her already overstuffed tote, slipping her arm through the legs of the folding chairs, gathering the ungainly pile of signs up in her arms.

  “Margaret and Charlie made it themselves in 1965, right at the beginning of the Vietnam War. They were some of the first people in America to protest Vietnam. It’s just a couple of bedsheets they sewed together and painted, but they carried it to peace marches in, like, forty-two states over the years. They took it to Woodstock; you can see it in one part of the documentary. Did you see that Woodstock documentary?”

  Jesse shakes her head. Her father had wanted to Net-flix the documentary about the great rock-and-roll love-in of 1969, but her mother had insisted on putting an entire sixteen-hour miniseries of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations ahead of it on their queue, and somehow they hadn’t made it yet from Victorian London to the Summer of Love.

  “It’s not that interesting a movie, but it’s very cool to see Margaret and Charlie in the background in that one shot, holding this very banner. This banner has been to Hungary, Germany, France, and Japan. It’s been everywhere.”

  “It does look kind of grungy.” Jesse takes a closer look at the piece of history she’s cradling. The fabric rolled around the two-by-fours is cracked and grimy, so stiff with layers of leathery gray paint it looks like dried elephant skin.

  “They repair and repaint it every year,” Esther explains. “And they change the lumber whenever it gets warped. Archbishop Desmond Tutu once held that banner. This way. Come on.”

  Esther turns and clanks toward the side of the Town Hall building, laden with tote and chairs and signs. Jesse follows.

  “I’m so happy you’re here,” Esther calls to Jesse over her shoulder.

  “Thanks.” Jesse feels that same small sense of warm recognition she felt when Esther first complimented her manifestos.

  “Usually, it’s just me trying to haul all this stuff around myself. It’s nice to have another set of hands.”

  “Oh.” Jesse thinks to herself, Glad I could be of service. But she doesn’t say it out loud.

  When they round the corner of the Town Hall, there’s already a guy waiting for them on the sidewalk about twenty yards down.

  “Oh, good, Arlo’s here. We set up over there, where Arlo’s standing.” Esther points to the waiting guy and follows her own finger in his direction.

  Arlo is tall, slim, and undulant, like a giant reed in a river. He’s clearly a grown-up but dressed like a kid—red Che T-shirt peeking out from under his army jacket, artlessly ripped jeans, a newsboy cap perched atop his narrow face. A sparse but silky mustache and beard ripple around his mouth and chin. He has a bundle of newspapers clamped under one arm and sips from a paper coffee cup. When he waves to Esther, his whole body seems to sway along with his hand as it arcs fluidly through the air.

  “Arlo,” Esther calls to him.

  “Comrade,” Arlo calls back.

  “This is Jesse Halberstam. She’s new.”

  “Excellent.” Arlo looks briefly at Jesse with little interest, then takes a precise sip from his coffee, his lips extending toward the cup like a giraffe’s.

  Esther drops her armful of equipment on a patch of grass between the Town Hall and the sidewalk and begins busily but clumsily setting up for the vigil.

  “Mary Catherine called,” Arlo informs Esther as she struggles to open one of the folding chairs. “Paul’s sick so she can’t make it today. Aurora’s in Burlington doing a muscular dystrophy walk, Louis has a men’s group thing, and Elise is at her cousin’s bar mitzvah in Keene. And Phyllis has work. So I guess it’s just you, me, and Margaret and Charlie today.”

  “And Jesse,” Esther reminds him through gritted teeth as she bears down on the stubborn folding chair, trying to force it open. It snaps into position at last with a pop, and she sighs with relief.

  “And Jesse,” Arlo repeats.

  Esther walks ten feet down the sidewalk to plant the chair in the grass facing the street and the row of shops across it. It’s the main drag of the town, and the place is humming with sunny-weekend activity; cars are driving by in a steady stream in both directions, and the stores across the street—Blue Planet Global Gifts, Beverly Coffee, Jansen’s Stationery Store, Murray and Sons Hardware—are alive with people coming and going. This is a good spot, visibility-wise, for a demo, though it also occurs to Jesse now to wonder how she could have lived in this town for fifteen years and never noticed that there was a peace vigil going on in the center of town every Sunday.

  “Can someone help with the other chair?” Esther calls.

  Jesse looks at Arlo to see if he’s going to respond to this, but he’s peering into his BlackBerry now, reading something with one eyebrow arched. Jesse grabs the second folding chair—it’s as light as a piece of balsa wood and opens smoothly to her touch. She holds it up with one hand.

  “Where do you want it?”

  Esther takes the chair and places it on the ground near where Arlo’s standing. Then she turns back to the cardboard signs, arranging them faceup on the grass, fanned out so they’re clearly readable. NO TO WAR. WAR IS OVER—IF YOU WANT IT. WAR IS NOT GOOD FOR CHILDREN AND OTHER LIVING THINGS. WAR: WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? There are about ten signs, all hand-lettered in Sharpie marker on brightly colored card stock. Some are taped to rulers, some to broomsticks, some to scraps of wood. They’ve clearly been through some inclement weather, these signs—they’re a little the worse for wear. Pretty soon, Jesse realizes, she’s going to be expected to choose one to hold.

  “Hang on to this end of the banner,” Esther commands Jesse abruptly, pointing, “and I’ll unroll it.”

  Jesse props one of the two-by-fours up on its end and Esther takes the other one, walking backward to unfurl the banner as Jesse turns her end around and around. When it’s all the way open, Jesse leans around to look at it. In big red block letters on the gray background it says PEACE NOW.

  A white Access-a-Ride van pulls up to the sidewalk, and the door puffs open. Esther props her end of the banner up on the folding chair and steps forward expectantly. The van beeps as the handicapped lift folds out from the open door like a giant diesel tongue. A tiny, white-haired lady in a velour tracksuit shuffles onto the lift, pushing a walker, and stands impassive while the lift grinds its way down and delivers her onto the sidewalk. Esther reaches out her arm and steadies Margaret as she inches forward off the platform.

  “Good morning, good morning!” Margaret bellows in a throaty voice, thick with N
ew York accent. She sounds like a cross between Fran Drescher on The Nanny and Jesse’s grandpa, who spent his whole life in Brooklyn before retiring to Delray Beach, Florida, last year to live with his seventy-five-year-old girlfriend. “Good morning, gorgeous girls and boys!” Jesse isn’t sure now what she was expecting Margaret to be like, but it wasn’t this. She can’t believe that huge voice could come out of such a miniature lady.

  “Good morning, Margaret,” Esther says, and hugs Margaret fervently, awkwardly, around her shoulders. Margaret reaches one gnarled hand up off the walker and pats Esther perfunctorily, then edges out of her embrace.