RED STATE
By Linda Hirshman
CHAPTER ONE
The doorbell rang. Odd; who even knew she was there in the empty apartment? Lucy went to the intercom and pressed the button. “Who is it?”
“Michael Mecklenburg, Lucy. We had an appointment this afternoon. When you didn’t show up, I got worried. Buzz me in?”
She tapped her phone to check the door camera and let him in the building. No chance to go fix her hair or anything. In the time it took to bound up two flights of stairs, her 10th grade high school history teacher, the romantic lead in her fantasy life, was standing at her front door.
“May I come in?” Meck asked. “I know you’re busy.”
“Sure. Come in, sit down.” He folded his tall frame into the one remaining chair. She had completely forgotten about their student teacher conference. Having all your hopes stripped out of you will do that to a person she supposed. She’d never have missed a chance to see him otherwise. Those occasional student teacher sessions alone were like drugs to her.
She shoved her suitcases out of the way and sat down on a box opposite him, nervously shaking her long hair over her shoulders and trying to pull down her ugly University of Chicago T shirt over her ratty denim shorts. Boy did he look serious.
He looked around. “I guess it’s true what the kids are saying then. You’re leaving Chicago. Are you going back to Virginia, Lucy?”
She nodded. There was a long silence. It was a summer day. But she felt so cold.
He reached over to her and took her icy hands in his warm ones. Although she had been in love with him since the first day of his eighth grade history class three years ago, he had never actually touched her. Her blood pounded in her ears so hard she could hardly hear what he was saying. She caught the scary tone he used though.
“I came here to tell you not to go to Virginia. I know your mom is sick. But you must not go. You may never be able to leave.”
She waited. He released her hands and leaned back, looking down. Even after her belated growth spurt, he was way taller. All she could think of was: Was that it? Would she know Meck’s touch for five seconds in her entire life?
“When you came to Chicago from Arlington last year, you asked me why I left, remember?” he asked. “I wasn’t talking to anyone then, because I still have family in Virginia. And I am afraid. But I’m going to take a chance and tell you, Lucy, because . . .” His voice dropped and he took a deep breath. She held hers. Would he finally say something about what they meant to each other?
But no. Instead he regaled her with a short version of recent American history. “I left Virginia,” he explained, “when the state started making us all teach the same thing. They were going to appoint a student to record each class. Students spying on us.” He sighed and ran his hand through his beautiful curly hair. “So I left. It was Arlington, which was pretty hip for Virginia, but by then that didn’t matter. Virginia was Virginia.”
“I suppose I should have seen it coming,” he went on. “It wasn’t too bad the first few years, unless you needed an abortion. But after the Reds took Virginia again in the last election, they cracked down hard.”
She stared at him, wordlessly, frowning. She wasn’t a little girl any more. She didn’t even look like a little girl, thank God. She knew what had happened. Her father was killed in the riots around the election that started it all more than six years ago! The Reds took the White House but the Blues kept the Senate. She knew the parties has agreed to let the states mostly go their own ways in the year after Justice McReynolds died and the Supreme Court went down to eight Justices. The conservatives on the Court would not make abortion criminal nationwide, and the liberals would stop forcing the states to follow the Bill of Rights – free speech, sexual privacy, gender equality. After all, for most of American history, that charter of liberty had only applied to the federal government, not the states. So it would be 1925 again.
Even though her mother trapped herself in Virginia when she married a Red State honcho, Lucy made her big brother take her back to Chicago with him so she could go to high school in the blue. Meck knew her story. Why was he telling her all this again?
“Meck, I left,” she began to defend herself. “I didn’t like it there either.”
“I’m not trying to teach you a history lesson, Lucy. You and I both know that a big piece of you leaving was to get away from your horrible stepfather and had nothing to do with politics.”
Lucy smiled. Meck did hate her stepfather Arthur, who he blamed for pushing the red agenda in Virginia after the Court let them out of the Bill of Rights. Arthur was the brains behind the think tank that wrote the new laws, now that the states didn’t have to obey the Supreme Court on anything but race. Lucy could not figure out how Mom got involved with him.
“This has nothing to do with Arthur!” Meck said harshly. Lucy looked at him in surprise. Meck never raised his voice. “It’s a Red State. You can’t go back there because you will be trapped there forever. Now that there’s no bill of rights in Virginia, the Virginia legislature just passed a law forbidding teenagers from traveling alone into the blue states at all. I just saw it on my MeckNews Line. If you’re a girl traveling alone, they’re going to assume you’re going for an abortion. People are talking about guards at the airports and checkpoints on the roads. They’re already doing it in Utah and some of the other red states. You know they’re taking over the networks and the phones. Without a password, you won’t even be able to get hold of me or someone to help you.”
“I wondered why my phone kept cutting out when I went back to meet with Mom’s doctor last week,” Lucy said, the chill spreading from her icy hands up her arms. She had never felt so completely alone in her life, not even after they shot her dad. At least then she still had a mom and a brother and things had not started changing. But Daniel was back in Virginia by now. As soon as she finished packing she’d be there too.
“Don’t go back, Lucy. You can’t live with me, but one of your friends’ families will keep you in Chicago. I don’t want to lose you.”
“Live with me?” “Lose you?” Maybe he did care about her after all. She’d been rehearsing her profession of love for him since she met him three years ago. Twelve years between them was nothing, she’d planned to say. She had grown up so fast after they killed Dad. This past year she kept house for herself and Daniel in Chicago without any parents in sight. They were meant for each other, she would confess. She had been her father’s best companion before he died, going to political meetings with him, listening to him talk about his work with the campaigns. She didn’t want to be a teenager and date those jerky boys. She’d found her soul mate in Meck. When she finished college, they could be teachers together and in the evening sit at opposite ends of the sofa, reading important books, their feet just touching, music playing softly in the background.
She knew that Meck would never let a student talk to him like this. She had long ago resigned to wait until she graduated before confessing her passion for him. But she was sure they were right for each other. And now it sounded like he might feel that way too.
Most people think red is the warmest color. But for Lucy it would always be blue. The blue of Meck’s eyes, the blue of Lake Michigan outside her Chicago apartment, offering its cold comfort as he spoke. The lake was the first thing she found to love, when she moved here to get away from Red Virginia and that awful man Mom had married. She had been so happy there, living with her brother and going to the geeky high school the university ran while Daniel got his geology degree. When she found Meck had come there from Arlington, it was the best surprise she’d ever had. Maybe he was right. This is where she belonged. With him.
She shook herself. What difference did that make now? Everything changed two weeks ago when Daniel barged into her room and told her their mother had just phoned from Richmond. She had cancer. She had been hiding it from them that whole spring.
Chilling. Seems too close to current reality, which is really scary.
And I wrote it in 2005, actually.
Sincerely
Cassandra