Red State: Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Twenty-four hours after Mom had called, Lucy and Daniel were sitting at the doctor’s office in Richmond. “I thought we got it all in surgery,” the oncologist admitted. “I was disappointed when we found more last week. But we have many things to try,” he assured the two siblings. Lucy could not look at her mother as the doctor described the future she would have. First, the radiation. Then the chemotherapy; that would make her pretty sick. Her hair would fall out. She would be so tired. Through it all Mom seemed oddly calm. They all entered a bunch of treatment appointments in their calendars as if they were signing up for tennis lessons.
A few minutes later, Lucy found herself walking to the car with them in complete silence.
Lucy looked over at Daniel. “Soon,” he said. An hour later the door had clicked behind the two of them – one so tall and one so petite -- as they left the mansion and crossed the enormous green lawn around Stepdaddy Arthur’s fancy neighborhood. “Wow, columns,” Lucy said sarcastically, glancing back. “Of course it was the capital of the Old South. Looks just like Gone With the Wind. Lawzy Miss Scarlett.” Meck’s civil war course had made Lucy pretty resistant to the appeal of the plantation South. To be fair, the Agreement to get a ninth Justice on the Court didn’t let the states go back to slavery or segregation; those laws still applied. But Lucy was in no mood to be fair. The Bill of Rights – like the laws protecting gays and women and subversives like the tweeters and the podcasters -- were left up to the states. And Virginia had just said it was having none of it.
“Lucy stop it,” Daniel said. “This is about Mom and it’s very bad news. While you two were in the bathroom at the doctor’s I talked to him scientist to scientist.” Right. Man to man of course, she should have known.
“Mom has a very aggressive kind of cancer. She could very well be dead in months. Best case, he’s going to have to use massive amounts of chemotherapy to have any hope of stopping it. She’s going to be very sick.”
Dead. Mom. Her brain fought desperately to deny what she was hearing. First dad and then mom. She looked up. Tears were trickling down Daniel’s face. He seemed not even to notice. He’d always been their mother’s favorite.
“I don’t trust that asshole she married to take care of her. I’m coming back here,” Daniel continued. “I can work on my dissertation from here.”
Now she knew what people meant when they said their heart sank. Meck was in Chicago. She had only two more years of high school before she could go to college. Dad had promised her he had set aside the money to send her. Would she have to come back to Richmond and live with Mom and horrible Arthur instead of her blissful existence in Chicago with Daniel?
“So I guess that means you’re coming back too,” he added unnecessarily.
They walked a block without saying a word.
“I could ask someone at school if I might stay with them . . .” she ventured, “Until. . .”
“Mom will die while you are in Chicago,” he responded in an icy voice. “I’m coming back. I’m not happy about leaving my girlfriend, surprise. But I’m doing it. And so are you.”
She knew he was right. Mom had done the best she could. Now it was Lucy’s turn. Lucy would see her through this. And then, she reassured herself, she’d go right back to being a normal teenager. How long could it be? A few months?
Lucy wrenched her attention back to Meck. Meck was saying she wouldn’t be able to go back. Ever. If she did the right thing for Mom, she’d live the rest of her life in Red Virginia. They’d made the University of Virginia all male again right after the Agreement. No college in Virginia for Lucy. If she couldn’t leave, she could do word processing until some good old boy decided her big boobs made up for the fact that she always had her head in a book and make her his wife. That’s what Meck was telling her.
Back, not back. Meck, Mom, Meck, Mom. Lucy felt like she was spinning in circle, her arms and legs swirling about in the bright light of the newly empty apartment, her long chestnut hair fanning about her face, spinning faster and faster until in a minute she’d fly right out the window and land in her beloved blue lake outside the apartment window.
“Meck, I can’t,” she said brokenly, when the whirling stopped. She’d loved Meck since she was thirteen. But even today he hadn’t outright said he loved her back. Mom had raised her. Daniel would always be mom’s favorite, but she had really tried to help Lucy through those awful first years after Dad died. Meck was not family. Her real family was all going to be in Virginia.
“My mother is going to die. How could I live with myself if I left her to die alone? When she was here this year, she told us that she’d only married my horrible stepfather because he controlled Dad’s trust. It was the money for my college, Mom said. I wondered why she said that at the time but now I know. She’s dying, and she wanted me to know she’d tried to help me. By marrying Dad’s half brother Arthur. To save my college fund. And then she let Daniel take me away to Chicago.”
“I’m young” she went on hopefully. It’s still America. How bad can it be? I’ll be okay. If she dies or if she has a miracle I’ll be on the next plane.”
“Lucy,” he said in a desperate voice, “It’s not still America. It hasn’t been America since Justice McReynolds died and they cut that rotten bargain to get a ninth Justice. It’s not America, if you have no rights. You won’t be on any plane. The Virginia governor is going to sign that law. They won’t let you out unless a man brings you.”
“Arthur won’t want me around,” Lucy said. She was sure Arthur hated her as much as she hated him.
“They’re going to let him arrange a marriage for you,” Meck went on desperately. “After everybody used abortions to try to have sons all those years, there aren’t enough girls. There won’t be enough girls for ages. So even if you get out of his house, you’ll need one of his crony’s permission to leave.”
“How do you know it’s really going to be that bad? You can’t believe half that stuff on your news feed. You picked those people to follow. The kids at the high school are always spreading all kinds of stupid stuff on the feeds. And then five minutes later you find it isn’t true.
“It’s not some kid!!” he shouted. “I got this from the Blue Profs Blawg at the Law School. When they put Sam O’Connor on the Supreme Court, they bound him to the Agreement not to apply the Bill of Rights to the States. Virginia is just the latest place to repeal the state bill of rights and imprison its girls.”
“Mom and Daniel would never let him do that to me.”
“Your mom is going to be dead,” Meck said brutally. “That only leaves Daniel. Talk is his girlfriend is pregnant. Is she going with him to live in Virginia? How brave is he going to be when he has a family to look after?”