19
Michael and Stuart were both looking at me like I had forgotten to take the rollers out of my hair.
I was in Michael’s office the following morning, explaining what we needed to do next, and it wasn’t going well.
“Start at the beginning,” Michael said. “Again.”
“This is nonsense,” Stuart protested.
I turned to him. “We gained, if we’re lucky, a hundred and fifty votes last night. Against Sam’s what? A hundred thousand?”
“Women don’t vote,” he said again.
“They will ,” I countered. “Especially if we give them a reason to.”
Michael sighed. “I’m with Stuart here. Historically women will come to a speech, but they’ll stay home in November. Or vote the way their husbands do.”
I pointed a finger at him. “That. That right there is the problem. And how I know neither of you is married.”
“You want me to get married?”
“No! Actually—” I thought for a moment. “No, better if you’re single. Once we get you a haircut and some new clothes, single is better.”
“What’s wrong with my hair and clothes?” Michael smoothed his hair and adjusted his tie.
“You can’t go speak at a women’s luncheon looking like that. You have to be dapper.”
“I’m dapper,” he said, insulted. “Besides, what I look like doesn’t matter.”
“Then why isn’t Richard Nixon president now?” I had a point there, and they both knew it. Nixon still would have had a leg up in the radio era, but once televisions brought him into everyone’s living room, he was sunk unless his opposition looked like a drowned rat. And Kennedy was no drowned rat.
“Women’s luncheons are a waste of time,” Stuart said. He turned back to Michael, the tension evident in every sinew of his body. “I’m telling you, she’s here to sabotage.” He returned a cool gaze to me. “If it’s such a good idea, why didn’t you tell your husband to get Sam to talk to women?”
“It wasn’t my place. And he wouldn’t have listened. Besides, my father agreed with me that this was your best shot at winning.”
Neither man responded immediately, but they shared a long look.
“I’m listening,” Michael said finally, steepling his fingers.
“Look, Maryland women haven’t voted historically because we were one of the last states to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment. It happened in our lifetimes.” I gestured to the three of us. I was six when the ratification came down, and I still remembered my father swinging me onto his shoulders and asking whom I was going to vote for when I turned twenty-one. My answer had been “Papa,” of course. Back then, I still thought he would be president someday, even though my father repeatedly reminded me that the country wasn’t voting to put a Jew in the White House anytime soon. “But women are finally starting to vote. I know so many people who were proud to cast their first vote for Kennedy. But Kennedy isn’t running in November. So we need to give them a reason to go back to the polls.”
“So you just want me to go in and be good-looking, and you think that’s going to do it?”
“Not with that attitude, no. If you treat women like they’re incapable of thinking for themselves and like they’ll vote for anyone with a decent haircut, then no, they’re going to go vote for Sam or stay home.”
“Why do you keep harping on my haircut?” Michael ran a hand over his head again.
“Because it looks like Stuart did it over the kitchen sink with a pair of garden shears, but that’s beside the point. Pay attention.” Stuart looked away, and I stifled a laugh. “Oh. I didn’t realize Stuart actually cut your hair. No, we need to pay a professional. But that’s a problem for tomorrow. Today, I want you to realize that women don’t want to just do what their husbands tell them to.”
“Then what do women want?”
I thought of my mother, moving out under the pretense of helping me. Would she have left my father if my life hadn’t imploded, providing the perfect opportunity? And of Nancy, who had to hide her handiness from her husband, lying to protect his fragile ego and pocket the money a repairman would get. Of Fran, who was now struggling to get by on her own. And of myself. My situation could turn on a dime once we went to court and I knew it.
“Freedom. Self-sufficiency. Respect for who we are, not who other people want us to be. The same life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that this country promises men.”
Michael shook his head. “How am I supposed to deliver that?”
“You can’t. But you can show them that you hear them. That you want them to have what they want. And that you’ll work to help them get it. That will be enough.”
He and Stuart exchanged another long glance.
“I still think it’s a waste of time,” Stuart said.
“Because I suggested it or because you can’t get it through your thick skull that women have their own brains and opinions?”
He stood up, angry, and had I been a man, I think he would have told me to step outside.
“One luncheon,” I said, turning back to Michael. “Let me help you write your speech for one lunch. And if you’re not convinced after that, I’ll drop it. What have you got to lose?”
“Our dignity? Sam is going to be laughing all the way to the polls,” Stuart said.
“And if I’m right, he’ll be skulking the whole way home. Michael, one lunch.”
There was another long pause as we both watched to see which way this would go. If he sided with Stuart, I was done here. He would lose. And if he lost, so did I.
I didn’t care about the house. Not really. But I wanted to win against Larry. I wanted to show that I could go up against him, brain against brain, and come away the victor. He, like Stuart, was so convinced that women were the weaker sex and that I was lost without him. And as I sat there for that interminable moment while Michael Landau determined my future, I realized what it was that I wanted.
“Set it up,” he said finally. “I want to represent the people of Maryland, and that includes women.”