Chapter 34
Thirty-Four
The cold light of day reveals a swastika graffitied on the diner’s window. Red spray paint drips like blood spatter here in
the beating heart of my small town.
I know the internet is a brutal, dog-eat-dog place. If someone hasn’t sent you a death threat or told you to kill yourself,
then you just haven’t been online long enough.
But this is Egan’s Creek, in idyllic Sonoma County wine country. I only know what violence in Egan’s Creek looks like through
Nuclear Seasons, but NS prioritized eerie over violent. A swastika in a window is sinister.
It’s one thing for people to threaten me. I’m not going to victim-blame myself for a literal hate crime, but I acknowledge
that this wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed quiet, kept my mouth shut. I made my choices. I can handle the death threats
and my deadname circulating on social media. But this is my family’s diner. Naomi and my moms have done nothing to deserve this.
Mom saw it first on her predawn run, and the four of us have been here for an hour by the time Lola parallel parks and joins
us on the sidewalk. Efraín’s a step behind her, immediately wrapping his arms around me.
This tableau demands a wide-angle establishing shot. Up close, viewed only in pieces, the symbol loses meaning. To fully understand
it, you need to see the whole scene. This retro diner on the corner of a classic Americana town square, something out of another
decade.
Maybe that’s the point. Hate is timeless. It’s also senseless because I know this isn’t truly an antisemitic hate crime. I don’t know who did it, so I can’t know their true motives, but
transphobia is the most obvious explanation. Maybe anti-labor sentiment. Maybe they’re just old-school Nuclear Seasons purists who hate on younger fans. Perhaps most likely, all of the above.
Because that’s the thing about hate: it coheres even as the symbols destabilize. One kind of hate can stand in for another. People looking for an excuse to hate me don’t
need to look far.
I wonder how many of them would call me a pinko commie, too.
Lola asks us how we’re doing, which is a fraught question at the best of times but a nonsensical one now, for three autistic,
alexithymic Jews descended from Holocaust survivors.
As our resident shiksa and most emotionally in-touch family member, Ma offers Lola a watery smile. “Oh, hon.”
“This is better than if they’d thrown a brick through the window,” Mom observes, and Efraín hugs me impossibly tighter.
Naomi has documented the damage with both her phone and Mom’s film camera.
Ma’s smile wobbles. “You’re sweet for coming, kids.”
Lola says, “Of course we came.”
Efraín asks, “What can I—” I can feel Efraín’s shaky exhalation ruffling my curls. “How can we help?”
“Do you think you kids have time to help us get started cleaning this up before you head to the picket line?” Ma checks her
watch. “Do we need to make a trip to the hardware store? What is it they say you need to remove graffiti? Acetone or a razor
blade?”
“Generic ‘graffiti remover’ followed by a razor blade,” Ms. Sinclair calls, cutting across the square with two canvas totes
on each shoulder. “We used to get the occasional complaint when we screened certain films.” She shrugs, like it’s just ancient
history, long buried. “I picked up supplies from Loman he just loosely laces our hands together and lets me lead.
As we trek across the lawn, we’re technically trespassing, but the museum doesn’t have the manpower to hunt us down.
I cut between the farmhouse and barn, away from the silo, and all the way to the trellises cordoning off Kane’s grave.
I don’t go inside the courtyard; I’m not going to have it out in front of a literal grave, but here on the far side, the vine-covered trellises afford us some much-needed privacy.
Efraín leans back against the trellis, deceptively nonchalant, but discreetly drumming his fingers against his thigh.
It’s taking all my self-control to stop from pacing, but I’m trying to face him. So I’m tapping my foot, shaking my hands,
blinking behind my sunglasses—doing everything I can to skim off my anxious energy. I’ve never considered myself a confrontational
person; my tendency to fall into arguments is a result of my clinical inability to shut up.
This isn’t that.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment,” Efraín says lightly, “but I’m not sure this is the time or the place for a make-out
session.”
“Don’t do that,” I snap, looking everywhere, at everything but him. “Don’t pretend. Don’t tell me everything’s okay when we
both know it’s not.”
“I never said that,” he replies, grim.
“You didn’t have to say it.” I look past him, at grapevines woven between weathered slats. “But ever since you came back,
you’ve been doing a really great impression of the not-quite-body-snatchers from ‘Dell of the Dolls,’ and—”
“What?”
“Nuclear Seasons, episode five! You’d know that if you’d ever let me show you more than three random episodes.”
“Maybe I’d get it if you didn’t couch everything in TV references instead of just saying what you really mean.”
Maybe it’s just my imagination, but across campus, I can hear the counterprotesters jeering. I hug my arms across my chest.
When I finally meet my reflection in Efraín’s aviators, I look strange and small, a surreal distortion.
Finally, I say, “You said you came back because you didn’t want me to do this alone. So why do I feel more alone than I did
before? I understand why everyone else is pulling back—they’re exhausted and losing faith—but I thought you were a true believer.”
He’s closer now, and he’s working his jaw—that angry tic that’s so familiar in the sprawl of my memory but conspicuously absent
from the past few weeks. “Fucking hell, Elisha, you can’t have it both ways.”
“I don’t understand.” I blink at him through my knockoff Wayfarers. “What does that even mean?”
“You told me my ‘lone wolf routine’ was a problem, and you know what? You were right. From the very beginning. My choices
put other people’s jobs—their livelihoods—in danger. I put you at risk. So, I took responsibility for that. I saved your job, and I stepped back.”
“You mean you ran away.”
“I came back.” He’s close enough to touch me, but he doesn’t close the distance. “What else do you want from me?”
“More than a pair of noise-filtering earplugs!” I hiss, then immediately regret it. If I were less raw, my filter would be stronger. “Sorry, I really like the earplugs, and it means more than you know that you thought to do that for me. More than getting yourself fired, actually.”
“I thought we already had that argument.”
“And I thought you realized—”
“What, Elisha? What profound lesson was I supposed to take away from your last lecture? Did you think I’d just show up at
the picket line reciting strike chants into a megaphone?”
I want to argue, but . . . What did I expect would happen? I know Efraín. Give him a pulpit, and he can’t help but preach. Maybe I thought he could turn this
soap opera into his soapbox, and that’s how we’d win. Efraín would seize the day and inspire the masses by telling his story.
All those silences I’ve been waiting for him to fill this past week. All those pictures where he’s faded into the background.
He wasn’t minimizing his presence to protect himself from harassment; he was trying to protect the union from himself.
“I thought you knew it wasn’t all on you,” I say softly. “None of the bad things—the setbacks or the retaliation—none of it
was ever your fault.”
“The union was my idea,” Efraín insists, “and look where it got us. You almost got fired. Someone painted a fucking swastika on the diner.
That never would’ve happened if . . .”
“If you’d never founded the union?” I challenge him. “Maybe not, but in that timeline? Naomi would’ve gotten fired. We wouldn’t have stools. And I—”
“You still don’t have a button, not inside the museum.” He touches my contraband pronoun button, pinned over my heart. “And
your top surgery fund is at risk. If I’d never taken this job, never played tourist with a time card—”
“I’d still think I was completely and totally alone,” I say. “I thought you’d realized, by now, that organizing isn’t about
grand gestures. The union isn’t all or nothing. I’m not trying to have it both ways; you’re the one who doesn’t know how to
compromise to save your life.”
“You mean, save my job?”
“I mean it’s not a contradiction to say I want you here, doing your part, but that you need to let everyone else do their
parts, too. That’s why you believe in collective power, right? Everyone does their part. Lola’s a social leader. Naomi documents
everything. I write petitions. And you . . .”
Tears prickle at the corners of my eyes. I tell myself it’s because I’m allergic to the flora, not because I’m allergic to
feeling this much.
“You piss people off, and then you show them how to use that anger for good. You warn them that others will try to knock them down, and then you bring them together to storm the castle. You agitate, educate, inoculate, and organize without even trying. You’re the whole damn acronym, Efraín.
The union needs you too much for you to hold back.
” I take his hand in mine. “I need you here with me.”
“You really don’t,” Efraín murmurs. “You said it when I came back. You were never alone.”
“No, but I’m tired and scared,” I confess. “Between the cyberbullying, IRL harassment, and financial insecurity, I don’t know
if the union can make it until Friday. I can’t keep this strike going alone.”
“Everyone’s still here.”
“Except Divya, who can’t pay her bills, and Miles, who can’t afford a babysitter.” I shake my head. I can’t keep losing this
argument. I look across the lawn, where someone from admin is leading a very small tour group from the farmhouse to the silo.
“The union took on management and won, more than once. If this strike was just us against the museum, maybe we could win again.
But the combined force of the museum and the dark side of the fanbase might be more than the union can handle. I learned the
hard way that I couldn’t go it alone. What do we do if the union can’t go it alone, either?”
Efraín looks at me for so long I worry I’ve lost him. He doesn’t let go of my hand, but there’s an intensity in the way he’s
scrutinizing me. I stay still as he works out whatever internal battle he needs to fight before he can rejoin the war. Then
he asks, “What if the union doesn’t have to go it alone?”
My heart rate perks up. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he admits, “but I want to figure it out, together. If you still want that.”
I don’t need a metaphor to describe my relief, because the emotion his words evoke is a perfect match to the sensation of
him pulling me closer, wrapping his arms around me, pressing a soft kiss to my forehead before pulling back. His voice is
low and rough when he asks, “Is that still what you want, Elisha?”
“Of course it is.”
He’s vibrating at that higher frequency, the righteous indignation that accompanies his every crusade. The smolder in his
eyes isn’t without tenderness, but I force myself to look up at him full-on.
It’s a familiar, dangerous smolder. I saw it that night at the diner when he swore he wouldn’t let me get fired. He smoldered
at me and then looked out the same window that was defaced this morning.
But as I look into his eyes, I’m not thinking about what that window looked like when I first got to the square. Instead,
the same scene keeps replaying in my memory:
Ms. Sinclair, noticing the graffiti on the diner on her way to work and stopping by the hardware store. Mr. Loman, donating
graffiti removal supplies. Lola, offering Ma emotional support. And Efraín asking how he could help.
They all gave of themselves so freely.
I blink at Efraín and break the spell. “I think I have an idea.”
Efraín smiles like I just gave him the bank account numbers for every billionaire in the world for us to pillage and redistribute
the wealth.