Chapter 24 #2
Shades of what Ella had said the day she moved in. The thought of it made Beatrix wince—and her words did not have the rousing effect she’d hoped for. Lydia stood, listless, while Beatrix fixed her hair and pinched her cheeks in an attempt to bring some life back to her sister’s face.
“Come have some juice,” Beatrix said, taking her by the arm. “I’m afraid you’re going to faint.”
Gossard was still talking—“our children are counting on us to do what is right”—and Beatrix hoped she would continue for her full half-hour. Lydia was in no condition to go on.
“Here,” she said, handing Lydia a glass of punch and standing by in case she was required to catch either the glass or her sister. But she turned reflexively at the sound of voices behind her—loud, boisterous voices.
Schoen’s weekend shift streamed from the factory. Some of those workers, attracted by the unusual sight nearby, were coming their way.
Oh no. She hadn’t considered quitting time and what it might mean. The men in front were laughing and pointing.
Yet again, Rosemarie had been right. Disaster.
“Entertainment!” one of the men called out. “How thoughtful of the boss!”
“Well hello there, ladies!” another yelled, putting a great deal of meaning into the words.
Gossard stopped mid-sentence and gaped at the fast-growing crowd. But she quickly recovered.
“This,” she said, gesturing with one white-gloved hand, “is why you need an experienced leader guiding the League. This is why a twenty-year-old girl cannot be trusted with the presidency. No other conference in our history has been so poorly organized. Miss Harper seeks to excuse it by claiming that wizards interfered, but we have always stood against the wizards, and somehow we have always managed to put on a conference worthy of the League’s reputation.
She is the first to fall down on the job. ”
“Sing ‘Kiss Me Bobby Benjamin’!” yelled a burly man, to guffaws and hoots.
Ella rushed over, eyes wide with anxiety, as if she hadn’t set the entire debacle in motion. (Maybe she didn’t ran through Beatrix’s mind—in exactly the way, years ago, she’d thought maybe Mom will be OK.)
“What can we do?” her friend—enemy—whispered. “There must be something we can do.”
Beatrix couldn’t think of a single thing. These were not the sort of men to be shooed, especially in such numbers. As for the general manager who’d agreed to let them use his lot for practically nothing, his stipulations were that they didn’t touch any of the equipment—and didn’t bother him again.
The swarm of noisy men expanded by the second as workers turned from their cars to come see what the fuss was about. Helen Hickok and the News-Register’s columnist were both scribbling furiously in their notepads.
“We need to run this organization with the dignity it deserves,” Gossard said, drawing herself up. “Please send that message with your vote.”
The League’s president stalked into the tent, getting stony silence from the pro-Lydia minority but loud applause from most of the rest. Beatrix couldn’t seem to catch her breath. She had ruined her sister’s chances. Completely ruined them.
She turned, broken apologies on her lips, but was brought up short by the look on her sister’s no-longer-pale face.
“Oh,” Lydia bit out, staring fixedly at the empty stage. “Oh, I’ll show her.”
She strode to the spot Gossard had vacated, her auburn hair bright against her billowing black coat. The hoots and catcalls increased in volume.
“I seen you in the papers, gorgeous!” the burly man yelled.
“Sisters.” Lydia’s voice thundered across the crowd in her usual effortless way.
“And unexpected brothers,” she added, getting a laugh from her supporters and the men.
“Mrs. Gossard points out how singular this conference is compared with all others, but she fails to grasp the reason wizards have never managed to disrupt us before: They have never bothered before. And why? Because we had never posed a threat before!”
The Hazelhurst contingent applauded loudly. But they accounted for a fraction of the ninety-six people—presidents and vice presidents in each of the forty-eight states—who would be voting. An entire tableful of elderly women near Beatrix crossed themselves, shuddering.
“And lest you think I am merely claiming the interference of wizards to cover up my own ineptitude, and that I somehow concocted that film out of thin air, read The Star tomorrow. The owner of the Key Hotel has admitted all,” Lydia said, skirt swishing around her heels as she paced.
Ella grasped Beatrix’s arm. “What? What film? What’s she talking about?”
Ella had been with Beatrix and Rosemarie all day—Rosemarie keeping a sharp eye on her—and wasn’t anywhere near the church when Lydia showed the film there. Beatrix’s stomach twisted.
“Tell you later,” she whispered.
Lydia grasped the microphone with both hands. “So I ask you: Why are you here? Why did you join the League? Is it to socialize? To feel as if you’re standing on the high ground? Or do you want to change this country?”
“Amen!” cried Joan Hamilton of the Baltimore chapter, jumping to her feet and drawing echo amens from other young leaders.
“If you ask me, the biggest risk to the League’s dignity is petitioning wizards to outlaw magic!” Lydia boomed. “It is an action designed to make us look ridiculous!”
The men loved that. Their laughter was so loud that she had to pause a few seconds.
“Let me tell you what Mrs. Gossard must surely know: We will never be able to ban magic,” she said, to gasps from some of the assembled women and a lone “hear, hear!” from Dot Yamaguchi, a fellow Hazelhurst senior.
“It would be as fruitless as telling our armed forces they must not use tanks though every other country has them.”
“That’s true!” a man called out, a man who sounded very much like Blackwell.
“But we can do something very important.” Lydia said this a few notches up from a whisper, like a secret.
The workers weren’t laughing anymore. They were listening.
“We can throw the wizards out of Congress. We can throw them out of the White House. And”—she amped up to a roar—“we can stop giving a tiny percent of the country more rights than all the rest of us!”
Silence greeted this statement—for a beat, maybe two. Then the men cheered with the sort of wild enthusiasm Beatrix had only ever heard on radio broadcasts of football games.
“Sign me up!” yelled a redhead in a leather jacket.
“Our founding fathers understood that a military is both potent and necessary, but its purpose is to serve America—not to rule it,” Lydia bellowed over the noise. “Wizards may have magical power, but not the power to subvert a government of the people, by the people, for the people!”
The men roared their approval. The League leaders—the ones not sitting at the three tables Lydia had long ago sewn up—were far harder to read. They were giving her their full attention. They were not, however, clapping.
“I won’t sugarcoat it.” Lydia stopped pacing, which must have taken a monumental effort of will.
“Reform won’t be easy. Our wizard overseers are very used to the way this country is run, and they won’t go without a fight.
If you’re not ready for hard work, sisters—if you’re satisfied with what the League has accomplished in our lifetimes—then by all means vote for Mrs. Gossard. ”
She paused, staring at the women around the tables. Challenging them. Beatrix held her breath.
“But let me remind you,” Lydia said, “that everything we set out to do in this conference today has been done, even though the magiocracy has spent the last eight months trying to keep it from happening. The fact that we were able to meet anywhere today”—she looked straight at Beatrix—“is a testament to what the League can accomplish when we refuse to give up. So, my sisters,” she said, urging, cajoling, “will you talk or do? Because I say we need to start running this organization with the dignity it deserves!”
Someone chanted her name as she stepped back into the tent—Beatrix again suspected Blackwell—and soon all the men were bellowing, “Har-per, Har-per, Har-per!”
“Holy smoke, but she can work a crowd,” Ella said, hands clasped reverently. “But tell me—what was that about a—”
“Later, sorry!” Beatrix called out, running toward Lydia to get her to sit down.
Gossard beat her to her destination. “You planned this,” she whispered, fury coloring her alabaster skin.
Lydia raised an eyebrow. “None of us had any idea we would be here until a few hours ago. We were all far too busy acquiring a tent and other necessities at the extreme last minute to inquire whether two hundred men would show up to make trouble.”
“And as you might recall, we wanted to hold the election at St. Margaret’s,” Beatrix said.
Gossard scowled. “I demand to be present while the ballots are tallied.”
“Be my guest,” Lydia said.
“And neither of us may talk to anyone until they’ve voted,” the president added, turning on her heel.
As the caterers cleared away the dishes, Beatrix handed each woman a ballot and pen. Then she rushed to rescue Lydia from the Schoen mob. The men were shaking her hand, asking how they could help kick the bums out and in several cases begging for an autograph.
One worker who was probably younger than Lydia cried, “Marry me! I promise I’ll never complain if dinner’s late!”
“A tempting offer,” Beatrix said, and hustled Lydia into the tent so she could vote.
“How many still have their ballots?” Lydia asked as she sat at a table full of Hazelhurst alumnae.
Beatrix cast an eye over the other tables. “At least half.”
“They can’t make up their minds.”
“Considering how many thought they had by the end of Mrs. Gossard’s speech, I call that progress,” Beatrix said.
She went back to the crowd, worried that it was still so large with nothing left to occupy the men’s attention, and heard Blackwell say not ten feet from her, “Shit, it’s after six.”