Small Great Things(40)

Christina grabs my hand. “Come with me,” she says, and she drags me up the stairs to the bedroom where we used to play.

It’s a shrine of sorts, with the same furniture she had as a child, but now there is a crib and a litter of toys on the floor. I step on something that nearly hobbles me, and Christina rolls her eyes. “Oh, God, Felix’s Playmobil men. Crazy, right, to spend hundreds of dollars on something plastic? But you know Felix. He loves his pirates.”

I crouch down, examining the intricate ship as Christina rummages through the closet. There is a captain in a red coat and a feathered black hat, and several pirates tangled in the plastic web of rigging. On the deck is a character with plastic skin that’s an orange-brown, with a little silver collar around his neck.

Good lord, is this supposed to be a slave?

Yes, it’s historically accurate. But still, it’s a toy. Why this slice of the past? What’s next—the Japanese POW internment camp play set? The Trail of Tears Lego? The Salem Witch Hunt game?

“I wanted to tell you before you read it in the paper,” Christina says. “Larry’s thinking of running for Congress.”

“Wow,” I answer. “How do you feel about that?”

She throws her arms around me. “Thank you. Do you realize you’re the first friend I’ve told who doesn’t act like this is the first step to the White House or start talking about whether we should get a place in Bethesda or Arlington? You’re the first person, period, who it occurred to that I might have a choice in the matter.”

“Well, don’t you? It seems like a pretty big disruption for the whole family.”

“Yeah,” Christina says. “I’m not sure I have the fortitude to be the wife of a politician.”

I laugh. “You have the fortitude to run the country by yourself.”

“That is exactly what I mean. Apparently I’m supposed to forget the fact that I graduated summa cum laude and instead I get to stand around holding my cute kid and smiling like the only thought I can hold in my head is what shade of lipstick matches my blouse,” Christina sighs. “Promise me something? If I ever cut my hair into a bob that kind of looks like a helmet, you’ll euthanize me?”

You see, I tell myself. Here is proof. I’ve known Christina my whole life. And yes, maybe there are differences between us—socioeconomic, political, racial—but that doesn’t mean we can’t connect, human to human, friend to friend.

“Sounds to me like you’ve already made up your mind,” I point out.

She looks at me, hopeless. “I can’t say no to him,” Christina sighs. “That’s why I fell for him in the first place.”

“I know,” I tell her. “But it could be worse.”

“How?”

“Congressmen serve for two years,” I point out. “Two years is a blink. Imagine if he’d set his heart on being a senator.”

She shudders, then grins. “If he makes it to the White House,” Christina says, “I’m hiring you as my chief of staff.”

“Maybe surgeon general,” I counter.

Christina links her arm through mine as we walk back to the gold room, where my mama is now setting out a tray of china and a teapot, a platter of homemade almond cookies. Felix sits on the floor, playing with a wooden train. “Mmm, Lou, I dream about these cookies,” Christina says. She hugs my mama before reaching for one. “We are so lucky to have you as part of our family.”

Family doesn’t get a paycheck, I think.

I smile. But like anything you wear that doesn’t fit, it pinches.

—

DURING ONE OF those Indentured Servant Saturdays when I was playing hide-and-seek with Christina and Rachel, I took a wrong turn and found myself in a room that was off-limits. Mr. Hallowell’s study was usually locked, but when I turned the knob, desperate to hide from the high-pitched squeal of Christina calling, “Ready or not, here I come…” I found myself stumbling inside the secret sanctum.

Rachel and I had spent a good deal of time imagining what might be behind that closed door. She thought it was a laboratory, with rows and rows of pickled body parts. I thought it was candy, because in my seven-year-old mind, that was the most valuable stash worth locking up. But when I landed on my hands and knees on the Oriental rug in Mr. Hallowell’s study, the reality was pretty disappointing: there was a leather couch. Shelves and shelves of what looked like silver wheels. A portable movie screen. And feeding the film into the chattering teeth of a projector was Sam Hallowell himself.

I always thought Mr. Hallowell looked like a movie star, and Mama used to say he practically was one. As he turned around, pinning me with his gaze, I tried to come up with an excuse for why I had breached this forbidden territory but was distracted by the grainy picture, on the screen, of Tinker Bell lighting animated fireworks over a castle.

“This is all you’ve ever known,” he said, and I realized that his speech was funny, that the words blurred into each other. He lifted a glass to his mouth and I heard the ice cubes clink. “You have no idea what it was like to see the world change in front of your eyes.”

On the screen, a man I didn’t recognize was speaking. “Color does brighten things up, doesn’t it?” he said, as a black-and-white wall of photos behind him bloomed into all the shades of the rainbow.