Chapter Fifteen: The Debate
Spike, Rhea, and Colin were kept busy between playing soccer, attending Maestro’s lessons, and training to become clowns, but when Grizzelda announced that she was running for Mayor, things got even busier. The boys and Melissa were, of course, expected to run their aunt’s campaign headquarters. One of the factors that did not bode well for her was that, other than Mr. Blandish and the owners of the funeral home, support in the hierarchy of the town was rather thin. This didn’t do anything to ease Grizzelda’s natural impatience with many things, and her anger with everything else. If she had been able to be honest with herself, even for one minute, she would have realized that she craved acceptance, needed it as much as the air she breathed. And perhaps, one minute more of reflection might have opened her eyes to the reasons she craved this kind of unrealistic acceptance. Unfortunately, these crucial two minutes of thought were quickly swallowed up by the Nix lurking inside her. This was exactly what it wanted her to do, to run for Mayor.
“Don’t you understand!” she blurted out, the stress of the oncoming debate getting to her, “Everything depends on this!” Her fury had driven her close to tears.
Tired of stuffing envelopes, knocking on doors, and taping signs to telephone poles (no one would let them put signs on their lawns), Colin had asked in self defense, “What more can we do?”
His aunt’s response was to simply grab her Marcus doll from the desk and swirl out of the office. The doll seemed to provide her with security, and the more she felt threatened, the tighter she held onto it. Colin sighed.
The campaign headquarters, which Mr. Blandish had provided, were conveniently next door to the bank, so any time he wanted, he could slither in and look around. When this happened, and Grizzelda was in the office, she had instructed Colin and the others to press the intercom button--three short beeps and one long beep--to give her a heads up. The system wasn’t exactly foolproof, usually because Grizzelda was having a bad day and would screech through the intercom, “ABSOLUTELY NO CALLS! NO EXCEPTIONS, OR ELSE!”, thus creating a gaping hole in the communications network set up to protect against Blandish and his unannounced visits.
Once, he caught her there and wouldn’t leave, following her about like a puppy, willing to do anything to please her. She had finally succumbed to his passive, silent pressure and assented to letting him come along on a canvassing run. When she returned, she was furious, and without Blandish.
Colin tapped on her office door and popped his head in asking her how the canvassing had gone.
His aunt was sitting behind her desk, repetitively stabbing a letter opener into an apple. The Marcus doll, kilt splayed out over its legs, sat guard on the corner of her desk. Her eyes flashed dangerously at her nephew.
“He’s going to win!” she said, her voice so loud and full of such animosity that everyone in the outer office stopped stuffing envelopes.
“How do you know?” asked Colin hesitantly.
“Don’t ask how I know! I just know! And that’s all you need to know!” she snapped, jumping out of her seat, beginning to pace again. “Hugh Dundas! They like him better than they like me!”
“Can you blame them,” said Spike, his mouth always a little ahead of his thoughts. He was finding it difficult to talk because his tongue had a number of paper cuts on it. In a fit of humor, Spike had dressed the Marcus doll in a pink chiffon outfit, complete with handbag and high heels. Grizzelda was not amused, and took away the porcelain envelope sealer he had been using to wet the envelope glue, thus condemning him to use his tongue.
“No,” she said, her eyes blazing intensely, “you don’t understand.” She’d dashed out of her office and descended on Spike, his face squeezed between her thumb and forefinger. His lips were squished up vertically, like some bizarre kissing fish. “I must win, at any cost!”
“Well, why don’t you have a debate? You know, get people together by offering free food, then debate Hugh on the issues,” offered Colin trying to save Spike.
Grizzelda hovered indecisively, somewhere between turning on him and dismissing him from her sight, but thought better of it, gave a restrained nod, and then left the campaign office.
“Thanks,” said Spike rubbing his jaw. “I thought she was going to squash my face. I sure would hate to be around her when Hugh takes her apart. I mean, how can she debate the issues, when she doesn’t know what any of them are?”