Living Dolls: The Director's Cut

"Running for president on the second slate is Karen McCarthy. Her vice-presidential candidate is Julie Pinsky, her candidate for treasurer is Kathy Wilson, and her candidate for secretary is Scott Kamen."

Karen won the coin flip to determine the order of speakers, and choose to go second. So Andy got up, and gave the same smug little speech he'd given last year, about what a great thing it was to have a democratic process, and how he and his little assistants would continue giving us the same excellent quality government that they had for the past two years. It was well-written (yeah, like he wrote it) and well-rehearsed. The kind of smooth performance we'd all come to expect from Richie Rich.

And then Karen got up. And totally bombed. I was stunned. She'd always seemed to be so self-assured when she was giving presentations in the classes we had together. Of course, that was before a crowd of twenty. This was a crowd of six hundred. Every third word was "um." She licked her lips. She sweated. Not just perspired, but sweated. I wanted to rush up there and hug her to me and tell her that I loved her and that by the time school started again next year, nobody would remember it. Instead, I just started sinking lower and lower in my seat.

Everything she said was fine, brilliant even. She spoke about how it was time for a change, about how a close examination of the record of the current administration would reveal that they had done very little to benefit the average student, and about how the changes they had managed to effect had been cosmetic, or had only affected a small group of students, like those who drove fancy sports cars to school.

But it sucked. I mean, my God, she'd been practicing – along with Gordon and Julie – for three hours in her room last night. And three hours the night before. At least, I'd assumed they'd been practicing. I looked over at the two of them. They both had little half-smiles on their face. Yeah, I should probably be doing that supportive crap, too. If Karen looked over here and saw what her boyfriend/brother/fiancée thought of her performance, she'd probably start crying. Of course, you didn't want to look like you actually enjoyed sitting on the deck chairs of the Titanic. Nice night, huh? A little chilly, maybe. Doesn't the ship seem a little less horizontal than usual?

When Karen sat down, it was clear from her expression that she knew that the election was over, and that the final tally of votes would simply be the final humiliation.

Ms. Dodge stood up, and with a worried glance at Karen, walked back to the podium.

"And now the question portion of the debate," she said. "Mr. Richardson, it's your turn first."

"I'm sorry, the what?" Andy looked over at her, with the shit-eating grin he'd been wearing ever since Karen started speaking.

"The ten-minute question portion," Gail told him. "To be followed by a five-minute summation. It's all spelled out in the rules, Mr. Richardson."

"Oh, yeah, yeah, sure," he said. He'd never had an opponent before, so the "debates" the last three years had ended after Andy's opening speech. He obviously hadn't remembered about this part, but he clearly didn't care. He looked over at Karen, and decided that this was the time for him, the king, to show mercy.

"I'll pass." He waved Gail off.

"Very well," she said. "Ms. McCarthy, do you have any questions for Mr. Richardson?"

"I do," she said, in a surprisingly strong voice.

Gail gestured Karen to the podium, and my girlfriend/sister/fiancée practically leaped out of her chair.

"Mister Richardson." Her voice rang out across the auditorium, "do you have a personal computer?"

"Well, yeah," he said. "I mean, everybody has one."

Well, not everybody. Hardwood wasn't exactly Westchester County, New York.

"A good one?" Karen asked.

"Yeah," he agreed.

"With all the fancy programs on it?"

"I guess," he said.

"Word?" she asked.

"Uh-huh," he agreed, clearly taken aback by this whole thing, and now a little puzzled by Karen's questions.

"Excel?"

"Uh-huh."

"Photoshop?"

"Uh-huh."

"PowerPoint?"

"Yeah," he shook his head. "It's a nice computer. What's your problem –"

"Mr. Richardson," she talked right over him, "have you seen this picture?"

She pulled a picture out from the podium and held it up so he could see it.

"What the fuck?" Andy said.

"Mister Richardson," Gail cautioned him.

Karen was already in motion. Walking over to Andy, she threw it in his lap. Meanwhile, Gordon and Julie were in motion as well, jumping out of their seats and striding toward the front of the auditorium, passing papers down each row as they came towards the back.

"Well?" Karen asked as she returned to the podium.

"I object to this," Mr. Richardson – the lawyer – jumped up from his seat next to my parents in the back of the room.

"Sir," Gail said, "I'll have to ask you to take your seat. This is a student debate, between your son and Ms. McCarthy. If you speak up again, I will call security."

"Then I object," Andy said.

"To what?" Ms. Dodge asked.

"To this written material," he said. "It's against the rules."

The whole auditorium started laughing at that. Except me, of course. By this time, not only had I received my copy of the picture, the same picture I'd seen this morning, but my parents had received their copies as well. I twisted back to see the horrified expression on my mother's face.

"Ms. Dodge," Karen said. "I agree that this violates Rule Thirteen point Four of the Hardwood Student Regulations. And I hereby accept my penalty, a loss of ten percent of any votes I receive in this election."

"Very well, Ms. McCarthy," Gail blinked, making a note on the clipboard she had put beside her chair. "Please continue."

"So you recognize the picture." Karen turned to Andy again.

"Yeah," he said slowly.

"And have you been passing out this picture, and other pictures like it, to your fellow students this week?"

"Well, I guess my buddies have," he admitted.

Yeah, like he hadn't been involved. A low chuckle ran through the audience. Everyone in the school knew Andy's buddies didn't go to the john without getting permission.

"Will you please tell your fellow students who is in this picture?" Karen asked, having made her point.

"Seriously?" he asked her.

Gail spoke up.

"Ms. McCarthy is entitled to ask any questions she wants," she reminded him. "You are required to answer them, Mr. Richardson."

"All right," he shrugged. "It's you and me."

"And when was this photo taken, Mr. Richardson?"

"Two weeks ago," he said. "On Friday night, when you came over to my house."

"That would be Friday, the second of June?"

"Yeah," he said.

"At what time?" she asked.

"I dunno," he said. "Like, nine-thirty?"

"So I was at your house, having sexual intercourse with you, at nine-thirty on June second?"

"Yeah." He smiled at her. "You were."

Karen looked out in the audience toward us and nodded. Julie and Gordon bounced up again.

"Ms. Dodge," Karen said. "This is my second violation. I understand and accept that the penalty will be the loss of twenty-five percent of the votes I receive in this election."

"Very well," Gail said, making another note.

"And I hereby demand that Mr. Richardson forfeit one-third of the votes that he receives, based on multiple violations of Rule Thirteen point Four."

"NO!" Andy shouted. Apparently, he had concerns of his own now about where this was all headed.

"Mister Richardson," Gail said. "You were the one who objected to Ms. McCarthy's use of written materials. Based on that objection, I have already noted a penalty of ten percent."

"I withdraw the objection!" he screamed as he stood up.

"I'm afraid it's too late for that," Gail said. "Do you contest Ms. McCarthy's allegation of multiple violations of Rule Thirteen point Four?"

"Fuck," he said, slamming himself back down in his seat.

"Please continue, Ms. McCarthy," Gail said.

"Mr. Richardson," Karen said, "if I told our fellow students here that I was in O'Brien's having a hot dog and soda with John Fuller on Friday evening from nine o'clock to quarter of ten, you'd say I was lying, wouldn't you?"

"Fuck, yeah," Andy growled.

"And if I produced an affidavit from John Fuller saying the same thing, you'd say he was lying, wouldn't you?"

"Yeah," he challenged her.

She walked over and handed him the second piece of paper that Gordon and Julie had passed out to the rest of us.

"Will you read the part I've highlighted please?" she asked him.

"No," he whispered.

"Very well, I will," Karen said. "'I got to O'Brien's about quarter of nine, and about nine o'clock Karen McCarthy came over to sit with me. She spent the next 45 minutes telling me her life story, including how wonderful her boyfriend is. She's a beautiful chick, but if I have to sit through something like that again, I'm going to slit my wrists.' So Mr. Fuller is lying, isn't he?"

"He, uh," Andy began.

"John Fuller, the senior captain of the Hardwood soccer team, who turned down full athletic scholarships to Stanford and the University of Virginia in order to attend Columbia next fall, is lying in this affidavit, is that what you're saying?"

Mr. Richardson wasn't saying anything, just staring at the affidavit.

"Mr. Richardson," Karen was flying now, "you said earlier that you had Photoshop on your computer, didn't you?"

"Huh?" Andy looked up.

"It's a nice program, isn't it?" Karen said. "You can do a lot with pictures on it, can't you? But you still assert that this is me, right?"

By this point, Andy probably wasn't sure that he was at his house on that Friday night. He was looking wildly around for support, at his buddies, at his dad, at any friendly face he could find.

"I guess I'm pretty good looking, aren't I?" Karen said. "Nice and smooth, too?"

She raised an eyebrow at Andy as she paused. Everyone else in the audience was looking at the picture again, too.

"But not that smooth, you fucking asshole," she said.

Stepping out in front of the podium, Karen unzipped her pants, hooked her thumbs in her panties, and jerked them both down five inches. Now all of Hardwood High School knew that my beautiful Karen was a natural redhead. She slowly pivoted, giving everyone a good look. Then she zipped herself back up.

"I have no further questions, Ms. Dodge," she said sweetly into the microphone before she returned to her seat.

"Um, very well," Gail said. "And I'll have to caution you to watch your language as well, Ms. McCarthy."

"I'm sorry, ma'am," Karen smiled.

"Mr. Richardson," Gail stood up at the podium. "You have five minutes for a final summation."

"What?" he said, trying to focus on the moderator.

"Five minutes," Gail said.

Andy was rooted to his seat.

"Starting now," Gail finally muttered.

Andy got up after a minute or so and mumbled through the same speech he'd given earlier, until Gail finally cut him off.

"Ms. McCarthy?"

Karen sprang up again and launched into the speech I'd been expecting all along. So evidently she'd been practicing this speech. Although now that I heard her speaking, I realized that it had probably been much harder for her to give the bad speech than it was to give this one. Maybe she'd spent most of her time practicing how to suck. I allowed myself a small smile as I returned my attention to what she was saying.

"And I told Julie Pinsky that she deserved a new boyfriend, that she didn't have to settle, that she was too good for that. And she said, 'oh, golly –"

Julie started laughing hysterically next to me.

"— you know, Karen, I think maybe you're right.' And I'm here to say the same thing to you know, my fellow students. I've been here for a year now, and I've spoken to Julie about the government you've had for the past two years. And I want to tell you that you deserve a new government, that you don't have to settle, that you're too good for that. You deserve a government that takes does more than just satisfy itself. A government that thinks about you before it adjourns. A government that takes longer than five minutes to come to a conclusion. A big government, not a small government. A vote for me, for Julie, for Kathy, and for Scott is a vote for that government. Or you could, you know . . ."

She shrugged her head toward Andy and raised her eyebrows, and the audience collapsed with laughter. The laughter turned into applause as Karen took her seat, and she was forced to stand up to ask them to stop so the voting could take place.

"So what was the hardest part?" I asked her, when the four of us and Mom and Dad were sitting around the dinner table with a celebratory cake.

"Sweating," she grinned at me.

"Sweating?" I asked her.

"Sure," she agreed. "Any idiot can pull down her pants. The hardest part was working up a sweat through something that I had no doubt would turn out exactly the way I had planned it."

I mentioned before that she was smart, didn't I? The girl was a fucking chess player. I hope she never gets mad at me.

"The only thing I don't understand," Mom said, "was the final vote count. How could Andy get only two votes?"

"They penalized him thirty-three percent of his votes for the campaign violations," Karen explained. "They penalized me twenty-five percent; that's how I ended up with 447 votes."

"But that's only one vote," I protested.

"Sorry?" Karen raised an eyebrow.

"If you lost thirty-three percent of your votes, and you ended up with two," I explained, "that means you only started with three."

"That's true, math boy," Karen had a sly grin on her face.

"But he had four people on his slate," I said. "That means he didn't even get all of their votes."

"That's true, too," Karen said. "By the way, you guys, I hope you don't mind. I think I'm going to ask the student council to approve a fifth officer next year. Corresponding secretary."

"You've got someone in mind already, haven't you?" Julie asked.

"Ann Stoller," Karen said. "She came up after the assembly. So I introduced her to Scott. I don't think he'll have a problem with it at all. They were getting along real good when I left."

"By the way," I asked her after Julie and Gordon stopped laughing, "what's that card you threw on your dresser when we got home?"

"Oh, that was Mr. Richardson's business card," she said. "He told me to give him a call after I got out of law school. He also told me he thinks that Andy might do pretty well in military school next year."

CHAPTER FOUR

We spent part of the following summer deciding on which colleges Karen was going to apply to the following year. Or, to be more precise, which college. Mom was pushing Karen to look at her alma mater, Chatham College in Pittsburgh, where Mom was one of the members of the Board of Trustees. Karen agreed that it was an excellent college; her only problem with it was that, at least at the undergrad level, it was women-only.

"Mom," she asked, "do you really think I ought to leave my husband loose among some other bunch of coeds when I'm not there to beat them back? I mean, it'll be bad enough to have him at Penn this year."

"Beat them back?" I asked.

"Husband?" Mom asked.

Oh, yeah, that too.

"Husband?" I asked. We'd always referred to each other as our fiancées, but we'd never gone out and bought a ring. At least, I hadn't. And we certainly hadn't set a date. At least, I hadn't. Of course, I was often left out of the loop in a lot of the decision-making around our house.

Karen looked at both of us and gave us a surprisingly shy smile.

"I really do love him, Mom," she said. "Apart from the whole gratitude thing. He's my other half. He always will be. And I don't want to wait one minute longer than I have to to marry him. There'll be only one college. I'll be going to Penn."

I smiled back at her.

"All right, dear," Mom said. "We'll take a look at the calendar and pick out a date next summer."

"June 23rd," Karen said. "The day after I graduate."

"All right," Mom said slowly.

"I already reserved the Moose Lodge," she said.

"The Moose Lodge?" I asked. "We're getting married in the Moose Lodge?"

Mom was also a bit skeptical.

"Trust me," Karen took my hand. "It'll be the best day of your life. Of course, it better be the only wedding of your life."

"We're getting married in the Moose Lodge, Mom," I said. "June 23rd."

I started at Penn in the fall. Back in Hardwood, Karen took complete charge of the reins of student government, although she did manage to accidentally miss a meeting or two so that Julie had to run the show. And I came home pretty much every weekend.

Thanksgiving weekend was particularly special, though. Gail and Chris had asked us to meet them for dinner in August in order to wish Gunner and Susan good luck before they went off to freshman orientation at Free Union. The real purpose, though, was to announce that they'd selected the Saturday after Thanksgiving for their wedding date. Gail had Sue bawling when she asked her to be her maid of honor, and Karen began sniffling when Gail asked her to be her lone bridesmaid. Then Gail turned to me.

"Chris's two brothers are going to be his best man and usher," she said, as I felt a pang of disappointment. "But I'd like you to give me away."

"Give you away?" I asked. "Give you away to who?"

"Whom!" Karen and Gail said at the same time.

"Math guy!" I protested, throwing up my hands.

"I'm not asking my family," Gail explained to Karen before turning back to me. "Usually a woman's father 'gives' her to her groom. Since I don't have a dad, I'd like my hero to do it instead."

I sat there with an open mouth until finally Karen said, "He'd be honored."

Originally they were planning on a relatively simple civil ceremony in the park, but then Julie had excitedly announced to us at during one of my weekend's home in early September that her dad and Gordon's mom were also going to be getting married the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

"And of course they want the two people responsible for them getting together to be there," she looked at us expectantly as Gordon, also home from school, gazed at her on with a particularly sappy grin. He was doing a lot of that this year. I don't know, there was just something annoying about it.

"And who is that?" I smiled back.

I was apparently equally clueless with respect to all marriages.

"You two!" Julie gushed.

"Us?" I protested. "They worked together for ten years!"

"Actually only six," Gordon pointed out. "But if you hadn't gotten Julie to spend prom night with me, then her dad would have never asked my mom out."

"Well, that's sweet," Karen said gently. "And I'm really sorry to have to tell you that we already have a wedding to go to that day. You remember Ms. Dodge? Well, yeah, you were in Creative Writing last year. And she was the one at the debate. Well, I'm her bridesmaid and Jase here is giving the bride away."

"Really?" Julie said. "That's so cool. I'll tell Daddy and Andy. They can change the date."

"Oh, don't be silly," Karen said. "They can't just – "

"Don't you be silly," Julie answered, reaching in her purse for her cell phone. "It's already done."

In fact, Mr. Pinsky and Mrs. Ackerman did a lot more than change the date of their wedding, to the next weekend. Once they found out about Chris and Gail, they also insisted, in one of those won't-take-no-for-an-answer ways that you can get away with when you're the town's banker, on Gail and Chris getting married in their house (the Pinsky mansion). And even on paying for the caterer as well, since they'd already engaged her for that weekend. Gail and Chris never had a chance. Gail found herself agreeing to everything that Julie and Andrea proposed.

So Thanksgiving promised to be a full holiday. Gail's bachelorette party was going to be held at our house on Thanksgiving night. By then, Karen had Mom and Dad wrapped around her little finger, and had no trouble convincing them to extend their usual Thanksgiving holiday until Friday. Her plan was that Gail would come over for Thanksgiving dinner – Chris would be on his way back from Ohio with his parents – and then after dinner Julie, Andrea, and Sue would come over to our place for the party while I joined Gordon and Mr. Pinsky to watch the Eagles and the Cowboys on Gene Pinsky's projection TV. I put up a half-hearted and completely ineffectual protest at being driven out of the house on Thanksgiving night, but even Mom backed Karen up on that one.