Jesse props one of the two-by-fours up on its end and Esther takes the other one, walking backward to unfurl the banner as Jesse turns her end around and around. When it’s all the way open, Jesse leans around to look at it. In big red block letters on the gray background it says PEACE NOW.
A white Access-a-Ride van pulls up to the sidewalk, and the door puffs open. Esther props her end of the banner up on the folding chair and steps forward expectantly. The van beeps as the handicapped lift folds out from the open door like a giant diesel tongue. A tiny, white-haired lady in a velour tracksuit shuffles onto the lift, pushing a walker, and stands impassive while the lift grinds its way down and delivers her onto the sidewalk. Esther reaches out her arm and steadies Margaret as she inches forward off the platform.
“Good morning, good morning!” Margaret bellows in a throaty voice, thick with New York accent. She sounds like a cross between Fran Drescher on The Nanny and Jesse’s grandpa, who spent his whole life in Brooklyn before retiring to Delray Beach, Florida, last year to live with his seventy-five-year-old girlfriend. “Good morning, gorgeous girls and boys!” Jesse isn’t sure now what she was expecting Margaret to be like, but it wasn’t this. She can’t believe that huge voice could come out of such a miniature lady.
“Good morning, Margaret,” Esther says, and hugs Margaret fervently, awkwardly, around her shoulders. Margaret reaches one gnarled hand up off the walker and pats Esther perfunctorily, then edges out of her embrace.
“Move aside, move aside, let the old man out.” Margaret shuffles away from the van door and the lift repeats its performance, hoisting up and folding in, then lurching back down to the sidewalk, this time with a tall, stooped gentleman on it, hunched over his own walker. He’s wearing a long, beige trench coat over sweatpants, and dress shoes with white socks, and when he reaches the sidewalk he calls back over his shoulder to the driver: “A thousand thanks, Bert!” The driver waves to Charlie, smiling wanly behind his mirrored sunglasses. “Poor Bert,” Charlie comments to whoever might be listening. “That guy hates us. We torment that guy.” Charlie’s accent is more tart, more New England than Margaret’s—he sounds a little like the old guy from the Pepperidge Farm ads.
“He doesn’t hate me,” Margaret objects. “Bert loves me. It’s you he hates.”
“He only hates me because he knows I’m right.”
“He hates you because he has a route full of people to get to and you hold him hostage in our driveway for forty minutes at a time lecturing him about social security!”
Charlie leans in to Jesse. “He pretends to believe what they tell him on Fox News, but deep down inside he knows I’m right. That’s why he hates me. Charlie Magnuson.” Charlie extends his hand to Jesse, and she takes it.
“Jesse Halberstam,” Jesse says. Charlie’s hand is big and dry and heavy, and it creaks a little in the wrist as she squeezes it.
“Of the Chicago Halberstams?” Charlie peers at Jesse as if trying to place her. His face is long and droopy, his wispy hair more sandy yellow than white. “Are you related by any chance to Morty Halberstam, attorney-at-law?”
Jesse shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Find out,” Charlie instructs her. “That guy is one in a million. Kept a good friend of mine out of prison.”
“If he asks you a question, don’t answer it,” Margaret warns Jesse. “If you think of a question for him, don’t ask it. Otherwise he’ll start talking and never let you go.” To Arlo, she says, “Hello, Arlo.”
Arlo nods. “Margaret. Charlie.”
“Chair, chair, chair,” Margaret commands, and Esther helps her over to the nearer of the two folding chairs. Margaret lowers herself excruciatingly slowly toward the seat, then collapses the last few inches into a sitting position. “Not so long ago I could stand on my own two feet for an hour on a Sunday,” she explains to Jesse. “But no longer. Now I sit down for peace. Ha! At least my ass is still on the line. Ha!” She laughs a big, loud laugh, and Charlie joins her. He’s headed down to the chair at the far end of the banner. It takes him a minute, but he gets there, and once he’s arranged himself in the chair he picks up his end of the banner and holds it upright. Esther hands Margaret the other end, and above them the big town clock begins to chime. Gong, gong, gong, gong…
“Forty-two years,” Margaret says proudly. “Haven’t missed a noontime yet.”
Esther and Arlo and Jesse all choose signs from the grass behind the banner (Jesse picks NO TO WAR, which seems basic, and a true enough statement about how she feels) and hold them up. Margaret and Charlie each hold an end of the banner. And then they all stand there.