Margot grew up in the Party of Truth, back when it was called something else. Her father was a Truther and his father before him. The truths they believed were bootstrap truths, fiscal truths, truths about patriotism and free markets. Remy also grew up in the Party of Truth, except his parents’ party believed truths about hope and equality, about safety nets and personal sacrifice. In college Remy came to believe his parents’ truths were fantasies. There would never be equality for the masses, he realized. In the real world, there could only ever be personal achievement. So he switched from the Party of Truth to the Party of Truth.
And yet it’s hard to dispute that in the last few years, the truths themselves have gotten murkier. For instance, it used to be the Party of Truth that believed in reducing the national debt. But somewhere around 2016, they abandoned that truth in favor of the Truth of Massive Tax Cuts. As a result, the Other Party of Truth became the Party for Reduced National Debt. Which means that now, for Remy and Margot’s side, reduced national debt has become a lie, fought for by the Party of Lies.
Try to keep up.
Margot herself uses a different analogy. She looks at her party as a Bar and the other party as a Restaurant. This makes her a Drinker, and the other party’s members Cooks. The Cooks claim they want to serve food to as many people as possible. They act like all they want is a big, warm forever feast, a giant Norman Rockwell melting-pot-Thanksgiving, but the truth is what they really want is to tell their patrons where to sit and their suppliers how to farm.
Rules. Snobbery. Guilt. These are the dishes they serve.
In the Cooks’ restaurant, new diners are made to pay the bill for old meals because historical debts can never be repaid. In the Cooks’ restaurant, those with more are punished and those with less are praised. See, the Cooks believe that the rich should give their seats up to the poor, often forgoing their own meals entirely, so that those who didn’t call ahead, who didn’t make a reservation, who can’t afford to order an entrée or dessert, should get the all-you-can-eat buffet, free of charge, until the very function of a restaurant—to feed customers in exchange for money—has been repurposed and the people who have the most eat the least.
A Bar, on the other hand, is a place for adults to drink, adults who—because they’re adults—can make their own decisions about what to order and how much to consume. The Bar Margot belongs to used to be a Cigar Bar, where well-educated Christian family men and their wives drank brandy and discussed tax shelters and exporting American freedom to the tropics. But then, a few years ago, the Bar changed management. It became a Sports Bar! Now, the only thing the Drinkers inside care about is winning. And their enemy is everyone outside. The more drinks they have, the more damage they want to do, until their reason for living is not just to beat the other teams but to destroy them.
Sure, there’s still a small backroom where Drinkers who believe in moderation can sit, but the tone of the place has changed. In the main room, the customer is always right, and so the drinks keep getting bigger and stronger. Fights break out, but if the Bartenders try to cut people off, a mob forms and threatens to destroy the Bar, so they apologize and pour another round.
In the old days, Drinkers used to choose leaders who believed in small government and free enterprise. These days the leaders that get the most votes are the entertainers, the emotionalists. They buy round after round, telling the sad Drinkers that the world is a sad place and the angry Drinkers that the world is out to get them. Only in the Bar are you safe. Only your fellow Drinkers deserve a say. What do the Cooks know about suffering? All they do is eat their Sunday dinners and judge.
Now, personally, Margot is a moderate. She will have one or two drinks maximum. And she tends to believe that others should do the same. The problem is, her Bar has been taken over by the drunks. And though she doesn’t believe in drinking to excess, she thinks the moment you start making rules about who can drink and how much, you turn adults into children.
And Judge Margot Burr-Nadir is not a child.
*
Then one day she is in Texas, like a tall tale, a twist you never saw coming.
It is the Year of the Rabbit, another collection of Q1s through Q4s, days to work and bills to pay. Late April specifically. The days in Austin have just started to get Texas hot. Armpit weather. Ninety-eight in the shade.
There is a rental car driving into the city from the airport. A blue Ford going fifty-five in the far-right lane. Margot is in the passenger seat. Remy is driving. Hadrian, twelve now impossibly, with a size nine shoe, sits in back. They are headed to visit Story, now twenty-two (also impossible), an adult by any measure. She moved to Austin two years back for law school, though it may be she has dropped out. Margot isn’t clear. A few weeks ago, phone calls became text messages and then text messages became Facebook posts, and since then communications have mostly ceased.
It is still the early days of the wave. In Wisconsin, Brad Carpenter is already dead. As are Todd Billings and Tim O’Malley, plus the girls at the Wisconsin border. There are clusters in Oregon and Alabama, but no clear sense yet that larger events are afoot.
In back, young Hadrian listens to an audiobook on wireless headphones. Harry Potter, maybe? Remy isn’t sure. He always means to police the device better than he does.
“She knows we’re coming, right?” he asks as he scans the road signs.
“She should,” says Margot. “We planned this trip over Christmas. And I left a bunch of messages.”
Remy nods. He likes to think that he and Story have a good relationship, but the reality is who knows? She was always close to her dad, and Remy is the extra wheel, though he tries to be straight with her, a shoulder to lean on, an impartial ear in times of struggle. He looks back on that period of his life—Hadrian’s first five years, a new marriage, trying to launch a writing career—as a blur. A triage of constant crises, bob and weave. In the end, he thinks what most parents think.