Wit's End by Karen Joy Fowler

she wouldn’t publish again until habeas corpus had been restored. Addison was an intensely political person. She kept lists.
    Wednesday morning, in a post-election euphoria, she added an e-mail she’d received on her website to the hall of shame that was her refrigerator door.
    â€œI have always been a fan of yours, but I just read what you wrote on the Huffington Post with all your snotty little remarks denigrating President Bush. So now I know you despise the present administration, and prefer people who are so sleazy and morally bankrupt as to submit to blow jobs in the oval office, raping women, committing adultery, lying under oath, and are so stupid as to ignore the threats to American safety such as the first attack on the World Trade Center.
    â€œI’m sorry you felt it necessary to express your Bush hating aging hippie opinions. I know my comments will mean nothing to you. Liberals never change, but I thank you anyway for revealing yourself. I never have to read you again. I think Maxwell would be just as appalled as I am.” It was signed “a fan no more.”
    â€œWho says the gracious art of letter-writing is dead?” Addison asked. She was in a magnanimous mood. “You’ll see. Food will taste better, jokes will be funnier, even television, even television will be good. All because the Democrats have the power of the subpoena.” If only Rima’s father had lived to see it!
    (If only Oliver had lived to see YouTube. If only Rima’s mother had lived to see . . . But that death was so long past, Rima was hard-pressed to think of anything her mother hadn’t missed.)
    They were celebrating. Addison was taking Rima downtown for a quick congratulatory stop at the bookstore (which was forty years old this month, and Addison remembered every single year. The Loma Prieta quake had leveled it, and Addison had been among the four hundred volunteers who carried the books out of the rubble, but that was a story for another time, or maybe it wasn’t, nothing more tiresome than people’s quake stories, but anyway, that old rising-from-the-ashes feeling was as powerful today as it had been back then) and then a sushi lunch. Tilda said she couldn’t go, she had a thing. Rima was relieved to hear it. It was hard to share raw fish with someone who thought you were a corrupter of impressionable young men.
    The scene on the street was joyful. A man on a recumbent bicycle pedaled past. He was shouting like the town crier. “The Ring-bearer has fulfilled his quest! Frodo has destroyed the Ring!”
    Addison pointed out a man downtown who would, for a dollar, debate you on any subject you chose, taking whatever position you opposed. His look was eclectic—stained navy pea jacket, deer-stalker cap, ski gloves, mirror shades. His nose was purple, his cheeks veined. But he was refusing to argue. “We’re all on the same page today,” he kept saying. “One day only. Out of business! Tomorrow we’ll talk about how the Democrats’ taking the House is not the same as the end of the Iraq War.” Addison said she’d never before seen him refuse an argument. It was unprecedented.
    An a cappella group by the flower stand was leading a sing-along of “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” “Aren’t there any Republicans in Santa Cruz?” Rima asked.
    â€œApparently. They write letters to the editor,” Addison said. “And the local results weren’t as invigorating as the national.
    â€œBut that’ll be a cold comfort today. Today you’ll recognize the Republicans by the expressions on their faces.”
    She was wrong about this. The pink clown was just walking by. His umbrella was printed with little ducks, and he was wrapped in a sparkly shawl. His smile was both beatific and scary, but this had nothing to do with the election. Rima had seen exactly the same smile the weekend before. He could easily be a