Wilhelmina Brown, or Willie, as her friends called her, crested a wave and watched the bow of her kayak slap the water on the way down. A tiny bit of spray splashed up toward her face and she squeezed her eyes shut as it flew toward her, then opened them, smiling broadly. The view was, as it often was, spectacular, and the water, apart from the boat wake just passed, was serene and inviting. From her seat she could see the Olympic Mountains on her left, and the Seattle skyline on her right. Behind her was the promenade and sandy beach of Alki Beach, and below her she could visualize the rocky bottom of the Sound, colored by purple starfish and pink anemones.
She paddled on, feeling a sense of genial companionship with the gulls as they passed by. Oh, how she loved it out there, the cool ocean air filling her lungs, the cold water freezing her bottom right through the fiberglass kayak and her dry suit. She quite forgot about everything else: how lumpy her long past middle aged body was beginning to look in the suit, how gray her hair was becoming, and how the house she must return to, beloved as it was, often seemed too quiet and still, as if breathlessly and futilely awaiting the return of the joyful tumult of child rearing.
She sighed, then turned and paddled back toward her house, which perched above the water like an overgrown treehouse. She approached it with a familiar mix of pride and humility. It was adorable. It had been her dream, a house on the water. She felt so grateful. Yet at the same time, she liked that the surrounding houses were so much more grand and ostentatious. Hers was modest. Just big enough; never too much. The kids had beachcombed on the beach, walked to the shops, and roller-bladed and cycled down the promenade. It had been a good life.
She beached the kayak and stepped firmly out onto the shore. Pulling the kayak up toward the house, she heard a very insistent knocking from the front yard. It conveyed a strong sense of authority, and brooked no delay.
“Hang on, I’ll be right there,” she hollered as she pulled the kayak up above the high water line.
She walked around the side of the house and climbed the outdoor steps up to the front. As she came around the corner, she saw a very bland and official looking gray eevee in the driveway, and a pair of very bland and official looking people standing on her front steps.
“Good morning, can I help you?” she asked as she walked toward them.
They turned abruptly to face her, startled by her sudden appearance, and perhaps by her black, very tight wetsuit.
“Wilhelmina? Wilhelmina Brown?” asked the nearest of the two, a young woman of about 25 with curly brown hair and large dark eyes, which glared suspiciously at Willie.
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Brown – sorry, I mean I’m Wilhelmina.” She had forgotten she couldn’t call herself that anymore. Crap, she thought, I hope to heck they’re not from the Social Justice Department.
“Wilhelmina, I’m Officer Lucas and this is Officer Porter, we’re from the West Seattle branch of the Social Justice Department.”
Willie felt her knees go weak, then reminded herself she had done nothing wrong. She worked up her courage enough to feign what she thought was convincing nonchalance.
“Oh, hello. What brings you here this lovely morning?” she asked, smiling and trying hard to look innocent and perfectly comfortable but feeling quite naked in her tight black suit. The sun suddenly peeped out from behind the clouds and beat down with surprising fierceness on the back of her head. She willed herself in vain not to sweat.
“Wilhelmina, we got a disturbing report about you recently. Any idea what that might be about?”
Willie had no idea. She looked from the woman to her companion, a very tall young man with dull black hair, metal gray eyes and a face as impassive as granite. He deliberately pulled a pair of sunglasses from his jacket breast pocket and put them on. The woman stared at her sternly and waited for an answer.
“I’m sorry,” Willie said finally, “I really have no idea.”
The woman sniffed.
“Were you at a restaurant called Captain’s recently?”
“Yes, I was there last Thursday.” Willie’s mind raced back to that day. She had met an old friend for lunch. The friend, Julie, had moved to Canada several years before, and they had been catching up. She furiously tried to remember every detail of their conversation to remember what infraction she might have committed, but it escaped her.
“And were you in the company of a Julie Whitmore, resident of Kelowna, Canada?”
Willie nodded.
“Yes, I was.” Willie knew enough to know it was best not to offer too much in these situations.
“Wilhelmina, this Julie was overheard making statements, statements that, in a free and tolerant society like ours, are just simply out of the question.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Wilhelmina, do you remember what she said?”
“Well, not exactly. Okay maybe somewhat, but you have to understand, Julie is pretty religious and her ideas, her opinions – and she’s in Canada now, so-“
“Nevertheless,” the young woman nearly shouted, “it is your responsibility to ensure that no one is offended by what your friends say. If you can’t control them, you are obligated to correct them.”
“Well, I’m quite sure I did try, in fact, but I was trying to keep my voice down, to encourage her to do the same, you know.”
The woman looked at Willie skeptically, her right eyebrow raised severely.
“So, you’re not of the same mind as your friend then? Look, you know what, I don’t have time for this. Let me scan your chip, I want to see when your last freedom of speech training session was.”
“Oh, I don’t have a chip,” Willie said quickly and apologetically, “I’m allergic. Let me just run in and get my –“
“What? No chip? Where is your card then? Why isn’t it on your person?”
“Well, it’s just I’ve nowhere to put it and I’m afraid I might lose it out there. Let me run in and get it.”
“Fine,” the woman spat out, “but hurry it up.”
Willie turned to open the front door but it was locked. She pressed her palm on a shiny black plate located in the center at eye level and heard the deadbolt click but when she went to push it open found it stopped by the chain.
“Oh I’ve locked it from the inside!” she exclaimed.
She sheepishly pointed toward the side of the house from which she had come, and when the woman nodded impatiently, trotted around the corner, down the stairs, up the stairs to the deck off the kitchen, into the kitchen, and finally down the hall to her office next to the front door. Her card was in there, in the lanyard she always wore around her neck when she went out in public. She pulled the card from its clear plastic sheath and rushed back out through the front door.
“Here is it,” she said breathlessly, handing it to the woman, who held up a small, thin rectangular device with a screen on it. The woman held up Willie’s card to the device and touched the screen. Willie could see words pop up onto the screen. The woman handed back Willie’s card and then stood reading the screen for some time.
“Well your training is up to date,” she said after a few moments, “but you have no religious exception, and even if you did, we must not speak about such things outside the confines of a place of worship. You should know this already.”
“Of course I do know that, and I honestly was trying to stop her from talking, but she does go on and on, she was always like that…” Willie trailed off, not knowing what to say to help her case.
The young woman looked at her in frank disgust, as if she couldn’t believe people could be so foolish as to have friends who would actually express such things.
The young man spoke at last.
“Wilhelmina, I know sometimes people like yourself, you know, of a certain, mmm, variety, or generational type, you know what I mean.” He lowered his chin a bit to peer at her above his sunglasses for a moment, then continued.
“Well, I have parents of my own, so you get what I’m saying. Anyway, it can be difficult to remember what we can talk about now, and what is hurtful and for that reason, hateful. I know you don’t mean it, it’s just that you grew up in a different time, when people didn’t realize how hateful they actually were, I mean their opinions, their speech.”
He paused, apparently considering what ought to happen next. The young woman looked at him impatiently. She seemed put out, as if she had been thwarted. Willie got the impression he was her superior. The young man remained sanguine, and despite his companion’s apparent frustration, thought for several more seconds before he resumed speaking.
“Look, we’ll let you off with a warning this time, okay? Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. Officer Lucas, please enter the relevant information into the record and we will be on our way.”
The young woman sighed, and began tapping the screen on the rectangular device with her finger. When finished, she looked up and gestured brusquely for Willie to hold up her hand. She pressed Willie’s thumb to screen, then tucked the device back into a holster under her jacket.
“Wait, might I see what I’ve authenticated? I mean, may I see the report?” Willie asked suddenly.
“What? Why?” asked the young woman in astonishment. The young man’s raised eyebrows were briefly visible above his sunglasses. He gave out a hearty chuckle.
“Oh, good one, Wilhelmina. You have a pleasant day. Oh and get rid of that chain immediately. They’re forbidden.”
Willie, momentarily confused, recovered enough to politely bid the officers goodbye. She watched from her front step as they climbed into their eevee and then drove off, almost noiselessly, with only the sound of the odd bit of gravel crunching beneath the tires. As they drove out of sight, the composure left her face and she frowned, shook her head and then, remembering she was still outside, in view of the neighbors, instantly assumed a look of composure until she had closed the front door behind her.
Willie went automatically to return her chip card to its usual place, then collapsed into her office chair. She couldn’t believe that she, of all people, had been visited by the SJD. Worse, they had taken a report. She had vaguely heard about such things but she had never given it much thought. She was always very careful, and honestly, she thought, never offended anyone.
Well, she thought, what can you do? It’s just the way the world is now. I must remember to be more careful from now on.
Willie, rarely one to brood, went to the small bathroom off the kitchen and took off her dry suit. She picked her brightly colored leggings off the shelf where she had put them earlier, pulled them on and then did the same with her long navy jersey. She finished off her outfit with some woolen socks she’d left on the chair on the deck, and some clogs. She hung the dry suit up on a hook and then remembered she had left the kayak out. She went down to hang it up under the deck, placing it into a sling and deftly managing the system of ropes and pulleys she used to tuck it up under the deck. She tied the lead rope firmly to a cleat she had installed on a post years ago, when she had first bought the kayak.
Gosh, I’m lucky they didn’t see it, Willie thought suddenly, her chest tightening.
The kayak was a luxury good now, she was sure, and you had to have a lot of either points or money to get your hands on those! Willie didn’t have much money or enough points for luxuries. Mostly she didn’t mind. She was plenty happy with what she already had. When you get to a certain age, you realize things aren’t what really matter anyway. Still, she would have been sad to lose the kayak, beat up and faded as it was. Well, perhaps they wouldn’t even bother about it. Her plan had always been that when she finally lost the house she would leave the kayak for the new inhabitants. She could tell SJD that if they ever asked about it.
Equilibrium restored, she took a moment to gaze out across the Sound. The remaining low, misty clouds had burned off and a vibrant blue sky had been revealed. The wind was fresh and cool, and the sun, shining upon a solitary boat just then passing in the distance made the vessel appear impossibly white on the cobalt blue of the water. The boat seemed to glow, as did the ever present gulls as they flew by, or lighted on the shore. As she almost always did when she looked out from her tiny piece of the shoreline, she gave a little prayer of gratitude, for the view, for her life, for her blessings in general. She didn’t really think about who or what she prayed too, as, like most people, she didn’t believe in God. Willie was just grateful by nature.
Willie didn’t think much about God as a rule, mostly because it reminded her of Andy and she missed him enough without bringing up even more things to remind herself. Andy had believed in God, which was why they had been married in a church. It was in the early days of the Change, and he wanted to make a stand for what he believed in. It was important to him, Willie knew, so she went along with it, even though deep down she had never had any faith. It felt a little uncomfortable, like lying actually, but truly, she did try very hard to believe, for Andy’s sake. She just never could. Now it didn’t matter. Andy was gone, and so was God, for the most part.
Well, God was still around, but mostly what Willie thought of as small “g” god. Some people still went to church and talked about god. Willie didn’t believe in small “g” god any more than the other one. Small “g” god was mutable and inconsistent. He or she changed his or her opinions on moral matters quite frequently, sometimes with breathtaking speed. Small “g” god looked a lot like whatever the SJD wanted him or her to. Even Willie could see that much. So she didn’t bother about religion, and thankfully, it wasn’t mandatory.
The old God was now relegated to non-sanctioned churches, mosques, synagogues and the like. These hadn’t been banned outright, at least not yet, but they were considered illegitimate. People who married in illegitimate churches were not considered legally married, which was why Willie couldn’t call herself Mrs. Brown anymore. Even though it had been 35 years since her wedding, and even though it had happened before the Change was complete, her marriage was no longer valid.
Other couples had converted and got married again in other churches or renounced their faith and had civil ceremonies, but even if Andy had been alive when they passed that law, Willie didn’t think he would have done it. He would never have given up his faith, and Willie wouldn’t have asked him to, not for anything. Somehow that just seemed wrong to her. Almost like the opposite of tolerance.
Enough, she thought to herself, that’s enough. You can’t allow yourself to think like that. It’s bad enough you let Julie go on and on, and in public too. Your so-called tolerance is going to get you into a heap of trouble. You were a good wife to Andy and now you have to take care of yourself. You don’t owe it to him to let Julie blather on.
Still, she felt unsettled, like she had overheard someone say something nasty about a friend at a party and had neglected to stand up for them.
“Oh hell,” she said aloud, “what do I have to feel guilty about?”
Shaking her head dismissively she turned and went into the house to get ready for work.