The Recipe for Revolution. Carolyn Chute

were ever laughing. But the governors’ wives had at first been entertained, though uneasily. Now they might be asking themselves, Where is this gang going with this? Momentarily the speaker will say something that will add a positive twist to this . . . Maybe this is really a well-known theater group and Mr. St. Onge a local playwright of comedy stage productions.

      But now he just stands there fondling his temples with the spread fingers of one hand, head bowed.

      Someone at Janet Weymouth’s table leans over to whisper to her and she winks both eyes and pats this person’s hands.

      There is other whispering by those who recognize Gordon St. Onge from all the recent newspaper photos.

      The security men who stand (yes, bulging with guns) at the doors watch everything that breathes and makes a shadow.

      The monkeys are now in further chaos mode. One even jumps off a chair.

      Gordon St. Onge has begun pawing through the pockets of his sweater vest and work pants, searching for something. He says huskily, “I was asked to do a speech about my home. This—” He now has his stapled papers in hand again, gives them a little shake. “—is not my speech. Where is my speech? There was a switch. Someone is giving my speech right now in Tanzania. Or Lone Creek, Mississippi.”

      Laughter explodes and one of the governors’ wives waves her hands at the others . . . She is obviously this crowd’s Mississippian VIP.

      The speaker again slips on his old-mannish-looking specs and frowns at the stapled speech. Lifts a couple of pages, squinting, shrugs his thick sloping shoulders. Again the specs come off. He smiles beguilingly at the wives. “This is not my speech. Mine’s somewhere.”

      Now lots of monkeys wearing signs that say POOR OF THE WORLD charge the pile of bananas just as Gordon St. Onge finally turns toward the fireplace area to behold the spectacle.

      The FOREIGN POLICY . . . FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE teen-sized monkey whips out a toy rocket launcher truck and hollers, “POW! POW! POW!” as he blows away all the monkeys wearing POOR OF THE WORLD signs and RESISTER of OLIGO OPPRESSION. Then, like a trophy hunter, he stands with one bare foot on a heap of bananas.

      Gordon St. Onge eyes the men in black by the door.

      A committeeman at a table near one of the doors whispers huskily to another, “This is definitely inappropriate for this audience.”

      The other nods.

      Several committeemen farther into the big room begin to whisper, “Who the hell is this St. Onge guy? Find out.”

      A committeewoman overhears and whispers, “Phil says he’s been in the papers . . . a radical right-wing type. Really scary.”

      “Right wing?” One of the committeemen forgets himself and speaks aloud. He looks across the room at Janet Weymouth. His expression of astonishment is Chaplinesque. And a small man in a brown suit, carrying a pen and rolled-up paper, walks to the table of whispering committeemen and bends to speak with them and they all nod gloomily and gesture toward Janet Weymouth’s table. And the woman at the next table, who has pulled her chair closer, whispers, “Mrs. Weymouth says she’s known him since he was a child . . . he has some connection with the Depaolo family.”

      “The Depaolos?” the brown-suited man’s voice cracks teenagerishly on the name. Now he’s striding briskly away toward another table.

      FOREIGN POLICY . . . FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE kicks a very hungry-looking monkey who is crawling along on all fours and whose sign reads REFUGEE. The FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE champ-chimp adds more bananas to his stash as four small monkeys in sundresses, dressy shoes, silky scarves, and wigs, carrying purses, prance toward the thickest cluster of governors’ wives. All but one find empty chairs and sit, crossing legs. A helpful committeeperson unfolds a chair for the extra who, once she is seated, positions a hand with a little snooty finger up, miming the holding of a fine china teacup. Some of the real governors’ wives humor these imitators with smiles and friendly whispers.

      Meanwhile, the brown-suited man is working his way around the outside tables of the room, visiting various members of the committee. The name Depaolo is murmured, followed by wide eyes, then shrugs, while “right-wing extremist” is hissed.

      “But the message of the children borders on Marxism, wouldn’t you agree?” insists a committeewoman in a suit so white it vibrates.

      Gordon St. Onge abandons the rogue speech, stuffing it and his glasses into the lectern cubby with the water glass, and steps away. No need for the mike, because he is getting close, sidling closer and closer to these VIP gals. The nearest one has dark eyes and gray-streaked hair of a cut that may have cost more than brain surgery. He looks down at her hand curled on the table. Her other hand rests in her lap. Her nails are not polished but are long and shapely. He and she are now eyes into eyes as the racket of the monkeys plays out near the fireplace. And beyond them are the tall arched windows framing the sea and its deepening pulsing tide and brutal rocks.

      Gordon St. Onge rubs his eyes then spreads his left hand over the chest of his black sweater vest, over his heart.

      Janet Weymouth’s expression is serene, her eyes are fixed on the speaker’s profile. A few people have approached her with urgent queries. She has given them little pats. Little consoling pats. Then glances back at the speaker to catch his eye and when she does, she winks.

      Now, as one of the monkeys drops the already staved-in red hotline box to the 7,100 nuke warheads making another discomfiting clomp, one of the agency hosts remarks gruffly to another, “It is said he molests little girls. His twenty or so wives aren’t enough.”

      The subject of this matter, the tallest guy in the room, locks the fingers of his right hand around his belt near the buckle, an open, darkly aged steel square. His eyes slide from one set of VIP eyes to another, and settle on one face in the second row of clustered tables. She has nice warm eyes. Short chestnut hair.

      The men in black (FBI? state police?), standing with legs a little apart in all doorways now and behind the outside rows of tables along the walls, have a tight-thighed look, a ready look. Their eyes are riveted on the speaker and his accomplices, while he, Gordon St. Onge, steps back to the lectern and stands there hanging his head. When his sadness becomes ever so ballooned in his big neck, he swallows and the mike near his face amplifies the swallow to cannon booms. He draws the palm of one hand down over his face. He jerks from the cubby the stapled speech that his kids wrote and reads out loud from the last page, “My home is in those hands.” Jerks a thumb back toward the action, another cardboard box bouncing recklessly across the floor.

      On he reads: “Clever species, we Homo sapiens are. How inventive! How sophisticated and complex!” He rubs the mike now with a huge palm. Spanks it. Speakers against the ceiling thump and scrape. And on he reads. Gravely. “But sagacity does not make humans not dangerous dumb-ass stupid primates. Am I right?” He gulps from the water glass that was in the lectern cubby. The whole thing. Then he laughs, one snort. His eyes smile.

      Now he stands back, wiping his mustache and beard with both wrists, eyes on the audience.

      “This is embarrassing,” complains one committeeman to a committeewoman, both from the Department of Education.

      “The world in those hands,” Gordon reads. He’s not smiling.

      “This is quite negative,” another woman says quietly.

      A man in a light-blue suit sighs, looks across heads at Janet Weymouth’s elegant profile.

      A person at the next table says, “Think. Think about that face. Look familiar?”

      Another committeeman leans in. “He’s our own homegrown David Koresh.” He tee-hees, then looks over toward the table where Janet Weymouth is sitting. “Funny woman, she is.” Tee-hees again. Folds his arms, looking happily entertained. “She’s gone way beyond her shareholder activism.”

      At the table of adults who came with the speaker, the beachball-round Passamaquoddy woman picks a stray banana off the floor and finds room