Now he’s taking on another heavy topic inAnthem, out Jan. 18, 2022.
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The lights flash, signaling the event is about to get underway.
People move to take their seats.
Credit: Carolyn Fong
A group of unvaccinated 3rd graders clamor down the aisle to join their renegade families.
Everybody has a theory, Judge Nadir has come to believe.
A conviction, dogged and tenacious, which they refuse to surrender.
Grand Central Publishing
This is the American way.
We have home remedies we swear by, superstitions we will not renounce.
We are optimists or pessimists, trusting or suspicious.
We confirm out theories online.
You are always right.
It is making the laws harder to enforce, Margot has noticed.
Lately she has found an increasing number of defendants who refuse even to recognize the authority of the court.
Which, while existentially true, is not how society works.
Miss Cindy comes out on stage, smiling nervously.
She thanks them for coming and shills the bake-sale upcoming.
“And now hey welcome Story Burr-Nadir.”
And then Miss Cindy is gone and young Story steps out onto the stage.
There she stands, willowy and blond, with her impossible blue eyes and effortless human grace.
Looking at her, Margot realizes she’s holding her breath.
So many critical systems are still forming for girls of this age, the paper-thin wings of their identity.
Story is on the small side, just eyes and a smile.
She is a hater of dresses, freckles beginning to emerge from beneath the down of her skin.
She steps into the light.
Nor, Margot realizes, does she know exactly what her daughter has chosen.
Like a Halloween costume unmade.
And yet here she is, about to sing.
And then the accompanist plays middle C and Story begins to sing.
“Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light?”
Some even with resentment I just sat down.
Others with irony patriotism is so Midwestern.
“what so proudly we hailed, at the twilight’s last gleaming.”
Judge Nadir stands as if lifted.
It is not a voluntary feeling.
Not an intellectual choice.
The judge spends her days sitting on a dais before an American flag.
She herself is an American institution her Honor steeped in the power and history of symbols.
They will laugh about Clive and his overweight Michael Jackson impersonation, andwasn’t Hannah’s voice pretty.
Remy will reenact the way Malcolm kept pulling up his pants, as he bounces Hadrian in his arms.
It is the first warm night of April.
Families from all over the neighborhood are out on the streets.
The traffic on the BQE has quieted.
They eat mint chocolate chip and raspberry sorbet with rainbow sprinkles.
Margot can’t stop talking about how proud she is, how surprised she was.
“Did you see everybody standing?”
“They had to stand, mom,” says Story.
“It’s the national anthem.”
Margot meets her husband’s eye and smiles.
A swell of national wonder.
From the promenade they can see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building.
They can see kids on scooters and kids on bikes.
A parent will always be a parent.
A child will always be a child.
Like a warm breeze that brings with it the feeling that happiness is a temperature.
Everything is all right.Mommy’s here.
You don’t have to worry.Daddy’s got you.
As if the parents themselves weren’t once children, clinging to their own parents' legs.
And their parents weren’t toddlers themselves a few decades before.
Excerpted fromAnthemby Noah Hawley.
Copyright 2022 by Noah Hawley.
Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing.
