2017 MacBook Air Set up

New to me 2017 AirBook. I set up (I THINK???) using VoiceOver commands. What a pain by the way. But now that it's set up, "clicking" on the mouse pad doesn't do anything. The cursor moves with my finger on the pad, but I can't open anything...or shut down for that matter. I thought this would be a good idea since I love my 2017 iMac desktop so it would be any easy to use notebook. Anyone know what I did wrong?