The Confession Club (ARC)

by Elizabeth Berg

  Rosemary speaks quietly, looking down as though she is addressing her bosom. “I think we need to talk privately first.”

  “It’s okay,” Iris says, and starts to rise out of her chair. But Toots, who is sitting next to her, puts her hand over Iris’s: Stay.

  “Rosemary,” Toots says, “we’re not discussing whether to bomb North Korea. We’re talking about admitting two new women to our little club in our little town.”

  “Which would probably be good for us,” says Dodie. “We need some new blood! I’ve thought that for some time, but there wasn’t any room. Now, with Leah and Anne leaving, we could use two more. I say it’s providential. Let’s let these two in!” She coughs spectacularly into her napkin. “Excuse me.”

  “I think I get what Rosemary is concerned about, though,” says Gretchen. “A lot of what we say here is really personal. Sensitive.”

  “How about if we have it be on a trial basis?” Joanie asks. “Maddy and Iris can come to the next meeting, and we’ll see how it goes. If anyone is uncomfortable—including them—the deal is off. How’s that?”

  Silence, but for the scraping of Gretchen’s fork against the cake plate. “Do you have the recipe for this?” she asks Joanie, and Joanie says, “Trust me, you don’t want it.”

  “Any other discussion?” Toots asks. No one says anything, and Toots says, “Is there a motion to vote?”

  “I move to vote,” says Maddy.

  Toots looks at her. “As you are not yet in the club, you can’t make such a motion.”

  “I move to vote,” says Joanie.

  “All in favor of admitting two new people?” Toots asks.

  “Trying out,” Rosemary says, and Toots says, “All in favor of trying out Maddy and Iris?”

  Everyone in the club except for Rosemary raises her hand.

  “Opposed?” Toots says, and Rosemary hesitates, then says, “Oh, all right, I’ll vote ‘for.’ ”

  “Unanimous!” says Toots. “We will try out these two next time we meet.”

  Taking their cue, Iris and Maddy get up, and on their way out the door, Rosemary rushes over to them. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t mean to seem inhospitable. But when it’s my turn, my confession is …”

  “I understand completely,” Iris says.

  “Me, too,” Maddy says. “I respect your honesty.”

  “Well, it has to do with lust. Which, as you may know, is one of the seven deadly sins.”

  “Uh-huh,” says Iris.

  Now no one says anything until Rosemary says, “That’s all I can say. I hope you understand.”

  “We do,” says Maddy, and Rosemary presses her hand to her heart, offers a sad smile, and closes the door after them.

  Back in the car, Maddy says, “What do you think? An affair? A slip?”

  “I guess we’ll find out,” Iris says.

  Maddy looks out the window. “So, can I stay with you for a few weeks? I confess I wasn’t sure I was staying here that long until I heard myself say so.”

  “Of course!”

  “I’ll arrange for Nola to finish her class work here. There are just a couple of weeks left, and Nola has always wanted to try home schooling.”

  “Okay.”

  Maddy sighs. “I love this town. Isn’t that stupid?”

  “Not to me,” Iris says.

  When they arrive back home, they go into the kitchen for a cup of tea. Iris tells Maddy, “It’s great that you’re here; I could use your help. I want to go and cut lilacs out in the country tomorrow morning. Will you help me by doing a little prep work for my eleven o’clock class so I can take my time getting the flowers?”

  “Absolutely. What are you teaching?”

  “Super-Fast Sticky Buns.”

  “Oh, I love them! Lucille made them every Sunday for Arthur and me.”

  “So you know how to make them?”

  “In my sleep. Nola can make them.”

  As if on cue, the little girl comes banging in the kitchen door from having been next door, where she was staying with Link and his parents while Maddy and Iris delivered the cake. She’s wearing a red corduroy skirt, a pink blouse with birds on it, polka-dotted tights, and cowgirl boots. Her ponytail has slid halfway down her head, and her bangs are sticking straight up. “Hi, Iris!” she says. “I’ll bet you guys were just talking about me.”

  “What happened to your bangs?” Maddy asks.

  The girl presses gently on them. “Did you know this happens if you put egg white on things? Link taught me. He’s a scientist. He’s got a microscope and also a chemistry set. He’s going to cure cancer and win the Doorbell Prize.”

  “You mean … Nobel?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” She sighs. “I’m getting sleepy and I hate sleeping so much. Why can’t we just stay up all the time? We miss everything!”

  “Maybe Link will figure out a way to help us stay up all the time,” Maddy says. “But for now—”

  “I know, I know,” Maddy says. “Put on my pajamas. Wash my face. Brush my teeth, yada yada, yada.”

  She leaves the kitchen and clomps upstairs.

  “She’s gotten older,” Iris says.

  “She was born old,” Maddy says.

  Lilac Time

  The next morning, it’s raining again. Iris stands at her bedroom window, watching the birds that have sought shelter in the trees and beneath the eaves of her house. They are subdued, watchful, and there’s something so cozy about them huddling down this way that she is tempted to go back to bed. But she wants the lilacs at that old farmhouse, and she needs to get home in time for her class. So she quickly washes up, forgoes any makeup, and dresses in khaki cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and high-top sneakers. The sneakers are black glitter, a kind of joke shoe she had at the clothing consignment shop she used to own in Boston, but they’ve come in handy for days like today.

  On the way out of town, Iris uses the drive-through at Caff-fiend for a large coffee, double cream, no sugar. What is it that’s so pleasant about getting morning coffee out, she wonders, when it’s so little trouble for most people to make it at home? She isn’t sure—the camaraderie? The reassurance of seeing that you aren’t the only one up and at ’em? The way we prize individuality but nonetheless find comfort in sameness? The filing of citizenry out from coffee shops always reminds Iris of cattle coming out of a barn in the morning, in their slow, blinking line. Not the most flattering of images, but for her, it’s calming, suggesting a kind of optimism about at least one thing in the world. A new day. A new start.

  When she reaches the county road on which she saw the abandoned farmhouse, she turns off NPR, the better to pay attention. She doesn’t remember exactly where it was, but the huge bank of dark-purple lilacs in front of it will be hard to miss. She’s gone about two miles when she sees the brilliant stand, a silent paean to spring. Some boughs are weighted down so much by their wet blossoms that they are touching the ground.

  She pulls into the rutted dirt driveway, bumpy enough to make it feel like her fillings are rattling. A rusted black mailbox at the edge of the driveway lists to the side, as if pulling back out of her way and welcoming her intention to pilfer. The rain has let up to a fine drizzle now. She can get the flowers and with any luck be out of here before the sky opens again—the forecast is brutal, especially for late this afternoon.

  She gets her scissors out of the glove compartment and slides them into the side pocket of her pants. From the floor of the backseat, she carefully lifts out one of the three big containers she brought along—thick plastic buckets in which thirty pounds of flour and sugar are regularly delivered to her door. They had been empty, but the water she added halfway up makes them surprisingly heavy again. She rests the first bucket on the ground before gripping the handle with both hands to hike it up, grunting. Then she does a modified duck walk over to
the bushes.

  “Need any help?” she hears, and, startled, drops the bucket. Before her is a good-looking man, maybe early sixties, in faded jeans and a blue work shirt, and his smile is so disarming she tables her fear.

  The man reaches forward to stand the bucket upright. “Sorry I scared you. Now you’ve spilled your water.” He looks up at the sky. “Looks like more is on the way, though. Here for the lilacs, I presume?”

  She pulls the scissors from her pocket as though to confess, but also is aware—as she thinks the man might be—that they could serve as a weapon, should she need one.

  “Do you live here?” she asks. “I’m so sorry. I thought this place was abandoned, or I never would have …” She gestures toward the bucket.

  “Yes, I’m here for a while. But you can take the lilacs. Want some help? I could hold the bucket for you.”

  She considers this, then says, “I have to tell you, I was planning on taking a lot of them. I have two more buckets in the car.”

  “Knock yourself out.” He grabs the bucket and stands beside a bush, watching her. Iris glances over at her car—a short distance away, easy to run to.

  “I’m a perfectly nice guy,” he says, “but if you’d be more comfortable, I can go back inside and read the dictionary.”

  Iris laughs. He does have a very kind face. “No, I’d actually appreciate the help.”

  The man points at the lower boughs. “These are easy. But the ones up higher are fuller. Closer to the sun, I guess, is why.”

  “That’s always the way,” Iris says. “The ones hardest to reach are always the best.”

  “You may be interested to know that I can still climb trees,” the man says.

  “Hmm,” she says. “And you may be interested to know that I cannot. So, isn’t this lucky for me?”

  “For me, too,” the man says. Iris wants to ask why, but doesn’t.

  They work quietly for a while, Iris snipping as she moves slowly around the bushes. As promised, the man holds the bucket she collects the stems in. At one point he says, “Hey, look at that!” and indicates a particularly lush grouping of blossoms, higher up. “You want those?” he asks.

  “That would be great.” She hands him the scissors, then immediately regrets it.

  But he only stands on his tiptoes and reaches up to take hold of the branch. He’s remarkably gentle, doing this. And she thinks his hands are beautiful: he has the long fingers of a pianist or a surgeon or an artist. His shirt rises to reveal his stomach as he reaches up higher to cut, and Iris looks away, then back. Apparently, sometimes when you feel yourself done with something, you’re not done with it at all. Inside her, a specific longing stirs.

  The sun peeks out and they both look up at the sky.

  “Think it’s going to stop?” Iris asks, and he says, “Nah. False hope.” He puts the flowers in her bucket. “Good ones,” he says, handing her back the scissors.

  She looks down at the blossoms, then up at him. “Thanks a bunch. So to speak.”

  “Can I tell you something? You’re really a beautiful woman. No offense.”

  “None taken. Not at my age.”

  “What’s your age?”

  “Coming into my fifties.”

  He nods.

  “How about you?” Iris asks.

  “Sixty-six.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Well, you certainly don’t look sixty-six.”

  “Lots of fresh air.”

  His voice is steady, and youthful with its undercurrent of energy. There’s none of the sighing or resignation that she often hears in the voices of older people—that, if truth be told, she sometimes hears in herself.

  “I guess if you really don’t mind, I’ll fill the other buckets,” she says, looking over at the car.

  “Let’s do it,” he says, and lifts the full bucket to carry it to the car.

  After Iris resumes cutting and putting the lilacs into the buckets he brought out for her, he says, “Well, what do you think? Should we exchange names?”

  She extends her hand. “Iris Winters.”

  “I’m John,” he says.

  “John … ?”

  He only smiles.

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Loney.”

  “Are you Irish?”

  “I’m afraid I am.” Then, putting on the lilt: “But you won’t hold a man’s DNA against him now, will yeh?”

  “What do you do?” Iris asks.

  “I used to refinish furniture. But now … well, now I would say I’m in the business of waiting for things to come along. And you?”

  “I used to own a consignment store in Boston. But I live in Mason now, and I teach baking classes.” She bends to cut more lilacs from a low branch.

  “Are you happy?”

  She straightens and faces him, flustered. “I … Do you mean, am I happy teaching baking?”

  “That, too.” He takes the flowers from her and adds them to the bucket.

  “I am happy teaching baking. And otherwise, I would say I’m happy enough.”

  There is a loud crack of thunder, followed immediately by a flash of lightning. Then again. The thunder is so loud Iris can feel the reverberations in her chest. The last two buckets of flowers are barely half-full. She looks at her car, then at John.

  “Come in if you’d like to,” he says, and starts toward the house. Over his shoulder, his thick silver hair obscuring one eye, he adds, “I’ve got tea and graham crackers, and for entertainment I can recite the Gettysburg Address. When the rain lets up again, we’ll fill those buckets fast as Jimmy’s ashes.”

  Iris stands there. Then she calls after him, “What does that mean?”

  “No idea,” he shouts. “My mother used to say it.” He turns around. “Oh, come on, then, Iris. I’ve got Hershey bars, too. Come around back; the front door’s stuck.”

  She doesn’t move, and he walks back over to her, his shoulders hunched against the rain that has begun again. “If you’re nervous about coming in, we can stay outside and continue the conversation. I’ll go and get us chairs, and we’ll take our chances with the lightning.”

  Iris laughs, then decides that a killer would not reveal that the front door was stuck. Nor would a killer cut flowers so gently. Probably. At any rate, she’s going to take a chance. She does have her scissors back in her pocket. She’ll sit near the door, and if she needs to, she’ll run out fast as Jimmy’s ashes.

  When Iris crosses the threshold into the kitchen, she sees a Formica table in the middle of the room, with four evenly spaced chairs around it, a braided rug beneath. At the center of the table is a coffee can full of wildflowers. There’s a fat red candle decorated with dusty holly and berries off to one side, burned down low. There is also a small pile of books, and on top—she can see it from here, even in the dimness—is an old hardback American College Dictionary, the pale-blue binding frayed. There’s something deliciously inviting about it. Maybe John wasn’t kidding about reading it. Iris uses her computer whenever she needs to look up a word, but she misses leafing through the delicate pages of a dictionary, trying to remember to use the guide words Mrs. Murray taught her about in elementary school; she misses, too, coming across incidental words that end up being as useful as the ones whose meanings she sought.

  “Come and sit,” John says.

  Iris lowers herself into a chair, her hands in her lap. She’s damp from the rain, and she shivers.

  “Cold?” he asks.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Wait there.”

  He disappears into another room and returns with a faded quilt, which he drapes over her shoulders. “Better?”

  “Better.”

  She pulls the quilt tighter around herself and looks around the kitchen. A few mismatched dishes a
re neatly stacked on one counter: plates, mugs, glasses, and a small cast-iron pan. There is also a spatula, a few forks and spoons, and a paring knife with a chipped red handle. On another counter are jugs of water, plastic bags of what look like trail mix, cans of soup, Honey Nut Cheerios, a big box of Lipton tea, and a wooden bowl holding an apple, an orange, and a spotted banana. There’s a box from Sugarbutter bakery, the twine undone. She wonders what he got.

  The cupboards are hanging crookedly on the wall; they look like you could blow them down. A few missing windowpanes have been filled in with cardboard. There is no stove, only a space where it used to be. There is no refrigerator, either, but there is a beat-up cooler in the space where it must have been. A mop and broom are in another corner. The place is comfortable, despite its limitations, and though Iris has now figured out that the man is squatting, she doesn’t mind being here with him. It’s interesting, being here.

  John digs in the cooler and produces an iced tea. “This okay?”

  “It’s fine, thank you.”

  “I’d offer you hot tea but I can’t build a fire in the rain.”

  “Next time,” she says, and the words surprise her—they just leaped out.

  But, “Yes, next time,” he says, and it’s as natural as if she had said “Thank you” and he had said “You’re welcome.”

  He sits at the table opposite her, empty-handed. “Where’s your tea?” Iris asks. The rain is beating down so hard on the roof now that she must raise her voice to be heard.

  “Oh, that was the last one.”

  “I’m sorry. We could have shared. Now I’ve drunk from it, though.”

  “Kissing the glass, we call it, drinking after someone else. I don’t mind it, but I had a tea just before you came; I don’t need anything just now.”

  He sets out four squares of graham crackers on a plate and holds it out to her. She takes one and bites in. “Delicious,” she says, and she means it; they’ve not gone soft from the humidity. She can’t remember the last time she had a graham cracker, plain. On a rainy day. Sitting across from a man with a bit of stubble and blue eyes that seem to change color depending on the light. Blue, then greenish, then back again. “Hershey bar?” he asks.