The Club

by Jane Heller

  He laughed, then his expression became one of concern. “Is there a problem?”

  I shrugged. “My mother seems to think I’m pregnant, do you believe that? Me. After all these years.”

  “Pregnant, huh?” he mused. “Let’s have a look.”

  Dr. Higginbottom looked, and while he looked he delivered a lecture on how the big boys in New York were making a mockery of the medical profession the way they were advertising their services on television.

  “See anything?” I asked as I lay there, more than a little curious.

  He stood up, pulled off his rubber gloves, and grinned.

  “Tell your mother she’s a better diagnostician than most of the big boys in New York,” he said, chuckling.

  My heart thundered in my chest and my jaw dropped. “You mean it’s true? I am pregnant?”

  He nodded. “About two months along,” he said.

  I continued to stare at him. “But how could this have…” I stammered. “How could I be…How could…”

  “It didn’t happen while you were sitting on a park bench, dear,” he chuckled again.

  “Yes, I know that, but…why now? Why at this time of my life? Why would I suddenly be able to have a child when I’d never been able to have one before?” My jaw had returned to its normal position, but my eyes had filled with tears. Tears of joy and wonder and complete and utter incredulity.

  “God works in mysterious ways, dear,” said Dr. Higginbottom as he pulled up a chair and sat beside me. “Look at all you’ve been through lately, with your friend, Ms. Cox, taken from you so abruptly.” Obviously, Dr. Higginbottom had been following the case along with everyone else in town. “Perhaps, the good Lord is replacing the life that was lost.”

  I regarded him, all sweet and fatherly and sixtysomething, and then I leaned toward him and began to cry on his shoulder. For what must have been several minutes, I cried for it all—for Claire, for Arlene, for the job I had lost, for the marriage I had nearly lost, and especially, for the sheer miracle that now grew inside me. I was overwhelmed by my emotions, flooded with the enormity of the situation in which I now found myself, astonished that, without my expecting it or worrying about it or even wishing for it, Hunt and I had created a life. A life that would change ours in ways I couldn’t begin to anticipate. The very idea of my having a baby was thrilling and terrifying, and despite the fact that women had babies every day, totally awe-inspiring.

  “There, there,” Dr. Higginbottom comforted me. “Surely, you’re happy about this?”

  I picked my head up off his shoulder and wiped my tears.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “Very happy and very shocked.”

  Dr. Higginbottom chuckled once again and began a speech about pregnancy—how the first trimester was critical in terms of miscarriage, what I should and shouldn’t eat, etc., etc.

  “Dr. Higginbottom,” I said, interrupting him just as he was getting to down-the-road stuff like amniocentesis, “I appreciate the talk, but I’d really like to go home and tell my family about the baby. I’ll call you later and you can finish your speech then, okay?”

  He laughed. “Okay,” he said and helped me off the examining table. “Tell your husband I said congratulations, will you?”

  “I sure will,” I said. “Don’t you worry.”

  When I got home, nobody was there. I had driven like a madwoman, barely able to contain my excitement, rehearsing how I would tell them, figuring out exactly what I would say, and they had all gone out! Hunt, who was doing more and more work from home these days, had taken Kimberley over to his parents’ house, according to the note on the kitchen table, and my parents had gone grocery shopping.

  Momentarily deflated, I went upstairs and tried to keep busy until everybody came home. My parents arrived first, and not wanting them to hear the news before Hunt did, I pretended I was asleep. It was only when I heard Hunt and Kimberley enter the house that I made my entrance in the kitchen.

  “There’s something I’d like to tell everyone,” I announced.

  Only my mother registered a reaction. Her eyes opened as wide as I’d ever seen them, and she was about to blurt something out when I shushed her.

  “Hunt, Kimberley, Dad, I said I have something to tell you all,” I repeated, hoping to get their attention away from Kimberley’s gerbil, which was racing around in its cage on the kitchen counter and, apparently, behaving in a very entertaining way. Its namesake would have been proud.

  Hunt turned around to face me. “What is it, Jude?” he asked.

  “I’ll tell you as soon as I have everybody’s attention,” I said, eyeing my father and Kimberley.

  “Arthur! Kimberley! Listen to Judy,” my mother scolded.

  They turned to look at me.

  Now, I thought. Now I have their attention. Now I can tell them my wonderful, amazing news.

  I cleared my throat and began to speak, but nothing came out! I was mute!

  “Jude? You okay?” asked Hunt, walking over to me. “I thought that bug was a stomach virus. Has it gone to your throat now?”

  My mother guffawed, and I shushed her again.

  I tried once more. “It turns out that I’m not sick after all,” I said, gathering strength for the big punch line.

  “But the vomiting,” Hunt said.

  “Yeah, you sure look sick to me,” said Kimberley, as tactful as ever.

  “Well,” I said slowly, dragging the whole thing out just a tad.

  “Oh, tell them already,” my mother said, bursting with the realization that she would be a grandmother at last.

  “I will, I will,” I said, then paused for dramatic effect and fixed my eyes on Hunt. “It turns out that I’m not sick. I’m…I’m pregnant.”

  He looked confused, as if I had just spoken in Bangladesh.

  “It’s true,” I said, throwing my arms around his neck and pulling him toward me. “We’re going to have a baby, Booch. Isn’t that something?”

  Before he could respond, Kimberley rushed over to us and threw her arms around us, wanting to be part of our little huddle, not wanting to be left out. “A baby!” she cried, jumping up and down. “I’ve always wanted a little brother or sister!”

  “Oh, I’m so glad,” I told her, bending down to hug her back. “You’ll be a terrific big sister, Kim. I know you will.” I stood back up and looked at Hunt. “And you’ll be a wonderful father. Are you happy, Booch? Tell me you are.”

  He answered with his eyes, which were brimming with tears, just as mine had when I’d first heard the news.

  “A baby,” he murmured, a little dazed and not quite sure he believed what I had told him.

  “Yes, Dr. Higginbottom confirmed what my mother already guessed,” I said, winking at my mother. “He said to send you his congratulations.”

  “A baby,” Hunt said again, shaking his head and beginning to grin. “When?”

  “April,” I told him and then watched as his grin grew wider and his expression changed from one of confusion, disbelief, and uncertainty, to one of joy, pride, and most apparent of all, abiding love. For the family he already cherished. And for the family that was yet to be.

  Epilogue

  “How do I look?” I asked Hunt as I smoothed the skirt of my dress, which was frilly and lacy and not at all me. My look was a little more tailored, but when you’re a bridesmaid, you’re stuck with the bride’s taste in dresses.

  “You look…let’s see.” Hunt eyed me—all of me. “You look like a woman I’d like to throw down on the bed and ravish,” he said.

  “So I look ravishing?”

  “Yes.”

  “So do you.” Hunt was wearing a white dinner jacket over a pale blue and white striped shirt and navy blue slacks. I walked over to him, combed back an errant lock of his hair with my fingers, and kissed him on the mouth.

  He moaned with gratitude, then said, “Do you think we have time?” His voice was low and husky.

  I checked the clock on the night table, then shook my
head. “Arlene and Tom want us at the club at two-thirty. It’s one-thirty now and we still have to make sure the girls are ready.”

  “Megan’s dressing them. They’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, but it’s not every day that an eleven-year-old girl and her five-month-old sister are flower girls in a wedding,” I pointed out, thinking of how adorable Kimberley and Heather (that’s what we named the baby) would look in their frilly little dresses. Actually, the question of what to name the baby had become quite a topic of discussion in the house in the months leading up to the birth. Three generations of male children in Hunt’s family had been named Hunter. But what was I supposed to name Hunt’s daughter: Huntress? My mother wanted me to name the baby Adelaide, after her dead sister with whom she feuded most of their lives. And Kimberley wanted us to name the child Madonna, after her gerbil. Hunt and I vetoed all their suggestions and settled on Heather, the closest we could get to Hunter without resorting to Helen or Hester. Her full name was Heather Mills Price. We hoped she’d be happy with it when she was old enough to care.

  “It only takes ten minutes to get to the club from here,” Hunt said.

  “True, but we’re already dressed in our party clothes. We’d have to get undressed, then redressed,” I said.

  “Okay. Figure another five minutes to get undressed and five more to get redressed.”

  “That’s a total of twenty minutes.”

  “You’re quite the math whiz.”

  “It’s one-thirty now, and if we add twenty minutes, that would put us at one-fifty.”

  “Right. If we had a quickie, we’d definitely make it to the club by two-thirty.”

  “A quickie. A quiet quickie.” I was warming to the idea, but didn’t want to offend the other members of the household. “Where should we do it?”

  Hunt began to loosen his tie. “How about the bed?”

  “No, we always do it on the bed. I’m up for something different. What about the floor?”

  “I’m not supposed to. My back, remember?”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I’ll think of someplace else,” said Hunt. I could tell he was ready because he had his “hooded eyes” look. I was ready too. I quickly pulled my dress over my head and removed my undergarments. Then I unbuttoned Hunt’s shirt, while he unzipped his pants and stepped out of his boxer shorts.

  “How about doing it standing up?” he said, keeping up his end of our little game. “In the bathroom? Against the sink?”

  “Nooo!” I shivered. “The porcelain’s too cold. I’ll freeze.”

  “Come here,” said Hunt.

  As I came into his arms, he threw me down on the bed and ravished me, keeping one eye on me, the other on the clock.

  Arlene and Tom wanted a simple, early September, Saturday afternoon wedding—a small affair attended by members of their immediate families and a few close friends. Hunt was Tom’s best man, I was Arlene’s matron of honor and her sister was her maid of honor. And as she didn’t have children or even young cousins, Kimberley and Heather were the so-called flower girls (Kimberley tossed rose petals along the aisle and Heather sat in my arms, gurgling and cooing and pulling on my hair). Tom’s father, Wild Bill Cunningham, head of Pubtel, was there too, since he and his son had mended their fences the year before, a few weeks after Tom apprehended Ducky on the golf course and saved our lives. Apparently, Wild Bill had watched his son receive a great deal of favorable publicity surrounding the Claire Cox murder case, and had decided that having a cop for a son wasn’t such a terrible thing after all.

  Tom and Arlene had begun dating after she left the hospital. He visited her in the city, took her on walks through Central Park, brought her cookies and candies to fatten her up, read her passages from her favorite romance novels, and ignored her Bell’s palsy, which eventually disappeared, just as the doctor had predicted it might. Tom was every bit the romantic hero, and she fell madly, passionately in love with him. Three months before the wedding, they had decided to get married at The Oaks, where Arlene was a new and very enthusiastic member.

  She had joined the club at the suggestion of her physical therapist, who thought it would be good for her to drive up to Connecticut on weekends and play a little golf or tennis. I had heartily seconded the idea, of course, seeing as I was spending more and more time at the club myself. I had concluded that since Hunt loved The Oaks’s golf course with such ferocity, I should learn to love it too. And the only way I was going to learn to love it was if I had women I liked and respected to play golf with. So I became friends with the women whom Claire had recruited for membership, including Sharon Klein, the accountant. And then Arlene joined. And then I persuaded her to convince some of her authors to join. Before I knew it, I had a real circle of friends at the club—my circle. And since I had hired a wonderful young woman named Megan to help me take care of Heather, I actually looked forward to spending weekends there.

  As for my weekdays, they were spent at home, either in the nursery with Heather or at the computer, working on my second book. Yes, my second book. I had planned to start looking for a publishing job after the whole mess with Ducky was over, but then came the pregnancy and the morning sickness and the trips to Dr. Higginbottom, and before I knew it, time was marching on. I did get one job offer though: from my old company, good old Charlton House. Tom had introduced me to his father, who tried to talk me into coming back to the company, coming back to work for Loathsome Leeza Grummond. While I was weighing the offer, I got a phone call from Dorothy Ohlmeyer, Claire’s agent, who invited me to lunch. It seemed that Dorothy had found a sort of culinary diary that Claire had kept—a journal in which she had described the meals she prepared for her retreats, complete with actual recipes. Dorothy had the idea that I should draw from the diary and write the cookbook that Claire and I were going to write together. I agreed instantly, we sold the proposal to a publisher, and I told Wild Bill that Charlton House would just have to do without me and that, if he were smart, he’d get rid of Loathsome Leeza. I spent the rest of the year writing the book, which was due to be released the following year. In the meantime, Dorothy had gotten me a contract to write another cookbook. It was titled Country Club Cuisine, and my co-author was Armand Rossier, the new chef at The Oaks. A native of Paris, and the former sous-chef at La Bouche, one of Connecticut’s premier restaurants, Armand was brought into the club after I became chairperson of the Dining Committee. Yes, things at The Oaks had definitely changed in the past year. Larkin Vail was still the women’s singles tennis champion and Duncan and Delia Tewksbury still behaved as if they were from a previous century and there was still no valet parking. But Ducky’s death—and the revelation that a man everyone had trusted and respected was a murderer—had a sobering affect on the people at the club. Some of the old guard actually resigned their memberships in an effort to distance themselves from the sordidness of Claire’s death and its aftermath. Others simply came to the conclusion that times were changing and The Oaks would have to change too. As a result, those of us who felt the club needed updating and upgrading were able to persuade the rest of the members to cough up the money for a top-notch chef, a redecorated clubhouse, refurbished locker rooms and tennis pros who actually taught tennis.

  As for Hunt, he decided he’d waited long enough for F&F to make him a partner and quit his job. He also decided that he didn’t have the stomach for the commodities market and turned, instead, to mutual funds. He set up a consulting business out of our house and continued to represent many of his old clients. He found being self-employed very satisfying, and it gave him more time to spend with Kimberley, who was still giving me grief but not as often, and with little Heather, who wasn’t giving me any grief—yet.

  The weather was glorious for the wedding—crisp, clear, fragrant. The ceremony was held in the living room of the clubhouse, the cocktail reception outside on the terrace. Arlene, whose hair had grown to chin-length, looked radiant in her nineteenth-century bridal gown, the exact replica of the gow
n worn by the heroine of one of Kathleen Woodiwiss’s novels. Tom wore a dark suit and looked like the happiest man on the planet. He beamed and hugged people and said corny things like, “Pinch me. I can’t believe this is happening.”

  Speaking of corny, I cried my eyes out as the minister asked Tom and Arlene if they promised to love each other till death do them part. I was so moved by the fact that they had found each other, that they had been able to turn adversity into happiness. At the word “death,” I was reminded of the terrible ordeal Arlene had been through, of the terrible ordeal we all had been through, of Claire and Brendan and Ducky, of the summer we were still trying to forget.

  Obviously, last summer hadn’t been a total disaster. I’d met Tom, and Tom had met Arlene, and Hunt and I had rekindled our love for each other and conceived Heather. Yes, there were positives about last summer, I thought, as I watched Hunt raise his champagne glass and toast the bride and groom at the start of the reception.

  About an hour into the party, I was standing with Hunt, sipping champagne, nibbling on one of Armand’s perfectly divine hors d’oeuvres, and keeping my eye on Kimberley, who was holding Heather and trying not to drop her, when Arlene came scurrying over.

  “In all the excitement, I completely forgot to tell you,” she said breathlessly.

  “Tell me what?” I said.

  “About Leeza,” she said.

  “What about Leeza?” asked Hunt, who was no longer Leeza Grummond’s financial advisor. Several months before, she had abruptly fired him, just as she had abruptly fired me.

  “She’s leaving Charlton House,” said Arlene.

  “Well, what do you know,” I said, a self-satisfied grin on my face. “The geniuses over there finally figured out what a zero she is.”

  “Wrong,” said Arlene. “She wasn’t canned. She quit. To go to Remington House. As president of the company!”

  My mouth dropped open. Leeza Grummond had ascended yet again! She was actually being rewarded for her incompetence! Instead of getting the heave-ho, she was given the go-ahead to run one of the most prestigious companies in the industry! I was nonplussed, not to mention resentful.