The Hot Flash Club Strikes Again

by Nancy Thayer

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  About the Author

  Also by Nancy Thayer

  Copyright Page

  FOR

  Jean Mallinson

  With admiration

  And gratitude for

  Thirty luscious years of epistolary friendship

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Gallons of Godiva to the heavenly Linda Marrow and the divine Meg Ruley!

  Crates of Nantucket Sweet Inspiration chocolate to Deborah Beale, Steve Boldt, Mimi Beman, Martha Foshee, David Gillum, Gilly Hailparn, Charlotte Maison, Tricia Patterson, Jane Patton, Pam Pindell, Josh Thayer, Jill Hunter Wickes, Sam Wilde, and Arielle Zibrak.

  Thanks to Terry Pommett for information about videography.

  And for Charley . . . all the chocolate kisses you want!

  1

  Because Polly Lodge liked to look on the bright side, the word she chose to describe her mother-in-law was challenging, as in “the ferret makes a challenging pet.” So when Polly’s only child, David, married, Polly vowed to be the best mother-in-law she could possibly be, and the least interfering.

  Sometimes, this was a struggle. But even though her son’s wife, Amy, was a week overdue for the birth of Polly’s first grandchild, Polly did not phone David and Amy every day. Of course they would call her when the baby was born! In the meantime, she didn’t so much sleep at night as levitate a few inches off her bed in a trance of anticipation, every instinct straining to hear the ringing of the phone.

  And then the phone rang.

  It was the middle of the night. Polly lurched up and grabbed for the handset, knocking all her books off the bedside table.

  “Hello?”

  David’s voice was gorgeously smug. “Hello, Grandma.”

  Polly shrieked. “Amy had the baby!” She switched on her bedside lamp and sat up, leaning against the headboard. From the foot of her bed, her ancient basset hound, Roy Orbison, shot her a long-suffering look, then laid his head down between his paws and resumed snoring.

  “She did indeed.” David’s laugh was proud.

  David and Amy’s insistence on having the baby born at home with a midwife had worried Polly, but she’d kept quiet, and now the joy in her son’s voice signaled that all was well. Polly fell back among her pillows, weak with relief. “Stop it, David! Don’t torture me!” They’d also decided, when they’d had the first ultrasound, not to be told the sex of the baby, nor to discuss the names they were considering.

  “Jehoshaphat Feast Piper has just arrived on planet Earth, weighing nine pounds, three ounces, and bellowing like a bull.”

  The string of unfamiliar syllables made Polly blink. “Jeho—huh?”

  “Jehoshaphat was a biblical king, famed for his righteousness.”

  “Oh, David!” Tears streamed down Polly’s face. “A little boy! Oh, darling, congratulations! How’s Amy?”

  “She’s beautiful.” Now David’s voice was choked. “She was awesome, Mom.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she was! Please tell her how proud I am of her. Give her a hug for me. And lots of kisses for everyone! Is there anything I can do?”

  “No, thanks. I think we’re going to try to snatch a few hours of sleep. We’re exhausted. Well, Amy is.”

  “I’m so happy for you all, David. I love you all so much!”

  “Thanks, Mom. We’ll phone in the morning.”

  ——————————

  Polly clicked off the phone and looked at the clock. Three seventeen. Her grandson had been born sometime around three seventeen on September 20. Her grandson. Little Jehoshaphat.

  Little Jehoshaphat?

  “Stop it!” Polly snapped at herself. She threw back her covers and flung herself from her bed with such energy she disturbed Roy Orbison, who, for an old dog with sagging skin, could conjure up an impressive array of expressions. Right now he resembled an exasperated hausfrau, hair in curlers, arms folded over her Wagnerian chest.

  “Well, I’m sorry!” Polly told the dog. “But you’re a dog, and I’m overwhelmed, and you’re all I’ve got at the moment, so you can just bear up and sacrifice some sleep to keep me company!”

  Roy Orbison sagged a bit, morphing into his Jeanne-d’Arc-at-the-stake pose, but stayed at attention.

  “In the first place,” Polly muttered, reaching for her silk robe and pulling it on over her nightgown, “isn’t Jehoshaphat an awfully big name for a little boy? ‘Stop, Jehoshaphat, don’t put that raisin up your nose!’ ” She slid her feet into her slippers. “And what if he goes through that prepubescent plump phase David went through? You know his nickname will be Phat! Although”—Polly stopped tapping the top of her head as she did more and more these days when she was trying to remember something—“isn’t phat ‘cool’ now? I mean, the word itself? Something I saw on television . . . But never mind what’s cool now, it’s bound to be out of style when Jehoshaphat is a preteen.”

  Roy Orbison fell over on his side, groaning.

  “But we’re not going to be critical, are we, Roy?” Flicking on lights as she went, Polly headed down the stairs. She wouldn’t get back to sleep now. She didn’t have to call Roy Orbison to join her; the animal was catatonic unless he suspected someone was headed for the kitchen, in which case he became Wonder Dog. Sure enough, she heard a thud as he hit the floor, then the clicking of his nails.

  In the kitchen, she poured herself a mug of milk and popped it into the microwave. “Oh, Tucker,” she said aloud, “if only you were still alive.”

  Her husband, Tucker, was David’s stepfather, so this baby would be his step-grandson. Still, Tucker would have shared every ounce of Polly’s joy. Oh, she could imagine just how he would smile! Tucker had died two years ago, and while the heart-searing grief had diminished, Polly still missed him every moment of every day.

  The microwave beeped. She took out the mug and held it in her hands. So nice and warm.

  Roy Orbison came waddling into the kitchen. The vets warned Polly the dog was overweight. But he was fifteen years old, for heaven’s sake! He deserved a treat now and then. Instead of collapsing in his usual heap of wrinkles, he sat at her feet and cocked his head at Polly, doing his best Loyal Fido at His Mistress’s Feet impersonation.

  “You are such a fake,” Polly said fondly. “But all right. I’ll add a celebratory spot of brandy to my milk, and you can have a great big dog biscuit. Okay?”

  Roy Orbison wagged his tail and passed gas.

  ——————————

  In the morning, Polly showered, dressed, and breakfasted, and it was only eight o’cloc
k. She wouldn’t call David and Amy yet, they might still be sleeping, and she couldn’t possibly sit at her desk and accomplish anything, so she phoned her best friend, Franny, to share the good news, and then she went up to the attic to dig out the boxes of baby things she’d been saving for thirty years.

  By noon, Polly had not only found the various little rompers and blankets and quilts, she’d put them through the washing machine and had them tumbling away in the dryer, and still David hadn’t phoned. She couldn’t wait any longer. She dialed the Pipers’ house.

  David answered in a whisper. “Oh, hi, Mom. How are you?”

  “Impatient!” Polly said with a laugh. “David, when can I come see little Jehoshaphat?”

  David paused. “Amy wants you to wait a couple of days. She’s concerned about strange germs.”

  Strange germs? Polly’s jaw dropped. “Amy thinks I’ve got strange germs?”

  “Not just you, Mom. Everyone.”

  “Oh, David, that’s—”

  “Humor us, Mom. Amy’s exhausted. We all are.”

  Polly took a deep breath. “All right. What about tomorrow?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll let you know.”

  Polly felt her lip quiver. She felt cold-shouldered, left out. “But, David, I can’t wait to see him.”

  “I know, Mom. I can’t wait for you to see him, either. He’s beautiful.”

  ——————————

  Thank God for her garden! Polly hung up the phone, slid into her gardening clogs, and stomped outside. She’d already planted her new bulbs and put most of the outdoor furniture away, so she headed to the back of her yard to prepare her little vegetable plot for winter. She worked away furiously, thrusting her spade into the ground, turning over the lumpy soil, carrying heavy piles from the compost heap and mixing it in. Her garden would be better for this next spring. Plus, it kept her from pulling out her hair.

  Relatives! No wonder Einstein had named his incomprehensible hypothesis the theory of relativity. E = MC2 was easy, compared to her own familial galaxy.

  Polly had grown up in South Boston, where her father was a schoolteacher, her mother a homemaker. Both parents were kind, loving, and as boring as turtles. Their lives clicked reliably through the familiar, repetitive routines of their days, and anything else made them nervous. They never yearned for adventure, wealth, or fame. Hell, they nearly broke out in a rash when they had to travel to the middle of the state to see Polly’s brother, and two years later Polly, graduate from U. Mass./Amherst. Polly’s father died young of emphysema, brought on by too many cigarettes, Polly’s mother just two months later, of a heart attack brought on, Polly was certain, by the stress of being without his familiar presence.

  Naturally, since Polly’s parents never went anywhere and were totally predictable, Polly’s brother became a geologist, working in Alaska, Dubai, and any other location as far as possible from South Boston, while Polly married Scott Piper, a man so fabulously interesting, Polly’s mother took to biting her nails and weeping during dinner. Polly’s father simply hid in his basement workshop as if it were a bunker.

  Scott was older, unpredictable, and because he wrote travel books for a living, seldom on one continent for long. For a few years, Polly traveled with Scott to Mexico, where she got some great silver jewelry, to Peru, where she got dysentery, and to Newfoundland, where she got pregnant.

  Scott didn’t want to be grounded by a child, and Polly didn’t want to lug a baby around in a basket she’d woven from banana leaves and twigs. Plus, Scott had the disconcerting habit of sleeping with indigenous women. Polly returned to Boston to be near college friends during her pregnancy, and it was her college friend Franny who stood by her side during labor and childbirth. Polly didn’t even know where Scott was then, and when he got the news of the birth of his son, he sent her an African fertility statue, but didn’t bother to come home or even phone. A year later, Polly divorced him.

  In the early years, Polly and David lived, first, in a small apartment, and later in a little rented house. During the day, while her mother babysat David, Polly worked as a secretary for a Ford dealership on Norwood’s “Auto Mile” on the outskirts of Boston. The owner had three daughters and a wife who couldn’t thread a needle, so one day when business was slow, Polly volunteered to help when some of the girls’ clothing was torn. If her mother had taught her anything, it was how to mend. She did it at first for no charge, because it was easy enough to do at night while David slept, but quickly the owner’s wife asked for Polly to repair or alter other clothing, and her friends began to ask if Polly could sew just a few little things for them. The other women, busy as teachers or lawyers or accountants, didn’t have the time, experience, or patience to reattach a button, take up a hem, let out a cuff, or stitch darts into a skirt. Polly agreed, but she would have to charge them and was astonished at how grateful they were to pay any fee for what came as easily as breathing for Polly. Before she knew it, she was able to leave her secretarial job, work full-time in her home as a seamstress, and live, if not in luxury, at least in comfortable financial security.

  Every year or so, Scott dropped in to say hello, presenting David with a musk-ox tooth or a box carved from Siberian birch, but that was the extent of his interaction with his son. A few years ago, Scott had died in a scuba-diving accident. Scott’s parents had both died young, without seeing their grandson, so that pretty much took care of that side of David’s family tree. Because Polly felt vaguely guilty about providing her son with so few relatives, she gave David a cat and a dog, who turned out to be excellent substitutes.

  For years, she sewed all day, spent her nights feeling lonely, going on blind dates, which made her feel even lonelier, or visiting her increasingly withdrawn parents, who seemed perversely pleased by Polly’s difficult life because it proved what they’d told her, that marrying that wandering Scott would bring only doom. When they died, she grieved, but she also felt an unexpected sense of relief. Now, no matter what, she could no longer disappoint them.

  Then a miracle took place.

  Polly met Tucker Lodge. They fell in love and married and lived almost happily ever after. Tucker loved David as if he were his own, and David worshiped Tucker. The marriage had a truly fairy-tale quality, except that in place of a wicked stepmother, Polly had a malevolent mother-in-law.

  During the eighteen years of her marriage to Tucker, the only times Polly ever considered herself unhappy or unlucky were when she was around Claudia, who considered Polly deeply inferior to her son and never attempted to hide the fact. Sometimes Claudia’s sheer, intentional meanness made Polly’s heart cringe and jump like a beaten animal. Some nights Polly crept away from her sleeping Tucker, hid herself in the downstairs bathroom, and cried her heart out. And she swore to herself that when she became a mother-in-law, she would be loving, accepting, and kind.

  ——————————

  Then, two years ago, David told Polly he was going to marry Amy Anderson, and while Polly smiled and congratulated her son, she mentally gagged like an old cat choking on a fur ball. Not that Polly looked down on Amy. She just found Amy so strange.

  Amy was a Birkenstock, batik, and braids kind of girl, who drifted through the world in unusual garments she and her mother made on their farm, which had been in the family for generations. A strict vegetarian, Amy was so soft-spoken and gently, dreamily healthy, she made Polly want to swear like a sailor, smoke cigarettes, and inject ice cream directly into her veins. When Polly, David, and Amy were together, Amy said little, but stared at David with her large brown eyes, oozing a rather creepy intelligence, like some small, alert, brown bat.

  The Anderson family grew organic produce—strawberries, tomatoes, and squash—on their hundred acres of land forty-five minutes west of Boston. They made jam and chutneys and bread to sell in their country store, along with handcrafted dolls and hand-knit wool caps and mittens. It was an idyllic rural life, with many charms, and Polly believed it gave David a sense o
f stability that had been missing from his early life, when his adventuring father had disappeared into unknown lands and his anxious mother was bent over the dining room table day and night, sewing the curtains and clothing that supported herself and her son. It was Amy’s family, Polly thought ruefully, that made David feel, finally, at home.

  After college, David had worked in the same bank where his step-father had been vice president, but when he became engaged to Amy, he quit the bank to work at the Anderson Farm and General Store. Polly was surprised, but not upset. She had suspected that David had gone to work with Tucker partly to please him and partly because he had no clear idea what he really wanted to do. She knew from her own experience how children choose different lives from their parents’. She tried to be tolerant as she saw her son change.

  She was just so unprepared for the changes.

  At Christmas, she gave David and Amy beautiful cashmere sweaters, only to have them handed back to her, still in the box. “We make our own garments,” Amy had informed her with the gently reproving righteousness of an Amish elder. “Or, if necessary, we buy them at the secondhand shops.” Polly thought of all the pleasure David had taken, after being promoted at the bank, in buying several handsome suits from Louis of Boston. She stared at her son, who only smiled placidly, like a tranquilized bull. She reminded herself of Claudia and kept her mouth shut.

  For David’s birthday, Polly wanted to take him and Amy out to dinner at Locke-Ober’s, a posh Boston restaurant. Amy had sweetly objected, “We don’t eat at restaurants. We don’t believe in supporting the gluttonous American consumer economy.”

  Polly had cleared her throat and asked, meekly, in that case, could she invite Amy and her family to her house for a birthday celebration for David?

  Yes, Amy had said, that would be nice. As long as Polly understood they would eat only organic foods and no sugar.

  Polly had looked at her son, who had been born with a sweet tooth as fierce as her own. David had smiled back serenely.

  “I know!” Polly had offered without a hint of desperation. “Could I treat you two to a weekend on the Maine coast?”