The Break-Up Book Club

by Wendy Wax

  My fury builds as I realize how deftly Hanson has outmaneuvered me. I drain the last of the drink I’ve been nursing and glance down at my Apple Watch, which is telling me to breathe and suggesting I stand up. It also tells me it’s 6:25 p.m. Shit. Chastain Park isn’t far, but there’s no way I could get there in five minutes even if it weren’t rush hour.

  I fire off a text to Maya that I’m on my way, but by the time I pay the tab and the valet hands over my car, it’s 6:40. When I screech to a halt in the tennis complex parking lot, the temperature has dropped. My daughter and her instructor stand beneath a streetlight, bathed in its glow. It’s 7:05.

  Maya, who just turned thirteen and is already closing in on six feet, doesn’t even try to hide her irritation. One size 11 tennis shoe taps impatiently. Her high cheekbones, honey skin tone, and wide-set brown eyes are duplicates of mine, but at the moment those eyes are angry. The wide, mobile mouth, a near replica of her father’s, twists into a frown. With a flip of a box braid over one broad shoulder, she glares at me. If looks could kill, I’d be a chalk outline on the concrete right now.

  Kyle Anderson, with whom Maya has been working for close to a year, appears more resigned than angry. This is not the first time I’ve been late, and no matter how often or sincerely I promise to do better, we all know it’s unlikely to be the last.

  I’m out of the car and striding toward them before the engine comes to a full stop. “I’m so sorry. I had a work emergency.”

  Anderson, tall and lanky with sun-streaked blond hair, a perennial tan, and the requisite zinc oxide–covered nose, nods a greeting.

  “It’s sports, Mom, not brain surgery,” Maya snaps. “Your clients are always having emergencies.” She air quotes the last word. “You’d think they’d be old enough to take care of themselves.”

  If only. “I get paid to take care of those emergencies. It’s what I do. And you know it’s never been a nine-to-five job.” And certainly not a career path I ever planned on.

  I’d been nearing the end of my senior year at Georgia Tech, where I’d gone on a tennis scholarship, only months away from graduation, the sports media already referring to me as the “next Serena Williams” even though Serena Williams was still very much a force. I was poised to join the women’s pro tour and madly in love with Xavier Wright, point guard for the Atlanta Hawks. My entire life, everything I’d dreamed of and worked so hard for was within my grasp.

  All of it was blown to pieces when a rusted-out Mustang spun out of control and slammed into us.

  When I awoke in the hospital with a career-ending crushed pelvis and a broken kneecap, Xavier was dead. The blood test I’d been given before treatment could commence revealed a pregnancy so early I hadn’t even been aware of it.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say to the instructor. “Thank you so much for waiting.”

  “Couldn’t leave her standing here on her own in the dark, now could I?” He looks so all-American that the British accent always takes me by surprise. He’s smiling, and his voice betrays no disrespect, but the set of his jaw telegraphs his disapproval.

  But then Anderson is single and, as far as I know, has no children. It’s easy to disapprove of others when the only person you have to look out for is yourself. And how stressful could teaching tennis be? I shake my head. God, what I wouldn’t give to smack the hell out of a tennis ball right now, ace a serve at ninety-five miles an hour, drop a shot over the net that my opponent can’t get to. What I’d really like to do is wipe the court with this guy. But although I can still hit a tennis ball pretty much wherever I aim it, I can’t move fast or well enough to play the game.

  “As I said, I am truly sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  If he notices how tight my voice is or how much I wish I could show him up on the court, he gives no indication. “See you next time, Maya. Don’t forget to work on those drills.” He turns and heads for the only other car in the lot, a low, sporty, penis-shaped convertible.

  “You promised you were going to do better,” Maya says as she slams the passenger door of my more practical and less phallic BMW. “It’s humiliating to always be the last one standing here. Poppy is never late.”

  “Your grandfather is retired. He has all the time in the world. And thank God for that.” It’s my father who first took me out on the public courts near our house when I was five. He did the same for his granddaughter.

  “I hate how everything else is always more important to you than me.”

  “That’s not true. And it isn’t fair.”

  “Ha! Aren’t you the one who’s always telling me that life isn’t fair and that I’d better get used to it?” My daughter unerringly chooses to hurl at me the one thing that I should never have said.

  I take a deep breath, searching for the calm adult tone I know the situation calls for. But I’ve been jangling since Tyrone Browning dropped that damned SI on the table. My heart’s still pounding from the race to get here. So is my head.

  Maya shoots off a text—no doubt a complaint about me—then turns to stare out the passenger window.

  Fine. Even without a reminder from my Apple Watch, I breathe for a full minute, both hands gripping the wheel, my eyes straight ahead. As my thoughts begin to clear, it comes to me that this moment calls not only for deep breathing but for acknowledging the positive.

  Traffic has thinned, so I take Wieuca over to Peachtree. Ignoring Maya’s huff of impatience when I fail to make the light, I acknowledge the top three in my head. One—I have a healthy, and clearly uncowed, daughter. Two—I have a successful, if stressful, career. All working mothers, especially the single ones, have to juggle way too many balls for comfort. Three—My parents. Having them nearby and a part of our lives is about as positive as it gets.

  At Peachtree I head north to Dresden, then sneak a peek at Maya, who’s staring out her window as if she’s never seen the Brookhaven MARTA station before.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” I say to the back of her head. “I’ve got a whole bunch of appetizers from the InterContinental for dinner.”

  There’s no response. And no sign of thawing.

  I’m about to reprimand her for ignoring me when I realize that my daughter’s silence is a great big positive at the moment. So is the fact that I’m not going to have to make dinner. There. How’s that for determined, positive thinking?

  Three

  Sara

  Favorite book: All of them—I can’t help it!

  The bathroom doorknob jiggles. “Sara? Are you in there?” My mother-in-law’s voice is as brisk as her knock, easily reaching me where I sit. On top of the closed toilet seat. Reading. Hiding.

  I consider staying silent, but the door is locked, and my car is parked in the driveway. There’s no way I can pretend that I’m not home. “Yes?”

  “Are you planning to come out soon?” Dorothy, never Dottie or, God forbid, Dot, moved in three months ago after hip replacement surgery that didn’t go smoothly. Although the home health care workers are now gone and she is, according to her doctor, fully mended, she’s still here and in no rush to move back to her home in Greenville.

  My husband, Mitchell, has no problem with this, primarily because he got a new job and has been working in Birmingham for the last six months and comes home only on weekends. This makes Dorothy, who has always made me feel that I am not good enough for her son, my responsibility.

  Each month, our three-bedroom, two-bath home—the very first I’ve ever been able to call “mine”—gets smaller. There’s virtually nowhere left to hide. Including, it seems, the master bathroom.

  “Yes. Of course.” I wait for Dorothy’s footsteps to recede, but my mother-in-law stays put. I glance around the bathroom looking for an escape route, but the lone window that overlooks the backyard is small. I’ve always been almost painfully thin, but I wouldn’t lay money on being able to squeeze through it. And even if I ma
naged to wriggle out, I’d have to come back at some point.

  “Any chance it’ll be this millennium?”

  I curse myself for not locking the bedroom door, even though barging into a closed bedroom and knocking on a bathroom door is a stretch even for Dorothy.

  “Are you all right?” I ask in case this is an emergency.

  She doesn’t answer. I listen intently, but there’s no ragged breathing, no body crumpling to the floor. I set my book on the vanity countertop, reject the instinct to flush the unused toilet just to prove I’ve been doing something legitimate, and open the door. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” Dorothy’s puff of thin white hair is deceptively grandmotherly and looks freshly washed. She’s wearing makeup. Her purse hangs over one bony shoulder. “I just wanted to see if you’d heard from Mitchell.”

  My parents left me in a rest stop bathroom on the Florida-Georgia state line when I was three years old. I have virtually no memory of them, but highway rest areas still make me queasy. I grew up in foster homes—six of them—before I finally aged out. After that, I worked multiple jobs to keep a roof over my head and pay for night school until I finally got my teaching degree. Meeting Mitchell Whalen at a friend’s birthday party was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me. I’d never had a boyfriend. The fact that he’d never known his father and I couldn’t remember either of my parents gave us something important in common. When he asked me to marry him, I felt as if I’d won the lottery; I was going to have a husband and a mother. Unfortunately, what warmth Dorothy has is reserved for her son. I have tried my hardest, but it’s impossible to have a relationship all by yourself.

  “No, I haven’t. But he must be on his way.”

  The drive from Birmingham is just over two and a half hours, but Mitch doesn’t drive home on Friday nights for fear of rush-hour traffic, nor does he jump out of bed early on Saturday mornings. Normally, he rolls in around noon, which is when I typically leave for my weekly Saturday afternoon shift at Between the Covers. I check my phone. It’s eleven thirty.

  “I’m sure he’ll be here any minute and ready for your lunch date.” This is the one-on-one time Mitch gives his mother each week. We share him Saturday evening. Once she goes to bed, he’s all mine; we tiptoe past her bedroom and into ours like naughty teenagers. There we make love (as quietly as possible), then curl up together to watch Saturday Night Live. It’s my favorite part of the week.

  He heads back to Birmingham on Sunday afternoon so that he won’t have to fight rush hour getting out of Atlanta on Monday morning. “Did you call him?”

  “No.” A former efficiency expert, Dorothy does not engage in idle chitchat, at least not with me. If she’s ever poured her heart or thoughts out to her son, I’ve never witnessed it and he’s never mentioned it. “You know I don’t like to bother him or distract him if he’s driving.”

  I hit speed dial. Mitch picks up on the fourth ring sounding oddly out of breath for someone sitting in a car.

  “Hi. Where are you?”

  “Home.” He pauses. “I mean, in the apartment. I’ve got some kind of bug. I’m, uh, not going to be able to get back this weekend.”

  The bathroom is small, but I manage to turn away from Dorothy. “When were you planning to let us know?” I whisper as the disappointment seeps through me. “Your mother’s expecting you.” And so am I.

  “I’m sick, Sara. It happens.” He coughs loudly. A less charitable person might say unconvincingly. This is not the first time he’s bailed at the last minute.

  “It’s only a couple hours’ drive,” I point out. “I’m not scheduled to work at the bookstore today. I’ll make a great big pot of chicken soup, and you can lie in bed and be waited on.”

  “Sorry. But I can barely get out of the bed I’m in,” he says. “Besides, my mother’s had surgery. I promise neither of you want to be around these germs.”

  The anger gurgles up from somewhere deep inside of me. It’s an emotion I rarely give in to. One of the keys to surviving a lifetime in other people’s homes is tamping down your feelings and not making waves.

  “Hang on a sec. I want you to explain that to her.”

  “Oh, no. You can’t . . .”

  I hand the phone to Dorothy. Unable to get by her in the tight space, I’m forced to watch her face fall as she listens to her son’s excuses. Her lips quiver as she hands my phone back.

  I feel like crying, too. I love my husband and I want him here, not in some furnished corporate apartment two hours away. And if I have to be here when he’s not, I don’t want to be left with this woman who barely tolerates me while she waits for his appearance on the weekends.

  Since I’m not getting either of those things, I want a pint of ice cream. And I want to eat it lying in bed reading a novel that will take me somewhere else. Let me be someone else. Books are what got me through the foster care system and every other situation that I’ve had no control over. Don’t get me wrong, I like to read when I’m happy or even just okay, but books—and the words that form them—have gotten me through a lot of things I’d like to forget. If I’d relied on ice cream alone, I’d be the size of a barn.

  Dorothy, who’s normally puffed up beyond her diminutive size, looks small and shriveled.

  Before I can think it through, I ask her if she’d still like to go out for lunch.

  Dorothy sniffs. Her eyes are moist with tears that don’t dare to fall. “I can make myself a sandwich.” She looks at me suspiciously. “Assuming there are things in the refrigerator.” Like her son, Dorothy chooses to believe that grocery elves come in to stock it while she’s asleep.

  “We could make grilled cheese or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but I wouldn’t mind picking up a few more things. I think we should go out and have a bite together.”

  “Why on earth would we do that?” She looks as horrified as I feel.

  “Because I know you were looking forward to going out. And it might make us both feel better.”

  We do a bit of a stare down. Her gray eyes are identical to Mitch’s, only without the warmth. I will my green ones—they’ve always been my best feature and help to cancel out my stick-straight carrot-red hair and ghost-white skin—to telegraph sincerity even though I already regret the offer.

  “If you like.” Her tone is grudging, and I have to remind myself that I’m doing a nice thing and that is supposed to be its own reward.

  “Anyplace you’d especially like to go?” I ask.

  She shrugs.

  “Okay. How about the Brooklyn Café? They have good salads. Then we can stop by Between the Covers. I want to pick up the book club book even though we won’t be discussing it until January. Then I can run into Whole Foods.”

  She nods glumly.

  We get into the car, and I back it out of the driveway. As we drive to the restaurant, I attempt to fill the silence. I tell her about how I first started working at the bookstore where we’ll be stopping after lunch, on Saturday afternoons and then over school holidays and summer break. (I’m a reading specialist at Eastend Middle School.) Then I go on to tell her about how Annell Barrett, the owner of Between the Covers, first formed the book club, how long it’s been in existence, and that it takes place in a carriage house. Just thinking about book club and how warm and welcoming a group it is, I feel lighter.

  Dorothy doesn’t ask a single question, so I ramble on about how the book club’s on hiatus over the holidays because everyone’s so busy. (Present company excepted.) I’m an introvert by nature, and when I’m uncomfortable (which is always around Dorothy) or nervous I develop logorrhea. In case you’re wondering, that’s

  log·or·rhea

  lȯ-gə-ˈrē-ə

  noun

  Origin: Greek, early 20th century.

  1. uncontrollable talkativeness

  2. a tendency toward overly compl
ex wordiness in speech or writing

  Ex: “If I’m not careful, my logorrhea leads to foot-in-mouth disease.”

  As we enter the restaurant, it’s clear I’m going to need not just the new book club book but a LOT of ice cream to get me through this weekend.

  At the table, I order an appetizer to share and a glass of wine. At her sniff of disapproval, I say, “Normally, I don’t drink until after five p.m. But it’s got to be five o’clock somewhere, right?”

  She doesn’t crack a smile and only tastes the appetizer when I push the plate toward her and ask her to tell me what she thinks.

  “Not bad. If you like roasted brussels sprouts. I didn’t realize that was a thing.”

  “I love them,” I admit. If I knew who thought of seasoning and roasting them this way, I would send a thank-you note.

  My mother-in-law harrumphs. I didn’t realize until she came to live with us that harrumphing was still a thing. I met Mitch twelve years ago and have been married to him for ten, but I could probably count the number of times I’ve been alone with Dorothy on one and a quarter hands. Although she’s very attached to her son, I’ve never witnessed a serious display of affection between them. When I ask Mitch about his childhood, he says, “It was fine. Pretty ordinary. Virtually no drama.” This, I have learned over the years, is how he likes it.

  I think now about how restrained Dorothy is, and for the first time, I wonder why.

  “Did you and Mitchell argue?” Dorothy looks up from the panini and salad she’s been picking at. “Is that why he’s not coming home this weekend?”

  I blink in surprise. Has she really just blamed me for Mitch’s absence? His fake cough and lame excuses are on the tip of my tongue, but I pop another brussels sprout in my mouth and remain silent.