The Accidental Book Club

by Jennifer Scott

  “It’s a long way from me too,” Laura said, and for a second Bailey almost felt sorry for her mother, especially when she saw a single tear slip down Laura’s cheek. Had she ever seen Laura Butler the Great cry? She couldn’t think of a time.

  But then Bailey remembered the million times she’d been hurt by her mother, and her resolve hardened. “I know,” she said.

  At least Laura had the decency to not look crushed. “What about your dad?” she asked, whisking the tear away efficiently.

  Bailey shrugged. What about him? He hadn’t argued at all when Jean and Bailey approached him. He may have actually looked relieved. Which was a pretty crappy thing to do to your daughter, but Bailey supposed she couldn’t blame him. She’d directed heaping amounts of crap toward him, and he hadn’t had the alcohol to take him away like her mother did. “I don’t know,” she said to Laura. “We haven’t figured out all the details yet. But he doesn’t care. He never did.”

  “He did,” Laura said. “He does. He’s had a lot to deal with. Give him time. He’ll show it.”

  Bailey nodded, scraped the toe of one shoe down the side of the toe of the other. Silence stretched between them too long, but just before it became so long as to become uncomfortable, Bailey blurted, “You’re a horrible mother.” Laura didn’t react. She was steely, almost as if she hadn’t heard Bailey speak at all. Bailey took a breath. “But you haven’t always been. So I came to give you this, because I don’t need it anymore, and maybe you do.”

  Bailey took two steps into the room, leaned forward, and dropped Home for a Bunny on her mother’s bed. It was worn, the pages curling at the corners, the cover illustration rubbed off, and the binding loose. How Bailey had loved that book.

  Bailey took those two steps back into the doorway again as Laura laid her hand on the book. “I won’t die for you. I won’t ruin myself to save you. You understand that?” she asked.

  Laura swallowed. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  “Good,” Bailey said, and turned to leave.

  “Bailey?” Laura called, halfway pulling herself up off the bed again. Bailey turned and locked eyes with her mother. “I’m going to get better. I’m going to stay here until I’m better. And then I’ll come get you.”

  Bailey wiped her cheeks with the palm of one hand and said, “Right.”

  And then she turned and left.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The ride home was much quieter than the ride east. Dorothy and Jean both felt wrung out, having spent three days in a seedy motel, neither of them getting any sleep. Jean had spent most of her days at the hospital, sitting quietly while an aggravated and sore Bailey cussed out anyone who dared look at her wrong: Curt, the nurses, even the poor volunteer who stopped by to see if she’d like a second blanket. Jean winced every time Bailey opened her mouth, but she understood this to be part of Bailey’s demons, part of what she needed to get out. And she understood that these demons were part of why Bailey wanted to come live with her. She knew that Bailey also hoped they wouldn’t follow her there.

  In the evenings, after dinner was brought and Bailey got sleepy, Jean would go back to the motel, only to find Dorothy on the phone with a lawyer or a bondsman or with her ex-husband, trying to work out this problem or that. Together, they would grab a quick bite, and then head to Laura’s house, where they systematically packed up Bailey’s things, cramming them into old banana boxes Jean had gotten from a grocery store. Dorothy covered Bailey’s hanging clothes with trash bags and hauled them to the car in armloads while Jean wrapped knickknacks in tissue paper and placed them under soft pajamas and T-shirts. They were moving her out completely, at Bailey’s request, as if she expected to never return to her old life, not even for a day.

  Curt hadn’t argued at all about Bailey going to live with Jean. Not that she’d expected him to. In fact, she’d have been shocked if he had.

  I think that’s what’s best for all of us, he said, and though cynical Bailey clucked her tongue and said, Translation: It’s what’s best for Curt, Jean couldn’t help but feel that he was saying what he really believed. Throughout everything, the man never left his daughter’s bedside—not even to go home and change clothes—and if that didn’t speak for some sort of dedication, Jean didn’t know what would. Curt was doing the best he could.

  Every night, Jean expected to sleep like the dead, but as soon as she and Dorothy turned out the lights, her mind would start racing. What would Wayne have said about a grandchild coming to live with them? Would he approve? Could she do this? Was Bailey just coming to live with her because she figured she could get away with her outrageous antics there? Would she steal from Jean, hurt her? She could hear those last questions in Wayne’s voice.

  And soon she would hear Dorothy’s voice over the noise of the highway outside their window, drifting through the pitch-dark motel room.

  “Jean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You awake?”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “Me either.”

  There was a pause; then she heard the rattle of the air-conditioning in the unit next door coming on.

  “Jean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I miss them. The boys. Can you believe it?”

  “Yes, of course I can.”

  “They’re not all bad. I know people think they are. But they can be so loving too. They’re my boys. Do you know they make me breakfast in bed every year on my birthday? Every year. Never missed one. Bad boys wouldn’t do that, would they?”

  Jean thought it over. One of the many things she’d learned over the past couple of months with her daughter, and Curt, and especially Bailey, was that nobody was ever all bad. “I can see that,” she said. “Noah’s a good lifeguard.”

  Dorothy chuckled. “It’s easy to be good when you don’t have anyone to actually save. I don’t know how he even got the job. I had no idea he even had a lifeguard certificate. I wouldn’t be surprised if he faked one.”

  Jean turned to her side and fluffed the pillow up under her cheek. “Oh, God, that’s terrible.”

  “But it’s not, really. Noah would never let anything bad happen to an innocent person. He’d drown with them.”

  “Well, ideally, nobody drowns,” Jean said, though in the back of her head she was thinking how swimming was a lot like life that way. Nobody expected to be the one at the bottom of the pool, reaching for a hand to pull him up for air. Nobody expected to be the one who didn’t make it.

  On the third day, when Bailey was released, Curt found Laura at the Blue Serenity Rehabilitation Center again. She was in bad shape, they told him. She was at her rock bottom, they told him. She wouldn’t see him, they told him.

  But Bailey had requested to visit her mother one last time, and Jean had taken her. When Bailey finished up there, she was in no mood to talk, so they’d gone ahead and hit the road. Bailey didn’t say good-bye to Curt; she just leaned over against the car door and fell asleep. She remained that way the entire ride home.

  Likewise, Dorothy fell asleep within an hour. Jean stopped at a gas station, picked up a bag of candy-coated licorice, and kept herself awake with talk radio and sweets, her excitement and fear growing every mile they got closer to home.

  This time, Bailey didn’t stand around in the entryway, pouting. She grabbed the largest suitcase and her pillow and blanket and headed right up to her bedroom. She came back down and got her other things, one box at a time, and hefted each one up on her own.

  Jean drifted into her bedroom and opened Wayne’s top drawer. She sifted through the treasures inside until she found what she was looking for: a photo of Wayne holding baby Bailey, a stern-faced Laura peering over his shoulder. Jean could remember the day so clearly. Whereas she worried about silly things like how the word grandma made her sound old, Wayne was nothing but proud to be a grandfather. He handed out chocolates to hi
s friends; he told every cashier and waiter along the way to St. Louis that he had a new grandbaby and that she had his eyes. He couldn’t wait to hold her.

  Of course, Laura had Bailey’s naptimes so carefully controlled, they scarcely got to see the child, and this was the only photo of Wayne holding her. He’d kept it in his top desk drawer. He’d looked at it often.

  He would approve of Bailey’s new living arrangement. Jean knew that now.

  “Hey,” Jean heard, softly, from the doorway. She turned to find Bailey standing just outside.

  “Is something wrong?” Jean asked, lowering the picture into her lap.

  Bailey shook her head, then nodded. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “This. Moving in with someone I don’t really know, and I’m, like, really far away from my mom, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to love her or hate her or . . .” She shrugged again.

  “Or miss her?” Jean asked, and Bailey nodded. “For what it’s worth, it’s a little weird for me too,” Jean said, and when she moved her hand, the photo caught Bailey’s eye. She stepped into the room and tentatively lowered herself next to Jean on the bed.

  “Who’s that?” she asked.

  Jean frowned. “You don’t remember Grandpa Wayne?”

  Bailey squinted at the photo. “Maybe,” she said. “He had glasses, right?” Jean gave a sheepish grin, and Bailey took in a short breath. “Oh, right. I forgot about that. Those were his. Can I see?” She held out her hand, and Jean passed the photo to her. Bailey ran her fingers over the image. “I was tiny,” she said. “At least I think that’s me. Am I right?”

  “Our only grandchild,” Jean said. “He was very excited.”

  Bailey looked for a moment more, running her fingers over Laura, and then using her forefinger to blot out Laura’s face. “At least someone was.”

  “Bailey, I know your mother loves you. She’s just . . .” Jean trailed off. She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Laura was “just” so many things.

  “Selfish?” Bailey finished for her, and Jean had to admit, at least to herself, that selfish was one of the traits she would use to describe her daughter. Entitled was another.

  She nodded. “Yes, I suppose she is.”

  “But she’s also wonderful sometimes,” Bailey said. “Everyone wants to be like her. I wanted to, for sure. But not anymore.”

  Jean could see tears glisten in the corners of her granddaughter’s eyes once again, and could see Bailey tremble with the effort to keep them in. She wondered what it must have felt like to be Bailey—to be in constant pain and always trying to control it, always trying to maintain it.

  Actually, Jean realized, she knew exactly what that felt like.

  She stood and walked to the dresser, motioning for Bailey to join her. Bailey got up and crept to the drawer, peering in timidly.

  “You know what this is?” Jean asked, and Bailey shook her head. “This is my Crying Time drawer. These are the memories I keep of Wayne, and once a day, for one hour, I get them out and I look through them and cry over him and I just allow myself to feel terrible. But when my hour is up, I put them away and close the drawer. Crying Time over. The rest of the day is all about getting on with my life.”

  Bailey reached in and touched some objects. She picked up the pinky ring and turned it over in her hand. She felt his wallet, wore his glasses. While she did, Jean rifled through the old photos until she found half a dozen of Wayne with Laura. She held them out to Bailey.

  “If you want, you can have a Crying Time too. It might help you decide how you really feel about her. And it will be okay for you, for that one hour a day, to miss her. And to cry for her.”

  Bailey seemed to stare at the stack of photos for an incredibly long time. So long, in fact, Jean was sure she wouldn’t take them and would leave Jean standing there, holding them forever. But just as Jean was getting ready to put them back in the dresser, Bailey reached out with a trembling hand and took them.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, and Jean could see that the tears had finally spilled over. It broke Jean’s heart to finally see the tough exterior on her granddaughter begin to crumble. She had seen lots of emotions on her granddaughter—defiance, insolence, anger, hatred—but this was her first hint of sadness.

  “You’re welcome,” she said.

  Bailey started back toward the door, sniffling and swiping at her spilled tears with one hand while staring down at the photos that she held in the other. She left the room, and Jean closed the drawer, feeling a pang of loss over having given the photos away, but not necessarily a loss that wasn’t balanced out by a huge gain.

  Just as Jean closed the drawer, Bailey came back down the hall and leaned in the bedroom doorway.

  “Can I ask you for a favor?”

  “Sure. Anything,” Jean said.

  “Can I redecorate my room? Those bears are really stupid.”

  Jean laughed. “Of course you can,” she said. “It’s your room now.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  “Stop fidgeting,” Bailey whispered, leaning over to Jean, who had barely touched her wine.

  Mitzi broke away from Loretta and Dorothy’s conversation. She turned the stem of her glass between her thumb and forefinger. “What are you so nervous about, anyway?” she asked.

  “I’ve never had a celebrity in my house before,” Jean said, and her stomach rumbled. The roast lamb that she’d made for the special occasion had overcooked, and the longer it sat on top of the stove, resting, waiting, the worse Jean feared it would taste. Dry. It was going to be dry. Rubbery. Tough. She should have known better than to try something fancy. What on earth had she been thinking? She was hardly a chef, and to try to imagine herself as one was ridiculous. She should have stuck with her capers.

  Even Bailey had tried to talk her out of it. “Don’t make anything special for him,” she’d said. “Serve bologna sandwiches. On stale bread. He’ll probably like having something to complain about.”

  But had Jean listened? No, of course not. And now a Pulitzer Prize–winning author was going to be chewing on cardboard lamb in her dining room. Correction: a Pulitzer Prize–winning author was going to first have to step over the purplish stain and wine-bottle dent on her kitchen floor before chewing on cardboard lamb in her dining room. Dear God, why had she agreed to this?

  By this time, Dorothy and Loretta’s attention had been grabbed too.

  “He’s just a normal person,” Dorothy said. “Pants on one leg at a time and all that, you know.”

  “Speaking of pants,” Mitzi said, “I saw your boy Leonard the other day. Had his pants hanging half down his ass. You should tell him to pull those up, Dot.”

  “Oh, trust me, not a day goes by that I don’t. But, hey, if you think you can reason with him better than I can, I wholeheartedly invite you to try.” Jean caught a flick of Dorothy’s eye and remembered the conversation they’d had in the car on the way to St. Louis. Was Dorothy feeling judged right now? Most certainly. But was she letting it roll a little too? Jean thought so.

  “Who said anything about reason?” Mitzi said. “I’ll just come up behind him and give him a wedgie till he sings soprano.”

  Dorothy laughed. “His dad used to sing, way back in junior high. I remember. His voice was so high, and we didn’t have enough sopranos, so they had him sing with them. It was the funniest thing. He was so embarrassed, and all the boys in school gave him so much trouble over it. They called him Elaine instead of Elan.”

  “See? I’d just be helping Leonard relate to his dad on another level. Leonetta and Elaine.” She leaned over the table and clinked glasses with Dorothy, triumphant.

  “This is ridiculous,” Mitzi said, checking her watch. “I’m starving over here. I say we should eat. He’s not the pope.”

  “Even if he was the
pope, you’d still eat,” May said.

  “Only after saying the blessing,” Mitzi answered. “Come on, Jean—everything’s getting cold. What if he doesn’t show up? He’s just the type to not show up.”

  They all looked at their hostess, who was growing paler by the minute. She’d fidgeted with her book so much, she’d torn a corner of the cover off, and then had been beset with fear that he would notice and would lay into her for not respecting his book. Why? Why, in the name of the universe, had she let Bailey talk her into this?

  Bailey scooted her chair back and stood up. “I don’t have any problem with eating. Show up late, don’t get food—that’s my motto.”

  “He’ll be expecting us to eat all the food anyway,” a voice said from the end of the table, and everyone stopped and peered down at Janet, who was shaking with terror at having spoken aloud. She mashed her lips together a few times, chewing on the bottom one, then said, “He thinks women are all fat useless creatures. I mean . . .” She paused, swallowed, and Jean had an urge to go to her, to put her arm around her and tell her it was okay, she could keep talking. “It’s all in the book. You just have to read between the lines.”

  Loretta made a pfft noise. “Not too in between, and, yes, I totally agree with you.”

  Mitzi leaned her elbows, clad in a brown and maroon embroidered jacket that looked more like tapestry than clothing, on the table. “What do you bet his mother is fat? Or whoever raised him. I agree with Janet—he’s got a vendetta. If you read between the lines in this book, he’s basically saying all women are whores until they become moms, and then they’re fat, lazy whores, screwing not for money, but for timeshares and expensive cars and designer onesies for their babies. Nobody who was raised right really believes that, do they?”

  Dorothy, who had been standing, plopped back into her chair. “Hell, even my boys don’t believe that. Even Topher, when he’s not in prison, treats his girls like queens.”

  “I was more struck with Thackeray’s interpretation of Josie, the bandleader. Could he have described her as being any uglier?” Mitzi complained.