The Accidental Book Club

by Jennifer Scott

  Dorothy rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake. Noah.”

  And then Mitzi let out a snort.

  Jean held her hands out toward Thackeray, desperate. “We don’t do that here. This is a mistake. I had no idea.” She looked at Bailey for help, but Bailey was nearly doubled over at this point, her eyes watering from laughter now instead of tears. “Dammit, Bailey!”

  “Language, Jean,” Bailey said between racking laughs, and then Loretta joined in.

  Thackeray looked from the dope to Bailey, to Jean, and back again. “You are all insane,” he said, and stormed out of the house, shrugging into his sport coat as he clacked down the sidewalk. “I knew I would regret this. I—I have no words.”

  Jean could barely hear the sound of his car squealing out of the driveway over the laughter in her kitchen. Even Janet was holding one hand over her mouth with glee. Jean faced them. “You all think this is funny?” she cried.

  Mitzi nodded. “Kind of. No, more than kind of. Come on, Jean. It’s hilarious.”

  May giggled. “You know his next book is going to star a bunch of drug-smuggling book nerds, right?”

  “Oh, God,” Jean wailed. What would Wayne have thought of this debacle? He would have never wanted to show his face again. “This is illegal. There are illegal drugs on my kitchen floor.”

  “We should get T-shirts,” Loretta said. “‘Drug-smuggling Grannies Who Read.’”

  Bailey pushed her way through the knot of friends and snaked her arm around her grandmother’s elbow, her face shining with tears and glee. “You should be proud of me, Grandma Jean,” she said. “I didn’t smoke it.”

  “Well, at least there’s that,” Jean said, and she too succumbed to laughter.

  “Besides, did you hear what he said?” May asked. The ladies shook their heads. “He said he had no words.”

  “We rendered the great R. Sebastian Thackeray speechless?” Mitzi said.

  “It’s exactly what we wanted,” Dorothy said. “To shut him up.”

  Bailey’s eyes grew wide. “My plan worked!”

  And they all cheered.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  They all met in the supermarket parking lot. Janet was in her smock, as always, and as always looking a little green around the gills with the stress of being forced to be social. But she was there, twisting her apron, rubbing at the line where her forehead met her visor, casting worried looks at the front of the store. But she was there nonetheless.

  After her outburst with R. Sebastian Thackeray, the day that Jean liked to think of as the Best and Most Humiliating Day of Her Recent Life, Janet had seemed to come out of her shell a little more. They’d decided to have another meeting the next week, to make up for their botched one, and she’d actually started the conversation, her fingers shaking around the pages of the book she held open in front of her, but her voice a little clearer, a little bolder.

  That was when they’d decided to meet again today.

  “I’ve got goodies!” Mitzi called, coming out of her car, shopping bag first. Everyone had worried about Mitzi’s unending strong opinions. Everyone had rolled their eyes and sighed about her at one time or another. But one thing they could all agree on—for her harshness, there was a certain place in the group for Mitzi. She kept them in line, but she was also their biggest fan. There was no one in the group, Jean had realized, more loyal than Mitzi. And Jean also knew that Mitzi never judged anyone more harshly than she judged herself.

  She loped over toward them all, Dorothy climbing out of the passenger side of the car and following behind, a big grin on her face.

  “We ready for this?” Mitzi asked, breathlessly.

  “I think so,” Jean said, and at the same time, Bailey said, “Hell, yeah!”

  Jean glanced at Janet, who shrugged miserably. “Not really,” she said.

  “You’ll do great, honey,” May said, patting Janet’s round shoulder. “We’ve got your back.”

  “And speaking of backs, I’ve got a surprise,” Mitzi said. She set the shopping bag on the ground and bent over it, then stood, pulling a black T-shirt up over her chest and holding it out for everyone to see. “Ta-da!”

  “‘OBWB’?” Jean asked, squinting at the shirt.

  Bailey laughed, a hand over her mouth. “‘Old Biddies with Books’!” she said, pointing at the smaller letters beneath the big ones.

  “I got one for each of us,” Mitzi said. “I thought it could be the official name of our book club. What do you think?” She passed one to each of them, then pulled out a pink T-shirt and held it up to Bailey. It read: AYT: AND A YOUNG’UN TOO.

  Bailey clapped her hands and took the shirt. She reached out to hug Mitzi. “I love it!”

  “We thought this would give us some authority,” Dorothy said. “Like a uniform or something. Plus, it’s just fun.”

  The ladies stretched their new shirts on over the shirts they were wearing, then paused a moment to admire themselves.

  “We look like Hooters girls,” Loretta said, craning her neck to peer down at her shirt. “Only our boobs are lower.”

  “Speak for yourself, Lolo,” Bailey said, and Jean smiled. Bailey had been making such great progress, and Jean knew she had Loretta to thank for part of it. Bailey had really taken to Loretta—called her “Lolo” and spent many afternoons in La Ladies’ Lounge, gobbling up Flavian Munney books like candy. Man candy, Bailey called the books, and both she and Loretta worked hard to convince Jean that reading them was an integral part of Bailey’s homeschooling work. It’s part of health class, they’d argued. No, no, anatomy.

  “Should we get this over with?” Janet asked, holding her T-shirt in one hand. It wouldn’t be allowed as part of her uniform.

  “You ready?” Jean asked, and again Janet shrugged.

  “I have to be,” she said. It had been her idea. She understood the risks. But she’d said it was worth it and that hearing Thackeray’s opinion reminded her how people saw her. Standing up to him had reminded her that she was important too, and if she didn’t take care of herself, nobody would.

  “Let’s do it,” Mitzi said, and confidently led the way, grabbing Janet’s sleeve as she passed and pulling her across the parking lot.

  As soon as the front doors whooshed open in front of them, they stopped and stood still.

  “You’ve got to lead the way from here,” May said. “We don’t know where to go.”

  Janet gave one last pleading look to each of them, then squared her shoulders and marched through the doors.

  All the customers turned when they came in, and the cashiers paused. It wasn’t every day, after all, that six women, all wearing matching shirts, pounded through the front doors of the supermarket, looks of determination etched on their faces.

  They ignored the stares and followed Janet, across the front of the store, through an Employees Only doorway and up a flight of stairs to a smoky common room where several employees in various states of uniform smoked cigarettes, read the newspaper, and picked through lunch bags, their shoes off and their feet stretched out on couches. A snowy tube TV was on in one corner. Jean noticed that one whole wall was a bank of windows, what appeared to be mirrors on the other side. It dawned on her how many times she’d been watched from within this room, how she’d been monitored unseen. It was an unsettling feeling that only added to the anticipation of what they were about to do.

  “Hey, Janet, I thought you were working at five,” a woman said from over at one of the tables.

  “I am,” Janet said. “Is Rodney in his office?”

  The woman made a face. “Better not mess with him, though. He’s in a mood.”

  “He’s always in a mood,” Janet mumbled, in a surprising show of sass that Jean was totally not expecting. Janet headed ever faster toward a door in the corner of the room, the ladies following her. She knocked on the door, and then pushed it
open without being invited in.

  There sat the bald guy that Jean had seen lay into Janet twice. He was bent over his desk, writing.

  “Did I say you could come in?” he droned without even looking up. “I’m busy. Get out.”

  “We said we could come in,” Mitzi said, stepping up next to Janet and throwing an arm around her shoulder in a show of solidarity.

  Rodney looked up from what he was writing, his pen still poised over the paper. His mouth hung open just slightly, showing elongated front teeth that Jean hadn’t noticed before. His beady eyes magnified out from behind his glasses, giving him a rodent look.

  “What is this?” he asked, and Jean’s natural inclination was to shrink back, to apologize for intruding, to leave the way she’d come. But then she remembered how he’d embarrassed Janet in front of her, how he’d treated her like trash, and she forced herself to stand tall. She even shuffled a step or two toward Janet’s back.

  “We’re here to get some things straight,” Mitzi said, and then nudged Janet’s shoulder as if to cue her. Rodney’s giant eyes flicked from Mitzi to Janet.

  “Okay?” he said.

  Loretta stepped up on the other side of Janet. “She has some things to say to you,” she said. “Right?” She too glanced at Janet, who seemed to have been struck with stage fright.

  “I heard you the first time,” he said sourly, and when Janet still didn’t speak, said, “I don’t have time for this. Just leave. I’ll deal with you later. This is my office, not a place for field trips.”

  But instead of leaving, Janet stepped toward his desk, breaking free of Mitzi’s and Loretta’s arms.

  “No,” she said, her voice tiny, then again, louder. “No. I’m not going anywhere. Until . . . until you hear me out.”

  This time Rodney put down his pen and folded his hands on top of his desk. “This ought to be good,” he said. “Please, do tell me everything that’s on your mind.”

  Janet glanced over her shoulder at Jean, who gave her a nod. “First of all, I don’t like the way you talk to me. You’re mean and you yell for no reason and I’m a good employee.”

  “Pacifiers are in aisle two,” Rodney said, oh-so-sympathetically.

  “Shut it, chrome dome,” Dorothy said. She linked elbows with Loretta. Bailey stepped up and linked Loretta’s other elbow.

  “Hey, now, you have no right to come in here and—”

  “And number two, I don’t like it when you call me names. Rotunda, Frieda Fatty-pants, Large Marge. Those are harassing names, and I could sue you.”

  He held out his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Nobody’s talking about lawsuits here.”

  “I’m a lawyer and I’m telling you right now, she could sue your bald little balls off,” May said, stepping up and linking elbows with Dorothy and Mitzi, and even though it was a lie—May was a librarian, and they hadn’t said the word lawsuit even once before coming today—it was a very, very convincing lie. “So you’d better stop talking and start listening.”

  “Third, if you yell at me in front of a customer one more time . . . ,” Janet said, and then she faltered, seemingly unsure how to finish the threat.

  Finally, Jean stepped up and linked her elbow through Bailey’s remaining one. “I will never shop here again. And I will tell everyone I know to stop shopping here too. And, trust me, I know a lot of people.” Jean smiled, satisfied with herself. She’d just sounded exactly like Wayne. Quickly, she glanced up at the ceiling, sure she’d see him smiling down at her from above.

  Rodney looked nonplussed. “Are you all done now? Fine. I’ll baby your friend here. But not because I’m scared. Because I’m a nice guy.” He swished his hands at them as if ushering them out of the room. Slowly, they each let go of one another’s arms and turned to leave, shuffling forward a few steps, the whole meeting feeling a little too easy and thus anticlimactic. The way they’d talked at the last meeting, still high from their demolition of Thackeray, Jean had expected . . . more.

  But just a step or two short of the door, Janet pulled up. “No,” she said, looking at the ground and bringing her fists together across her body in a double aw-shucks move. She shook her head. “No,” she repeated. She turned, held her head high, and yelled, louder than Jean would have even believed Janet to be capable of. “No, you will not quit because you’re a nice guy. Because you’re not a nice guy. You’re going to quit because I’m bigger than you and I will kick your ass!”

  A cheer erupted, Mitzi, Dorothy, and Loretta all pumping their fists. Mitzi and Dorothy patted Janet heartily on the back. Janet smirked, her smile growing wider as it became obvious that Rodney wasn’t going to respond at all to her threat—and, in fact, he did look scared—and they all tumbled out of the office in one rising, laughing, matching-shirt-wearing pile.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  They’d all gone for pie after Janet’s confrontation with Rodney. They had stormed Gingham Kitchen, known for its buttery crust, and had each ordered a different kind of pie—strawberry, rhubarb, lemon, blackberry, banana, French silk, mincemeat. When the waitress came, they pushed all the plates to the middle of the table and each took forkfuls from every one until the plates were scraped clean and Bailey had licked her finger to pick up the crust crumbs.

  They were giddy. Silly. Best friends.

  Janet worried aloud that she would get fired, and Mitzi reminded her that having to get a job with a better manager might not be a bad thing, anyway.

  “Besides, you finally stood up for yourself. Doesn’t that count for anything?” Mitzi had added, and Janet had smiled, flushed with happiness. She had a crooked front tooth—in two years of club meetings, Jean had never seen that before now.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Actually, it counts for a lot.”

  “Okay, okay,” May had finally said when Loretta mentioned needing to get home. “But we need to decide on our next book.”

  “Flavian is in training for a marathon right now,” Loretta suggested, and someone threw a wadded-up napkin at her.

  “A looove marathon,” Bailey said in a low, sultry voice, and giggled.

  “There’s a Jeremiah Manning biography out,” Dorothy said. “I just started it. It’s really good.”

  “Jeremiah Manning,” Jean repeated. “Where have I heard that name before?”

  “He’s that congressman, you know, the one with the hair?” May said, pantomiming big fluffy hair.

  “He’s the one who cheated on his wife with a whole bevy of frat boys,” Mitzi added. “A real bonehead. Why in the heck are you reading that drivel, Dot?”

  Dorothy shrugged. “Because he’s an idiot. It’s like a train wreck. Gotta watch it.”

  “How are his abs?” Loretta asked.

  “Ew. No,” Dorothy said.

  “We could read it and then get him to come to our meeting,” Bailey suggested, and this time she was hit by several wadded-up napkins. “You’re right,” she said, giggling pointedly at Jean. “We don’t have enough pot for visitors.”

  Bailey was like a new person, Jean noted. She still had her moments. She screamed at her father on the phone pretty much every time he called. She wrote dark and depressing poetry on her bedroom walls with a Sharpie marker. She slept too late and ate too much and never cleaned anything.

  But she was trying. And given the girl that she had been at the beginning of the summer, trying was the best Jean could hope for.

  They came home after the pie and went to their separate corners as they so often did. Bailey disappeared into her room, and Jean into hers. Out of habit, Jean kicked off her shoes and went straight to Wayne’s top drawer. She pulled it open and fished out an item—this time, a love letter from when they were in college. The paper it was written on was yellowed and fragile, the ink of his pen softened with age.

  She carried the letter over to her bed and leaned back against her pillows, unfolding the pape
r and holding it to her chest. She didn’t have to read it to know what it said. She’d memorized it months ago:

  My Lovely Jeanie,

  Last night when I proposed, I honestly wasn’t sure how it would go. We’d never even talked about marriage. I had no idea how you felt about it! Maybe you were one of those women who only worried about doing it all for herself, and didn’t want to get married. Maybe you wanted to get married, but not to me. Maybe you wanted to get married, but not now. I was taking a huge risk! Putting my heart out there, leaving it for you to step on and squash.

  I knew this, but in the end I decided it was worth it to find out if, by chance, you were one of those girls who did want to get married, and maybe even married to me, right now.

  I am over the moon that you said yes. Say it again—yes and yes and yes. Say it on our wedding day. Say it in our home. Say it in every way you can, and say it until death do us part. And even then, say it again. That’s all I ask.

  I love you.

  Your future husband,

  Wayne

  Jean circled her hands around the note and pressed it to her chest. “Yes and yes and yes,” she whispered, just as she always did when she revisited this particular letter. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  She checked the clock and waited for the tears to come, for Crying Time to begin.

  But they didn’t. It didn’t.

  She had said yes and yes and yes. She had said it on their wedding day and in their home and in every way she could and until he died and even then again. She had done what he asked. She had been the wife he wanted.

  She was finally, just now, sure of it, and the tears never came.

  And she knew with a certainty she’d not felt since that first day when that first doctor had looked across his desk at them so solemnly, that her Crying Time was finished. It was time to move on.

  And someday it would be finished for Bailey too. And Jean would be there when it was.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Dear Margaret Wise Brown: