The Rejected Writers' Book Club (Southlea Bay)

by Suzanne Kelman

  Deciding to avoid the public, I buried myself in the back office. I was sorting the mail when I suddenly noticed Ruby-Skye, one of our story-time readers, glaring at me from the children’s area. Ruby, as we called her for short, was a typical example of the assortment of characters that make up our little town. A genuine hippie with heart, she left her knitting emporium twice a week to read stories to the young folk in our community. She was a notorious local character and was always dressed in a very eclectic style. Today was no exception. She was wearing an ankle-length orange wool poodle coat with large green pompoms that dangled from it like branches. On her head sat a green knitted hat embellished with an enormous emerald-colored peacock feather that came to a dramatic point on her forehead and wouldn’t have looked out of place on Robin Hood. She was adorned in a number of glistening and clattering accessories that she was well known for. In fact, not unlike the silver-belled ponies at the circus, she was often heard coming well before she arrived. I’m not sure if the children came to listen to stories or just to stare at Ruby’s outfits as she jingled, glistened, and bobbled in the sunlit windows. As I caught her eye again, she was smiling and nodding from behind a display of Disney bears that she was building into a pile. She looked around covertly, then urgently beckoned a multi-gold-bangled arm toward me.

  I moved across the library, and she pulled me in quickly, close to her. She handed me an open book of Goodnight Moon, pretending to point to something in it as she whispered, “I heard you were invited. You’re coming, aren’t you?”

  Her peacock feather spiraled balletically as her head started a long, slow nod, and, mesmerized, my head started to bob too, even though I’d no idea what she was talking about.

  “Coming?” I eventually inquired.

  “Shhh,” she responded, quickly looking over her shoulder and circling me around into a display of Winnie-the-Pooh bears as the pompoms on her coat bounced wildly. “We never know who’s listening. Keep your voice down. Today’s meeting is going to be very special, and Doris told me you were coming.”

  Suddenly, the penny dropped.

  “Oh, Doris’s rejection group.”

  She put a finger to her lips. “Right on,” she whispered, smiling. “We have to be careful,” she warned in her hushed, mysterious way. “Not everyone can be rejected. If we just shout about it, everyone will come running to join.” She emphasized “rejected” as if she were talking about being crowned homecoming queen. Her face broke out into a benevolent smile as she tapped my arm and added, “You are one of the lucky ones, man.”

  Smiling and nodding, I feigned understanding, even though, once again, I was completely stumped by the curious intrigues that I encountered while navigating my way through small-town life.

  Chapter Two

  LEMON CAKE & LOONIES

  Sitting in the car before venturing to Doris’s, I tried in vain to spruce up my appearance. Reapplying “Shimmering Pink Ice” to my lips in the rearview mirror, I noticed my hair still looked a real fright. My clothes had decided to dry in creases that lay in accordion pleats around my body. Sighing, I conceded that this was as good as it got.

  When I stepped out, I was immediately greeted by Doris’s four overexcited dogs. They jumped up and covered me with mud and sloppy kisses.

  Doris had a pleasant country-style home and yard with little whimsical wooden doodads smiling up at you from every corner of her garden, each of them wishing you a pleasant day in one form or another.

  I rang the doorbell and the dogs disappeared, distracted by a brave rabbit that had appeared in the garden. I took a deep breath and tried ineffectively to brush off my now dog-muddied clothes.

  As the door opened, a hand-painted angel with the words “Welcome Friends” swung back and forth. The face that greeted me, however, was definitely not friendly or welcoming. It belonged to a miniature stick insect of a woman with wiry white hair and enormous glasses that emphasized her heavily wrinkled face. She blinked twice and looked me up and down. By the look on her face, I could tell she wasn’t that impressed with what she saw. I smiled pleasantly, but before I had a chance to speak, I heard Doris shout from somewhere in the house.

  “Who is it, Ethel?”

  “It’s some homeless woman,” the bespectacled scarecrow responded. “She looks like she needs money and a good wash.”

  And I thought I’d already reached the lowest point of my day.

  Doris bustled up to the door with a change purse and a concerned look. When she realized it was me, I could tell she was more than a little bemused by my appearance.

  “Hello, Doris,” I said in as airy a fashion as I could muster, trying to shake off the homeless comment.

  “Why, this isn’t a homeless woman, Ethel,” said Doris, with just a hint of disappointment. “It’s only Mrs. Johnson from the library. I invited her today.” Doris looked me up and down again and inquired with obvious concern, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said overly enthusiastically.

  “Come on in and have some tea and cake. You look as if you need it.” She pushed open the door and waddled away.

  Following her up the hallway, I was flanked all the way by Ethel, who warily eyed me in a sort of “guard the silver” mode.

  The front room was stuffed to the brim with ladies all chatting excitedly while seated in a circle on an odd assortment of chairs. Each one juggled a dainty teacup and a large slab of cake on a little rosebud-patterned tea plate. Doris’s décor was . . . eclectic, to say the least. Some seventies pieces, a green sofa covered in clear plastic, and furry orange bucket chairs, for example, mixed with white wicker furniture and country florals. It was if two completely different styles were in the process of fighting to the death.

  I finally caught up with Doris as she was starting to cut me a very large slice of lemon cake. “Are you sure you want me here today?” I felt acutely self-conscious of my appearance. “I got caught in a downpour this morning before work. I could always come back another time, maybe later when I’ve had a chance to change—”

  She cut me off. “Nonsense. You look . . . fine,” she retorted, though I noticed she sounded far from convinced as she forced me down into a flowery bedroom chair and handed me the hunk of cake and a brimming teacup. As she unfolded one of her dainty lace napkins and placed it on my knee, she scrutinized me, as if considering if it was worth paying the asking price for a battered bunch of bruised bananas. Then, standing back to view me from a distance, she muttered to herself, “No, that will never do.”

  She pulled a large tablecloth from her tea table drawer, unfurled it, and tucked it firmly into the top of my blouse. “That should help. After all, it’s only my rejected ladies,” she pointed out offhandedly as she carried on dressing me.

  Once she’d wobbled away, I looked down at myself. The tablecloth now shrouded me like a poncho and was obviously in keeping with the seventies ensemble. It was lime-green and decorated with hideous orange and brown flowers. In one hand, I held high the teacup, and in the other I balanced the huge slab of cake. I looked like a psychedelic Lady Justice, except right then, I actually envied the fact she was blind.

  Looking around the group of ladies as they nibbled on their slabs of cake, sharing and savoring nuggets of village gossip, I found I knew most of them, at least by sight.

  Ruby was also there. It was rumored she’d lived a very wild life in her twenties being a part of the sixties music scene. It was also rumored her name was really Brenda, but she had changed it to Ruby-Skye during that time. She liked to brag she’d once dated Bob Dylan and insisted she helped him write the lyrics for “Blowing in the Wind.” She also claimed she’d been on a crazy road of drugs and rock ’n’ roll until she’d discovered knitting in her thirty-second year, professing that yarn had been her savior and the only way to channel her wayward energy into something productive. She may have been a knitted hippie at heart, but if you were looking for someone to lead a revolution, she was your gal. She’d never married, and when pe
ople asked her about it, she would say, “Why would I do something like that?!” as if you had just asked her to eat dirt. When she’d claimed this year on her seventieth birthday that it was time for her to start slowing down, no one had much believed her, especially as she’d celebrated it by dancing naked on the beach at midnight and then skinny-dipping in the bone-chilling Sound. I could hear her talking about patterns to a woman next to her. I didn’t know that woman, but she was knitting a blue matinee coat using sparkly purple needles.

  Across the room was Flora, who worked at the florist and was painfully shy. Gangly and awkward, she stared at the ground and sipped delicately from her teacup. She’d been a teenager the first time I’d met her when her family had moved to the island from a large city on the East Coast. Floating into the library, she’d been not unlike an uncomfortable waif out of a Dickens novel; with a pair of oversized spectacles perched on her nose, she’d given the appearance of a scared owl. She had the palest hair that hung long and limp down her back and rice-paper skin to match. I remembered thinking if I could hold her up to the light, I would be able to see right through her. That first day she’d drifted up to my desk looking for Anne of Green Gables. That was five years ago, and even though her body had grown into that of a woman, she still looked exactly the same: a shy, gentle creature, uncomfortable in her own skin. You couldn’t help but adore her.

  As I tried to get her attention, the door burst open. The Labette twins had arrived, identically dressed, as usual. Always impeccable, they wore midnight-blue suits trimmed in shell-pink with matching blue hats, white silk blouses, and pumps. They arrived accompanied by Doris’s mother, whom everyone lovingly referred to as Gracie. The three of them entered carrying a pile of colorful packages, creating a flurry of activity as they juggled them to administer heartfelt hugs.

  “Darlinnngs, so sorry we kept y’all waiting,” said Lavinia in her strong Southern drawl. And as twins often do, Charlotte, whom everyone called Lottie, picked up her sister’s sentence.

  “I told her, I told Lavinia, I said, ‘Lavinia, we are going to be late unless you get your patootie into gear.’ I prayed all the way from town, ‘Lord, please don’t let us be late and have us keep those dear ladies waiting. That would never be part of God’s plan.’”

  “I’m so sorry, y’all,” interjected Lavinia, picking up Lottie’s thread. “I just needed to poke my head into Claudette’s for one tiny minute. She’s having a sale, and her new season’s stock is just too divine. Besides, Lottie, we would never have met up with Doris’s momma if we had been here on time. Have you thought that might have been God’s real plan?”

  Lavinia and Lottie were about as different as two people who just happen to look identical could be. Lottie was a deeply spiritual woman while Lavinia had three husbands before her twenty-fifth birthday. I knew them both as library regulars. We never had to try to figure out which twin had ordered what; it was always pretty obvious to us. If it was entitled A Day Close to God, it was for Lottie; if it was called A Night Close to a God, it was for Lavinia.

  It was widely known they had moved to our sleepy little town in the mid-1970s, running from some scandal of Lavinia’s, who, on arriving here, had run right into another one. Within two weeks of moving to the village, she’d started a notorious affair with the mayor of Southlea Bay that steamrolled him right out of office and back to his family home in Georgia. The last thing he’d promised Lavinia before leaving was that he would divorce his wife and then return to marry her. That had been the last time anyone had ever heard from him. The embarrassment of being jilted so publicly had been the final straw. Lavinia had vowed never to marry again, and Lottie had vowed to help her keep that promise. They used their father’s money to buy an elegant house with a stunning view of the Sound on the edge of town. Though Lottie had entertained a couple of suitors over the years, she’d remained single in order to keep her eye on her troublesome twin. And apparently, if the rumors were true, Lavinia had given her sister a run for her money over the years. The poor woman had probably never gotten off her knees.

  Pulling a stunning periwinkle-blue silk scarf from black-and-white tissue paper, Lavinia wrapped it around her neck with a flurry and then posed like a twenties movie star, saying, “Look what we got for a steal at Claudette’s.”

  I chuckled to myself. Claudette’s was an exclusive ladies’ dress shop with a door that had to be unlocked to let customers in, and what Lavinia was calling a steal was probably what the rest of us used to buy a week of groceries.

  “Never mind your purchases, Lavinia,” Lottie admonished her. “We should get Doris’s momma settled. Where would you like to sit, Gracie, dear?”

  The room fell silent.

  “Ohh,” Gracie squealed. She seemed to be enjoying all the attention. “I’ll take my usual seat.” She pointed and then floated over to a wicker chair with delicate peach cushions and gently settled herself down.

  You couldn’t have gotten much different than Gracie and her daughter, Doris. Doris was a large, rotund woman with a brusque manner. Gracie was gentle with lively blue eyes and delicate, porcelain features. She traveled softly through the world with a childlike awe. She’d moved into her daughter’s house ten years before, when Doris’s father had passed away. Insisting on moving all of her furniture in with her, the country florals were hers.

  “At last,” said Doris as she bustled in from the kitchen. “I thought you ladies were never going to get here. We do start at five o’clock, you know.”

  Lavinia melted like butter and laid on the Southern charm. She took Doris’s hand and looked directly into her eyes. “Doris, darling, it’s all my fault, and I’m so sorry. You’re a wonderful woman and a sweetheart for waiting for us. But we did find your momma off on one of her little walks, and we decided to stop and bring her home.”

  Doris’s face softened.

  “Okay,” she said, a little less surly. “Thank you for that. Now we need to get going.”

  She cut two slices of lemon cake for the sisters, who thanked her with the same glassy smile, placed them directly on a side table, and never touched a morsel.

  Doris started the meeting by banging a gavel on her wooden tea table. “Let’s get started. First, the promise.”

  Each woman responded instinctively by joining hands and reciting together a pledge.

  “Selected for rejection

  We reach for true connection

  Choosing a path of celebration

  As we bond with true affection.”

  Finishing, they burst into spontaneous applause and hugged each other. As bizarre as this whole thing seemed to me, I envied their obvious care for one another.

  Doris brought them back to order with her gavel again, placed her hand on the top of my head, and announced in a tone that sounded as if she were about to auction me off to the highest bidder, “I want to introduce you all to our special guest today. She’s going to help us with our little plan. Mrs. Johnson, from the library.” Everybody started to clap again, and Doris leaned into me and whispered, “I wouldn’t stand up if I were you, dear.” Then she readjusted my tablecloth to cover the rest of my blouse and stood back to study her work with a hesitant smile.

  Not knowing what else to do, I lifted my hand in a pathetic little wave.

  “Janet, let me introduce you to the ladies of the Rejected Writers’ Book Club. I’m sure you know Ruby-Skye, as she volunteers at the library.” I nodded in her direction, as Doris went on, “Ruby writes horror.” I had to take a minute to let that digest. So, the woman who read stories to our under-fives . . . wrote . . . horror.

  “They’re awful”—Ruby grinned ruefully, then sipped her herbal tea—“but oh, so much fun to write.”

  “Next to her is Lavinia—I’m guessing it wouldn’t take much to guess what she writes.”

  Lavinia laughed. “Romance with a good dose of spice, that’s what I like to call them. They’re the kind of books Lottie wouldn’t be caught dead reading. It’s my own little wicke
d pleasure.”

  Lottie tapped her sister on the hand, saying, “Lavinia,” with the tone of mock horror. Lottie jumped in, saying, “I’ve written a lovely piece about the Psalms and how they can help us find peace in a troubled world. I think it’s perfect, but nobody seems to want it. But I don’t care; now I’m part of this group. We’re just so happy sharing our work with each other, who’d want to be published?”

  Doris continued. “Then there is Momma. She’s writing her memoirs—and a beautiful job she is doing of them too.”

  Gracie’s face lit up. “All about the work I did during World War II. I was living in England when I met Doris’s father. He was this handsome American GI that swept into our small town with his bubblegum and Hershey bars.” She lifted her shoulders and giggled like a schoolgirl before adding, “And swept me right off my feet.”

  She was enchanting.

  “Apparently the market is just flooded with World War II memoirs, and my story just isn’t . . . interesting enough.” Her voice trailed off, and there was an intense sadness in her blue eyes.

  Lottie, who was seated close in one of the furry orange bucket chairs, patted her hand and reassured her. “But you get to share your stories with us, and we love them.”

  Gracie seemed to brighten and lightly covered Lottie’s hand with her own.

  “Next to Momma is Flora,” announced Doris. “She’s the poet of our group.”

  Flora flushed a deep crimson. “I’ve written 123 of them. I like to write poetry,” Flora squeaked out in a tiny voice.

  Lavinia jumped in to help Flora, who had started to squirm with the attention. “But poetry is hard to sell, so we get to hear her poems here. And we love them.”

  The woman with the sparkly knitting needles piped up, “I’m Annie.” A bright, warm smile spread across her ruddy cheeks. She had round, soft features, and her head was a mass of tight white curls. She wore bright-white sneakers and a plum velour lounge suit. She hooked a stitch. “I’m not as talented as the rest of them, but—”