The Oakdale Dinner Club

by Kim Moritsugu

  He tore his eyes away from Mary Ann. “With the roof. You go ahead, Alice.” He reached out an arm to steady Mary Ann’s progress. “Watch your step there, Ma’am.”

  Alice turned around on the narrow steps to shoot Mary Ann a look and caught a wink from her.

  Tom said, “Permit me to point out the fine brick and tile work on the turrets up here, Mary Ann. The degree of care and pride with which the craftsmen of old approached their work was such that they exacted the same standards of perfection on every part of the building, including sections that no one but roof repairmen would ever see up close.”

  “I bet they worked nice and slow, too,” Mary Ann said. “Made sure they did it right, and didn’t rush. I hate it when men rush.”

  Alice thought she heard Carl chuckle, but Mary Ann affected not to notice. Her performance was all for Tom.

  “Why,” Mary Ann said, “I wouldn’t be surprised if the workmen made better love to this building than they did to their wives.”

  Alice suppressed a groan and led the way onto the roof, where they all squinted in the sunlight. Except for Mary Ann, who had brought sunglasses in her purse. She put them on, raised her head, and pointed her chin at the sky. “What a beautiful day!”

  The two men obediently looked upward, and Alice said, “How’s it going with the replacement roof tiles, Carl? Any luck finding some to match?”

  Carl and Tom turned to Alice and Carl answered her question. But Mary Ann kept her head thrown back, in contemplation of the clouds, for a full minute.

  Alice called Mary Ann when she arrived at her office. “What was that act at the station?”

  “What act?”

  “Come on. The disrobing, the cloud gazing, the double entendres — what gives?”

  “By the way, I know who you’re after, and it’s okay. I can keep your secret.”

  “What?”

  “Your mystery guy is Carl, right? The foreman?”

  “No, Mary Ann.”

  “I could tell you’d gone to extra trouble with your appearance — the earrings and all — and he’s not bad if you’re into tool belts. Which I didn’t think you were, but that’s okay. People change.”

  “Carl is not my guy.”

  “Then who is?”

  “I can’t talk about him yet. I don’t want to jinx it. And my skin’s probably too pigmented for a relationship anyway. But what about Tom? Did your heavy-handed wiles work? Did he jump you on the way back to the office?”

  “You’ve never seen anyone so businesslike.”

  “What was the routine with your neck, anyway?”

  “That was throat-baring.”

  “I’m sure it was, but why?”

  “I learned about it on a wildlife documentary. When you expose your most vulnerable body part, you imply your willingness to submit sexually.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “I think Tom may prefer a more dominant type.”

  “Carl seemed like he might be interested in having you submit.”

  “At least I went after Tom like I said I would.”

  “And what comes next?”

  “Drew. At the next dinner club meeting.”

  13

  October 2010

  The Mediterranean restaurant had rough plaster walls, rustic wooden tables, big windows that opened onto Cornelia Street, and it was peopled with well-heeled West Village types who made Alice feel, as usual, that she didn’t fit in, that she was a refugee from her own planet, but Jake showed no such discomfort.

  His tone with the hostess was engaging, he ordered a half bottle of red wine with a confidence that wasn’t overbearing, he won over Alice and the waiter both with his easy informality when they made their choices. And was it the wine, or her excitable state, or was the food incredible? Sweet sautéed cauliflower with pine nuts and raisins. A plate of crisp fried artichokes redolent of a good, green olive oil.

  “The food’s so good,” she said to Jake. “I don’t usually eat this well at lunchtime.”

  “Me either. Except when I’m on a bike tour. Our customers like their food high end.”

  “How did you end up in that line of work, anyway?”

  Jake filled her in on his past, on his three years at UCLA, his realization that he was not academically inclined or gifted, his failure to graduate, the extended period he spent leading excursions out of a bike shop in San Francisco, his travels in Europe, his eventual return home, and the job with the tour company based in New York.

  He spoke, and Alice pictured him, younger, riding a bike on a river path, his long blond hair flowing behind him, a blue bandanna tied around his forehead. He wore a faded T-shirt, baggy shorts, and hiking boots, and his long leg muscles flexed as he pedalled. He made a joke and laughed when he passed the other riders, and his easy grace made every woman on the trip want to sleep with him.

  “A lot of aimless wandering is what I’ve been doing,” Jake said. “And somewhere in there, I lost my hair and forgot to become very good at any one thing. What about you?”

  Alice woke from her daydream of the Jake that was, and faced the current Jake, bald and self-deprecating.

  “Tell me your life story,” he said. “I’ll bet it’s been more directed than mine.”

  Alice had thought she could handle being a single mother. When, at age thirty-eight, she’d discovered she was pregnant — the result of a one-nighter with a Danish colleague at a conference in Berlin — she’d worried and wondered, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to keep the baby, to embark on a new kind of journey.

  She was living in England still, teaching at the University of Leicester and directing archeological digs with student labour between terms. But she’d gotten a little old to be living in a caravan beside a dig site during her summers. And she didn’t much like the image of herself she sometimes caught reflected in the wavy glass window panes of the classroom doors — of a no-longer-young woman in reproduction Roman-style earrings who eyed the visiting scholars and new professorial hires each year in search of a keen mind and an unassuming smile to sleep with for a term or two.

  The pregnancy that would be Lavinia felt right, true, fated, the solution to her perpetual I-can’t-imagine-living-with-anyone-but-do-I-really-want-to-be-alone-forever? dilemma. So she quit smoking, started eating right, and breezily informed her faraway parents and local friends of the impending event. She saw no need to notify her already forgotten lover of the conception, and she sailed through the pregnancy with an air of pleasant anticipation. She took birthing classes with a friend from the university, and outfitted her flat with the necessary equipment. She read baby books — British and American ones both. She was prepared.

  No, she wasn’t. Who could be prepared for a baby who alternated between adorable and deplorable, who cried for hours on end, who wouldn’t lie still in her stroller for more than a minute, who wouldn’t sleep if you laid her down, who drove Alice insane?

  She got through the first few weeks of Lavinia’s life without realizing how difficult and all-consuming single motherhood was. Her mother came over for ten days to help out, and Alice leaned on her, and was distracted by her friends’ drop-in visits, by the congratulatory emails and phone calls, by her physical recovery from the unremarkable but nevertheless exhausting childbirth she’d experienced. By week three, though, after her mother had left, Alice leapt at the offer made to her by retired Mrs. Willoughby from the downstairs flat. “You can always leave the little darling with me for an hour if you need to run down to the shops, dear,” she said. “I’m happy to mind her.”

  Alice did leave Lavinia. Started looking forward to leaving her. Began to build her entire day around the high point when she could drop Lavinia with Mrs. Willoughby, walk away, and go outside to breathe the air of freedom, of childless people, if only for a short time.

  When Lavinia was five weeks old, Mrs. Willoughby took sick — nothing serious, a head cold. She wouldn’t be able to mind Lavinia for a few days. So sorry, dear. And Alice fo
und herself slumped in a chair in her sitting room, holding Lavinia in her arms, and sobbing at the thought that her future consisted of dependence on inconstant babysitters, of being chained to this needy creature, of an end to the now-guilty pleasures of solitude.

  She loved Lavinia, but she couldn’t manage her alone.

  Once she put her mind to the task, moving back to Oakdale wasn’t difficult. An American archeologist she’d dug with in France was at NYU and recommended her for a teaching job there that would allow her to do some low-level research if she would take on a dreary freshman-level ancient history survey course. There was an infant daycare attached to Oakdale Elementary School that took babies as young as six months. Her flat in Leicester fetched a fair price, enough that she didn’t need to worry about moving expenses. Her parents offered to have her move in with them (she declined, with a shudder) and graciously pretended they had no need for their five-year-old Honda, were about to buy a new one, could give her the old car.

  All she needed was a place to live. She emailed Mary Ann’s mother, Sarah, and asked if she knew, through her real-estate brokering, of any available flats in a house with a yard. And she felt like she’d won the lottery when Sarah wrote back to say she’d recently sold her family house, and moved into a duplex near the park. The second-storey apartment in the duplex was vacant and the rent was reasonable. She had some furniture leftover from the old house, too, that she could use to furnish it, if Alice wanted.

  Lavinia, meanwhile, became more human with every passing week. She began to smile, to emit a gurgly laugh, to lay her head on Alice’s shoulder, and cling, sighing, when Alice held her. All of which led Alice to love Lavinia more than she had ever loved anyone.

  Lavinia fussed and fussed during the transatlantic flight over. Alice offered her frequent access to the breast for soothing purposes, her fellow passengers be damned, and Lavinia grabbed at it every time, only to spit out Alice’s chewed nipple in anger and disgust a few seconds later. The sequence was repeated so often over the eight-hour flight that Alice came close to screaming. Was appalled to find herself snapping — a whisper-snap, but still a snap — at Lavinia, “What the fuck do you want?” in the angry, I’m-losing-it tone she hated to hear herself use, the tone whose too-frequent appearance had spurred her to make this trip, to go home, for Christ’s sake, to boring old Oakdale.

  Where much had changed, she saw when she arrived. The traffic lights were bigger and bolder, the street signs were new, made up in an unfamiliar typeface and colour. Many of the old houses were done over, remodelled.

  Sarah welcomed Alice and her suitcases and car seat and stroller at her door, invited her to sit in a wicker chair on the front porch, took Lavinia and exclaimed over her at length, offered Alice lemonade and homemade peach cobbler. “Run inside whenever you’re ready and take a look at the apartment,” she said. “I’m sure you want to see it alone first — I know what it’s like to have a landlady hovering.”

  After consuming a delicious bowlful of peaches and cream, Alice accepted Sarah’s offer, excused herself, opened the unlocked apartment door, and climbed the narrow steps to the second floor. The house was not as old as some in Oakdale — it dated from the nineteen-twenties. Much of its interior was original, including hardwood floors, white plaster walls, and a large bay window. The light in the living room was indirect (there was a screened porch at the front, above Sarah’s) but bright enough. A cross breeze blew through open windows. The kitchen contained old but sparkling appliances — a gas stove, a fridge that was all curves and chrome trim. The bigger bedroom featured more wood floor, a big bed and boxspring, a painted white dresser, and muslin curtains pulled back from two windows that overlooked the yard. Lavinia’s bedroom adjoined, small and square, and was already set up with the crib and changing table Alice’s mother had ordered for her from Sears.

  Alice ran downstairs and onto the porch. “It’s lovely,” she said. “Thank you.”

  “If you don’t like the furniture, or if there’s anything you want to add —”

  “Nothing but the few boxes of linens and keepsakes I’ve got coming over from Leicester.”

  Sarah said, “I feel awkward saying this, but I’m afraid I have a few house rules, and I think we should review them at the outset.”

  “Let’s have them.”

  “Sound really carries in this house, so I’ll have to ask you not to play music loudly.”

  “That’s fine. Loud music is best enjoyed in a closed car, don’t you find? But if the floors are thin, I worry about Lavinia’s crying. She does go on. Often in the middle of the night.”

  “I can live with that. Don’t feel self-conscious about it. I’m not much of a sleeper anyway.”

  “Insomnia?”

  “Call it what you want. I put it down to age. I end up watching television at four a.m. more often than I’d like.”

  “Any good programs on then?”

  “No.”

  “Not in England, either. Four a.m. tends to be one of my bad times with Lavinia.”

  “It must be difficult being the only parent.”

  Alice couldn’t withstand Sarah’s sympathetic gaze for more than a few seconds without wanting to bawl like Lavinia. “One makes one’s choices.”

  “Coming back was a good choice.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  “Enough of that. It pleases me to have you here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “No more thanking.”

  “Okay. I’ll stop. What are the other rules?”

  “Those were the only two. No loud music and no excessive thanking.”

  Alice smiled. “In that case, I think I’m going to like it here.”

  The next day, Alice spent some time with her parents, who doted on Lavinia, served Alice a simple lunch, and made it clear that while she could call on them in an emergency, their lives were regimented and full, and their available babysitting hours were few. Though a regular two-hour stint every Monday evening from six to eight might work, what did she think?

  The day after that, Alice took Lavinia, in a stroller — she could last short walks now without major crying jags, as long as she was recently fed and the weather wasn’t extreme — to visit Mary Ann.

  She felt a twinge of anxiety on the doorstep of the grand house on Green Street. What would she and Mary Ann talk about? And what were the chances that there remained a square inch of common ground between them? Since Mary Ann had become the sort of prosperous wife and mother of leisure who busied herself with decorating projects and volunteer committees.

  They could always talk about the baby, even if this one courtesy visit proved to be their last for the next twenty years. Adult company was adult company — better than being alone with Lavinia, staring at the walls in the new flat, and worrying that the decision to move home had not been a solution to her single motherhood problem at all, but was a compounding of her original mistake.

  Since they’d last met, perky young blonde Mary Ann had become a perky middle-aged dyed blonde who proclaimed joy at the sight of Alice with babe in arms. “You’re so thin!” she cried, when Alice had struggled inside the house with all her gear.

  “Caregiving has had that effect on me. The draining of my life forces effect. Did it you, as well?”

  “I wish. I’ve carried around ten extra pounds since Kayla was born. I’m so happy to see you! Come on in.”

  “Thanks for inviting me.” Alice switched the bundle that was Lavinia from one arm to the other and followed Mary Ann into a large sitting room that was joined to her large kitchen. “I hope I’m not keeping you from something.”

  “Not at all. I’ve got loads of free time this month, with the boys away at camp, and Kayla doing the tennis program at the club. How often can I reorganize their dresser drawers or get a pedicure? Another few weeks of this and I might have to consider doing something meaningful with my life.”

  Alice smiled uncertainly. Was that last comment meant to be a joke?


  “Please have a seat anywhere,” Mary Ann said.

  Alice bypassed two loveseats and crouched down on the area rug between them. With one hand, she eased her diaper bag off her shoulder, extracted a receiving blanket, and began to lay it down.

  Mary Ann reached out. “Can I take her?”

  Alice handed Lavinia over and smoothed out the blanket. “Put her down any time you want to. She’s usually good for at least two minutes before she needs to be picked up again.”

  Mary Ann held Lavinia in the crook of her arm. “There’s coffee made if you want some. And I baked some Stilton shortbread for you. Gosh, she’s beautiful, Alice. Look at those eyes. And her eyelashes.”

  “She has her moments.”

  “She’s heavy, isn’t she? Solid.”

  “I know. My back kills. Would you mind if I made myself some tea?”

  Mary Ann said of course not, told Alice where to find things, stayed put, cradled the baby.

  “This is quite the house,” Alice said, when she’d put the kettle on. “It’s like something out of a real estate porn website.”

  “Bob calls it my never-ending project. I work hard to keep it looking good, but I’m embarrassed sometimes when people without money see it.”

  “People like me, you mean?”

  “I’m sorry. How insensitive of me. Are you broke?”

  “No, I’m not. The move was a little costly, but I’ve saved some, all those years of being single and childless. Mind you, I’ll never afford a palace like this, not in my lifetime.”

  Mary Ann grimaced. “Do you take one look around and feel the urge to man the barricades?”

  “No, but I never aspired to this. Not that there’s anything wrong with people who did. Who do. Help me pull my foot out of my mouth, will you?”

  “I guess I did aspire.”

  Alice let the “did” go by without comment. “Do you miss your kids when they’re away?”

  “Less this week than the week before. It’s strange how quickly I get used to not having them here. Considering that my life revolves around them the rest of the time.”