The Book Club

by Mary Alice Monroe

  “You mean all this time she’s cut herself off even from her family?” asked Eve, frowning with concern.

  “Yes. Completely,” she replied, eyes on the letter. “Ah, here we are.” Midge shifted in her seat, cleared her throat and read.

  “I needed to get away from R.J. for a while. And even from the children. Far away from the isolation I’ve been living in. I know you think it strange that I escape isolation by going to deeper isolation. But I’m not! That’s the surprise. You see, up here I’m with myself in a way I never was before. Don’t laugh, but I’m always singing that song we liked so much in chorus in high school, ‘Getting to Know You.’ It makes me feel happy somehow.

  “Because I’m getting to know me. It’s been quite a month. Sometimes I’m a sad, silly little girl, pouting and crying and kicking my heels. Other times I’m very weary and ancient and can do little more than lie on the deck and let the insects feast. I have no distractions so daily I face all the characters that run around inside me. I hear my mother and father a lot. They’re so judgmental all the time, so very critical. But their voices are getting quieter and quieter. I don’t seem to care so much whether they’d approve anymore, and I mean that in a good way. They’re gone now, and this is my life.

  “And, of course, I hear R.J. and the children in my mind, too. When I want to skinny-dip in the lake—yes I do!—I sometimes hear the children’s horrified voices in my head, ‘Oh, Mother, how could you embarrass me like that!’ Or R.J.’s, ‘What kind of an example are you setting?’ I laugh now thinking how angry he’d be with me! Tra la!

  “I’m not crazy. Really, Midge. I’m okay. I hope you’ll understand most of all. Sign me up for a few of those self-exploration sessions you’re always trying to get me to join. I’ll do it with you when I come back. I promise. Whenever that is. I can’t come home yet. There are still so many voices, so overbearing, that I can’t make sense of them all. It’s like they’re festering inside my body, hovering, stealing bits of me. Poisoning me.

  “But I won’t be like poor Emma. I’m determined to exorcise them, one way or another. I can’t go on listening to everyone else because that only makes me feel weak and insignificant. And angry. Oh, Midge, I am so weary of being angry.

  “So please give my apologies to the Book Club. I won’t be at the next meeting, either. Or perhaps not even the meeting after that. I don’t know when I’ll be returning, so please don’t plan on me. I don’t want anyone to plan on me for anything right now. I need to take care of myself.

  “Someone told me once about women who give and give, and find they have nothing left. I was angry at her at the time. I thought she was selfish. But in the past few weeks I’ve come to know that she was right. So for now I need to give to myself. And I hope later, I can give to others again.

  Love, Doris”

  There was a long silence that no one knew how to fill. Annie rose and excused herself, dashing off to the bathroom. Midge began to rise after her but Eve held on to her arm and gently shook her head.

  “Leave her alone for a moment. She’ll be okay.”

  Midge sighed, uncomfortable with that, but agreed and settled back in the chair. “That party was only the tip of the iceberg for Doris, I’m telling you.”

  “I’m sure it was,” replied Eve.

  They picked at their food as they picked apart the letter, searching for clues. By the time Annie returned to the group, composed but with eyes rimmed red, they had started discussing this month’s selection, The Awakening.

  “We’re just beginning,” said Midge when Annie sat down. “You didn’t miss anything. Basically we’ve agreed that both Doris and the heroine have rotten husbands.”

  “Hold on, you said that,” countered Gabriella. It was no secret that Midge never could stand R.J., and that the feeling was mutual.

  “That’s where the comparison ends,” Eve argued back. “Edna Pontillier, our heroine, didn’t enjoy motherhood. But Doris treasured every moment of it. I think that’s part of the problem. Her kids are growing up and leaving home.”

  “There might be more comparisons,” Annie said, twiddling the stem of her wineglass. “In Edna’s day and age, she had no choice other than to conform to the rigid social code. Divorce wasn’t an option. In her mind, I’m not sure it was so different for Doris.”

  “Come on, it’s not the same at all,” complained Gabriella. “Edna committed suicide because she couldn’t have her lover. Just like Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina. That really made me mad.”

  “No, no, no!” Eve cried. “You’re all missing the point of the novel. Edna had an awakening on the island. Her senses, her desires, her sense of self all came alive that summer. She could never be the same after that happened. I believe that all women have these epiphanies throughout their lives. At puberty there’s a first awakening when we see ourselves as individual, sexual beings. Then somewhere in our early twenties there’s another when we get a sense of ourselves as a woman. Then there’s that panic at forty when we think we’re running out of time and click into high gear. But somewhere between forty-five and fifty-five we have another true awakening, every bit as powerful as the one at adolescence. Our children are grown, we’ve enjoyed some success in our lives, and we’re looking for something else now to fulfill ourselves.”

  “And our outer beauty is fading, too,” Gabriella said. “God, I hate it...I keep working at it but I’m beginning to think the upkeep isn’t as important anymore.”

  “Perhaps because we’re not so eager to please or to impress others as we once were,” said Midge. “It’s like being adolescents all over again, only this time we don’t care if everyone likes the way we look or the clothes we wear. Or even if people like us at all. That nasty competition is over. I see this as a time to be who we’ve always seen ourselves as being, deep in our hearts. The advice-giving wise woman or the heel-kicking rebel.”

  Eve nodded. “That’s exactly what I mean. That’s what I took from the book.”

  “Well, I’ll never understand how some women can drink poison or throw themselves in front of trains or walk into oceans because of a man.” Midge crossed her arms and legs in a huff of disgust.

  “You know, I hate to say it—” Gabriella was sitting at the edge of her chair “—but am I the only one thinking that Doris is up there all depressed and alone, thinking she lost her lover, too?”

  There was a sudden silence.

  “Maybe we should call Doris,” Gabriella said. “Now.”

  “Yes,” echoed Eve. “Just to let her know we’re thinking of her.”

  This suggestion was met with a chorus of agreement and a rippling of relief. Gabriella brought the portable phone into the living room and they all circled close while Midge dialed the number. It rang five times, but finally Doris picked up.

  “Hello, girlfriend,” Midge called into the phone, her dark eyes flashing in Morse code to the group. “We’re at the Book Club meeting and we miss you. What are you doing up there all alone?”

  Eve, Gabriella and Annie all sat on the edges of their chairs, eyes bright, their hands clenched tight over their knees. They called out “Hi, sweetie!” “Miss you, Doris!” “I love you!”

  They couldn’t hear what Doris was saying to Midge, but they could eke out from Midge’s responses that she was okay, that she just wanted time for herself for a change, that she didn’t know exactly how long she was going to stay but she’d know when it was time to come home. That they shouldn’t worry about her, but she was glad that they did.

  Midge said to all of them, “Doris says she loves you. But she needs to love herself right now.”

  The power of that statement zinged right to the marrow.

  No matter that in the Book Club meeting they were discussing poor tragic heroines Edna Pontillier, Emma Bovary or Anna Karenina. Tragic characters, true, but they were fiction. In real
life, they had Doris! Who’d have thought that proud, conservative, romantic Doris Bridges would break the mold and become Diana the huntress, hunting down herself. If Doris could do it, then they could, too. They were ready for their own awakenings, damn it!

  The women of the Book Club raised their glasses high into the air. Midge put the receiver in the center of the close circle as they all brought their heads close.

  “You go, girl!” they shouted.

  After they hung up, they danced and laughed, then settled down and tore apart the book line by line. They couldn’t know that in a small cottage in Michigan, Doris sat in a low chair with her feet up on the deck, wrapped in a red-and-black checked flannel blanket, with a glass of herbal tea in her hand, looking out at the moon’s golden pathway across the lake. Tears of happiness flowed freely down her cheeks while in her head the chorus of her dearest friends’ support danced in her head. Even far away, she knew she wasn’t alone. She mattered to the Book Club.

  She leaned back in her chair and stared at the moon. It hung in the sky beside her, a silent but steady presence—inspiring, enlightening, timeless, changing. Sometimes fat, sometimes thin, sometimes glowing. Sometimes those blotches were right there on the surface for the world to see. Some nights the moon dominated the sky, other nights it slipped quietly through veils of clouds. Sometimes it was mysterious, other times it was exposed, scarred with the prints of men’s heavy boots. Tonight the moon seemed to be smiling with her, keeping her company with a glow that seemed to radiate from within. It filled her with its golden light.

  The moon had to be a woman, Doris decided. Raising her glass, she toasted her new friend and called out, “You Go, Girl!”

  Seventeen

  To everything there is a season,

  and a time to every purpose under heaven.

  A time to be born, and a time to die.

  —The Bible

  The mint-and-white-colored hospital gown made Annie’s skin appear even more sallow than when she had walked in that morning.

  “You’d think they’d have some pretty bright colors, wouldn’t you?” Annie said, plucking with a grimace at the thin fabric. “For all the money they spend, they should hire a color consultant. How smart do you have to be to figure out green and sick is a bad combination? I’d look like shit in one of these on a good day, but right before surgery? Can I sue? I’m sure there’s some psychological trauma I’m going through just looking in the mirror.”

  Eve laughed and reached out for Annie’s hand. “You look beautiful, kiddo,” she lied. “But then, you always do to me.”

  Annie squeezed her hand and her facade slipped away like a mask removed.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Eve said, mustering encouragement. “The doctor said there’s every sign that they’ll get all the cancer out with the uterus.”

  Annie nodded, then glanced over at the wall clock and swallowed hard. Surgery was scheduled in an hour and her tension was mounting by the second. “This is the pits, waiting here. Why do they have clocks in here, anyway? They should at least be cuckoo clocks, just to make sure we all don’t forget to pay attention to how long we’re waiting.” All at once her expression changed to reflect her fear. “I’ve never had surgery.”

  “It’s nothing I’d go in for if I didn’t have to, but believe me, once you get the gas, you don’t remember a thing. It’s in and out, no pun intended. The worst part is getting over the anesthesia, but we’ll all be there when you wake up and you can yell at us.”

  “I won’t yell, if you just promise to be there.”

  It was hard seeing Annie lying in a hospital bed with her hair limp, her face gaunt, looking like a bag of bones in that pitiful hospital gown. Such a switch from the vibrant, stylish Annie she knew and loved. This Annie was so vulnerable.

  “Sure, I’ll be there,” she said, patting her hand. “And so will John. He’s been great, hasn’t he? Always by your side.”

  “I know. I never knew he could be so strong. He watches everything like a hawk. Brings my vitamins and medication in on schedule, consults with my doctors, feeds me organic meals, and he’s on a first-name basis with the homeopath at the health food store. Where is the bully?”

  “Out talking to the nurses. I’m not swearing by it, but I thought I saw candy pass hands.”

  “Such a schmoozer.” She shrugged her thin shoulders. “I guess he really loves me.”

  “You sound so surprised!”

  “I am,” she said, rubbing the gold band on her long fingers. “I never thought of myself as lovable.”

  “You’re either crazy or just plain stupid then. We all love you.”

  Two pink stains blossomed on Annie’s white cheeks. Eve never thought she’d live to see the day.

  “Did you talk to Doris for me? Tell her that I was sorry? I mean...” She paused, then forced swagger into her voice. “I wouldn’t want to die unforgiven.”

  “Yes,” Eve replied seriously.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Everything.”

  “So,” Annie said, her long, slender fingers tapping the bedsheet. “What did she say?”

  “Not much, actually,” Eve replied. Then with her mouth twitching she said, “She was too busy crying.”

  Annie chortled quietly. “Typical,” she said, pleasure shining in her eyes. Then changing her tone, she tapped Eve’s fingers playfully. “How’d it go with the prof? Are you back together? If I die before you tell me, I’ll haunt you, I swear to God.”

  “Don’t even say that.”

  “Well, then?”

  “We talked, and I introduced him to the children. Bronte cooked dinner, if you can believe that. I think things will work out but I don’t want to go too fast. And Paul, well, I think he does. He’s so definite. He tells me he loves me.”

  “You really are a marriage magnet.”

  “Whoa, we’re not anywhere near that yet. Besides, the last thing I want to do is get married. I’ve worked too hard to get this far. I’m not willing to give up my independence.”

  “And you don’t have to. But promise me you won’t go around telling a lot of women that you’re turning down a hot prospect like Paul Hammond. I’d hate to find you murdered in your sleep. Trust me on this one.”

  Eve laughed as John walked in the door with a nurse and the doctor behind him. They had that business smile plastered on their faces.

  “Annie, I’m letting you go to sleep now and when you wake up we’ll laugh and talk and you can tell me what else I should do.” She bent over to kiss Annie’s tense cheek. “I need you, sweetie. I love you,” she whispered in her ear.

  Annie and Eve squeezed hands and shared a gaze that transcended words.

  “Okay, guys,” Annie said, looking up at the medical team, swiping the tears from her eyes with the backs of her palms. Her voice was rollicking. “Let’s get this thing over with.” She abruptly turned her head so she wouldn’t have to see what the nurse was doing with the veins in her arm.

  “By the way, Doc,” she asked the young medical student scribbling into her chart at her side, “do you know how to make a hormone?”

  John groaned. Eve rolled her eyes and slipped through the door. But the student shook his head, taking her question seriously. Annie just loved gullible guys.

  “Don’t pay her!”

  * * *

  When Doris walked into the waiting room several hours later, Eve, Midge and Gabriella gasped in unison, then ran forward to wrap her in their arms. They hugged and kissed and gathered reassurance from their circle of friends.

  Then they took notice of how much Doris had changed in the past six weeks.

  “You look positively svelte!” Gabriella exclaimed, noting the weight Doris had lost and the tan of her skin, and most of all, the gleam in her eye once again. She was not s
velte, really, but healthy and glowing. She looked like a woman from the country in her long denim skirt, blue-cotton blouse and thick-knitted, jewel-toned shawl. “I hate you!”

  Midge narrowed her eyes and checked out Doris’s body. “So, Bridges, just how many pounds did you lose?”

  “I haven’t a clue,” Doris said blithely. “There isn’t a scale at the cottage and frankly, I don’t want to know. I’m not thinking about calories or fat grams. I never want to go on another diet. I eat healthy foods when I’m hungry, stop when I’m full and swim and walk every day. It’s called healthy living, girls. To tell you the truth, I never tried to lose weight. It just happened. I’m more concerned about my health than my looks right now. And what’s going on inside my head.”

  “Speaking of your head—” Midge smirked, but her eyes were glowing with approval “—I noticed the outside’s a little different.”

  Doris’s hand went to her hair. She had colored it a flattering soft white, a marked change from the strawberry-blond color. “I got tired of dying it. I thought if I colored it once more, just to get the red out, then my own hair could grow back in on its own. And the fact is, that color is mostly gray.”

  “But why stop coloring it?” asked Gabriella. She was horrified at the very concept of her own hair going gray. “Why would anyone want to go gray?”

  “I don’t want that fake color on my head in the same way I don’t want artificial fibers on my body. You might think I’m crazy, but when I first arrived at the cottage I felt that I had some black poison in me, oozing out of my pores, even out of the follicles of my hair. I drank lots and lots of water, swam every day and ate so much fruit and fiber I pumped ship for days. Now I feel clean inside. And empty, too, like a big old steamer trunk waiting to be filled. But I’m going to be very choosy about what I fill the space with this time.”