The Club

by Jane Heller

  “Maybe I’d better come with you,” I said, half in jest.

  “I can manage,” he said. “Oh look. Here’s our champagne.”

  The waitress had arrived with our Perrier-Jouet. She showed Hunt the label, waited for him to nod his approval, and when he did, she popped the cork—right into my left breast.

  I was in agony, as if a bullet had ripped through me. But it wasn’t the pain of the wayward cork that sent me into the ladies’ room sobbing. It was the torrent of champagne that soaked my Calvin Klein linen suit, the suit I’d just bought myself for my fortieth birthday. When things go bad, they really go bad.

  I chose the next day for my long-awaited debut at the club. I had promised Hunt I would start showing up there, cultivating business contacts the way he did. So, true to my word, I went.

  Hunt had informed me that he had a 7:00 a.m. golf game with Perry Vail, Ducky Laughton, and Addison Bidwell, and that if I wanted to ride over to the club with him, I’d have to be ready by six-thirty.

  “Never mind,” I said. “I’ll take my own car.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. I said I’d put in an appearance at The Oaks. I didn’t say I’d live there.”

  Hunt kissed me. “Why don’t you call Larkin or Nedra and see if you can get a tennis game?”

  Larkin Vail was Perry’s wife. She had platinum blond hair, a deep tan, and a terrific figure, despite having given birth to five children. She was a full-time wife and mother if you didn’t count the seven hours a day she spent on the tennis courts at The Oaks, where she reigned as the women’s singles champion and made it known that she intended to hang on to her crown until the day she died. She was also the doubles champ with Nedra Laughton, Ducky’s wife. Nedra had stick-straight, chin-length, coal-black hair and spoke with a vaguely foreign accent I couldn’t place. One minute I guessed Prague, the next Pago Pago, the next Peoria. She intended to appear worldly and sophisticated, I supposed, what with her kissing people on both cheeks and her constant chatter about her sex life. But her most curious trait was her jealousy: if Ducky even looked at another woman, she went berserk. The whole thing seemed rather high schoolish to me, but Ducky, apparently, found it a turn-on.

  “I can’t call Larkin or Nedra,” I said.

  “Why not?” said Hunt.

  “For one thing, I haven’t seen either of them since those awful Let’s-get-to-know-Hunt-Price-and-his-wife dinners last year. For another, Larkin and Nedra are excellent players. They’re not going to play with me. I haven’t hit a tennis ball in years.”

  “Sure, they will, Jude. The Oaks is a very friendly club. Look at how easy it’s been for me to get golf games.”

  “Sure, it’s been easy. In golf you’re competing against yourself; the other members of your foursome don’t care if you’re a lousy player. But in tennis you’re supposed to hit the ball back to the people across the net. If you don’t, they tend to get a bit churlish.”

  “Look, Jude. I’ve got to go. Give Larkin and Nedra a call, huh?”

  He kissed the top of my head and took off.

  I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror. “Okay, so you’re not Steffi Graf,” I addressed my reflection. “Get over to that club and start networking.”

  I made a stop on my way to the club. Realizing I had nothing to wear on the tennis court, I walked into the Wimbledon Shop on Main Street in Belford, asked to see the latest in tennis clothes, and walked out wearing a hot pink Ellesse outfit, complete with matching top, skirt, socks, wristbands, and lace panties. Valerio would have loved it—I looked like a walking pistachio nut.

  The entrance to The Oaks was marked by stone pillars, one of which was embedded with a small bronze plaque that read: private—members only. No name. No identification. Just a tasteful fuck-off to the riffraff.

  My BMW and I made our way up the long, winding driveway, past the stone walls and beneath an archway of sixty-foot, century-old oak trees, to the sprawling, Tudor-style clubhouse, which loomed over the club’s nearly three hundred acres like a grand nineteenth-century English estate. As I’d discovered from my one and only evening at The Oaks, back when Hunt and I were still being considered for membership, the building housed a large and very formal living room, the walls of which were covered with murals depicting ladies and gentlemen of the turn of the century engaging in a variety of not-very-strenuous sports; a sitting room, paneled in mahogany and lined with bookcases; a main dining room, which overlooked the golf course’s eighteenth hole; a Men’s Grill, a dark, clubby dining room from which women and children were aggressively barred; a dining terrace, shielded from the elements by a green and white striped awning; men’s and ladies’ card rooms, which erupted with activity on Thursday nights when many of the members played bridge; and a ballroom, which was used for weddings, debutante balls, and of course, the Memorial Day Dance.

  I pulled up in front of the clubhouse and waited for someone to help me out of my car and park it. No one did.

  “Excuse me,” I said to the elderly woman who finally emerged from the building. She wore a baggy cotton dress, sneakers without socks, and bobby pins in her matted gray hair. I guessed she was one of the club’s maids. “Is this where I leave the car for valet parking?” I asked her.

  The woman flared her nostrils, as if I’d stepped in dog doo and she’d just caught a whiff. “Valet pahking? At The Oaks? How obsuhd,” she said in an unmistakable WASP lockjaw. She walked away, shaking her head and muttering to herself. I later learned she was Mrs. Whitman Tuttle, one of the club’s most revered members.

  Revered maybe, but the woman wasn’t going to make anyone’s Best Dressed List; that much I knew.

  And what was this no valet parking bullshit? My parents’ country club in Boca Raton had valet parking. The attendants there not only parked your car, but shampooed and waxed it.

  I parked my own car and found my way to the white clapboard tennis house, which overlooked the club’s sixteen Har-Tru courts. A half-dozen women were huddled around a water fountain. They wore white shirts and white skirts and white socks, and they looked like a huge bar of Ivory soap. One of them spotted me and nudged the others, and before I knew it they were all staring at me, their gaze as withering as I had ever endured.

  I felt my cheeks grow hot. Was my slip showing? I wondered. No, I wasn’t wearing a slip. So what was the problem?

  I decided not to let them intimidate me and stared right back. Upon closer examination, I noticed that Larkin Vail and Nedra Laughton were among the group. I took a deep breath and walked over to say hello.

  “Oh, look everybody,” said Larkin as I approached them. “It’s Hunt Price’s wife.”

  She remembered me. Or at least, she remembered Hunt.

  “Hi, Larkin,” I said. “Nice to see you again.”

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  “And you’re Nedra, right?” I said, turning to Ducky Laughton’s wife.

  “It is true,” she said in that continental way of hers. She kissed me in that continental way too, first on the left cheek, then on the right. “Everybody, meet June,” she said.

  “Judy,” I corrected her.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said. “Judy.”

  Call me paranoid, but it sounded like she was saying Jew-dy.

  Nedra introduced the others as Weezie Evans, Bailey Vanderhoff, Lacey Hilliard, and Penelope Etheridge.

  “Who’s going to tell her?” Bailey Vanderhoff asked, eyeing me.

  “Tell me what?” I said.

  “It’s the pink,” said Larkin.

  “The Oaks has an all-white rule,” said Nedra.

  “You mean, like South Africa?” I said.

  The women looked at each other and shook their heads, as if they couldn’t believe they were in the presence of such a hopelessly dense person.

  “Everyone has to wear white on the tennis courts,” Larkin explained. “It says so in the club directory.”

  “Oh,” I said, looking down over my hot pink Ellesse ou
tfit, which the saleswoman at the Wimbledon Shop had said looked very “smart” on me. Smart. I was so smart I’d never bothered to read that damn club directory. But it had never occurred to me that The Oaks wouldn’t allow its members to wear pink on the tennis courts. My parents’ club didn’t have a dress code on the tennis courts or anywhere else. You could show up there in a magenta roller blading outfit and none of the women would mind—unless, of course, one of them was wearing the very same outfit, in which case you’d be blackballed for life.

  “If you plan on playing today, Judy, you might try the pro shop,” said Larkin. “They sell white tennis clothes.”

  Yeah, and judging from the white tennis clothes you’re all wearing, the pro shop’s merchandise must be about as stylish as a nurse’s uniform.

  “Thanks, Larkin,” I said. “I certainly don’t want to break any rules. Not on my first day anyway.” I smiled jauntily, trying to make light of the situation. Hey, the situation was light. I mean, we were talking about tennis clothes, not world peace.

  “How’s that adorable husband of yours?” Nedra asked.

  “Who’s her husband again?” asked Weezie Evans.

  “Hunt Price,” Larkin said.

  “Hunt Price?” said Lacey Hilliard. “He’s sooo sweet.”

  “And those dreamy eyes,” added Penelope Etheridge.

  Adorable? Sweet? Dreamy eyes? My Hunt?

  What are you so surprised about? I asked myself as they began to debate the merits of Har-Tru tennis courts versus the faster-drying all-weather, then flitted from one insignificant subject to another. Have you forgotten how charming you used to find your husband? How you used to think his earnest, uncomplicated personality was such a refreshing change from all the intense, self-involved assholes out there? How his golden blond hair and twinkling blue eyes and tall, long-waisted body used to make you weak in the knees? Have you really forgotten all that?

  “So, Judy,” said Nedra, turning the conversation back to me. These women had the attention span of a gnat. “Are you here to play tennis?”

  No, I’m here to make new business contacts, I laughed to myself. “Yes, I’m here to play,” I said.

  Larkin looked stricken, then recoiled from me as if I’d eaten a dozen garlic cloves for breakfast. Perhaps she saw me as a threat, someone who might whip her butt on the court and challenge her sovereignty as The Oaks’s best woman player.

  “I’m here to play,” I said again, “but not with you ladies. I haven’t hit the ball in years, and even then I was only a ‘C’ player.”

  She breathed a sigh of relief. “Maybe you should take a lesson,” she suggested. “The head pro’s great. His name’s Johnny. He used to be ranked.”

  “Or you could take an hour with Rob, the assistant pro,” Nedra smiled lasciviously. “He’s very good.”

  Rob turned out to be twenty-one, well built, and very hands-on. Ten minutes into the lesson, I could see why Nedra enjoyed being under his tutelage. When he wanted to demonstrate, say, the backhand grip, he held you from behind, wrapped his hands around yours on the grip of your racquet, and nuzzled his face between your head and neck as he whispered instructions in your ear. Then he showed you how to execute the perfect swing, and if you followed his instructions correctly, he rubbed your back. Hmm, I thought. If the assistant pro’s reward for good play is a back rub, how does the head pro show his approval?

  After my lesson I took a quick swim, changed clothes, and drove home. I had promised Hunt we could go to the big Memorial Day Dance that night and I needed a nap before heading back into the trenches.

  I had no idea what to wear to The Oaks’s Memorial Day Dance, especially after the fiasco with my pink tennis outfit. I knew that the affair was black tie, but I also knew that when it came to sensing what people at The Oaks considered “appropriate dress,” I was at a loss.

  I threw on the most conservative, understated thing I could find in my closet: a midcalf, black linen dress with short sleeves and a white lace collar. It was more suitable for a funeral than a country club dance, but at least it wouldn’t offend anybody.

  Imagine my surprise when I arrived at the dance and found that all the women—even the old bats—were dressed to kill. I had never seen so many heaving bosoms. Everywhere I looked there was cleavage and bare backs and slits up the sides of gowns.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get this right,” I sighed as Hunt and I stood in the foyer of the clubhouse.

  “What’s to get right?” said Hunt. “This is going to be a great party. Enjoy yourself.”

  A great party. Fat chance. As the theme of the dance was “The Motown Sound,” the club had hired a live band composed entirely of white people, performing songs by the Temptations and Four Tops, who were black people. It was The Oaks’s idea of multiculturalism.

  “Shall we go in?” Hunt said, offering me his arm.

  “If we must,” I smiled weakly, linking my arm through his.

  As we walked through the clubhouse en route to the ballroom, I surveyed the rooms and wondered what the club did with our money. I mean, the walls needed a paint job, the floors were completely carpetless, and the place smelled as musty as my attic. They obviously didn’t apply our steep initiation fees and annual dues to the sprucing up of the clubhouse. I guessed it all went to the golf course, knowing nothing about golf courses except that they obviously required more maintenance than the average backyard.

  Hunt had reserved a table-for-six with Larkin and Perry Vail and Nedra and Ducky Laughton. Swell.

  Nedra waved as we approached the table.

  “Hey, everybody. How are ya?” said Hunt as he waved back.

  What I didn’t realize was that when Hunt said, “Hey, everybody,” he didn’t just mean the Vails and the Laughtons. He meant everybody in the goddamn room. I’m telling you, the man stopped at every single table to say hello to somebody or other. There had to be nearly three hundred people there, and Hunt seemed to know every one of them! What’s more, they seemed to know him. And like him! They joked about his golf game. They inquired about his sore shoulder. They commented on his whimsical cummerbund, a black silk sash with—what else?—little white golf balls on it. My husband really had made a lot of contacts at The Oaks. I was impressed. But there was something so nauseating about the obviousness of it all, something so pathetic about the way he slapped backs and laughed too hard at jokes and sucked up to complete strangers.

  Or was I just envious? Was I envious of the fact that people were paying attention to my husband and not to me? Was I feeling competitive with him, now that he had friends and I did not? That he had contacts and I did not? That he had a job and I did not?

  We sat down at the table. Boy girl boy girl boy girl. I was sandwiched between Perry and Ducky.

  Perry had shaggy, prematurely gray hair, a hoarse, raspy voice, and as I mentioned earlier, a penchant for knowing everybody’s business and sharing it. Ducky was my favorite in the group, although “favorite” might be overstating the level of my affection for him. It was just that he seemed more “real” than the others. He had thinning, wispy brown hair, chubby chipmunk cheeks, and a warm, avuncular manner. It was Ducky who asked me about my career as a cookbook editor; Ducky who confided he was The Oaks’s only liberal Democrat; Ducky who joked about the food at the club.

  “Awful, isn’t it?” he laughed, after taking a bite of his dinner. The menu for the Memorial Day Dance consisted of clamless New England clam chowder, rubbery chicken cordon bleu, and apple pie à la WASP—i.e., with a slice of Velveeta on top. “Even after three drinks it’s awful.”

  “Why doesn’t the club fire the chef and get somebody in here who can cook?” I asked.

  “Because good chefs are expensive,” Ducky explained. “The members would much rather spend their money on a new sprinkler system for the golf course. Besides, Brendan was brought in by the chairman of the Board of Governors, Duncan Tewksbury.”

  “Brendan’s the chef?”

  “Right. Duncan l
ikes to tell everyone how he ‘stole’ Brendan away from The Belford Athletic Club. Now we’re stuck with him and his rubbery chicken cordon bleu.”

  For the next hour or so, the men spoke of commodities and the women spoke of shopping. I was so bored I thought I’d cry. Then Addison Bidwell, looking more funereal than ever, his cowlick sticking up like a pitiful erection, walked over to our table to drop a bombshell.

  “Claire Cox has joined The Oaks,” he told us. “Say goodbye to everything that was good and honorable and right about our club.”

  I was speechless. Everyone was. Claire Cox was America’s best-known feminist, a Gloria Steinem for the nineties. Beautiful and brilliant, she was a lawyer-activist who crusaded tirelessly for women’s rights. Everywhere you looked, there she was: on “The Today Show,” on “Donahue,” on “MacNeil/Lehrer,” on “Nightline.” The woman was a dynamo. But unlike some of her famous sisters in the Movement, she wasn’t a man-hater. On the contrary, her liaisons with some of America’s most powerful men made headlines. Tall and lean and graceful, she had long, flowing auburn hair, creamy white skin, and huge green eyes. She looked like the classic forties movie star, with her shoulder pads and pleated slacks and Katharine Hepburn ease. Like Hepburn, Cox was also said to be quite the athlete. She played golf and tennis and was a fabulous swimmer.

  But why on earth would someone as sharp and forward-thinking as Claire Cox want to join a club where women were treated like second-class citizens? After showing up at the tennis courts earlier in the day in my hot pink, against-the-rules Ellesse outfit, I’d come home and read that dopey club directory and was shocked: according to the bylaws of The Oaks, men and women were not created equal. We weren’t allowed to eat in the Men’s Grill. We weren’t allowed to use the golf course on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. We weren’t allowed to play tennis on Courts 1 through 4 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings. We weren’t allowed to wear slacks in the dining room—even if the slacks were palazzo pants from Giorgio Armani. And worst of all, we weren’t allowed to serve on the Board of Governors and certain other committees or vote on matters affecting the membership. Hell, women weren’t even allowed to be full members. It was our husbands who were full members, while we were referred to as “associate members.” What’s more, single women couldn’t join the club under any circumstances. Apparently, the men didn’t want women hanging around the golf course, and their wives didn’t want single women hanging around their husbands. It was that simple. But if single women couldn’t join the club, how had Claire Cox gotten in?