The Club

by Jane Heller

  “My mother says it costs a lot of money to belong there.”

  “That’s really none of your mother’s concern, Kim.”

  “She says Daddy should be saving his money so he can send me to college.”

  “You’ll be able to go to college. Don’t you worry.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because your father works very hard so he can send you to college.”

  “What if he gets fired?”

  “He won’t. He’s good at his job.”

  “You got fired. Weren’t you good at your job?”

  “Not good enough, apparently.” I was exhausted, and I’d spent only five minutes with the kid.

  “That’s what my mother says.”

  “What?”

  “That you weren’t good at your job.”

  “Would you tell your mother something when you see her?” I said as I gunned the accelerator. “Tell her that actresses who can’t get acting jobs shouldn’t cast aspersions.”

  “What are ass-persions?”

  “You’re a smart girl. Figure it out.”

  Kimberley figured it out all right. The three of us had dinner at the club that night, and the food was as ghastly as ever. My appetizer, an avocado stuffed with shrimp salad, was so mayonnaise-y you needed a team of divers to locate the shrimp. And my entrée—ha! It was Brendan’s so-called specialty: Blackened Crab Cakes. I defy anyone to tell me there was a single morsel of crabmeat in those hockey pucks. What’s more, Brendan’s idea of “blackened” was overcooking food to the point where it looked and tasted like charcoal. We were just about to order dessert when Kimberley reported to her father that, earlier in the day, during our ride home from the station, I had called her mother a curse word. Hunt said nothing. Neither did I. But after we got home and put Kimberley to bed, he lectured me on the responsibilities of parenthood. Then I denied that I had used foul language in front of his daughter. Then he lectured me on the responsibilities of step-parenthood. Again I denied that I had used foul language in front of his daughter. Then he lectured me on the responsibilities of marriage, at which point I used the foulest language—and gestures—I could think of and announced that I was going to sleep.

  On Sunday, Kimberley said she wanted to stay home and watch TV.

  “But it’s a beautiful day,” Hunt said. “Don’t you want to go swimming at the club?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t like it there,” she said. So Kimberley and I finally had something in common.

  “Why don’t you like it there?” Hunt asked.

  “They make you wear a bathing cap if you go in the pool.”

  “Who makes you?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Some old guy.”

  “Do you remember his name?” asked Hunt.

  “Yeah, it was something like Pukesberry,” said Kimberly.

  I stifled a laugh. “Must be Duncan Tewksbury,” I said.

  “All right, honey,” Hunt told his daughter. “You don’t have to go to the club if you don’t want to.” He turned to me. “I’ve got a golf game, Jude. Would you mind staying here with her?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Arlene’s coming for lunch. Kimberley can help me cook.”

  “I changed my mind. I want to go to the club with you, Dad,” she said quickly. Anything not to be alone with me.

  “What about the bathing cap problem?” Hunt asked.

  She smiled. “What bathing cap problem?”

  Arlene was in great spirits—for her. She liked her new job very much, she said, and was making terrific money. As a result, she felt she could finally afford psychotherapy.

  “It’s time I learned how to have a rich, full life,” she said. “I want a husband and children.”

  I was dying to tell her that having a husband and children weren’t all they were cracked up to be, but I kept quiet. After all, I’d been the one who’d spent years trying to talk her into finding a man. What right did I have to talk her out of it?

  She told me all about the people she worked with, the books she was editing, the restaurants she was eating lunch at. Then she asked me what was new.

  “Not a thing,” I admitted. “Not a damn thing. No interviews. No meetings. Nothing.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I wish I could do something.”

  I patted her shoulder. “You are doing something,” I said. “You’re having lunch with me. All my other friends have dropped me like a ten-ton manuscript.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said again. “So what are you doing with yourself? How do you keep busy?”

  “I’ve been hanging out at our country club,” I said. “Swimming. Taking tennis lessons. Trying to meet people.”

  “Anyone there worth meeting?” she asked.

  “Only if you’re doing a study of people who never made it out of the 1950s. Either that, or you need material for a TV sit-com.”

  She laughed.

  “Actually, I just found out that Claire Cox has become a member,” I said.

  “Wow. I’m impressed,” said Arlene. “Have you met her yet?”

  “No, but I’d like to.”

  “You two would have a lot in common.”

  “Why? Does she have a disagreeable stepdaughter too?”

  “No, silly. She’s a food maven. Like you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. She’s a great cook, practically a professional. Haven’t you read about those weekend get-togethers she has at her Connecticut house?”

  I thought for a moment. “Now that you mention it, yes. Once a month she invites important women like Janet Reno and Barbra Streisand to her house for these fabulous, six-course meals.”

  “Right. And she does all the cooking. You should get friendly with her, Judy. Maybe she’ll add you to her guest list.”

  “Maybe I should,” I said.

  Then suddenly, an idea came to me. An idea that would change my whole life.

  “If Claire Cox is such a great cook, she should write a cookbook,” I said.

  Arlene smiled. “There’s the Judy Mills I know,” she said. “The Judy Mills who saw cookbooks where nobody else would think to look.”

  “I mean it, Arlene. If Claire Cox really cooks all those terrific meals for Diane Sawyer and Nora Ephron and women like that, she must know her way around the kitchen. And if she knows her way around the kitchen, she should share her techniques and recipes with the public. Think of the promotional possibilities! Claire Cox whipping up soufflés on ‘Good Morning America!’ It’s dynamite, pure dynamite.”

  “Yeah, but Claire Cox doesn’t strike me as someone who would go on a talk show to hype a product.”

  “She wouldn’t hype a product, but she’d sure as hell hype a cause.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  “What if she donated the profits from the cookbook to one of her pet causes? She’d hype it then, wouldn’t she?”

  “I think you’re on to something, Judy. But how do you fit into the picture?”

  “A big-shot feminist lawyer like Claire Cox would never have time to write a cookbook herself. She’d need a collaborator. Someone to help her write and edit the book, then package it for a publisher. I could do that for her, couldn’t I?”

  “Damn right you could,” said Arlene, her eyes twinkling.

  “I can see it now,” I said. “We’ll call the book Cooking with Claire. Or Food for Feminists. Or Smart Women, Scrumptious Courses. It’ll be big, Arlene. Bigger than The Art of French Cooking. Bigger than The Silver Palate. Bigger than Martha Stewart’s Entertaining.”

  Arlene nodded enthusiastically.

  “All I’ve got to do is meet her, get friendly with her, and talk her into doing the book—with me. Then we’ll sell it to a publisher and watch the money roll in. Everyone will see my name attached to the project and my phone will start ringing off the hook. I’ll be turning down offers. Even Loathsome Leeza will call, begging me to come back to Charlton House. I’ll tell her to go fuck herself and take a job so
mewhere else. This book will represent my triumphant return to the industry, Arlene. I’ll be back! Oh, God, I’ll be back!”

  Okay, so I got a little carried away. I couldn’t help myself. I saw Claire Cox as my return ticket to the land of the working. I would get her to write a cookbook if it killed me. I would get her to write a cookbook if it killed her.

  Chapter Six

  On Monday morning I went down to the kitchen to make breakfast for Kimberley, who was taking the train back to the city with Hunt. I always felt a keen sense of regret when she was about to leave after yet another failed weekend, regret that I was unable, once again, to bridge the gap between us.

  Was it simply that I was unlovable as far as she was concerned? Or rather, that she was unlovable as far as I was concerned, and knew it? Why couldn’t things go better between us? Why did she have to treat me with such disdain, such resentment? And why couldn’t I win her over? “Try acting like a normal person,” she told me once when I’d asked her why we couldn’t seem to get along. “But I do,” I’d protested. “No, you just think you do,” she’d said. “What you act like is a stepmother.” She had me there. I was a stepmother. Her stepmother. And not a bad one, all things considered. I kept her bedroom spotless. I bought her little goodies whenever I went shopping. And I cooked for her—in spite of her horrendous manners. And what did I get for it? Grief. Nothing but grief.

  “Oh, yuk,” she said when she sat down at the kitchen table and saw the plateful of food I’d prepared for her that Monday morning.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked, knowing the answer.

  “Yeah. The problem is: What is that?” She pointed at her plate.

  “You know what it is, Kimberley. It’s scrambled eggs and English muffins. I sprinkled a little paprika on them, that’s all. Just for color. Now, how about eating them while they’re hot.”

  “But I hate scrambled eggs. I’m into poached eggs,” she said.

  “Since when? I’ve never seen you eat a poached egg.”

  “I do a lot of things you’ve never seen me do.”

  I know I was supposed to ask “What things?,” but I wasn’t in the mood to play. It was too early in the morning.

  “Taste the eggs,” I said. “I made them mushy. Just the way you like them.”

  “The way I used to like them. When I was a kid.”

  I looked at Hunt’s daughter, who was all of ten years old. She had the face of an angel. And the personality of a Gila monster.

  “Kimberley,” I said patiently. “Your dad will be down in a few minutes and he wants to make the 8:15 express train. Now that I know you like poached eggs, I’ll be sure to make them for you the next time you visit us. But just this once, for old times’ sake, how about polishing off these scrambled eggs, huh?”

  “My mother says eggs are bad for you,” she said as she picked up the fork and began to play with her food.

  “They are high in cholesterol,” I conceded. “But every now and then, it’s all right to indulge.”

  “My mother says cholesterol causes heart attacks and strokes. She says millions of people die from too much cholesterol in their diet.”

  “You won’t die from eating scrambled eggs,” I said. “At least, not today. So come on, Kim. Your breakfast is getting cold. Eat up.”

  “My mother says—”

  “Kimberley! Enough! Please eat your breakfast!”

  I left the little darling in the kitchen and walked outside to get the newspaper. Hunt never took the train into the city without his New York Times, and I never let him take it without reading it first.

  I unfolded it as I walked back into the kitchen and set it down on the counter. And then I gasped. Right there in the bottom right section of the front page was the headline “Claire Cox Fights Sex Discrimination At Connecticut Country Club.”

  I grabbed the paper off the counter, sat down next to Kimberley, and devoured the article, which read, in part:

  …Feminist lawyer Claire Cox says she has received many letters from women who want to join a country club but lack an essential requirement for membership: a husband.

  “These women are capable of running their own businesses but not of joining a country club? That’s absurd,” stated Ms. Cox in an interview late Friday. “It’s not only absurd. It’s illegal.”

  Technically, there is no federal law against sex discrimination by private clubs, but several cities have passed laws banning discrimination, and still others have threatened to take away a club’s tax benefits or revoke its liquor license if there is evidence of discrimination.

  “Exclusion from clubs limits women’s economic opportunities,” Ms. Cox argued. “Men conduct business on the golf course. Golf is a sport that promotes business relationships. So why shouldn’t women have access to it? How can women be cabinet members and corporate leaders and presidents of colleges and universities and not be allowed membership in country clubs? How can we allow men to continue to close the door in our faces? We can’t. Not anymore.”

  In addition to turning down applications from qualified single women, many clubs, according to Ms. Cox, discriminate against their existing women members by barring them from men’s grills, not permitting them to tee off on weekends and restricting their memberships to “associate” status. Ms. Cox intends to focus the public’s attention on these practices by challenging the bylaws of The Oaks of Belford, Connecticut, the country club founded by her late grandfather, Justin Kennelworth Tewksbury. Ms. Cox explained that her primary reason for joining The Oaks last month was to put pressure on the club’s Board of Governors to change its antiquated and discriminatory bylaws.

  “The other reason I joined was to play lots of golf and tennis,” she said. “The facilities at The Oaks are absolutely first-rate.”

  Duncan Tewksbury, a spokesman for The Oaks and Ms. Cox’s great-uncle, said the club would have no comment…

  “Hunt, look at this!” I said as he entered the kitchen. “There’s an article in the Times about The Oaks.”

  “Impossible,” said Hunt. He kissed the top of Kimberley’s head, then reached into the refrigerator for some orange juice and poured himself a glass. “The members of the club would rather die than see their names in the newspaper, Judy. You know that.”

  I did know that. People at The Oaks were such privacy nuts that they didn’t allow cameras on the premises.

  “Read it,” I said and handed Hunt the article.

  “I’ll read it on the train,” he said, swallowing the last of his juice and checking his watch. “Come on, Kim. We gotta go.”

  “But Kimberley hasn’t touched her breakfast,” I said.

  Hunt looked at his daughter. “Not hungry, pumpkin?”

  Pumpkin shook her head and pouted. “Judy says I have to eat these eggs, even though eggs give people heart attacks.”

  “Oh, Kimberley,” I sighed.

  “Leave the eggs,” Hunt told her, refusing to support me, as usual. “I’ll buy you a muffin at the station.”

  “Oh, thank you, Daddy,” she cried, smiling, then hopped off her chair into his arms.

  I nearly got sick. One of these days, I thought angrily as I watched them leave the house together. One of these days I’m going to tell Hunt that if he doesn’t stop undermining my authority over Kimberley, if he doesn’t stop coddling his precious little pumpkin, if he doesn’t stop acting like a guilty, divorced father, I’ll walk. I’ll walk and I won’t look back. I’ll walk and I’ll start a new life. I’ll walk and I’ll find somebody else. Somebody who thinks I’m attractive and sexy and a great cook. Somebody who appreciates me. Somebody who would rather get laid than play golf. In the meantime, I’ll put Kimberley’s breakfast in the microwave, nuke it, and eat it myself.

  The article in the Times threw the old guard at The Oaks into a state of panic. Lose their tax benefits? Their liquor license? Get dragged into a messy lawsuit? See The Oaks’s name sullied in the press? The very idea! On the other hand, how could they let themselves be
bossed around by some ball-breaking feminist? Even if she was Duncan Tewksbury’s grandniece.

  There were feverish meetings late into the night, according to Hunt, who was now on the Finance Committee and involved in nearly every aspect of club business. Duncan, Addison Bidwell, and Curtis Lamb were violently opposed to amending the bylaws. But several others felt that, in order to avoid a protracted and expensive legal battle, it was in the club’s best interests to change the rules. In the end, the membership of The Oaks decided to cave in to Claire Cox’s demands and admit single women for the first time in its fifty-year history, as well as remove all barriers to female equality at the club. The whole thing was vaguely reminiscent of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall.

  “I can’t wait to meet Claire Cox,” I said to Hunt. “She must be an amazing woman.”

  I told Hunt about Claire’s culinary skills and about my idea for a cookbook that I would help her write.

  “Sounds great,” he said. “But you’ve never even spoken to the woman.”

  “No problem,” I said. “I’ll follow her around that club until she begs me to talk to her.”

  “Jude?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just don’t ask her to play tennis.”

  “Why? Because she’s a great player and I stink?”

  “No. Because you’ve already broken one nose this summer. Don’t try for two.”

  My first sighting of Claire Cox came the following Saturday afternoon. I had decided to venture into the new, supposedly female-friendly Men’s Grill, which, at Claire’s insistence, had been renamed simply The Grill. Yes, things were changing quickly at The Oaks, despite the grumblings of the old guard, who could only watch in horror as their precious club marched into the nineties.

  On one side of the dark, publike dining room sat several men in plaid pants, one of them Duncan. On the other side sat a group of women in business suits, one of them Claire. The men were drinking scotch and glowering at the women. The women were eating salads and talking about the stock market.

  I laughed when I remembered that, only two weeks before, I had been thrown out of the very same room. My mere presence had provoked the sort of angry, lynch mob response usually reserved for child molesters and people who stand in supermarket express lines with more than ten items in their shopping cart. But now here I was. No scenes. No fuss. Just a little hostility, but that was to be expected.