I took a deep breath. “I want to write something more like the book I wrote first, the one I burned after Dirk said those awful things about it, only I want to do it without all the overwritten parts. I think now, when I let myself think about it, that it wasn’t such a bad book after all. It just needed a lot of work. I was too quick to think that, just because I had a first draft, I was good to go. I also wish I hadn’t been so quick to burn it, delete the file, and throw away the disk. If only I’d saved it, I might be able to look at it again with fresh eyes. Maybe I’d be able to see now what’s needed to fix it.”
I set down my fork and knife, ravenous hunger gone, too empty at the thought of my foolishness to want to fill the vacant space with something as relatively insignificant as food.
“I know it wasn’t the greatest book in the world,” I went on. “And I don’t even aspire to write the greatest book in the world. But that book did say something, however small, about the way we human beings live our lives. If only it was still here,” I finished, staring at the flames, reminiscent of different flames on a different night. “If only I didn’t destroy it.”
“Would you ever consider going back to teaching part time?” he said, switching gears. “Maybe just one class a semester? I happen to know Dean would love to have you back, on any terms. He may have gotten complaints about you last year, but the new professor is a total dud. Add to that, the cachet the school has accrued from your students turning around and selling their own books.”
“A few months ago, I’d have given you an uncategorical no. But now? I miss my classroom. I miss helping other writers settle on what kind of writers they want to be. I miss people! If only I could find a way to strike a balance: teach a little and still get the writing in. If only I hadn’t—”
“Please don’t say again if only you hadn’t destroyed your book.”
I laughed at myself. “You’re right,” I admitted ruefully. “The whining of coulda, woulda, shoulda does get old, doesn’t it?”
“No,” he said, “listening to you doesn’t get old. But you didn’t destroy it.”
“What?” I sat up.
“Well, OK, technically, you did destroy it. But it’s not gone.”
“Tony, tell me what you’re talking about. Tell me what you’re talking about before I hit you.”
“It’s right here,” he said, patting the package that had been sitting beside his plate all during our meal.
“But how?”
“That night after you burned it, after you deleted it and threw out the disk, while you were sleeping the sleep of the damned and the depressed, I went and rescued it from your hard drive. I hope you don’t mind that, or that I’ve since read it. It’s quite good, actually. Overwritten in parts, true. I think you’ll know how to fix that now, though.”
“But why?” I was stunned. “Why would you do that for me when you never believed in my writing in the first place?” I thought about that for a second. “And why would you wait so long to tell me?”
“I did it because writers who destroy their work always live to regret it, or they die and then the world regrets it. And no, I never said I didn’t believe in your writing. What I didn’t want was for you to go off half-cocked like, well, Chicken Little. I thought you should have more of a plan first, one involving more than quitting your job and saying, ‘Today I will become a writer.’ What can I say?” He shrugged, evidently mildly embarrassed. “I’m a man. Even when it comes to something as abstract as creativity, we deal in absolutes. You want to talk about it; I want to fix it. Man. Woman. Even our body parts are different.” He laughed, I think as much at himself as at me, maybe at us. “Finally, I waited until now because I needed to make sure you were ready to go back to what you started and make it better. I needed to be sure you wouldn’t just destroy it again. So, what do you say? Teach one class a semester and make your book as good as you can make it?”
In the very best Jo March tradition, I flew at his head.
Thanksgiving
Recommended Reading:
Cindy: Family Planning, Elizabeth Letts
Diana: My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult
Sylvia: The Food of Love, Anthony Capella
Lise: The Art of Dramatic Writing, Lajos Egri
• • •
“Do you know what one of the students said the new creative writing professor told them?” Dean Jones asked his wife as he carved into their turkey for two.
“No,” she said, swirling the sherry in her glass, “but I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”
He ignored her bored expression.
“He said she told them they needed to become a perfect blend of Charles Dickens and Danielle Steel if they wanted to succeed in the current publishing climate. God, I miss Lise Barrett.”
“I know, dear, I know.”
• • •
“What are these little round things doing in the cranberry sauce?” Art Barrett asked his wife.
“Sara gave me the recipe and told me to make it,” Ann Barrett said. “Sara wanted us to have an all-natural Thanksgiving, even though she’s not with us this year.”
“Don’t you have any of that stuff in the can?”
“No. Sara made me promise to donate it to a food drive. First she wanted me to just throw it out, but then she changed her mind, saying it would be wasteful.”
“Lise,” Art said, “promise me that, whatever else you do, you won’t be like your sister, at least not totally.”
“I promise, Dad.”
“Are you really considering going back to work at the university?”
“Part time? Yes, I’m considering it.”
“Good. I’ll bet Tony here had something to do with that.”
Tony held up his hands. “I’m innocent.”
“Lise,” Aunt Tess said, “could you help me get more stuffing from the kitchen?”
“But we already have—”
Aunt Tess kicked her. “We need more. Without any decent cranberry sauce, your father will need thirds.”
Once Lise had followed Aunt Tess into the kitchen, Aunt Tess turned on her.
“So?” she said. “Tony’s here. You’re here. Do I hear wedding bells?”
“Aunt Tess! We only just got back together!”
“So? I’ve still got that cash in paper bags at the top of my closet, if you need any help with the wedding!”
• • •
Eddie picked at his turkey. One of his band mates had invited him over to eat dinner with him and his wife.
“I’m thinking,” said Eddie, “that maybe we should all just move to Europe. You know, if we went somewhere where no one knows us, maybe we could reinvent ourselves as younger. Then we could be like, I don’t know, European Idols or something.”
• • •
“Mom,” Porter said, passing the three-bean salad, “there’s this girl I met.” He cleared his throat. “Actually, I met her a while ago, back in high school, but now I’ve met her again.”
“A girl? A nice girl?”
“A very nice girl.” He cleared his throat again. “Only thing is, there’s something a little bit different about her…”
• • •
Richard Cox was drinking his dinner while the rest of his family was eating theirs.
“One daughter knocked up, the other working in a bra shop.” He turned to his wife. “This is all your fault.”
“How is it my fault?”
“If you’d been a better role model, they wouldn’t be such losers.”
“Maybe if you didn’t treat me like crap—”
“How do I treat you like crap? Look at this place! I treat you like a queen!”
Carly put her head close to Cindy’s. “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered.
“But wouldn’t that be rude,” Cindy whispered back, “to leave before dessert?”
“Nah. They won’t even notice.”
• • •
Magda Riley ate her frozen dinner as she s
at in front of her TV table watching television; or, to put it more properly, watching the competition on television.
“Fucking Sylvia Goldsmith,” she muttered. “That stupid bitch could’ve made me a mint.”
• • •
Minnie Goldsmith, wherever she was, smiled.
• • •
“I can’t believe you made dinner for me,” Sylvia said. “It’s like a cook’s holiday.”
“You deserve a holiday,” Sunny said. “Although, I must say, I am not as good of a cook as you.”
“It sure is quiet here without the girls.”
“Do you mind that so very much?”
Sylvia thought about it. “No,” she finally said. “It’s just different.”
“I was thinking, perhaps you would like to move in together.”
“I think we’d get a bit crowded here, don’t you? When the baby comes, there’ll be five of us.”
“I wasn’t thinking about here necessarily. I was thinking about my place.”
“But what about Cindy? She needs me right now. I can’t just sell the place out from under her.”
“Who said anything about that? So you stay here and help her for as long as she needs you, and then you move in with me. You own this place outright, do you not?”
Sylvia nodded.
“So turn it over to her and Carly and come to me.”
• • •
“Fucking Americans,” Dirk Peters said. “Just because they go on holiday they expect the rest of the world to as well. Might as well have not even bothered getting up this morning for all the work I got done today.”
• • •
“Tell me again,” Artemis’s father said, “why your mother and I had to come over to your place and eat turkey even though it’s not our holiday? I don’t even like turkey. I’d certainly never shoot one. Way too easy. I’d much rather shoot a falcon.”
“We’re doing this,” Artemis said through gritted teeth, “to honor Diana, your daughter, and her new life.” She raised her glass. “To Diana.”
• • •
Diana knocked on the door to Dan’s hotel room, massive picnic basket in hand.
“I’m glad you decided not to go to your mother and sister’s place in Michigan this year,” she said when he answered the door.
“Travel’s hellish this time of year,” he admitted. “It was good to have an excuse not to.”
“And I’m glad,” Diana said, “you agreed to let me cook you a meal and bring it over.”
“A man’s got to eat.”
“Yes, I know that. But if you didn’t want me to come, you could have gone out to eat or had room service send you up something, right? Aargh, I’m doing this all wrong.” She took a moment before speaking again. “I guess what I came here to say, what I’m trying to say, is that I’m very sorry for everything. I’m sorry for what I did, and I’m sorry for what you did. I know the way back into your heart isn’t through your stomach.” She laughed at the picnic basket she was carrying. “And I know it’s not through your bed.”
“Well,” he raised his eyebrows at her, “we could see if it is.”
But she went on, registering his willingness to make a joke, but needing to say what she’d come there to say all the same.
“Look,” she said, “I know we can’t just suddenly go back to where we were before this all happened. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Who we are and the things we’ve done have changed each other. But we have to start somewhere. And maybe if we do, maybe someday we’ll find ourselves at a better place than the place we were at before. At the very least, we can try.”
“At the very least,” Dan said, “we can try.”
• • •
All over the city of Danbury that day, people gave thanks; if not necessarily for the families they had, then for the families they had created.
Recommended Reading:
Lise: The Color of Light, William Goldman
Diana: Gods in Alabama, Joshilyn Jackson
Sylvia: Tender at the Bone, Ruth Reichl
Cindy: The Cat Who Came for Christmas, Cleveland Amory
• • •
Lise
We were all at Sylvia’s for Christmas Eve dinner. Her dining room table, with extra leaves in it to accommodate the nine of us, nearly filled the entire room, and I was in the kitchen helping her. Cindy’s due date had been two days previous, and the doctor had told her that morning that the baby was fine, just a little late.
“Funny,” I said, “the two of us doing all the Christmas work when we’re Jewish.”
Sylvia nearly dropped the pot she was holding. “You’re Jewish too? How come you never said anything?”
I shrugged. “I guess it never came up in conversation,” I said. I peeked my head around the corner and took in the view of the living room where the others—Dan and Diana, Tony, Sunny, Carly, Cindy and Porter—were seated on chairs, on the couch, on the floor. In particular, I looked at Cindy and Porter.
“Is having a man the answer to everything?” I asked.
Sylvia bent down to peek around the corner too so that her head was beneath mine. Instinctively, she knew what I meant.
“Well, not if you’re a lesbian,” she said. “But having someone to love? A husband, a wife, a friend, a sister? I think it’s a big part of what we’re put here for. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
Maybe, I thought, I was finally really ready to ask Tony to marry me.
Diana
I looked around the table Sylvia had put together for all of us: the long red and green candles inside their glass domes, the food lovingly prepared, and the people. And, as I looked, I felt the closeness of us once more; not so tight as to be restricting, but a closeness that bound us together like the strands of a whole just the same.
I reached for Dan’s hand beneath the tablecloth and held on tight.
Sylvia
Sunny helped me do the dishes. He washed, saying it was more important that my hands stay nice than his, while I dried.
“Have you thought,” he said, “about my proposal?”
“Which proposal is that?”
“The one where, after you see Cindy settled, you move in with me?”
“Yes,” I said. “It sounds like a good plan.”
“Good. Then, if you are going to move in with me anyway”—and here he dropped to one knee, removing a ring from his pocket without even wiping the soapsuds from his hands first—“how about agreeing to be my wife?”
Cindy
Even though it was freezing out, after dinner Porter and I sat out on Sylvia’s stoop, staring up at the clear December night sky.
“I can’t believe,” I said, “that you want to date me, given everything.”
“It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve wanted to date you. It’s only that it’s the first time I’ve wanted to date you when you’ve actually, maybe wanted to date me too.”
“I guess. But I was too stupid when we knew each other before. And now,” I looked down at my huge belly, “well, I’m hardly a bargain.”
“Look at it this way,” he said, rubbing my hands to keep them warm. “I’ve dated plenty of girls who seemed to have no baggage who then turned out to be nothing but baggage. At least this way, it’s been as bad as it can get—violent boyfriend, etcetera, etcetera—going in.”
“Oh, thanks,” I said, cuffing him lightly on the shoulder. “That makes me feel real good.”
“We’re just kind of dating,” he said. “It’s not like the whole entire future has to be decided tonight.”
“True,” I said. Then I thought of something. “Hey,” I said playfully, “at least you know I’m fertile. You know, just in case we ever get married. Kidding. Kidding!”
The Club
Sometimes in stories, people get beaten to death, they lose the baby, they never change, they never find love, or, if they do find it, they lose it because they don’t know what to do with it; the manuscript stays burned and sadness
ensues.
But those stories aren’t this story.
That’s not to say that the lives of these four women, from this moment forward, will be without pain or suffering. They are human. They will know plenty. They will love, and, because they love, they will know great tragedy. They will all die. They will grow old, they will get sick, one will die only after everyone she’s ever loved has died first.
But right now, before we spin away from them, as we look at them in this moment, today, they are happy. We can let them have that.
• • •
Cindy went into labor.
It happened later on that night, long after everyone had left. Still, despite the late hour, before leaving for the hospital, Sylvia phoned Lise and Diana to tell them.
As Cindy labored, Sylvia at her side, Diana and Lise and Carly paced the waiting room.
“I don’t think I can do this!” Cindy said to Sylvia at one point through gritted teeth as another contraction hit her.
“Of course you can do it,” Sylvia said, her arm steady behind Cindy’s back. Sylvia always had Cindy’s back. “It’s what you came here to do.”
Three hours later, Carly and Lise and Diana came in to meet Cindy’s new baby.
“This is wonderful!” Diana said, surveying the results of what she’d started all those months ago. “Today it really feels as though we are The Sisters Club.”
Sylvia looked at her sharply.
“Oops, sorry,” Diana said, looking embarrassed. “I just—”
The Sisters Club Page 33