The Accidental Book Club

by Jennifer Scott

“Yes,” Wayne had answered.

  “A hundred years ago, you would’ve been thought of as an extremely old man,” she’d said. “For what it’s worth.”

  Wayne had glanced at Jean and then frowned, a perplexed crease between his eyebrows. “I suppose you’re right,” was all he’d said.

  That’s Laura, Jean had told Wayne when they hung up. That’s her way of dealing with hard stuff. You know how she is. If she can’t solve it, she doesn’t know what to do with it.

  But given events of the past couple of weeks, Jean couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Laura had been drunk that night too.

  And now look at her. Sitting in a rehab center out in a St. Louis suburb somewhere, fighting with her husband, fighting with her daughter, fighting with bill collectors, fighting to keep her job. So much fighting.

  Jean wondered now if Laura was feeling like she had felt back when Wayne was diagnosed, back when he first got sick. She wondered if Laura felt like she was swimming and swimming, taking in water with each choking breath, but never getting anywhere. She wondered if she felt jellyfish stinging her gut and sharks nipping at her heels, prodding her to go on, to hurry up, to get on top of things. She wondered if that was why Laura had gotten to where she was right now—just trying to get out of the damn ocean. Just trying to get to the beach where she could dry off and get her wits about her.

  Not that it mattered. You could lose control, but that didn’t mean you got to check out of your life. It didn’t mean you let your teen daughter drown because you couldn’t hack the temperature of the water.

  Jean decided not to read any more aloud after all. She laid the book in her lap and leaned her head back against the sofa cushion, closed her eyes, imagined what Wayne’s reaction to the Thackeray book would have been. Jeanie, she could hear him say, I’m trying to find a greater truth here. There has to be a life truth he’s trying to reflect back at us with this. How Wayne had always done that—tried to find more in the books they read than was actually there. He’d felt so strongly about not only reading them, but also learning from them. She’d once joked that he could find a greater life truth in a Dr. Seuss book, so what had he done? Come home from the library with a Dr. Seuss book and dissected it for her, page after silly page. You see, Jeanie, this book is, at its core, about courage in the face of adversity, he’d said. It’s actually very sophisticated. And then he’d started the book over, reading in the voice of a Shakespearean actor. He’d had her laughing so hard by the end of it that pain stabbed her sides, but she’d also been in awe of him. Of what he could do. Surely that was a gift. It felt like a gift to her, anyway.

  The phone rang, jarring her out of her thoughts.

  She got up, absentmindedly carrying the book with her, and set it on the table next to the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Jean, it’s Curt again.”

  Her heart sank. The last time Curt had called, it had been bad news. And he didn’t sound any better this time. “Yes?” she asked timidly.

  “It’s Bailey.”

  “Bailey?” This took Jean aback. She was expecting it to be about Laura. “What happened? Is she okay?”

  A pause, a deep breath. “Depends on what you mean by okay. Physically, she’s fine, yes.”

  Jean waited for more, but he didn’t elaborate. What did that mean, physically, she’s fine? “Good,” she said, unsure what else to say. Unsure what else would make him keep talking, or even if she wanted him to. Seemed like the only time Curt talked to her these days he was saying something that almost hurt her to hear.

  “She’s a pain in the ass,” he finally added. “Out of control. I don’t know what to do with her, and I can’t . . . I just can’t handle her anymore. She needs her mother, but we all know what happened there.”

  Jean sank into the chair next to the phone. Wayne had called it her “necessary chair,” after the argument they’d had over whether to buy it. Where in Sam Hill’s name are you going to put it? he’d asked. In the telephone nook, she’d responded, proud of herself for naming the little alcove in the hallway where the telephone jack was. What the heck for? he’d pressed. To sit on while using the phone, she’d replied as if he were dumb. If you’re going to have a telephone nook, it’s necessary to have a chair to sit on. Of course, not once had anyone ever sat on it. They’d simply carried the phone to whatever chair or bed or bench in the house they wanted to sit on. Now, finally, Jean was sitting in the necessary chair, and no one was there to notice it.

  “Have you taken her to see someone?”

  “See someone? No, listen, that’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Okay?”

  “I’m calling because I need to ask a favor.”

  “Okay?” she repeated.

  “I need you to take her.”

  “Take who?”

  “Bailey.”

  “Take her where?”

  His voice grew impatient. “To your house. I need her to stay with you for a while. I can’t control her, and it’s starting to interfere with my work and just until Laura is back up on her feet and we can figure out what to do, can you take her? Can she live with you?”

  Jean’s mind swam. Take Bailey? Here? She hadn’t had a child in this house in so long. She glanced across the alcove at the flower oil painting Wayne had bought at an estate sale years ago. It was all browns and deep reds and ochre, and it was lumpy and ugly. Something that screamed, Old person lives here.

  “Well . . . maybe you should take her to a therapist of some kind,” she stammered. “I’m not sure what I can . . .”

  “I can take her to a therapist, but I can’t be here twenty-four-seven to make sure she’s not destroying my house. I have to work sometime or I’ll lose my job, and then where will she be? A therapist can’t help you if you’re starving.”

  “Destroying your house . . . ?” Again, Jean glanced around her house, getting up from the necessary chair and walking into the kitchen, feeling like she was floating. Most things in her house hadn’t been moved in years, except to dust under. Her kitchen was country themed with gingham and rattan and dark wood. Her dining room table could seat fourteen and was flanked by perfectly placed porcelain trinkets—her Made in Occupied Japan collection. Wayne’s bar . . . She had never touched any of the aged bourbons or the crystal decanters. He’d been so proud of his bar. He’d loved playing bartender during their gatherings. They were dusty and fragile now.

  Curt breathed hard into the phone. “She dumped a gallon of milk on my hardwood floor and left the house for the day. An entire gallon. Ruined the wood. She carved the words no peace in the bathroom door with nail clippers. She . . . She just does the most bizarre stuff, and I think it’s me. If I tell her to stay in, she sneaks out. If I tell her to leave the house, she locks herself in her bedroom. Once, I told her to do her homework, and she ate it. Balled it up and stuck it in her mouth and ate it. Then barked at me. And she wouldn’t stop. Just barked and barked and barked until I finally left the room. I can’t ground her. I can’t do anything with her. You punish her, and she either ignores you completely or just doesn’t care. She’s so willful and she hates me.” He let out a flat chuckle. “Her mother is the one putting this family through hell, and it’s me Bailey hates.”

  Jean had left the bar and had gone down to the living room. She sank into the couch, her fingers automatically drifting over to Wayne’s glasses on the end table and running along the cold metal frame.

  “It sounds like she needs help,” she said. “She probably has a lot of anger.”

  “Yes, she does,” he said. “She does need help. And we’ll get her that help as soon as Laura gets out and everything is back to normal, I swear. Until then . . . I’m the one who needs your help, Jean. Please. I need you.”

  Jean felt dizzy and confused. It seemed there were so many questions that weren’t being answered here. So many questions that weren’t ev
en being asked. She was certain there were more, but her mind kept coming up blank. “Laura’s getting out soon? You’ve heard from her?”

  “Well, there’s not a definite date yet, no. But she’ll want out of there as quickly as possible. She’s smart. And she’ll be motivated.”

  “But she doesn’t know about Bailey.”

  “She’s actually the one who suggested I call you. She definitely would rather Bailey be with you than my parents.”

  “Wouldn’t she prefer Bailey stay with you than go anywhere?”

  He paused. “Jean. I need you. We need you. All of us. Please.”

  Jean took one last glance around the room, then squinched her eyes shut. This house didn’t know chaos. She didn’t know this child at all—this problem child.

  But Bailey was her granddaughter.

  Her only granddaughter.

  And Wayne would have done it. He wouldn’t have hesitated for a second.

  “Okay,” she said. “When are you bringing her?”

  SIX

  Dear Beverly Cleary,

  Hi. I am Bailey. I like to read. My mom gav me one of your books one day when she was cleening out the groj. I don’t rember wich one it was but I think it was ramona the pest. I thot it was going to be boring becos it was wrote a long time ago. But I loved it and I started reading all of your books. I am sometimes a pesk like ramona. I am going to ask for mor books for Crismas. Do you have any sujeshions?

  Bailey Butler

  Age 7

  Bailey had been in Kansas City exactly twice in her life. Both times were to visit her grandparents at their house. They kept Lysol on the tops of their toilet tanks. Her mom and dad had made fun of it. Lysol, as decor. Nice.

  Now she was going to be living there? Had the man lost his mind?

  She’d tried screaming, raging. It didn’t work. He’d only continued cramming her things into suitcases—putting his dad hands all over her underwear. Gross. Like he knew what items were important to her. He packed about a thousand pairs of socks, as if she could care, but not one of her books. Left her bookshelf completely alone. Did he really not ever notice that she always had a book in her hand? Did he really think she’d need her snow boots in June, but not one paperback?

  She threw things. She broke the few items in his depressing apartment that looked like they could maybe be considered important. He didn’t care.

  You won’t listen to my rules; maybe you’ll listen to your grandmother’s, he’d said.

  Why? Why would she listen to anyone? Nobody ever listened to her. Not ever.

  Here’s a rule for you: Don’t drink and drive.

  Here’s another: Don’t abandon your daughter and leave her to live with someone who doesn’t have the first clue about rule #1.

  Oh, and here’s a good one: If you do, don’t expect her to think you’re the World’s Greatest Dad or anything.

  Eventually, she gave up. He was shipping her off, and if nothing else, at least now she didn’t have to keep pretending she was “doing something productive”—her dad’s newest catchphrase. And it wasn’t like her grandmother was going to be too hard to fool. The woman sat in the same room with her for, like, thirty minutes before she ever looked up.

  Although. She was the only one who ever did look up. There was at least that.

  But she didn’t say anything about seeing her. Bailey was still trying to figure that one out.

  He left. Said he was just running out real quick to get some supplies for the road trip to Kansas City. But it was good for him to be gone, even for that amount of time. She wanted him away from her. She was so angry with him, her eyeballs hurt.

  She lay back on his bed, as she’d done many afternoons when she’d skipped school to come home and nap. He’d spared no expense in buying his new bachelor pad duds, and the bed was ten times fluffier and more comfortable than the one she had at home, or the garage sale furniture he had for her here.

  She clutched her rescued, but beat-up, Anne of Green Gables to her chest, flipping one corner of the pages over and over again for the satisfying brrr sound, and stared at the ceiling fan until she could swear it began to move on its own accord under her watery gaze. What did it matter, anyway? What was there for her here? What was left of her life? Where had those days gone, the ones where her mom would make peppermint cookies and play music on the stereo, and they would dance around, laughing, maybe dusting or vacuuming, making the house smell good and fresh? Where were those nights snuggled up to her mom’s chest, listening to that story about the bunny who needed a home? God, she had made her mom read that book so many times. She was in love with the story, but she was more in love with the moment. The tenor of her mom’s voice, the smell of her perfume, the way her toes looked smushed up in her work panty hose—the memories hurt so much, but she couldn’t stop thinking about them. She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about them since her mom started being too drunk at night to take off her panty hose at all.

  She dropped the paperback on the floor beside the bed, brought her hand up to her mouth, and poked a cigarette—filched from the gym teacher’s desk drawer on the last day of school—between her lips. Then with a shaky hand, realizing that she was now embarking on a whole new level of messing with the system, she brought a lighter—stolen from the same desk—to the cigarette and thumbed it on.

  The smoke burned a thousand times worse than she thought it would. She thought it would be like the wood smoke that drifted off her mom’s fire pit on Sangria Sundays, but instead it felt like hot liquid pouring down into her lungs, and she coughed and wretched until she felt like her eyes would pop out, curling up onto one side and pressing her cheek against her dad’s superfirm pillow, clutching her stomach with her free arm.

  This. This was good. Physical pain to blot out the emotional pain. Bailey knew that was a dangerous game to play, but she couldn’t help it. The pain made her feel alive, made her feel there. It had been so long since she’d been present, she sometimes wondered whether maybe she wasn’t a figment of someone’s imagination.

  But the pain passed and then came the light-headedness; it felt so good to be weightless and out of contact with the world, so she pulled on the cigarette again and coughed again, but less. So she took another drag and another, perfecting various holds on it—perched between the first knuckles of her index and middle fingers, squeezing it between her thumb and index finger—and flipping ashes on the comforter, enjoying watching embers shrivel away the fabric into little holes. She tried to imagine herself as the smoking antagonist from one of her books, but, frustratingly, found that she couldn’t think of any. Why didn’t bad guys ever smoke? Finally, the butt was nearly down to the filter, and she wished more than anything that she’d taken the whole pack.

  But there were always cigarettes to be found. Anything was easy to steal. For now, she’d just have to be happy with the relaxed dizziness that this one had given her.

  There was a sound of metal clicking against the lock on the front door, and she knew her peaceful weightlessness was over. It was time to head out west. She needed to take some of those stupid socks out of her suitcase. She needed to find her bunny book. If she wasn’t going to have a home, at least she’d have an old friend who’d been there, done that to help her along.

  But first, she had a reputation to protect. She had to make the man feel justified in yet another abandonment. She was Bailey Butler, Pain in the Ass. Bailey Butler, Problem Child. Bailey Butler, Worthless Kid. She couldn’t go without leaving him a little reminder that she had once been here. She sat up, giving her father’s pillow one last appreciative pat, then drew back the comforter and snuffed out the cigarette right onto the pillow.

  The scent of burned fabric was intoxicating.

  SEVEN

  Jean wasn’t sure who was more nervous—she or her granddaughter.

  Her granddaughter. It was so weird to say that word. No
t that she didn’t know she had one; of course she did. She just had always thought of the girl in generic terms. As “the Granddaughter,” not as Bailey, the girl who would be showing up at her house any moment.

  Cookies. In the end, she’d baked cookies. Not because she loved cookies, nor because she knew Bailey liked them, but because cookie baking seemed to her an undeniably grandmotherly thing to do.

  So she’d baked them. Thick chocolate chip cookies, made with real butter and mixed by hand rather than by mixer, because she’d read that hand mixing them made them softer coming out of the oven. If nothing else, the house smelled like Christmas when Bailey arrived.

  Jean put on her best smile when she opened the door. “Hello!” she’d cried out, probably far too loudly, far too welcomingly. Kids could sense fear—she knew this!—and if that was true, surely Bailey could sense terror coming off Jean. “Come in, come in!” She shuffled backward and gestured with her whole arm, realizing that she looked a bit like one of those game show models while she was doing it. Show Bailey what’s behind door number three, Jeanie! A new house!

  “Sorry we’re late,” Curt said, pushing past her, lugging a big, heavy-looking suitcase in each hand. “Someone decided to set fire to my bed right before we left.”

  “Fire?” Jean repeated, reaching out to help him with the luggage. He just kept walking, and again she was left with her arms waving around. “Is everything okay?”

  Bailey stood on the front porch, clutching a pillow and blanket to her stomach. She rolled her eyes, which were ringed with massive amounts of makeup, and it was smudged and running, as if she’d been crying. She stood as if she’d grown roots, looking at the ground at Jean’s feet.

  “Come on in,” Jean said again, brightly, but still the girl didn’t move.

  “Yes, everything’s fine. Luckily,” Curt said angrily. “Where do I put this?”

  Jean jumped. “Oh, right. The guest bedroom is upstairs, first room on the right. You can just set your things in there and put it away in your own time.” She directed the last sentence to Bailey, who still wasn’t moving. “The comforter is a black bear pattern. I hope that’s okay with you.”