The Accidental Book Club

by Jennifer Scott

  At the same time, Curt, who was trudging up the stairs, yelled over his shoulder. “Get in the goddamn house. You’re letting the air-conditioning out.”

  Jean laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t mind. It’s okay, really. Take however long you nee—”

  Slowly, hesitantly, Bailey entered the house, her hands still buried under cloth and pillow. Jean moved out of her way, and then shut the door behind her. Once Bailey was in, the atmosphere seemed very, very awkward, and Jean wasn’t sure what to say.

  Jean had never been particularly at ease around children, not even her own. When Kenneth and Laura were little, it had seemed that all of Jean’s friends simply adored being mothers, that their lives were finally complete. But Jean had always felt clumsy and unsure. She loved her children with everything she had; she was just never sure how to turn that feeling into action. She felt continually judged—sized up other mothers, sized up by her children, especially Laura. She feared that she never quite hit the mark. Now, with Laura in rehab and Bailey standing ill at ease in her foyer, she wondered if she never did hit it. If she never would. She certainly had never predicted that she would be questioning her parenting skills in her sixties.

  “I made cookies,” she said, glad that she’d done it now, glad for the talking point.

  Bailey swiveled her head slowly toward Jean and gave her a nonplussed look. “You do that for all your guests?” she asked, and Jean was taken aback by how flat and cold and deep her granddaughter’s voice sounded.

  Jean blinked a few times. “I—I have some friends I cook for sometimes,” she said. “And I suppose I’ve made cookies once or twice . . .”

  Bailey made a sniffing noise and once again rolled her eyes. Jean had never seen someone roll her eyes so much, as if life itself were such a disappointment, such a lame attempt at everything, there was almost no point dealing with it.

  “Would you like one?” Jean asked, heading for the kitchen and hoping Bailey would follow her there.

  There was a long pause, and Jean noticed she was walking alone. But she kept going, kept moving forward, because that was what she did best ever since Wayne died, wasn’t it? Kept going, never looking back, because what she might find back there might be even more frightening than what she saw ahead.

  “She asked you a question,” she heard Curt growl. There was a muffled thumping as he came down the carpeted stairs. Then he was in the kitchen, the opposite of his daughter: all pumping limbs and whipping, hard energy.

  “No,” Jean heard from the entryway.

  “No, what?” Curt boomed, making Jean jump. He plucked a cookie off the cooling rack.

  Bailey’s voice came back, only this time sarcastic and squeaky-high. “No, thank you, dear Granny,” she said, and Jean could feel her face flush, as if she were being made fun of, though she was pretty sure Bailey was actually mocking her father.

  Curt shook his head. “You see?” he said around a mouthful of cookie. “You see what I’m dealing with? She didn’t say one pleasant word the entire four hours it took to get here. She cussed me out for the first hour and a half. She locked herself in a gas station bathroom and took a nap. She ground candy into my floorboard with her feet. How her mother didn’t see what was happening with this child . . .” He shook his head, shoved more cookie into his mouth, his jaw working around the bite angrily. Jean wondered if he could even taste what he was chewing. “Anyway, thank you for letting her stay here. It will do us all good, I think, to get away from one another for a while.”

  “Fly away, fly away, little ghostie,” Jean heard muttered from the entryway. She leaned forward and craned her neck to see Bailey, still holding the pillow and blanket, turning in slow circles on the tile and gazing up at the chandelier as she did so. “It’s what ghosts do best,” Bailey continued, so softly Jean almost couldn’t make out what she was saying.

  “Is she . . . Does she . . . ?”

  He held up one hand. “She’s weird, but she’s not as weird as she wants everyone to believe she is. It’s an act. An attention tactic.”

  Maybe she needs some attention, then, Jean thought, though she didn’t say it aloud. The truth was, she had no idea what this strange child needed. No idea at all.

  “Okay. So she’s got her laptop and her cell phone. She knows how to get ahold of me if she needs me. And you can call if you need anything. But hopefully you won’t have any problems.” He raised his voice for this last part, aiming it toward Bailey.

  “Boo!” came the echoey return from the entryway.

  He ignored the noise completely and dug his wallet out of his back pocket. “Here’s her insurance card,” he said, and handed a white card over to Jean. “And here’s a couple hundred bucks to get us through the first few weeks. I can get you more next Tuesday if you need it.”

  Jean held the money in her palm as if she didn’t know what to do with it, and realized that she really didn’t. You couldn’t take away the generic feel of a grandchild you didn’t know by baking cookies, for God’s sake. What did Bailey need? Did she need razor cartridges and shampoo and tampons? Did she like to eat Pizza Rolls? What did she want for breakfast, and did she remember to bring socks? Would she need a swimsuit? Jean almost felt dizzy under all the questions she’d forgotten to ask before agreeing to take Bailey in.

  “And you have my phone number,” Curt was saying, pressing along with his instructions, even though Jean feared she wasn’t absorbing them. “She doesn’t have her driver’s license, so don’t let her drive your car. She can’t be trusted with a vehicle, anyway. I’ll check in later this week, see if you need anything else, and . . .”

  Jean closed her eyes and envisioned Wayne standing next to her. The young, healthy Wayne. The Wayne whose blood cells were still marching along just fine in there, eating up the bad stuff. The Wayne who raised their two kids and who built the log fence around their backyard and who never put up with anybody’s crap. She tried to channel him, to adopt his force of energy. Please, Wayne, she beseeched in her mind, please help me deal with her. Please help me know how.

  Eventually, Curt finished talking, thanked her again, and announced that he had to get back to St. Louis, back to work. Jean bagged him up a couple of cookies to eat on the road and followed him to the door.

  He stopped when he pulled up parallel to Bailey, but didn’t make a move to reach out to her, though he looked like he wanted to, looked like he thought he should. “I’ll call,” he said, and Jean wondered if that was the best he could do, the closest he could get to being sentimental about leaving his only daughter behind. Again she was struck with a wonder, a fear, that this was exactly how she’d handled sentimentality with Laura, exactly how she’d handled it with Wayne and Kenneth too. Was it possible that Laura had grown up so accustomed to a lack of hearts and flowers that she attracted a man just like her? Was it possible that nobody ever told Bailey that they loved her?

  “I’ll be on pins and needles,” Bailey responded, trying to sound tough, but coming off as only flat and hurt. Jean thought she saw the girl clutch the pillow and blanket closer to her stomach.

  “Don’t give your grandmother any trouble,” he said. “Got that?”

  At first it looked like Bailey wouldn’t answer at all. She rocked herself side to side so minimally it was almost not there—Jean almost felt like she was the one who was swaying rather than her granddaughter. But then finally, “Sir, yes, sir,” she said, in that same odd, flat voice.

  And that was when things got really awkward. Jean almost felt as if she needed to leave them alone, but she was at the door—one hand on the doorknob—and Curt stood between her and the kitchen, Bailey between her and the stairs. She was trapped in their uncomfortable moment, unable to get out.

  Curt raised his hand just a few inches, as if he thought he might put it on Bailey’s shoulder, or maybe the top of her head, but then he changed his mind. But feeling the change in moveme
nt, Bailey immediately stopped rocking and stood still and tense, dipping her chin down into the pillow and blanket she held. And after a few moments that seemed to stretch into eternity, he finally just stepped forward and through the front door.

  “I’ll call,” he said once again, and then jogged off the front porch steps and to his car.

  After Jean shut the door, it was as if the uncomfortable moment had been transferred from Curt to her as he whisked past. Suddenly she didn’t know what to do—whether she should talk or reach out or just leave well enough alone. Whether she should just go about her business and risk Bailey standing in the same spot in the entryway for hours, or maybe even weeks, until Curt eventually came back to collect her. Or whether she should grab the child by the elbow and lead her to the cookies, which now seemed like the dumbest idea ever. Who bakes cookies for an event such as this?

  “Do you need me to show you where the guest bedroom is?” she asked.

  Bailey shook her head no.

  “It has its own bathroom,” Jean offered, “so you’ll have all the privacy you need.”

  Bailey continued pressing her chin into the pillow.

  “Are you hungry at all?”

  Another head shake.

  “Your room also has a TV. There’s no satellite on that one. But you can watch satellite on the big TV anytime you want. I hardly ever use it. That’s downstairs. Through the kitchen and dining room.”

  Nothing. Maybe no matter what she did, Bailey would just stand here. Maybe that was how it was going to end up regardless. The blanket that was looped over Bailey’s arm shifted, and Jean saw what looked like the corner of a child’s book peek out from underneath it. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought it was a Little Golden Book, the kind she used to read to Laura and Kenny when they were small. Bailey followed Jean’s eyes and tucked the book back into the blanket sheepishly.

  “Okay, well . . .” Jean paused, wracked her brain for something interesting or fantastic or profound or . . . anything that would make this child move, and found nothing. “Just let me know if you need something,” she said.

  She began walking back toward the kitchen, though admittedly she had no idea what she was going to do with herself once she got there. But just as she reached the doorway, she heard that low, melodic voice again.

  “It wasn’t a fire.”

  Jean turned. “I’m sorry?”

  Bailey lowered the blanket, but still didn’t raise her eyes. “I didn’t set his bed on fire.”

  “Oh. I . . .”

  “I put a cigarette out on his pillow. There’s a difference.”

  “Okay,” Jean said. “I see.” Though she really didn’t. “I don’t smoke,” she finally offered, and then felt stupid for not saying something more . . . soothing . . . more comforting. She wanted to say, I believe you, or, What’s between you and your father won’t follow you here, or, I’m not worried, or any number of things that might have expressed to Bailey that she’d come to a safe place, a place where she would be cared for and loved. But Jean couldn’t decide which of those things to say, and the longer the silence stretched between them, the more absurd any of them would have felt coming out of her mouth. In the end, she didn’t say anything. Just left it with I don’t smoke.

  Time seemed interminable as the two stood opposite each other. Jean’s mouth opened and closed, opened and closed, and it wasn’t until finally the phone rang—it was Kenneth, wondering if Bailey had arrived, wanting to know how things were going, wanting to know if Jean needed help—that Jean could finally come up with a good segue to leave. By the time she got off the phone—mumbling cryptic answers to his questions as if she were FBI—Bailey had gone up to her room and shut the door. For a time, Jean stood outside the door, her hand splayed open on it as if she were reaching inside and touching Bailey, comforting her the way she couldn’t do when they were face-to-face, her ears perked for any sign of movement, any sign of foul play.

  What if her granddaughter did set her house on fire?

  Would she? Was she that unpredictable?

  After a while, Jean knocked.

  “I need to go to the grocery store,” she called. “Would you like to come?”

  No answer.

  “Bailey?” she called, her heart jumping. What if the child had done something stupid inside the room? What if she’d hurt herself or snuck out? There was a muffled sound. Jean tried the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. She knocked again, a little more insistent this time. “Bailey?”

  “I said I’m asleep!” came the annoyed response from the other side, screamed so loudly, Jean actually took two steps back from the door, her hand turning itself back into a fist. She stood in the hallway, unsure, then stepped back to the door.

  “Oh. Okay. I’m . . . sorry I woke you.”

  • • •

  She knew she should have felt afraid to leave Bailey home alone, but the truth was, the minute Jean was in her car, driving toward town, she felt so relieved, she almost tingled. Here, at the supermarket, there would be nothing unfamiliar. Here she could be in control.

  She grabbed a cart from the corral next to her car and pushed it across the lot herself, liking the familiar jangle of the metal shaking and jarring over the potholed concrete parking lot. She liked the everyday whoosh of the automatic doors opening for her, the beeping sound of the cash registers permeating the air as if she’d just stepped into a heart monitor, the scuffle of shoppers, the clang of cart meeting cart, the music—Cyndi Lauper today—piping in over her head. All expected. All things she understood on every level. No surprises here.

  She wheeled to the deli counter and began to order the usual—a half pound of kettle fried turkey breast and six slices of white American cheese—when she looked up to see Janet, her perpetually red-faced friend from the book club.

  Jean barked out a surprised laugh, the one Laura had always called her “flaff.” It’s a fake laugh, Mother, she used to droll, rolling her eyes not too unlike her daughter had just been doing in the entryway earlier that day. It makes you sound like some hoity-toity TV wife. And then, of course, Laura had grown to be all about appearances, and Jean often wondered whether Laura flaffed now, and if it made her feel as ridiculous as it still made Jean feel when she did it.

  “I didn’t know you were working here,” Jean said.

  Janet shrugged, her nose going crimson. “Just started a couple weeks ago. It’s killing me being away from the kids, but we needed the money, so . . .” She fidgeted with the hem of her apron.

  “Totally understand,” Jean said, and she flaffed again, which only made her feel even more awkward, and to Jean it began to feel as if this would be a whole day of awkwardness. “I’ve thought of applying here myself,” she added, which wasn’t true, and she had no idea what made her say it in the first place, especially since it only added to the discomfort, and she and Janet both shuffled their feet and looked down.

  “I read Blame,” Janet finally blurted. “The book? For our next meeting? I finished it last night after my shift.”

  “Oh! The book!” Jean said, relieved to have something to talk about while at the same time mortified that in all the strange goings-on of the past few days, she had neglected to read it herself. “Book club. Of course! Yes, yes. Quite the interesting book.”

  Janet’s face turned so red on the forehead, it began to go white in the creases. She leaned forward over the counter, her gut with its narrow strip of apron pressing into the glass on the other side. “I thought it was—”

  “Janet!” a voice barked, and Janet jumped, her hands flying up to her collarbone. A bald man, looking trussed-up in an apron that matched Janet’s, was churning toward her. “I thought I told you to shave more sale ham.”

  “I was just about to,” Janet said, her voice going tiny and the whites of her eyes turning bloodshot and glassy as she turned them toward the flo
or. “I’ve got a customer.”

  “Looks to me like you were standing around gossiping with your ‘customer.’” He made air quotes with his fingers. “We don’t pay you to chat with your friends,” he said, pulling himself up tall and placing his hands on his narrow hips. “Get to work or give me your apron. There are a hundred people out there who would love to have this job.”

  “Yes, sir,” she mumbled to her shoes, and Jean felt so embarrassed and guilty for her friend that she found herself growing warm.

  The man stalked away, shaking his head and muttering something about “lazy cow” under his breath. Jean watched him go, her mouth hanging open. When he had gone and she’d refocused her attention on Janet, the poor thing was twisting the bottom of her apron between her hands and swallowing repeatedly, as if to swallow the whole episode inside herself so that no one else had to witness it.

  “What a jerk,” Jean started to say.

  But Janet had finally swallowed enough to find her voice and at the same time said, “Can I get you anything? Because I need to, um . . .”

  “Shave some ham,” Jean finished for her. Janet nodded, fumbling with a box of latex gloves, and Jean decided that the best way to be Janet’s friend in this moment was to let it go. She ordered her kettle fried turkey, took the bag of meat, and said good-bye. She forgot the cheese.

  Besides, she had something much more pressing to worry about.

  Something she hadn’t realized until Janet mentioned Blame.

  The book club.

  It would be meeting again soon.

  And Bailey, just as snarling and nasty as that man, would be there.

  EIGHT

  Even though Janet had reminded her that day at the supermarket, it was still days before Jean opened up her copy of Blame again. She’d stumbled across it on the coffee table and had been startled by the realization that she had still barely cracked it open. She’d gotten only about twenty pages into it, and had until the next meeting to read another six hundred of them. Thackeray was nothing if not prolific.