by Pearl Cleage
“We did,” I said. “I guess that means we’re going to be working together.”
“We are indeed. Actually, I’m going to FedEx you some material about an event we’ve got coming up next week. I know you’re just getting your feet wet, but if you could pull together some remarks for me, I’d appreciate it.”
“Of course,” I said, even though serving as speechwriter was not part of my contract. “When do you need them?”
“Yesterday,” he said cheerfully. “But right now I’ve got to run, Catherine. May I call you Catherine? Now that we’re officially coworkers.”
“Of course,” I said. “Catherine is fine.”
“Then I’m Sam.” And he was gone.
I wondered what event he was talking about, but for now I was through working. I had cooking to do. Our brand-new book club was meeting this evening at Amelia’s, and I was making pasta.
It was Miss Iona’s idea. She was devoted to Oprah Winfrey, and ever since Oprah started a book club, Miss Iona had been hot to start one, too. First she tried the women at the senior center near her house, but they weren’t interested or couldn’t see well enough to take pleasure in reading anymore. Then she tried her church, but they wanted to limit their selections to Christian fiction and inspirational books, and Miss Iona wanted more variety. So she finally invited me and Amelia, Flora Lumumba, who’s in charge of the community gardens, Aretha Hargrove, a painter and photographer who is carrying her first child, and Blue Hamilton’s new wife, Regina, who does PR, to come to her house to explore the possibility of forming a book club that would meet for dinner every other month or so and talk.
Miss Iona suggested that we keep it small, just the six of us, and that we start with Jill Nelson’s novel Sexual Healing, because nobody could be neutral about the questions she was raising. We agreed the meal would always be communal and that nobody had to feel guilty about bringing takeout as long as it wasn’t pizza.
“Are we going to name ourselves?” Aretha said, folding her hands over her belly in a protective gesture that seems to come to mothers in their sleep the moment that egg starts becoming the magic of somebody’s ears or somebody’s eyes or somebody’s little flat feet. Last year she had married Kwame Hargrove, the son of a popular politician, sister Senator Precious Hargrove, and the celebration had ended with a community-wide party that went on peacefully until dawn. Standing in for her parents, who had died in a car accident when she was a kid, Blue Hamilton not only walked her down the aisle, but at the bride’s request, sang the most amazing a cappella version of “Ave Maria” I’ve ever heard in my life.
“I guess we should have a name,” Miss Iona agreed, “but I’m not good at that stuff. Anything you all choose is fine with me.”
“I like Babylon Sisters,” Amelia said. “But it’s already taken.”
They all looked at me. I was flattered that they liked the name I’d already chosen, especially since my business was going on hiatus as soon as I was full-time with Ezola. I liked the idea of keeping the name alive. There was absolutely no reason not to share it. This could be that start of a whole movement of Babylon Sisters stuff. Babylon Sisters dry cleaners, Babylon Sisters day-care centers, Babylon Sisters nail shops. The more the merrier.
“If that’s the name you want,” I said, “I’d be honored.”
“Babylon Sisters Book Club,” Regina Hamilton said, nodding her approval. “I like that a lot.”
The story in the neighborhood is that Blue and Regina knew each other in another life, lost each other for a few hundred years, and then found each other again right here in West End. Neither one of them ever confirmed it, and nobody has nerve enough to ask either one of them about their personal histories. I don’t believe in reincarnation myself, but it’s a beautiful story, and they are so clearly in love that if it’s not true, it ought to be. She was probably a real Babylon sister a lifetime or two ago, and the name just stirred up the memory.
“Me, too,” said Flora. “Shall we vote?”
Flora rides herd on the group of independent old folks who are the heart and soul of West End’s award-winning community gardens program. She’s big on participatory democracy, but she’s used to calling for the question.
“All in favor,” said Miss Iona, raising her hand and wiggling her crimson-tipped fingers.
It was unanimous. The Babylon Sisters Book Club was now officially launched, and I was looking forward to our discussion tonight at Amelia’s. The women in Sexual Healing had taken matters into their own hands and opened an upscale, full-service brothel catering to sisters in need of some serious TLC. The idea was intriguing, but I couldn’t imagine any of us throwing down a credit card and disappearing into a private room for an afternoon of technically proficient but soulless sex. The problem is, the part that makes it sweet is the part money can’t buy and time can’t seem to erase. I’m curious to see what my sisters think, but right now, all I’ve got to do is concoct a pan of my best spinach lasagna. Sexual healing is a sometimes thing, but a good meal with your girlfriends is a guarantee.
16
The lasagna had another half hour to bake, which gave me more than enough time to dash up to Mr. Jackson’s package store and pick up a bottle of Chianti to complement my culinary skills. I had invited his wife, Barbara, to join our book club, but she was always busy at the store, so I didn’t really expect her to be able to come. I had my keys in my hand and a light jacket across my shoulders, since summer was now officially over and fall was in the air, when the doorbell rang. I opened it to find a tall, thin, very uncomfortable-looking man standing there. He looked vaguely familiar, with his close haircut and his large, square glasses, but mostly what struck me was how uncomfortable he was.
“Yes?”
“Catherine?” he said, achieving the impossible by sounding even more uncomfortable than he looked.
“I’m Catherine. Can I help you?”
A look of shocked surprise crept across his face. “You don’t even remember me, do you?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You look familiar, but . . .”
“Bobby Hicks,” he said. “We had Chemistry together senior year. Dr. McBay’s class?”
“Oh, my God! Bobby! Of course! Sure! How are you?”
I stuck out my hand, wondering what would have brought my old lab partner to my doorstep after all these— Oh, shit! How clueless can I be? He got one of Phoebe’s letters!
He shook my hand without much conviction. Bobby Hicks had been a very smart, very boring boy who was a perfect lab partner because he understood everything and loved to explain it, repeatedly. The problem was, he loved to explain everything. Repeatedly. There could be only one reason for his visit, but what was the damn protocol? Was he supposed to bring it up or was I?
“I guess you’re wondering why I’m here,” he said.
“I think I have an idea.”
“You do?”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I know you’re not her father.”
“Well, there was never any question about that,” he said, sounding relieved and annoyed in equal measure. “But what made her think . . . I mean, how did your daughter get the idea I might be . . .”
He couldn’t seem to finish a sentence.
“Listen,” I said, “would you like to come in? I can explain.”
He stiffened up and took a small step back, like I might lure him inside and then take advantage of him. “I’d prefer we talk out here.”
“Fine,” I said, wishing I could get my hands around Phoebe’s neck. Modern mother, my ass! “Would you like to sit down?”
“Thank you,” he said, taking one of the porch chairs.
I sat down, too. I felt sorry for Bobby. It wasn’t his fault. If I had gotten a letter like that, I’d probably be pissed off, too. I tried to be clear but not waste time on too many details.
“My daughter is on a quest to find her biological father. She went through my diaries and sent letters to any man whose name she found there.”
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br /> “My name was in your diaries?”
“Yes.”
“As your lab partner?”
“Yes.” That wasn’t a lie, but the part about me and him being more than friends was. “The point is, she was wrong to send you a letter like that, and I can promise you she won’t contact you again.”
He looked at me. “My wife opened it. It came special delivery and she thought it might be important, so she opened it.”
“I’m so sorry, Bobby. Please tell her how sorry I am to have upset her.”
“I’d appreciate it if you’d call her yourself.”
“What?” He had to be kidding.
Without further explanation, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone, punched in a speed-dial number, and extended it to me.
“Her name is Monica.”
“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” I said, but I could already hear her voice on the other end of the line. There was a baby or two wailing in the background.
“Bobby? Are you there? Bobby? Who is this?”
Bobby was looking at me like we were back in Chemistry class and I had forgotten my homework. I took the phone from his hand because I couldn’t think of a way not to. “Monica? This is Catherine Sanderson.”
Silence. I was going to kill Phoebe for sure. I never had this kind of foolishness in my life. Now, here I sat in the middle of a scene straight out of One Life to Live.
“I want to apologize for my daughter. She’s working out some issues and this was her way of forcing my hand. Bobby and I were never more than friends. He’s not her father.”
I looked at Bobby, sitting there glowering at me. “In fact, we weren’t even friends. We were just lab partners.”
“I know,” Monica said. “I was in that class, too. You probably don’t remember me. You were too busy talking to my husband.”
I resisted the temptation to remind her that they weren’t married then and apologized one last time.
“Well, I’m sorry about everything,” I said. “Bobby’s completely innocent. He won’t hear from my daughter again.”
She was saying something else shrill as I handed him back the phone.
“Monica, it’s me!” he interrupted her tirade. “Now do you believe me? I told you we never even . . . did it!”
Just the thought made me feel a little queasy. I stood up.
“Take your time and finish your call,” I whispered with a small wave. I still had time to get my Chianti without overcooking my lasagna and, as far as I was concerned, this conversation was truly over.
“Monica?” he said, standing up, too. “I’ll call you right back.”
He snapped the phone closed and looked at me, suddenly uncomfortable again. That was an improvement over the glowering, but not by much. I wondered if there was a more direct way to say good-bye and get him off my porch.
“I’m a teacher now,” he said, apropos of nothing. “Tenth-grade Chemistry and Biology.”
“Still doing that science, huh?” I said, heading for the front steps and pleased that he took the hint and walked with me.
“Yeah. Same old, same old.”
His tone had changed completely. He sounded almost wistful. What was going on?
“Well, I’m sure your students are lucky to have you,” I said, although I wasn’t sure of anything of the kind. His little gray Honda Civic was parked right behind the big old green Buick I inherited from Louis a couple of years ago and that I’m still driving. His car looked old and sad, just like he did.
“You think so?” he said, fishing in one pocket after the other for his keys. He hadn’t changed a bit. Still awkward. Still confused.
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know what they think,” he said. “They probably hate me.”
He was suddenly awash in self-pity, his voice almost a whine. I could tell he wanted to tell me his troubles, but that was not going to happen. I’d had enough.
“Well, good seeing you, Bobby,” I said, opening the car door. “Sorry about the circumstances. You take care, now.”
“You, too.” He watched me climb in, but before I could pull away, he tapped on my window. I reluctantly lowered it and he leaned down to look me in the eye. “You should have told me, you know?”
“Told you what?”
A slow, goofy smile spread across his face. “That you felt that way about me. Maybe we could have worked something out.”
Was boring Bobby Hicks hitting on me? How much worse could this get?
“Maybe we still could,” he said.
I put the car in drive. If it was going to be worse than this, I wasn’t going to stick around to see. “Go home to your wife,” I said. “Before I call her back and tell her being lab partners was just the tip of the iceberg.”
He must have believed me, or his fear of Monica’s wrath far outweighed his desire to rekindle our imaginary romance, because by the time I got to the corner and looked in the rearview mirror, he had pulled off the other way and disappeared.
17
Bobby’s unexpected drop-by had really rattled me, but I still managed to get the wine, and the lasagna was perfect. We were only six, but we could have easily fed a dozen. Flora had grilled a variety of fresh vegetables from her prizewinning garden, with just a touch of olive oil and herbs. Aretha had roasted a free-range chicken with tarragon. Miss Iona had brought a pan of her legendary macaroni and cheese, and Regina had made a salad with fresh tomatoes and basil and mozzarella cheese that melted in your mouth. For dessert, Amelia had constructed six colorful parfaits.
The wine flowed freely and so did the conversation. The book was a jumping-off point for a wide-ranging discussion that touched on sex, love, AIDS, desire, birth control, romance, religion, and whether or not any of us could imagine paying for sex, no matter how good it was supposed to be or how long the drought had lasted. We ranged in age from Aretha, at a blossoming twenty-five, to Miss Iona, who admitted to sixty-plus, with a few stops in between for the rest of us, but everybody said no way to the brothels. Paying for sex was beyond where their imaginations could take them. More important, as I picked up in the easy ebb and flow of our confessions and critique, my sisters had no reason to consider such an option because all of them were currently having sex. Every single one, including Miss Iona, who was keeping company with Mr. Charles, one of the senior gardeners, who was seventy-five if he was a day, and Aretha, who was due to deliver in less than a month. I was a minority of one.
Even Amelia had chimed in with an anecdote and answered my raised eyebrows with a giggle and a conspiratorial wink. Maybe I should have taken Bobby Hicks up on his offer just to see if I still remember the basic moves. I’d hate to have an opportunity present itself and be too rusty to take advantage of the situation.
As the evening started winding down, we found ourselves examining what it takes, other than sex, to make a relationship last.
“The thing is, you gotta have truth or the whole thing falls apart,” Aretha was saying. “I tell Kwame everything.”
“Some women think that telling a man the truth will ruin a relationship faster than infidelity, but I think they’re wrong,” Amelia said. “I have found that truth is a great aphrodisiac for men. If you tell them the truth, they know you don’t need their approval. It changes the balance of things in a way that is always sexier than pretending. Don’t forget, it’s a short step from feigning an interest in football to faking orgasms, and an equally mind-deadening waste of time.”
“I never told any man everything,” said Miss Iona, rolling her eyes. “There’s some things men don’t need to know.”
“Like what?” Amelia smiled.
“Like whatever I decide not to tell ’em,” Miss Iona said. “Telling a man the truth about everything all the time takes the mystery out of it. I’d rather keep them guessing.”
“Not me,” said Flora, whose husband was a well-known defense lawyer flirting with a career in politics. “I like to lay my cards on the table.
”
“Me, too,” Regina said. “I believe that old Mark Twain thing about if you always tell the truth, you never have to remember anything.”
“I’m not saying you have to lie,” Miss Iona said, clarifying her position. “I’m just saying you aren’t required to tell everything you know.”
“What’s the difference?” I said. The distinction was starting to elude me.
“A lie is a deliberate distortion of the truth,” Amelia said. “I think Miss Iona’s talking more about letting people draw their own conclusions.”
“Exactly.” Miss Iona nodded, pleased. “Too much truth will drive a man crazy.”
Aretha just laughed. “Does Kwame look crazy to you?”
“As a bedbug,” Miss Iona teased her, knowing Kwame was as solid as a rock. “I’ve been meaning to speak to his mama about that very thing.”
Our evening floated to a close on the music of our laughter, and I thought how lucky Kwame was to have found a woman who would gift him with her secrets, because she trusted him to handle them as gently as he was going to hold their baby. Thinking truth could do that was crazy, all right. Crazy like a fox.
18
Amelia’s office was a bustling beehive of activity tucked away on a quiet midtown street whose only other commercial entity was a quiet little French bistro on the corner that Amelia used to woo her upscale clients and reward her associates after a successful trial. We had gone there for lunch to celebrate Jason’s acceptance to Yale and when Phoebe made the honor roll at Fairfield her first semester, but today both of us were too busy to linger over cappuccino in the middle of the afternoon.
I had spent the morning lobbying members of the city council in support of increased funding for homeless shelters and wondering if Bobby Hicks was an aberration or the first of many uncomfortable encounters. Last night after everybody else had divided up the leftovers, hugged one another good night one more time, and headed home, I stayed around to tell Amelia about my visitor. She was appalled that he made me speak to his wife, but not surprised that he hit on me, pointing out that Louis had said some of them would probably be flattered at the thought, however far from reality it might be. She voted on the side of his being an aberration, not a trend, and told me to come by her office around two so she could introduce me to her new intern.