The Potluck Club

by Linda Evans Shepherd

  “Excuse me? What do you call taking care of this house? Washing your dirty underwear? Being there for you anytime you needed someone to be there? Raising your daughter? What are you thinking—that being your wife has been some sort of cruise around the world?”

  “Hey!” Jack exclaimed. “You don’t like it . . .” He pointed toward the front door. “You know where the door is. Don’t let it hit you on the way out.”

  I shook my head sadly. “Oh, and I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding someone to take my place. Some poor, poor, pitiful soul. Someone like . . . oh, let me think,” I mimicked him. “Charlene Hopefield.”

  It was a delightful moment. I watched the pallor of his face grow ashy, then deepen to something akin to purple. “Who told you about Charlene Hopefield?”

  I laughed again. “Oh, Jack. You pathetic man. Do you think I’ve been stupid all these years? I’m as sharp about your runnings-around as your mother was about your father’s. And don’t tell me you don’t know about that.”

  Jack pointed to me. “You keep my mother out of this.”

  I snorted. “Oh, please.” I turned and headed back toward the kitchen. “Go to work, Jack. Maybe you can meet Charlene in the teachers lounge before the school bell rings, eat yourself a stale donut, and toast your infidelity with a cup of coffee.”

  When I got to the kitchen I began to shake. It was only the lightest quivering at first, but as I heard Jack moving about—doing whatever it is he does to finish getting ready for the day—it grew so violent I had to stop what I was doing and wrap my arms around myself. I took deep breaths, attempting to steady the erratic pounding of my heart. I thought about praying but decided against it. I was too angry at the moment. I had nothing, really, to say to God. Nothing except Just let me get through these next few minutes, Lord. Just get him out of the house so I can think, why don’t you?

  Jack left the house way before 7:00, giving himself plenty of time to get to work, where I imagined he would seek out his mistress. Maybe he’d tell her about my casserole. Perhaps they’d even laugh about it. Or he might even tell her I’d been disrespectful to him . . . how he’d spent all these years “supporting” me and now I was treating him like yesterday’s trash. He’d say things like, “I told you, Charlene. My wife just doesn’t understand me . . . doesn’t appreciate me.”

  “I know, I know,” she’d say, then slip her arms around him and kiss him deeply and passionately, the way he used to kiss me all those years ago by the pool in Washington, D.C., and in the early years of our marriage.

  I touched my lips with the tips of my fingers. “I gotta get out of here,” I whispered to no one. “I can’t live like this anymore.”

  Two hours later—with the kitchen cleaned up and the bed stripped and remade—I arrived at Olivia’s house with a large suitcase in one hand and an overnight bag in the other.

  “Mom.” She stood on the other side of the glass storm door, her eyes darting from my car parked in her driveway to the luggage in my hand. “What are you doing here?”

  “Can I come in?” I asked.

  She unlatched and opened the door. “Of course you can. I’m sorry. Goodness,” she rattled as I stepped into the small living room of her home. Olivia and Tony live in a comfortable three-bedroom duplex owned by Tony’s parents, who live, conveniently, on the other side. The rent is cheap, enabling my daughter to stay at home with Brook. I can certainly appreciate this for Brook’s sake, but on this day I was wishing Olivia would do something to make herself financially secure, God forbid she be standing in Brook’s living room one day, suitcase in hand. I set my luggage on the mocha-colored plush carpet as she repeated, “Mom, what are you doing here? What’s going on?”

  I turned and faced her. “I need a place to stay for a while.”

  “Oh, Mom. Come, sit down,” she said, leading me to the overstuffed red, blue, and green plaid sofa.

  “I promise I won’t get in the way and I won’t stay here forever. I just need some time to find a job . . . to get my own place . . .”

  “Mom.” We sat, and she looked around the room, the walls of which were painted stark white, trimmed in maple. Olivia had stenciled a rolling train of red and blue flowers around the room and into the adjoining dining room, which was dominated by an antique oak table and matching sideboard and hutch.

  I allowed my eyes to scan the room with hers, past the country teddy bears and porcelain figurines and hand-stitched quilts that hung from the walls, then back to her.

  “I can help you around the house.” She whipped her face back to mine. “Not that I think you need help. Goodness, look at this place. Early in the morning, and not a thing out of place. Where’s my grandson?”

  “He’s at preschool. Mom, tell me what happened.” She placed a slender hand on mine, which were one atop the other in my lap.

  “I’ve simply had enough. I’m clinging, but he’s cleaving—in the verb tense, not the other way it’s used—and until we’re both on the same definition of the word, I’m dying day by day and year by year. Affair by affair. I just can’t live with a man who doesn’t appreciate who I am or what I’ve been to him all these years.”

  Olivia was quiet before answering. “I understand, Mom. And of course you can stay here,” she added with a sigh. “I’ll call Tony at the shop, but I’m sure he’ll be okay with it. You can stay in the guest bedroom. It’s not fixed up real nice, but it’s got a comfortable bed.”

  “Oh, Olivia,” I cried, wrapping my arms around her, drawing her to me. “Oh, Olivia, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Olivia squeezed her bony frame into my softer one. “It’s okay, Mom. It’s all going to be okay,” she said with a firm resolve, though I could hear the hurt in her voice.

  I drew back to look at her. Sure enough, tiny tears were slipping down her cheeks, and I brushed them away with the tips of my fingers. “Now, now. Don’t you cry too, or I’ll never be able to stop.” I forced a smile, the kind mothers manage to give to their children when the rest of the world seems to be going to pot. “And I promise things will get better.” I took a deep breath, then let it out. “This will be a good time for us, my Olivia. I can help you with Brook . . . when he’s home. When does he come home?”

  “I pick him up at noon.”

  “Oh. Well . . . I’ll take him to the park down the street after his afternoon nap and keep him in the evenings sometime so you and Tony can go out. You know, like on a date.” I looked over my right shoulder, to the bar that wrapped around and divided the living room, dining room, and kitchen, then past it to the kitchen’s maple cabinets and white tile countertops, unusually stacked with dirty dishes. “And I can help you prepare meals or clean up after we eat. I’m a good cook, you know, and I’ve always enjoyed taking care of a house.”

  Olivia coughed out a laugh. “Well, your timing couldn’t be better,” she said. “I could use some help in the kitchen right now.”

  “I noticed things seem to be a bit out of place in there. Is there a problem?” I asked.

  She looked down at her lap. “No, no problem. Or, at least, just a temporary one. I’m just having trouble cleaning the kitchen.” She looked back up at me. “Mom, I’m about two months pregnant,” she announced. “We were going to tell you and Dad this weekend, but . . . well . . .”

  I hugged my daughter again. “Oh, Olivia! How wonderful. Oh, how very wonderful.”

  Life goes on.

  I found it hard to believe Saturday morning that it was time for another Potluck Club meeting. Hadn’t it been only a couple of weeks since we’d had dessert with a brown bear? It had been a month since we’d met to pray, and I had two items for the prayer list: one, I would need prayer to continue to be strong in my resolve to make a better life for myself. This would be difficult for me to talk about—the girls still didn’t know I’d left Jack. Two, I wanted to pray for Olivia’s pregnancy. I hoped it wouldn’t make Leigh feel strangely about her own upcoming arrival . . . which would be soon coming.
I wondered what she planned to do after the baby arrived, or if she’d talked to the father at all since she’d come to Summit View.

  Distressing as it was to think about Leigh raising a child without its father, I was so grateful to have a man like Tony Burke as the father of my grandchildren, not to mention the husband of my Olivia. Tony is a good man, a little shorter in stature than Olivia, but he’s 100 percent proof that the height of a man doesn’t make the man.

  When Olivia told Tony that I needed a place to stay, he left his shop in the capable hands of his one and only employee and rushed right over. The shop, Ye Olde Antiques, is really within walking distance of their house—two or three blocks only—but that’s not the point. The point is that he came.

  He entered the house quietly through the front door, looked at me sitting there on his sofa nursing a hot cup of apple cinnamon tea, raked the fingers of one hand through his thick blond hair, then brought it down to rest on a square-shaped hip. “Mom,” he said gently. “Ah, Mom.”

  He closed the door behind him, then joined me, sitting almost knee to knee. He gazed at me with his sweet blue eyes through small round glasses, placed a hand on my shoulder, and squeezed.

  Words weren’t really necessary, but I decided to use them anyway. “I won’t interrupt your life for long, Tony. I promise. I know that as much as I loved Mother Dippel, I wouldn’t have wanted her living with us for a long period of time when we were still honeymooning.”

  Tony smiled a crooked smile. “We’ve been married five years. We’re hardly honeymooning.”

  I smiled back, raised my mug in a toast, and said, “Apparently you are. I understand I’m going to be a grandmother again.”

  “Olivia told you.”

  “She did.”

  “Where is she?” he asked, looking around.

  “Taking a shower.”

  Tony nodded. “Well, I’ll step back there and let her know I’m here. Meanwhile, you just know you’re welcome to stay here as long as need be. I wouldn’t mind some of your good cooking, maybe a little of your old-fashioned Southern dressing, and I know Brook will be thrilled to have his nana here.”

  I patted Tony’s hand. “Tony, I’m not ready for anyone to know just yet about all this . . . so do me a favor and don’t talk about it outside of this house, okay?”

  “Not on your life.” Tony’s voice was so soft and kind; it was no wonder Olivia loved him like she did. No doubt Olivia has never wondered about or worried if Tony has roving hands and eyes. If the whole world fell into the sea and all that was left was Olivia, Brook, and himself, I suspect that Tony would be just fine with that.

  Was it possible for a mother to be jealous of her own daughter’s marriage? Well, maybe jealous isn’t the word for it. Perhaps the right phrase is “tickled pink.” I’m so blessed to know my daughter is in good hands.

  But at the Potluck Club, I planned to ask that the girls pray for continued good fortune for my new little at-home family.

  “Has Jack even called you?” Lizzie asked. We sat in our usual places in Evie’s living room, going around in a circle, casting out our prayer requests like pennies in a fountain. Please, Lord. Hear this one . . .

  “Oh, of course. He called later that day when he realized I wasn’t at home to cook his supper.” I had a tissue in my hand, and I began to tear at it. I kept my eyes focused on the white dust that flew about. “He figured I’d be at Olivia’s. Not that I’d packed a bag and left him, but that I was just over there visiting. The notion of me leaving him has never once crossed his mind.”

  “I, for one, don’t know what to say,” Evie, who was dressed more fashionably than we’d ever known her to, broke in. Supposedly, she, Leigh, Lizzie, and Michelle had done some recent shopping in Silverthorne. “Yes, I do. What in Sam Hill made you wait so long?”

  Donna had kept her jaw set most of the meeting, avoiding eye contact with everyone, including Vonnie, but at this she leaned forward, bracing her elbows on her knees and cracking her knuckles. “Much as I hate to admit it, Goldie, I’m with Evie on this one. I can’t really say I’m surprised.”

  Donna wouldn’t be. She knew so much more than the others, but, true to her profession, was keeping it all to herself, allowing me to tell only the parts I wanted to tell.

  “Is Pastor Kevin aware?” Vonnie asked.

  “Not from me, he isn’t.”

  “What will you do tomorrow . . . for church?”

  Church? I hadn’t thought about church. I couldn’t not go. Olivia and Tony, Jack and I had sat in our pew for the past seven years. Sitting there like a real family. Could I ask Olivia to choose which parent to sit with? Would that be fair? “I don’t know,” I whimpered, then felt Lizzie’s arm slide across my shoulder.

  “What did Jack say when he called, Goldie?” she asked.

  I coughed out a laugh. “You know Jack. ‘What are you doing, Goldie? What do you think you’re doing? Throwing away a perfectly good marriage like this?’ My question to him was, ‘What makes this a perfectly good marriage? I stay at home while you run around?’” I looked about the room. “I don’t guess it’s been any secret that Jack has pretty much cheated on me since the day we married.”

  “I don’t get it,” Lisa Leann piped in. “I mean, I don’t know you that well, Goldie, but you seem like such a dear lady. Is it that Jack is more interested in women who . . . how do I say this kindly? . . . fix themselves up a little more than you do?” Her eyes darted from one of us to the other as we each attempted to pull the stakes out of our hearts. “I’m not saying that any of you are not attractive. You’ve all got a lot of potential, and I certainly tried to get that point across when I brought my little gift bags to you at the last meeting. But none of you have even contacted me about giving you a facial, and as of yet I haven’t seen one of you with so much as a hint of lipstick on.”

  “Where do you get off talking like that?” Donna asked. For the life of me, I thought Donna was like a ticking time bomb that day.

  Lisa shifted her weight in the chair, causing her shiny red leather pants to squeak. Her mouth fell open as though she’d been the one wronged. “All I’m saying is that a man likes to see a little color on his woman’s face.” She patted her cheek. “Who wants to live with a brown paper sack when you can live with a gift bag from Tiffany’s?”

  “Lisa Leann—” Vonnie’s voice sounded like a warning.

  “Now you just hold up there, Lisa Leann Lambert,” Evie broke in. “I happen to know for a fact that your husband spends more time with Fred Westbrook than he does with what you obviously think is your pretty pout, so if I were you I’d watch what I say. Especially in my house.”

  “I didn’t mean to cause such a—” I attempted to break in, but it didn’t do much good. Lisa Leann nearly came out of her chair.

  “You know, since the minute I came to town you haven’t liked me, Evangeline Benson. And, for the life of me, I can’t figure out why.” Lisa Leann’s face turned nearly as red as her dyed hair.

  “I like you just fine,” Evie barked.

  Donna threw up her hands. “I could be in bed catching some z’s right now and not listening to all this drivel.”

  “Oh, my goodness . . .” Leigh stretched out a bit and rubbed her swollen belly. Those of us who had given birth took note of the peak it formed in the middle and moved quickly.

  “What is it?” Evie jumped to her niece’s side, her writing pad and pen falling undetected to the floor.

  Vonnie moved just as quickly.

  “You’re not in labor there, are you, Leigh?” Donna asked, standing from her chair but not approaching her. “I’ve got training, but I’ve never had to use it.”

  Evie turned on her. “Vonnie’s a nurse, Donna. Remember?”

  “I’m not in labor,” Leigh said, taking in a deep breath and exhaling as though she were. “It’s just a little Braxton Hicks.”

  “False labor,” Vonnie reiterated. She looked at Leigh. “Are you sure?”

  Leigh nodd
ed. “This has been going on for a couple of days.” She sat straight. “To be honest with you, the bickering in this room has totally stressed me out. I thought this was supposed to be a prayer group.”

  “Amen,” Donna huffed.

  What is going on with her, anyway?

  The room grew silent, and eyes were downcast until Lizzie said, “You’re so right, Leigh. Ladies, do you think we can get back on task here?”

  Evie returned to her seat, picking up the pad and pen that had fallen to the floor in all the excitement. “We’ll pray for you, Goldie,” she said, her voice subdued. “Are there any specifics?”

  I sniffled before answering. “Yes. I’m staying with Tony and Olivia—as I said before—but I can’t do that forever. It’s fine for now; as a matter of fact, Olivia is expecting again.” A rush of excitement went throughout the room. I nodded and beamed. “Yes, yes. She’s only a couple of months, and she’s having some minor morning sickness, so my being there right now is a blessing. But eventually I’ll have to find my own place.”

  “So, then,” Lizzie said, “there’s no chance of you and Jack reuniting?”

  I shook my head. “I won’t say yes or no right now. It’s too soon. Olivia says we need counseling, and I guess we do.” I paused. “I know we do.” I chuckled. “But I don’t know if Jack would ever consider it.” The others in the group who knew Jack well nodded back at me. “And I need a job. So . . . if any of you know of work—”

  “A job?” Lisa Leann cut in again, then scanned the room with her eyes. “And forgive me for breathing over here, but surely after all these years you’re entitled to alimony. Why should you have to go to work at this stage of your life?”

  “Alimony?” I asked. I hadn’t even thought that far.

  “If it were Henry, I’d take him for every nickel. Do you have an attorney?”

  “I haven’t really thought that far,” I said, repeating my thoughts. “Well, darling, you’ve got to think it before Jack does. I say we also pray that Goldie can find the right attorney.” To my surprise, everyone agreed, Evie jotting it down on her pad of paper.