The Rejected Writers' Book Club (Southlea Bay)

by Suzanne Kelman

  Doris let go of a long slow breath and sat down in one of the side chairs.

  “Momma is more of an extrovert, and Regina preferred to retreat to the world of her books and her writing, eventually becoming a teacher in a private girls’ school. When she died a few months ago, I inherited all of her things. I got rid of a lot but decided to keep all the volumes of her stories. They were crafted in beautiful books and so eloquently written. One day I was bored and wanted to spice up my manuscript—you know, change it up a bit. I was stuck about what to add when I remembered Regina’s stories. I searched through her journals. Many of them were inappropriate, about goblins and fairies. But then I found this one about a young girl embarking on an illicit love affair during the Second World War. It was exactly what I was looking for, a love triangle with a British girl, her Scottish lover, and an American GI stationed in England during that time.”

  Doris sat back, her tone more relaxed now she’d decided to unburden herself.

  “The story started with the young woman falling in love with this GI stationed in her hometown. They got engaged before he had to leave her to fight the war in Europe. While he was gone, she stole her best friend’s Scottish boyfriend, whom she met when he’d rescued her from a pond where she’d fallen in, drunk and unable to swim. However, she spurned his love, and the young Scottish man died heartbroken and alone in a hospital. When the GI eventually came back from the war, she told him nothing of her affair and married him. I thought the story was an interesting addition, and I managed to work it into one of Jane Austen’s time-travel adventures, and it fit nicely with the rest of the book. I then sent it off in this last manuscript.”

  Doris got up then and started to pace.

  “Then, a few weeks ago, Momma and I decided to try out that new aquatic place that opened up on the island, as I know how much she loves to swim. On our way there, she just happened to mention that she didn’t learn to swim till after she was married and that my father had taught her. She went on to tell me how she’d once nearly drowned in a pond in her village and a friend had saved her life. Her recollection was eerily similar to the story I’d just sent off to the publishers. So, I tentatively asked her a few more questions. She couldn’t remember much else, but she did mention her best friend Mary’s maiden name. After this conversation, I was really concerned. It bothered me. Surely the story I’d just read in Regina’s journal couldn’t be based in fact. Momma had never mentioned anything about a story like this. And you know we’ve heard so many of her stories set during the war. The thought just wouldn’t go away, so I decided to do some checking to see if I could locate Mary.”

  Doris paused.

  “Did you find her?” asked Annie, finishing her cocoa.

  “Yes and no. The morning we left on this trip, I eventually tracked down a phone number for Mary’s granddaughter. I tried to call her straightaway, but with the time difference in England, it wasn’t easy. Then the other night when you’d all gone to bed, I asked Dan’s parents to let me use their phone and managed to talk to her. Her name was Sarah. She informed me her grandmother had passed away quite some time ago, and unfortunately she didn’t know an awful lot about Mary’s childhood. However, she did remember Mary had spoken of a friend called Grace and that her grandmother had once been engaged to someone from the north. She didn’t know the details of why they’d split up, just that Mary had gone on to marry her grandfather, whom she’d nursed during the war.

  “It seems like the north could be Scotland, and now instead of putting my mind at rest, I’m now really worried, more than ever, that all this is a true story. I can’t stop wondering, if so, how come Momma has never told me about it.”

  We sat quietly and listened to the fire as we finished our cocoa.

  “It could still all be a story,” said Flora gently. “A love triangle? It doesn’t even sound like something Grace would do.”

  Doris nodded. “I know. I have thought of that too, but it’s how the story ends that has me most concerned. At the end of the story, the girl decides to marry the GI even though she doesn’t love him. She marries him for one reason only . . .” She paused then, before saying quietly, “She marries him because she was pregnant with the Scottish man’s baby.”

  We all seemed to realize at once the implication of what she was saying, and heaviness descended on the room like a blanket.

  Doris clarified it for us. “Which means if this story is about my mother, the man I knew all of my life may not have been my father.”

  I tried desperately to think of something reassuring to say.

  “And where is the story now?” asked Flora in alarm.

  “It was hidden in the attic. I wish I’d destroyed it before we left. But those books are the only things of my auntie’s I have. I just didn’t want to destroy them until I’d spoken to Mary’s granddaughter. I didn’t want to overreact. I thought they would be perfectly safe while we were gone, as Momma never goes up in the attic, and she was going to be staying at the twins’ house. Now, in my foolishness, I may have exposed my momma to something she has felt the need to keep hidden from me all these years.”

  Doris sighed deeply.

  I tried to encourage her. “There are a lot of ‘what ifs’ here, Doris,” I reminded her gently. “Regina could have just set her tale in the same village she grew up in, drawing on experiences from her childhood, and Lavinia might have been talking about completely different stories at the group. We’ll have your manuscript back by tomorrow, the day after that at the latest. Then you can destroy both that and the journal when you get home, if you want, and no one will be any the wiser.”

  Doris nodded at that wisdom as she collected our cups and headed for the kitchen before adding, somberly, “Yes, it would all go away, except for knowing for sure that my father was really my father.”

  We sat quietly for a while, each with her own thoughts, before an antique clock on the mantel chimed ten o’clock. We decided to call it a night.

  I patted Doris’s hand as I left for my bedroom.

  “Try not to worry about all this, Doris. There’s nothing we can do tonight, and in the morning you can call Lavinia and get her to destroy the journal if it will make you feel better.”

  She nodded and seemed to cheer a little before making her way to her room.

  We all said our good nights.

  I opened my bedroom door and there it was . . . staring at me . . . Mr. Moose. I had momentarily forgotten about him with all that had happened, but now he was staring down at me as I shivered. Preparing for bed, I felt his two beady eyes following me all around the room, silently questioning: “Why did you do this to me? What did I ever do to you?”

  I looked at him as I brushed my teeth while standing in the tiny gray-and-white-tiled bathroom. Something had to be done. The thing was humongous, too bulky for me to lift off the wall. I looked around the room. As I searched, I heard the gentle tinkle of a music box coming from the nursery and the unmistakable giggle of Annie. I was glad someone was having fun. Opening an enormous blanket chest at the foot of the bed, I found a clean white sheet. That would have to do. By standing on the throne, I managed to throw the sheet right over the moose’s head and cover it perfectly. It looked better already. What I couldn’t see wouldn’t hurt me.

  Getting into bed, I suddenly missed Martin and my own cozy bed at home. Checking my phone, I could see there was still no signal. At least by tomorrow we would be back in civilization. Battling with the stiff white sheets and the bedspread, I eventually managed to burrow myself inside.

  Replaying the day’s events as I lay there, I felt deeply sad for Doris. This was hard. The only other thought that preoccupied my mind as I drifted off to sleep was . . . what if the secretary’s baby was really an alien?

  Chapter Twelve

  RONALD TRAMP, THE GRIZZLY BEAR

  In my dream, there was a girl floating about in a white wedding dress, holding a candle and calling my name. She reached toward me with an outstretched hand
and shook me. It felt so real. Opening my eyes, I tried to focus through the darkness.

  The girl in my dream appeared to be standing right next to my bed. Was it a ghost? Maybe this was Grandma coming back to punish me for covering up her moose head. As the girl moved closer, I realized it was only Flora in her nightgown.

  “Are you okay?” My voice was dry and rasping.

  She bent down and whispered to me, “There’s something in the kitchen. I think it might be a bear!”

  Annie arrived behind her, yawning as she put on her own robe.

  “Someone needs to investigate,” added Flora.

  “It’s probably just this old house settling.” I yawned. I did not relish the thought of leaving my bed. “I don’t think a bear would come all the way inside. Besides . . .”

  I never finished my sentence because all of a sudden there was a clear, dull thud in another part of the house. It sounded like a book or a log being dropped to the floor.

  Suddenly, one thought rendered me fully awake: the back door. I couldn’t remember if any of us had set anything heavy against it as Joe had advised us to do. Jumping up out of bed, I followed Flora out into the corridor. Switching on the lights, I looked down the hall toward the noise.

  “Maybe Doris is up,” I whispered to them both.

  Doris’s door suddenly opened.

  “Up where?” inquired a curler-clad Doris.

  We filled Doris in on the situation. She nodded and then went back into her room for a second, arriving back in the hallway with a pile of her pots and pans.

  “What are we going to do with these, cook it an omelet?” I asked, bewildered.

  “If you see a bear,” hissed Doris as she started to tiptoe down the hall, “you’re supposed to make yourself very large and make a lot of noise.”

  Ethel’s head popped out of her bedroom door and made us all jump. Doris gave a pan and lid to Ethel, who didn’t seem the least bit fazed by being handed kitchen equipment in the middle of the night and then being asked to join the end of the Scooby-Doo line that we were forming.

  “So here’s the plan,” hissed Doris. “We’ll walk up the hallway, slowly. When we reach the kitchen, we’ll run in and bang our pots together as hard as we can.”

  We started to creep behind Doris. I looked back at our old lady battle line and didn’t hold out much hope for Ethel. The bear would probably see her as a delightful little snack.

  As we tiptoed into the main room, I couldn’t help myself.

  “Doris, why do you have your pans in the bedroom?”

  She stopped and looked back at me as if I were an idiot. “They’re my best ones!” she said indignantly. “I don’t want anyone stealing them.”

  “Who are you talking about? We’re not exactly at the end of the world, but we can see it from here!”

  Doris looked back at me again as if the thought had never actually occurred to her. She appeared to be about to answer me when we heard another noise from the kitchen, and it sounded as if something were exhaling. We were all frozen to the spot for a second, and then Doris raised her pot above her head, holding her pan lid up in the other hand as if she were about to crash an enormous pair of cymbals. She gestured for us all to do the same. As we lifted our arms, Flora’s lid slipped from her hand and clattered to the ground. Doris rolled her eyes as Flora hastily picked it up and mouthed her apologies. Signaling us to follow, Doris charged toward the kitchen, banging her lid on her pot and screaming at the top of her lungs.

  “Aaaaaaaaaarh!”

  We all followed behind, banging and yelling at the top of our voices too.

  “Aaaaaaaaaaarh!”

  We saw a flash of movement and a jumbled mass of matted fur running for its life toward the back kitchen door, screeching. Somehow, it managed to miss the doorway and run smack into the kitchen wall instead. Ricocheting off it, it hit the floor hard, and then it just lay there. The impact of the crash shook the walls and knocked down the “floozy clock,” as Doris had nicknamed it. The Coca-Cola girl lay on the floor, smiling up at us, her legs still rocking back and forth.

  We all looked down at the mass of fur with concern. Whatever it was, we had just killed it. Scared it to death, no doubt. It lay on the black-and-white-tiled floor, fearfully still. We put down our pans, and Doris turned on the light.

  “What is it?” asked Annie.

  “It’s an extremely odd shape for a bear,” added Flora.

  “That’s because it’s Big Foot,” snapped Ethel.

  We all walked slowly toward the animal lying on the floor. As we got closer, I noticed it didn’t have paws, but fingers. Oh no, this ragbag of jumble definitely wasn’t a bear.

  “It’s a man!” said Flora, moving closer.

  We gathered around and looked closer. He was wearing what looked like flour sacks pulled together as a sort of cape and tatty pants being held together with a piece of string. He had long, matted, sandy-colored hair and a ragged beard. The newest, cleanest thing on him seemed to be his boots.

  “Should we try and wake him?” asked Flora, leaning even closer to his face.

  Suddenly, a sticklike hand shot out of the cape and grabbed Flora’s arm. We all screamed, except Flora. She seemed to be frozen in shock. He opened his eyes and screamed too.

  Flora was incredible. She came to life, put her other hand on his shoulder, and reassured him. “Don’t be scared,” she said soothingly. “It’s okay. We’re not going to hurt you.”

  He stopped screaming, his wild brown eyes flicking fearfully from one of us to the other, like a caged animal in terror. He seemed to be summing up the situation extremely quickly and deciding if we could be trusted.

  “Can you sit up?” asked Doris, starting to take command.

  He just stared at her.

  “Ethel, get him a glass of water.”

  Flora gently patted his shoulder; I reached down and took him by the arm.

  He slowly started to sit up. It was like lifting a tiny bird. He was really bundled up, but I was guessing he was just a pile of skin and bones.

  Ethel came back with water and handed it to him. His grimy, shaking hand stretched out and took the glass. He took a couple of gulps, then opened his mouth and said, “What y’all doin’ here in my house?”

  “Sorry?” said Doris.

  “My house,” he said, sounding braver. “Why y’all here?”

  We all looked at him in bewilderment.

  “We’re guests of Tom and Joe at the Fish and Cut Bait Store,” I said.

  “Who?” he said, screwing up his eyes.

  “Down the mountain,” I added, weakly.

  “Never heard of ’em! This is my cabin. I’ve been using it for years.”

  The man was obviously a little deranged, so I decided to play along. “Oh. We thought you wouldn’t mind us staying one night. We ran out of gas on the road, and it was very cold to sleep in the car.”

  He eyed me cautiously over his glass of water, then said, “S’pose that’d be okay. But you can’t go around yelling and hollering like that. You darn near gave me a heart attack.”

  “Oh no, that’s because we thought you were a bear.”

  “A bear!” he screeched, incredulously. “How could you think I looked anything like a bear?” He sniffed then, as if he believed we were all obviously a little stupid.

  Doris picked up the kettle. “Would you like a cup of coffee or something?”

  His eyes narrowed. “As long as you don’t poison it or anything,” he snapped gruffly.

  Doris held her tongue, but the disapproval was obvious on her face.

  With Flora’s help, he climbed to his feet. He folded his arms and huffed, then sat himself firmly down on the edge of the booth and started picking at his teeth. He looked ridiculous sitting there, a bundle of rags and matted hair on the shiny, buttoned buffet seat.

  We all congregated around the stove to talk as Doris made coffee.

  “What should we do?” asked Annie, concerned.

  “W
hat can we do? We’re all stuck up here in the middle of the night with no phone,” I answered.

  “He could be an axe murderer,” sneered Ethel with a look as if she were half-hoping that was exactly what he was.

  I looked back at him as he now picked at his nails. “I don’t think he’s dangerous. Besides, he’s as light as a feather. Ethel could take him down.”

  She looked up at me, then back at the man. She wrinkled her nose and sniffed.

  “There’s nothing we can do now. It’s four in the morning,” I said, glancing at the floozy clock that was still rocking her way around the kitchen floor. “We may as well wait until it gets light. Then we can go down the mountain and get Joe or Tom.”

  “What are ya birds whispering about?” shouted our scruffy guest from the booth. “I don’t like all that whispering. Makes me nervous. Makes me think you’re plotting to kill me and throw my tired old bones in the creek.”

  “Oh, we would never do anything like that,” said Flora, walking over and sitting opposite him. “Do we look like the murdering type to you?”

  He looked straight at Flora, narrowed his eyes, and said with conviction, “Yes. You look exactly like the murdering type. Using all your feminine wiles to get on me good side and then you’d be killing me stone dead.” He emphasized his words as he spoke. “Yes, siree,” he said. “You are exactly the murdering type.”

  Flora just sat, blinking, with her mouth open.

  Doris brought over his coffee and slammed it down in front of him. I could tell she was not putting up with any of his nonsense. “Would you like some sugar for your poison?” she asked sarcastically.

  He just sniffed and begrudgingly took a sip.

  I approached him and sat next to him.

  “My name is Janet.” I held out my hand. “What’s yours?”

  He looked at me like a lame dog that had just been beaten and was not sure whether to trust this hand of a stranger or not. Then his eyes twinkled, and he screwed up his nose, thrusting a darkened, scraggy, half-mittened hand into mine saying, “Ronald Tramp. You may know my brother. Pleased to meet ya.”