Once again, the twins shared a glance.
Lavinia spoke. “I think this whole thing might have been my fault,” she said soberly.
“Now, Lavinia,” rebuked Lottie, “no one was to know. The thing is, Doris, we were having a little get-together of our rejected ladies, and my sister found an old story journal in your attic.”
Lavinia looked sheepish.
“I asked your momma if I could bring it down to read. She seemed fine with that. She said it belonged to her sister, who had loved to write stories. I had no idea, of course . . .” Lavinia’s voice trailed off.
Lottie picked up the thread. “No one was to know. It had lots of sweet stories about goblins and fairies, and then there was this one story set during World War Two.”
We all looked around at one another, knowing instinctively where this was going.
Lavinia searched for the right words. “Well, I started to read the story out to the group, and suddenly your momma let out a scream. I looked over at her, and she had gone ashen-white, and her whole body was shaking . . .”
“Ruby rushed to get her a glass of water, and I dropped straight to my knees to pray,” Lottie interjected.
“Which was a good thing,” added Lavinia, “because your momma suddenly jumped to her feet and then went down like a sack of oranges. If Lottie hadn’t been there on her knees to break her fall, the doctor said we could have been dealing with broken bones.”
“Prayer always helps,” said Lottie wistfully, “in one way or another.”
Lavinia picked up the thread. “Anyhow, her blood pressure was a mite low, but they released her as there was no reason to keep her as her health seems fine; it’s just that this has hit her hard emotionally.”
Lottie sighed. “She seems to be preoccupied with that story in the journal, saying over and over, ‘How could she do it? How could she do this to me?’”
Lavinia jumped in. “We’ve tried to take her mind off it, but she’s very sad and just won’t get out of bed. I feel terrible about all this. You know the last thing in the world I would want to do is hurt your momma. This whole mess is just my fault, as usual.”
“No,” said Doris, “it’s my fault. I should have destroyed that journal when I found it. Now it appears that we’ve uncovered something about Momma’s past that she wanted to keep buried.”
“We can burn it if you think it will help,” said Lottie wistfully, “and then this whole thing can be put behind us.”
“Not quite,” said Doris softly. “Unfortunately, I added details of that story into the manuscript that’s now at the publisher.”
The twins drew in their breath together as if it were rehearsed. All of us instinctively reached out to Doris again.
“Oh my,” said Lottie, “you need to get that back and destroy it as soon as you can. I don’t want to even think about how that news would affect your momma.”
“That is exactly what we’re going to do,” said Annie. “By tomorrow there will be no trace of this story, and we’ll make sure of that.”
The twins nodded their heads in approval.
Lavinia added, “In the meantime, we’ll try to buoy your momma’s spirits the best we can. I’m going to try and coax her out for one of her fairy teas in town. She can wear her sparkles, and I’m sure Ruby has something appropriate I can borrow.”
“We’ll be back soon,” said Doris.
“I know this is difficult,” added Lottie. “I’m praying for you all. Just know your momma is in good hands. Her health is fine. She’s just very sad, but we’ll do our best.”
Doris nodded, and we all said our good-byes.
Once the twins were gone, we looked around at each other despondently.
Surprisingly, it was Ethel who broke the silence. “Looks like we have a job to do for Gracie’s sake, so I think we had better get on and do it, don’t you?”
I didn’t know whether it was her words or that she had actually spoken a whole sentence that rallied us, but whatever it was, it was just the encouragement we needed. Doris nodded at me, and I started the car with renewed determination.
Chapter Fifteen
THE IVORY PALACE OF THE ICE QUEEN
With Flora and Dan following behind us in the truck, we headed toward San Francisco and settled into our usual routine. Doris issued instructions from map-reading headquarters, Ethel stared out the window, and Annie caught up on two days of her missed soap.
A lot had happened since we’d been stuck in the snow. The doctor had been shot, his wife was arrested for the hit, and the secretary had given birth to her alien baby that had now also been abducted.
Phew, things sure happened fast on that show.
The sights changed again as we entered California; we left behind the stately cedars of the Northwest and traded them for the majestic splendor of the redwood trees. We stopped briefly in Redding for a coffee, but with the end in sight, we didn’t stop for lunch but opted to eat the last of Doris’s baked bread. Doris had made a ton of sandwiches to get us all the way through until we saw the Golden Gate Bridge, which was just before 6:00 p.m.
As we came up and over the brow of a long slow hill the sun was just starting to set as the bridge appeared in our view, its vivid red framing glistening in the waning sun, an impressive and welcoming host beckoning us into the city.
“We’re going to be staying at my cousin John’s place in the north,” Doris informed me, giving me the exact directions.
“Did you let him know you’d be arriving today?”
Doris looked at me as if I’d just dropped off Mars. “My cousin never goes anywhere,” she snapped.
But when we turned up at his little brick house, there didn’t seem to be anyone there, no matter how hard Doris banged on the door.
“Fishing!” shouted a neighbor as he was getting into his car. “If you’re looking for John, he’s gone fishing. He won’t be back until the day after tomorrow.”
Doris shuffled back despondently.
“Look, why don’t you come over to Stacy’s house? You could have some dinner and then call a motel from there.”
“Okay,” she muttered, but I could tell she wasn’t very happy about it.
When we arrived at my daughter’s clean, sprawling suburban house, we all sat in the car for a minute and looked around. She lived in one of those buttoned-up neighborhoods where everything was just a little too perfect to feel comfortable. It was a place that seemed to say, “Welcome to our version of the American Dream. Now stay the hell off our pansies.”
Walking up her whiter-than-white driveway, I passed the koi pond and lollipop-sculptured bushes and trees. The garden, manicured to death, gave the aura of being afraid to let a twig grow out of place.
The girls stared at me through the car window.
I rang Stacy’s doorbell and an odd melodic chiming pattern rang out as I waited. There was no reply, so I rang once more, and she pulled open the door in a manner as if she were going to hit me. Then her expression changed.
“Mom, at last!”
Enveloping me in an enormous bear hug, she started to sob on my shoulder. I almost pulled her off to say, “Who are you and what did you do with my daughter?”
Wow, this was going to be a fascinating visit to the hormone amusement park.
She was on her third full sob when she noticed the girls all staring at her from the car. She stopped crying abruptly, as if she were doing it on cue, saying indignantly, “Who are they?”
“They’re the women I was on the road with,” I answered matter-of-factly.
“What are they doing here?” she spat out, as if I’d just brought her a gang of terrorists.
“The guy they were supposed to be staying with wasn’t home. I was hoping they could come in here and use your telephone, maybe get a cup of coffee . . . or something?”
It felt as if I were asking my mom’s permission.
“I suppose they could come in for a short while.” She furrowed her brow, obviously not too hot on the idea. “Just
make sure they remove their shoes!”
We all skulked into Stacy’s foyer, dutifully doing as we were told. I shivered. Her house always felt more like a mausoleum than a home to me; its stolid reverence couldn’t help but encourage an atmosphere of whispering and tiptoeing. Her walls, sparse and dark, were counterbalanced with lots of heavy white marble. All about the house, expensive art pieces balanced precariously on lofty, spotlighted plinths.
A long hour later, we sat lined up on the couch in our stocking feet, a group of nuns under a vow of silence. One person would attempt to start a conversation, and everyone else just appeared to be afraid to respond. Even Doris seemed subdued. Stacy’s intense demeanor always seemed to have that effect on people. It was as if we’d been invited to tea with a stern old spinster aunt. Only Dan, who was seated on the other side of the room, seemed to be making comfortable inroads with her. Unbelievably, Ethel thawed the ice.
“I’m getting hungry,” she said, not unlike a five-year-old child.
I realized I was hungry as well. We hadn’t eaten anything since Doris’s sandwiches on the road, hours before.
“I don’t have a thing in the house. No point. I just honk it up anyway.”
“Would you mind if I used your kitchen to cook something?” inquired Doris, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
“No, of course not,” responded Stacy in a tone that gave the impression that was the last thing she wanted them to do.
Doris, Flora, Ethel, and even Annie exited toward the kitchen as if someone had just yelled, “Fire,” leaving me and Dan to entertain Stacy.
As I finished my second cup of coffee, Doris poked her head into the room, and boomed. Apparently, she also seemed unaware that any sudden vibrations might knock the exotic backlit crystal from its delicate pedestals. “I think we’re going to need some supplies.”
“I’ll go,” I whispered back, sounding a little more excited than I’d intended.
“Can I come?” inquired Dan in his regular tone as I was putting on my coat. He didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by the precariously balanced décor.
When we got back an hour later, I found Annie curled up on the sofa next to Stacy. They were both giggling and talking about soaps. It was nice to see Stacy connecting at last.
As we were clearing the dinner plates later, my phone rang. It was Martin.
“Hey there, I hadn’t heard from you for a couple of days, so I thought I’d give you a call.” His voice was a calming sea. “How’s it going?”
“It’s going,” I joked in our familiar banter.
I stepped outside into Stacy’s bleached backyard to talk to him. I knew he was really inquiring about Stacy.
“Actually, it is going well. We had a crazy day yesterday, but I arrived at Stacy’s a couple of hours ago, and it’s slowly starting to thaw here.”
And he knew I wasn’t talking about the weather.
“I see,” he said in a knowing tone.
Then he wanted to know all about the snowstorm and landslide in detail, so we chatted for a good while before I eventually hung up the phone.
When I stepped back into the house about thirty minutes later, there was a party atmosphere. Stacy had put on some sixties music and was singing along as she helped the other girls wash up in the kitchen. Grabbing a dishtowel too, I watched in a curious awe as Annie jigged and sang along at Stacy’s side, like they were best buddies.
Suddenly, Stacy announced we were all going to play charades. I nearly dropped the exquisite swan-shaped gravy boat I’d been carefully drying.
So there we were, one hour later, armed with popcorn and a bottle of wine, trying to figure out why Doris was pretending to be a chicken and pointing and pulling at one leg of her pantyhose.
“Chicken Run!” shouted Stacy at the top of her voice, jumping to her feet, and bouncing up and down like an excited child.
If only my husband could have been there to see it. Swept up in the fun of the evening, Stacy had insisted everyone stay at her house overnight, so Doris never bothered to call the motel, and we all settled down into our museum-like rooms. It took all my might just to get the cardboard sheets to let go of the underside of the mattress, but I finally managed to sleep.
The next morning I wandered into the kitchen and found Doris at the breakfast table, strategizing. Everyone else was gathered around her like a pack of obedient puppies. Doris pointed her pen at each member of the group, one by one.
“Each of you will have a job to do. I’ll be our main speaker and make sure we get in to see this editor. Janet, we may need you for strategic planning if this attempt fails,” she informed me over her shoulder as I prepared my morning coffee.
I nodded absently, though I hadn’t the foggiest what that really meant.
“Annie, you are to help Ethel chain herself to the toilet if we need it, and, Ethel, have you got what we need for plan B?”
Ethel nodded and went off toward the bedroom.
Dan appeared to be highly amused by all of this. “What’s my job?” His eyes blazed excitedly, though his tongue appeared firmly in his cheek.
“Well, young man,” said Doris, sucking in her cheeks as if she were thinking of exactly where to place him, “I think we may need you if things get ugly. Not bad to have a little muscle on our side.”
Dan nearly spat out his coffee, and Flora’s face registered horror.
Ethel arrived back, ceremoniously dumping onto the table a bag of chains and a leather bustier.
“Flora, if we have to go to plan B, I have this outfit for you. Your job is to use all of that youthful, sexual energy to wow him to our way of thinking.”
Flora swallowed hard as another flash of amusement crossed Dan’s face.
Doris slammed her hand down on the table. “We’re ready,” she announced in her best team player voice.
The plan was I would drop them all off at the office building and then come back to pick up Stacy and take her to her conference.
Within an hour, the whole group was sandwiched into my car in a determined mood as we trundled into downtown San Francisco. It was as if we were part of an episode of some old seventies TV show. All we needed was a flashy van and a theme song. I thought, not for the first time, that I was so glad I was just the getaway driver.
Chapter Sixteen
A BAG OF CHAINS & A FANCY-PANTS SETUP
When we arrived downtown, however, the group’s buoyant mood disappeared faster than a ten-pound note dropped by mistake on a Scotsman’s table. Even I felt intimidated by the enormous shiny office building with the words “Welcome to the World of Publishing” etched in black on a brushed stainless steel sign. Behind me, I heard Flora draw a breath.
Doris took control as I circled the block to find somewhere to park.
“Don’t be thrown off by this fancy-pants setup,” she reminded them. “Remember, we’re here for our group, not to mention getting this manuscript back for Momma’s sake.”
That was all the pep talk her cohorts needed. As I slid into a parking space, they all bounded out like ninjas—well-aged ninjas or the mothers of ninjas, perhaps, but there was a definite clip in their steps as they bounded toward the building.
Only Doris hung back and motioned for me to lower the window. “Can you wait here for a while? If things go well, we should be back soon. If not, I’m planning a media-encouraged sit-in. So if you see helicopters, you know it’s going to be a long night.”
I nodded absently as I watched her join the others striding defiantly toward the building.
I took a moment to call Martin. It took him a while to answer. When he did, I could tell he was in the middle of something.
“Can I call you back?” his tone was strained. “I’m at the doctor’s.”
“At the doctor’s? Are you okay?”
There was a pause. He was hiding something.
“Honey, what did you do?”
“Nothing,” he bounced back with the speed of a child being caught with his hand in the cookie jar
. “I just needed to get a . . . rabies shot.”
“Rabies shot!” I shrieked so loud that someone who was passing the car looked in at me with concern.
“Yeah,” he murmured humbly. “One of the dang raccoons bit me!”
This was why I never went away.
“The doctor’s here. Have to go. Talk to you later.”
Hanging up the phone, I sighed. I already needed more coffee.
It was as I got out of the car that I noticed it: Doris’s bag, complete with chains and a leather bustier, waving at me from an unzipped corner. I sighed again. I had the feeling it was going to be another sighing day. Staring at it for a long, hard moment, I considered the alternatives. Doris would want that bag, but taking it to them could risk association with the loony brigade inside, and I didn’t really want to be on the local six o’clock news. But not taking it to them meant the wrath of Doris. The choice was easy.
Grabbing the bag and locking the car, I headed into the gleaming gray-stone building with the black-tinted windows. Entering the foyer, I felt totally underdressed in my gray tracksuit and sneakers. Bustling, coiffed people sidestepped around me, going on their businesslike way.
The publisher Doris had mentioned was on the eighth floor. I hurried to the elevator, arriving just in time to watch the slick, onyx-colored doors close, buttoning in its heaving mass. I stepped back and pushed the “Up” button. The building had another three elevators, and with a quick scan, I noticed one was exceedingly high up in the building. The third had an “Out of Order” sign, and the last one had a woman—the slowest cleaner in the world—mopping the floor inside. She was obviously paid by the hour.
Frustrated, I hit the button again, and out of the corner of my eye, I caught the cleaner shaking her head at me as she continued to drag her mop around on its snaillike crawl. Pacing back and forth, I made a decision and headed toward a sign for the stairs. After all, it was only eight floors, and I thought of myself as pretty fit.
Or I had.
It was as I rounded the stairwell on the sixth floor that I collapsed into a heap on the top step and tried to catch my breath. The thick leisure suit I had put on, feeling cold that morning, now felt as if it were strangling my hormone-flashing body. Breathing in long, deep waves, I pulled aggressively at the collar and mopped beads of sweat from my forehead. As I sat looking around the bleak, dark stairwell, I asked myself for the umpteenth time why I was doing this.
The Rejected Writers' Book Club (Southlea Bay) Page 18