“Successful in getting people worked up a little,” I offered. “She was drawing attention to something more…what? … more sociologically significant, even if it is upsetting. You can’t just stick your head in the sand.”
Vicki pointed her at camera at Kiki who pursed her lips.
“They don’t do that, you know?”
“What?”
“Ostriches. They don’t stick their heads in the sand. I don’t know how that got started. And what kind of a name is Lionel for a woman anyway? Is she gay?”
“Does it matter? In the notes at the back of the book, she says she didn’t like her given name so she changed it and she has a husband, not that that means anything anymore,” I pointed out.
I remember taking in the group that night, and thinking of all the things that had happened recently. I felt sentimental and sappy and content. I couldn’t help thinking about my mother’s book groups, both of which she’s been in for years. She has one that consists of a bunch of academics that ONLY discuss the books, and another that is full of friends who seem to discuss everything EXCEPT the books.
I have always felt lucky, and never more than on that night, that I was a member of a book club in which we can do both—and more.
“It was definitely a different kind of read,” I went on. “Really clever how the author told the story in letters. But if I had a kid like Kevin, I definitely wouldn’t have waited around hoping my husband would eventually see what I saw—though, of course, by then he was dead.”
“No,” said Paige, her bob once again blown out perfectly. “I agree. He’d be off to military school in a heartbeat. Maternal love or not.”
“You say that, but you’d have a harder time than you think,” Sarah said.
“Fortunately Enrique doesn’t have the temperament,” said Vicki. Then added with some concern, “I don’t think.”
“It would be hard,” Paige went on. “But it’s a question of protecting flesh and blood on an unstoppable path of self-destruction versus protecting a bunch of innocent strangers who get in his way. No,” she said with the tough demeanor of the tennis champion she once was, “I know I could do it—it would be my duty to do it. But the point is, we should all feel pretty damned lucky none of us has a kid like Kevin.”
“That’s all I could think about with this book,” said Lauren. “I mean, God. None of us has kids we’re worried about like that. Do we?”
The question hung there awhile before Paige said, “My babies both loved breast feeding.”
“That was the start of it all, wasn’t it?” said Vicki, her camera focused on Paige. “Kevin didn’t want to take his mother’s breast.”
Paige shook her head.
“Amanda was colicky and really couldn’t drink breast milk, but then girls are different,” Lauren said in an apparent attempt to convince herself.
“Has there ever been a female high school shooter?” someone asked.
“Wait—you’re suggesting most mass murderers either never got, or rejected, their mother’s breast milk?” asked Jelicka. “I’d buy that.”
“Interesting idea. But if true, it could mean mandatory breastfeeding—women forced to become cows,” Vicki said. “More legislating on how to be a mother.”
“There’s already that pressure,” I said. “I actually mediated a case between a husband and wife who had differing ideas on how long to breastfeed their baby. She said six months, he said two years.”
“What happened?” said Vicki, focusing the lens on me.
“They compromised—a year and a quarter. The term of art is they split the baby, though when an actual baby is involved, it’s kind of a gruesome image.”
“America,” groaned Vicki. “I mean, in Spain no one goes around asking if you plan on breastfeeding like people do here, ready to seal your fate as an unfit mother if you give the wrong answer.”
We all agreed, to a Muff, on the pressures of being perfect—perfect mothers, perfect hostesses, perfect wives (those of us still married), perfect in every way. It was a burden I’d been trying to rid myself of with mild success.
“Getting back to Kevin—” said Rachel, “I have to say I preferred it to the last book we read. Though I liked Deliciously Disturbed it was a little…let me put it this way: too much perfect sex is unnatural in my experience, so it didn’t really turn me on in that sense.”
“Poor thing,” said Jelicka. “Not that surprising a comment coming from a woman whose new series of paintings is entitled ‘Nude Men Without Heads,’” she added.
“‘Nude Men Without Faces,’” Rachel corrected.
“Whatever—men with something missing. And I say that in the most loving way possible.”
“Well,” said Paige, “they do have something missing. I mean, don’t they? They would never do anything as cool as our book club.”
“They have poker night,” Jelicka said. “I mean, Roscoe did. Or so he said, but he could have been schtupping the secretary. Ah, hell, what do I care? I’m being delightfully distracted by a thirty-year-old.”
“Seriously, men don’t generally have the kinds of deep commitments and support we have with each other,” Paige went on.
In my experience, what Paige said is true: Men’s friendships aren’t generally as deep. And this group of women friends is deep, solid and longstanding. In honor of our commitment to each other, we routinely reaffirm our gratitude for whatever forces of nature and planetary movements brought us together. This was such a night.
“There’s something we get from each other that only other women can provide,” I said. “You all know I’m pretty self-sufficient, but you must know that that’s in large part to knowing that all of you are nearby, ready to lend support if needed. Whether it’s trauma over lovers, husbands, disease, death, children—”
“Breaking into houses owned by ex-Mossad agents,” said Jelicka, injecting much-needed humor into the melodrama.
“Whatever—I know you’re there for me. People come and go, but we will be Muff sisters ’til the end. Here’s to you, and to the absent Quinn. I’m glad you’re all in my life.”
I held up my glass of Veuve Clicquot in toast, and the others brought their glasses to meet mine. “To the Muffia.”
“To the Muffia,” came the collective cheer.
Chapter 35
It’s always been a little strange to me how so often we seek out companionship and then, equally as often, we destroy the connection we sought so hard to find—spinning off into our own separate orbits once again, either from neglect, fear, self-interest, or something else. But changed, one would hope, ever so slightly, as a result of the contact that’s been lost.
I loved and will always cherish those brief glimmering moments of blissful union I’d had with Udi. But he and I never reached the point when we would have had to make that big decision—do we go on together or move off alone.
Through this whole experience, the old bonds were still there. I had Lila and my wonderful friends to help me get through whatever sequence of events might be headed my way. But when it came to my physical needs, I’d made no new contacts I cared to cultivate. That physical need to be touched, held and loved would have to be satisfied by smaller things—a warm greeting from a Muff, a shared hug with Lila, even Stipple, rubbing his body against my leg at dinner would provide for the foreseeable future.
That night, when I got home after talking about Kevin, I went into Lila’s room and watched her sleep. How lucky I am. I have a wonderful daughter, fabulous friends and my health. So I don’t have a guy. So what?
I won’t settle, I told myself. If I’m going to make room in my life for a man, it has got to be better with him than it would be without him. Otherwise, I’m just filling the void, as it were. In the meantime, I’ll just keep an eye out for the next Udi—a meteor of a man to strike me broadside and change my world for as long as it lasts.
I’m not saying people should live their lives as I’m living mine. Being alone is not the state of
existence I envisioned for myself at any point in my life. But at this juncture, that’s the way I find myself. Alone. But not lonely.
And so ends the first Chronicle of The Muffia. There will be more adventures to come for sure. In the meantime, I’ll just keep trying to live life to the fullest while balancing the interests of a child and the need to stay financially solvent. But don’t worry about me. I’ll keep busy—hold on a second—where is it? Ah yes—under the bed where it’s supposed to be.
Bzzzzzzz . . . weeee . . . urrrr . . . weee—urrrr, weee—urrrr, weee—urrrr . . .
Ahhhhhhh . . .
Mmmmm. Oh yeah, that feels good.
At the end of the day, it sure is nice to know a girl can take care of herself.
Epilogue
Lying in the drowsy afterglow of mechanically orchestrated orgasm, I was shaken awake when the phone rang. I glanced at the clock on the bedside table—it was three in the morning. Who would be calling now? It had to be an emergen—Lila! I panicked. Then I realized she was in her bedroom down the hall. I’d given her a kiss a few hours earlier.
Picking up the receiver, I heard that telltale long-distance sound—far away and underwater. Cullen? Why would he be calling? Please not Cullen. And from Turkey? I couldn’t imagine him missing me, especially after our last conversation. “Maddie? Are you there?” It was Quinn’s voice and I realized I hadn’t said hello.
“Quinn?”
“Hey, yeah, it’s me. Sorry to wake you up, but I didn’t think this should wait.” She paused for a beat. “Are you alone?”
I sighed. “Of course.”
“OK, well, I’m at the airport in Tokyo on my way back to LA and something really weird just happened.”
Her tone was very focused and extremely serious. I woke up fast. “What do you mean ‘something weird’?”
“Well, I saw something and I had to tell you before I got on the plane. I mean we could, god forbid, crash or something and I might never get the chance to tell you and then you wouldn’t know and then that might—”
“Quinn—Quinn, stop. The plane isn’t going to go down. You’ll be back tomorrow. But could you just tell me what you saw?”
“All right. This is going to sound bizarre and impossible, but I think Jelicka was right.”
“About what? Quinn, what are you talking about?”
“Udi, or whatever his name is.”
“Udi . . . What about Udi?”
“I just saw him. Here. At the airport.”
“How could you see him? He’s dead.”
“I know. But I did. I saw him. You know those, like, bulletproof glass or maybe they’re plastic partitions that separate passengers coming off planes from the ones going into the waiting areas?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Well, as I was heading to the waiting area for my flight, I saw him coming down the hallway in the middle of a group of people on the other side of the partition. He must have gotten off a plane and was just getting to Tokyo.”
“Everybody is supposed to have a twin somewhere.” A warm sensation filled me at the thought of Udi being alive. Could he be? No, it was impossible, of course, but then again, what if…? I shut myself down; this line of thought would only lead to torment.
“I wouldn’t put too much stock in it,” I said.
“Maybe…” The way Quinn said it, I could tell there was more to her story than a quick sighting. “But I followed him. I went back through security, which you know is a gargantuan task these days, and I saw him at the pay phones in between Satusmaya Okutani and the Chibanippo Books shop. I walked over and picked up the phone next to his and pretended to make a call and I heard him speaking Hebrew. I mean, I think it was Hebrew. It sure wasn’t Japanese.”
“I’m still not convinced it was Udi. I mean, I saw him and he was dead. You saw him, too. We both saw him dead. Not to mention that Nissim, who is his friend, confirmed he was dead. Nissim and those other guys came to take his body back to Israel—his body, which was stiff with rigor mortis. How do you get undead from that condition?”
“Look, I don’t know what Nissam’s motives may have been, but I’m telling you, Maddie, the only way this guy isn’t Udi is if he has an identical twin and that’s just too Hollywood. Even I wouldn’t suggest that.”
“If you only saw him lying down after he collapsed and died, do you seriously think you’d recognize him?”
“Absolutely. I studied him good. I mean I studied him real good and I bet if I could have gotten his pants off, I would have recognized his penis, too, along with the birthmark on his right thigh.”
She really had gotten an eyeful. “Quinn—” I protested.
“Uh-oh, gotta go. They’re calling for us to board. Luckily they say it in three languages before they shut the cabin doors. Sorry to wake you up and everything, but I thought you’d want to know.”
Truthfully, I wasn’t completely appreciative of Quinn’s call. Mostly because I didn’t think what she’d told me was possible. Udi was dead. I’d seen him. Besides, what would he have been doing in Japan? If it was
Udi . . .
The only way it could have been Udi is if he really was Mossad. How else would he have been able to pull it off? Nissim would have needed to be in on it. But why would he fake his own death? With me? And then, why walk around a major airport without disguising himself if he had?
As I lay there in my darkened room, lit only by the moon, I let myself consider all the delicious and disturbing possibilities.
If you have enjoyed The Muffia, you might also like More Muffia, out soon. Here’s a taste...
IF THERE’S ONE THING I’M SURE OF, it’s that if my dear friend and fellow Muffia book club member had called me from half way around the world to tell me that my stupendous Israeli ex-lover—who, by the way, died while we were having unbelievable sex—was actually walking around Narita Airport very much alive, I would have jumped on the next plane to Tokyo.
If it had been me who’d been awakened with this news in the middle of the night, I would have been apoplectic and immediately gone online and booked a ticket. How dare Maddie react with her typically unique combination of disbelief and ennui? She should reserve all that composure for her freakin’ mediations. What’s wrong with people? And on top of that, now I was going to miss my plane! No good deed goes unpunished, right?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It is said you can find inspiration anywhere. It’s also said to “write what you know.” In my case, both statements are true. As it happens, The Muffia was inspired by true events—that is, a lot of what happens in the book actually happened. There really is a Muffia book club. We’ve been reading books and talking about them since 2002 when Muffia member Denise came up with the name—a vast improvement over “The Cliterati,” a suggestion made by yours truly. We agreed that went a bit too far—even for us.
Though most everything that happens in the book, or some version of it, happened to me, other Muffs, or people we know, names have been changed. And since there are so many of us, some characters are composites of one or more members. All the members of the Muffia have read The Muffia and have given me, and it, their blessings. Thanks, therefore, must first go to my inspiration, the ladies of the Real Life Muffia: Michelle Joyner, Lisa Mohan, Carolyn Calvert, Sonya Walger, Lysa Hayland Heslov, Denise Gruska, Susan Hoffman Hyman, Betsy Salkind, Clare Foster, Janine Eser and Jann Turner. Without you women, life would be so much less than it is. All of you are funny, engaging, enterprising, brave, beautiful and flawed—as am I. I hope we’re reading and arguing about books until we drop.
So many others inspired me in the writing of this book as well and helped me as I wrote: Agatha Dominik, Arbel Ben Peretz, Sirgiv Rossano, Cedering Fox, Claire Carmichael, Lynn Vannucci of Water Street Press and Hannah Dennison. Maybe some people can write in complete solitude and only for themselves but I can’t, so thank you.
I also need to thank my fabulous agent, Liz Trupin-Pulli who just kept believing in me and the
book despite numerous glowing rejections.
And because I could not have written, nor have launched this book into the world without the assistance of several wonderful women, I am donating ten percent of profits from the sale of this book and all subsequent Muffia books to charitable organizations that benefit women in the United States. We’re willing to go beyond US borders too but until we’ve helped all the women who need help here, that’s not likely to happen. I’m particularly interested in organizations that provide women of all ages with access to education and the means to start their own businesses.
Happy reading and thank you.
Praise for Ann Royal Nicholas’
THE MUFFIA
“Who can resist a book about a book club where the members refer to themselves as “Muffs”? Meet Madeleine Scott-Crane, a savvy 42-year old single mom and mediator as she and her six friends take their monthly meetings to an unconventional—and often shocking level. Nicholas’s romp through suburban Los Angeles is sexy, edgy and laugh-out loud funny. With a few of life’s lessons thrown in along the way, The Muffia is smart, sassy and simply irresistible—just like her heroine. A must-read.
—Hannah Dennison of The Honeychurch Hall Mysteries & The Vicky Hill Mysteries
“I just loved this book. Such a great read. It really speaks to women of all ages but especially those in thier 30's and beyond. What a great surprise from a new author!”
—Ely Pouget, actor & producer. CSI, The Mentalist, The 3Tails Movie: A Mermaid Adventure
“5 Stars. Nicholas deftly walks the tightrope of the sexual landscape unfolding around her—of the young, the older and the in between.”
—David Glynn – Artist
“LOVED this book. It's good, not so clean, fun. And 50 Shades of Great Writing. An empowered woman who knows not only what she wants, but who she wants, and how many times a day... I recommend it highly.”
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