The Oakdale Dinner Club

by Kim Moritsugu

  Bob said he needed time to figure things out. Time to keep seeing Zoe in the city, while pretending his marriage was intact in Oakdale. Time to keep their marital strife hidden from the kids, and live the lie.

  And Mary Ann had agreed to this mortifying, soul-destroying, eat-out-her-insides plan because it was better than the alternative: to kick him out, start divorce proceedings, become a broke single mom.

  Mary Ann had confided her troubles in Alice and no one else, and eventually picked herself up, dusted herself off, and gone to work for Drew. Only to have Bob come home with news one night soon after she’d settled into the job.

  The younger kids had gone to bed, and Mary Ann was working on some status reports in the study when Bob came in the front door, ran up the stairs, stood in the doorway, and with great drama, announced that the affair with Zoe had ended, and Zoe had transferred to Chicago.

  It took Mary Ann a minute to find the right reply. A minute during which she located the affair topic on the back shelf of her mind, hauled it up front, gave it a cursory examination, and said, “So now what?”

  “So now what?” Bob said. “Is that all you have to say? Aren’t you happy? Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  “Yes, I wanted you to stop seeing her. But am I happy? I wouldn’t go that far.”

  Bob sat down in the visitor’s chair on the other side of her desk. “Don’t you want to know how I feel?”

  Did she? “How do you feel?”

  He slumped forward, buried his face in his hands. “Like a total douche. I can’t believe what I’ve done. What a jerk I’ve been.” He looked up. “But at the same time — I’m destroyed that it’s over.”

  Mary Ann got up from her chair. It wasn’t that late — Josh might hear their voices. She shut the door, sat back down, and waited for Bob to calm himself. Mary Ann would stay with him for now, stay married, until she got her bearings and found her footing. But she would neither forgive nor forget. And when she was ready, she’d get hers.

  20

  The dinner club meeting was in full swing in Alice’s apartment and, to her amazement, it was going smoothly. The only explanation for that state of affairs was that Mary Ann, AKA the Great Arranger, had organized everything. Including the invite she issued to the group, before Alice could stop her, to come along to Chuck’s later.

  “Attention, please!” Mary Ann said, when everyone had arrived. “Before you stuff yourselves with food, I wanted to mention that Alice has a friend playing in an R&B band over in Booth tonight, and she was hoping we could all go there later, cheer him on, and dance.”

  “You can count me out,” said Mary Ann’s friend Lisa, who was standing near Alice. “I don’t dance.”

  “Me neither,” Danielle murmured.

  And Amy said, “Don’t you have to be under thirty, or drunk, to dance in public?”

  In the ensuing conversational buzz, Mary Ann did not appear to catch the reproving, thanks-a-lot look Alice gave her.

  Now Mary Ann was carrying around a tray of soup-filled shot glasses, offering one to each guest in turn. She’d made the tackily named Engorgeous Soup from a recipe in her lovers’ cookbook. “Mmm, it’s good,” Alice heard Danielle say. “Velvety and rich.” And Mary Ann whispered something to Danielle that made her laugh. Something dirty, no doubt.

  Alice watched Mary Ann sidle over to Tom and Kate, who were standing by the fireplace. Careful now. Put on a friendly smile, don’t be afraid to look them in the eye. They don’t know you contemplated rolling around naked with Tom, climbing up and down that long body. “Hi, guys. You up for some soup?”

  Alice shivered. Hold on a second. Mary Ann was on the other side of a noisy room, facing away. Alice couldn’t have heard her offer soup to Tom and Kate. And where had those thoughts about climbing Tom’s body come from?

  Alice put down her glass of wine on a side table and covered her face with her hands. Was she hearing voices, or was the telepathy coming back? It couldn’t be, could it, after all this time?

  She turned her back on the room, closed her eyes, concentrated on tuning in Mary Ann’s brainwaves, and got — nothing. She must have imagined hearing Mary Ann’s thoughts. All she could hear now was static, and all she could see was a blurred collage of sexual images that had to be the product of her own fevered mind, the result of too much anticipation of tonight’s rendezvous with Jake, and too much time spent listening to the Voice croon in her ear.

  She walked over to the drinks table, took an ice cube out of the bucket, popped it in her mouth. She had a long night ahead. She should keep calm. Stay away from the wine. Be a good host, forget about long-lost mind-reading powers.

  Tom came up, having survived the soup tasting. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “I took the liberty of giving myself a tour of your apartment. It has great character. And the way you’ve let the house’s personality shine through by keeping the wood floors uncovered, by painting the mouldings white — the effect is very serene.”

  Good old Tom. And good thing Mary Ann had given up on pursuing him. Though spoon-feeding the aphrodisiac soup to Sam, as Mary Ann was now doing, seemed almost equally indiscreet.

  Better Tom didn’t see. Alice bit down on the ice cube. “Can you come with me a second? I need some help in the kitchen. And thanks about the apartment. I had very little to do with it — Sarah set it up for Lavinia and me.”

  “Lavinia is not among us this evening?”

  They stepped into the kitchen, and Alice picked up some serving spoons from the dish rack, found a clean dishtowel, and asked Tom to dry them. She also raised the sash on the window, propped it up with a piece of wood, leant down, and tried to inhale the cold outside air. “If Lavinia were here tonight, you’d know. She’s being babysat elsewhere.”

  “By your au pair?”

  Alice reached for her oven mitts. “I don’t have an au pair, or a nanny. Lavinia is a daycare child. She’s with a teenage babysitter at Mary Ann’s house.”

  “I should have known. If you had an au pair, you would be arranging to take her with you to Italy on that excavation.”

  “There’s people who have staff, and there’s me, is how it works.”

  “I understand. And let me bring us back to where I started: your apartment is charming.”

  Would he think it charming when Mary Ann led Sam onto the floor for some dirty dancing at the bar? Alice pulled her dish of salmon out of the oven, laid it on a trivet. “About the announcement Mary Ann just made? Please feel no obligation to come to the bar and see my friend’s band. I’m happy to go by myself.” She would prefer to go by herself.

  “But Kate and I love to dance. You’re looking at a former disco king.”

  Alice tried to picture Tom in a white suit, pointing to the sky. “I can’t see it.”

  “I’m several years older than you, don’t forget.”

  “Anyway, I’m not sure this band covers disco music. I think they’re more into classic Motown-type material.”

  “Even better. Wait till I tell Kate.”

  After the main courses had been consumed, Sam said to Danielle, “Your salad was exquisite. I’m starting to see why your husband only wants to eat your food.”

  “Gee, thanks, I guess.”

  “You’re still not too keen on food prep?”

  “It’s the cumulative effect, I think, of having done it non-stop for twenty years.”

  “Have you considered the alternatives?”

  “Like?”

  Sam pulled a small notebook and a pen out of his jacket pocket. “When I was in business school, I was taught a problem-solving method using numbered alternatives. Shall we apply it to your wish not to cook?”

  “It’s not exactly a business problem.”

  “Neither was the writing of my novel, but I used the approach on my plot. For example, what should be the ultimate fate of my hero? Should he A1: die, A2: live happily ever after with the pretty girl, or A3: jump into a raging river, disappear, and return in a sequel?”
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  This was why Danielle was here tonight. So she could have a funny conversation like this instead of talking about dogs and plants and kids every evening of her life. “What did you decide for your hero?”

  “Maybe that wasn’t a good example. Let’s return to yours. You’re fed up with your cooking, so your alternatives would be something like, A1: your husband takes a turn, cooks for the next twenty years.” He made a note in his book. “By the way, I do the cooking at my house, and I enjoy it.”

  “You don’t understand. Benny is hopeless. He can’t boil an egg.”

  “And you want to stay married to him?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Okay, then.” He made another note. “A2: You eat out every night.”

  “Benny would die of heartburn, indigestion, and sheer grumpiness.”

  “A3: You jump into a raging river and return in a sequel?”

  Danielle laughed.

  “Okay, seriously now,” Sam said. “A4 would probably be that you hire a cook.”

  “I don’t mean to be negative, but that won’t work either. We can’t afford help like that.”

  “Don’t apologize. You’re exposing my method, my entire post-graduate education, in fact, for the trickery that it is. And now that we’ve eliminated the obvious solutions to your problem, we must come up with something — dare I say it — creative.”

  He thought for a few seconds. “I’ve got it. What number are we at? Five? A5: an acquaintance of yours who used to be in the prepared food business, and who has recently come to the painful realization that he is no novelist, re-enters the world of commerce with a boutique operation on Main Street, a prepared food outlet called Danielle’s Kitchen. A cook is hired and trained to replicate your recipes and techniques exactly, so that all you need do each night is choose which item from your own repertoire you wish to take home and give to your family. Served with each meal are perfect little side salads made of heirloom lettuces and edible flower petals, supplied, of course, by you.” He grinned. “Go ahead. Shoot it down.”

  “Not Danielle’s Kitchen, please.” She liked this game. “How about we name it The Oakdale Dinner Club? And get Sarah to do some baking for it, and some of the other members to provide their best recipes.”

  “You’re right. We should draw on the wealth of available talent. Mary Ann could teach the cook how to make soups, for instance. Her soup tonight was stupendous.”

  Danielle said, “If only it would work.”

  “Why couldn’t it?”

  “We’d need capital, food industry experience, commercial kitchen facilities.”

  “Got it, got it, can get them.”

  “Where would you find cooks willing to cook someone else’s recipes?”

  “This would be a dream job for some cooking school graduates. Far better than an institutional gig.”

  “There’d have to be more than one potential customer willing to pay for my food.”

  “That shouldn’t be difficult. You’re a proven crowd pleaser. And I have a hunch you’re not the only person in Oakdale who’s sick of making dinner.”

  Danielle saw a distant look in his eye, something like the one Mary Ann had said meant he was thinking about his novel. “This is all just party talk, right?” she said. “You wouldn’t actually consider doing this, would you?”

  “Wouldn’t I?”

  Mary Ann was in Alice’s small kitchen washing a few dishes when Phoebe walked up to her and said, “Come with me for a minute?”

  “What for?”

  Phoebe made a shushing sign, pulled Mary Ann away from the sink and down the hallway into Alice’s bedroom, and closed the door behind her. “Guess what?” she said. “I found out who the other woman is.”

  Mary Ann checked her reflection in the mirror hung above Alice’s dresser and finger-combed her hair. “Are we talking about Drew now?”

  “Yes. The married woman he was boning was Hallie Smith! That stuck-up blonde.”

  Mary Ann stopped in mid-comb. “What? Are you sure?”

  “He told me the whole story out on the porch before dinner. She broke it off yesterday when he offered to fly to London and meet her there.”

  Drew and Hallie? How and why had that come about? More importantly, how did this news affect Mary Ann’s plans for the evening? “Does that mean she might come back early from her business trip?”

  “If I were her, I’d try to stay away longer, give him a chance to get over her. Though I don’t know what he saw in her to begin with. I thought she was a bit of a bitch.”

  Mary Ann imagined herself being rejected by Sam at Chuck’s later, after all her efforts, and her shoulders sagged in empathy. “Poor Drew.”

  “I’ve talked him into going to the bar where Alice’s friend is playing,” Phoebe said. “The guy needs to have a little fun, and see that there’s other fish in the sea. You’ll help me cheer him up?”

  “Definitely.”

  After the girls were settled in their sleeping bags and the lights turned out, Melina retreated to the main-floor family room, turned on the TV there, flipped channels.

  Josh came in a few minutes later. “What are you watching?”

  Melina muted the volume on a reality show. “Nothing. How’s your homework going?”

  “Bad.”

  “What is it?”

  “An assignment to find history in our daily environment. The project proposal is due on Monday.”

  “Who’s your teacher? Cruikshank?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He assigned my class that project last year.”

  “What did you do for it?”

  “Everybody else interviewed their grandparents, but I researched the old railroad tracks running through Oakdale. The highlight of my presentation was when I took the class on a field trip to follow the path of the tracks through town. Alice Maeda helped me — she knows all about that stuff. I got an A+.”

  “What railroad tracks?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.”

  “You know the yellow-brick building on Main Street that Alice has been working on? The old doughnut shop? It used to be the train station, back when there were railroad tracks.”

  “No shit.”

  “That’s what you should do your project on — the new library. Interview Alice on some historical facts about when it was a train station for your written report, then arrange for your history class to have a tour of the building as your presentation. Get Alice to conduct the tour. She’ll know what to say, and you’ll get the good mark.”

  “It’s going to be a library?”

  “God, Josh, don’t you pay attention to anything that’s going on around you?”

  All huffy, Josh said, “Of course I do.”

  And Melina regretted her words. Because if Josh was paying attention to what was going on in his own house, he would have figured out, as Melina had, that his parents were on the brink of divorce. “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. But what do you think of the project idea?”

  He smiled. “I like the part about Alice giving the lecture and me getting the mark.”

  “So go for it. You’ve got the connections. You might as well use them.”

  Jake’s band wasn’t onstage when the dinner club arrived at Chuck’s, a gloomy dive that looked to Alice like it had a long history of being a gloomy dive, complete with the requisite single men in dirty truckers’ hats seated at the bar nursing beers and watching televised sporting events.

  In the dimly lit room, it took Alice a minute to see that a small stage platform was backed against the far, windowless wall. The worn parquet dance floor in front of it was ringed by round wooden tables peopled with pot-bellied men and blowsy women talking about either baseball or labour unrest — she heard the word “strike” bandied about. Maybe they were bowlers? In the farthest, darkest corner of the room, six or eight youngish people huddled over two pitchers of beer.

  While the remnants of the dinner
club, led by Mary Ann, wandered around in search of an unstained table that could seat eight, Alice caught the attention of the bartender and confirmed that Rhythm and Blues was playing that night, had played one set already, and was due to come back on in fifteen minutes, after which time she could only hope the jukebox would be turned off.

  She joined the group at the table they’d picked out and counted heads. Mary Ann, seated with Drew on one side and Sam on the other, was fully enacting her role as Veronica, complete with hair-flipping gestures; Kate and Tom were trying to look comfortable in the shabby back-roads setting; and Phoebe was talking brightly about god knows what with a tired-looking Sarah. The others had declined to attend, pleading lack of dance aptitude. The fewer people the better, in Alice’s opinion. Maybe they could all leave now. “You okay?” Alice said to Sarah, aside. “You sure you’re up to this?”

  “I won’t stay long. I thought I might see if the band would be suitable for the country-club dance, but I’m fading fast.”

  Alice looked around. Where were Jake and the band? In a back room, no doubt. Should she try to find them, say hello, let him know she was here? No. Better to act casual, cool. Loosen up a bit. Try to recall how to act cool. And get that persistent image of a cat’s tongue lapping up milk right out of her head.

  Danielle came in her front door, listened for household noise, heard the upstairs TV on low. She walked through the ground floor, turned off lights, checked door locks, stopped in the kitchen to wipe off the cutting board, wash the paring knife Benny had used to slice apples for the kids, and toss the apple cores into the compost bin.

  Upstairs, she peeked in at the boys — how angelic and sweet they looked when asleep — and walked into the master bedroom, where Benny’s sleeping form looked neither angelic nor sweet. His bedside lamp and the TV were both on, and he was propped up on three pillows, his head slumped down to one side, his chin doubled, snoring.