Doris parked her Lexus at the curb of John and Annie’s house, anxious to deliver the envelope and get out as soon as possible. She harrumphed seeing that the front entryway of the house was under scaffolding. She’d have to make her way around the piles of brick and wood that lay like hulking beasts in the driveway to get to the rear entrance. She clucked her tongue in annoyance as she trudged around to the rear door of the low, spreading brown-brick house, careful not to step on any tools or trip in any holes.
She was panting with the effort by the time she climbed up the back porch and rang the doorbell. She tapped her foot after a moment and rang again. The button was soft to the touch. She cursed under her breath, realizing that it, like everything else in this house, probably wasn’t working. Was anyone even home? She didn’t hear anything.... Doris walked to one of the kitchen windows, and leaning far over the pair of wooden horses, peeked inside.
Her breath stilled in her throat as she caught sight of John and Annie slow dancing in the quiet room to the beat of some inner love song. His sinewy arms, bare under his overalls, held Annie’s nude body against his long torso in a tight, possessive manner. His tanned hands cupped her alabaster hips while her slim arms clung around his shoulders so close her nose and lips were pressed against his neck. They swayed with hips joined and eyes closed. The passion between them was palpable and Doris gazed on with longing. When John pulled Annie’s head back in a hungry, devouring kiss, Doris licked her own parched lips and sighed. She stepped back from the window, feeling an excruciating emptiness in her heart. A shiver of envy swept through her for that kind of tenderness in her own life.
She tucked the envelope securely between the back door and the screen, careful not to disturb the lovers, then quietly left the house unobserved. She walked away with a shaky gait across the uneven flagstone.
* * *
Doris wasn’t ready to return to her empty house. On the way home, she stopped by Eve’s place for some cheer and conversation. She hadn’t seen much of her since Tom’s funeral, though everyone had tried to call or just stop by frequently. But Eve was firm in her refusals, preferring her self-imposed exile.
Eve’s house was an impressive redbrick structure well situated on a large property bordered by a black iron fence and ancient towering pines. Driving through the gates, Doris thought again how she’d always admired Eve’s ability to soften hard edges in both her landscape designs and in her relationships with people. Just as the harsh, straight lines of the Prairie architecture were rounded by Eve’s fabulous curved perennial beds and shrubs, so had her warm, womanly nature doused many flare-ups between obstinate opponents—both in committee meetings and on the playground. Doris missed Eve’s presence in her life. She missed her friendship. Doris hadn’t known that losing Tom would also mean losing her best friend. It wasn’t fair! Eve was the friend who lugged over a bag full of perennials to share from her garden, or who picked up Sarah if Doris was ill. She was the one Doris would call if she was in a pinch or just needed to talk.
As she walked from her car to the front door, Doris was dismayed to see Eve’s garden such a wilderness. Dried leaves drooped under bent flower heads that appeared to have given up the battle against choking weeds. The front curtains were drawn against the daylight, adding to the mood of neglect. All bad signs. Gathering her resolve, Doris knocked on the door.
After a moment the door opened, revealing Eve’s pale, drawn face. She stood, blinking in the sunshine, then forced a smile and exclaimed delight in seeing her. Her eyes, however, were lifeless.
“I’m all alone tonight,” Doris announced, stepping into the soft floral foyer. The house was dimly lit, and as gloomy as a tomb. “And I seem to remember your children are at camp, right?”
“Yes, and I miss them terribly,” Eve replied, closing the door. “Bronte and Finney have been there for a week already and still have one more to go. They seem to like it well enough. Their doctor thought it would be good for them to get some fresh air and new scenery. But it seems so quiet here without them. Without...” Her voice faded and her eyes seemed to glaze over in pain.
Doris thought that it was a shame there was no camp for Eve to go to. Her pallor and thinness was a tell-tale sign that she wasn’t going out or eating well. “So, we’re both alone. Do you want to go out to dinner?”
Eve rubbed her thin arms with her fingers and shook her head. “No, not really. I feel so tired. Actually, I was going to go to bed early tonight. Maybe watch a little TV.” She yawned and covered her mouth with her palm. “I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I just can’t seem to get enough sleep lately.”
“Are you well?” Doris scanned Eve’s face. “You look so pale and you’ve lost weight.”
Eve waved away her concern. “I’m fine. It’s just being inside and alone so much.”
“I’ve tried to call you...” Doris interrupted.
“I know you have. Everyone has... And I’m grateful. But, it’s not your company I’m lonely for. It’s Tom’s,” she said with the air of a confession. “The sadness inside of me is so big it just sucks the energy straight from my bones.” Then she smiled a bit too brightly, as though to dispel any doubt that anything was amiss. “Oh, don’t worry, I hear it’s normal. This is what the doctors call normal grieving. It’s just a phase.”
“It doesn’t sound normal to me. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I like being alone.”
“But it’s not good to be alone too much. Everything in moderation. Come out to dinner with me.”
Eve shook her head. “I’m just not in the mood. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. Think of this period as a kind of hibernation. I need to sleep for a while, okay? I’ll be my old self in time.”
Doris looked at Eve with doubt. She knew in her heart she shouldn’t leave Eve alone, yet she couldn’t think what to do to lure her out of her isolation. Doris was the type to fix things when they were broken. She couldn’t abide a tear in a dress or serve coffee in a chipped cup, and it was obvious to her that Eve was somehow, well...broken. Then she thought of the garden and knew how to lure Eve outdoors. After all, a woman always felt better when her garden was in order.
“All right, you win. We won’t go out to dinner. But your garden looks a little tired, don’t you think? Let’s take a few minutes to put your garden to bed, like we used to. It’s a lovely evening. Come on, no laziness. It’s got to get done. Go get your gloves and a pair for me. We can make a dent before the sun disappears completely.”
Doris thought she caught a flicker of interest. Eve raised one brow, shrugged, then a small smile of resignation eased across her slender face. Doris beamed with elation, for having succeeded, and gratitude, for not having to be alone this evening. Rolling up her sleeves she felt flush with relief that she wouldn’t have time to recall the love and passion she’d witnessed in Annie’s marriage, then compare it to her own. Eve wasn’t the only one who needed care and mending tonight. Feeling a sudden surge of energy, Doris followed Eve into the kitchen, flicked on a light and called out, “Why don’t I just make a quick call to North Star and order some Chinese for dinner?”
Four
I will honor Christmas in my heart. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.
—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
The lights on the Christmas tree sparkled like distant stars in the darkened living room. Eve’s collection of Santa Clauses were carefully placed on decorated tables around the room and the delicate wooden crèche that she and Tom had purchased for their first Christmas together nestled in its place of honor atop the grand piano. Eve sat on one end of the green velvet living room sofa cuddled under an old afghan. She’d lost a lot of weight and the cold affected her much more than it ever used to.
Opposite her on t
he other side, with her long legs stretched out and one hand absently tugging at her shaggy bangs, slouched Annie Blake. They were sipping coffee spiked with brandy and listening to Frank Sinatra croon “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”
Eve’s vision of the colored lights swam as the message struck true: home for Christmas. That had been her single goal for the six months since Tom’s death: to stay in her home until Christmas. But now it all seemed so pointless. Although the stage was set with the usual props, it felt as empty and cold as a deserted theater. Once this was a place of hospitality, merriment and revelry, a place where scores of friends and family came for a holiday visit and a cup of cheer. This year only Annie rang her doorbell.
“It doesn’t feel like Christmas,” Eve said softly over the rim of her cup.
“Aw, Eve,” Annie replied with gentle exasperation. “What did you expect?” She rested her cup on her bent knee and pursed her lips. “It’s your first Christmas without Tom. You have to face the fact that this Christmas isn’t the same. Your life is different. No amount of creative decorating is going to change that immutable fact.”
Eve shuddered, drawing the afghan closer around her shoulders and turning her head away. She didn’t want to listen. “Bah, humbug.”
“What am I going to do with you?” Annie asked with a sorry shake of her head. “I see you slipping deeper and deeper into this pit and I can’t pull you out. You’re so thin. So remote. So goddamn stubborn.”
“I’m not stubborn,” Eve retaliated, hurt. “I’m in mourning.”
“No, you’re way past mourning. You’re dying. Fizzing out. Fading away before my very eyes. And it burns my butt.”
“I’m sorry,” Eve replied tightly, shifting her weight and retreating farther. “Then...just go if I make you so uncomfortable.”
“Damn, you don’t think I haven’t thought about it?” she exploded. “It’s hard watching this. It’s hard for everyone who cares about you. You just won’t listen to anything anyone has to say to you. You’re deaf to all advice. It’s driving your friends—the people who care about you—crazy.” She paused, taking in the way Eve brought her knees up to her chest and tightened the afghan around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Eve, but haven’t you noticed that a whole lot of people don’t come by anymore?”
Eve felt a burn on her cheeks. “Of course I have,” she replied defensively. “I don’t blame them. It’s the holidays. I’m alone, depressed. I’m not exactly party material. Aside from making them feel awkward about tiptoeing around my feelings, I make for a difficult table placement. A single woman not yet social or socially acceptable to pair up with an unattached male so soon after...” Her voice trailed away.
“After Tom’s death. Go ahead, say it.”
Eve stuck her chin out and tightened her lips.
“Don’t you see, sweetie, that’s what I’m talking about. No more excuses. Tom’s dead. Gone. You have to pick up the pieces and move forward. Not just for you, but for the children’s sake. You’re stagnant here. Going under.”
“I’m doing okay....”
Annie slapped her forehead with her palm. “Hey, who are you talking to here? You can’t keep up those false pretenses with me, sweetie. It might work with Doris and the rest of those Riverton matrons, but I’m not just your friend, I’m your lawyer. I do your books. I know your finances better than you do and I’m telling you, you’re going under. Faster than the Titanic and,” she said rolling her eyes, “this place you’re carrying is about as big.”
“It’s not just some place. It’s my home.”
“Look, hon, I know you wanted, even needed, to stretch things out so you could be here for Christmas. It was a bad decision fiscally, I didn’t like it, but hey, I didn’t push you either, for the kids’ sake. But the party’s over. You have to move. Now.”
“I can hang on a little longer.”
“No, you can’t. In fact, I’m worried sick about what will happen to you if the house doesn’t sell quickly. You should have sold last summer when the pool was open, gotten top dollar. But,” she conceded, turning her head to take in the large room with the coved molding and high ceilings, “all this mahogany and balsam trim makes this a perfect holiday house and ought to push a lot of emotional buttons for buyers after Christmas. As your lawyer, I’m advising you to put this elephant on the market. And as your friend, I’m begging you to do it now.”
Eve had heard this conversation before, knew where it was heading and felt the walls closing in on her. She set her cup on the glass coffee table with a shaky hand. “Where would I go?” she rasped, voicing the question for the first time. When she raised her eyes to Annie, they were wide with fear.
Annie slowly placed her cup on the table beside Eve’s and said gently, “Where do you want to go?”
Eve shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “It’s not that I haven’t thought about it. Bronte and Finney are happy here. Their friends are here. I can’t pull them away from what they know, not after all they’ve been through.”
“Hon,” Annie said with her husky voice low and well modulated. “I’m not sure you can afford to stay in Riverton.”
“There are some small houses....”
“You can’t afford a small house here.”
Eve sucked in her breath and brought her fist to her lips. “My God, what am I going to do?”
“Again, you have to answer that question for yourself.”
“I can’t. I can’t...”
“Of course you can,” Annie hurried to answer, moving closer to place her long hands over Eve’s small ones. “And you’re not alone. I’m here with you. Helping women in your situation is what I do for a living, remember? There’s nothing to fear. You just have to see yourself in transition. Step by step, you’ll get through this.”
Eve nodded halfheartedly, knowing this was what was expected, accustomed to doing what was expected of her. She drew back. Annie sighed, released Eve’s hand and did the same.
Eve chewed her lip and fingered the afghan. Annie’s patience with her was wearing thin. She looked at Annie’s long, slim body wrapped in cashmere and wool with diamond studs in her ears, short but polished nails and her blond hair loosely tied back with a clasp. Annie’s self-confidence crackled in the air around her. She’d practically raised herself after running away at thirteen from her poor, “weird” hippie-commune home in Oregon to live with her grandparents in Chicago. There was nothing Annie felt she couldn’t do if she tried hard enough. It was this sense of empowerment that led so many divorced, widowed, lost single women to her law firm, seeking her out, hoping a bit of her confidence would sprinkle on them, like fairy dust.
On the other end of the sofa, Eve felt all the more a thin, opaque shadow of women like Annie Blake, who faced the outside world on a daily basis, chin out, fists in the ready, making their own living. It wasn’t envy she felt, but confusion. Who was this pitiful creature curled up on the sofa, cowering under a blanket? Where was the secure, attractive, competent woman she remembered Eve Porter to be? That woman seemed to have died with Tom.
“How did I let this happen to me, Annie?” she cried. “I’m not stupid or naive. I’ve always prided myself on my intellect. But for twenty-three years I let Tom make all the decisions about money. He liked to do it, and I...” She paused. “I didn’t care. Sure, I handled the checkbooks, paid the bills, arranged for the lawn to be cut, the maid to clean twice a week and the shirts to be laundered. I mean, I’m not a moron. I raised my children. I supported my husband. I managed my family. I was good at my job.”
She heard the defensiveness in her own voice and felt an overwhelming sadness that somehow, that job didn’t matter much anymore. That her home was unimportant. She felt somehow less than Annie and other professional women working outside the home. And she resented it, deeply.
“Of course you were,” Annie said, res
ting a hand over hers. “No one’s saying you weren’t, Eve.”
“Don’t use that tone with me,” she snapped.
“What tone?”
“That placating ‘Poor little Eve, poor helpless, mindless housewife’ tone that working women like you are so good at dishing out.”
“I see.”
Eve looked up to see Annie draw her knees in tight. Guilt washed over her and she reached out to grab Annie’s hand back. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
Annie snorted and said, “I did sound kinda patronizing. I hate when people do that to me, too. To any woman. Hit me if I ever do it again.”
“Ditto.”
Both women laughed and squeezed hands. The tension eased.
“You know I’m on your side, pal.”
“I know.”
“I’m only telling you that you can’t afford your old life-style any longer. I’m sorry, Eve, I wish it were different for you. But Tom... Well, you know.”
Eve knew. Tom had stretched everything to the limit, and like most baby boomers, expected to live to a ripe old age. He was a surgeon, raking in a healthy income and at the prime of his life. He’d thought he had plenty of time to start saving for the future. He didn’t expect to die at fifty. But he did, leaving his family unprepared. They didn’t have outstanding debts, but their lifestyle, as Annie put it, was titanic. His life insurance had carried them through the past six months but it was disappearing fast. In fact, they were broke, and at no time of the year was that fact more rudely apparent than at Christmas.
“Look at that,” Eve said, indicating with a wave of her hand the sparse showing of gifts under the tree. “The kids are going to be so disappointed this year. I couldn’t afford to get them much of anything. They’re used to mountains of gifts. It used to take us all day just to open them.”
“Yeah, well, I never had that many Christmas gifts so excuse me if I don’t feel sorry for them. Well, I do, but not because of the number of gifts. Don’t they have a clue what it took for you to keep them in this house through Christmas?”
The Book Club Page 5