On the bottom was an envelope that was newer, crisper than the others. She tore it open, expecting a child’s drawing or perhaps a letter. All that fell out was a Polaroid photograph of a woman. She was lovely; a willowy redhead with soulful eyes and full pouting lips turned up in a sultry smile. She was attractively dressed in a well-cut dark suit, as though on her way to an important meeting. Her clothing, her stance of confidence, spoke of her being a professional, bright, savvy.
There was something about her that rang a bell with Eve. She couldn’t quite place her, but she knew she’d seen her somewhere before. But where?
She’d have to come back to it later, she decided, placing all the treasures back into the box for safekeeping. The children would be home from school soon and she needed to get all of Tom’s clothing out of sight before they arrived. They might be upset that she was getting rid of them.
Still, as she worked, the image of the mysterious woman niggled at her, rousing her dormant suspicions. Sliding the file box onto the shelf, her hand lingered while her fingers tapped the metal. Who was that redheaded woman?
Seven
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.
—Robert Herrick, To Virgins, to Make Much of Time
It was spring at last! The earth was full of hope and promise, even if in Chicago there were still patches of muddy snow on the front lawn. Shoots of brave crocus broke through the soil in cheery yellow and purple to open in the warm sun. Eve felt inspired as she loaded the last of her personal possessions into her car, a boxy green Volvo wagon that was old enough she could afford to keep it. She’d sold Tom’s new black sedan. And most of her antiques. And her Japanese porcelains, her Oriental carpets, her gold coins, and at long, blessed relief last, the house. Annie had been right, damn her, but she should have sold the house last summer. As it was, Eve limped through the winter months, lowering the price bit by bit, watching the mortgage gouge into her nest egg, until a doctor who was moving to the University of Illinois heard about the house from a colleague and stopped by during a visit. In one whirlwind weekend his wife flew in, fell in love, and they bought it on the spot. Annie was stunned but crowed, “Coming from New York, they’re probably popping the bubbly thinking they stole the house from you!”
Nonetheless, it broke Eve’s heart to sign the sale contract. So many years, hours, precious minutes she’d spent in this house.
But that was last month. This month, she was glad to be rid of the burden and eager to get settled into her new home. Gabriella had rushed over the afternoon after the sale, her nut-brown eyes sparkling and her large mouth cooing about fortune and fate and lucky stars and how she wouldn’t believe it but the glorious, funky, positively ancient apartment complex in Old Town Oakley that Eve’d always admired was going condo. Together they hurried over as fast as Gabriella’s gold Saturn could get them there to inspect the gothic, brick and stone complex of apartments.
The Santa Maria wasn’t secluded or elite. Rather, it was located in the heart of the town near shops and across the street from a large park that was a favorite gathering place of high school boys playing Frisbee, Sunday morning dog groups and countless art fairs. There was no doubt that a move here would be a definite step down for the Porters. The largest unit was a two bedroom plus study. She’d have to squeeze Finney into the small room without a closet. But Eve loved it the moment she stepped inside. Each condo housed an enormous stone fireplace, ten-foot ceilings, tall bay windows overlooking the park and nooks and crannies that were only found in old buildings. Plus, it positively reeked of old-world charm. She’d just known it would be like this.
Like a bird dog with a keen nose, Eve was blessed with a sharp sense for discovering the unique. Whether it was an antique in somebody’s attic, a first edition lying in a box of paperbacks, scouting out the best view while hiking, or discovering the crustiest bread in town, Eve found it. She held her breath and, acting on instinct, purchased one of the larger units that very day, clobbering her bank account and assuming debt in one fell swoop. But later, over chardonnay, Annie had assured her there was nothing like a mortgage to develop her credit rating.
All that was left now was to close the door on her old house—and all the tenacious feelings still clinging to it like the vines of the grape ivy on the west wall—lock it securely and drive away. Eve hefted her two bulging suitcases into the rear of the station wagon, feeling as if she were twenty years old all over again, leaving her parents’ house and getting her first apartment.
Except she was forty-five.
She didn’t feel forty-five today; she didn’t want to be forty-five. She’d never had her own apartment, she realized with surprise. She hadn’t planned it that way, it just happened. She went from home, to college, to marriage in rapid-fire order, a natural transition that so many other women of her generation went through. Resting against the dusty Volvo, she thought how she’d never really had any time alone. Just for herself. Not like Annie, who’d traveled across the United States and Europe with a backpack like a vagabond. Not even like her own daughter, Bronte, who’d spent a summer testing her limits in the Colorado Rockies at camp. She was jealous of that kind of self-exploration, that kind of freedom. Eve Brown Porter had always been somebody’s daughter, or wife or mother. She’d moved from being taken care of to taking care of others as easily as slipping into a warm pool. One step, hold your breath, and you’re immersed. But don’t stop stroking or you’ll drown. She wondered what it would be like having no one to take care of but yourself, to stop stroking and just let go? It seemed unfathomable.
Well, someday she’d take a trip all on her own, she vowed, slamming the trunk and slapping the dust off from the seat of her jeans. But not yet. She had many miles to go before she slept, as Robert Frost put so eloquently, starting with convincing two sullen children that moving the few miles from Riverton to Oakley was not the end of the world.
She entered what was once her house and walked through the first floor, her footsteps echoing in the large empty rooms. It was a fine house, a handsome house. A happy house. She hoped the next family would be happy in it, too, and made a mental note to send them flowers on their moving day.
Her hands slid along the banister as she hurried up the stairs to the children’s rooms, remembering all the times she’d climbed these steps in the past. Rushing at the sound of gagging and throwing up in the bathroom, storming when she heard talking on the telephone after 11:00 p.m., sleepily to kiss warm, sweet-smelling foreheads good-night, stomping to lay down the law, tiptoeing to wake a yawning, smiling child with a birthday breakfast in bed.
She found Bronte and Finney on the floor of the landing sitting close together and hunched over in whispered conversation. Their faces were thunderous, sucking the sun right out of Eve’s warm spring day. Finney bent to wipe his eyes with his sleeve. Eve paused at the top of the stairs, physically hurting to see them in such pain, wishing she could gather them up like flowers close to her chest and reassure them with all the right words. But she knew there were no words that would make them feel better; she prayed that time would. And she also knew better than to touch them when they were in this mood. They’d shrug her off, hate her all the more for forcing them to forgive her what they perceived a horrible injustice. So she opted to be practical.
“Okay, kiddos,” she said, clapping her hands, forcing a ray of brightness into the gloom. “Rise and shine! It’s time to go.”
“I...don’t...want...to...go.” Bronte’s eyes, so much like her own, were two green flames in her pale face and her pointed chin jutted out angrily.
Oh boy, here we go, sighed Eve to herself. “We’ve been through this a million times. This isn’t our house anymore.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“It’s n
obody’s fault.”
“Why’d you sell it? Why couldn’t you keep it? Dad would’ve kept it. He’d have found a way. You always do everything wrong.”
Eve let this go. “Honey, I had no choice. I... We can’t afford to stay here anymore. End of story.”
“I’ll get a job. So will Finney.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, still not looking at her. It was the first word she’d heard him speak all day. Of the two of them, Eve was most worried about Finney. In the past months her gentle-hearted, spontaneous, free-natured boy had changed into a sullen, guarded preteen, uttering only slurred, monosyllabic phrases.
“Be realistic,” she said gently. “Besides, it’s all done. The house is sold. We’re moving into our new home today. Let’s go.”
“You’re ruining my life!” screamed Bronte, climbing to her feet, her face flushed, her fists bunched and bobbing like a bantam. At only fourteen, already she was two inches taller than Eve. When she bore down on her mother with teenage frustration and anger pouring out like lava from a volcano it might have been intimidating to some women. But not Eve.
“How am I ruining your life?” Eve screamed right back at her, chin up, taking one step closer. “I’m doing the best I can.”
“You’re tearing me away from this house. My neighborhood. All my friends.”
“I am not! You and Finney get to finish out the year in Riverton and then you’re going to the same high school with all your friends. So don’t give me that. It’s Finney who’s having the toughest time. He’s got to go to a new school next year. He’ll be the new kid, not you. But I don’t hear him complaining about how I’m ruining his life.”
“That’s because he’s not telling you. Go on, Finney, tell her.”
Finney kept his head down low and began pinching the skin on his arm.
“He just won’t tell you,” Bronte ground out.
“Come on, kids, give me a break,” Eve said fighting back tears. “I’m not trying to make you miserable. I love you. I wish we didn’t have to move. I wish I could find a way to stay here for your sakes. I wish we had loads of money.” Her voice hitched. “I wish your dad was alive.” She stopped to swallow hard. She would not cry in front of her children.
Bronte quieted, quickly deflated at seeing her mother on the verge of tears. Her contorted face expressed remorse. “I’m sorry, Mom.”
Eve sniffed and offered a weak smile. “I am, too.” She opened her arms and Bronte bent low to somehow shrink herself and squeeze into them while Eve thought, My poor half child-half woman. Finney rose clumsily to his feet and clung tight, his thin body a bag of bones.
“We’ll be okay,” Eve said, her voice cracking but strong as she squeezed them tight. “We’re the Three Musketeers. One for all and all for one.”
Bronte and Finney sniffed and nodded, then released her and stepped back, embarrassed by either the sentiment or the cornball phrase. She’d never know and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the storm had passed.
Eve took a deep breath, then mussed the thick brown hair on top of Finney’s head and gently tucked a wayward tendril behind Bronte’s ear. The plains and valleys of their tearstained faces loomed soft and achingly beautiful on Eve’s horizon.
“Let’s go home.”
* * *
“Here they are! Over here, Eve. Park here!”
Eve spotted Gabriella arching on her tiptoes and waving her plump arms in wide arcs over her head, barely visible over the row of parked cars in front of the Santa Maria complex. Annie and Midge stood militantly in a parking space blessedly close to the front entrance of her building. Doris was stuffing quarters into the meter. Eve’s heart skipped gaily on seeing each of them, like a pebble bouncing across a span of water—one, two, three, four, Gabriella, Midge, Annie, Doris.
“Thank God you got here!” exclaimed Gabriella, grinning into the open window after Eve finished an ace parking job into the tight spot. Parallel parking was a new fact of life for her; there would be no more rolling into her driveway, punching the automatic garage door opener and slipping to a secure parking spot. There would be no more garages.
“What the hell took you so long?” asked Annie, opening her door. “We’ve been duking it out with the natives, defending your parking space. I thought someone was going to call the cops!”
“What are you guys doing here!” Eve couldn’t help squealing—had to do it.
“We heard someone was moving in!” exclaimed Midge, moving in for her turn at a hug. “We finally lured you out of Riverton to our neighborhood. Welcome to Oakley, sweetie.”
“Yeah, to the real world.” Gabriella winked, acknowledging the silent feud between large, progressive, more cosmopolitan Oakley and small, conservative, slightly snobby Riverton. Both communities had their share of drop-jaw houses and wealth, but where Riverton’s population was predominately white, upper class, Oakley celebrated its diversity.
“Bronte, come out of that hot car and say hello,” called Doris, leaning into the window. “Finney, you too!”
Bronte responded to the iron in Doris’s velvet voice, as she had so many times growing up, and climbed from the car with Finney right behind her.
As if on cue, the women ignored the sour expressions and humped-shoulder stances of the children, instinctively giving them their space. All were well acquainted with the power and duration of a teenage sulk.
Eve, however, was beaming as she took in the smiling faces of her friends, weak-kneed with gratitude at seeing them here to help, taking care of her, making sure she wasn’t alone. Stepping inside her condo she was speechless to find they’d already washed the windows until they sparkled and the hardwood floors until they gleamed. They’d scrubbed the single bathroom, thinking ahead to add rolls of toilet paper, a fancy bottle of liquid soap and even expensive, decorated paper towels, that she knew had to come from Doris.
It was typical of Doris to place a flower beside a kitchen sink, or spritz scent in a dark, musty back stairwell, knowing a woman needed such things at such times. She’d already placed a book of poems by Gwendolyn Brooks on the toilet lid. Eve always had books and magazines stacked in her Riverton bathroom. Dabbing her fingers on the thick paper that felt like cotton, Eve felt luxurious in her cramped black-and-white bathroom with the leaky toilet and the chipped porcelain sink.
The afternoon sped by in a blur. She dispensed Bronte and Finney to the park across the street with ten dollars in their pockets and a kiss, instructing them to come back at six for dinner. The movers arrived a few minutes later, and rolling up her sleeves, Eve began setting up house. With the help of four sharp-eyed, wily generals, the furniture was set in place with the efficiency and speed of a military formation drill. There wasn’t a slacker in the bunch, one outdoing the other in generosity and talent. Except, by decree, Annie.
“Annie, you get out of here,” Gabriella exclaimed, tying a sunflower-yellow apron around her waist. “You have no business lifting those boxes. Madre de Dios, you brainy types don’t have any common sense. Now go on, get out of here and find something easy to do. Better yet, put your feet up.”
Eve, unloading a box of glasses, froze, her hand in midair. She’d never heard Gabriella order Annie around like that. She was even more amazed to watch Annie meekly obey. Annie had missed her period and nurse Gabriella was watching her like a mother hen. They were a group of mother hens, actually. For the rest of the afternoon, the women had an unspoken agreement to take care of Annie, who didn’t know the first thing about being pregnant, and as far as they could tell, didn’t have good instincts, either. They chased Annie away from any lifting or hard labor, brought her cool water to drink and ordered her to “just sit down and take a load off.” Annie protested and argued, but everyone could tell she was secretly delighted with the obvious care and love of the group. In the end, Annie managed to accomplish little more than
inserting new lightbulbs into the sockets.
“Have you read this month’s book?” called Midge from under the kitchen sink. She’d brought along her tool chest and was installing a rollaway garbage basket. She’d already added an extra deadbolt on the front door. “Fabulous. I couldn’t put it down.”
“You’re kidding? I couldn’t pick it up. Boring, boring, boring,” Doris replied as she unpacked the kitchen dishes and utensils onto the myriad new Rubbermaid items she’d placed in every cabinet. “Mysteries are all the same. Someone gets killed, someone hunts the killer down, killer gets punished. The end. It’s such a waste of time.”
“I could say the same thing about your romances.”
“You’ve never even read a romance, so how would you know?”
“How many mysteries have you read?”
“I think you two are missing the point,” Gabriella chimed in, sticking her head out from the oven. “It’s not about choosing just a good read. We all have our favorites. We need to pick books that promote a good discussion. I mean, I love it when we all get fired up about some topic.”
“Remember Doris with Madame Bovary?” asked Eve, walking in with another box in her arms. “I thought she was gonna scratch Annie’s eyes out.”
The Book Club Page 10