She knew what would happen; it’d happened so many times before. She might get a turned head, a discreet glance beneath a raised brow, enough to give her a momentary thrill that she was still being admired, that she still “had it.” Then the dewy-faced looker would catch on to some undefinable cue, the searchlight would switch off and he’d turn his head and move on. What was it? Some pheromone that the young and available gave off? A subtle movement or a tilt of the head? Something in the eyes?
Whatever it was, it had slipped through her fingers, slowly, soundlessly, like sand. She didn’t even realize it was happening, but suddenly all she had left were a few grains, and she was holding on to them, tight.
And yet, it wasn’t that sexy aspect of youth she coveted now. Perhaps a year ago, when she was secure in her marriage and it was all an amusing game. But no longer. What had her quaking in her pumps as she sat in the waiting room of the personnel office and perused the three twenty-something-year-old women seated across from her was the confidence that shone like a beacon from their eager, fresh, oh so damnably energetic eyes. They were sharp, prepared, hungry. This wasn’t about being attractive or finding a mate. This was about survival. This was her competition.
Her toes curled as she fingered her résumé, seeing in her mind’s eye the date of her college graduation: 1974. Were these women even born then? Why hadn’t she taken courses to brush up? Why hadn’t she taken Annie’s advice to pad her résumé a bit?
When her name was called, Eve marshaled her wits along with her briefcase and strode straight-shouldered across the waiting room, ignoring the sharp surveillance by the other three women, telling herself that was not derision she saw in their fresh eyes. Stepping into the cramped, gray, unadorned office, however, she knew she was doomed when the woman behind the desk stood up to shake her hand.
The large-boned, blunt-faced woman appeared much younger but it was impossible to guess her age. Ms. Kovac was a mountain of a woman with lifeless, cold eyes behind heavy, dark-rimmed glasses. She wore no wedding ring on her hand and had no personal photographs on her desk. In fact, there was nothing in the gray square of space to indicate any personal preferences or style or personality at all.
“Take a seat, please,” she said with a brisk wave of her hand indicating the steel chair. She offered no name, no eye contact.
Eve sat and crossed her ankles instead of her legs, a reflex after a lifetime of training. The silence was oppressive. Eve felt the last shreds of her confidence shrivel as Ms. Kovac read her résumé with her mouth set in a grim line. At last she cleared her throat, flattened the résumé on her desk, then folded her hands over it. She studied Eve with the same cold perusal a judge would survey a convict who’d just been found guilty—guilty of wasting her time.
“You have no teaching experience?”
“Well, I’ve volunteered at the Literacy Center for the past five years. And there was my student teaching, of course.”
“Are you familiar with current methods of pedagogy?”
Eve ventured a smile that was not returned. “I can’t imagine teaching has changed all that much in the past—” she paused, not willing to offer the number “—years.”
“Yes, well...I don’t think the chairman of the English department would agree.”
It went downhill from there. For the next twenty minutes Eve answered question after question in halting sentences, while thinking in a blind fury that this underpaid, bitter personnel employee of a mediocre college delighted in making it painfully clear to an attractive, seemingly well-to-do suburban housewife how out of touch with the world of academics she was. Unspoken was the message that she was naive to think a master’s degree in English would qualify her to teach that subject. It was clear to Eve from Ms. Kovac’s repeated, pointed questions on teaching methodology that she didn’t care a whit how well Eve understood the cadence and power of Keats, Coleridge, Burns and the other Romantic poets, or wished to hear her discuss her thesis on The Visionary Company of William Blake. That twenty-five years of extensive reading, writing newsletters and volunteering at literacy clinics had no bearing whatsoever on the teaching of literature, even as a substitute.
This she pounded into Eve’s head mercilessly, causing her shoulders to slump and her chin to inch closer to her chest. Eve was made to feel guilty for not having updated her résumé, guilty for wasting time on things like motherhood and family and volunteering, guilty for being forty-five and unemployable.
When Ms. Kovac looked at her wristwatch, then leaned back in her chair and said, “You do realize, Mrs. Porter, that there are many applicants for this position?” Eve had had enough. She rose and shook the woman’s hand.
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Kovac. It’s clear Lincoln College is not the place for me,” she said in her best clipped tone, leaving the stunned woman to figure out whatever she pleased from the statement.
As she strolled out the door, past the three young women who watched her sloe-eyed, she slipped off her jacket and slung it over her arm. Walking through the halls she pulled the pins from her hair, shaking it loose like a filly would her mane and swung her hips to the left and right in tempo with her arms. She ignored the curious, searching gazes from the boys as she passed—they were children! Her eyes were straight ahead.
Pushing open the heavy wood door, she stepped out into a beautiful spring day and felt the sunshine kiss her cheeks and smelled the faint scent of apple blossoms in the air. She breathed in great gulps of the fresh air, feeling as though she’d barely escaped with her identity. But she had escaped and was free; this was her life. Instead of being beaten into the earth by the heel of conceit, she felt like a young shoot bursting through the soil.
Damn Ms. Kovac and all the women like her who found pleasure in plucking out the joy and success of other women. She would not let them get in her way or trivialize her intelligence and experience just because it didn’t fit the mold. She strode through the countless pale-yellow tree seedlings whirling through the rarefied spring air like cheery helicopters. She should be grateful to that poor, plodding woman who existed only in that fluorescent-lit, gray cubicle. That dog had pulled back the curtain, forcing Eve to see the man pulling the levers and pushing the buttons. The man was the reality. Her degrees were all an illusion. She’d been waltzing in Oz.
As she made her way home, Eve decided it was high time to click her Ferragamo heels and wake up to the way it was.
Nine
And closely akin to the visions...was the call still sounding in the depths of the forest. It filled him with a great unrest and strange desires. It caused him to feel a vague, sweet gladness, and he was aware of wild yearnings and stirrings for he knew not what.
—Jack London, The Call of the Wild
It was a quiet night. Outside her window a neighbor’s dog howled at the quarter moon. Eve sat at the secretary in her living room listening to the throaty call and felt a strange stirring in her breast that quickened her breath and caused her to tighten her fingers around the pen in her hand. She’d been sitting for the better part of an hour, staring in turns at the moon and at the application for a position as an administrative assistant in the English department at Saint Benedict’s College. Her first job application in twenty-five years.
Outside the dog cried again. Deep inside she felt the rustlings of change in the scented air. Like Buck in this month’s Book Club selection, The Call of the Wild, she sat rigid, ears cocked, nose high in the air, sensing an approaching message, sniffing at what was as yet only a distant scent.
Yet, while excitement quivered, she was hesitant, knowing she stood alone in the wide-open space of uncertainty. The winds of anxiety and fear engendered by more than a quarter of a century of experience buffeted her. She’d learned the rules of fang and club, been kept in line by the tethers of social mores and tradition, whipped by the lash of women’s tongues and men’s criti
cisms. Despite her eagerness to move forward, her paw lingered in the air. She crouched back.
Why did she hold back? What was she afraid of? What expectations were there to meet? She wasn’t the doctor’s wife anymore. Or the Riverton matron who served on committees, drove carpool and rallied at sports events. Nor was she any longer the naive child seeking approval. She felt young again, despite the softening of her skin and the graying of her hair. She felt young deep in her heart. She wanted to laugh out loud like she saw the students at Lincoln College do, with their heads back and their mouths wide-open.
She had the urge to test her limits rappelling high on a mountaintop or traversing snowy fields with a dog team. Most of all, she wanted to go back to school, to update old skills and learn new ones. She wanted to grow. Never again would she allow someone like Ms. Kovac to put her paws on her back. This Eve Porter was showing her teeth and fighting back.
Jack London had put it succinctly when Ol’ Buck stirred in his sleep, his paws running in the air, hearing the call of the wild. It was an ancient howling that awoke all beasts from their stupor and awakened them to survival.
She heard the calling in her heart, in her soul, in every fiber of her being. She would survive, Eve decided, sitting up straight in her chair. Her period of mourning was over. It was time to live. Each day was precious and she would embrace each one, be grateful for each one.
Taking a deep breath, she leaned forward and, in her finest Palmer Method script, wrote her name: Eve Porter.
Not Mrs. Thomas Porter. Nor Miss Eve Brown. She was Ms. Eve Porter, a blending of both the energetic, curious, outgoing girl she once was and the sedate, respectable wife and mother she’d become. She stared at the name, wondering who this new, unknown Eve was. She was sure she was someone she wanted to get to know better. Or perhaps, rediscover.
Eve smoothed out the application with her palms, feeling the crisp cool paper on her skin as she quieted the stirrings of doubt in her breast. Then with quick, decisive movements, she folded the application into thirds, stuffed the envelope and affixed a stamp.
“There, it is done,” she said aloud, then released a long sigh, nodding. She’d get this job, she felt it in her bones. It may not be the teaching job she’d hoped for, but it was a first step. Then she’d take another, then another, on her way toward her goals.
Eve heard the call of the dog again and, turning her face to the moon, smiled, answering the cry in her heart. She’d stuck out her paw into the path. She was running with the pack.
* * *
Two weeks later, at the same desk, Eve opened her purse for a last-minute check that she had everything she needed before leaving for her first day at work. Her wallet, her lipstick, her car keys—everything was in order. Her hands shook as she closed her purse and clasped it tight.
“It’s gonna be okay, Mom.”
Bronte stepped forward to wrap her long arms around her mother and give her a reassuring hug. “I’ll take care of Finney so don’t you worry about a thing.”
Eve’s heart melted. “I have cheese and sandwich meat in the fridge for lunch. And salad. Make sure Finney eats his veggies. Oh, and Nello’s brother is going to drive them to the baseball game at three. That’s the schedule for today. Later this week I thought you and Finney might want to go to the movies so there’s money in an envelope up on the bulletin board. But don’t spend it all in one day. There’s enough there for treats during the week, you know, like ice cream or something.”
“Mom, we’ve gone over this a million times. I’ve been a baby-sitter for years. Trust me, I can handle one creepy brother.”
Eve sighed and tucked Bronte’s hair behind her ear, then cupped her slender cheek in her palm. Her daughter looked so old, and she looked so young.
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way. It’s not the way I’d like for you to spend the summer before high school.”
“It’s cool. Summer school starts next week and there’re some really good courses I want to take. I think it’s Finney who’s bummed. He doesn’t want to go to summer school.”
“School? He’s taking video production and football, for heaven’s sake. That’s not school, that’s fun.”
“You know Finney.”
Eve chewed her lip. No, she didn’t know Finney, she thought with worry. She couldn’t find the cheerful little boy she used to know beneath the facade of the remote, distanced young man she lived with now. He spent most of his time either on the phone with his friends or at their homes. He never invited anyone here. He never invited her in.
“Oh, that reminds me. If you want to have some friends over, that’s fine, but no more than two. And no boys.”
“Duh.” Bronte’s lips twisted with annoyance.
“Why don’t you invite Sarah Bridges over? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
Bronte’s face darkened and she shrugged.
There was a story there, but Eve knew better than to broach the topic now. Maybe later, when she came home.
“My number at Saint Benedict’s is on the bulletin board. And the emergency numbers. Let’s see, what have I forgotten?”
“Go already, Mom. We’ll be fine.”
“Really?”
“Goodbye!” Bronte offered another hug. “Good luck on the new job, Mom. You’ll be great.” She turned her head and called over her shoulder, “Finney! Mom’s leaving!”
“Oh, he doesn’t have to say goodbye. Let him be.”
Bronte’s face was mutinous. “He does, too. You let him get away with murder.”
“Be easy on him.”
Bronte was about to retort when Finney appeared in the hallway. He walked toward them, head down, shoulders up and hands in his baggy pants pockets. His soft brown hair was parted in the middle and was growing long, fringing the base of his neck. When he looked up it was with a jerk of his head that shifted the shock of hair back from his eyes.
Eve reached out to smooth it back. Finney ducked away from her reach. She laughed a bit but only to disguise how much it hurt that he no longer let her touch him.
“Be good,” she said, “and mind your sister. She’s in charge.”
Finney nodded and shrugged, then turned to walk away.
“What? No hug goodbye? It’s my first day of work and I could use all the moral support I can get. You’re my only guy, don’t forget.”
She caught a glimmer of affection in his eyes as he stepped forward to deliver a lackluster hug. But she hung on tight, squeezing him, and for a magical second she felt him squeeze her, too, and pat her back. Then he stepped away, seemingly embarrassed by the moment.
She looked in the faces of her children and physically ached with her love for them, was loath to leave them. It seemed only yesterday that they were underfoot, needing constant supervision. When did they grow up? Could she really leave them on their own while she went to work?
She’d never once before considered what it might’ve been like all those years for Tom when he said goodbye every morning on his way to the office, or before leaving on one of his many trips. When he bent over to receive a warm milky kiss from his children, did he feel a twinge of regret at leaving them, such as she did now? At what point, if ever, did it become perfunctory, like brushing one’s teeth or saying a pat “Good morning” without bothering to look up from the morning paper and meet their eyes.
How did she and Tom ever reach the point where they took their relationship so for granted that he could leave on a business trip that took him away forever and not even say goodbye?
The pain was still so raw that she winced. She didn’t even say goodbye.
“Mom, it’s okay,” repeated Bronte, misunderstanding her anguish. “We’ll be fine. I’ll take care of everything.”
Bronte was trying so hard to be competent. It shamed her that her mother doubted her ability.
“I know you will,” Eve replied, sounding as though she meant it even as she worried. “Well,” she said, grasping hold of her purse and straightening her shoulders. “I guess this is it.” She looked her children in the eyes, vowing never to leave or allow anyone she loved to leave her again without saying goodbye.
“Goodbye,” she said through a tight smile that held back too much emotion. “I love you!”
They closed the door behind her. She stood quietly in the hall and listened if they locked the dead bolts, smiling when they did. Wiping her eyes, she walked forward, packing in her heart the echo of their “I love you, too!” as neatly as she’d packed a tuna sandwich for her lunch.
* * *
The immersion process into the working world was much less painful than she’d expected. The small, crowded office of Saint Benedict’s English department was located in Saint Augustine Hall, at the rear of the second floor overlooking the commons. Overflowing from the entrance was a throng of students that pressed into the anteroom, each of them waving a registration form with a forlorn expression on his or her face. At the other end of the room, seemingly barricaded by a long metal table, stood a trio of women hunched over stacks of forms.
If she’d expected a cordial welcome, a tour of the facilities and perhaps a cup of coffee, she was mistaken. She hadn’t been in the office for more than a few minutes when she was accosted by a thin, nimble, elderly woman with the bright-blue eyes and short haircut of a pixie. She must’ve had a streak of magic in her to pick Eve out from the crowd.
“You must be Mrs. Porter! At last! Come right this way, far from the madding crowd. You’re an absolute godsend. Wish you could’ve been here last week but you’re here now, that’s all that matters. It’ll be a baptism by fire, I’m afraid, but you look up to it. Let’s sneak around to the other side of this table, careful now! Watch that stack of books on the floor.”
The Book Club Page 13