The Book Club

by Mary Alice Monroe

  “Well,” Doris said with a small huff. “She’s not going to cook and clean all summer, is she?”

  Eve chafed under Doris’s censorial tone. “Of course not. She’s taking classes this summer, too. I’m not Simon Legree.”

  “Oh, I know,” Doris rushed to say, squelching the flare of temper in Eve’s reply. “I just meant that she’s still so young and needs free time to play with her friends.”

  “Speaking of which, we haven’t seen Sarah in a while.”

  There was a pause. “Oh, she’s been so busy. And Bronte’s not next door anymore.”

  “No, but we’re not at the other end of the earth, you know. We’d love to have her over.”

  “Of course.” She paused again, longer this time. “But to be honest, without you home, we can’t trust that word won’t get out and boys won’t start to flock over. You know how that happens. It’s not a good idea to leave them alone too often or too long. Why doesn’t Bronte come over here?”

  Eve ordinarily would have agreed instantly that leaving girls this age unattended was an invitation to trouble. But these weren’t ordinary times. And there was something else that wasn’t being spoken aloud. Eve felt that, somehow, her new place might not be thought of as quite up to snuff.

  “It’d be wonderful if you could swing by and pick Bronte up once in a while and bring her over to your place. Maybe take them all to the pool. She doesn’t see her old friends much anymore. I’m sure it’s just a matter of getting them together. But we’ll have to arrange it on days that Finney goes to a friend’s house, too.” She sighed. “It’s all so complicated now.”

  “I’ll be glad to drop him off wherever. Just let me know.”

  It was a welcome offer and Eve was grateful. “I’d appreciate that.”

  “So tell me, how was your first day at work?”

  “Oh, all right, I guess.”

  “You guess? What happened?”

  “Nothing. It went well. The ladies I work with are nice enough. I walked into a wall of students clamoring for help. It was wild. But I caught on pretty quickly. Really, it was no different than when you and I used to be room mothers for the first grade.”

  “Don’t tell me they all wanted to go to the bathroom at the same time?”

  Eve laughed, thinking that in so many ways it was just like that.

  “It was more the chairman that was the problem. A detestable man.”

  “Rude?”

  “Worse. He was perfectly polite and said all the right words but then he just turned his head and ignored me, as though I wasn’t even there. I was mortified.”

  “Eve, he probably didn’t even realize that he did it. Men in power have tunnel vision. R.J. does that sort of thing all the time. Runs over people every day and doesn’t look back because he doesn’t even see them. Don’t take it personally.”

  “I know how I’m going to handle it. I’m taking lessons from Buck in Call of the Wild. First, I’m going to watch and learn every facet of that organization, from the filing to the name of every faculty member. Next, I’ll work harder and better than anyone else. I’m going to make myself indispensable. Then we’ll see if he ever dares dismiss me again.”

  “Forget it. He’s the leader of the pack, Eve, if you’re going to use that analogy.”

  “No, the women are in the pack. He’s the driver of the team. The master. The man with the whip and club.”

  “Be careful, Eve. That’s all fine and good for dogs and wolves, but we live in the man’s world.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned if I’m going to mince around him and bring him coffee like he was my master. And if he expects me to lick his hand I’ll snarl and bite it!”

  Doris paused. “Honestly, Eve, I hardly recognize you when you talk like this. First of all, even the dogs in London’s books recognized their masters and obeyed them. Don’t forget that elemental law of nature. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with bringing him a little coffee once in a while. Play it smart. You shouldn’t be so confrontational. Smile a bit and make nice-nice. Keep the men happy. It makes them feel important.”

  Eve swallowed. “I just can’t. I won’t.”

  “Eve, you need this job to survive. Don’t do anything to get him too mad. I know about men like this. Trust me. You’ll get yourself fired. Or, at the very least, he’ll make your job miserable.”

  Eve pursed her lips and twisted the phone cord in her fingers. There was a time not so long ago when she would have listened to Doris, perhaps even agreed with her. This was the way she, a woman, was brought up. To build up the man’s ego at the sacrifice of your own. To accommodate his needs, and the needs of others. Your own needs could wait.

  Now, Eve wasn’t so sure Doris was right.

  A faint howl rose up outside her windows. It was her neighbor’s dog again. Her ears perked to the sound and she rose to follow it, stretching the telephone cord as she moved toward the windows and opened them wide. As Doris continued her diatribe about how she should, as it were, submit to the harness, the neighbor’s dog cried again. It was a full throaty song this time that rose high up to the moon hanging full in the sky. Eve thought of Buck at the edge of the forest. She felt her hackles rise and was filled with a deep hunger and disquiet. She hadn’t felt this stirring this strongly since she was young and full of her own dreams—a time long before Tom and the children.

  In the other ear Doris’s words of shoulds and ought tos sounded like the wailing of a lost soul, the cry of a banshee in a castle’s keep. Eve lowered the telephone receiver and tilted her head toward the open window. If ever there was a chance that she would listen to Doris and be strapped into the harness, that time had passed. Eve stood at the window, faceup to the warm light, and felt the pull of the moon.

  Ten

  Oh man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among the ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own!

  —Herman Melville, Moby Dick

  The Oakley Bath and Tennis Club was housed in an old Tudor-style postwar building that was crisscrossed with lines of ivy, was crumbling at the base and needed a good face-lift. Most of its patrons felt right at home there.

  A newer, sleeker health club had opened up down the block and had a growing membership, mostly of the younger, new-mother-trying-to-get-her-size-six-figure-back set. The ladies of the Book Club, however, had decided to be faithful to the Oakley Bath and Tennis Club, preferring its old-world classy comfort with all of its aging flaws to the high-tech glare and blare of the new club. Not to mention the annoying sight of those high-perched bosoms and taut tummies of its younger clients. As Midge often said, “Who needs that?”

  Eve closed her locker door and turned the key, thinking as she did so that she was closing this part of her life as well. Her membership would end this week and she couldn’t afford to renew it. Not that she’d used it much since Tom’s death anyway. She was thin now; her clothes hung shapelessly from her like from a wire hanger and food held little interest for her. It was too bad that she couldn’t afford the club dues any longer. But in the scheme of things, she thought, tossing the towel around her neck and moving forward, it was a small loss. She still had her feet, a pair of jogging shoes and nature outside her door.

  “Let go. Go on,” she murmured to herself, a mantra that she’d adopted over the past few weeks. That, and the prayer to Saint Francis of Assisi she’d learned as a child, helped her keep her equilibrium through the rough moments.

  Passing through the women’s lovely, gardenlike locker room, her gaze traveled across the lattice-covered walls, the coolers of chilled water dripping with condensation, the stacks of neatly folded white towels. There we
re Italian wooden trays filled with artfully arranged brushes, combs, soaps, lotions, sanitary napkins, breath mints and a myriad of sundries that a woman might need. This club had a European charm that was as comforting to the soul as it was uncomfortable to her new spirit. Its very attentiveness to feminine luxury represented a lifestyle for women that she no longer felt akin to, that in fact, few women she knew today still were.

  Her mother would have loved this place, would have approved of her membership. And would have been appalled that she was giving it up. She, a doctor’s wife. She always suspected that her mother wanted her to follow in her footsteps. But the shoes didn’t fit. The older women here, those like her mother who remembered World War II and raised children in the 1950s era, sat and read or chatted comfortably in the lounge or the restaurant, or kept a steady, but easy, pace on the treadmill. The club, for them, was a safe place to come to and feel they belonged. They didn’t see the curled edges of the wallpaper.

  She, too, was once dazzled by the elegant trappings. Now she saw them as inconsequential backdrops for the real reason she and other younger, Vietnam War era women came to clubs today. They came not for lunches and gossip but for quick exercise routines and personal trainers. They were not facing menopause with whispers and resignation. They were crunching and sweating, pushing back time’s boundaries, year by year, inch by inch.

  But today was Eve’s last day here. Resigned, she reminded herself that she was more keenly interested in building up her mind than her body right now. And so far, her inner self was firming up. She had a new condo, she was getting a grip on her finances, and most importantly, she finally had a job. Her future was now.

  She pushed open the door and stepped into the glare of mirrors, shiny chrome and black metal of the newly renovated gym. The scent of sweat mingled with air freshener assailed her nose and she readily spotted Midge furiously pedaling away at a stationary bicycle. Her long hair was pulled back into a thick braid and a halo of soft gray frizzed along her scalp. Her face, not pretty in normal situations, was almost comical in her fierce determination. Midge’s defined muscles were slick with sweat, dampening her gray University of Illinois T-shirt in patches across her flat chest.

  “Whoa there,” Eve said approaching. “What’s got you working up such a lather?”

  Midge caught her eye, nodded in mute acknowledgment, then held up one finger indicating that Eve should wait a minute. She ducked her head and pedaled like a demon was chasing her for a few more minutes, completing her cycle, then gradually slowed down while she gathered her breath. Around them, three other women Eve didn’t recognize worked the machines at a slower pace while watching the overhead television.

  Eve handed Midge a towel. “Where is everyone else today?”

  Midge patted her face with the towel, emerging from behind the white cotton with a weary grin on her bright-pink face. “They all pooped out. Gabby had to take her youngest to the dentist but she’ll catch up with us. Annie says she’s flooding again and doesn’t dare get on a machine until she checks with her doctor. She and Doris are meeting us for lunch. And you’re late.” Midge feigned sternness but her eyes glowed with affection. “So get yourself up and at ’em on the machines.”

  “They say misery loves company,” Eve said in singsong, climbing up on a tread machine. When Midge took the one beside hers, however, Eve raised her brows and exclaimed, “Don’t tell me you’re not done? You look exhausted.”

  “I need to work out. I’m so tense lately I’m getting headaches and I feel like I’m going to burst.”

  “What’s up?” Eve asked.

  “My mother. She’s decided she likes it here and is renting an apartment.” She rolled her eyes. “To be near me.”

  “I think that’s sweet.”

  Midge replied with an unladylike snort, “That’s hardly the word I’d use to describe that petite, fireball of a woman who likes her steaks rare, her martinis dry and her men virile.”

  “You’re lucky you have a mother. I really miss mine,” Eve said wistfully. “We were close even though we didn’t live near each other. Used to talk on the phone every week. It’s not so much that I needed her advice. We were quite different, really. I just enjoyed hearing her voice.” She sighed and looked out the window. “We talked about everything—and nothing.”

  “Edith’s been in Chicago for a couple of months now, and though we talk, I can’t say we’ve yet had a heart-to-heart. I’ve tried every trick I know, and as a therapist I know quite a few. And I caught that poodle peeing on a canvas in the corner yesterday. Thank God it was a blank or I’d have tossed that puffball out the window. What kind of person comes for a week’s visit, stays a couple of months and brings her dog along, too?”

  “A relative?”

  Midge laughed and increased the speed of her treadmill.

  “I adore your mother, Midge. She’s a gas. Always was.”

  “Sure you do. Everybody loves Mom. Fun Edith, the wild-and-crazy gal. The life of the party. But you don’t know her. Shoot, I don’t really know her. Part of me adores her, too. She’s my mom. And part of me wants to kill her...and that mangy dog,” she muttered under her breath. “She’s secretive about things that matter. Her deep inside feelings, her true history, and not the smoke screen she tells me. I don’t know the realities of who she is, really. There’s this wall she refuses to let me pass.”

  Eve thought that Midge had just described herself. The pace picked up and Eve adjusted, her heart rate quickening.

  “Midge,” she said with a choppy cadence as she hustled. “You still have time to try. My time is over. For both my mom and my dad. But I don’t have any regrets. They both were ill and I had time to say what I had to before they died.” She paused, thinking of Tom, feeling an old dagger strike. “Make the most of your time.”

  Midge shrugged and picked up her pace.

  Eve, wiser by her many experiences with death and loss, shook her head with resignation. Even a therapist like Midge who had studied grief and consolation in textbooks had no real clue how powerful the loss of a parent could be.

  “I wish my mother lived next door to me,” Eve added with a whimsical note. “Just so we could chat. Shop. I’d like to show her how well I’m doing, show her my condo.” She chuckled. “Let her tell me how wonderful I’m doing. Mom’s are our best cheerleaders. No one else ever cares quite the same. Who else is going to be as angry at you when you do something wrong, or be as proud of you when you do something right?”

  Midge closed her eyes. She recalled the bitter fight she’d had with Edith on her sixteenth birthday when she’d refused her mother’s gift—a nose job.

  “Did you ever stop to think that maybe this wasn’t just a gift for you? Maybe it was a gift for me, too,” Edith had demanded.

  Midge took a deep breath and opened her eyes to look at Eve. How could she explain it to her? Eve had no clue what it was like to grow up never once feeling the glow of her mother’s approval.

  “You don’t know Edith,” she said. “As far as she’s concerned, everything I do is wrong. She doesn’t want to talk, she wants to tell. She doesn’t want to just shop, she wants to dictate what I buy. Who I see. What I do. God, that woman is so controlling. I moved out of her house at eighteen because I couldn’t stand it then. What makes her think I can stand it now? Why does she think I live alone?”

  “She probably thinks you’re lonely. And...you’re her child.”

  “Damn,” Midge muttered through pants. Her face was bright-pink again. “But I’m not a child.”

  “But you are. Her child, anyway. I hate to say it, but I can’t imagine ever really seeing my children as grown-up. At least so much so that they won’t need my advice.”

  “Eve,” Midge said, her eyes wide with frustration. “Listen to yourself. Do you have any idea how smothering that is?”

  Eve caught her breath
, stunned by the question. She’d never thought of herself as the smothering type. “I’m... I’m not!” she blurted in reply. Yet, how many times had she heard her children groan, Come on, Mom, when she questioned—grilled—them on their whereabouts or homework or choice of movie? How many times had Tom looked up from his work and said in a cajoling voice, “Aw, let ’em go. They’ll have a good time.”

  She puffed up her cheeks and exhaled a big chunk of her parental confidence, recalling, too, how capable Bronte was in the kitchen, how independent Finney was in his social world. That couldn’t have happened overnight. When did her children start letting go of her hand?

  “My God, Midge. Maybe you’re right. I have to face that my babies are growing up.”

  “That’s a good thing, Eve. It’s a normal process. Soon you’ll be free, sweetie! And if you’re lucky, your children will become your friends.”

  “It seems too much too soon. Especially for Bronte. She’s shouldering a lot of what I used to do. But I’m still her mom, not her friend.”

  “Maybe she wants to be your friend.”

  “No. That’s not my role. I have to make sure my baby doesn’t get hurt. She’s still so young.”

  “Yeah, well you’d better be aware that the things she’s going to start getting involved in aren’t so young. Boys, sex, drugs, alcohol, driving. She’ll need to talk to you and she won’t if she’s afraid of getting punished or lectured. Face it, Eve. She’s not that young.” She wiped her brow with her elbow. “And neither am I.”

  “But, Midge, to me, she is! Always will be. For your mom, you are still young. Speaking from the other side of the fence, it’s not easy to let go of their hands.”

  “But you’ve got to, honey. You’ve simply got to let go or they’ll never grow up. They’ll feel choked—and eventually they’ll resent you.”

  Eve stepped off the machine, balancing her weight on the sides as she balanced her thoughts. After a moment she conceded, “Maybe you’re right and I need to rethink things a bit. Maybe I can find ways to be Bronte’s friend.” She looked over at Midge before remounting her treadmill. “And maybe, you can be your mom’s.”