The Book Club

by Mary Alice Monroe

  She was relieved that no one did, and handed the menu to the waitress. Yet while she sat with her hands on her ample thighs and listened to her friends’ monotonous orders for various salads, grilled chicken or fish and iced tea, she cringed. There were no rallying calls now as there had been for Annie, follow-up orders with laughs and giggles for sundaes or pie. She had crossed an invisible line, broken somehow from the pack.

  Doris had never felt so distant from her friends, or so alone. As she bit into mouthful after mouthful of her towering sandwich, she felt as though hers was the immense distended jaw of a large sperm whale. In her heart she knew that it wasn’t her friends’ fault she felt this way. They were tiptoeing around her this afternoon, aware of her mood and taking care not to offend. Yet their sympathy only fueled her anguish.

  When the waitress delivered her dessert, she stared at the large square of Apple Brown Betty with vanilla ice cream melting down the sides under the hot afternoon sun. Don’t eat it, her conscience warned. The dessert sat there, teasing and waiting, her nemesis floating in a sea of melting cream. She foresaw her own little death. Her coffin was carved from brown sugar and white flour.

  The afternoon’s sun glared no hotter than the four pairs of eyes around her as they sat uncomfortably and watched her devour the dessert. She was near tears as she stealthily glanced at the half-eaten portions of light foods on their plates. With her last modicum of control she set down her fork, and with a ladylike turn of her wrists, dabbed at her mouth with a thick napkin.

  “Look at the time,” Eve said in a choked voice, glancing at her watch. “I’ve got to go.”

  Instantly, all the other women reached for their purses, eager to leave.

  Doris lowered her head to reach for her white leather purse on the floor, and doing so, saw her middle divided into two sagging folds at the belt. Hating the sight, hating herself, her mind was swirling, round and round in a whirlpool, and she felt certain she’d soon slip beneath the murky blackness.

  “Have you finished Moby Dick yet?” asked Gabriella, counting out her share of the bill carefully.

  Doris remained silent, thinking to herself that she couldn’t get the book out of her mind. It lingered and churned dangerous thoughts. R.J. was her Moby Dick. She loved him, yet she loathed him. Her thoughts pursued him. Her suspicions burned in her heart. At night and throughout the day she secretly dreamed of harpooning him, throwing the spear hard, watching it penetrate the pale flesh. Then reeling him in, tug after tug, and tethering him to the side of her boat. But of course, she couldn’t tell her friends this.

  “I labored through it,” replied Annie, flipping down twenty dollar bills without thought. “That should cover the tip, too,” she said to Gabriella, snapping her purse shut.

  “I heard Melville almost lost his sanity writing it,” said Midge.

  “I almost lost mine reading it,” quipped Annie.

  They snickered and Eve asked, “By the way, whose house is the meeting at?”

  “Mine,” Annie said, rising in inches with more care than usual. Her hand was on her abdomen in a protective gesture that didn’t slip anyone’s notice. “Polish your teeth, girls,” she said. “I’m serving whale skins for us to chew down.” After they laughed she added, “Frankly, I now know more about whales than I ever wanted to know.”

  “Me, too,” said Gabriella in a moan. “I’m still busy trying to figure if ol’ Moby Dick was good or bad or what?”

  “And if he was good, just how good was he?” Annie said in a low voice to a chorus of groans.

  Doris rose stiffly from her chair and laid her money on the table. Her face was somber and she said in a tight voice, “All you need to know is that Moby Dick is a huge, white, wrinkled, misunderstood sperm whale.” She paused, then taking her purse and straightening her shoulders she said, “And I feel a sudden sympathy for him.”

  Eleven

  “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

  “And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.”

  “And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to misunderstand them.”

  —Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

  Eve sat in the cool of the air-conditioned office and looked out over the dried, brown tinged lawns of the college commons. Even the shade looked hot. Although it was only early June, already the Midwest had been hit with a blistering heat wave. For the past week, temperatures had hovered in the low nineties, taxing energy supplies and breaking records. Tempers grew prickly as the relentless glare of the sun pressed, broken only by the occasional gathering of clouds that teased at a rainfall that never came.

  She sighed and let the shades drop, deflecting the scorching shine of light and creating long lines of black and white across the shadowy floors. There was nothing anyone could do but stay indoors—or escape north to cooler climates and lakes as many locals did.

  Bless them, she thought, recalling her profound relief when Finney’s friend invited him to their summer home in Michigan for the first two weeks of summer vacation. Monday morning she’d kissed him goodbye, feeling as though she’d been granted a reprieve from worry.

  Bronte was another story. In another week she’d be enrolled in summer school. In the meantime, Doris had proved herself as good as her word by picking her up in the afternoon and driving her over to visit with Sarah and the girls at the pool. Sometimes, Bronte claimed she was too busy to see her friends or preferred to finish her book—a marked contrast from the summer before. Bronte was becoming more and more withdrawn. Eve wrung her hands, feeling that they were tied in this matter. What could she do? Bronte was fourteen, a difficult age.

  At Saint Benedict’s the summer term was underway and the pressure was off the office staff. Pat Crawford felt she could take a vacation, implying when she left the Friday before that it was the highest compliment to entrust her small empire to the sole care of Eve Porter. Eve smiled to herself, recollecting how she’d thanked Pat for the opportunity. Secretly she was amused. Tending to the schedules and needs of one Dr. Paul Hammond and his skeleton staff was a joy-walk compared to running a home with the dynamic Tom Porter and two teenagers. She often thought most businesses would be better run if a housewife was at the helm.

  Eve pursed her lips and exhaled slowly. She gazed around the dimly lit, silent office of the English department where she sat alone during her lunch break. Ah, Pat, she thought to herself as she glanced at the woman’s immaculate, barren desk, if you only knew why I shivered when you announced you were going away. The week’s anxiety wasn’t about how a middle-aged woman would manage running an office for the first time. It was about how she’d manage the middle-aged man, Dr. Paul Hammond.

  His explosive outbursts were legendary, though she herself had never heard one. “He’s a live volcano, and from time to time, he must spill out a bit of lava, that is all,” Pat explained to her. During her first few weeks in the department, they’d maintained a polite distance, one too tense for indifference. One could not be indifferent about Paul Hammond. Pat was always there to act as buffer with her cheery comments, her nose in every detail and her unflagging devotion to the chairman. She positively hovered at his side. Rather like a mosquito, Eve often thought as she caught an occasional tightening of Dr. Hammond’s lips or heard a subtle tone of irritation in his quick, “Yes, yes, thank you, Pat.”

  Pat was blissfully oblivious to these signals. Eve, however, spotted them readily. Tom and Dr. Hammond were very much alike in this way. Both men persisted in the belief that all people could read such subtleties. How she used to tease Tom that he only set himself up for disappointment! To his credit, Dr. Hammond bore the brunt of Pat’s unfailing devotion with civility.

  To his students, however, he was not as tolerant. Whenever a boisterous or rebell
ious student destroyed the English language in either speech or written form, Dr. Hammond skewered him with a piercing gaze and, using his tongue as a rapier, served the culprit up to the class in pieces. Eve found it fascinating that his students bore it almost as a compliment. Dr. Hammond was reputed to be a gifted teacher; long lines of students clamored to enter his classes each semester. It was his passion for the subject, Eve was told, and his brilliance, that earned him the respect of teachers and colleagues alike.

  It was a different passion, however, that Eve saw behind his hooded glances directed her way. An unmistakable, smoldering emotion held taut by bands of iron control that she could feel vibrate when he walked into the room. Feel it even though he wouldn’t come near her, or speak to her other than the perfunctory, “Good morning, Eve,” and the occasional, “Goodbye, Eve,” choosing to address all his questions and comments solely to Pat.

  And so, when Pat announced her vacation, Eve had thought, So, I’m consigned to be the mosquito.

  But, of course, she couldn’t let that happen. A praying mantis, perhaps. A wasp, maybe. A worker bee, oh, all right, yes. She accepted this role dutifully and had completed the routine tasks easily enough. Dealing with Dr. Hammond, however, required contact, even conversation.

  She rested her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. Lord, what a week it had been! They had been alone in the office and she’d felt as though the blistering waves of heat from the outdoors had seeped in with him each time he entered the room. Her heart raced, her palms sweat and her mouth went as dry as the Sahara. She hadn’t had feelings like these for a man since...she couldn’t even remember. It felt wrong, illicit—at her age, especially, she told herself. But no matter, whenever she thought of Paul, the yearnings were there, tingling her spine and making her wonder throughout the day where he was and what he was doing.

  He seemed equally ill at ease, all five feet ten inches of him standing stiffly by her desk, clearing his throat as he handed her reports or student schedules, barely sparing ten words at a time. She was no better, averting her gaze and accepting the papers with a curt nod of her head and a brief yet direct reply. At first she’d thought that he didn’t find her worthy of more. But by the third day, she noticed the way his fingers tapped the papers on her desk, the number of times he mangled a question in her presence, his frequent glances with an aiming eye. As the week continued, he had more questions for her and lingered at her desk. His bright-blue eyes had the power to engulf. She felt like any student of his would when singled out from the hundreds by that concentrated look. It made her feel she was the only other person in the world. Between the long length of his questions and her carefully considered replies, they eventually found to their surprise that they were actually engaging in a conversation—of sorts.

  By Friday morning she was not at all surprised that he didn’t close his office door as was his habit. All morning, the soft classical sounds from his radio wafted through the heavy stillness of the office as they worked in their separate spaces, uniting them with an invisible ribbon of music.

  Eve closed her eyes and relished the thought that someone might actually find her desirable. Not just some stranger walking past her in the street, but someone she knew, someone she saw every day, someone she found desirable herself. How very strange to feel this again—and how very lovely.

  He was older than her, at least ten years, but what did that matter? There was a passion about everything he did that she found wildly exciting. What did she think would happen after a week of mildly flirtatious behavior? She scolded herself for enjoying this little game entirely too much.

  She turned her attention to Pride and Prejudice lying in her lap. Now here was a love story worth savoring, she thought. Every word, phrase, every character in this book was a delight, even the third time around. And she and Elizabeth Bennet had a lot in common. They both had a love-hate thing going on with a proud, devilishly handsome man.

  A short while later her reading was interrupted by the opening of the door. She raised her eyes in a drowsy manner as Dr. Hammond pushed into the office. When she saw him her heart seized. His face was pale and harried, and his hair was slicked back with sweat. He always wore a suit, no matter what the weather, but today his jacket hung over his arm, exposing a broad back under a crumpled shirt, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to the elbow. His left shoulder drooped with the weight of his overflowing leather briefcase.

  He looked very much like Tom on the last day she saw him alive.

  A tremor of déjà vu shot through her and she rose impulsively, the book falling from her hand. She sprang forward.

  “Dr. Hammond, are you well?” She hovered an arm’s length away, not touching him.

  He dumped his briefcase on the floor, then poured himself a cup of cool water from the cooler and drank it thirstily.

  “The electricity went out in the lecture hall,” he said, his voice as low as a curse. “The lights, the air-conditioning, everything. Opened the windows but there wasn’t a breath of wind to be had. It was a bloody sauna in there.”

  “Please, sit down, cool off. Here, give me your jacket. Let me get you some more water.”

  He paused, relinquishing his suit coat, registering her concern. “Thank you,” he replied, eyeing her with curiosity.

  She refilled his glass and he drank that down as well. Eve was relieved to note that his color was less flushed and his breathing more steady. He had dark skin that tanned readily, like Tom’s, and also like Tom, a bright rosy flush marked his prominent cheekbones. This happened whenever Tom was too hot, drank too much red wine, or they had just made love. She’d always found the high color sensual and attractive, bringing to mind the bold streaks of an Indian warrior’s war paint.

  Eve clasped her hands tightly before her and willed away the comparisons. But when she’d seen Paul Hammond flushed and sweaty, so like Tom on that last morning, she just thought... She abruptly turned on her heel and walked to the cooler, pouring out a cup of water for herself, holding the plastic cup with shaky hands.

  “I feel much better in the air-conditioning,” Dr. Hammond was saying to her. “But it wasn’t so bad, really. I just can’t tolerate the heat. Never could. The students managed pretty well, considering.”

  Eve gathered her wits and turned to face him. “Do you mean to say you didn’t cancel the class?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “The threat of a heatstroke, for one reason. Not just for you, but for those students.”

  “My job is to teach and that is what I did. I don’t recall there being an addendum to my contract stipulating weather conditions.”

  Eve felt a flush of feminine anger rise up, born from worry. Not only about the students, but about him. There was a small drop of perspiration on his forehead that her hand was itching to wipe away.

  “You kept those children in session? Today? In this heat?”

  “You don’t approve?” he asked, leaning back in the chair, studying her.

  She walked over to her desk, tugged a tissue out of the box and handed it to him. “It’s not for me to approve or disapprove.”

  “Ah, so you say,” he replied, wiping his brow. “But I think, Mrs. Porter, that you can’t help yourself. It’s your nature to have strong opinions. And to speak directly and honestly. I like that about you. You don’t snivel about.” He crumpled the tissue and tossed it in the garbage pail. “So, which is it?”

  She took her time answering, folding her arms before her. “I think,” she said in a level tone, “that it takes an enormous amount of either ego or lack of concern to keep a roomful of children inside a hot cauldron on a day like today—” she paused “—no matter how brilliant or fascinating you think your lecture might be.”

  His eyes flashed. “I see. Well, let’s skip over the comment about the quality of my lecture and stay on the topic of the students.�
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  He seemed to be enjoying this and it pricked her vanity.

  “Why would you think I kept them in the lecture hall?”

  “But you just said...”

  “I said the electricity failed, that the room was stifling and that, nonetheless, I taught my class. You jumped to the conclusion that I forced my students to stay in a hellish classroom.” He stood, picked up his suit coat and flung it over his arm. “I’m sorry to disappoint your image of me as Beelzebub, Mrs. Porter, but I brought my class out to the breezy shade of the commons where they sipped the cool drinks I purchased for them while I continued my lecture.” He lifted his shoulders lightly. “If it was good enough for Socrates, I daresay it’s good enough for me.”

  Eve felt a blush burn her cheeks and she looked down, spotting her book on the floor where it fell. “I’m sure it was a wonderful lecture, Dr. Hammond. I...well, I’m sorry.” She bent to pick up her paperback, hoping he would have the mercy to end this scene and move on to his office, sparing her a little dignity. But he did not. He moved quickly to pick up her book for her. He handed the paperback to her outstretched hand.

  “What are you reading?” he asked.

  “Pride and Prejudice.”

  “Oh.”

  A condescension in the tone of his reply prickled. She knew she shouldn’t say anything, that she should just say “thank you” and let it go. But in for a penny, in for a pound, she decided. Besides, in her mind’s eye she envisioned Annie, Midge, Gabriella and Doris with their mouths agape and their fists up and ready.

  “And what does that mean?”

  He raised his brows. “Just, Oh.”

  “You don’t approve?”

  “How can I not? It’s a classic.”

  “Have you ever read it?”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it with a slightly embarrassed smile and a shrug.

  “Not weighty enough for a man, I suppose?”