“You have no idea, do you? Well, I’m here to tell you that playing with fire is dangerous. You can get burned. And not just you, but me, your husband, even R.J.”
“Okay, you’ve told me. Will you go now?”
“You’re just like so many women I know who indulge themselves in a seemingly harmless flirtation. A brief letter or a phone call. Maybe a snuggle while the tennis instructor teaches a serve. A wiggle and a kiss. Little do you know that these sparks can flare up out of control, destroying everything in their path.” Her eyes raked Annie with accusation. “Turning good marriages to ash.”
“And weren’t you playing, too?” Annie shot back. “You were hiding in the bushes. Spying. What kind of sick game is that? God, I hate sneaks.”
“I came looking for you. John was worried.”
“You could have called out. I wish you had! A good ol’ blowout would’ve been better than this sneaking around. Hide-and-seek. Well, you found out all right. The whole sordid mess. Talk about games. What I want to know is, what was the prize? As far as I can tell, there were no winners, only losers. Everyone was hurt.”
“And it’s all your fault! You didn’t stop to think of who you were hurting, Annie. That’s so typical of you. Act first, think later. To me, that’s the height of selfishness.”
Annie sputtered, she was so angry. Livid. It was so unfair of Doris to blame it all on her rather than her own husband. “Doris, stop pretending to me and to yourself. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I didn’t go after your husband. He came down to the pool after me. He put the make on me.”
“You lured him!”
“Wake up, Doris! Everyone but you knows R. J. Bridges chases anything in a skirt.”
Doris looked away, stricken.
Annie blew out a sigh and shook her head with regret. “I’m sorry, Doris. That wasn’t the right way to tell you. But I’m glad you know. Sometimes a friend doesn’t cover up the truth, no matter how tough it is to hear.”
“You’re not my friend,” she said, her voice low.
Annie’s heart skipped a beat, registering another hurt. “No, I don’t suppose I am,” she replied in a sad voice. “I tried to be, but you wouldn’t let it happen. The point is, I still think of you as a friend and I swear I would never go after a friend’s husband. Hell, I don’t go after anyone. I’m married too, you know. And I happen to love the creep.”
Doris placed her palms to her face and began to cry. Deep heaving sobs shook her shoulders while a low muffled wail echoed in the kitchen. Her copper-shiny hair fell forward to mop the tears.
Annie stepped closer to place a comforting hand on her shoulder and was relieved Doris didn’t shake it away. She waited until Doris’s breathing was less ragged.
“Have you ever thought about leaving him?” she asked gently.
Doris nodded her head. “Yes. But I can’t imagine ever divorcing R.J. He’s my life.”
“Well, maybe he shouldn’t be.”
Doris drew herself up, collecting her wits as she wiped her eyes. “You don’t understand,” she said with cold dismissal. “It’s just not done. Not by women like me. It’s not the way we were raised.”
Annie’s voice softened with pity. “Don’t I? Doris, I’ve got a practice full of good, upstanding women who’ve gotten the shaft. It ain’t pretty. Women who’ve given up the best years of their lives living by the rules of that social code you’re referring to, waiting on these jerks hand and foot. And then get dumped for a younger model. That’s when they come to me. Good ol’ Annie’s door is always open. They’re stuck without an income, without skills and a coupl’a kids in tow who are also angry and hurt and afraid to admit they love their father. And you know what? I love it when these women finally get angry. Really pissed. I feed it, use it to help them throw off that ‘poor me’ attitude and get started on building new lives for themselves.”
Doris took a deep breath. “You imply I have no life.”
Annie leaned against the door, unspeakably weary. “No, of course not. I don’t mean for you to change everything, or to go out and get a job. That’s not the answer. It’s about cultivating your own interests, Doris. Not getting stuck in your own house staring at the walls with all the time in the world and not a clue what to do with that time. So many women give, give, give until they have nothing left. Then one day they wake up, look in the mirror and don’t know their own reflection.”
Doris shivered, her face frozen in thought. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, without a trace of the earlier venom. “And what about you, Annie? With your high-powered law practice and self-centered lifestyle, are you happy?”
Annie was taken aback. She looked down at her hands and shook her head. “Touché, Doris.”
“It’s late. I should go.” She gave a short laugh. “I can’t imagine why I came in the first place. I snuck out of bed. Isn’t that pathetic? R.J. doesn’t even know I’m gone.”
Annie opened the door. “Oh, don’t forget this.” She walked across the room to grab the raincoat hanging off a chair and returned it to Doris. “Your maid lent it to me.”
Doris held R.J.’s coat away from her body as if it were contaminated. “Throw it away. Burn it. I don’t care.”
“Okay,” Annie said, taking it back, wishing she could burn away all memory of this horrible evening.
Before leaving, Doris hesitated, and with a puzzled expression on her tired face asked, “I’m thinking about the woman you described earlier. The woman who can leave her husband. You make her sound so empowered and successful. But she sounds vindictive, too. And angry. If that’s the kind of woman you want me to become...” She shook her head and tears sprang again to her eyes. “No,” Doris continued, struggling to control her voice. “That’s not my idea of being a woman. I think the answer lies somewhere in between. I don’t know. I’m not sure of anything right now. I’m just very tired.”
They didn’t hug or kiss or even smile. Their eyes met, they nodded in brief acknowledgment, and Doris left.
Annie closed the door and leaned against it. She had no strength left. She felt as though she’d been cut into little pieces and fed to the ravens. With an automatic gesture she smoothed the hair from her face, ending with her palms at her eyes. She still hadn’t told John about the cancer. It was too late now. She wouldn’t want him to come back to her out of pity.
How had things reached such a low, she cried as she paced the house? She walked through room after room without purpose, turning her head from left to right as she counted the number of projects that still had to be done. There was so much junk and clutter everywhere. Not a damn room was finished. Suddenly she hated the house, hated that they’d spent two years patching and painting, planning and dreaming, spending so much of their free time and money on this project—and all for naught. It was just a place, not a home. This was not the dwelling of a family. No milestones were reached under this roof. This huge, architectural elephant was nothing but a mausoleum, as silent as the tomb.
She stood in the middle of the long, spreading living room with its distinctive low ceilings and small, green-and-red stained-glass windows. Suddenly the gloomy darkness and the eerie silence frightened her. The air felt thick and her heart began pounding erratically. She couldn’t get enough air in her lungs.
Panting, she heard Dr. Gibson’s words play again in her brain. Sometimes tests reveal what we don’t want to see.
Oh God, she was crying. She’d thought she’d forgotten how. John, where are you? She didn’t want to be alone in this tomb. She didn’t want to be sick. She didn’t want to die. It was too quiet in this house, she thought in a panic. Clutching at her breast she hurried to the stereo system and clicked on a CD. She leaned against the table, bent over, taking deep breaths while she waited for the system to begin playing.
When the velvety voice of Otis Redding f
illed the air she slumped to the floor and lay on her back. At last she could breathe normally again. She knew this voice. His music transported her away from her current fears back to a time when she was younger and happier. Pressing her hands against her abdomen, she clung to Otis’s words like a lifeline. Try a little tenderness.
Fifteen
Weeping comes in the evening but
Joy comes in the morning.
—King David, Psalm 29
The telephone’s ringing startled Eve from a deep sleep. Phone calls in the middle of the night were only bad business, she thought as her heart pounded. Her mind fumbled, sweeping away cobwebs to recall where her children were: Bronte was asleep in bed. Finney... Oh my God, Finney was in Michigan. Her baby...
“Hello?” she gasped, her mouth dry.
“Eve it’s me, Annie. Did I wake you up?”
Eve was so relieved she almost wept. “God, Annie, do you know what time it is?”
“No, I’m sorry. What time is it?”
“I dunno. But trust me, it’s late.” She cleared her throat and rubbed her eyes while her heart rate returned to normal. It sounded like Annie had been drinking. Her words were slurred. “What’s the matter? Is everything okay?”
“Nooo...” she wailed.
Eve sat up, wide awake. Annie never cried. “Are you all right?”
“I’m a mess. I’m a creep. A dirty rotten scoundrel.” She hiccuped.
Eve rubbed her eyes, gathering her wits. Annie was obviously drunk. “Where’s John?”
“I dunno. He’s not home yet.”
Eve stretched out to reach for the alarm clock. It was four in the morning. “Not home? Where can he be?”
“I don’t know. We were at a party. We had a fight. He left, sort of. I dunno.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.” Her voice was mournful, overflowing with grief.
“Open the front door, sweetheart. I’m on my way.”
Fifteen minutes later Eve was climbing the stone steps to Annie’s house. The front door was wide-open, only the screen door kept the insects at bay. Eve opened the door, stuck her head in and called Annie’s name. There was no answer. With her heart pounding, she raced through the house, pushing open doors and tripping over the heavy tools and cardboard boxes littering every room. “Annie!”
“I’m out here.” The voice came wafting in the window, seemingly from the backyard.
The grass was dry under her shoes and in the shifting moonlight, the yard appeared vacant. The only movement came from the shadows of branches and leaves across the broad expanse of green. It was creepy outside, alone, in the middle of the night. “Where are you?” Eve called, feeling her throat close up.
“In here.”
Eve followed the voice to a clump of overgrown lilac bushes in a corner of the yard. Bending at the waist, she spied through the tunnel of branches a figure in a white, cotton nightgown sitting cross-legged on the dirt, camouflaged behind the green leaves. Eve sighed, then got down on hands and knees and navigated her way around clumps of branches and saplings that scraped through the thin cotton of her own short nightgown. “You’re really getting weird on me, Blake,” she said as she drew near. “If there’s poison ivy in here, I’ll never speak to you again.”
“Hey,” Annie said as Eve settled beside her. She was leaning back, perusing Eve’s nightgown worn under a sweater. “If I’da known I was gonna have so many visitors in pajamas tonight I’da had a slumber party.”
“Why?” Eve replied, slapping soil from her palm. It was clear from Annie’s low slurring and her weaving that she was loaded. Annie could be a belligerent drunk so Eve immediately tried to placate her until she could figure out how to cajole her back into the house. “Who else was here?”
“Doris.”
“Doris? Here? In her pajamas?”
“Yep. She came to give me what-for. And you know what? She done good. Right between the eyes. I’m a shell of my former self.”
Eve narrowed her eyes. Annie always hid her hurt with humor. “Care to tell me about it?”
“It’s...” She paused and Eve could hear her frustration, a clamping down on words before spoken. “Never mind.” She reached out for the wine bottle.
Eve arrested her hand, gently holding it. “Hold off, Annie. I think you’ve had enough.”
“Who asked you?” Annie said gruffly, pushing away Eve’s hand. “I don’t want you, or John, or anyone telling me what I can or can’t drink. Got that?”
Eve swallowed down her anger, reminding herself that this was Annie’s drunkenness talking.
“If it’s about Doris’s party, don’t worry. You’re not spilling the beans. I already know about it. She called earlier tonight to apologize for not inviting me.”
“Huh? Well, whaddya know.” Annie shook her head in wide swings, then looked back at Eve with her brow furrowed. Her voice changed, became solicitous. “So how are you? Are you hurt?”
Eve sighed wearily. “Sure, I guess I was. At first. Not anymore. I’ve known Doris and R.J. for a long time and even though she gives the appearance of being in control and bossy, she kowtows to him all the time. He has no loyalties at all, except to money. Tom and I always knew that about him, which was why Tom couldn’t stand being in the same room with him. The friendship was always between Doris and me. And now, well, even that’s changing. We don’t have so much in common anymore.”
“Well, I hafta hand it to her for calling you up. That took a lotta courage. She must really care about you.”
Eve was silent.
“Anyway...” There was a long pause.
“What’s the matter, Annie?”
In a low, broken voice, Annie told Eve what had happened in the Bridgeses’ garden, the fight with John, and the odd confrontation with Doris.
“My poor Annie. I’m speechless,” Eve said with a gentle laugh that came from release, not humor. “You got it from all corners, kiddo. Annie, Annie, Annie, you get yourself in the weirdest predicaments.”
“I know. It’s a curse.”
“It’s just you, Annie. You take risks. Speak your mind.”
“You bet,” she said with punch, but her voice didn’t carry any conviction.
“You and Doris will work things out.”
“Yeah, maybe. But John... I never saw him so cold. Well, he can just go out and drive all night, see if I care.”
“You shouldn’t have tested him that way.”
“I’m glad I did. When he turned away, just walked off, I thought—” her face tightened into a grimace “—you wimp. I lost all respect for him.” Her voice hitched and she became weepy. “He didn’t do anything. He just left me there. Do you know how that made me feel?”
It was frightening for Eve to see Annie like this. Annie was her rock. To see her crumble shook the terra firma of Eve’s own world. She wanted to slap John silly—and R.J., too. But she was wary of where Annie’s thoughts were headed. John loved Annie, she knew it. And Annie, John. It wouldn’t help either him or Annie if she took sides right now.
“Maybe he didn’t see it as a pass,” she said, playing devil’s advocate. “After all, it was R.J., it was late, you were talking...”
“It was R.J.! That’s my point! Not only is R.J. his boss but he’s supposedly his friend too. The big pal. Shit, I can’t count the number of times we sat at dinner with him and R.J. dom...minated the table. The li’l king. John can run circles around R.J. But he never says a damn thing. He just sits there like the goody schoolboy and smiles.” She cursed under her breath then said in a sorry tone, “Maybe I shouldn’t have told Doris about R.J.”
Eve felt her heart skip. “Tell Doris what?”
Annie appeared haunted. “About R.J. You know, about the women.”
“Oh, Annie,�
�� Eve replied softly, covering her eyes and shaking her head. “Poor Doris.”
“But he is!” Annie said, raising her chin defensively.
“But you shouldn’t have told her.”
“Come on...let’s be real. I’d say she figured it out for herself tonight. Hiding in the bushes. What’s with the bushes? Shit, everyone else was playing in the bushes tonight, I figured why not me? I wanna play too. It’s kinda nice in here, whatchya think? Kinda like a secret fort.” Her face drooped in sorrow as she looked off toward the house. “So many secrets... I don’t wanna be in that house.”
Eve let out a long sigh, still thinking of Doris. “How could she not know?”
“You might ask how can she stay?”
Eve closed her mouth, understanding Doris’s position perfectly. She knew Annie’s strength was also her weakness. She was quick to make decisions and form opinions. While that might be good for business, it wasn’t always good for relationships.
“Nothing is black-and-white,” Eve replied. “There are a lot of good, solid marriages that work because two people try hard to make it work. Divorce isn’t always the answer.”
“Of course not. I know that. But it kills me to watch women like Doris get hurt. Those are the easy targets, Eve. The good girls. The sweet ones who trust. Dream that it’ll last forever, but live like it’ll end next week. That’s my new credo.”
“What kind of a cynical attitude is that? I worry for you, Annie. Lots of marriages work because each member tries to make the other person’s life better. It may sound old-fashioned and trite, but fidelity and monogamy exist. And for the right reasons, too. Love, romance, trust.”
“Like yours, I suppose?”
There was a bitterness, almost an accusation, in the statement that set Eve’s teeth on edge. Alcohol had a way of bringing out truths that sobriety kept muffled. Especially ugly truths.
“Yes,” she said, archly. “Like mine.”
“Don’t be so sure of yourself all the time, Eve. Sometimes you get a little preachy.”
The Book Club Page 28