In a Book Club Far Away

by Tif Marcelo

  She just hadn’t anticipated that her planned night would coincide with what felt like hot flashes.

  She patted her face with a damp paper towel and breathed in long sips of air. This was the first event in her home. At least twenty people had arrived, and she didn’t know if she had enough food. She, for sure, didn’t have enough chairs, and she could hear her mother, a triple threat in etiquette—Southern, career officer’s wife, and former event planner—in her head. Never run out of food, Adelaide, y’hear? That’s the worst sin of hostessing.

  In her normal state, she’d have managed these issues with a passable imitation of her mother’s grace, but currently? She didn’t know if her own underwear was on inside out.

  A knock on the door made her jump.

  “Mrs. Wilson-Chang?” a woman said on the other side.

  Adelaide’s heart thumped an unsteady beat at the sound of the woman’s formality. The whole Mrs. thing hadn’t stuck yet, despite six years in the role. Mrs. referred to her mother, right? It was one thing when they were in the South, where the title was customary, but in this case, her title was due to the fact that her husband was a captain; Fort Fairfax was an operational unit, and folks tended to stand at attention until they were told to be at ease.

  “Hello?” the voice said again, undeterred.

  If Adelaide stayed still, if she didn’t say a word, would the person go away?

  “It’s Sophie… and…” the woman started.

  “Regina,” a soprano voice added.

  “It’s Sophie and Regina. Are you okay?”

  Golly. There were now two women outside her bathroom door, and Adelaide was causing a scene, and she didn’t remember who they were. She was usually great with names, but after the first dozen introductions earlier that evening, Adelaide had lost track. She was living in a mush of timelines from their recent arrival and upcoming deployment, which had been hit with occasional bouts of confusion, all heaped up together into this one moment.

  “Adelaide?”

  The sound of her first name, now whispered softly, snapped her out of her runaway thoughts. “Um, yes, I’ll be right there.” She flattened down her flyaway red hair and then pressed her lips together to salvage whatever was left of her red lipstick. She noticed a smudge of mascara where a cat eye was supposed to be. Dang it.

  She opened the door.

  Two women looked at her with matching sets of concerned but friendly expressions. Then, slowly, after the rush of blood in her ears subsided, Adelaide pieced together who these two were from their introductions as well as from her “pre-event briefing” from Matt. Know who your guests are before they arrive, her mother had always said, and earlier that afternoon, Adelaide and Matt had discussed those attendees who belonged to the 701st.

  The woman on the left, Sophie Walden, was partner of ten years to Jasper Clemens, a sergeant first class in Matt’s unit, which made him one of the more experienced and seasoned noncommissioned officers around. She was Black, tall, and refined, classic in casual clothing, and a nurse. They’d arrived in the area about the same time, though Sophie didn’t give any indication that she was at all stressed about it. Her demeanor was calm, professional, approachable.

  Next to her was Regina Castro, Filipino, petite but with a personality twice her size from what Adelaide remembered from their brief introduction at the door. She was an active-duty quartermaster officer, married to Logan Hardin, who worked directly for Matt. Both were lieutenants. Today, out of uniform, she was in a red maxi dress and a leather jacket, hair loosely braided down the side. Adelaide recalled her making a beeline for a small group of attendees and chatting them up immediately.

  “Are you okay?” Sophie asked.

  “Yeah, of course. I was just…” Getting my life together. “Checking my makeup, is all.”

  “Okay,” Sophie answered, though her smile didn’t reach her eyes. She saw right through Adelaide. “Thank you, by the way, for inviting all of us, and for picking such a great first book to read this month. I loved The Hunger Games. But I’m sure we’ll chat more about it later.”

  Regina grinned. “I hope you don’t mind, but we passed out drinks. The book clubbers were getting restless.”

  Adelaide’s face heated. God, she was already failing. “Thanks.”

  Regina batted away her words. “No problem. It was easy, and people were more than willing to wait with a glass of wine. Great choices, by the way. Oh, I made an apple tart to share. It’s made of puff pastry…”

  Regina kept talking, about wine and hors d’oeuvres, and Adelaide shifted on her feet. It was all too much—the talking and the noise—and she broke out into a sweat. “I… I’m just going to sit,” Adelaide said, and perched on the closed toilet seat. She cradled her head in her hands to block out the light and the embarrassment and the panic running through her. “I’m sorry. This is unlike me.”

  From above her, she heard Sophie whisper, the padding of footsteps, and the door closing. Then, the sound of rustling, and two thumps. She looked up to Sophie, who was on her knees, her face at eye level. “So, really, are you okay?”

  Adelaide contemplated telling Sophie that she might be pregnant. That for the second time this year, her period hadn’t come when it was supposed to. But Adelaide had learned her lesson in the past. No one wanted to hear a sob story about miscarriage. Most people only wanted to see the good, the pretty. So, despite her desire to tell the world, her news would have to wait until she was in her second trimester. “I just need a second. I don’t think I ate enough preparing for this.”

  “I can call Captain Chang, or send everyone away? Because I can; I can say you’re ill.”

  Those two suggestions alone stirred up nausea. She hadn’t even told her husband that she was late. “Oh my, no… no. Matt’s out at a friend’s house with my dog, Scout, and I just… I don’t know… need to take a breath. Maybe a glass of water.”

  Sophie inspected her face. “I can definitely get you that. Anything else?”

  “I… I don’t think so.”

  “Okay, then, I’ll grab you some water, and I’m sure Regina can keep everyone entertained. She knows half the people in there. In fact, she’s already admitted to most everyone that she didn’t finish the book.” She cackled a laugh. “These young people, I swear.”

  With that, Adelaide smiled. It was a reminder that, by God, she could do this. This wasn’t her first party, or her first duty station. She and Matt were rounding their sixth year; she had three duty stations and two deployments under her belt. Before that, almost twenty years following Daddy through ten different homes.

  “I’ll be back,” Sophie said, standing. But as she turned to open the door, Adelaide called out her name.

  “Yes?”

  “Could we keep this…” Adelaide wasn’t sure what to say that didn’t sound fake or pretentious.

  “On the DL? Sure.”

  She swallowed her relief. “Thank you, Sophie.”

  “Hey.” She touched the toe of her flat shoe to Adelaide’s boot. “What good are we if we can’t handle a little SOS? We’ve each got to be someone’s Katniss every once in a while.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Sophie

  If Sophie heard Regina say “I volunteer as tribute” one more time, she was going to cry from laughter.

  All the book clubbers were seated in different spots, plopped on couches, and on the floor around the coffee table. Of the twenty-one members who arrived, two were men. An hour in, most were tipsy, which meant that none of the book had really been discussed yet.

  It was unlike any other book club she’d attended, where it had been serious, literary, and high-brow. Sophie hadn’t been this relaxed since she and her family left their last duty station and home in Louisiana. It was exactly what she needed.

  Everyone had gone around at the beginning of the night and introduced themselves and said what their spouses did for the Army. From there, it had been easy to deduce unit and possibly rank, and then age. All e
xcept Sophie were spouses to active-duty soldiers at Fort Fairfax.

  Any person in this business with any kind of social awareness was careful to note where everyone else fell in the unit or on post, since at times the position of the service member transposed itself to the spouse. Sometimes, though not always, when the soldier rose in leadership, their spouse took on a greater role within the family-program structure. That spouse might be involved with unit social functions, with the dissemination of information. The bottom line, in this environment, was that no one wanted to insult someone with senior rank’s spouse, unless, of course, they deserved it.

  This meant Sophie always stayed on the right side of etiquette. She was still sipping the same glass of wine she had poured earlier that night. Despite letting her guard down a little, she wouldn’t be caught doing something foolish when she didn’t know these people at all. This wasn’t Fight Club. Loose lips sank ships and reputations, even if this was a neighborly Army social function and not the Navy. Never, ever Navy.

  “Okay, everyone,” Adelaide said, tapping her drink glass with her fork. She was laughing now, seemingly one hundred times more relaxed than she’d been in her bathroom just an hour ago. She had repinned the sides of her hair into a loose victory roll. She was a really pretty woman and had great style. Earlier, Sophie couldn’t stop looking at the trinkets behind the glass cases in her living room, the wall of hand-drawn sketches of the homes the Wilson-Changs had previously lived in. The pillows strewn across the sofa, the quilt folded and hung over an antique ladder—the decor was effortless.

  It was like Adelaide was meant to be this Army wife, and there was no doubt that although she was new to Fort Fairfax, she had already been brought into the fold of the spouse social life. On the other hand, Sophie had to fight for her position as part of this community. Being a girlfriend didn’t garner the same respect. Other spouses assumed the term girlfriend meant temporary, when in fact, she and Jasper had been together longer than many of their friends’ marriages.

  But so far, so good. She didn’t feel judgment from this group, and she loosened up as the minutes passed.

  “We should really talk about the book.” Adelaide’s voice took Sophie from her thoughts. “It’s obvious that everyone seemed to connect with it. Which is great because I have a list of questions.”

  “Oh, I like this,” Sophie said, settling into her seat. Themes, characters, plot—these were the things she wanted to discuss. Sophie read avidly and even reviewed books on a website called Goodreads, where anyone could spill their thoughts about a book. Since e-readers had come onto the scene, as flimsy as they sometimes felt in her hand, her library had grown rapidly.

  To think she almost hadn’t come.

  Fort Fairfax was Sophie and Jasper’s fifth duty station, a surprise—meaning, it wasn’t on their request list. His aging parents lived in Orlando; they’d both wanted to be within a day’s drive of them. In their almost ten-year relationship, they’d both agreed that they would always aim for southern locations, and so far had lived in South Carolina (Charleston was charming), Georgia (Savannah was delightful), Kentucky (those hats!), Alabama (not her fave), and most recently, close enough to New Orleans to properly celebrate Mardi Gras with her favorite guy.

  Upstate New York wasn’t on their radar, and yet, there she was. And though almost two months had passed, she still hadn’t accepted that this was going to be home for the next two years. Her heart was still taped up in one of the boxes stacked floor to ceiling in their apartment.

  She was tired of trying to find a spot for her old records, and what was she going to do with the curtains that once again didn’t fit the dimensions of her current windows? And moving into these military towns just outside of post, versus on post, where new and bigger housing was being built, was more salt to the wound that she wasn’t considered a legal spouse and, therefore, was not allowed to live on post.

  Adelaide’s face lit up. “Great! So this is my question: Would you have volunteered to save your sister, knowing you would have to kill to survive?”

  Sophie knew her answer, but she didn’t jump in right away. She scanned the room, which seemed to have sobered as each person looked at one another for an answer.

  Across from her, Regina tipped her wineglass away from her lips and set it down on the coffee table. “Oh my God, totally.”

  Sophie hummed an agreement.

  Everyone eyes swung her direction. Whoops. Naturally, she felt compelled to answer. “I’m with Regina. I would have volunteered and thought about it later. Because we’re talking about Prim here, my own flesh and blood.”

  Regina pointed at her in high praise. “Exactly.”

  “Oh, I don’t know what I would do,” Liana Folger said. She was originally from South Dakota, and she’d introduced her favorite hobby as knitting. She was, in fact, wearing a tricolor sweater she’d knit herself. “I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have done it. I just don’t know if I would have volunteered like that. It takes time for me to make decisions. To think things through, I guess. There’re pros and cons to everything.”

  “That’s just not me.” Sophie felt the need to distinguish herself as loyal and steadfast. “I make a decision and a commitment for better or for worse.”

  “So you would commit to kill others to keep your family alive?” One of the men had raised his hand—Frank Montreal. He was married to a woman in the MP, or Military Police, unit. Cheeks pink from his drink, he wore rounded spectacles and was sitting cross-legged on the ground. “I mean, isn’t that what the military does, in some cases?”

  After a moment of silence, the room exploded in conversation. Wine be damned, the banter flew. The conversation meandered from the country’s role in Syria, to its responsibility with refugees, and then to the portrayal of killing as part of life in The Hunger Games. After a bit, Sophie took a sip of her wine and found the glass empty and her mouth gloriously tired from talking and laughing.

  By God, she might have found her people.

  “So what does everyone think about doing this regularly?” Adelaide asked once the conversation lulled, setting the book down on the coffee table.

  This time, Sophie didn’t hesitate. “I’d love it. It will help pass the time, too, with the deployment.” She was greeted with a collective nod from the group.

  “How shall we choose books?” Colleen Lasseter, a woman who lived in Adelaide’s building, asked.

  “Let’s do it the easy way,” Adelaide answered. “Whoever wants to host can pick the book. Is everyone okay not voting for a lineup? This will make it flexible for people, since I’m sure some of us will pop in and out throughout the year, especially during the holidays.”

  Regina tentatively raised her hand. “Uh… is there, like, a mandatory ‘you must read the book’ rule?”

  Sophie smiled and answered for her. “I don’t think there should be, right? I used to be in a book club where there was a minimum-page read and it kept folks from coming. We should try to stay inclusive.” She looked at Adelaide for confirmation. Already, Sophie felt a little protective over this young officer. This deployment had to be Regina’s first as a spouse.

  Adelaide gleamed. “I agree. Great!”

  As the party died down, Sophie stood and made her way to the kitchen, straight to the sink, where cold water called to her. Above the squeak when she turned the faucet handle, she heard, “I wasn’t sure what to expect from book club, but it wasn’t this.”

  She turned and saw Regina. She was pouring herself another glass of wine.

  “What did you expect?” Sophie asked her.

  “I dunno. Academic? Stuffy?”

  “Stuffy?”

  “Yes. I guess it’s what I first think of when someone says ‘book club.’ To be honest I was worried about how everyone was going to act. I didn’t want to lampoon myself since I’m not much of a reader. And working and playing in the same place where you live… it can get intimidating.”

  “I haven’t had that experien
ce.” Sophie noticed a drop of wine on the kitchen counter, so she grabbed a napkin and wiped it up. The act gave her a moment to focus her words before discussing something that had been bothering her. “I quit my job a month before I moved here—I’m an RN and worked nights, and me and my coworkers… we bonded through our meals, in our break room.” She smiled to herself, bringing back the memory of last Christmas, when the break room table was a buffet. “It improved our work because we became a team.”

  Regina’s gaze dropped. “Yeah, it’s not quite as friendly where I work. Not to say that I don’t have good people working with me, because I do. But I’m not sure the Army’s my forever career. I think I want to do something else. I guess I don’t feel that… umph.”

  Sophie was intrigued. She leaned on her elbows. “What do you want to do?”

  “If you’re asking about my dreams? Something with food. I haven’t really figured it out. But it doesn’t matter. It’s not what I want to do, really, but what I have to do and should do,” Regina said. “I’m sorry that you had to quit your job. It sounds like you loved it.”

  “I did.” Sophie shrugged. Because what else was she supposed to do? Complain? Every person in the book club had had to give up something to be there. So she changed the subject. “Anyway, you make a good book clubber.”

  “Thanks. I mean, I can definitely drink wine. And I promise that next time I will actually read the book all the way through.”

  “It thrills me that there will be a next time.” Adelaide walked up, shaking the glass in her hand for a refill. “Just sweet tea, thanks.”

  As Regina poured tea from a pitcher, the sugar wafting into Sophie’s nostrils, Adelaide continued.

  “I wanted to catch y’all before you both had to go. I want to thank you for—” She gestured toward the direction of the guest bath.