In a Book Club Far Away

by Tif Marcelo

  “Really?”

  “Yes, because—” Bravado rose within her. In all the talk of change, here was something she had control over. She might not have had control over her marriage, the rate and speed her son was growing, or this situation with Sophie, which was a whirlwind on its own. But this, with Henry, she could manage. “Because you’re letting me find my footing. So I can do this, on my own time.”

  His Adam’s apple bobbed. “This?”

  “Yes, this.” She placed both hands on his chest, letting them slowly slide up his shoulders. She felt his heat on her palms; she heard each breath he took. “This okay?” she whispered as she lifted to her tiptoes.

  “Just… perfect.” He met her in between, his lips finding hers. His hands came to rest solidly on her hips.

  But unlike the comforting hug of their first meeting, the casual kiss on the cheek afterward, their friendly lunch at Genevieve’s mini table, and their good-night kiss the other night, this was hot. It escalated to the tangling of limbs, of clothes being tugged out of place, of locking up the store. Together, they took the building steps two at a time to his third-floor apartment. There, in his bedroom, they tumbled and kissed, then gave in and made love in the same way they talked and messaged: with an equal give-and-take.

  The night was, indeed, perfect.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Sophie

  “Perfect. Just perfect.” Sophie licked her lips as she set the glass of Moscato on the side table. She kicked her legs up on the ottoman and sighed. She’d earned this moment of relaxation, and she intended to savor it.

  “You don’t have to rub it in.” Adelaide, reclined in the La-Z-Boy, peeked above her book.

  “You’ll have some soon enough. Alcohol and narcotics do not mix.” Sophie cracked open her copy of Waiting to Exhale. Now on page 201, she was well into the book and enjoying every page. And the wine, of course.

  “I haven’t had a narcotic since this morning. Only ibuprofen,” Adelaide whined.

  “Still. Not tonight.” Sophie lifted the book to her face, ready to immerse herself in the book’s world.

  To Sophie, books always carried secret messages tailored specifically to her. They were like horoscopes, giving her exactly what she needed at the moment. Right now, she pretended that she was with her three friends in Sun City trying to figure out what in fact had happened in her life, though she hadn’t quite decided if she was Bernadine, Savannah, Gloria, or Robin. These four women were drastically different, and all were dealing with troubled love lives, and reinventing part of themselves in the process. Sophie saw a little bit of herself in each of them.

  It had flown by, this real life of hers. Looking back at raising her children, at all she’d accomplished, Sophie had to admit that she hadn’t done a bad job. But while her friends throughout the years had taken girls’ trips to glamorous destinations to practice self-care, or cruises and adult vacations with their spouses, Sophie had not.

  It hadn’t been about the opportunity, or even about the ability. In raising her kids, her focus had been on being there for them, always. She’d wanted them to have a parent to come home to. She hadn’t wanted her children to have to miss her in addition to Jasper, nor did she want to miss a moment of their lives. Had she been a helicopter parent? Proudly so. She had no regrets.

  And now her girls were independent.

  Being here in Alexandria, away from her responsibilities, Sophie realized that she had missed out. She had been so focused on being good, on doing good. Soon, her babies would be off to college. Adventure was calling.

  A knock sounded from the front door. Sophie met Adelaide’s eyes. Regina was out but had a key, and it was eight o’clock, well past time for solicitors to come around.

  Sophie stood. “Are you expecting anyone?”

  Adelaide shook her head.

  The knock sounded again. Sophie looked down at her outfit to make sure she was decent. Then she opened the door. A delivery person stood on the threshold, dressed in a purple collared shirt and a purple hat branded with Flowers-R-Us.

  “Ms. Sophie Walden?”

  “Yes?”

  He held out a package. “Delivery.”

  Delivery? “For me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She frowned, taking the box hesitantly. “Okay.”

  He tipped his head forward. “Have a great day.”

  Sophie weighed the box in her hand, then read the label printed with a message.

  Sophie,

  Remember me. Remember us.

  Come home.

  Jasper

  Her heart softened, and then she rolled her eyes. If there was anyone who should have known she didn’t like flowers, it was Jasper. Sophie considered flowers a waste of money because they died no matter how often she changed the water. Besides, she had more important things to worry about than changing out the water of plants, like taking care of humans.

  But, typically, Jasper didn’t listen to her. When it came to logistical information—that, he was good at. On the days she’d worked, he knew how to manage the children’s schedules. Jasper was not helpless, nor did she ever need to thank him for babysitting his own kids. But it stopped there. Because anything above and beyond, he’d forget. He’d sent flowers anyway on every occasion, until she’d given up trying to correct him and instead learned to say thank you.

  After locking the door once more, she turned. Adelaide had sat up in the recliner. “From Jasper?”

  “Mmm,” she answered, not really willing to explain more.

  “Looks like flowers…” Adelaide added, as Sophie brought the box to the living room. “Is this bad? Usually flowers make people smile, and you’re not smiling. Are you two all right?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “No?” Adelaide gasped. “But you guys are… perfect.”

  “There’s no such thing as perfect, Ad. There’s only work, and then suddenly an absolute silence.”

  Sophie started to tear at the tape at the top of the box.

  “Silence? What does that mean? Did you guys just stop talking?”

  The top flaps popped open. “One day the girls got older, and Jasper and I had little to say to each other. And I realized. Twenty years, Adelaide. Twenty years that man and I worked to keep our family together. Did we have fun? He just retired, and he slid right into a government job. I’m in a new job, too. So what does that mean? Another twenty years there? It feels… so mundane.”

  “Are you saying that you…”

  There was packing material inside, which Sophie pulled out. Really, Jasper, what is the point of this?

  “Sophie Walden! It just dawned on me that you ran away from home! I’m so disappointed. I’m going to tell that man that I did not mean to harbor a criminal.”

  “I hold your pain meds, lady. Watch it.” Sophie looked up. “I just don’t understand him sometimes. I’ve been gone for a week. Surely he could survive it without having to send me a care package.”

  “It’s probably because he thinks you’re never coming home!” Adelaide put her hand on her forehead.

  Sophie stuck her hand in the box and felt a sting at the end of her middle finger. She retracted her hand. “Ow!”

  “Thorns!” Adelaide said. “Must be roses.”

  “Can’t be. They’re too short to be roses.” Sophie tore at the corners, peeling back the box, and finding the offending plant. A cactus. “Wow.”

  Adelaide threw her head back in laughter. “Oh my God, it hurts to laugh. Ouch!” She held the pillow against her stomach. “That is classic.”

  Sophie fumed and held up the ugly thing. It was round with tiny, spiky thorns. “Carmela called me a cactus the other day. She must have picked up the term from Jasper. What the hell is this supposed to mean?”

  The door opened, and Regina walked into the foyer. “Hey! I’m back.”

  Sophie tried to put the cactus out of eyesight. The last thing she needed was more teasing from Regina. But little could be done before she
walked into the living room.

  “What’s going on?” Regina unwound her scarf.

  “Sophie got a cactus. From Jasper,” Adelaide said.

  Regina turned to hang her jacket on the hallway tree. “Ha! Because you are prickly as hell.”

  Adelaide clutched her pillow against her tummy and cough-laughed again.

  “Thanks, you guys. Thanks a lot,” Sophie said.

  “I guess that means you have to actually speak to him now.” Regina looked at her pointedly.

  Sophie was left without a comeback. “We’ll see.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Sophie

  May 2012

  It was reunion day, the day Sophie and her girls had been painstakingly awaiting the last eight months. The vibe around her was electric. People milled with chaotic energy. Sophie felt anxiety in every part of her body. And, per usual, the buses’ arrival time had been delayed.

  While others simply looked off into space, in the hopes of catching sight of those buses sooner rather than later, Sophie pulled out The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for book club next week, hosted by Kerry. Her bag was never without a book, and these days, usually two, with at least one romance novel. But the priority was Henrietta Lacks.

  Except, Sophie hadn’t gotten past the prologue in the last six weeks since Kerry had announced this title. The prologue set a serious tone, and while Henrietta’s story was clearly important, Sophie wasn’t sure she had the emotional fortitude to read this story of injustice, not with their family reunion on the horizon. Not when another huge feat would have to be completed: Jasper’s reintegration home.

  She gripped the sides of the book with the same fervor she gripped her children whenever they crossed a busy street, in hopes that her nerves would remain still and steady for the next few minutes.

  “The buses are about ten minutes out,” the announcer on the loudspeaker said, snapping Sophie out of her thoughts.

  She called out to her girls, who had been playing with other kids, and they ran toward her. They were in matching red, white, and blue dresses. Sophie hadn’t told them that Jasper was coming home until that morning. From her experience, it was best to hold off for as long as possible. It was tough enough for adults to comprehend if a flight was suddenly canceled or delayed, but the children? These children were placed under enough pressure.

  Not to say she didn’t prepare. She’d filled up the fridge with Jasper’s drinks of choice—chocolate milk and Mountain Dew—and the cupboards with pork rinds and dark-chocolate-covered pretzels. She’d purchased the girls’ dresses and her own outfit this week, then gotten her hair and nails done. She had also shaved her legs, braving the forest that had grown all winter.

  All the while, she felt the pressure of transition. Soon, she would not have the bed to herself. She would have to consult with Jasper on parental decisions. All completely understandable, but still, it was a change.

  Once the girls were seated, Sophie turned and searched the crowd for Regina, for whom she’d saved a seat. Above the heads of seated families, her friend was nowhere to be found. Adelaide was with the battalion commander’s spouse, doing her duty and making the rounds to greet families.

  “Regina’s not here yet,” Annie Rodriguez, an occasional book club member, whose husband was arriving early as well, said. “You don’t think she went into labor, do you?”

  “She better not have! She’s only eight months along. But I should text her.” Sophie took out her phone: no texts from Regina, but one from Kerry. “Hey, I just got a text from Kerry. One of her kids has hand, foot, and mouth. So no book club at her place. She asked me to pass on the message.”

  Annie made a face. “Oh man, we had that a couple of years ago, and I am not envious. But maybe it’s a good thing. I haven’t even cracked the book open. You?”

  “Honestly?” Sophie said. “No. I can barely keep my mind straight.”

  To the side, the unit military band had begun their set with an uplifting patriotic instrumental, signaling the arrival of the buses. Smiles appeared in the crowd, the anticipation rising. Sophie’s heart thumped in time with the music, and she tapped her heel-clad food onto the ground. Her girls began to dance next to her.

  The rush of emotions was like the rising of the tide, looming above surfers, enormous. That tide represented the length of separation, the struggles of the last eight months, the triumph of survival.

  When Sophie saw the flash of the white buses, knowing that in one of them was Jasper, the wave crashed down. Her emotions jumbled in the foam, with no way of knowing up from down in all that rushing water. She wanted to cry, to laugh, to clap, all the while finally experiencing the belated worry that she could have lost Jasper during the last eight months, when most days she’d been able to ignore this fact altogether.

  Forgetting her intention to text Regina, Sophie reveled in the anticipation of seeing her partner: How he would look, surely different from on the screen. How he would feel in her arms. A smile bloomed on her face, so big, so bright she imagined he could see her smile, too.

  The white buses parked quite a ways from them, just as they had at deployment. Except this time, when the doors opened, bodies in camouflage tumbled out. Family members began yelling names; children were crying. Sophie began to tear up. It wasn’t just for her soldier, but also for the others, some mothers and fathers, all sons and daughters, friends and neighbors. These soldiers stumbled out, with wide smiles and bright eyes, radiating joy. Their faces said that they were home. Finally.

  And yet, formality must be observed. The formation’s march to the front of the stands. The stillness of their proud bodies. And while they stood there, at parade rest, Sophie did what everyone was doing; she searched the sea of faces for her loved one.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Olivia asked.

  “I’m looking for him, baby,” Sophie answered, then hooked an arm around each one of her daughters’ shoulders, shocked at how tall they’d gotten. They bowed their heads at the chaplain’s prayer and then waited patiently through the general’s brief speech.

  “I see Mr. Logan,” Carmela said, pointing up ahead.

  “Oh, you do?” Sophie’s curiosity was again piqued after the reminder that Regina was not there. Or maybe just not next to her. The crowd behind them had grown, and Regina could have been in the back somewhere.

  Then her eyes darted to the left of the formation as if directed by her sixth sense, and there he was. Fourth row from the front, second from the right.

  Her Jasper.

  She squeezed her daughter’s shoulders. “I see him, girls. I see him.”

  And finally, at the commander’s command of “Fall out,” the people rushed out of the stands. Holding her girls’ hands, Sophie ran toward the love of her life.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Regina

  Regina had been there all along and watched the people in the stands spill onto the field. From her vantage point, she had seen the empty space next to Sophie, too. Her friend was probably worried; her nurse’s mind had likely gone all the way to premature labor. But Regina had needed space; she wanted privacy. She wanted to see her husband’s face from far away, to assess it without seeing the judgment of others or being influenced by the rising excitement of the crowd.

  And she’d found him, singular and still among the rushing parents and children, spouses, and significant others. He looked like she felt, a little lost and alone. This should’ve been a happy reunion. The commander had cited her pregnancy as the reason why Logan was coming home early, and Logan had vehemently dispelled the rumors that would surely spread now that the first of the unit was home. But she couldn’t shake this unsettling feeling brewing in her belly, like yeast fermenting.

  Then, he spotted her in the stands. His eyes locked in on hers. His gaze was unreadable, but for the sake of the moment, she plastered a smile on her face. She was relieved that he was home, that he’d made it home, that he was safe no matter the circumstances of his return. Even
if people believed ill of him, of them as a couple, those people would not see them struggling.

  She finally walked up to him, careful in her wedge espadrilles. The field was a mess of rocks and uneven ground. She squinted, facing the sun, and when she got close enough, saw tears in his eyes. He looked down at her belly; he touched it with a palm.

  “Hi, Logan.”

  “Oh my God, hi.” His voice choked out a reply that rattled Regina’s soul. He kissed her on the lips, and on the cheek, then on the neck, as if breathing her in, and he got down on one knee, a hand on her eight-months-pregnant belly. “I made it, baby.”

  Regina’s tears came hard and fast, and they were from relief. She’d survived the pregnancy without him; she’d made it through their first deployment as a couple. She’d endured those first torturous and lonely weeks, and come out almost nine months later, thriving.

  A camera started to circle them—local press. The internet was hungry for reunion stories. She knew because she hadn’t been able to get enough of watching the taped encounters on Facebook while wishing for her own. But she didn’t want anyone to see her face, to detect the mixed emotions in her heart.

  She pressed her hand against the top of his shoulder, a sign for him, and he stood. “I need to grab my duffel. They’ve unloaded them against the side of the building,” he said.

  “Let’s go,” she said, and allowed him to take her hand. It was rough, just as she remembered, a sign of his hard work. He hated lotion, didn’t think that skin care was something infantrymen practiced, but at times she’d rub lotion into his hands anyway. Touch kept them together. They could calm each other with it. Their worst fights were neutralized by a kiss.

  This time, holding hands would have to do, because they said nothing as they traversed the busy field to the quiet side of the building, where a group of soldiers watched over neatly arranged gear. Logan spotted his name painted on one green duffel among the others and slung it over his shoulder.