Rejected Writers Take the Stage (Southlea Bay Book 2)

by Suzanne Kelman

  “Well, my,” said Lavinia, placing a perfectly manicured pink fingernail to the center of her lips, “how entertaining. Dinner and a show.”

  “That’s it,” said Doris, slamming down her hand and bouncing condiments all over the table. Everyone, still lost in their own contemplations, jumped in the air too. “We will put on a show. Yes, our very own huge musical extravaganza. It will be like Broadway, but by the sea, or Fame with mature women. Maybe Macbeth, with a full female cast.”

  Doris prattled on, and in all her excitement, she neglected to notice that everyone else at the table was locked into shock like a modern art piece that could have been called Statues Eating. It was obvious by the horror on all our frozen faces that no one seemed excited about this proposition.

  No one except Gracie, who just giggled, saying, “Can I be the fairy godmother?”

  Gladys, pencil still in hand, surveyed the stone-faced tableau. All around the table, forks stopped on the way to mouths and glasses poised on frozen lips. She nodded slowly and knowingly.

  She dispensed her pad to her breast cubbyhole and pronounced, “Well done, Your Majesty. Looks like your magic worked again. I will start tearing up my Christmas list right away, and I’ll be back when Aslan returns. In the meantime, it looks as if your news requires strong coffee.”

  It took a second, but Flora found her voice first.

  “Doris, I think I misunderstood. Did you just say we were going to put on a . . . show? As in, on the stage, with people watching?”

  Doris was on a roll now, her mind whirring in a million different directions, a crazed centipede on roller skates.

  “Exactly,” she said, her enthusiasm unmistakable. She rummaged in her gigantic purse, where she found a pen and a notepad, and started to scribble notes.

  “Do you know anything about producing a show?” I asked meekly.

  “No,” said Doris, “but I was a Tupperware rep for a while, and I reckon it’s about the same. Besides, those longhaired thespians that meet at the library put them on all the time, so how hard can it be? We should assign roles. I will start working on securing the theater, and Flora, you can be our female lead . . .”

  Flora went ashen. “What?” she said in the tiniest voice possible.

  Doris was writing. “I think we should do some sort of musical and, Flora, you will sing.”

  “Sing?” Flora squeaked. A thin, white, fluttering hand found its way to her throat. “I don’t sing!” she said, as if she had just been asked to eat worms.

  But Doris was getting so excited that she was starting to foam at the mouth. I practiced my response in my head because I knew it was only a matter of time before I was next on the list.

  Say no. I practiced. Just say no.

  “Ruby, can you help with the costumes?” Doris asked. Ruby nodded enthusiastically. Doris continued, “I will produce and have Ethel help me. Momma, the twins and you could all be fantastic in the right stage role, and that just leaves Janet.”

  She eyed me like yesterday’s kippers.

  Just say no, I thought again. No.

  An idea appeared to formulate in Doris’s mind, and she pointed her pencil straight at me.

  No. I said it to myself one more time.

  “Janet,” said Doris, obvious excitement in her tone, “would you have any objection to being our director?”

  “No,” I said with more vigor than I had expected. I was proud of myself. That was forceful, strong, and not confusing to interpret.

  Doris slapped her pen down and shouted, “Good, that’s all settled.”

  I was confused. Wait, what had just happened?

  “I said no,” I reiterated, even more forcefully, and Doris looked at me, a little annoyed.

  “Yes, I know,” she said with irritation in her voice, “and I have written you down.”

  I backtracked to what had just happened. Suddenly, I heard Doris’s actual words play themselves back in my head.

  But before I could say another word to clear up the mistake, Doris was talking. Uncharacteristically, she grabbed my hand and held it tightly, causing me to shut my mouth, which was still hanging open from the last exchange.

  “Janet,” said Doris, “I just want to really thank you for your support. You weren’t one of our original rejected ladies, but without you, we would never have managed to secure all those rejection letters, keeping our rejection club going strong. We are so grateful that, even though you don’t know us that well, you are still willing to help us.”

  As Doris finished her speech, Annie reached forward, her cold, pudgy hand taking hold of my other hand, and she squeezed it tightly, tears brimming in her eyes. “You are one of a kind, Janet,” she finally managed to force out in a dry rasp as emotion overtook her one more time.

  “You really don’t mind being our director?” asked Flora, appearing to pick up some of my resistance.

  “No,” I said in a tiny, tight voice. What else could I say?

  For the rest of lunch, Doris was positively buoyant, planning what the show could look like and what sort of show it should be. She seemed blindly unaware that hardly anyone else was talking at the table. Only Annie seemed excited.

  “I am going to look into scripts, and we can get together this week for a special Rejected Writers’ Book Club meeting. We need to decide on a show.”

  At the end of the meal, Gladys arrived with the bill and, dangling on the end of her protruding finger, Doris’s beaver coat. Ruby, who sat at the end, didn’t see Gladys approaching, and she turned as Gladys started to speak.

  “Here’s your . . .”

  That was as far as our waitress got because, on seeing the fur coat dangling in front of her, Ruby leapt to her feet and screamed.

  “Oh my God, that’s real fur!” she screeched, her voice piercing the restaurant clatter and bringing it to a deadly stop all around her. Then, without thinking, she picked up a pot of half-eaten salsa and emptied it straight down the front of the coat.

  Everyone at the table froze for a second, and then, as if rehearsed, eight heads swiveled toward Doris, who sat white-faced and openmouthed.

  Ruby started to rant as she picked up the ketchup and blasted the coat again. “How can anyone in this day and age condone such a thing? I am appalled!”

  Totally amused, Gladys reached forward and handed Ruby the mustard before Doris came to her senses and boomed, “Stop!”

  Ruby turned, and as she looked at the faces around the table, the penny dropped.

  “This belongs to one of you?”

  No one dared say anything.

  Gladys couldn’t resist and chirped in, “Her Majesty, herself.” She bobbed her head in Doris’s direction, whose face had gone from white to red.

  Plowing out of the booth and spraying bodies like matchsticks, Doris pushed her way to her feet and snatched the dripping coat from Gladys. She turned on her heels and stomped off toward the bathroom, spitting out over her shoulder, “This was my father’s fur!”

  Gladys couldn’t resist getting in the last word as she shouted after Doris, “I always thought you were a son of a beaver. Now that confirms it.”

  Everyone jumped to their feet, no one wanting to be around when Doris returned.

  Chapter Five

  CAMELOT CROONERS & DONKEY TREKKING

  As we left the restaurant, the storm was starting to pass and only a gentle drizzle remained on the tail end of it. The streets were wet, and the air smelled fresh and clean. We all stood outside with our own thoughts for a minute, looking out onto Main Street. The village itself sat like a bowl in the water that surrounded it on three sides and could be viewed to great advantage from the Crabapple doorway. Today, the tides of torrid waves were an angry steel gray as they reflected the aftermath of the passing storm.

  Annie couldn’t help but give each one of us a large, teary hug.

  I walked back to the library and was still in shock. What had just happened? Had I imagined it or had I just agreed to direct a stage show? The wo
rds got stuck in my brain, like soap in a colander. I didn’t know the first thing about directing a show. Sure, I had done a little acting in high school, but nothing that I could even vaguely remember.

  Karen met me at the door.

  “Well?” she said. “Don’t tell me, you’re going trekking on a donkey across the Andes. Should I go and buy you a saddle?”

  “It’s worse,” I said, shaking my head as I made my way to the back office.

  Karen followed close behind, a smirk on her face.

  “Much worse than that,” I said as I sulked inside and took off my coat. “I’m going to be directing a musical.”

  Karen looked taken aback. “Have you done that before, then?”

  I raised my eyebrows, confirming Karen’s suspicions.

  She couldn’t help herself. She started laughing uncontrollably.

  “Thank you for your sympathy,” I said flatly as I straightened my clothes and moved past her into the library, hoping that the rest of my day would be calm.

  But it had begun.

  One hour later, Ethel and Doris marched into the library. I was under a fixture, retrieving books that had fallen behind the shelves, when I felt a tug on my leg.

  “Great news,” thundered Doris so loudly Homeland Security was probably alerted. “I think I can secure us a building. I want to go and see about it tomorrow afternoon.”

  I sat back on my heels, and from that position, Doris’s towering bulk was even more formidable.

  “Oh,” I said, flustered, “I’ve been wondering if I’m the right person to do your show justice. I think you should be talking to someone with experience and—”

  That was as far as I got, as Doris pulled me to my feet and took hold of me firmly by the shoulders.

  “Nonsense! You are the perfect person. You’re just lacking confidence, that’s all. You can come over to my house, and we can watch musicals together, if you like,” she burbled on excitedly. “I have tons of them. I have My Fair Lady and West Side Story and Camelot. I know all the words to the songs of Camelot.”

  “Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary,” I said, frightening visions looming in my head of afternoons sandwiched between Ethel and Doris, a stack of videos and the far-from-dulcet tones of Doris crooning “How to Handle a Woman.”

  “Or . . . ,” said Doris, who was getting her second wind, “we could, the three of us, go to Seattle together for a few days. We could bunk up together and take in all the shows.”

  “Oh no, I don’t think so,” I said, realizing every new objection was serving to draw me closer to a Doris encounter of the scary kind.

  Doris’s eyes narrowed as she loomed in closer to my face. “Maybe some books, then. You work in the right place.”

  “Perfect,” I said quickly, hoping it would mean that Doris would let go of the top of my arms. I was beginning to feel like a walnut in a nutcracker.

  “Okay,” said Doris, and I tried to wriggle free.

  Doris finally obliged, and I breathed deeply as I watched her move toward the door.

  Chapter Six

  DEAD PLASTIC PLANTS & BEETHOVEN WITH CHICKEN

  Flora pushed her narrow cottage door open, and Mr. Darcy, her cat, immediately warmed her legs as he weaved between them, purring his hello.

  She picked him up and tucked him under her arm. She gently stroked his ears, cooing to him as she walked into her kitchen and placed her bag down on the counter.

  She remembered the letter. After dinner, she decided; it would be a welcome hug at the end of a very difficult day.

  As she moved around the house, plumping cushions and straightening lace doilies, she docked her iPod and put on some music. Beethoven sounded about right, she mused as she scanned to the right track, allowing exquisite piano music to fill the cottage. She noted the chill in the room and went to her tiny white enamel woodstove, which she always kept laid with a stack of wood, and struck a match. It erupted into warm, glowing firelight.

  Humming along with “Moonlight Sonata,” she went back into the kitchen and pulled out the bottle of white wine and the baked chicken dinner she had just bought. The food smelled intoxicating and was still warm from when it had been handed to her at the deli counter. With its combination of vegetables and stuffing, it was the perfect comfort food for the end of such a day.

  She took her wine and her dinner, sat on her cozy white sofa, and sighed. The day had continued to spiral downward after lunch.

  If the thought of having to sing wasn’t bad enough, she had also tried to reconstruct the window display and had retrieved the rest of the Easter decorations from the shop’s tiny attic at her boss’s bidding.

  Late in the afternoon, Gladys had returned after her shift at the Crab. Flora had just finished laying out the rest of the Easter decorations all over the shop when Gladys arrived, demanding that Flora help her hunt through a stack of catalogs and books as Gladys scrutinized every conceivable potted plastic plant.

  “The problem is,” she pointed out to Flora, tapping a knobby finger on the stack of catalogs, “that these just don’t look alive.”

  “That’s because they’re plastic,” Flora answered shortly, her patience wearing thin.

  Gladys sucked on her teeth and adjusted her bosom before answering.

  “I know that, young lady, but I want them to at least look halfway lively. I mean, everything in these books is just a little too perky and perfect. They need to have them lopping over on one side, or they should add a couple of shriveled-up brown leaves for effect.”

  Finally, after an hour, Gladys had ordered a string of ivy similar to the one she’d previously stolen from the window, and then she marched off to the library to do more research.

  As her blue afghan had billowed in the door frame, she announced that there had to be something that was real and hardy, and she would go and read books about it and let Flora know.

  Flora sighed, following Gladys to the door and shutting it behind her, watching the determined waitress march up the center of Main Street. Poor Janet would have her now, Flora thought.

  It had been ten minutes till closing then, and Flora couldn’t leave the shop in such disarray. She had cleared away all the decorations before she left, finally getting out by 6:20 p.m.

  She poured the wine and took a large swig. She felt the warm tingling as it permeated her body and told herself, just as her grandma had, tomorrow was another day. She removed the food from its packaging and placed it on one of her blue china dinner plates. She would eat her dinner by the fire, and Dan’s letter would be her dessert.

  Chapter Seven

  PAUL SIMON PRODUCTIONS & ALIEN WIVES

  It had been a long day at the library by the time I arrived home, and I was pooped. It had only dragged after my lunch date with Doris.

  As I opened the door, I heard Martin filling the kettle with water.

  “Hey,” I said despondently as I came in and took off my coat.

  “I’ve put the kettle on,” he shouted back over his shoulder. I heard the burner burst into flame.

  “Great,” I sighed.

  I met him in our little blue Laura-Ashley-decorated kitchen. I really loved this time of year, always had. Coming home when it was cold, frosty, or rainy into the warm little belly of my cottage usually warmed my heart.

  “I had lunch with Doris Newberry and the posse,” I confessed as I threw my bag down.

  Martin raised his eyebrows. He was placing tea bags in a pot, his expression giving me the impression he had an idea where this conversation was going. “So, you will need this tea,” he jested.

  I gave him a look. “With brandy in it,” I quipped back.

  “Okay, what did she talk you into this time?” he inquired.

  I shook my head and said, “This one you are not going to believe.”

  Martin was going to do his best to guess. “Drug smuggling in the Caribbean? Flamenco dancing on a cruise ship? Maybe a trip into space or . . . ?”

  “Directing a musical show.
”

  “Or directing a musical show. Which, unless you are an alien and possessing my wife’s body, you know absolutely nothing about.”

  The kettle whistled, and he poured the water into the pot while I took off my shoes and threw myself facedown on the sofa.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “Which one?” he asked as he poured boiling water.

  “Sorry?” I turned over.

  “Are you an alien or my wife?”

  I looked up, deadpan. I was not having quite as much fun with this as he was.

  “It’s not funny, Martin. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get myself out of it.”

  “Well, marriage to you has always been entertaining,” he said.

  The phone started ringing. I absently picked it up. It was my very pregnant daughter, Stacy.

  “The fridge is broken, again.”

  I sat down. I loved our daughter, but in her twenty-four years, she still hadn’t ever really mastered social graces. That didn’t stop me trying.

  “Good evening to you too.”

  My lesson was lost on her. “And I called someone, but they can’t send anyone till tomorrow, and I have food in the top part of the freezer that’s going to go bad so I have to cook all the chicken breasts in there, and chicken is totally turning my stomach right now.”

  Martin brought my tea over and mouthed the word, “Stacy?”

  I nodded and curled my legs up under me on the sofa. I knew exactly how to handle this conversation.

  “How are the babies today?” I asked the minute Stacy took a short breath.

  All the air on the other end changed.

  “Oh, they’re doing great. I’m really starting to feel them move around now. It’s so much fun.”

  I sipped my tea. Since we had been involved in a car accident in California a few months before and Stacy had nearly lost the babies, I had felt so much closer to my daughter. She had a challenging character—“the ice maiden,” as Martin had nicknamed her when she wasn’t around. But now we were closer.