Chapter One
January 7, 1998 Tonight, I will return to my Book Club.
It's been half a year since I've been to a meeting. The women will be kind, I know. Solicitous, perhaps even wary not to say anything that will bring to mind my tragedy. I hope I don't see pity in their eyes. It is not pity I need now but understanding. Tender words and outstretched hands that will help me break my long isolation and rekindle the kinship with my friends.
And we are friends. Doris and I began the club out of desperation fifteen years ago. We were both new mothers living on the same block with a need for companionship, intellectual stimulation - and baby-sitters. Back in 1983, the club was really a combination Book-LeLeche-Baby-sitting Club.
The Book Club grew as our children did, new members joining, old members moving away, but always the core remained: me, Doris, Midge and Gabriella. And now Annie. We've gone through meetings where many of us had a child locked to our breasts, meetings where someone nodded, half-awake, on the sofa after a night up with a sick child, and meetings where, for no explicable reason, we drank too much wine and barely discussed the books at all.
Today, most of our children are poised for leaving and once more we search for books to give this new phase of our lives meaning.
I know my long absence has been a drain on the group. They're worried about me. Annie phoned me twice already to see whether I was coming tonight.
I read the previous month's book, a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, but I had little to say on the topic of an intelligent, determined woman who triumphed in the face of personal adversity. I wonder if the group didn't choose the book especially for my benefit, perhaps to give me inspiration or as an effort to make my reentry positive. My life is not filled with triumphs. Whose is?
I grew up in a comfortable suburb outside of Chicago, and like most of the women in the Book Club, am a product of the Catholic school system of the 1950s. We can all laugh now when a book makes reference to the Baltimore catechism or flocks of nuns shrouded in starched wimples and jangling rosaries. We relish books that bring us back to that innocent time when we played without fear in the streets on summer nights till 10:00 p.m.
How many books chronicled our era's passage from Motown to the Beatles and finally to acid rock? Or the painful choices of the Vietnam War years? All of us knew boys who wore either military uniforms or peace signs, or perhaps one who fled across the border, never to be heard from again. Now some of us know husbands - no longer young but aging without grace - who break family ties and flee. We devour stories about them, wondering, shivering.
I miss my Book Club. I miss reading the books and discussing them. The books are the key to the group, to what makes our discussions work. They provide a forum that is safe, so that during our meetings we can share our ideas, and later, our problems. And later still, our secrets. Mostly, however, I miss my friends. They are the true magic of the group. I see my life as a story, one I share with my Book Club. And though there are some surprises, there is no resolution. I am like you. My story could be yours.
One day, quite suddenly, my story changed. The setting shifted. The characters were rocked. If this were a plot diagram, my plummet was off the paper. The only constant was the point of view: first person, me, looking outward and inward, and seeing nothing.
I didn't see it coming. I guess that's what writers like to call "the element of surprise," that jolt from nowhere that catapults the hero into a new direction. The old gun-in-the-drawer trick. Whether the story is a mystery, a romance, an adventure, a comedy or a drama - in real life it's a combination of all of the above - you just don't know what's coming next.
For me, the change came on June 21, 1997. On that day, the corpse fell through the roof.
All life is a story, and daily each of us collects stories.
- Rachel Jacobsohn, The Reading Group Handbook
* * *
June 21, 1997
Eve Porter stepped out from her house into the brilliance of an early morning sun. She immediately raised her palm to shield her eyes; the piercing light was too strong.
Inside, her house was quiet and dark. Bronte and Finney were asleep in their rooms, the dog was whining, and she hadn't yet had a cup of coffee. Tom was prowling the rooms with nervous energy, gathering his work and packing last-minute items into his suitcase.
Most mornings Eve liked to linger over her coffee, open the windows to the fresh morning breezes and relish her few moments of solitude before the family's demands pressed her into action. On this morning, Eve felt driven outdoors by her husband's prickly tension and a nagging guilt she resented. She needed some distance, just a bit of fresh air.
Eve remembered the days when she stayed one step behind Tom as he prepared to go on a business trip. Here are your tickets. I found your beeper. Can I order you a cab? Don't you want anything for breakfast? Let me refresh your coffee. She was his trusty sidekick, or as Tom often put it, he was the captain and she the navigator.
Lately, however, she felt the ship was going down. For no one reason she could articulate, she'd begun looking for lifeboats. It wasn't so much that she doubted the competence of Tom, it was just that the buttons of his jacket didn't shine quite as bright anymore. Or perhaps the voyage was just too long.
Eve shook these mutinous thoughts out of her mind and stepped out into the morning air. Today will be a good day, she said firmly, silencing her heart murmuring, He will not ruin my day. She made her way toward the rustling breezes and birdsong in her garden, turning away from the closed, dark house. The early-morning air smelled sweet and the sun shone softly on the cheery colors of her perennial bed. She bent to admire droplets of dew cupped in the furry leaf of a lady's mantle.
Today was the first day of summer, she realized, her spirits lifting like a kite. She loved milestones of any sort: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, checks on the calendar, notches on a growth chart. Today would be special, brand-new. She felt it deep inside. Summer was here with sunny days and balmy nights, the informality of barbecues and dips in the swimming pool. She was so relieved to have the grind of the school year finished. She missed playing with her children.
She really should wake them to say goodbye to their father, but they were so tired; she'd let them sleep a bit longer. Finney had a football game at noon and Bronte wanted a ride to the mall at two. With Tom gone for a few days, and the children out of school, she could relax a bit herself. Perhaps even squeeze in a little extra time in her garden this morning, she thought, noting that her tobacco plants needed deadheading.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Book Club by Mary Monroe Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
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