A Stiff Critique (10 page)

“And poetry to boot,” Mave reminded everyone.

- Seven -

I smiled weakly as eight pairs of eyes stared my way. Then I asked myself why I had ever agreed to come to this group. And why I had ever mentioned poetry to Carrie.

“Oh, I’m a poet too!” Donna exclaimed happily.

A soulmate. I should have guessed. She closed her eyes and then clasped her hands together, knocking one elbow on the rosewood table as she did.

“God save us,” drawled Nan. “She’s going to recite her work again.”

“Red on white,” Donna whispered. Then her voice grew stronger. “My mother!” she boomed. “My grandmother. Blood ties. Blood spilled.”

She paused for a breath and finished in a shout. “Blood shared!”

Donna opened her eyes again and looked across at me. I arranged my features into an expression I hoped looked encouraging, wondering just whose blood had been spilled. Was this an example of organized crime poetry?

“That was real nice, Donna,” Mave praised. I turned to her, grateful for the intervention. “What kind of poetry do you write, Kate?” she asked.

“Uh,” I replied, startled. “Nothing really. Nothing I’d want to share.”

“Aw, bull-chips,” Mave chided, but her face was friendly enough. “Don’t you worry. We’ll get you over that in no time, Kate. Poetry is for reciting. That’s what I always say…”

Maybe I could claim laryngitis. I could almost feel my throat closing up already.

“I grew up when poetry was important,” Mave went on. “We read it, memorized it, recited it. I know free verse is all the rage now, but I love a poem with traditional meter all the same.” She looked my way as if for agreement.

I nodded and smiled. My jaw muscles were beginning to twitch with the effort. Why is it that a false smile takes so much more effort than a real one?

“Some good new poets out there, though,” she admitted. “You read Margaret Atwood?”

I shook my head. “So, do you write poetry too?” I asked, hoping to derail her.

“No, no,” she answered. “Only wish I could. Never had it in me, I guess. But I do dearly love reading it. And hearing it. I’d love to hear you recite something—”

“Oh please,” Nan groaned. “No more poetry!” I could have kissed her. “Carrie, come on,” she whined. “Let’s get on with it. What’s next on the agenda?”

“I thought we could each give Kate a brief synopsis of our work, since she will be a permanent member of our group,” Carrie replied. “That way she could get to know us all a little better.”

“Hey, I’m hungry,” Travis announced from across the table. He was wearing a smile now. It looked good on his handsome face. But then everything did. “Can we eat while we talk?”

“Good golly, yes,” seconded Mave. “I’m more than a mite hungry myself.”

My own stomach was pretty empty too, I realized. But this meeting wasn’t a potluck, was it?

“I made sweet-potato bread,” said Carrie, rising from her chair. “But I left it in the car. I’ll go get it.”

“I did a fruit salad,” Nan said lazily. “Vicky, can you get it out of the refrigerator for me when you get your own salad?”

Vicky nodded stiffly as she stood up. Her thin face looked drawn and unhappy. I wasn’t feeling so great myself. I hadn’t thought to bring any food.

I looked at Mave. “I didn’t realize this one was a potluck. I—”

“Aw, don’t you worry,” Mave interrupted. She pushed back her chair. “We usually have enough grub to slop an army of hogs anyway. Plenty to spare.”

Then everyone besides Nan seemed to stand up and leave the room just as Vicky got back with two bowls in her hands. She put both of them down on the rosewood table and removed the Saran Wrap from one, keeping her eyes averted from its contents.

Within ten more minutes there was a feast spread out on the table in bowls and covered casserole dishes. Mave handed out her offering: lavender paper napkins and paper plates, and silverware that looked like real silver. Then finally, people began passing the bowls and dishes around. Vicky’s bowl turned out to contain a green salad, lightly dressed in lemon juice. Nan’s fruit salad looked good, full of melon and strawberries. And Carrie’s sweet-potato bread smelled wonderful.

The next dish that came around the table looked like a vegetable ratatouille, but it was hard to tell. I hesitated before dishing some out. Could there be meat lurking among the vegetables?

“Kate’s a vegetarian,” Carrie announced from beside me.

She was getting as psychic as my friend Barbara. “Is all the food vegetarian tonight?”

“Mine sure is,” Travis declared loudly through a mouthful of bread. Then he swallowed. “Tofu-stuffed potatoes with pepper and tahini.”

“The ratatouille is completely vegan,” Joyce assured me.

Russell said he’d brought a berry pie for dessert and he’d brought the label from the package too. Then Donna started in on the recipe for her multigrain pilaf. All the food had been passed around the table by the time she finished. And I had a little of everything on my paper plate. I took a bite of Carrie’s bread. It tasted as good as it smelled, sweet and full of raisins and nuts.

“Joyce and I are vegetarians too,” Travis announced a few minutes later. He had finished his first plateful of food and was reaching for more. “I don’t see how anyone with a conscience can be anything else.” He scooped about a pint of ratatouille onto his plate and grabbed five or six more slices of bread. “People have to realize that animals are on this earth too, just like you and me. You don’t kill your neighbors for food just because they’re a different species!” He stuffed a whole slice of bread into his mouth and spoke through it with muffled passion. “And fish. People say fish don’t count. Well I say, how’d you like to be pulled outa the water and suffocated?”

“The violence done to animals in the name of nutrition is terrible,” Joyce whispered, her hand arrested over her plate. “Really terrible. I just wish we could serve all vegetarian food at Operation Soup Pot, but we rely on handouts.” She sighed. “We have to use what is given.”

“Carrie tells me you’re the moving force behind Operation Soup Pot,” I said, hoping to encourage her. And to discourage Travis at the same time. Vegetarian though I was, I was certain I could live the rest of my life quite happily without another animal rights lecture.

“Oh, I’m just the kitchen manager,” Joyce objected, her pale skin suffused with a pink tide that went all the way up to the roots of her black hair.

“Come on, Joyce,” Travis said affectionately. “If it weren’t for you, there’d be no Operation Soup Pot.”

Joyce’s blush deepened even further with the compliment. “Oh, no,” she mumbled, shaking her head. “Other people have done similar things. It doesn’t take much thought to realize you can use leftovers to feed the needy.”

“But you—” Travis began.

“Excuse me,” Joyce cut in, rising from her chair. “I have more ratatouille in the kitchen. I’ll bring it in.”

“She’s kinda shy,” Travis explained once Joyce had left the room. “She does all this good stuff, but she won’t talk about it.”

“Isn’t that nice?” Nan drawled next to me. “Some of us could take a lesson from her.”

“You know what’s even crueler to animals?” Travis went on, ignoring Nan completely. Maybe he hadn’t even heard her. “Animal research. And what has it gotten us? Bigger and better drugs for the pharmaceutical companies to push. Cosmetics that we don’t need—”

“Oh please,” Nan interrupted. “Haven’t we heard this tirade enough times already?”

Travis crossed his arms and glared across the table at her. But his reaction didn’t seem to bother Nan. She speared a piece of watermelon and lifted it to her mouth with a languid hand.

As I watched Nan, I noticed Vicky on her other side. Vicky’s eyes were on that fork. As the watermelon disappeared into Nan’s mouth, Vicky blinked her eyes and swallowed. Vicky didn’t appear to be eating anything more than she had on Saturday. Once again, all she’d put on her plate was a small portion of her own green salad. And even that was untouched. Nan took another leisurely bite of melon, and again Vicky followed its progress with her eyes.

If she hadn’t been so thin, I would have sworn Vicky was on a diet.

“Vicky, why don’t you tell Kate about your work,” came Joyce’s quiet voice from the doorway.

Vicky’s head jerked, startled, I was startled too. I had become lost in her surveillance of Nan’s fork. Joyce set another dish on the rosewood table and sat back down.

“Soft porn,” Vicky said brusquely, brushing her short brown hair away from her face with a twitch of her hand. “I write soft porn.”

“Oh,” I said, smiling politely. “That must be fun.”

Vicky lifted her shoulders in a quick shrug without smiling back. I picked up what was left of my slice of sweet-potato bread and brought it to my mouth. Her eyes followed the movement of the bread. Suddenly, I didn’t feel like eating it. I set it back on my plate, looking at her bony face and thinking of starving children.

“Vicky’s writing is incredibly sensual,” Donna said, flinging out a hand in her enthusiasm. I was glad I wasn’t sitting next to her. “And it isn’t just porn. It’s like…like a metaphor. You know, a higher communion. Male and female aspects of the godhead.”

“Is that what they call screwing these days?” Nan asked, her voice a passable imitation of Donna’s higher, childlike one.

I chuckled before I could check myself. Nobody else laughed. I had a feeling Nan’s particular brand of humor got old fast.

“Perhaps you can talk about your own work, Nan,” Carrie suggested in a stern voice. But Nan responded to the content of Carrie’s words rather than the rebuke in their tone.

“I’m writing another historical novel now,” she said, her voice serious now that she was discussing her own work. “A different one than I read from last week. This one takes place in Canada during the seventeen hundreds, when the French Acadians were forced to leave Nova Scotia. Antoinette is an Acadian woman who’s in love with an English soldier. It’s going to be a classic story. My agent thinks it could make the best-seller list.” Her voice deepened with desire. “Not to mention oodles and oodles of money.”

“What’s it called?” I asked.

“
Love
’
s Passionate Embrace
” she replied with what looked like a genuine smile in my direction. “Isn’t that an adorable title?”

I nodded and smiled back. Who was I to judge?

“The title is real catchy, but it seems to me I’ve heard it somewhere before,” Mave said slowly. She frowned and shook her head. “Can’t say where, though.”

“Well, maybe someone
else
has used it before,” Nan replied with a shake of her blond bangs. “But
I
haven’t. So who cares?”

I didn’t want to get in the middle of that one. I returned my attention to my plate and took a bite of Travis’s tofu-stuffed potato. I resisted looking over at Vicky to see if she was watching me eat.

“The Acadians sure got dumped on by the British,” Travis told us a few minutes later. He glared in solidarity. “But the Native Americans—or Canadians or whatever—got dumped on worse. You gonna put anything in your book about them?”

“
Love’s Passionate Embrace
is an historical novel, not a thinly disguised political diatribe like some people’s work I could name,” Nan replied. Her tone didn’t seem to hold any real malice, though. “But don’t worry, there’ll be some Indians in there somewhere.”

“Huh,” Travis snorted, looking down at the table. I wasn’t sure whether the sound was a comment on Nan’s words or on the emptiness of his plate. “Hey, can you pass the pilaf down here?” he asked. “And some more fruit salad.”

Russell complied silently, stretching his arm across the table to pass down the food. Travis filled his paper plate for the fourth time. I wondered how soon the paper would wear through to the table as I tasted my own serving of ratatouille. Yum.

“My work isn’t a political diatribe,” Travis announced after he’d inhaled another half a plateful of pilaf and fruit salad. Maybe Vicky could take eating lessons from him. “It’s a practical manual. If you’re living in a city when the United States collapses, you’re gonna be glad to know how to survive. No electricity. No plumbing. No heat. No food.” He shoveled in a few more mouthfuls as if to protect himself from that terrible fate. “People killing each other in the street. You gotta be prepared.”

“If I was a betting woman, I’d bet on you to whup the apocalypse,” Mave commented. Her eyes were creased with affection as she looked at Travis.

And so were Carrie’s, I noticed. I hadn’t seen an expression that soft on her dark, freckled face since her children were babies. Just what was her relationship with Travis?

“Guess it’s my turn to talk about my work,” Mave said. “You could say I’m writing something historical too, though mine’s not fiction like Nan’s. Never got a yen to write fiction, myself. Though I sure do love to read it. Marge Piercy, Carolyn See—”

“
Your
work, Mave,” Nan cut in.

“Now, don’t you jump out of your britches,” Mave admonished gently. “I’m getting there at my own pace.” She took a bite of something and swallowed before going on. “I’m writing the biography of one Phoebe Mitchell. Lived 1830 to 1920. And she was one helluva woman, if you’ll pardon my language.”