Daughters of Eve (2 page)

"What's new in your life, chicken?" he had asked, ruffling the fine, light hair that he had referred to since her babyhood as "Janie's chicken fluff." And, on impulse, because it was such a happy surprise to see him this way on a Friday, Jane had brought forth the invitation.

"I've been asked to join a club."

"That's swell. That's great, chicken." He had laid the card on the end table and gone out to the kitchen to fix himself his martini. A moment later Jane had heard his voice raised in accusing anger. There was no gin? What had become of the gin? No, of course he hadn't finished it all last night. It couldn't possibly have been drunk up that quickly. And, if it had been, why the hell hadn't Ellen bought more when she was out doing the grocery shopping? The package store was less than a half block down from the grocery, and it was even on the same side of the street. Well, now he would have to get back into his car and go out into the after-work traffic on a Friday, which was always one of the worst days at work...

After that, of course, nothing could go right. The gin, when he did arrive home with it, was not the brand he had wanted. At dinner the chops had been greasy and the beans were canned instead of frozen and the Jell-O hadn't been chilled long enough to hold its shape. The phone rang twice during the meal with women from the church wanting to discuss the potluck ("Don't you women have enough time for jabber during the day, Ellie?") and the evening paper arrived with the sports section missing.

And now there was the invitation, "swell" and "great" when it had first been shown to him, suddenly a source of grave concern.

"What is this group anyway?" Mr. Rheardon asked suspiciously, his voice unnaturally loud in the silence left in the wake of the television. "You say you know about it, Ellie? Where did you hear about it? Has Jane been telling you things she hasn't been telling me?"

"Of course not, dear," Ellen Rheardon said mildly. "Daughters of Eve is a national organization. There's a chapter here in Modesta that has been active for years. In fact, I was in it myself when I was in high school."

"You were? You never told me that." Mr. Rheardon leaned back in his chair and took a long swallow of his drink. "Well, tell us all. What goes on at the meetings? What are all those secrets Jane was talking about?"

"I don't remember," Ellen said. "It's been so many years. They weren't anything big, just secret passwords and handshakes and things like that. We had projects and held bake sales to buy things for the school, and every once in a while we had a party." She paused. Suddenly her lips curved into a smile. "We had a club song. It was about being 'daughters of one mother, sisters to each other.' We formed a ring and held hands and sang it at the close of all our meetings."

"That sounds like a winner," Mr. Rheardon said. "Let's hear it."

"You mean, you want me to sing it?" His wife looked startled.

"Sure, sing it. We can use a little entertainment around here in the evenings."

"Oh, I can't," Ellen Rheardon said.

"What do you mean, you 'can't'? You've forgotten the words?"

"No, it's not that. It's just that we took an oath. We wouldn't sing the song anywhere except within the sisterhood. It was—sort of—sacred." Ellen gave a short, nervous giggle. "You know how lads are about symbols and ceremonies."

"But this is almost twenty years later! You're a grown woman, for God's sake, or at least you're supposed to be. You're a married woman whose husband is making a simple request of you, and you sit there and tell him—"

No, Jane cried silently, no, no, no! Her eye twitched again, hard. She could feel the whole left side of her face contorting with the muscular spasm. She dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands and tried to close her mind to her parents' voices.

"... really can't remember..." her mother was saying; and her father: "You said you did a few minutes ago. Look, Ellie"—Bart Rheardon's voice was tight and hard—"I'm not about to be shut out of things in my own family. If you think that I'm going to let my daughter join the sort of organization that breaks up marriages by holding adult women to silly promises that they made in childhood—"

"That's okay, Dad," Jane broke in quickly. "I don't want to join anyway."

"Sure, you do. Why else did you haul out that damned invitation and shove it at me? You could hardly wait till I was in the door before you started crowing about it. 'I've been asked to join a club!' you yelled, all excited."

"I've changed my mind."

"Well, I haven't changed mine. Your mother is going to sing for us. I mean it, Ellie. There's an issue at stake here. I'm going to hear that song from beginning to end if I have to—"

Oh, no, no, no! Silently screaming, Jane jumped to her feet. Her parents did not seem to notice. Her mother sat scrunched back in her chair, her eyes wide and dark in the pale oval of her childishly unlined face. Her father was flushed with anger, and a vein in his forehead was beginning to throb bright purple. One hand tightly clutched the martini glass, and the other was clenched into a fist.

"I don't want to join the stupid club!" Jane screamed to them. "I wouldn't join it if they paid me to!"

She whirled on her heel and ran from the room, up the stairs to the second-floor hall. She had left the bedside lamp on in her room, and the soft pastels of peach and lime-green beckoned to her from the half-open door at the end of the hallway. She burst through the doorway, slamming the door behind her, and threw herself facedown on the flowered spread.

It was always this way—always this way on Fridays. How could she have thought that tonight might be any different? The "end-of-the-week letdown" her father called it, when he called it anything, and her mother would say, "That's just the way men are, dear. You have to accept it. Your father works hard, and he gets so wound-up and tense."

But other people's fathers didn't get that wound-up, did they? Did Ann Whitten's gentle, dreamy-faced father break character each Friday night to become a raging tyrant? Tammy Carncross's father taught science at the high school. Did he arrive home at the end of the week shouting for his gin bottle? Well, maybe they did. How could she know? How could anyone know for sure what went on in all the neat white houses that lined the streets of a pleasant little town like Modesta? Behind each door here was a family, and every family held its own secrets, clutched tightly away from the eyes of the rest of the world. You didn't dishonor your family by discussing its problems with others.

I wish it were Monday, Jane thought wearily. I wish I were back in school again. Walking down the hall. People laughing and shoving. Lockers clanging. School smells. Chewing gum. Chalk. Tennis shoes. Peanut butter sandwiches and bananas.

Jane pressed her hands against the sides of her face to control the twitching. From the room below there came a thud and a high-pitched cry.

A moment later a thin, wavering voice began to sing.

CHAPTER 2

"The meeting will come to order." Fran Schneider raised the small wooden gavel and brought it down upon the tabletop with a sharp click. She nodded toward the partially open door. "Will somebody pull that closed, please? Thank you, Tammy. Now, let us all join hands and repeat the club pledge."

Hands reached out on all sides around the art room table and closed upon other hands, and a chorus of solemn voices rose softly to recite the words:

"I pledge myself to the spirit of sisterhood—and to the warmth of friendship. I promise to do my best—as a member of the Daughters of Eve—to follow the code of loyalty, love and service—laid out for womankind since time's beginning—and to divulge to no one words spoken in confidence—within this sacred circle."

There was a moment of silence. Then the hands released each other, and there was a shuffle of bodies shifting position to sit back more comfortably in the hard, straight-backed chairs.

Fran glanced around the table, taking silent roll. Everyone was here, including the three new ones. An oddly assorted trio they were, too, she thought as her eyes lingered momentarily upon their faces—Jane Rheardon with the delicate, porcelain features and the incredible corn-silk hair; freckled, snub-nosed Ruthie Grange; and Laura Snow. Fran still had reservations about Laura. The vote on her name had been close, and it had been only because of Irene Stark's strong support of the girl that she had been offered membership.

"We are not selecting candidates for a beauty contest," Irene had said in that firm, decided way she had. "We are a school-sponsored service club, not a snob sorority. We are extending an offer of sisterhood to people we feel would benefit from our supportive friendship. As your sponsor and adviser, it is my opinion that Laura Snow is one of those people."

Well, she probably was, Fran conceded silently. It was also true, of course, that beauty was not a criterion for membership. If it had been, Fran herself would have been an unlikely candidate. When she looked at herself in the mirror, and saw a long, pointed nose and small, nearsighted eyes set close together in a narrow face, she was often reminded of a giant mosquito. When she put on her glasses, it really completed the picture, for the thick lenses distorted her eyes until they did, indeed, resemble insect eyes as they might appear under a microscope.

"I wish you'd let us get you contact lenses," her mother said repeatedly. "They would make such a difference, Franny. Don't you want to look pretty so boys will ask you out?"

"Not particularly," Fran answered, and meant it. The senior boys at Modesta High were of little interest to her. The only one with a smattering of intelligence was Gordon Pellet, and he was too lazy to put it to any use.

"Don't you ever want to get married?" was her mother's second question, delivered always with a soft little sigh of exasperation. "You'll never get married, Franny, if you don't start dating. After all, it's your senior year."

This was one that Fran seldom even bothered to answer. Marriage, for what it was worth, lay a million miles in the future, if it was there at all. First there was graduation with, she hoped, a science scholarship. Then there was college, and after that medical school. On the side there would be studying, which was something she enjoyed, and probably a series of mundane jobs to help pay expenses. When love came, if it did, there would be time enough to discard her glasses in favor of contacts, but she did not intend to find romance among the boring, unambitious males who attended Modesta High.

No, Fran was not pretty, and she accepted the fact. But facial construction was something that God gave you. Obesity was another thing entirely. She could think of no reason in the world for anyone to allow herself to become fat.

Still, what was done was done. The vote had gone through, just barely, and here sat Laura, looking eager and nervous and happy. She had dressed for the occasion in a blue knit suit that was pulled so tight across her chest that it looked as though it might split at any moment, and her chins rested upon it like a stack of saucers on a sky-blue cloth. On Laura's right sat Ruth Grange. There had been no dissension over voting in Ruthie; everyone at Modesta High knew the Grange boys, Niles and Peter. On her left was Jane Rheardon, a real shoo-in. Besides her straight A record from middle school, Jane was a legacy, her mother having been a member of the Modesta chapter back when it had first been established.

Fran drew a long breath and addressed herself to the three of them.

"It is my pleasant duty as president of the Modesta Chapter of Daughters of Eve to welcome you—Jane, Laura, and Ruth—to our meeting and to extend to you a formal invitation to become members of our sisterhood. I'm Fran Schneider, and here on my left is our faculty sponsor, Irene Stark. She was sponsor of the Jefferson Chapter in Chicago before she moved here the middle of last year, so she's got a real background working with this organization. Do you want to say anything, Irene?"

"Well, I'll add my welcome to yours, Fran," Irene Stark said in a low, rich voice. "I want you girls to know how pleased we are to have you with us. You all know me as your art teacher, and, of course, I'm 'Miss Stark' to you in class, but within our sisterhood I just want to be 'Irene.' I want you to feel free to come to me at any time with your problems, and to consider me a friend and, if you can, a sort of older sister." She turned to Fran with a smile. "Is there more I should be telling them, Madam President?"

"I think you covered it fine, Irene." Fran gently stressed the use of the given name. Of all the teachers with whom she had had contact during her school years, Irene Stark was the only one who had ever made her feel like a contemporary.

"Will the secretary please read the minutes of the last meeting," Fran said.

Ann Whitten got to her feet.

"The September eighteenth meeting of the Modesta Chapter of Daughters of Eve was held in the high-school art room," she read carefully, frowning at her own handwriting. "Seven members were present. The minutes of the final meeting in May were read and accepted, and the treasurer's report was given.

"As there was no old business, president Fran Schneider opened the meeting with the discussion of new members. Six names were suggested and voted upon. The girls elected to membership were Jane Rheardon, Ruth Anne Grange, and Laura Snow. It was decided that invitations be issued immediately so that these girls could be initiated at the next meeting.

"As there was no other business, Tammy Carncross moved that the meeting be adjourned. Paula Brummell seconded the motion. The meeting was adjourned. Respectfully submitted, Ann Whitten, secretary."