The Accidental Book Club (11 page)

J
ean had just finished cleaning up the dishes from her egg salad sandwich, to which she’d added capers as a trial run for a possible future club dish, when Bailey came into the kitchen. Jean didn’t acknowledge her. She’d learned her lesson one too many times now. Engaging with Bailey meant opening oneself up to all manner of abuse, and after the shrieking match between Laura and Bailey in the kitchen that morning, Jean just didn’t think she had it in her.

She knew she couldn’t ignore the situation forever. At some point she would need to talk to Laura, find out how long she planned to stay, find out what exactly the plan was and how she could help. But today was not that day. Laura was hungover and pissed off and, short of calling Curt, who was unlikely to do anything, Jean was at a loss how to deal with any of that.

Wayne would have known. Wayne seemed to always know. And he had a way of getting Laura to listen to him. If only she could get Kenneth to come home while Laura was here. Maybe he would be able to get Laura to listen to him too.

“So when are we leaving?” Bailey asked.

Jean turned, still holding the dishrag in her hand, and tried to paste on a smile, though that was getting harder and harder with Bailey. “What?”

Bailey grunted and shook her head as if Jean were possibly the dumbest person who ever walked the face of the earth. “Swimming?” She mimed doing a breaststroke. “You said we were going swimming?”

“Oh. I didn’t think you’d want to go.”

“I don’t. But it’s better than sitting around here all day. With her.” Bailey gave a quick glance over her shoulder at the stairs.

“Okay,” Jean said, wringing out the dishrag and draping it over the faucet. “We’ll go. Just let me . . .” She found herself strangely rattled by this sudden request for together time, still wanting to do things right. Still hoping that doing things right was a possibility. She tried to move five directions at once, bobbing and weaving this way and that. She patted the sides of her hair and felt her shorts pockets—for no particular reason other than she didn’t know what else to do—until her brain kicked in. “Let me get ready,” she finally said, and that seemed to be what it took to get her moving. She picked up her book and put it down again. “Do you need something to eat?”

“I ate a Pop-Tart. Remember?”

“That was hours ago.”

Bailey rolled her eyes and sighed with annoyance. “I ate four of them, okay? Are we gonna go, or are we gonna talk about the History of Bailey’s Stomach Contents?”

Jean nodded, started to move past her granddaughter. “Do you swim?” she asked as she passed.

“No, I’m planning to drown myself in your neighborhood pool,” Bailey said.

Jean tried not to smile. She knew Bailey was trying to be tough, to be abrasive. But something about the way she’d said it led Jean to believe that just maybe she might be breaking through that angry exterior after all.

Jean rushed upstairs to her bedroom, pausing only briefly to listen at Laura’s door. Hearing nothing but silence, she moved on. She would leave Laura a note, invite her to join them, even though she knew Laura wouldn’t.

Jean pawed through her dresser drawer, rifling past clothing items she hadn’t worn in years—a clutch of slips that her mother had insisted she buy when she first got married, though she never wore dresses, a knotted pair of panty hose, a lacy negligee that Wayne had loved (she’d last worn it for him the week after he was diagnosed, for what Jean would always think of as their farewell lovemaking session, even though they’d made clunky, clumsy, half-sick love several times after that). Scrunched in the very back, half-stuck behind the drawer, was her old swimsuit, a black and gold skirted thing that practically screamed
old lady
. She held it up over her torso and studied herself in the mirror, shuddering at the very idea of squeezing into it. She hadn’t swum in years—maybe not in a decade. And she certainly didn’t plan to start today.

But if Bailey wanted to go down to the pool, she would go. She would wear the suit and she would sit in a lawn chair and she would be thrilled to do it, if it meant a few minutes of happiness for her granddaughter—and peace and control for her.

When she finally sucked up enough courage to face the world in her swimsuit and found her floppy sun hat, Jean headed back downstairs, where she found Bailey leaning over the bar, eating pickle chips out of a jar and thumbing through the Flavian Munney book.

“You ready to go?”

“This is stupid. You actually read this?”

Jean felt her face flush. “You mind if I call my friend Loretta to go with us?” she asked, reaching for the phone.

Bailey picked up the book and turned so that she was resting backward against the counter. She held it up in front of her face.
“Flavian’s chest heaved under Roberta’s shaky touch. She let her fingers dip into the playground of a divot at the top of his six-pack, and she shuddered, moaning aloud and swirling her finger in the pool of sweat that had gathered there,”
she read aloud. “Gross! Who wants to play with sweaty man nipples?”

“I’m going to call,” Jean said, dialing Loretta’s phone number.

Bailey continued to read, her voice going low and sultry.
“Roberta let her hand trail down his stomach, over the muscles that rose and lowered with his every breath, toward the erection that was unrolling to meet her just above his belly button.”
She laughed out loud. “Unrolling? Makes it sound like one of those party favor things you blow into.”

“I don’t read them normally,” Jean explained, her face burning. “The club voted . . .”

But Loretta picked up the other end of the line, rescuing Jean from having to explain further, and fortunately by the time she was off the phone, Bailey had finished her pickle chip and had laid the book down while she rooted around in the pickle jar for another one. Jean grabbed the book and stuffed it into her purse, as if she were dying to read it at the pool, but knowing she was simply hiding it from further humiliating read-alouds.

“Loretta will meet us down there,” she said. “Do you have your swimsuit on?”

“Duh,” Bailey answered, finally fishing out a pickle and devouring it in one bite.

Maybe because it was still early in the day, or maybe because the neighborhood had all grown up and moved out, or maybe because it wasn’t all that hot that day, the pool was nearly deserted when Jean and Bailey arrived. A lone lifeguard sat at a round patio table, listening to music and chewing on a thumbnail so intently, Jean wondered how it wasn’t hurting him.

He pulled the earbuds out of his ears when they opened the gate.

“Hey,” he said as Jean signed them in. “Nice day, huh?”

“Very,” Jean said, and it was true. The sky was brilliant blue, with just enough clouds to make it look interesting. The sun washed over the pool deck, giving it a bathed, glittery look that suggested excitement ahead. That had once been Jean’s favorite part about early summer—the promise that it held. But ever since Wayne died, she’d had so little to look forward to. What promises mattered when that one—the one that they’d be together until they were old and dotty—had been broken? She would be old and dotty alone. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

The guard shrugged his tanned shoulders and popped a handful of sunflower seeds, which he’d seemed to produce out of nowhere, into his mouth. “Been dead all week. Got the pool to yourself.”

“Awesome, dude,” Bailey snarked.

Jean offered him an apologetic smile and took her things to a deck chair. Suddenly she didn’t know why she hadn’t been to the pool in so long. Sitting in the sun for an hour or two would feel good. Had she gotten any sun on her face since Wayne died? She couldn’t remember. In some ways, it was as if the sun had died right along with him.

Loretta barreled through the gate just as Jean was getting settled, a giant bag dangling from her arm and an even bigger pair of sunglasses dwarfing the top half of her face. She signed in and made her way to Jean and Bailey, waving the whole way.

“How do you like our private pool?” Jean called.

“If I’d known, I’d have worn my bikini,” Loretta answered, and out of the corner of her eye, Jean could see Bailey make a gagging gesture with her finger. Loretta must have seen it too, because she leaned toward Bailey and said, “The thong one.” Jean tried hard not to giggle as Bailey shot daggers into Loretta with her eyes.

“I brought Flavian with me,” Jean said.

“Flavian in a Speedo—now, that’s my kind of after-lunch aperitif,” Loretta answered, pulling an oversized towel out of her bag and spreading it over the chair before settling into it. “What do you think of it so far?”

“You know the rules. No talking about a book before the club meets.”

Loretta pulled a sweating plastic cup out of her bag and took a healthy sip through the straw. “My rule. I can break it.”

“Nope. You have to wait, just like everyone else, if you want to hear my deep thoughts about Flavian Munney.”

“Don’t say
deep
and
Flavian Munney
in the same sentence. You’ll give me a hot flash.” Loretta took another sip as Bailey, making retching noises, got up from the deck chair and sat on the edge of the pool, down by the diving board, out of their earshot.

“So I see she’s warming up nicely,” Loretta said, gesturing to Bailey with her cup.

Jean leaned her head back against the vinyl strap of the chair. “I’ve given up. She’s sour and mad all the time, and her eating habits are atrocious. And she does the strangest things. Things you and I would never think of doing. Like the cake thing. That was just bizarre, wasn’t it?”

Loretta shrugged. “She’s trying to shock everyone because when she does, she gets attention.”

“Well, she’s losing mine. I just don’t have the energy for it. And to make it worse, now Laura has shown up. Drunk, of course, and having driven herself all the way across the state like that.”

“Oh, my, the prodigal daughter returns.”

“Yes, so what did they have first thing this morning? A screaming match in my kitchen. Wayne is probably rolling over in his grave just listening to it. He would have known how to handle all of this, and obviously I’m not doing a very good job of it. It’s hard to handle someone you barely know.”

“Don’t bring Wayne into it. You’ll just make yourself miserable. You’re doing just fine. Remember? You were two halves of the same whole, so anything he could have and would have done, you can do just as well. We’ve discussed this so many times.”

“I know, I know,” Jean said. “And I’m doing it. I just hate doing it alone.”

Loretta leaned over and set her drink on the ground next to her chair, then reached over and patted Jean’s arm. “That will never go away,” she said. “And you wouldn’t want it to.”

“Thank you, Dr. Optimist. Am I going to die a lonely and crazy old cat lady with no teeth too?”

“No, of course not,” Loretta said. “You’ll have a few teeth.” She reached into her bag and produced another Flavian Munney novel, which she dropped into Jean’s lap. “Take two of these and call me in the morning and you’ll be just fine.”

Jean ran her fingers over the book cover. “Dear God, is he wearing chaps?”

Loretta grinned wickedly. “Rodeo-Lovin’ Flavian. Rope me up, cowboy! Yeeeehaw!” This last she yelled while waving her arm over her head as if swinging a lasso. Her voice echoed off the walls, and even the lifeguard looked up. Bailey made a disgusted noise and slid into the deep end, the water rippling up over her head.

Jean laughed, despite herself. “How many of these things are there?”

Loretta took the book and rubbed the cover as if she were buffing off Jean’s fingerprints. “Not enough. Never enough.”

“You must have hundreds.”

“At least one for every month of next year’s club reading pleasure.”

“I think Mitzi would kill you.”

“Probably,” Loretta said. “But she’d kill me with a satisfied smile on her face.”

Jean burst out laughing. She loved how Loretta could take even the most stressful day and turn it into something fun.

“Besides, these are so much more fun than that tired Thackeray crap.”

“Oh,” Jean said. “Did I tell you about my run-in with Janet? She seemed to have a similar opinion of the Thackeray novel.”

“Not surprising. It really was terrible. What did she say about it? She didn’t make a peep about it at the meeting.”

“That was the thing. She didn’t get to say anything. The minute she started to talk to me, her horrible boss appeared out of nowhere and just lit into her.”

“Lit into her? About what?”

“About everything. It was really just so awkward. Almost inappropriate.”

“Oh, wait, was he the bald one? I’ve seen him before. Walks like he’s got a nine-foot pole crammed up his nethers.”

Jean nodded. “That’s him. I probably should have said something. Poor thing was so embarrassed.”

“To hell with turning him in. We should get him back. One time my friends Dolly, Jane, and Lily and I got fed up with our boss, so we kidnapped him and tied him up in a bedroom so we could run the company without him. True story.” She took a sip of her drink.

Jean studied her friend for a beat. “You did not. That’s the movie
Nine to Five
,” she said. “You never had a boss.”

“Not true. Before I married Chuck, I had bosses,” Loretta countered.

“I stand corrected.”

“I just never had a boss I didn’t sleep with.”

And that had turned into a true story about a gay boss that Loretta had once tried to sex straight, and how it almost worked, except he never could figure out how to undo women’s clothes, and they were so wrapped up in their conversation, they never saw the lifeguard get up and walk over to the deep end, where he crouched down and said, “Hey, you’re not allowed to wear street clothes in the pool.” And they didn’t see Bailey give him the double bird and do a lazy backflip, her cutoff jean shorts and tank top sticking to her body.

They chatted and had a good time, and Jean had just been thinking that maybe they could make this a regular thing, that maybe this was what would bring her back to the world of the living, back into the sun, when they heard a “Hey!”