The Book That Matters Most (3 page)

She had? Ava tried to remember a theme, or even a conversation about a theme. But all she could remember were her own persistent inquiries about joining the group. Couldn't Cate bend the membership limit just this once? she'd kept asking, and Cate would patiently explain how too big a group prevented everyone from getting to choose a book, and that the room wasn't big enough to accommodate more people, and this way all the members had ample time to contribute their thoughts. When she got the email from Cate with the subject line
A spot
has opened in the book group!
, she'd felt such relief and gratitude that it was possible she never actually read the entire email.

Honor turned in her seat in the row in front of Ava.

“You okay?” Honor whispered. “You're kind of flushed.” She swept her hands over her own cheeks as if Ava didn't understand the word “flushed.”

“I'm fine,” Ava said. “Thanks.”

Honor shrugged and turned back around. She had on layers and layers of clothes. An enormous, vaguely ethnic scarf, several blouses, and lots of bracelets.

“I have to say,” Cate said, “I love next year's theme.”

Her cheeks were flushed too, Ava saw, either from a hot flash or real excitement about next year's theme.

“Of course I loved reading the classics last year,” she continued. “The
Odyssey
and
Canterbury Tales
and even Proust.”

She paused so that everyone could nod and smile and laugh a little.

“God bless Paula,” Penny said.

Cate continued. “And the year before, most of you were here then, I loved reading nineteenth-century American literature, all that Twain and Poe. But this year's theme really allows us to reveal something about ourselves, to learn more about each other, doesn't it? It's more personal, and I like that.”

Again, she waited for everyone to agree with her. Ava eyed the wine and cheese table. Tattooed, ice-blue-haired Emma was standing guard over it, but surely she wouldn't stop Ava from getting a little more wine, would she? As if she'd read her mind, Emma frowned at her.

“Just a reminder,” Cate was saying, “and I think I emailed this to Ava and John too, but we take August off. And we don't read
a book for our December meeting. That's when we choose the books, like we're doing tonight.”

Ava walked as quietly as she could over to the table. Cate was saying they had to choose ten books for next year, and that she didn't choose one but she did read all the books—even
Proust!
—and led the discussions.

Ava remembered she'd knocked over her glass and it was somewhere under her seat, so she took a fresh one and reached for the red wine.

Emma whispered, “I'll get it,” and picked up the bottle and poured. Her arm was close enough that Ava could see on her tattoo the lines around Tigger's feet indicating he was jumping.

“Thanks,” Ava said.

She sensed someone behind her and looked up to see Mr. Porkpie Hat also getting more wine. He had one of those ridiculous short goatees running from his bottom lip to his chin. He smiled, showing beautiful teeth. She didn't smile back, but returned to her seat, noisily crushing her dropped cup under her boot as she did. Someone sighed.

“Our theme, of course, is ‘The Book That Matters Most,'” Cate said happily, and the group applauded. “Everyone chooses a book that mattered the most to you in your life and each month we read that one book. John? Ava? I thought you two could go last, if that's okay?”

Ava straightened.
That's
what she was supposed to do? Choose a book? Not any book, but the book that mattered the most to her? She couldn't even remember the last book she'd read that mattered at all. In fact, she purposely chose books that
didn't
matter. In summer she enjoyed sitting on the beach with a paperback while Jim worked his way steadily though
Robert Caro's thick biographies of LBJ. But those paperbacks she read—mysteries and travel stories and novels with banal, forgettable plots—did not stay with her. She'd plucked a few off the shelf at this very library, read them, and forgot about them. They didn't
matter
.

Around her, everyone was taking pens out of their pockets or purses and opening those expensive Moleskine notebooks. Was that another thing she had missed? Bring a Moleskine notebook and the book that matters most to you? She thought of when Maggie and Will were young and she made a trip every September to buy their school supplies, the lists long and detailed, requiring three ring binders of various sizes, and all kinds of pens and markers and pencils. She missed the rituals of her young family, of slicing cucumbers and carrots, checking homework, folding the warm laundry, making hospital corners on the beds—all of it. And for the tenth or hundredth or thousandth time that day she thought,
Damn you, Jim
.

Sounds of everyone settling in and Cate's voice announcing yet something else brought Ava back to attention. Who knew book groups were so complicated? Cate had a big bronze urn that reminded Ava of the kind that held a dead person's ashes.

Cate stuck her hand inside, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and grinned.

“Penny,” she said, “you get to choose our January book.”

The elderly blonde in the Chanel suit stood.

“As many of you know, I was Radcliffe, class of '47,” Penny said proudly. “And while there I fell in love with a certain Miss Jane Austen. I read her novels in order,
Sense and Sensibility
first, which was published in 1811, then . . .”

Ava couldn't concentrate on what Penny was saying. All she
could think about was that she had one month to read a Jane Austen novel. To date, she'd never read even one.

“Which of her novels is the book that matters most to you, Penny?” Cate was asking.

“The book which the contemporary writer Anna Quindlen said is the first great novel to teach us that the search for self is as surely undertaken while making small talk in the drawing room as it is while pursuing a great white whale.”

As Penny paused for dramatic effect, Ava watched several people, including Mr. Porkpie Hat, writing down the quote by Anna Quindlen. To her relief, John looked confused.

Penny announced, “
Pride and Prejudice
.”

A few people clapped and at least one murmured with delight. Not having a Moleskine notebook, Ava scribbled the title on the palm of her hand.

Cate reached into the urn and pulled out the next name.

“Luke, you've got February.”

Mr. Porkpie Hat stood and faced the group.

“The Great American Novel,” he said matter-of-factly. “
The Great Gatsby
.”

He seemed to say it directly to Ava, who immediately looked down and wrote the title on her palm. Someone tapped her on the shoulder and thrust a piece of paper at her. Emma. Ava mouthed a thank you, but Emma was too busy awaiting the next name to notice.

“March,” Cate said. “What book matters the most to you, Diana?”

A woman about Ava's age stood. She looked vaguely familiar. Dressed in black cigarette pants and an oversized black turtleneck sweater, she had dramatically lined eyes and dark red lipstick. On her head she wore a brightly colored scarf, tied with a big knot in front. Ava could see that Diana was bald beneath the scarf, and she remembered Cate telling her that someone in the
book group had breast cancer. They were taking turns bringing her to chemo, Cate had said.

In a deep smooth voice, Diana said, “I asked Cate if I could choose a play. Something by Shakespeare. He is, after all, the writer who matters most to me. But she said no, it had to be a novel. So the
book
that matters most to me has to be
Anna Karenina
.”

At this point, John looked terrified.

“You were a magnificent Anna,” Penny said.

Diana took a dramatic bow, reminding Ava where she'd seen her. Diana was one of the actresses at the local repertory theater. For years Jim and Ava had had a subscription, never missing a play. They'd enjoyed those Friday nights, often with Cate and her husband, Gray. Why had they stopped? Ava wondered. When had they stopped?

Cate was already onto April, calling out the name Ruth.

As soon as Ruth stood, Ava recognized her. She was a mother from Maggie's elementary school, one of the ones always in charge of things. Ruth had seemed to be a fixture in the classroom, helping the kids with projects, assisting with school plays, monitoring the lunchroom. Ava could picture her happily running off copies at the printer, checklists and reminders and permission slips and programs. Once, when the music teacher got food poisoning, Ruth even played the piano in her place at the holiday concert.

“I know it's a fat one,” Ruth said, “but the book that matters most to me is
One Hundred Years of Solitude
. Sorry,” she added playfully. She still had the same soft round body, cheerful face, and neat blond bob that Ava remembered. In her corduroy jumper and clogs, she looked just like a sitcom mom. In fact, Ava thought, Ruth had four kids. Or was it five?

“No, no, that's a wonderful book,” Cate assured her.

“Very interesting,” a woman said, nodding with approval. “I actually met Márquez once, when I was in Chile.” She pronounced it
Chee-lay
.

“I want your life, Jen,” Ruth said with a sigh. She laughed and pointed at Jen, who had long straight brown hair and a long serious face with a strong jaw and sharp cheekbones. “And don't say you want my life! No one wants all these kids I have.”

Turning to Ava, Honor said, “She actually made a quilt by hand for each one of them,
while
she was pregnant.”

“Oh, I know. I only had to get two kids to school on time,” Ava said, “and I would get there right before the bell rang to find Ruth on her way out already, all five of her kids delivered to their classrooms. Early.”

“Guilty as charged,” Ruth said.

“I guess you haven't seen Ruth in a while,” Jen said. “She actually has six kids now.”

Ruth nodded. “Cameron. Our oops. He's almost eight.”

“God bless you,” Penny said, shaking her head. “Three was more than enough for me.”

Cate reached into the urn and picked the name for May. “Honor?”

Honor stood and said, “This took me a very long time. Should I choose the book that made me fall in love with reading, and led me to my life's work? Should I choose the book that challenged me to think the most?”

Silently Ava prayed that Honor did not choose that one.

“Ultimately, though, one book truly is the one that matters most to me. Thank you, Cate, for giving us this theme. It's been a difficult but enormously rewarding exercise.” Her eyes sparkled, and her hands fluttered over her heart.

“
To Kill a Mockingbird
,” Honor said.

“I've read that one!” Ava blurted in surprise.

John shouted, “So have I!”

“You have to reread it,” Cate teased them.

She reached into the urn and selected the name for June.

“Monique,” she announced. “And welcome back, by the way.”

“One of our original group,” Penny explained to Ava. “But she got married and moved to France—”

“I know her,” Ava said as Monique got to her feet. Her once jet-black hair was now salt-and-pepper, but she still wore it in the same asymmetrical haircut, and her low-cut silky blouse revealed the impressive cleavage she'd boasted years ago. “She taught French with me.” One of the best and worst things about Providence was that it was impossible not to run into people you knew.

Without any fanfare, Monique said, “
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
is the book that mattered most to me,” and sat back down.

The next name Cate called was Kiki.

Kiki looked young, maybe the same age as Ava's son Will, who was twenty-three. She reminded Ava of Ava's students, which gave Ava a soft spot for her immediately.

Kiki chose
Catcher in the Rye
, another novel Ava had read years ago. Maybe this wasn't going to be impossible after all.

Jennifer, who had met Márquez in
Chee-lay
, had the September book.

“When I was in the Peace Corps in Guatemala,” she began, “there were, of course, limited books available.”

Jim had been in the Peace Corps too, in Honduras, long before Ava ever met him. He still returned once a year with school supplies or eyeglasses, flying into San Pedro Sula and then driving
hours on unpaved roads to the neediest villages. He came back with photographs of grinning children, newly planted avocado trees, chickens in newly built chicken coops. Sitting here now, Ava wondered if she should have accompanied him. Would that have made a difference? Would Delia Lindstrom go to Honduras with him and yarn bomb the avocado trees?

“There was one book that I read over and over,” Jennifer was saying, “and that book was
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera.”

“I love that book,” Kiki said.

Luke nodded. “Good choice.”

“And that brings us to our newcomers,” Cate said. “John?”

John got awkwardly to his feet, rocking slightly in his Topsiders.

“My wife was the reader in our family,” John said. “So this was kind of hard. But one book does matter to me. A lot.
Slaughterhouse-Five?
By Kurt Vonnegut?”

“That's a wonderful choice, John,” Cate said.

“Good one, man,” Luke said.

“I've never read Mr. Vonnegut,” Penny said as she carefully wrote the title in her notebook. “It's about time I did.”

As soon as John sat down, Cate said gently, “Ava?”

“Last but not least,” Ava said, stalling.

She felt everyone's eyes on her. She did not have a book that mattered to her, she thought, suddenly having to fight back tears. Her life mattered to her, her heartache, her losses, piling up with resounding thuds.