The Rejected Writers' Book Club (Southlea Bay) (8 page)

Sitting on the sofa next to her was Annie. Compared to Flora, she looked positively radiant. She was wearing a pink poodle-knit sweater and brown rayon pants, and her short, gray hair was sporting a new, tight permanent. Her sparkly pink knitting needles clicked away rhythmically as she sat glued to the early news on the TV.

“Good morning.” I nodded at Annie. Flora didn’t even move. She was lying remarkably still, with her eyes firmly closed. “Is Flora okay?”

Annie chuckled to herself as she knitted.

“She’s fine. We had a good old-fashioned girls’ sleepover last night. We ate dinner, drank my homemade cherry brandy, and played cards till late. These young folk just aren’t made of the same stuff we are.”

I tried to imagine a sleepover at Doris’s. The poor girl was probably stuffed full of cholesterol, with alcohol poisoning from potent homemade brandy. I was hoping that brandy and cards weren’t going to be the trend.

The front door opened, and Lavinia’s singsong greeting rang down the hallway. “Knock, knock, it’s only us.” The twins arrived in the living room looking like a breath of spring air and smelling like it too.

“It’s a new scent I had flown here from Paris,” said Lavinia, outstretching her wrist toward us.

“Lovely,” Annie reflected.

“Lottie hates it, so I wear enough for both of us.”

Lottie screwed up her nose. “It’s just too musky for me. I prefer something more flowery.”

Doris appeared in the living room with her clipboard.

Lottie straightened. “Here we are, reporting as ordered for Momma duty.”

“Great.” Doris tore off a sheet and handed it to Lottie with a bag of pills. “Here’s a list of Momma’s meds and when she needs to take them. Make sure she takes the blue ones in the morning and the red ones at night. The blue ones wake her up and the red ones help her sleep, and don’t get them in reverse, otherwise you’ve got yourself a whole bunch of trouble.”

“I like the sound of those blue ones,” mused Lavinia. “I might have to try a couple of those myself.”

As if on cue, Gracie floated into the room, wearing a pink nightgown, blue mud boots, and a red turban. Around her neck dangled a sparkly pink feather boa.

“Well, don’t you look lovely,” cooed Lavinia, taking Gracie by the hand and twirling her around in a circle.

“I’m going to a party,” announced Gracie with a twinkle in her eye.

Doris sighed. “Momma, I told you to get dressed. Lavinia and Lottie are here to take you to their house, remember? You’re staying there for a few days while I’m away.”

“I am dressed,” pointed out Gracie defensively. “Can’t you see I’m wearing my party outfit?”

Doris was obviously agitated, but before she could comment, Lavinia took Gracie by the hand. “Come on. Let’s see if we can find the rest of your party clothes, shall we? I don’t think I’ve seen all of your wardrobe.”

The two of them went off down the hallway toward Gracie’s bedroom, Gracie gliding along on her toes.

Lottie then took Doris’s arm. “Now, I don’t want you to worry a jot. We have it all in hand. Your momma is going to be fine with us.”

Doris nodded her thanks, then scanned her clipboard again.

“Okay, where was I?” Doris went on. “Oh yes. Flora, Annie, you two ladies are next. We need all your things out in the yard, ready to load into the car.”

There was a sudden flutter of movement in Flora’s ruffles, and she came to life. The two of them jumped to attention and started hustling. They’d obviously been part of one of Doris’s military campaigns before. They seemed to know the drill.

I followed everyone outside. It looked as if we were about to have a rummage sale. The back of my ten-year-old forest-green Suburban was already open, and Ethel, beet-red, was pushing bags into every corner of it. The assembled troops lined up and stood to attention as if there was going to be an inspection at any minute.

Taking in the whole picture, I closed my eyes for a second. I had had such a different vision in my head of what this would be like. It seemed silly now thinking about it and bearing in mind the company I was traveling with, but I’d always had this kind of idyllic 1950s vision of going on a road trip. I had conjured up images of good-looking middle-aged women in lipstick and headscarves laughing and joking along an open highway. A bit like
Thelma & Louise
, without the attempted rape, killing, and suicide leap. However, the notion of the suicide leap seemed almost appealing now.

I opened my eyes. Doris and her clipboard were in front of me.

“Did you bring toilet paper?” she inquired in an extremely serious tone.

“Toilet paper?”

“Yes, toilet paper.” She checked off other items on the list on her clipboard.

“Why would I need that?”

She looked up at me as if I’d lost my mind.

“I never travel without my own roll!” she said in a tone that made me sound like she thought I was a caveman. “You need it for the woods and those little box toilets along the road. I would never put myself in a position of getting caught short without my own paper.”

“No, I haven’t got any. I never travel with it normally,” I said, a little bewildered.

She gave me one of those looks as if she were trying to work out if I were joking or just an idiot and then shook her head.

“Never mind. I’m on it.” She yelled at the top of her lungs, “Ethel! We’ll need an extra roll of toilet paper from the bathroom cupboard. Mrs. Johnson forgot hers.”

Ethel marched into the house, emerged with a roll of toilet paper, and thrust it unceremoniously at me.

I got in the car to wait, sitting with “my roll” balanced on my knee. Presently, Flora and Annie joined me, each armed with their own rolls too. I guessed I wasn’t the only unenlightened one.

Lavinia opened the door and poked in her head. “I just wanted to say good-bye to you and good luck.” Seeing us all sitting there clutching our “rolls” she stopped in her tracks. “Let me guess,” she said, touching a pink, manicured nail to her lips. “Plan C is to TP the publishers?”

“Don’t ask,” I replied as Flora and Annie’s expressions echoed the same sentiment.

Gracie stuck her head in the window. She was now suitably dressed in a powder-blue lounge suit and her white wispy-wool hair had been combed into captivity, but she was still sporting her pink, sparkly boa.

“Guess what? I’m going for a sleepover at Lavinia’s. Won’t that be fun?” Her eyes danced wildly with the excitement of it all.

Doris squashed herself into the passenger side of the car, saying, “Looks as if we’re ready to roll. I have the maps and directions, so I’ll ride shotgun.”

“Oh, goody,” I said under my breath.

Ethel got in the back as Lottie appeared at the other passenger window.

Doris issued last-minute instructions. “Now, don’t forget Trevor has the dogs at Annie’s place, so they should be fine there. I’ll try and call to check in on them and Momma. I don’t own a cell phone—they fry your brain—so if you need to get a hold of me, Annie has her iPad. You could e-mail us, or Janet has her cell phone. Could you write down the number for them?” She looked over in my direction.

I did as I was told, handing Lavinia a hastily written note.

I could hear Gracie’s singsong voice in the wind as we drove away. “Good-bye, everybody. Come and visit me again soon!”

The clock on the dashboard informed me it was already 11:30. We might just make the noon ferry off the island if I put my foot down.

“First things first,” said Doris as I pulled the car onto the road. “Let’s stop at the Crab for some lunch.”

“But don’t you want to get on the road?” I asked, mystified.

“Without lunch? Why, I would barely have the energy to turn the map pages.”

I tried to find a compromise.

“What if we get going and find a restaurant on the mainland? At least we’ll be on the road.”

She screwed up her eyes and peered at me, then snapped, “I know what I’m getting at the Crab. I don’t trust a mainland patty melt the same way.”

“They add hormones!” declared Ethel, wrinkling up her nose.

Doris nodded in agreement. “Exactly. I have enough of those myself. I definitely don’t want any more hormones!”

What could I say to that?

Gladys watched us, bemused from behind the till, as we all burst out of the car, an act that I’m sure resembled a ripened boil about to pop. We all trudged in. She pulled out a bunch of menus, sniffed, and eyed Doris mischievously. “Will you and your renegades be wanting your usual war bunker?”

The joke was wasted on Doris.

“The back booth,” she demanded.

As I passed one of the tables, I spotted my husband, who was just finishing off what looked suspiciously like a cheeseburger and fries. He looked a little sheepish. He knew my views on cholesterol-laden foods, especially for lunch.

“Hi, honey. I didn’t expect to see you so soon.”

“Obviously,” I smirked, reaching down to his plate and stealing one of his leftover french fries.

“My thinking was I would have a large lunch, to save me from cooking later.”

“Hmmm,” I murmured. I had a pretty good idea the Crab would be seeing a lot of my husband over the next few weeks.

He quickly changed the subject. “How come you’re still here?”

“Oh, our fearless leader couldn’t face the world on an off-island patty melt!”

“Sounds as if it’s going to be a long journey.”

“Yes. And one that hasn’t even started yet!”

We finally made it out of the Crab at around 12:45 p.m. and headed out of town. I wasn’t even a mile out of the village when Annie leaned forward and whispered, “Are you stopping at the gas station at the end of town?”

“I wasn’t planning to. I got gas last night.”

“I just need to . . . go. That iced tea went straight through me!”

“No problem,” I said through clenched teeth.

I had left home four hours before, and we had barely made it to the end of town. It was worse than a kindergarten field trip.

“We don’t have time,” boomed Doris. “We’re scheduled to get the one o’clock boat. You’ll just have to hold it until we get on the ferry!”

So much for lipstick and headscarves. We were just pawns in Doris’s outlandish plan. We missed the one o’clock ferry and boarded the one thirty. As soon as we parked, Annie made a dash out of the car and ran upstairs to the bathroom. Doris followed, muttering something about getting herself an iced tea, and Flora and Ethel tagged along.

I decided to stay in the car. Alone with my own thoughts, I drew in a deep breath. I’d always loved traveling, which I’d found challenging over the years with my fear of flying. But there was nothing to compare with the experience of meeting new people and seeing new landscapes. Now, with the craziness of the planning of this trip behind me, I looked out at the waves of the Puget Sound as they broke at the foot of the ferry. As I absorbed their hypnotic rolling, I felt myself starting to relax, unwind, and actually feel excited. I marveled as a seagull hovered on the wind then dove down into the water and retrieved a fish. I ruminated on the fact that there was nothing more refreshing than experiencing life fully in the moment. An open road was good for clearing the mind, with nothing to distract you, nothing to pull you from the one goal of getting from here to there.

I had mixed feelings about how the visit would go. I was looking forward to seeing Stacy, even though the last time we had been to stay was still a painful memory. While she had been at work, Martin and I had decided to surprise her by filling her garden with beautiful pink, yellow, and purple spring plants to soften all the depressive straight lines of her yard. On returning home, she had shrieked, dropped her shopping, and burst into tears. Apparently without realizing it, we had “unfenged her shui.” We had apologized, digging up the offensive tulips and daffodils and giving them to one of her grateful neighbors, but it had made the rest of our visit very frosty indeed. I sighed knowingly; having children would change her, that was for sure. There was no time for monitoring complex chi patterns when a toddler is tearing through your yard covered in toilet paper and ketchup. The realization hit me once again: my little girl was about to become a mommy, and I was going to be a grandmother.

I found myself in a thoughtful and forgiving mood when they all arrived back at the car twenty minutes later. As they got in, I wondered if we would bond on this trip. Who knew? Maybe in ten years’ time we’d all be laughing and talking about how much we’d enjoyed our first road trip.

My foolish illusions were quickly shattered.

“What’s wrong with you?” asked Doris suspiciously. “Why are you smiling in the mirror like a Cheshire cat?”

“Oh, nothing,” I said wistfully. “I was just thinking.”

“You keep grinning at yourself like that, and someone is going to come along and haul you away to the funny farm.”

I sighed deeply, put the car into drive, and left the ferry to join the traffic on the freeway. Doris scrutinized her maps and looked at her watch, Flora listened to her iPod and looked out the window, Annie quietly read a woman’s magazine, and Ethel peered forward, stone-faced.

It was slow going on the road, and I hoped we weren’t going to hit traffic downtown. But my fear was realized when, thirty minutes later, we were bumper-to-bumper with the downtown traffic, crawling along slower than a herd of snails moving through molasses.

The women amused themselves. Annie knitted and read and punched Flora on the arm, yelling, “Slug bug” every time we passed a Volkswagen Beetle. Flora did her best to ignore her as soft tones of classical music floated from her iPod. She wrote poetry in a small leather-bound book, staring endlessly out the window with a pencil poised at her lips. Then suddenly, as if one of the passing trucks gave her the answer to life, she would start to scribble away. Ethel, who’d fallen asleep, snored softly, her head thrown back and her mouth open. Doris felt the need to feed us after only twenty minutes from the numerous plastic containers she ordered us to pass around as we went along.

It was 4:30 p.m. before we saw the back of Seattle, and I breathed a sigh of relief as we left the city behind us. We pulled off to get coffee, and on returning to the car, Doris slammed her map book closed and looked hard at me.