The Accidental Book Club (21 page)

T
he ride home was much quieter than the ride east. Dorothy and Jean both felt wrung out, having spent three days in a seedy motel, neither of them getting any sleep. Jean had spent most of her days at the hospital, sitting quietly while an aggravated and sore Bailey cussed out anyone who dared look at her wrong: Curt, the nurses, even the poor volunteer who stopped by to see if she’d like a second blanket. Jean winced every time Bailey opened her mouth, but she understood this to be part of Bailey’s demons, part of what she needed to get out. And she understood that these demons were part of why Bailey wanted to come live with her. She knew that Bailey also hoped they wouldn’t follow her there.

In the evenings, after dinner was brought and Bailey got sleepy, Jean would go back to the motel, only to find Dorothy on the phone with a lawyer or a bondsman or with her ex-husband, trying to work out this problem or that. Together, they would grab a quick bite, and then head to Laura’s house, where they systematically packed up Bailey’s things, cramming them into old banana boxes Jean had gotten from a grocery store. Dorothy covered Bailey’s hanging clothes with trash bags and hauled them to the car in armloads while Jean wrapped knickknacks in tissue paper and placed them under soft pajamas and T-shirts. They were moving her out completely, at Bailey’s request, as if she expected to never return to her old life, not even for a day.

Curt hadn’t argued at all about Bailey going to live with Jean. Not that she’d expected him to. In fact, she’d have been shocked if he had.

I think that’s what’s best for all of us,
he said, and though cynical Bailey clucked her tongue and said,
Translation: It’s what’s best for Curt,
Jean couldn’t help but feel that he was saying what he really believed. Throughout everything, the man never left his daughter’s bedside—not even to go home and change clothes—and if that didn’t speak for some sort of dedication, Jean didn’t know what would. Curt was doing the best he could.

Every night, Jean expected to sleep like the dead, but as soon as she and Dorothy turned out the lights, her mind would start racing. What would Wayne have said about a grandchild coming to live with them? Would he approve? Could she do this? Was Bailey just coming to live with her because she figured she could get away with her outrageous antics there? Would she steal from Jean, hurt her? She could hear those last questions in Wayne’s voice.

And soon she would hear Dorothy’s voice over the noise of the highway outside their window, drifting through the pitch-dark motel room.

“Jean?”

“Yeah?”

“You awake?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Me either.”

There was a pause; then she heard the rattle of the air-conditioning in the unit next door coming on.

“Jean?”

“Yeah.”

“I miss them. The boys. Can you believe it?”

“Yes, of course I can.”

“They’re not all bad. I know people think they are. But they can be so loving too. They’re my boys. Do you know they make me breakfast in bed every year on my birthday? Every year. Never missed one. Bad boys wouldn’t do that, would they?”

Jean thought it over. One of the many things she’d learned over the past couple of months with her daughter, and Curt, and especially Bailey, was that nobody was ever all bad. “I can see that,” she said. “Noah’s a good lifeguard.”

Dorothy chuckled. “It’s easy to be good when you don’t have anyone to actually save. I don’t know how he even got the job. I had no idea he even had a lifeguard certificate. I wouldn’t be surprised if he faked one.”

Jean turned to her side and fluffed the pillow up under her cheek. “Oh, God, that’s terrible.”

“But it’s not, really. Noah would never let anything bad happen to an innocent person. He’d drown with them.”

“Well, ideally, nobody drowns,” Jean said, though in the back of her head she was thinking how swimming was a lot like life that way. Nobody expected to be the one at the bottom of the pool, reaching for a hand to pull him up for air. Nobody expected to be the one who didn’t make it.

On the third day, when Bailey was released, Curt found Laura at the Blue Serenity Rehabilitation Center again. She was in bad shape, they told him. She was at her rock bottom, they told him. She wouldn’t see him, they told him.

But Bailey had requested to visit her mother one last time, and Jean had taken her. When Bailey finished up there, she was in no mood to talk, so they’d gone ahead and hit the road. Bailey didn’t say good-bye to Curt; she just leaned over against the car door and fell asleep. She remained that way the entire ride home.

Likewise, Dorothy fell asleep within an hour. Jean stopped at a gas station, picked up a bag of candy-coated licorice, and kept herself awake with talk radio and sweets, her excitement and fear growing every mile they got closer to home.

This time, Bailey didn’t stand around in the entryway, pouting. She grabbed the largest suitcase and her pillow and blanket and headed right up to her bedroom. She came back down and got her other things, one box at a time, and hefted each one up on her own.

Jean drifted into her bedroom and opened Wayne’s top drawer. She sifted through the treasures inside until she found what she was looking for: a photo of Wayne holding baby Bailey, a stern-faced Laura peering over his shoulder. Jean could remember the day so clearly. Whereas she worried about silly things like how the word
grandma
made her sound old, Wayne was nothing but proud to be a grandfather. He handed out chocolates to his friends; he told every cashier and waiter along the way to St. Louis that he had a new grandbaby and that she had his eyes. He couldn’t wait to hold her.

Of course, Laura had Bailey’s naptimes so carefully controlled, they scarcely got to see the child, and this was the only photo of Wayne holding her. He’d kept it in his top desk drawer. He’d looked at it often.

He would approve of Bailey’s new living arrangement. Jean knew that now.

“Hey,” Jean heard, softly, from the doorway. She turned to find Bailey standing just outside.

“Is something wrong?” Jean asked, lowering the picture into her lap.

Bailey shook her head, then nodded. “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“This. Moving in with someone I don’t really know, and I’m, like, really far away from my mom, and I don’t know if I’m supposed to love her or hate her or . . .” She shrugged again.

“Or miss her?” Jean asked, and Bailey nodded. “For what it’s worth, it’s a little weird for me too,” Jean said, and when she moved her hand, the photo caught Bailey’s eye. She stepped into the room and tentatively lowered herself next to Jean on the bed.

“Who’s that?” she asked.

Jean frowned. “You don’t remember Grandpa Wayne?”

Bailey squinted at the photo. “Maybe,” she said. “He had glasses, right?” Jean gave a sheepish grin, and Bailey took in a short breath. “Oh, right. I forgot about that. Those were his. Can I see?” She held out her hand, and Jean passed the photo to her. Bailey ran her fingers over the image. “I was tiny,” she said. “At least I think that’s me. Am I right?”

“Our only grandchild,” Jean said. “He was very excited.”

Bailey looked for a moment more, running her fingers over Laura, and then using her forefinger to blot out Laura’s face. “At least someone was.”

“Bailey, I know your mother loves you. She’s just . . .” Jean trailed off. She didn’t know how to finish the sentence. Laura was “just” so many things.

“Selfish?” Bailey finished for her, and Jean had to admit, at least to herself, that
selfish
was one of the traits she would use to describe her daughter.
Entitled
was another.

She nodded. “Yes, I suppose she is.”

“But she’s also wonderful sometimes,” Bailey said. “Everyone wants to be like her. I wanted to, for sure. But not anymore.”

Jean could see tears glisten in the corners of her granddaughter’s eyes once again, and could see Bailey tremble with the effort to keep them in. She wondered what it must have felt like to be Bailey—to be in constant pain and always trying to control it, always trying to maintain it.

Actually, Jean realized, she knew exactly what that felt like.

She stood and walked to the dresser, motioning for Bailey to join her. Bailey got up and crept to the drawer, peering in timidly.

“You know what this is?” Jean asked, and Bailey shook her head. “This is my Crying Time drawer. These are the memories I keep of Wayne, and once a day, for one hour, I get them out and I look through them and cry over him and I just allow myself to feel terrible. But when my hour is up, I put them away and close the drawer. Crying Time over. The rest of the day is all about getting on with my life.”

Bailey reached in and touched some objects. She picked up the pinky ring and turned it over in her hand. She felt his wallet, wore his glasses. While she did, Jean rifled through the old photos until she found half a dozen of Wayne with Laura. She held them out to Bailey.

“If you want, you can have a Crying Time too. It might help you decide how you really feel about her. And it will be okay for you, for that one hour a day, to miss her. And to cry for her.”

Bailey seemed to stare at the stack of photos for an incredibly long time. So long, in fact, Jean was sure she wouldn’t take them and would leave Jean standing there, holding them forever. But just as Jean was getting ready to put them back in the dresser, Bailey reached out with a trembling hand and took them.

“Thank you,” she whispered, and Jean could see that the tears had finally spilled over. It broke Jean’s heart to finally see the tough exterior on her granddaughter begin to crumble. She had seen lots of emotions on her granddaughter—defiance, insolence, anger, hatred—but this was her first hint of sadness.

“You’re welcome,” she said.

Bailey started back toward the door, sniffling and swiping at her spilled tears with one hand while staring down at the photos that she held in the other. She left the room, and Jean closed the drawer, feeling a pang of loss over having given the photos away, but not necessarily a loss that wasn’t balanced out by a huge gain.

Just as Jean closed the drawer, Bailey came back down the hall and leaned in the bedroom doorway.

“Can I ask you for a favor?”

“Sure. Anything,” Jean said.

“Can I redecorate my room? Those bears are really stupid.”

Jean laughed. “Of course you can,” she said. “It’s your room now.”

“S
top fidgeting,” Bailey whispered, leaning over to Jean, who had barely touched her wine.

Mitzi broke away from Loretta and Dorothy’s conversation. She turned the stem of her glass between her thumb and forefinger. “What are you so nervous about, anyway?” she asked.

“I’ve never had a celebrity in my house before,” Jean said, and her stomach rumbled. The roast lamb that she’d made for the special occasion had overcooked, and the longer it sat on top of the stove, resting, waiting, the worse Jean feared it would taste. Dry. It was going to be dry. Rubbery. Tough. She should have known better than to try something fancy. What on earth had she been thinking? She was hardly a chef, and to try to imagine herself as one was ridiculous. She should have stuck with her capers.

Even Bailey had tried to talk her out of it. “Don’t make anything special for him,” she’d said. “Serve bologna sandwiches. On stale bread. He’ll probably like having something to complain about.”

But had Jean listened? No, of course not. And now a Pulitzer Prize–winning author was going to be chewing on cardboard lamb in her dining room. Correction: a Pulitzer Prize–winning author was going to first have to step over the purplish stain and wine-bottle dent on her kitchen floor before chewing on cardboard lamb in her dining room. Dear God, why had she agreed to this?

By this time, Dorothy and Loretta’s attention had been grabbed too.

“He’s just a normal person,” Dorothy said. “Pants on one leg at a time and all that, you know.”

“Speaking of pants,” Mitzi said, “I saw your boy Leonard the other day. Had his pants hanging half down his ass. You should tell him to pull those up, Dot.”

“Oh, trust me, not a day goes by that I don’t. But, hey, if you think you can reason with him better than I can, I wholeheartedly invite you to try.” Jean caught a flick of Dorothy’s eye and remembered the conversation they’d had in the car on the way to St. Louis. Was Dorothy feeling judged right now? Most certainly. But was she letting it roll a little too? Jean thought so.

“Who said anything about reason?” Mitzi said. “I’ll just come up behind him and give him a wedgie till he sings soprano.”

Dorothy laughed. “His dad used to sing, way back in junior high. I remember. His voice was so high, and we didn’t have enough sopranos, so they had him sing with them. It was the funniest thing. He was so embarrassed, and all the boys in school gave him so much trouble over it. They called him Elaine instead of Elan.”

“See? I’d just be helping Leonard relate to his dad on another level. Leonetta and Elaine.” She leaned over the table and clinked glasses with Dorothy, triumphant.

“This is ridiculous,” Mitzi said, checking her watch. “I’m starving over here. I say we should eat. He’s not the pope.”

“Even if he was the pope, you’d still eat,” May said.

“Only after saying the blessing,” Mitzi answered. “Come on, Jean—everything’s getting cold. What if he doesn’t show up? He’s just the type to not show up.”

They all looked at their hostess, who was growing paler by the minute. She’d fidgeted with her book so much, she’d torn a corner of the cover off, and then had been beset with fear that he would notice and would lay into her for not respecting his book. Why? Why, in the name of the universe, had she let Bailey talk her into this?

Bailey scooted her chair back and stood up. “I don’t have any problem with eating. Show up late, don’t get food—that’s my motto.”

“He’ll be expecting us to eat all the food anyway,” a voice said from the end of the table, and everyone stopped and peered down at Janet, who was shaking with terror at having spoken aloud. She mashed her lips together a few times, chewing on the bottom one, then said, “He thinks women are all fat useless creatures. I mean . . .” She paused, swallowed, and Jean had an urge to go to her, to put her arm around her and tell her it was okay, she could keep talking. “It’s all in the book. You just have to read between the lines.”

Loretta made a
pfft
noise. “Not too in between, and, yes, I totally agree with you.”

Mitzi leaned her elbows, clad in a brown and maroon embroidered jacket that looked more like tapestry than clothing, on the table. “What do you bet his mother is fat? Or whoever raised him. I agree with Janet—he’s got a vendetta. If you read between the lines in this book, he’s basically saying all women are whores until they become moms, and then they’re fat, lazy whores, screwing not for money, but for timeshares and expensive cars and designer onesies for their babies. Nobody who was raised right really believes that, do they?”

Dorothy, who had been standing, plopped back into her chair. “Hell, even my boys don’t believe that. Even Topher, when he’s not in prison, treats his girls like queens.”

“I was more struck with Thackeray’s interpretation of Josie, the bandleader. Could he have described her as being any uglier?” Mitzi complained.

“He had gnats swarming her in that one band camp scene, for goodness’ sake,” Loretta pointed out, and Mitzi nodded in agreement.

“See? Who does that? He hates women. He’s going to take one step in here, sense our ovaries, and hiss and melt into a pile of bloody goo, like a vampire in sunlight.”

“Mmm, yummy description, Mitzi. Let’s eat,” May said, and they all stood up and made a beeline for the buffet. Jean hurried in to cut the lamb and arrange it on a tray, and was pleased to see a little juice and blood run out onto the china as she did.

But before she could get herself a plate, there was the sound of a car door slamming, followed by the clack of dress shoes coming up the front walk, then a man’s cough. Jean’s heart seized, and she stood motionless, a serving fork in one hand.

Everyone else had just gotten settled when the doorbell sounded.

“He’s here,” Jean heard Bailey say, and then heard the scrape of Bailey’s chair being pushed back. On one hand, Jean was grateful to her granddaughter for answering the door, as she seemed to be frozen in place and completely incapable of doing anything other than listen to her heartbeat at the moment. But on the other hand . . . Oh, Lord, Bailey was answering the door.

Jean heard the door pull open, and heard hushed whispers coming from the table, along with intermittent scraping and clanging of forks on china (yes, she had even brought out Grandma Vison’s good china for the occasion—plates she’d only ever used on Thanksgiving and Christmas), and then the hum of a male’s voice heading toward the kitchen. Jean noticed some of the ladies craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the Great R. Sebastian Thackeray III as he made his way into the kitchen.

Jean dropped the fork she was holding with a clatter onto the dish below it. She jumped into action, rushing to the man and holding out her hands as if to take something, which he did not have.

“Welcome,” she said. “I’m Jean.”

The man, who was incredibly short and stout, a block of pudge and excess skin balanced on two fire hydrant legs, came in, scowling. Bailey was following, a smug smirk on her face. Jean dreaded to think about what might have already been said, and silently pleaded with Bailey to say nothing more. The man’s eyes darted around balefully, his swollen lips overly wet.

“Smells like a short-order cafeteria in here,” he said. He wrinkled his nose. “Old grease and unfounded opinions all balled up into one oppressive feast for the senses.”

Jean’s mouth flapped shut. She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Was he insulting the smell of her house? She honestly couldn’t tell.

“You can take my jacket,” he said, pulling off his sport coat and holding it out toward her between his index and middle fingers, as if he might drop it at any second, and if she wasn’t prepared to catch it, God help her.

Jean grasped the jacket and hung it on the coat hooks on the kitchen wall, her hand bumping up against the little vase that sat on the shelf above, nearly knocking it off. She stopped its lazy roll with one palm.

“Please help yourself to some dinner,” she said. “Plates are over there. And we have wine on the table. Or would you like something else?”

He sneered. “Mmm, supermarket wine, how could I resist? Twist top, I presume?”

Jean blinked. This time she was sure he was insulting her. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Did you have any trouble finding us?” she asked, going through every Polite Hostess effort in her repertoire. Bailey disappeared into the dining room. The author picked up a plate and proceeded to serve himself, fastidiously, almost daintily.

“I once traveled through Turkey for two weeks, alone, with nothing but an American Express and a pocketful of lira,” he said in a recitation voice that boomed so loud, even the soft noise in the dining room stopped. “I have lived twenty years in New York City, and never once have I gotten lost.” He spooned some of Mitzi’s hash brown casserole onto his plate, then glanced up with a grin that was not altogether friendly. “I think I can handle suburbia with aplomb,” he said.

“Oh. Okay,” Jean said, and, not knowing what else to say to or do for this curious little man, she edged into the dining room, loitering in the doorway until he finally made his way over, his plate nearly overflowing with food. He had taken some of everything, Jean noted, except for her lamb.

“So,” he said, settling into a chair and scooting up toward the table. Mitzi leaned forward and poured him a glass of wine. “What have I missed? Gossip, no doubt. Whom are we hating today? Supermodels? The Real Housewives of Missour
ah
? One another?” He crammed a huge bite of potatoes into his mouth.

“You,” Bailey whispered at Jean’s side, and Jean shot her a look. Bailey went wide-eyed and shrugged.

Thackeray didn’t notice. He ate another spoonful, and then another, everyone else around the table pausing to stare.

Finally, he licked his lips, swilled some wine, and gazed around the table. “So, are we here to talk or what?”

Uncomfortable, Jean shifted, knowing there was no way she was going to eat any of the food she’d put on her plate, not that she’d brought her plate into the dining room anyway. In her haste to make everything perfect for Thackeray, she’d accidentally left it on the kitchen counter. She cleared her throat. “We actually read
Blame
a couple months ago. But we had such a lively discussion about it, we thought it would be interesting to get the author’s viewpoint on the story.”

He motioned to Jean with his fork. “Yes, your granddaughter told me as much. You don’t look so bad for a dying woman, by the way.” He shoveled more food into his mouth.

Jean glanced over at Bailey, who blushed deeply. “Sorry,” Bailey mumbled. “I kinda lied to get him here.”

“It didn’t work,” he said. “I knew she was full of shit from the moment I read the first e-mail. She had that certain adolescent entitlement about her, that certain fuck-you-ish-ness that makes teenagers so very charming to be around.”

Jean could see Bailey’s face transform from blushing embarrassment to glaring anger. She knew that look all too well. Until recently, it was the only look Jean had ever seen on her granddaughter. She knew that Thackeray had better watch his step, or he would find out just how much “fuck-you-ish-ness,” as he so indelicately put it, Bailey had in her.

“But . . . I have to appreciate anyone who will offer up her family on a silver platter to a word whore such as myself. A voyeur of strife. A stealer of pain. I’m hoping, though not hopeful—and yes, there is a difference—that she wasn’t lying about that. Where’s the alcoholic mother?”

At this point, Jean and the others were so confused, they could do nothing but exchange puzzled glances, but Jean felt Bailey stiffen next to her.

“She’s in rehab,” Bailey said.

“Oh, ho!” Thackeray crowed, throwing his head back. “It’s too perfect! The drunkard mother can’t be properly denigrated because she’s in rehab, drying out. I couldn’t have written it better myself.” He pointed to Jean again with his fork. “And I am assuming this . . . dying grandmother . . . of yours is the one whose husband died?”

Jean sat up ramrod-straight. What all had Bailey told him about her?

Bailey nodded, her mouth working silently around words only she could hear.

He shrugged. “Kind of a boring story. People die all the time. But I suppose I could use your extreme passion for the boring and ordinary for a twist. To never leave the dead one’s side, to pine until you’d pined yourself into a pine box. To forget how to live because you watched him die. Oh, how beautifully poetic. The dramatic irony is killing me.” He gulped more wine, closed his eyes as if to enjoy whatever scene it was he had set in his mind. “Do they actually call people ‘widder’ in Missouri, or is that just how I imagine it to be? As in ‘Widder Jones’? Ah, never mind. I can make it work even if they don’t really say it. I can make the whole world believe it, that this Widder . . . What was your last name again?”

He snapped his fingers at Jean, and she answered, the response popping out of her mouth before her brain could even unscramble everything he was saying. He spoke in such riddles, she had a hard time making sense of it all. “Vison.”

“The old Widder Vison,” only he said it
vah-son
, “rattling around her drafty house, desperately alone and lonely, only to discover that her Mr. Perfect—or should I say Mr. Perfectly Dead—had a long-term affair. Tell me, Widder Vison, how well do you think you know your dear, old, dead husband?”

“Very well,” Jean responded icily. This time she understood perfectly what he was getting at, and she felt something dangerous well up inside her, felt herself sit up straighter, defensively. This man knew nothing about her, about Wayne. Who was he to suppose anything about their lives?

“So how did it feel when you discovered that Mr. Perfect had taken a gay lover?”

Jean gasped. “He never did!”

“Ahhh, the dear widder has a touch of the bigotry,” he said, elongating his words in a crude interpretation of a Midwest accent.

Jean tried to chuckle, but what came out sounded so mirthless, she couldn’t really classify it as much of anything more than a grunt. “Oh, please,” she said.

“Not a denial, Widder,” he retorted, gleefully tucking a deviled egg into his mouth.