The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls (24 page)

“I’m sure all four of you are having a difficult time,” she said. “It’s going to be hard for quite a while.” A breeze cut through the screens above our heads. “But I want you to know that I felt proud of you when”—my mother stopped and took a breath—“when I found out how hard you tried to save him.”

“Don’t,” I said.

“Nine minutes,” my mother said. “You tried to breathe for him for nine minutes, until the paramedics got there.”

“It didn’t work, though,” I said. I leaned against her.

“He was under the water too long,” she said. “But you tried. You kept your wits about you. I think that was heroic.”

“It wasn’t,” I said. I was not heroic. I was not a heroine. I tugged at the loose thread on my shirt. “It wasn’t the ending I wanted.”

“No.” My mother took my hand away from the thread I was pulling. “I don’t want you unraveling,” she said.

We sat on the wicker couch for a while. My mother suggested that we order a pizza, and I agreed that we should. But neither one of us moved.

I didn’t intend to tell her the entire story. I just wanted to tell her one thing: what Jeff had looked like—helpless and lost, with his head thrown back—when we managed to drag him out of the pool. But then I ended up telling her about the first time I’d met him, about how he’d shown up with CeeCee that night at my bedroom window. I told
her about CeeCee piercing my ear in a moving car while Jeff drove us both to the mini-putt, and then I told her about the night I’d gotten drunk on the way to Wallis’s, and about Jeff (who had started to seem like a nicer person, now that I was describing him) driving me to CeeCee’s after I fell from the tower. I told her I had seen Wallis and her mother that night, and I had talked to Dr. Ramsan about hallucinations. I told her CeeCee was dyslexic, which was probably why our relationship started, because she had asked me to read to her from
Frankenstein
. My mother didn’t interrupt or ask questions, so I didn’t stop; I was a flood of words moving downhill. I told her about the blog and about Wallis’s picture, and about how I had jumped to conclusions because I thought I’d seen a gun. I described Wallis’s scar. I told her about CeeCee telling me I should find out who my father was, and about Jill’s parents picking her out of a lineup of babies, as one in a million. And because she still didn’t stop me or interrupt, I told my mother I hated our question-and-answer sessions and I’d read my aunt Beatrice’s email, and though I’d always known that no one had planned on me or wanted me, I never used to think of myself as a mistake—but I obviously was one. I told her Jill knew she wanted to be a nurse and Wallis was already a genius and CeeCee would probably become a millionaire in Paris and Liz would soon be coming home to West New Hope having transformed herself into an expert in all things outdoors—but I would be … nothing. I was the only person on the planet who walked through the world all day feeling incomplete. I wanted to be smart and to be a serious person, but I was
impressionable and susceptible and absurd, and I knew my mother would never be proud of me because I couldn’t make sense of things the way people did in books; and I felt terrible about Jeff and I was sorry about everything I had ruined, but I had just wanted to be part of a story; I wanted to be a person who had a story to tell.

My mother waited until I was finished. Then she lifted her feet off the floor and moved the pillows around on the couch and gently nudged me aside with her hip so we were both lying down. She said, “You were not a mistake.” Then she said it again. “You are not a mistake. I have always loved you. And you are not a person without a story. You are Adrienne Haus.”

I pushed my face into the crook of her neck. “We shouldn’t have gone to the pool,” I said.

We lay still without talking for a while.

My mother said, “I’m sorry about the question-and-answer sessions. We’ll find a better way to communicate.”

I couldn’t speak. I had run out of words.

“And I know what you mean about feeling incomplete,” she said. “I feel that way sometimes. Restless, I guess. I feel like I’m searching. As if I’m groping around in the dark. But usually, the thing I’m looking for is right here.”

“What’s the thing you’re looking for?” I asked.

Our feet were touching. My feet were bigger than hers, I noticed. But they had the same shape, the second toe longer than the first.

My mother said, “You.”

19. EPILOGUE: The last part of a book, kind of like a PS that might hint at the future of the characters
.

T
hat night after dinner, I took
The Awakening
out to the porch. I suspected things weren’t going to end very well for Edna, but it seemed only fair that I see her story through. The overhead light turned the pages yellow. Cicadas hurled their knobby bodies against the screens.

My mother had taken a plate of brownies to our neighbors, who had just tied a cluster of blue balloons to their mailbox that announced:
IT’S A BOY!
She’d been gone about fifteen minutes when, turning the final page of the book, I saw a small white truck pull in the drive.

Wallis got out on the passenger side. She saw me on the porch and walked up the back sidewalk.

“I thought you left town already,” I said, getting up.

“We’re leaving now. I came to return these to you.” She held out copies of
The Left Hand of Darkness
and
The Awakening
.

I opened the screen door and stepped out. Looking past her, I could see that the white truck was packed with boxes. Wallis’s mother (that had to be her mother, didn’t it?) was behind the wheel. I waved to her as if to say,
No hard feelings about my being drunk at your house that night and thinking you were insane
, but she was wearing oversized dark glasses and didn’t seem to be looking in my direction.

“Did you finish
The Awakening
?” I asked Wallis.

She said she had. “Tell your mother thanks for the books.” She turned to leave.

“It was a weird coincidence, wasn’t it?” I asked. “What happened in the book and what happened to Jeff? I know it was an accident.”

“I have to go,” Wallis said. The truck’s motor was running.

I didn’t want her to leave. “I keep going over it in my head,” I told her. “If he hadn’t been drunk, or if we hadn’t panicked and run when we saw the headlights—”

Wallis blinked. The lens in one side of her glasses was scratched.

“He was running behind us,” I said. “And I realized later that he must have tripped over my shoes. I left my shoes in front of the baby pool and he probably tripped on them and that’s why he’s dead. You’re the only person I’ve told.”

“I need to get going,” Wallis said.

“Right. Okay.” Feeling awkward, I patted her arm. “I hope things go well for you in Connecticut. I hope you find another book club.”

She started walking away.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t a nicer person to you, Wallis,” I said. “I’m sorry I imagined things about you that weren’t true.”

She had reached the driveway but turned around. “He didn’t trip over your shoes,” she said. She scratched her leg. “He tripped over one of the life preservers.”

I watched her climb up into the truck. When she closed the door, I said, as if to myself, “But we didn’t see him fall. We were already in the locker room. If we had seen him trip and fall—” Wallis didn’t look in my direction when they drove away.

My mother got back about twenty minutes later. “New babies smell wonderful,” she said. “Did you finish the book?”

I said that I had, and we talked about Edna Pontellier for a little while. We agreed that the other characters in the novel had wanted to script her life for her, when what she wanted was the chance to write it herself.

We saw a flash of orange and heard a terrified squeal in the bushes.

“There won’t be a living bird or chipmunk left within a hundred yards of this house by the end of August,” my mother said. She saw the books Wallis had returned. “Did they stop by while I was gone?” she asked.

I said that they had.

“It’s too bad they needed to leave town,” my mother said. “I wonder what sort of job her mother got in Utah.”

“They went to Connecticut,” I said.

“No, her mother definitely said Utah,” my mother said. “I spoke to her at the funeral.”

“She was there?” I asked.

“At the back of the church, all by herself,” my mother said. “I offered to bring them dinner while they were packing, but she said no. She was a bit … eccentric. Skittish.” She stacked “The Yellow Wallpaper” and
Frankenstein
and
The Left Hand of Darkness
and
The House on Mango Street
and
The Awakening
on top of each other.

I looked at the driveway where the truck had been.

“Let’s read one final book together,” my mother said. “Just you and me. Maybe something by Jane Austen this time.
Pride and Prejudice
? Or
Northanger Abbey
?”

“Next summer,” I said.

I straightened the books on the table between us. Edna and Esperanza and Genly and Frankenstein’s monster and the crazy woman in the yellow room: it seemed they all wanted to tell me something. They wanted to talk to me about this person named Adrienne Haus. They wanted Adrienne to tell them a story about the things that had happened to her over the summer.

I opened my laptop.

“What are you doing?” my mother asked.

“I have an idea for that essay I have to write,” I said.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chopin, Kate.
The Awakening and Selected Stories of Kate Chopin
, Barbara H. Solomon, editor. New York: Signet Classics/New American Library, 1976.

This book is about Edna Pontellier, who lived near New Orleans, where it was incredibly hot (like West New Hope in the summer). Maybe because she got annoyed with her husband, who
was
pretty annoying, she flirted with Robert and then slept with Arobin, who was a total weasel.

Cisneros, Sandra.
The House on Mango Street
. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.

This is the newest of the books we read. If you’re a girl reading this book, you’re obviously supposed to identify with the narrator, Esperanza, but I identified more with Genly Ai in
The Left Hand of Darkness
. This book is written in tiny pieces, as if somebody took it outside, put it on a rock, and smacked it with a hammer.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Wilder Publications, 2011.

I’m glad everybody in class had to read this book. In fact, if there were a list of books that every single person on the planet had to read, I think this should be on it. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is about a person who is going crazy because her husband thinks he knows what is best for her. Maybe that’s the lesson we’re supposed to take from all of these books: you have to think for yourself. (On the other hand, I don’t think books should make you feel like you’re learning lessons.)

Le Guin, Ursula K.
The Left Hand of Darkness
. New York: Ace Science Fiction Books, 1986.

Even at the beginning of this book when he is uptight and a bit of a jerk, I really liked Genly. I liked Estraven, too. I liked the way that at first they seemed to be enemies, but gradually they got closer. My mother says that some books are good no matter when you read them, and some are good at a particular moment; they come into your life at just the right time.

Shelley, Mary.
Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus
. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Frankenstein
is a book about a nameless monster. Everybody thinks the monster’s name is Frankenstein, but that’s actually the name of the guy who sews him together. I think if the monster were alive today, and he had to sit in the audience (I picture him wearing a really nice tux), clapping and smiling while his creator got all the credit, he would be pissed off.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to my agent, Lisa Bankoff, for her steadfast support, and to my editors at Delacorte Press, Michelle Poploff and Rebecca Short, for their gracious hands-on expertise.

Thanks to Kate DiCamillo for her kindness and encouragement during moments of doubt, to Swati Avasthi for her generosity and insight, and to Mary François Rockcastle for that hilarious weekend at the cabin.

Thanks to the members of the many groups of which I have been a part: the book club (now in its twenty-second year!), the WWW writers’ group, the lacrosse team, the basketball league, and JWIRL. Even when books are not directly involved, I do appreciate being invited into a group.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Julie Schumacher grew up in Delaware and spent her summers losing herself by reading books near the pool or the ocean. She is the author of
Black Box
, an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults;
The Book of One Hundred Truths;
and
The Chain Letter
, among other books. She directs the creative writing program at the University of Minnesota.