The Accidental Book Club (16 page)

She didn’t know. She couldn’t know, because she’d been dealt this life, and it was the only one she was going to get, whether it was fair or not.

“We should go,” May finally said, and Jean tried, with great effort, to put on her best hostess smile, as if a puddle of dark wine weren’t staining her hardwood at that very moment. Loretta tossed a handful of napkins on the mess and started to crouch down, but Jean told her to leave it.

“It’s okay,” Jean said. “I’ll handle it.”

She expected Loretta to say something witty, something about handling Flavian Munney or who knew what else, but instead, she just pressed her lips together and grabbed her oyster bucket, patting Jean’s back twice on her way out. Jean knew it was bad when even Loretta Murphy didn’t know what to say.

“We’ll do an e-mail vote on the next book,” Jean said, trying to keep some semblance of protocol as she followed the ladies toward the door. This was the second time in as many months that they’d been unable to choose a book because their meeting had been destroyed by Jean’s family problems, and she hated it.

“Maybe we should skip a month, give you some time to get things . . . worked out,” May said, and sweet May smiled at Jean in a way that made Jean feel pitied, which only deepened Jean’s guilt and humiliation.

Everyone seemed to get out of the house in record time, and it wasn’t until Jean shut the door and turned back to the kitchen and dining room that she could see that all the plates were still on the table. It seemed like they left quickly because they had.

She grabbed a black towel out of the guest bathroom, carried it over to the puddle, and threw it on top. She crouched next to it and watched as the towel sank into the liquid. It smelled terrible, so concentrated, so bitter.

She sank backward onto her bottom, her back leaning against the island, and closed her eyes. The ladies were probably gathering in Loretta’s house right now, speculating, feeling sorry for her, talking about what she should do, talking about her family. She loved the ladies, but having them witness this dark moment of hers felt so personal, and she didn’t like it.

She didn’t like any of it, actually. Her carefully constructed life, the control that she’d taken after Wayne’s death . . . It was all falling apart on her. She was crying every day again; she was yelling at her granddaughter in front of the book club. She felt on the verge of something, as if she never got it right and as if she never would.

She opened her eyes and reached forward to wipe up the rest of the wine with the now-soaked towel. The damage to the floor was worse than she thought it might be. The wine had left a light purple stain, gray against the brown floor, and in the middle of it was a deep chunk taken out of the wood, presumably where the bottle hit. Jean picked splinters out of the gouge, and it was then that the tears started.

She pulled herself up and got the dustpan and trash can from the mudroom, then brought them back to the damage, hiccupping and emitting loud, wet snorts the entire time. She picked up big hunks of glass and tossed them into the can, mumbling to herself, mostly angry, self-pitying words like
unfair
and
give up
.

And then she heard the front door open and close again softly. At first she thought it must be Loretta, back to check up on her, but she was crying too hard to call out.

But a pair of black flip-flops and blue, shimmery toenails, the polish chipped, came into view. Bailey. Without a word, Bailey crouched down next to Jean. She picked up a large chunk of glass and tossed it into the garbage pail, then picked up and threw away another and another.

She never spoke. She never apologized or cried or raged or did any of the things Jean would expect her to do. Slowly, Jean’s tears stopped, and she went back to work picking up the glass, sweeping smaller pieces into the dustpan with the edge of the towel, working side by side with her granddaughter.

At one point, she glanced up at Bailey, whose eyes flicked up and shone from behind her hair. But they only stared at each other for that one short beat, something passing between them, some unspoken sentence, some truth that neither of them could put into words but that both of them understood, and then they went back to their cleaning.

Once they had finished their work and the glass shards had been all thrown away, the towel had been wadded up and readied to toss in the wash, and all that remained was the gray stain and the hole in the floor, Bailey stood and walked steadily to her room.

She did not slam the door.

Dear Mr. Thackeray:

My name is Bailey Butler. I’m sixteen, and recently my grandma’s book club read your book
Blame
. We had so many things to discuss about it, and we still ended up with lots of unanswered questions. We would like to speak with you about it, so you can help us understand the true meaning behind your work. I know you do the hermit thing, but would you please be willing to consider stopping by our book club sometime? We have great food.

Sincerely,
Bailey Butler

Dear Fan:

Thank you for reading my book. Due to time constraints, I am unable to answer reader correspondence individually. Please feel free to visit my publisher’s Web site for more information about where to find my books.

Sincerely,
R. Sebastian Thackeray III, Author

Dear Mr. Thackeray:

I know you can’t answer every single e-mail, but this one is different, I promise.

You see, my grandmother is dying, and you’re her favorite author of all time. She has all your books, and she rereads them all, over and over again, during her dialysis treatments.

She wants the chance to tell you in person how much she admires your work before she goes. Think of this as one of those wish thingies they do for dying kids.

Sincerely,
Bailey A. Butler I

Dear Fan:

Thank you for reading my book. Due to time constraints, I am unable to answer reader correspondence individually. Please feel free to visit my publisher’s Web site for more information about where to find my books.

Sincerely,
R. Sebastian Thackeray III, Author

Dear Mr. Thackeray:

I’m not giving up. My grandmother is now losing her eyesight. She may not be able to see very much longer and won’t be able to read your books, so telling me where to find more of them is pointless.

Please come before it’s too late. Do it for me, a mere child who’s going to miss her grandmammy something fierce.

Sincerely,
Bailey Butler

Dear Fan:

Thank you for inquiring about my books. Please check my publisher’s Web site for a listing of Braille versions of my work.

Sincerely,
R. Sebastian Thackeray III, Author

Dear Thack:

Is it okay if I call you Thack? I think we’ve e-mailed back and forth enough times now for me to call you Thack. Or to call you R. What does R stand for, anyway? Robert? Randolph? Rufus? You look like a Rufus.

So here’s the deal. The doctors think she may only have a few months left. This is her last chance to meet her idol. I know you’re a decent guy. And I know you say you don’t do fan mail, but I think you actually do. I think you actually do because deep down inside you care. No, I don’t think it. I know it. Because I can read it between the lines in your books.

Please let my grandmother tell you how much she loves you. Come to our meeting. You can meet my grandma’s dog, Riptide (named, of course, after your 1994 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel).

Hey. Maybe that’s what your R stands for?

Sincerely,
Bailey Butler

Dear Fan:

Thank you for reading
Riptide
. For more information on author appearances, please consult my publisher’s Web site.

Sincerely,
R. Sebastian Thackeray III, Author

Howdy, Thack!

Boy, I do feel we’re having a major connection right now, don’t you? I mean, the way you keep pointing me to your publisher’s web site? So intimate! I feel so very taken care of!

So here’s the deal, Thack. I know you’re seeing these e-mails. I also know you’re pretending this is some random-e-mail-answering generator you’ve got set up here, but I’m not fooled.

I know you’re reading them, and I know you’re reading them specifically because you like hearing how awesome my grandma thinks you are.

And she does. The poor, old, coughing, choking, last-breath-shuddering lady really, really does.

You can find out in person when you show up at our book club.

It would probably give her a heart attack to see you and put her out of her pain and misery sooner.

Please say yes.

Sincerely,
Bailey

Dear Fan:

Thank you for reading my book. This is an automatic e-mail generator. Please do not respond. I’ve already told you where to look for further information.

Sincerely,
R. Sebastian Thackeray III, Author

Thack, Thack, Thack:

Did you actually read that last email before you hit send?

I know you’re reading this. You know you want to meet with us. You know you want to make my granny’s dying wishes come true. The cancer is spreading. Think of poor little Riptide, man (photo attached)!

Think of me, your biggest fan.

Sincerely,
Bailey

Dear Fan:

Cut the crap. Your grandmother isn’t dying. That dog was on
America’s Funniest Home Videos
last night. You took a screen shot.

Sincerely,
MR. R. Sebastian Thackeray III, Author

Dear
MISTER
Thackeray:

Okay, you caught me. Nobody is dying. Except me. I’m dying to talk to you about your book. We all are. You’ll like Kansas City in summertime. We’ll have barbecue. We’ll buy you beer. Or hookers. Or whatever it is you like to have when you’re on tour. Cocaine? Prozac? Bombs? You never know.

So here’s the skinny. Straight up. My grandma’s book club read your book, and so did I. And, Thack, if you intended to move us, you totally did. You made us think. You made us have capital-letter Things to Say. But some of those things can only be asked of and said to the author, and since you’re the author, that’s you.

I’m sure authors get asked for a lot of stuff. Free books, bookmarks, pens, research papers, put me in a book, whatever. But it can’t be every day that you get a heartfelt e-mail from a sixteen-year-old fan, offering you hookers and cocaine to just talk to her dying granny’s book club for thirty minutes. Even if the granny isn’t exactly dying.

Although I suppose you never know when your number is gonna come up, right?

Say yes.

Sincerely,
Bailey

To Whom It May Concern:

“You never know when your number is gonna come up, right?”

Is that a threat?

Listen, I don’t know what your game is, or what you really want from me, but please cease and desist all contact immediately, or I shall get my lawyers involved.

R. Sebastian Thackeray III, Author

Thack (Rufus):

You can’t really think I was threatening you. What is a half-crazed sixteen-year-old going to do to you? And did you really use “shall” in a sentence? You do know this is the twenty-first century, right?

Okay, okay, okay. I’ll lay my cards out on the table. I’m desperate.

I’m an orphan.

Who can deny an orphan?

You know you want to say yes. So just say it.

Bailey

Bailey:

Now this is just getting funny.

And, ah yes, I understand the game now. You are not the first fan to try to shake me down. I am a millionaire. That’s what comes with putting in the time and effort and work to become famous. But of course fame comes with crazed fans who think I have a desire to share my money with everyone else, especially bottom-feeding extortionists such as you. I can only imagine you have a stun gun and ransom note at the ready.

Please leave me alone, or I will be forced to forward your next correspondence to the Kansas City Police Department.

Sincerely,
Thackeray

Sebastian:

You are so way off, it’s not even funny. I have no stun gun, no ransom note, no snarling pit bull or handcuffs and doggy collar.

And I am an orphan. Not like Annie, no, but I’m still an orphan, living with my grandma, and I don’t belong here.

Thing is, I don’t belong anywhere.

My mom is an alcoholic. She’s living here too, actually, but by “living,” I mean sleeping all day and getting wasted all night, with intermittent bouts of talking crap about my father. Who probably deserves every bit of it, but the man’s my dad, you know? I call him Ghost Dad, though, because he doesn’t want anything to do with actual parenting. He’s the one who sent me to live with my grandma when my mom was in rehab. Just sent me away like a shirt he didn’t want anymore. And he said he would call all the time and stuff, but so far . . . nada. Nothing. Zilch. What kind of dad sends his kid away and never calls, not even one time, Thack?

My grandma wouldn’t be half-bad, except my grandpa died a couple years ago, and she’s like the walking wounded. She acts like everything’s okay, but I can hear her crying in her room at the same time every day, and once she went outside and stood in front of the shed for like half an hour and then came inside without having ever done anything but stand outside. It was weird.

And her only friends in this world like to read soft porn and talk about getting it on with guys who don’t actually exist in real life.

And I got naked at a public pool in the middle of the day, and I am way too fat to be doing something that stupid.

I had no prom date. I once caught my mom’s puke in my hands.

My family is so fucked up. Worse than a literary novel. And if you come talk to our book club, you can use us for your next book.

Think it through. That’s all I ask.

Sincerely,
The Real Bailey

B
ailey was already awake by the time Jean woke up. Jean had noticed when she’d gone to shut her bedroom door, as she always did before her shower, and a beam of sunlight had sliced through the hallway into the threshold of her bedroom. She leaned out and looked and, sure enough, Bailey’s door was open, her bed empty, save for the rumpled linens and the book that always poked out from under Bailey’s pillow. Jean had turned and checked the clock—surely it wasn’t that late. It was just barely ten, late for Jean, but not unforgivably afternoon.

She had leaned out into the hallway and cocked her head, listening for the television downstairs. Bailey wasn’t the biggest TV watcher in the world, and she’d never watched it this early in the morning, but Jean supposed anything was possible when it came to that girl. Instead, all she heard was the muffled voices coming from Laura’s TV in the bedroom next door. That TV was never turned off. It was impossible to tell what might be going on in that room. And half the time Jean didn’t want to know anyway.

Maybe Bailey was hanging out with that lifeguard down at the pool again, Jean thought, and, despite her worries when Bailey had been spending time with him before, she hoped it was true. Bailey had been a little easier to get along with when she’d been seeing him. And going out with kids her own age was normal behavior, at least. At one point, Jean had even wondered whether her granddaughter had fallen in love. But something must have happened between the two of them, because it had been weeks since Bailey had gone to the pool. Jean knew better than to ask about it.

Jean finally decided to go ahead and take her shower as usual. She would assume that nothing terrible was going on, and maybe she’d be right for a change. Plus, after the scene at the book club two nights before, she really was just too exhausted to jump into the day without a shower.

She showered, slowly, her entire bedroom filling with steam, and dressed, then headed downstairs. About halfway down the stairs, she realized something was different.

It was the smoke.

And the smell.

Bacon.

Bacon?

Jean raced down the last few steps and rounded the corner into the kitchen, to find Bailey standing over a skillet. A cloud of smoke drifted up from the pan, and Bailey squinted against it, pushing meat around with a fork that she held in a hand covered by an oven mitt. On the counter next to her was a plate full of blackened meat. She glanced at Jean and then went back to work in the skillet.

“Cooking is disgusting,” she said. “I almost barfed when I had to touch it raw.”

Jean stood frozen in the doorway. There were other things askew as well. A trio of glasses sat next to the orange juice container. Toast, also burned, littered the counter with gravel-like crumbs, an open tub of margarine with a knife impaling it at a ninety-degree angle nearby. Some bananas had been crudely sliced into a bowl, a half-opened can of mandarin oranges, with the can opener still attached, sitting next to it. And something grayish was in a pan next to the skillet Bailey was working on now. Were those eggs? Jean checked the sink. Yes, eggshells. She’d made eggs.

Finally finding her feet, Jean moved over to the stove, reaching over Bailey’s head to switch on the fan. It was loud, but the smoke cloud shifted toward it.

Bailey swiped the meat around in the grease a few more times, then turned off the stove and pulled the bacon out with the fork, laying it so carefully across the plate, as if she were afraid she’d somehow ruin it. She wiped her hands on a towel and swiped her hair out of her face. Jean noticed beads of sweat above the girl’s brow.

Bailey looked around, seeming to assess everything, and then let out a breath. “I doubt she’ll eat, but . . .” She never finished the sentence, just trudged upstairs.

Jean stood in the center of the kitchen, hugging herself. In a million years she’d have never guessed that Bailey would be making breakfast this morning. The same girl who’d said such hateful things, who’d smashed the wine bottle to bits, who’d embarrassed her in front of her friends repeatedly.

Maybe there was hope after all.

After a few minutes, Bailey came back downstairs. She didn’t speak, just picked up one of the juice glasses and put it back in the cabinet. She didn’t need to say anything, and Jean’s heart broke for the girl. How could her daughter be so self-centered?

“We have plenty,” Bailey said. She piled the toast on the bacon plate, picked up the eggs, and started toward the dining room. Jean poured the two glasses of orange juice and followed her.

And nearly dropped them when she saw the dining room table.

It had been neatly made, set for three, with Jean’s good plates and silverware—the ones she usually only brought out for book club. The Christmas cloth napkins—the ones she never used—had been folded into neat points and laid out on each plate. And in the center of the table, a vase was overflowing with familiar flowers.

“Are those . . . ?” Jean asked, setting down the glasses and lightly touching the petals of a Knock Out rose.

Bailey sat, still not making eye contact, and began loading her plate with food. “I saw you out there that day,” Bailey said. “They’re pretty.”

Jean’s mouth opened, but she had no words. How simple it seemed to just bring the flowers into the house. How simple it seemed to bring that thread of Wayne closer to her. Why had she never thought of it? Had she been so intent on focusing on what wasn’t that she couldn’t see what was?

Her fingers shook against the petal, and she dropped her hand. Slowly, she settled into the chair next to her granddaughter and gazed at the side of the girl’s head. Her hair glistened—dyed and tortured, but still healthy—and her skin seemed so silky, so smooth. When she wasn’t shining with anger, Bailey seemed to just shine.

Bailey shoveled a forkful of eggs into her mouth, then noticed Jean staring at her. “What?”

Jean shook her head, hoping the smile she was feeling on the inside was translating onto her face, but she feared that she only looked dazed, which she also felt.

“What?” Bailey said again, louder, more agitated, and that rocked Jean out of her stupor.

Tidily, she busied herself with unfolding the red napkin across her lap, and then took a spoonful of eggs for herself. “You’re right. They’re very pretty,” she said.

The eggs were dry. And very peppery—Jean quickly ascertained that it was black pepper that had made them so gray. The bacon caught in Jean’s throat, and the toast was so hard, it almost hurt her teeth. Yet somehow it was the most delicious breakfast she’d had in years.

The flowers didn’t cause a miracle. Jean and Bailey didn’t talk over their orange juice. They didn’t chat about boys or college or school dances. Irritation still radiated off Bailey with every bite, with every word not said, and Jean knew that it wouldn’t take much to set the girl off once again.

But there was something else there too. An acknowledgment. An opening. And Jean would be a fool not to sit there in silence and eat the dry eggs and burned bacon and love every minute of it.

“Thank you for making breakfast, Bailey,” she finally murmured when they were both done and the plates sat empty in front of them.

“I screwed it all up,” Bailey said.

“It tasted great to me.”

Bailey braced herself with her hands against the edge of the table, and Jean was sure she was going to scoot away from the table and the spell would be broken. She didn’t mind. Even a short spell was a welcome one.

After all, the girl had cut flowers for her.

“Can we go shopping today?” Bailey asked instead.

Jean was surprised. “Shopping? Do you need something?”

“I just need to go shopping,” Bailey spat, but then seemed to catch herself. She didn’t look at Jean, but said to the table, “It’s just been a long time since I’ve been shopping. You don’t have to buy me anything.” Jean thought the voice had taken on a childlike tone, as if Bailey were bartering. It almost broke her heart.

“Of course,” Jean said. “We can go shopping. And if you need something, I’ll buy it.”

Bailey nodded, then scooted her chair back and stood, gathering the dishes and glasses and taking them to the kitchen.

Jean sat, stunned into motionlessness, afraid to be as excited as she felt over this new revelation. She could only stare at the flowers and wonder if Wayne was seeing this now.

As if she could read Jean’s thoughts, Bailey called out from the kitchen. “The flowers have something to do with him, don’t they? With my grandfather?”

Jean got up, refolded the napkins, then rethought and wadded them up in her fist. They would need to be washed. How long had it been since she’d washed these napkins? She brushed crumbs off the front of her shirt and headed into the kitchen, where Bailey was already filling up the sink with sudsy water.

“Yes,” Jean said. “They do. And he would love that you think they’re pretty.”

“Can we go after the dishes are done?” Bailey asked.

“Sure. I’ll get ready.” Jean had to force herself not to run up the stairs in her excitement, but she couldn’t keep the smile from her face.

“But I don’t want to take her, so we should clear out before she wakes up,” Bailey yelled from the kitchen, and the way she said the word
her
, Jean knew very well that she was talking about Laura.

Jean stepped to Laura’s door, splayed her hand over it, leaned her head against it. The drone of the television echoed back at her, and nothing else.
Oh, Laura, please open your eyes and see what’s going on,
she thought, but she backed away from the door and leaned over the banister.

“Okay, just us,” she called downstairs, and then headed into her bedroom to get ready to go.