The Book Club Read online

  Mary Alice Monroe invites you to meet five remarkable characters as she explores the power of friendship with tenderness, honesty and understanding.

  On the surface, it is a monthly book club. But for five women, it is so much more. For Eve Porter, whose husband’s sudden death cheats her of every security she had planned on, the club is a place of sanctuary. For Annie Blake, a brilliant attorney intent on starting a family late in life, it is the chance to finally let down her guard and dream of other possibilities. For Doris Bridges, it is her support group as she acknowledges her dying marriage and finds the ultimate freedom in her husband’s betrayal. For Gabriella Rivera, the “perfect” wife, mother and friend who offers support to everyone but is afraid to ask for it herself, it is a sense of community. And for Midge Kirsch, an artist who has always lived her life against the grain, it is a haven of acceptance.

  They are five women from different walks of life, embracing the challenge of change. And as they share their hopes and fears and triumphs, they will hold fast to the true magic of the book club—friendship.

  “Monroe offers up believable characters in a well-crafted story.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Praise for the novels of

  MARY ALICE

  MONROE

  “With its evocative, often beautiful prose and keen insights into family relationships, Monroe’s latest is an exceptional and heartwarming work of fiction.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Beach House

  “The Book Club skillfully weaves the individual story threads into a warm, unified whole that will appeal to readers who enjoy multifaceted relationship novels with strong women protagonists.”

  —Library Journal on The Book Club

  “Skyward is a soaring, passionate story of loneliness and pain and the simple ability of love to heal and transcend both. Mary Alice Monroe’s voice is as strong and true as the great birds of prey of whom she writes.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Anne Rivers Siddons on Skyward

  “Readers who enjoy such fine Southern voices as Pat Conroy will add the talented Monroe to their list of favorites.”

  —Booklist on Sweetgrass

  “Monroe writes with a crisp precision and narrative energy that will keep [readers] turning the pages. Her talent for infusing her characters with warmth and vitality and her ability to spin a tale with emotional depth will earn her a broad spectrum of readers, particularly fans of Barbara Delinsky and Nora Roberts.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Four Seasons

  Also by Mary Alice Monroe

  SWIMMING LESSONS

  SWEETGRASS

  SKYWARD

  THE BEACH HOUSE

  THE FOUR SEASONS

  GIRL IN THE MIRROR

  THE LONG ROAD HOME

  MARY ALICE

  MONROE

  The Book Club

  To Markus

  “Grow old with me

  the best is yet to be.”

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Questions for Discussion

  Prologue

  Eve of Return

  January 7, 1998

  Tonight, I will return to my Book Club.

  It’s been half a year since I’ve been to a meeting. The women will be kind, I know. Solicitous, perhaps even wary not to say anything that will bring to mind my tragedy. I hope I don’t see pity in their eyes. It is not pity I need now but understanding. Tender words and outstretched hands that will help me break my long isolation and rekindle the kinship with my friends.

  And we are friends. Doris and I began the club out of desperation fifteen years ago. We were both new mothers living on the same block with a need for companionship, intellectual stimulation—and baby-sitters. Back in 1983, the club was really a combination Book-La Leche-Baby-sitting Club. The Book Club grew as our children did, new members joining, old members moving away, but always the core remained: me, Doris, Midge and Gabriella. And now Annie. We’ve gone through meetings where many of us had a child locked to our breasts, meetings where someone nodded, half-awake, on the sofa after a night up with a sick child, and meetings where, for no explicable reason, we drank too much wine and barely discussed the books at all. Today, most of our children are poised for leaving and once more we search for books to give this new phase of our lives meaning.

  I know my long absence has been a drain on the group. They’re worried about me. Annie phoned me twice already to see whether I was coming tonight. I read the previous month’s book, a biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, but I had little to say on the topic of an intelligent, determined woman who triumphed in the face of personal adversity. I wonder if the group didn’t choose the book especially for my benefit, perhaps to give me inspiration or as an effort to make my reentry positive. My life is not filled with triumphs. Whose is?

  I grew up in a comfortable suburb outside of Chicago, and like most of the women in the Book Club, am a product of the Catholic school system of the 1950s. We can all laugh now when a book makes reference to the Baltimore catechism or flocks of nuns shrouded in starched wimples and jangling rosaries. We relish books that bring us back to that innocent time when we played without fear in the streets on summer nights till 10:00 p.m. How many books chronicled our era’s passage from Motown to the Beatles and finally to acid rock? Or the painful choices of the Vietnam War years? All of us knew boys who wore either military uniforms or peace signs, or perhaps one who fled across the border, never to be heard from again. Now some of us know husbands—no longer young but aging without grace—who break family ties and flee. We devour stories about them, wondering, shivering.

  I miss my Book Club. I miss reading the books and discussing them. The books are the key to the group, to what makes our discussions work. They provide a forum that is safe, so that during our meetings we can share our ideas, and later, our problems. And later still, our secrets. Mostly, however, I miss my friends. They are the true magic of the group. I see my life as a story, one I share with my Book Club. And though there are some surprises, there is no resolution. I am like you. My story could be yours.

  One day, quite suddenly, my story changed. The setting shifted. The characters were rocked. If this were a plot diagram, my plummet was off the paper. The only constant was the point of view: first person, me, looking outward and inward, and seeing nothing.

  I didn’t see it coming. I guess that’s what writers like to call “the element of surprise,” that jolt from nowhere that catapults the hero into a new direction. The old gun-in-the-drawer trick. Whether the story is a mystery, a romance, an adventure, a comedy or a drama—in real life it’s a combination of all of the above—you just don’t know what’s coming next.

  For me, the change came on June 21, 1997. On that day, the corpse fell through the roof.

  One

  All life is a story, and daily each of us collects stories.

 
—Rachel Jacobsohn, The Reading Group Handbook

  June 21, 1997

  Eve Porter stepped out from her house into the brilliance of an early morning sun. She immediately raised her palm to shield her eyes; the piercing light was too strong.

  Inside, her house was quiet and dark. Bronte and Finney were asleep in their rooms, the dog was whining, and she hadn’t yet had a cup of coffee. Tom was prowling the rooms with nervous energy, gathering his work and packing last-minute items into his suitcase. Most mornings Eve liked to linger over her coffee, open the windows to the fresh morning breezes and relish her few moments of solitude before the family’s demands pressed her into action. On this morning, Eve felt driven outdoors by her husband’s prickly tension and a nagging guilt she resented. She needed some distance, just a bit of fresh air.

  Eve remembered the days when she stayed one step behind Tom as he prepared to go on a business trip. “Here are your tickets. I found your beeper. Can I order you a cab? Don’t you want anything for breakfast? Let me refresh your coffee.” She was his trusty sidekick, or as Tom often put it, he was the captain and she the navigator.

  Lately, however, she felt the ship was going down. For no one reason she could articulate, she’d begun looking for lifeboats. It wasn’t so much that she doubted the competence of Tom, it was just that the buttons of his jacket didn’t shine quite as bright anymore. Or perhaps the voyage was just too long.

  Eve shook these mutinous thoughts out of her mind and stepped out into the morning air. “Today will be a good day,” she said firmly, silencing her heart murmuring, “He will not ruin my day.” She made her way toward the rustling breezes and birdsong in her garden, turning away from the closed, dark house. The early-morning air smelled sweet and the sun shone softly on the cheery colors of her perennial bed. She bent to admire droplets of dew cupped in the furry leaf of a lady’s mantle.

  Today was the first day of summer, she realized, her spirits lifting like a kite. She loved milestones of any sort: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, checks on the calendar, notches on a growth chart. Today would be special, brand-new. She felt it deep inside. Summer was here with sunny days and balmy nights, the informality of barbecues and dips in the swimming pool. She was so relieved to have the grind of the school year finished. She missed playing with her children.

  She really should wake them to say goodbye to their father, but they were so tired; she’d let them sleep a bit longer. Finney had a football game at noon and Bronte wanted a ride to the mall at two. With Tom gone for a few days, and the children out of school, she could relax a bit herself. Perhaps even squeeze in a little extra time in her garden this morning, she thought, noting that her tobacco plants needed deadheading.

  She slipped to her knees, relishing the coolness of the morning dew that soaked the thin cotton of her pajamas. She no longer expected anyone to help her with the weeding or the planting. The children had complained so bitterly for so many years that she’d stopped demanding their time, and Tom, well, he never had the time or the interest. They had such busy lives and it was her job, as the mother and wife, to make certain all went smoothly in the home. But it was such a large home...and theirs was a large property, too, one of the largest in Riverton. The children were proud of their home and this she felt was her success. She’d decorated the twelve rooms herself, sewn countless yards of drapes and coordinated all the improvements. She’d even landscaped the entire lot, planting with her own delicate hands over fifty shrubs and countless perennials.

  Gardening was her hobby after all, she told herself as she dug in the earth. No one asked her to plant these flowers that she adored. So why should she expect them to help? And wasn’t it the mother’s job, even duty, to make a home run smoothly? Wasn’t she indispensable? Still, the thought that no one offered to help rankled as she reached to pull out the offending weeds, careful to get the roots.

  The front door swung open and she lifted her gaze to see her husband hurry down the stone steps on his way to the garage. His coattails were flying, he was tripping over his luggage and he sent off sparks of irritation that she could feel clear across the garden. Though his dark suit was immaculate, his white shirt was gleaming and his tie had enough panache to be discreetly admired, her knowing eyes picked up the tight line of his lips that gave his chiseled, tanned face a tautness too familiar of late. Tom wasn’t a vain man. His hair might be thinning at the crown and his waist fuller, but Tom Porter still had movie-star good looks—looks that would have been a hindrance to his medical career except for the sharp intelligence and compassion in his dark eyes.

  Eve didn’t see his eyes this morning, however, because the light was too bright. She squinted and caught only the shadow of his passing.

  “I’ll phone you tonight,” he called over his shoulder with a distracted air.

  She didn’t reply and instead rested her hands on her thighs and watched him raise the trunk of his sedan, then toss in his new garment bag. Next he gingerly rested his computer bag beside it. Eve knew exactly what was in that overnight bag she’d purchased for him for his fiftieth birthday. She’d laid in bed last night with her hands clenched in her lap silently watching as he packed it. The memory still irked.

  “Why do you always wait until the last minute to pack?” she’d asked crossly. “It’s almost midnight, Tom. I’m tired and we have to get up early. Your plane leaves at seven so you’ll have to leave by six.”

  “I didn’t have time to do it any earlier.” His tone was sharp and he tossed a folded boxed shirt into the bag with an angry flip.

  Eve bit her tongue, knowing this was true. She didn’t wish to annoy him when he was so pressed for time. Still, she couldn’t help the frustration boiling inside her. It didn’t seem to concern him in the least that she would be kept awake for as long as it took him to pack.

  “Why didn’t you ask me to help? All I needed was your schedule. I’d have been happy to do it for you.”

  “I told you I was leaving.”

  “Yes,” she replied in a tone that implied How can you be so obtuse? “But I didn’t know to where, or for what, until yesterday.”

  She used to always know where he was going, what topic he was speaking on, and made a game of packing for him. They’d laughed when she held ties up to his face and test-kissed him to make her selection. She took such pride in his appearance, as she did in her children’s. Recently, however, the trips piled one on top of the other as his reputation grew. He’d sometimes forget to tell her when he was going out of town until he needed something, and then he’d inform her as an afterthought. Like yesterday’s “Oh, Eve, could you make sure I have enough shirts for San Diego?” Whether she’d lost track of his schedule or he’d stopped sharing it with her, she couldn’t remember anymore. All she knew was that somehow, she no longer packed for him. So she lay in bed, still and hard-limbed, watching.

  “Look, just let me get it done,” he said, rummaging through his closet, laying her aside. “Go on to sleep. I’ll be a while yet.”

  She heard his dismissal, closed her mouth and folded her arms across her chest. In a cool silence that had grown over the past years, she watched him pack for the two-day trip, knowing exactly how he reasoned his choices. Three pairs of underwear, two fresh and an extra to change into should he go for a swim, two pairs of dark, cashmere wool socks and a spare polo shirt. He selected three Egyptian cotton shirts and a matching Hermès tie, a swimsuit, a flask of Scotch because he liked to work late in his room and, finally, the leather toiletries case. She’d meant to ask him why he still carried condoms in his bag now that she’d had her tubes tied, but never did.

  She knew he wasn’t fooling around and didn’t want him to think that she didn’t trust him. They’d been married for twenty-three years next month and a woman knew her husband well enough after all that time. She and Tom had an agreement, one forged on their wedding night and held sacred. They�
�d sworn that neither one of them would have an affair without first telling the other. Divorce or whatever might follow, but they’d vowed to have honor and respect in their marriage. They prided themselves on their honesty.

  Kneeling in the garden with the sun’s heat pressing on her back, Eve envisioned those condoms in that toiletry bag and her bare hands dug into the black soil as she forced out a deep dandelion root. A large worm clung to the soil around the weed, wriggling and coiling when she shook it off. She heard the car trunk slam shut and raised her eyes again.

  “Honey, what hotel will you be at?” she called out.

  “Oh, I don’t remember.”

  He sounded winded and she cocked her head, her hands still in the soil. He stood looking at her with an odd expression on his face, as though he were waiting for her to say something more, or perhaps he was wrestling with what to say to her. Her breath stilled and her attention focused as she studied him for some signal, one hint that he wanted a kiss goodbye or a familiar pat on the rear as he hugged her. He used to love to hug her.

  A new stubbornness kept her from leaping up and running into his arms as she always had before, a tenuous clinging to self-esteem after his rebuff in bed last night. She would not go to him first.

  Keeping her silence, staying in place, she noticed his hair was damp with perspiration. He was a heavy sweater—all the Porters were—but it wasn’t that hot this morning and he’d just come outdoors from the air-conditioning. He’d need a shower by the time he got to San Diego, she worried.

  “I’ll call you when I get there,” he said, and her ears perked at the hint of sadness in his voice. “Give you my room number.”

  This was the usual modus operandi these days, unlike back when she carefully posted the hotel name and number on the kitchen bulletin board, up high beside the car pool schedule, the pizza lunch schedule and emergency telephone number. She nodded and opened her mouth to say goodbye, to wish him a good trip, maybe to say I love you, but he’d already turned his back.