The Book Club

Well, it suited her, she thought, feeling the familiar stirrings of resentment that nothing she did was ever good enough for her mother. Why did she care, she asked herself? It was just her mother.

Midge paused and took a deep, relaxing breath, the kind that belled the belly and lowered the tense shoulders. “Mother…” she sighed aloud, gripping the edge of the sink for support. Edith Kirsch was the one woman on earth who could intimidate Midge. She’d spent a lifetime escaping the clutches of that woman’s expectations, and every time she thought she’d finally grown up and gone far enough away to form a separate identity, bam! One visit from her mother sent her reeling back into the nursery.

Stop! she scolded herself, warding off the furies. She didn’t have time to deal with old issues now. She glanced up at the clock. Her mother was due in ten minutes, and Edith was never late. Besides, her therapist told her to take deep breaths and let go of all that old anger. In and out…Breathing deep and exhaling long, Midge told herself it would be a fine visit—just peachy—if she could stay out of her mother’s way for the few days she would be in town and steer clear of anything having to do with men, marriage or sex.

Midge looked at the bottle of cleaner in her hand, her mind grinding away like a tire stuck in the snow, then pulled back the shower curtain with a jerk and tossed the bottle and the rag into the tub, too. She made a quick check in the mirror and smoothed back a few tendrils from the long braid that fell down her back. Perhaps it was the anticipation of her mother’s perusal, but she paused before the mirror to study the face that stared back at her.

It sometimes stunned her that she barely recognized the face she’d lived with for fifty years. She’d never been one to gaze at her reflection, to try on different makeups or expressions, not even as a teenager. Tilting her head, she studied her bone structure as an artist would a sculpture. She had bold bones that produced good strong lines at the cheeks and jaw, and angled her prominent nose in a Picasso-like manner. An interesting face, from an artistic viewpoint—but not, by any viewpoint, a pretty one. If she were a man, she’d be considered ruggedly handsome. Being a woman, she was unattractive. Not at all the vision of femininity her mother was.

The doorbell rang and Midge felt a surge of excitement flood her, despite her misgivings. She hadn’t seen her mother in over a year.

Opening the door, it was as though she’d seen her mother just yesterday. Her smile widened as her gaze devoured the petite woman at the threshold. Edith never changed. She looked as radiant as ever. In contrast to herself, Edith was a tiny woman, just five foot two, with the bones of a sparrow. In fact, that’s how Midge always saw her mother, as a small, delicate songbird with brilliant plumage, bright, dark eyes and movements that were quick yet graceful. She always dressed to the nines, as she put it, coordinating her shoes and bag to her outfit.

Edith’s bright eyes appraised every inch of her daughter with a mother’s clipped efficiency. Then stepping back, she tilted her head, pursed her lips, raised one perfectly plucked brow and gave Midge a sweeping perusal referred to as the look. Without a word spoken, Midge understood that her own artsy-chic choice of clothes, her graying hair, her unmade-up face, did not win her mother’s approval. It was all so quick, and so devastating. Midge felt the heat of shame but kept her smile rigidly in place.

“Well, aren’t you going to give me a kiss?” Edith’s flippancy was a buffer.

“Of course!” Midge bent low to wrap her arms around her mother, feeling as always like a giant beside her. Yet, close up, she relished the feel of her mother’s arms around her, the scent of her familiar perfume.

“Come in, Edith,” she said, swinging wide her arm.

“One moment, dear. I have to collect my luggage from the limo.” Her mother had insisted she come by limousine ever since her friends in Florida regaled her with stories about how it was the only way to get to and from the airport. “No fuss, no muss!” she’d told Midge after Midge had argued how she would be happy to pick up her own mother, for heaven’s sake.

“Let me help,” Midge said.

“No, no,” Edith replied too quickly, her gaze darting back and forth with anxiety. “The driver brings up the luggage. It’s part of the service, you see.” The way she said it implied, What did I tell you? “You just stay put.”

Midge waited by the door, craving a cigarette for the first time since giving them up over a year ago. A few minutes later she heard the measured footfall of a man carrying a heavy weight. Sure enough, the tall, muscular driver in a cheap, black suit labored up the stairs loaded down with two immense suitcases. Midge’s mouth slipped open as she gasped with the sinking realization that this was enough luggage to last a whole heck of a lot longer than a week.

“I’ll be right back with the others,” the driver said, turning the corner of the stairwell.

“Others?”

Edith just waved her hand and disappeared back down the stairs. Midge didn’t move a muscle as she waited, then watched the gentleman carry up a dainty hat box tilting precariously atop a taped, brown mailing box big enough to carry an entire wardrobe. A few minutes after he’d disappeared again, Midge heard the gentle tapping of high heels on the stairs. She opened her mouth to ask why on earth Edith needed so much luggage when her throat seized, her eyes bugged and her breath stilled.

Edith turned the corner and advanced the final two steps in a mincing motion, with a coy expression on her face. But all Midge could see was the small, smudgy ball of white fur and buggy black eyes in her arms.

“You brought your dog?” she croaked, incredulous that even her mother could be so callous of her feelings that she’d bring her dog along for a visit without asking.

“I just couldn’t leave Prince,” Edith replied, her voice too high. She was stroking the wiry white curls of her toy poodle’s head so hard she pulled the eyelids back, causing Prince’s eyes to bug out all the more. “He got a terrible case of diarrhea the last time I left him at that horrid Dog’s Day Inn. I swear I thought my baby would perish if I submitted him to that torture again. Honey, I’d perish of loneliness without him. Oh, please don’t be angry at me. He’s such a good boy and I promise I’ll keep him out of your way. Why, Prince is such a little thing, you won’t even know he’s here. Just like me!”

Midge was choking back her fury, swallowing so hard she couldn’t speak. It’s only for a few days, she told herself over and over again, breathing deep. In and out…She stepped aside, swinging her arm open, allowing her mother to pass.

She followed the sparrow’s flight path throughout the open, airy loft, seeing her home as her mother might. The upholstered sofa and chairs clustered before a brick fireplace were mismatched and tossed casually with oversize kilim pillows. The long, curved bar that surrounded the kitchen was littered with corked wine bottles, piles of books and assorted sculptures. In the far corner, before a spread of tall windows, two heavy wooden easels stood empty beside paint-splattered tables topped with neatly organized brushes. Against the wall were stacks of completed canvasses.

Midge liked to think her place was a statement of her dedication to talent, not fashion. But she could tell by the expression on her mother’s face that she saw it as a decorator’s worst nightmare. Her breath held, however, when her mother’s gaze alighted on the wall-size paintings that filled the west wall of the loft. Midge felt about her work as any mother would when someone inspected her children. Or for some people, their dog. She waited in a tense silence.

“Could you get Prince a bowl of water, dear?” Edith asked, turning to face her with a starched smile on her face.

Midge’s breath hitched. Edith had nothing to say about her paintings. They were dismissed without notice or a word.

“Sure,” she forced out, turning away so her mother wouldn’t see her disappointment. “How about some wine for you? I’ve uncorked a nice bottle of Margaux.”

“Oh no, dear, I never drink red wine anymore. Those sulfites give me a headache. Please say you have a martini? Vodka? With a lemon peel?”

Midge closed her eyes against the headache that was already forming in her temples. “No lemons, but I’ve got olives.”

Edith sighed with disappointment. “That’ll do, I suppose.”

Midge gritted her teeth and plopped an olive in Prince’s water, too. She hoped the little bugger would choke on it.

After the martini was served and she was fortified with a glass of the Margaux, Midge felt her equilibrium slowly return. They briefly discussed Edith’s flight to Chicago, the books she’d been reading, her bridge game, the nasty change in weather—safe topics that broke the ice. The conversation moved up a notch when her mother complained about how her grandchildren’s manners were shocking. “It’s like eating a meal with animals!” she said, slipping Prince a dog treat. The dog chewed the biscuit with noisy relish, dropping crumbs all over Midge’s sofa with fearless abandon.

As the sky darkened and a second drink was poured, Edith relaxed by slipping off her jacket, easing back into the sofa’s cushions and announcing that she found her condo in southern Florida utterly confining and the life-style boring.

“There’s no culture,” Edith said, plucking out the olive with a wrinkled nose. “There’s no there there. Florida’s great if you like to walk on the beach every morning and pick thousands of shells. But after you’ve done that…” She rolled her eyes. “C’est tout! Besides, I miss my old friends.”

“You’ve made new ones.” Midge wasn’t feeling sympathetic. Her mother had been hell-bent to move to Florida years back, dragging her back and forth to help find the condo, all the while professing that she couldn’t endure another Chicago winter.

“Everyone’s too old down there,” Edith continued. “One foot in the grave. And there’s not a decent man to be found. They’re all either hobbling around or married. I’m lonely for some male companionship. And I’ll tell you,” she added, perking up, “the man I saw in the airport bar…” She rolled her eyes suggestively, then sipped daintily from her martini, closing her eyes and almost purring. “Oh làlà.”

Midge shifted in her seat, uncomfortable with the notion of her mother scouting out babes in the bar. There was something smarmy about listening to one’s own mother’s love stories—especially when she herself didn’t have any.

“Please tell me you didn’t try to pick him up….”

“No,” she replied with an incredulous expression, “another woman met him there, probably his wife.” She tsked, then leaned farther back into the sofa’s cushions and looked long and hard through a drunken haze at her daughter. “But what if I had? What would be so wrong with that? Do you think because I’m of a certain age I can’t attract a man any longer? Or, God forbid, that I don’t want one?”

“No, Mother, but there’s such a thing as dignity.”

Edith threw back her head and laughed a throaty laugh. “I think we have more than enough of that in you for one family. You’d do well to drop a little of yours, darling, and go out and mingle more. Shake it up. It’s no wonder you haven’t met a decent man. You’ll never find anyone if you don’t hunt.”

“Maybe I don’t want to hunt for anyone.”

Edith waved her hand dismissively. “Of course you do, honey. You’re just too shy. You keep your nose stuck in your paints. Stick by your mama, I’ll show you a few tricks of the trade.”

She clicked her tongue and ran her palm along her hips in what she clearly thought was a sexy move. Midge thought she was going to be sick. In a flash she remembered the first time she’d come home from Boston College. It was parents’ weekend and her mother didn’t want to come out East just to hang around a bunch of rah-rahrahing freshman parents. So Midge decided to fly home to surprise her. And, too, because she didn’t want to hang around the dorms while all the other freshmen’s parents were getting tours, participating in events and taking their kids out to dinner. When her mother had opened the front door, however, she was not happy to see her. Why are you here? she’d asked in a heated whisper, then looked over her shoulder into the house. Grabbing her purse, she’d closed the door behind her and, stuffing a few twenties into her hand, told Midge to go to the Carlyle Hotel in town. She had a houseguest. When Midge moaned and asked why she couldn’t just sleep in her own room, Edith merely rolled her eyes, clicked her tongue, and said with that same coy expression how her friend didn’t know she had a college-age daughter and she didn’t want him to know, either.