The Book Club

I will honor Christmas in my heart. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.

—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

The lights on the Christmas tree sparkled like distant stars in the darkened living room. Eve’s collection of Santa Clauses were carefully placed on decorated tables around the room and the delicate wooden crèche that she and Tom had purchased for their first Christmas together nestled in its place of honor atop the grand piano. Eve sat on one end of the green velvet living room sofa cuddled under an old afghan. She’d lost a lot of weight and the cold affected her much more than it ever used to.

Opposite her on the other side, with her long legs stretched out and one hand absently tugging at her shaggy bangs, slouched Annie Blake. They were sipping coffee spiked with brandy and listening to Frank Sinatra croon “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

Eve’s vision of the colored lights swam as the message struck true: home for Christmas. That had been her single goal for the six months since Tom’s death: to stay in her home until Christmas. But now it all seemed so pointless. Although the stage was set with the usual props, it felt as empty and cold as a deserted theater. Once this was a place of hospitality, merriment and revelry, a place where scores of friends and family came for a holiday visit and a cup of cheer. This year only Annie rang her doorbell.

“It doesn’t feel like Christmas,” Eve said softly over the rim of her cup.

“Aw, Eve,” Annie replied with gentle exasperation. “What did you expect?” She rested her cup on her bent knee and pursed her lips. “It’s your first Christmas without Tom. You have to face the fact that this Christmas isn’t the same. Your life is different. No amount of creative decorating is going to change that immutable fact.”

Eve shuddered, drawing the afghan closer around her shoulders and turning her head away. She didn’t want to listen. “Bah, humbug.”

“What am I going to do with you?” Annie asked with a sorry shake of her head. “I see you slipping deeper and deeper into this pit and I can’t pull you out. You’re so thin. So remote. So goddamn stubborn.”

“I’m not stubborn,” Eve retaliated, hurt. “I’m in mourning.”

“No, you’re way past mourning. You’re dying. Fizzing out. Fading away before my very eyes. And it burns my butt.”

“I’m sorry,” Eve replied tightly, shifting her weight and retreating farther. “Then…just go if I make you so uncomfortable.”

“Damn, you don’t think I haven’t thought about it?” she exploded. “It’s hard watching this. It’s hard for everyone who cares about you. You just won’t listen to anything anyone has to say to you. You’re deaf to all advice. It’s driving your friends—the people who care about you—crazy.” She paused, taking in the way Eve brought her knees up to her chest and tightened the afghan around her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Eve, but haven’t you noticed that a whole lot of people don’t come by anymore?”

Eve felt a burn on her cheeks. “Of course I have,” she replied defensively. “I don’t blame them. It’s the holidays. I’m alone, depressed. I’m not exactly party material. Aside from making them feel awkward about tiptoeing around my feelings, I make for a difficult table placement. A single woman not yet social or socially acceptable to pair up with an unattached male so soon after…” Her voice trailed away.

“After Tom’s death. Go ahead, say it.”

Eve stuck her chin out and tightened her lips.

“Don’t you see, sweetie, that’s what I’m talking about. No more excuses. Tom’s dead. Gone. You have to pick up the pieces and move forward. Not just for you, but for the children’s sake. You’re stagnant here. Going under.”

“I’m doing okay….”

Annie slapped her forehead with her palm. “Hey, who are you talking to here? You can’t keep up those false pretenses with me, sweetie. It might work with Doris and the rest of those Riverton matrons, but I’m not just your friend, I’m your lawyer. I do your books. I know your finances better than you do and I’m telling you, you’re going under. Faster than the Titanic and,” she said rolling her eyes, “this place you’re carrying is about as big.”

“It’s not just some place. It’s my home.”

“Look, hon, I know you wanted, even needed, to stretch things out so you could be here for Christmas. It was a bad decision fiscally, I didn’t like it, but hey, I didn’t push you either, for the kids’ sake. But the party’s over. You have to move. Now.”

“I can hang on a little longer.”

“No, you can’t. In fact, I’m worried sick about what will happen to you if the house doesn’t sell quickly. You should have sold last summer when the pool was open, gotten top dollar. But,” she conceded, turning her head to take in the large room with the coved molding and high ceilings, “all this mahogany and balsam trim makes this a perfect holiday house and ought to push a lot of emotional buttons for buyers after Christmas. As your lawyer, I’m advising you to put this elephant on the market. And as your friend, I’m begging you to do it now.”

Eve had heard this conversation before, knew where it was heading and felt the walls closing in on her. She set her cup on the glass coffee table with a shaky hand. “Where would I go?” she rasped, voicing the question for the first time. When she raised her eyes to Annie, they were wide with fear.

Annie slowly placed her cup on the table beside Eve’s and said gently, “Where do you want to go?”

Eve shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. “It’s not that I haven’t thought about it. Bronte and Finney are happy here. Their friends are here. I can’t pull them away from what they know, not after all they’ve been through.”

“Hon,” Annie said with her husky voice low and well modulated. “I’m not sure you can afford to stay in Riverton.”

“There are some small houses….”

“You can’t afford a small house here.”

Eve sucked in her breath and brought her fist to her lips.

“My God, what am I going to do?”

“Again, you have to answer that question for yourself.”

“I can’t. I can’t…”

“Of course you can,” Annie hurried to answer, moving closer to place her long hands over Eve’s small ones. “And you’re not alone. I’m here with you. Helping women in your situation is what I do for a living, remember? There’s nothing to fear. You just have to see yourself in transition. Step by step, you’ll get through this.”

Eve nodded halfheartedly, knowing this was what was expected, accustomed to doing what was expected of her. She drew back. Annie sighed, released Eve’s hand and did the same.

Eve chewed her lip and fingered the afghan. Annie’s patience with her was wearing thin. She looked at Annie’s long, slim body wrapped in cashmere and wool with diamond studs in her ears, short but polished nails and her blond hair loosely tied back with a clasp. Annie’s self-confidence crackled in the air around her. She’d practically raised herself after running away at thirteen from her poor, “weird” hippie-commune home in Oregon to live with her grandparents in Chicago. There was nothing Annie felt she couldn’t do if she tried hard enough. It was this sense of empowerment that led so many divorced, widowed, lost single women to her law firm, seeking her out, hoping a bit of her confidence would sprinkle on them, like fairy dust.

On the other end of the sofa, Eve felt all the more a thin, opaque shadow of women like Annie Blake, who faced the outside world on a daily basis, chin out, fists in the ready, making their own living. It wasn’t envy she felt, but confusion. Who was this pitiful creature curled up on the sofa, cowering under a blanket? Where was the secure, attractive, competent woman she remembered Eve Porter to be? That woman seemed to have died with Tom.

“How did I let this happen to me, Annie?” she cried.

“I’m not stupid or naive. I’ve always prided myself on my intellect. But for twenty-three years I let Tom make all the decisions about money. He liked to do it, and I…” She paused. “I didn’t care. Sure, I handled the checkbooks, paid the bills, arranged for the lawn to be cut, the maid to clean twice a week and the shirts to be laundered. I mean, I’m not a moron. I raised my children. I supported my husband. I managed my family. I was good at my job.”

She heard the defensiveness in her own voice and felt an overwhelming sadness that somehow, that job didn’t matter much anymore. That her home was unimportant. She felt somehow less than Annie and other professional women working outside the home. And she resented it, deeply.

“Of course you were,” Annie said, resting a hand over hers. “No one’s saying you weren’t, Eve.”

“Don’t use that tone with me,” she snapped.

“What tone?”

“That placating ‘Poor little Eve, poor helpless, mindless housewife’ tone that working women like you are so good at dishing out.”

“I see.”

Eve looked up to see Annie draw her knees in tight. Guilt washed over her and she reached out to grab Annie’s hand back. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

Annie snorted and said, “I did sound kinda patronizing. I hate when people do that to me, too. To any woman. Hit me if I ever do it again.”

“Ditto.”

Both women laughed and squeezed hands. The tension eased.

“You know I’m on your side, pal.”