The Book Club

“I know.”

“I’m only telling you that you can’t afford your old life-style any longer. I’m sorry, Eve, I wish it were different for you. But Tom…Well, you know.”

Eve knew. Tom had stretched everything to the limit, and like most baby boomers, expected to live to a ripe old age. He was a surgeon, raking in a healthy income and at the prime of his life. He’d thought he had plenty of time to start saving for the future. He didn’t expect to die at fifty. But he did, leaving his family unprepared. They didn’t have outstanding debts, but their life-style, as Annie put it, was titanic. His life insurance had carried them through the past six months but it was disappearing fast. In fact, they were broke, and at no time of the year was that fact more rudely apparent than at Christmas.

“Look at that,” Eve said, indicating with a wave of her hand the sparse showing of gifts under the tree. “The kids are going to be so disappointed this year. I couldn’t afford to get them much of anything. They’re used to mountains of gifts. It used to take us all day just to open them.”

“Yeah, well, I never had that many Christmas gifts so excuse me if I don’t feel sorry for them. Well, I do, but not because of the number of gifts. Don’t they have a clue what it took for you to keep them in this house through Christmas?”

“No, and I don’t want them to know. Children shouldn’t worry about money.”

“Bull cakes. I knew more about handling my money—what there was of it—at thirteen than my druggie parents did. Not making children worry about it and discussing it honestly with them are two different things entirely. What’s wrong with letting them know money’s tight? They’re not stupid. They’ve probably figured it out already. You’re going to have to tell them something. And soon.” She craned her neck to peer through the arched entry. “By the way, where are the little darlings?”

Eve didn’t think Annie knew what she was talking about when it came to children. At forty-three, Annie had only married a few years earlier. Her big tribute to turning forty, and to a man three years her junior. She’d never opted to have children and often saw them in the same light one would see a mosquito at a picnic.

“They’re at their friends’ houses. They’re always out these days. I don’t think they like being here.” She plucked at the afghan and remembered the years before when the house overflowed with their many friends. Now the house seemed like a mausoleum. “Perhaps too many memories.”

Annie offered a bittersweet smile. “Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing to move on after all.”

Eve looked up sharply into Annie’s eyes and saw flash in the pale-blue the icy truth about so many things. Annie was right. The children weren’t that happy here anymore. Neither was she. Their life here was over and staying was like living in limbo. She’d been hanging on to this big house in the hope that somehow she’d get her old life back. The one where Tom carved out most of the decisions and she buffed and polished off the rough edges.

She’d been hanging on, when she ought to have been thinking, carefully planning her next step. She ought to have considered what job she could get, what schools her children could transfer to, where she could afford to move. Instead of dwelling in the past, she should have focused on the future. She ought to have dealt with her emotional upswings about having to leave her home, about having Tom leave her. Instead, she’d wasted months thinking…. No, that was the problem, she realized with sudden clarity. She didn’t think. She’d merely wandered through the rooms of her house and stared blankly at her lovely things. Somehow she’d felt if she just held on a little longer…

What? A miracle would happen? Someone would magically come down the chimney on Christmas Eve and drop a bag full of money under the tree, just because she was being a good girl? Well, standing in the long line at the discount department store to purchase the one or two gifts she could afford only on sale had taught her that Santa Claus wasn’t coming this year. Or next.

“I’ll put the house on the market,” she said. Usually, Eve was good at making quick, strong decisions and she felt a bolt of relief to find that part of herself once more. The dozen smiling, apple-cheeked, potbellied Santas suddenly seemed to be littering her room. She felt the urge to pack them all away, to clear the decks of dreamy clutter and sail on.

“That’s my girl,” exclaimed Annie. Then, “Oh God, did that sound patronizing? I’m sorry.”

Eve shook her head and stared at her hands, clenching white in her lap while realization set in. When she spoke, it was like an avalanche, a bursting of a dam, the opening of a festering wound.

“Annie, I don’t know how to do anything. Anything! Not my taxes, the mortgage, financial planning. I’m scared. I’m not prepared.”

“You’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know how to go out there and sign leases,” she raged on, her voice getting higher and higher. “Or figure out insurance payments for the house, for the car, for our health. I don’t even know what questions to ask. God, what job can I get? I haven’t had a job in twenty years. I have to do something.” She paused, stricken. “My children have only me.”

“And you’re more than enough.”

Eve stopped, blinked.

“You are,” Annie repeated.

Eve heard this. For a moment she felt her chest rise and fall heavily as the words sunk in. You’re more than enough. Dear God, help me, she prayed. I have to be.

She leaned back on her side of the sofa, tucking her legs beneath her and tugging the afghan under her chin. Annie did the same. Judy Garland was singing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” and beside them, the fire crackled and sparked behind the iron grate. Eve felt the warmth of it slowly seep into her soul, gradually thawing the chill that had seized it in the past months and made her numb. An iciness that straightened her spine, stiffened her walk, paled her cheek and made her so very brittle that each time she’d suffered a smile at a sympathetic comment, each time she’d offered a pat reply to a holiday greeting, she felt sure she might shatter into a thousand shards of crystal.

In the quiet peace, however, in the company of her trusted friend, in the aftermath of a decision, Eve felt her wintry depression begin to melt. Deep inside she experienced her first gentle kindling of Christmas spirit.

After a while, Annie spoke again. “I see you have Dickens’s A Christmas Carol on the table. That was this month’s choice for the Book Club.”

“Was it?” she replied vaguely.

Annie twitched her lips. Everyone knew that Eve loved books and reading with a passion and was unforgiving toward anyone who came to the Book Club meetings unprepared. It was the group’s greatest concern that Eve had stopped reading.

“Why didn’t you come to the meeting? We missed you.”

Eve’s toes curled under the afghan and bright-pink spots blossomed on her cheeks. “It was the Christmas party. It wouldn’t have been much of a discussion.”

“That’s not what I meant. You need to be with us. We need you.”

“I…I know. I just wasn’t ready to share my own, personal story yet.”

“The party was at Doris’s house,” Annie continued in a different vein, allowing Eve her space. “Again. As always, it was flawless, right down to the dripless candles and plum pudding.”

“How is she?”

“You mean you don’t know? I thought she was always hanging around here.”

“No, not so much anymore. I like to think it’s because she’s busy. It’s the holidays and R.J. likes to entertain.”

Annie looked away with a harrumph, frowning, registering her doubt that that was the real reason. “Well, I say it’d do you good to come back to the group. Reading, discussing ideas, hell, just laughing it up with the girls. Drink a little wine, get a little silly. It’s good for the heart and the soul.” Her voice altered to reflect her worry. “You shouldn’t be so isolated.”

“Not yet.”

“Okay, okay,” Annie said on a long sigh. “I know that tone well enough after the past six months. But don’t take too long. All the girls are anxious. They’ll be knocking down your door pretty soon.”

“I know. I won’t.” She paused. “You’re all so sweet to be worrying about me.”

“Yep, that’s us all right. A bunch of sweet ol’ ladies,” Annie said in that rollicking manner of hers that threw caution to the wind, dishing it out and taking it back in full measure. At heart, she was a clown and couldn’t stand too much gushy sentiment. Eve loved her for it, loved her tonight especially for taking off the gloves and speaking straight, for teasing her and treating her like a normal person again, not some fragile china doll that had to be handled carefully lest she break.

“I can see us in another ten or twenty years,” Annie said, moving as she acted out the role, “sitting around the rest home table, reading books with large print, gumming our lips together and shouting our opinions at each other because we won’t be able to hear.”

Eve laughed until tears squeezed from her eyes at Annie’s perfect pantomime. “Yes! I can see us now,” she said, joining in. “We’ll all wear large purple hats and clunky brown shoes.”

“And we’ll fart out loud and pretend we didn’t notice. Hell, we probably won’t even hear. ‘Eh, what’d you say? Oops, pardon me! What?”’

Eve held her sides. It hurt so good to laugh again, mostly at herself. Annie could always do this to her; it was what cemented their friendship.

“Oh, Annie, stop!”

“What? You don’t think the kids will be calling us ‘old farts’ behind our backs. Ha! Well, we might as well give it right back to them. Both barrels. But I’m givin’ it to them right through my tight, sexy Calvin Klein jeans.”

And she would, too, Eve thought chuckling. Annie Blake joined the Book Club five years earlier and right from the start everyone recognized that Annie was different from the usual Riverton matron. She was a little louder, a little brassier, a little more cool, and her opinions were always honest and on the money. And she had soul. It wasn’t long before Eve discovered that Annie was a kindred spirit—a freer, blithe spirit.

“I’m curious about something,” Annie said, wiping her eyes and settling back into the cushions. “I’ve been hammering at you for months to let go of this house and to get on with your life. And now, suddenly, you decide to do it.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. What happened? Am I a more persuasive lawyer than I thought or did I miss something here?”

The ghost of a smile crossed Eve’s face as she gazed down at Dickens’s book on the coffee table. How could she explain that all Annie’s numbers on the ledgers, the sheets of meaningless papers that she’d signed, meant nothing to her? That inside the hard covers of that edition of A Christmas Carol lay the pressed petals of three yellow roses, picked six months earlier. That this tale by Charles Dickens, her old friend, was the first book she’d read since Tom’s death. That tonight she felt as though she’d been visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future and was shaken out of her complacency.