Читать книгу The Book Club - Мэри Монро, Мэри Элис Монро, Mary Monroe Alice - Страница 11

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.”

“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.

“Let’s just say that, like Scrooge, I finally woke up and decided it was time to heed the spirits and change.”

“Well,” Annie replied with brows raised. “Whaddya know?” She swooped over to pick up her coffee cup and raise it in a toast. “Here’s to change, sweetheart.”

Eve picked up her cup and raised it, smiling bravely despite the shivering inside at the prospect of what felt to her like jumping off a cliff.

“God bless us, everyone,” she said, praying fervently.