The Dirty Book Club Page 11

  His affairs are like our dirty books—a cheap thrill between covers to fill the void—that’s all.

  Void? What void could Leo possibly have? I give him everything.

  No one gives anyone everything. He’ll never understand you the way we do, and you’ll never stroke his ego the way those desperate little starlets do. We get different things from different people. It’s nothing personal. It’s how we survive.

  Well, my void is full. (Dot)

  Same. (Liddy)

  If your voids were so full you wouldn’t be reading about Isadora’s orgasms, you’d be having your own.

  We purred.

  As usual, Marjorie made it all sound so neat and logical. Doable, even. I get support and laughter from my friends, romance from my books, love from my sons, security and companionship from Leo. All I had to do was change my perspective. Live off the à la carte menu instead of the prix fixe.

  It would take some adjusting. But I could do it. I could greet Leo with a smile on my face and love in my heart, even when he carried a whiff of Chantilly. Because he needed those starlets like I needed this club.

  I’m sitting alone now at my kitchen table writing this letter. My brain is soaked in vodka, my body is heavy from crying, and Leo is three hours late.

  It’s as if I’m at the end of Fear of Flying. I am both Isadora in the bathtub and Bennett returning to his hotel room unaware that she is there. I am inside that parenthetical moment. Before they see each other. Before they are faced with each other’s pain. Before decisions have to be made and action has to be taken. Like Isadora, I have no idea what will happen next.

  —G.G.

  * * *

  “WELL,” ADDIE SAID, refilling her red cup with wine. “We all know how that turned out.”

  “You think Bennett took Isadora back?” M.J. asked, pleased that Addie wanted to explore the novel’s ambiguous ending. It wasn’t the most logical place to start, but the question was valid nonetheless.

  “I’m talking about Gloria and Leo,” she said. “Gloria stayed with Leo even though he was cheating on her. It’s pathetic,” Addie practically spat. “It’s weak.”

  “Maybe she busted Leo and then held it over him for fifty years,” Britt said. “Made him kiss her ass and buy her diamonds so she wouldn’t leave.”

  “Hold still,” Jules said, her lip liner hovering inches away from Britt’s mouth.

  “My guess is that Gloria let Leo think he was getting away with it,” M.J. said, remembering the “five-minute warning” Leo got from Gloria the day she stopped by. At the time she assumed the phone call was a harmless little ritual, but what if it was an act of preservation—a chance for Leo to extinguish his cigarette or shove his girlfriend out the back door—to keep them from an unwanted run-in with the truth?

  “Why would she let him get away with it?” Britt asked.

  “To keep her family together,” Jules said. “It’s the opposite of weak. Putting her marriage before her ego is strong.”

  Addie yawned. “Sounds like a pussy move to me.”

  “Isadora was the pussy,” M.J. said, with a self-conscious giggle. It was the first time she had referred to a literary character as such and was tickled by its subversiveness. It was liberating. Not only to her but also to Isadora, who suddenly stopped being a character trapped in the 1970s and became another confused woman just like the rest of them. “She was all talk.”

  “All talk?” Britt asked. “Isadora had an affair.”

  “Yeah, but she went back to her husband’s hotel in the end. And what about her fantasy—where she meets a stranger on a train and has sex just for the sake of sex? No attachments, no ulterior motives? Isadora had an opportunity to do that and when it came down to it she was revolted.”

  “Y’all wanna know what I found revolting?” Jules asked. “The ending. How are we supposed to know if Bennett and Isadora stayed together?”

  “What’s the difference?” said Britt. “Marriage is boring. Single is lonely. They’re screwed no matter what.”

  M.J. shuddered. It was all so depressing. “So what’s the answer?”

  “Maybe the answer is pull a Leo,” Britt said. “Tie the knot, but keep it loose.”

  “A slipknot,” Addie suggested, plucking the chip clip from her updo and mussing her hair.

  “Exactly.”

  Jules lowered her gloss wand. “Y’all can’t be serious.”

  “We have two choices: married or single,” Addie said. “And they both suck. So why aren’t we, as a society, throwing out some new options? Why aren’t tastemakers planting seeds of change? Why isn’t anyone TED-talking about it?”

  “But marriage is so romantic,” Jules said.

  “And romance isn’t real. It’s conceptual. Only reality is real,” M.J. said. “We all have romantic visions of how our lives are supposed to play out. Then someone dies unexpectedly, or we get passed over for a promotion, or your partner is never around—”

  “The skin above our knees starts to sag,” Britt added. “Random hairs grow out of our chins, our boobs look like pencils when we’re in doggy style.”

  “Exactly,” M.J. said. “Then the romantic vision fades to black and we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out what went wrong. But what if everything is going exactly the way it should and we’re too busy clinging to our bullshit fantasies to roll with it? What if Fear of Flying ended where it did because Isadora and Bennett are supposed to let go of their expectations and accept whatever mess they’re in today?”

  “So, what mess are you in?” Addie asked.

  M.J. told them about the car accident, Liz Evans, Dan’s extended trip to Java, and the unsigned contract at the bottom of her suitcase. The one Dan knows nothing about. “I gave up my career to be with him. Now he’s off doing what he loves and I’m stuck here watching another one of my visions fade to black.”

  “Oh my gosh!” Jules gasped. She was holding a long thick clump of Britt’s hair in her hand. “Do you have—”

  “Yes, along with one in eight American women so can we not make a big deal about it?”

  “Oh no, shugah.” Jules pulled her in for a hug. “You’re going to get through this, you’ll see. Aunt Barb on my mother’s side is a cancer survivor and—”

  “Cancer? I don’t have cancer.”

  Confused, Jules examined the clump more closely.

  “I have hair extensions.”

  “Phew,” Jules said, “because I was fibbing about Aunt Barb. She passed away last year.”

  “What about your ass?” Addie asked. “Is that real?”

  “Yes,” Britt said.

  “Lucky Paul.”

  “You’re assuming he’s aware of it.”

  “He’s not?”

  “Truth?”

  They nodded.

  “Paul smokes more weed than a wildfire. He only notices my ass when it’s blocking the TV.”

  “So the colon cancer brownies . . . ?” M.J. asked.

  “They were his,” Britt confessed. “He broke his back on a landscaping job two years ago and is still quote, unquote, recovering. Apparently pot helps his pain. Meanwhile, I’m the one suffering because while Paul’s on the couch cupping his balls, I’m juggling twins, pet turtles, cooking, cleaning, and a career.” She paused while Jules dusted her T-zone. “This is not what I signed up for. I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. I actually love soccer practice and playdates and homemade teacher gifts. And now some nanny named Josephina gets to do all that while I work. Because if I don’t work, we won’t have a house, and who’s going to hire a homeless Realtor?”

  “When will Paul be well enough to work?”

  “Um, eighteen months ago, but he won’t. He’s had dozens of offers but none of them are good enough. Nothing is ever good enough and I’m over it. We sleep in separate rooms and communicate on sticky notes. Not even the big ones. The tiny ones. My romantic vision didn’t fade to black, it went up in pot smoke.” Britt wrapped the hair extension around her fi
nger until the tip turned red. “Sometimes I think it would be better if he just died.”

  Jules’s blush brush froze midstroke.

  “Relax. I don’t have a weapon or anything. But I’ve fantasized about it. Like, would my life be easier if Paul magically disappeared—a zipless death, if you will.”

  “Get a divorce,” Addie said.

  “I don’t want to,” Britt said. “I like being married, at least I used to, back when Paul was . . . Paul.” Then with a nostalgic smile: “I miss him.”

  Jules drew back her head, took in Britt’s newly made-up face. Her skin was luminescent, her features defined and enriched. “Dang, I’m good.”

  “Wow, you just might get laid tonight,” Addie said.

  Britt put down Jules’s hand mirror. “Not if I’m late,” she said, reaching for her clutch with renewed energy.

  “Wait, what about the closing rituals?” M.J. pulled the key necklace from her purse, dangled it for inspiration.

  Jules tapped her décolletage; she was already wearing hers.

  “Addie? Britt?” M.J. said, hating to be a stickler. But without the rituals and traditions, this was just another book club—one that was bound to lose its magic and fizzle out.

  “It’s somewhere in my room . . . I’ll have it next time.”

  M.J.’s shoulders slackened. “And the cigarette?”

  “I have chewing tobacco,” Jules said. “Will that do?”

  “Really?”

  “Nah, I’m just playing. I stopped chewing when Destiny was born.”

  Addie stood. “I might have an e-cig.” She quickly returned with a shoe box filled with items that her various one-night-stands had left behind: a navy dress sock, skull-and-crossbones cuff links, gold earbuds, a BlackBerry, and thong underwear. “Got it!” She wiped the tip with her gauzy dress and turned it on.

  All four women inhaled the clove-flavored vapor, all four of them coughed and tried again.

  “The smoke entering our bodies,” M.J. finally said, her voice pinched to keep the vapor from escaping, “carries secrets that will stay locked inside us forever.” Those who had keys turned them. Then, on an exhale, their beams crossed, blended, and rose as one.

  * * *

  WHILE RIDING HOME in a Lyft, feeling unsatisfied and slightly duped, M.J. wondered if maybe her expectations had been too high. What she had anticipated—a night where everyone arrived on time, thirsting for wine and stimulating conversation, where personal boundaries melted like the clocks in Salvador Dalí’s famous painting—was another romantic vision gone awry. Because unlike the original members of the Dirty Book Club, M.J., Jules, Addie, and Britt did not share memories that predated the invention of color TV, seat belts, and the publication of The Cat in the Hat. They didn’t make secret pacts or communicate in half sentences and inside jokes.

  Their relationship was more like an arranged marriage designed to preserve a bloodline and uphold traditions. It lacked history, chemistry, passion. Still. There would be a next time.

  Fifty Shades of Grey

  CHAPTER

  Twelve

  Pearl Beach, California

  Tuesday, June 21

  Full Moon

  IT WAS THE way Dan had taken to the new sectional that hurt M.J.: spine erect, legs rigor-mortis stiff, hands clasped tightly over his crotch. A crisp capital L, not the yielding C she had anticipated.

  “Ouch!” he barked as she pressed her pinkie nail into another one of his bug bites. There must have been thirty on his shins alone. “Why do you keep doing that?”

  “To help you,” she said, pressing again.

  It was a trick she had learned at summer camp. A carved X in the center of a bite stops the itching. Not that Dan was scratching. He wasn’t doing much of anything other than yawning and mumbling, “It’s so sorreal to be back home.”

  Had he not survived a deadly earthquake, spent weeks volunteering with the Red Cross, and slept on the floor of a Hong Kong airport, M.J. would have reminded him (again!) that the word was surreal. Instead, she said, “Try to relax,” then began rubbing his calloused feet. Which wasn’t easy, they smelled like Doritos.

  After twenty days apart—the most since they’d met—M.J. expected Dan to kick open the front door and carry her into the bedroom. Wake her flesh with stubbly kisses and defibrillate her heart with his love. But he was exhausted—that glazed stare, the gray tinge to his tan, the mealy quality to his voice—she could see it. She understood.

  What she didn’t understand was his blatant disregard for the sectional. As if it had been there since childhood, like some sort of down-filled Giving Tree, existing solely to provide while asking nothing in return. As opposed to what it really was: brand-new and definitely not there before he went to Java.

  Neither was the driftwood coffee table, the fluffy white rug, the kitchen appliances, the art, or the basket for his medical magazines. And Dan didn’t seem to notice any of it until M.J. lovingly propped a pillow behind his lumbar and the price tag, which she must have forgotten to remove, stuck him in the back.

  “Two hundred dollars?” He snapped it off. “For this?”

  “Yep.” M.J. beamed. It was the Kelly Wearstler “Kiss” pillow and had been marked down from $295. A steal!

  Dan tossed the tag onto the coffee table. “How much did you pay for all of this?”

  “So you did notice.” M.J. flicked him on the forearm to keep things light. “Don’t worry, I put everything on my card and I’ll return what you don’t like.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like it—”

  M.J. wrapped her hands around his feet and squeezed relief.

  “It’s just a bit . . .”

  “A bit . . . what?”

  “I dunno.” Dan squinted as if trying to remember an online banking password. “Excessive?”

  “How is a place to sit excessive?”

  Tears pinched the backs of M.J.’s eyes. All those trips to furniture stores, the money she wasted on rushed deliveries, that surge of joy she felt when she imagined Dan’s reaction, it was all for nothing; another failed attempt to fit into his world.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, then pulled her toward the coffee stain in the middle of his T-shirt. Though hurt, M.J. allowed herself to be pulled. She craved the intimacy and wanted to smell his coconut-scented skin. She also needed somewhere to dry her tears, and the couch hadn’t been Scotchgarded yet.

  “I should have waited. It’s your home. I had no business doing it without you.”

  “It’s our home,” Dan said, like he used to. “And I’m glad you did it. You know how much I hate shopping. If it were left up to me this place would look like one of those terrorist crash pads—nothing but a bare mattress and a cell phone charger.”

  She laughed. He was starting to thaw.

  “I love everything you did. It’s just—”

  M.J. lifted her head. “What?”

  “Do you know how many filters the Red Cross could have bought for the cost of that pillow? Enough to give four hundred people clean drinking water for a year.”

  “I’ll return it,” M.J. said, even though it was a final sale. “We can donate the money to the Red Cross and—”

  “I love the pillow.” Dan rolled toward her and wrapped her in his arms. “And I love you even more. Just give me a day to acclimate.”

  M.J. nestled into the relaxed curve of his body and synched her breathing to his. And there they slept, straight into the next morning, like perfect C’s.

  * * *

  M.J. WAS SITTING on her new porch swing, when Britt pulled up in the Mini—top down, hair whipping against her sunglasses, Mariah Carey’s “Dreamlover” blasting from the stereo.

  She turned off the engine. “So, how pissed is he?”

  M.J. planned to say that Dan was livid; that she never would have made Britt drop everything on a Friday afternoon if he wasn’t. That he has a “thing” about loaning cars and the fact that it had been a birthday gift made it worse. But when it came
down to it, she didn’t have the heart, especially since Dan hadn’t even noticed the damn thing was gone. “Turns out he’s fine. Not pissed at all.”

  “I thought you said he was—”

  “I lied.”

  “Lied? Why?”

  M.J. got in the car and shut the door. “I’m bored.”

  “Why didn’t you just say that?”

  “Would you have come if I did?”

  “No.” Britt’s dimple deepened. “But only because I was getting laid.”

  * * *

  M.J. LEANED BACK in her plastic chair, giving the busboy the space he needed to wipe the sticky sheen from their table. The raucous beach bar, with its bikini-clad waitresses, two-dollar test tube shots, and sand-footed clientele was nary the atmosphere M.J. had in mind when she suggested lunch. But Britt feared an unexpected run-in with a client or mom friend who would think nothing of asking to join them—the “small-town sabotage” as she called it—and was certain there would be no such interloper at Poncho and Frieda’s.

  “So you were getting day-laid? Sounds like your big date went well,” M.J. said, once the busboy had gone.

  “Date?”

  “At Marrow. With your husband.”

  “Oh, you mean Paul?”

  “Yeah, sorry, isn’t Paul your husband?”

  “He is, but that’s not who I met at Marrow.”

  Fleur, their waitress, chucked two baskets of glistening crab cakes onto their table.

  “Paul never showed,” Britt said. “He had passed out on the couch with half a salami sandwich stuck to his pregnant stomach. He has no clue he even missed it.”

  “So who did you meet at Marrow?”

  “Long story medium: I couldn’t let Jules’s makeup go to waste, so when they gave my table away I hit the bar and small-town sabotaged Mandy, this girl I know from high school. She was with her boyfriend and a couple of his work buddies and those work buddies were buying me shots and calling me sexy. So, being the tragic married-mother-of-two cliché that I am, I soaked up the attention like a super sport tampon.”