He is mocking her. They are in bed, the lights are on and Lorne is staring at his wife, amused at her valiant efforts to stay awake. Determined, she tries her best to concentrate on the words on the page in front of her, but she cannot help it. Her eyelids slowly close, her wrists grow weak…thunk! The novel on her lap falls to the ground. Lorne bursts out laughing.
“This thing is as heavy as a phonebook!” he says, fetching it from the floor. “Don’t tell me…it probably won some fancy prize, right?”
Monica sighs and snuggles into her pillow. “Marjorie picked it. I have three hundred and eighteen pages left to go.”
She’d never finish it on time. For a moment she fantasizes that one of her parishioners might get sick—not too sick—appendicitis maybe, (the appendix is a superfluous organ, isn’t it?) only they’d suspect it was something far worse, so she’d rush to the emergency department to offer comfort, thus possessing a convenient excuse to miss book club and not have to admit she hadn’t finished that month’s selection.
“Marjorie, huh?” Lorne says. “The retired principal?”
“She likes big books.”
“Hmmm.” Lorne opens the book. “After you have read this story of great misfortunes…sounds like torture.”
Monica’s eyes are closing again when Lorne flips to the next page. His light stays on for a couple more hours. He is captivated by the plight of an unlikely foursome whose paths converge in 1975 India. It’s a world away from the life of a thirty-something small town hardware store owner. He hopes there’s a happy ending. Beside him, Monica snores softly.
The next morning, Monica rises early and notices the book spread upside down without a bookmark, its spine already buckled. It’s one of her pet peeves, but she lets it slide when Lorne offers her a cup of coffee, his eyes bloodshot.
“You kept reading?” she asks, incredulous.
“It’s not John Grisham, but it’s not bad.”
Monica laughs. If only someone would pick an airport read for book club. It would be way more fun.
Did you like it?
Can’t remember.
Okay, let’s have canapés and talk about something else.
She leaves the cozy apartment above Valley Hardware for her morning stroll. She’s halfway done her regular loop when she spots her yogi, Caitlin, down by the river doing sun salutations in bright pink spandex. Monica waves.
Caitlin nods in her annoyingly Zen way. “Care to join me? You look like you might be carrying some tension.”
Oh great. Monica had caught a glimpse of herself in the newly washed store window the other day and saw that her jaw had settled in an unflattering grimace. She wonders at what point your face reconciles itself into the most familiar pattern, like a creek that finds the path of least resistance. She doesn’t want any part of her body (or soul) to melt into the grooves of someone who carries tension. She forces a smile and says, “Sure. Why not?”
Taking a deep breath, she lets her head hang down and her fingers dangle on the grass.
“Stop holding your breath,” Caitlin says. “Just let go.”
Monica wonders why she can’t remember the most basic precepts. It takes her a few minutes, but she finally finds a rhythm. By the time she’s on the ground in Shivasana, she’s almost forgotten about the stupid book. Caitlin rolls up her mat.
“Wait. Before you go, there’s something I meant to ask you,” Monica says.
“You want to have another giant pumpkin contest?”
Monica laughs. “No. I wouldn’t put you through that again.”
Last year, Monica held a fundraiser to fix the roof at the church and everyone in town grew massive pumpkins, and threw out their backs trying to display them on stage, resulting in a surge of attendees at Caitlin’s yoga classes. So far, nothing was falling apart this fall to warrant another outsized display of horticultural prowess.
“So, what did you want to ask me about?”
“We’re reading the Giller Prize winning novel for book club and I can’t find the time to finish it.”
“Yeah, it’s epic. I spent the whole month of August in my hammock savouring it.”
Monica tries to imagine having a month to read, a month to savour words and stories. That was the heaven she longed for. Suddenly, she has an idea.
“Do you want to come to book club this month?”
“Nope.”
It fascinates Monica how quickly some people make up their minds. She is secretly jealous of how easy it was for Caitlin to say no. If she had that gift she wouldn’t be carrying tension in the first place.
“ Don’t get me wrong…I loved the book. I was completely transported. It made me want to sell all my possessions and go back to the Ashram where I volunteered in my twenties.”
“So…can I ask why you’re not interested in coming?”
Caitlin would have something interesting to say and possibly Marjorie wouldn’t notice that Monica hadn’t finished the book.
“Who’s going to be at book club?” Caitlin asks.
“It’s Marjorie Hoffman’s turn to host. You know her place—the lovely cottage on the hill. Most of the yoga gang will be there, Hilda, Corrie, Lucy, Gilda, Denise…”
Caitlin puts up her hand. “So, it’s a hen party.”
“Well…” Monica smiles. One of the things she loved about book club in the beginning was the sound of women together in the kitchen before the ‘serious’ discussion began. Someone would giggle, usually Corrie, and they’d tease Hilda for finishing the book in the car and before long they would be gasping and holding their sides. Was that a hen party? “I guess so.”
“Usually the conversation is all about men and children. Not my thing.”
Monica doesn’t argue, but as Caitlin saunters away she envies her carefree steps. Oh to be a woman who reads big books and can easily say no.
#
Lorne is unpacking the rain gear for the apple pickers. It’s been sunny for weeks, but by the end of October there’s usually a few rainy days when the farmers will rush in and empty his stock for the season. Monica comes down the stairs and shyly hands him the novel.
“If you have time to finish it, maybe you could tell me what happens and—”
“Okay,” Lorne says. He pours himself a second coffee from his thermos behind the cash and sits in his chair, propping his feet on the half empty box of raincoats.
“I owe you one.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” He winks and turns his attention back to the Indian adventure.
She slips out the front door, the bells jingle and then it’s quiet.
He reads all morning.
At four o’clock that afternoon, Marjorie Hoffman sits across the road from Valley Hardware in Sharanne’s hair salon. Her colour has been processing for a while now, and she’s sweating even though the heat is off. Just when she thinks Sharanne will come and rescue her, the door opens and Lorne walks in.
“Can you squeeze me in?” he asks. He has an irresistible lopsided grin. Marjorie knows all about their history.
Sharanne smiles. “You’re in luck, Lorne. Mrs. Hoffman has about ten more minutes, so just a trim. No shampoo today.”
Marjorie watches as Sharanne lifts herself off her stool and waddles over to Lorne. Her belly is enormous—she’s due with twins in December. Marjorie congratulates herself for booking her cut and colour now. The woman can’t possibly be on her feet much longer.
Lorne catches Marjorie’s eye in the mirror. “Hello, Mrs. Hoffman.”
Marjorie waves. Why couldn’t men go to the barber shop and leave women their space in the salon? She knows she looks ridiculous with her head covered in tin foil. You can’t have a respectable conversation looking like a character from the Wizard of Oz, can you?
“I am enjoying that big old book you chose for book club,” he says.
She raises an eyebrow. She hadn’t taken the hardware store owner as the literary type. Half-joking she says, “Are you coming to book club, too?”
“Probably not. I’ll just tell Monica how it ends and let her do the chatting.”
Sharanne inhales sharply. “Lorne! Don’t give away your wife’s secrets.”
Lorne shrugs. “Sorry, Mrs. Hoffman. I know she wanted to finish it in time, but—”
Marjorie is now feeling quite warm. The dome over her head makes her claustrophobic. She wiggles it in vain, and Sharanne, seeing her struggle, shuffles over and flips it up.
“Almost done, Mrs. Hoffman.”
Marjorie welcomes the cool air. A few more snips around Lorne’s ears and Sharanne sends him home. “Good enough for today,” she says.
“You are still close,” Marjorie says a few minutes later when Sharanne rinses out her hair.
“We try.”
Marjorie has no idea where her first husband even lives. She’s fascinated by Lorne and Sharanne’s friendship. Of course they have a daughter. That changes things.
“Marjorie,” Sharanne combs out her hair with unnecessary vigor. “Most of the folks who’ve started this month’s book are having a bit of a hard time. From what I gather, it’s quite the read.”
“It’s literature.”
“Yeah. I get it. But people can’t spend the entire month reading one book, right?”
They can if they’re bored, Marjorie thinks. Aloud she says. “I can understand that perspective.”
Marjorie pats her hair uncertainly. Sharanne has talked her into going a shade lighter. It will soften up those roots, darling. She supposes it’s a judicious call, but Marjorie doesn’t really like the new shade. She looks just like all the other women in town now, when she’d once stood out with her dark curls and her raspberry rush lipstick.
She pays Sharanne, pressing something extra for the baby into her hands, and makes her way towards the parking lot by the river where her brand new four wheel drive SUV awaits. She fusses with a fancy electronic key and finally settles herself inside. The sun has already set. These days she doesn’t care to drive after dark, but she won’t admit this because then her husband will mention Florida again.
She takes a deep breath and reverses out of the lot and heads up the hill. It feels like she’s driving an ice-cream truck. The whole thing is so ridiculously bulky and wide and unsuitable. She’s in such a bad mood about her generic hair, and her stupid all terrain behemoth, that she doesn’t notice the flashing lights behind her until they’re nearly blinding.
“What the devil?” A sinking feeling washes over her. Was she speeding? At least he didn’t have to put his sirens on to get her attention.
He walks up and knocks on the window. “Hello ma’am. How are you this evening?”
Suddenly she’s very tired. Truth be told, she would rather be in Florida right then, close to her grandchildren. She’d rather be riding her bicycle along the ocean than driving forty million pounds of metal around town. She’d rather dye her hair a bold, dark hue, at the very least chestnut brown, and get a tan on her face so she doesn’t look so washed out and old. But if she did that, she wouldn’t have her book club friends. If they still wanted to be her friends after six hundred pages.
She’d wanted the evening to be memorable. She was going to serve Indian gelato, spiced paniyaram and samosas. If the night was special, her guests would remember her. And that was the worst thing about retirement. One moment you’re walking the halls and everyone knows you, the next, you’re invisible. One day, you have a closet full of blazers with shoulder pads that help you walk taller, the next, you find yourself seriously contemplating a velour hoodie.
“Ma’am?”
“Oh, sorry. Yes, was I speeding?”
“No ma’am. You were driving without your lights on.”
“Oh.” Marjorie scans the dashboard. Where was that stupid button? It should be obvious…there should be a lightbulb icon somewhere. Oh, for the love of God. Why was she driving this idiotic bus?
“Can I help?” the police officer asks.
Marjorie Hoffman looks at the young man standing by her window. In all likelihood, he was one of the thousands of students she’d walked past in the hallways not long ago. He probably knew who she was. Maybe he would return home that night and tell his partner that his former principal had dementia and was driving around in the dark with her lights off. Metaphor!
“It’s a new car,” she admits. “I thought the lights came on automatically.” That last part was a lie, but she has her pride.
“May I?” he asks.
It takes him five seconds to locate the obvious-to-young-people-button. Surely the salesman had pointed it out to her on the lot. But she hadn’t paid attention because she was halfway through her book and just wanted to get home to finish it. Would anyone in Florida feel that way about a six hundred page Indian tragedy?
“Is there anything else I can do for you this evening?” He is earnest, bless his heart. He is earnest and he is genuinely worried about her.
“Are you a reader, officer?” she asks him.
He seems taken aback by the question, but quickly recovers.
“I just finished ‘The Rainmaker,’” he says.
“Good book?” Marjorie asks.
“I love all of John Grisham’s stuff,” he replies. “Sometimes you just need an escape from reality.”
The officer tips his hat, retreats to his vehicle and drives off. Marjorie melts into the soft leather seat, turning the fancy seat warmers up. I am a fool, she thinks. The world wants a bowl of beer nuts and I’ve imposed a four-course meal. They’ll resent me forever. They might even kick me out. So much for being unforgettable.
And then, in her rear view mirror, she glimpses the local yogi pedaling up the hill behind her on her bicycle, a Himalayan patchwork drawstring bag slung across her back. And suddenly Marjorie has an idea to fix the mess she’s made.
#
“Did you bring an old shirt?” Monica asks Hilda on Friday night. They are standing on Marjorie’s doorstep together. The others arrive in quick succession, each carrying a plastic bag with old cotton dress shirts, as per the last minute mysterious instructions.
“I don’t keep anything for more than two years,” Gilda says, tossing her pashmina over her shoulder. “But Frank has a cupboard full of shirts I buy him for Hannukah every year and he never wears them.” She chuckles. “So, it’s safe to say he won’t notice.”
An undercurrent of nervousness permeates their laughter. Corrie whispers their unspoken dread. “Ladies. I have a confession…”
“You didn’t finish the book,” Hilda says.
Corrie bites her lip. “Neither did Lucy. Did either of you?”
Monica shakes her head. “Lorne filled me in on the plot.”
She doesn’t mention that Lorne didn’t like the ending and they had an argument about whether a book was worthwhile if it didn’t have a Happily Ever After. It would be a good discussion point, but you can’t discuss an ending you haven’t reached.
They shuffle in the cold, no one brave enough to knock.
“Should we just come clean?” Hilda asks.
They were shivering. Suddenly the door swings open.
“Come in, come in,” Marjorie says.
Something is different in her demeanour. She is wearing some kind of very un-Marjorie zip up sports jacket and has blondish highlights in her hair. To Monica’s surprise, Caitlin dances out of the kitchen with a tray of Kanda Bhaji.
“Hello ladies! Come in. Bring your clothes to the living room and we’ll get started.”
They follow her into the addition off the back of Marjorie’s cottage where tables have been set up all around the room with scissors, needles, thread and even a couple of sewing machines.
“This, uh, doesn’t look like book club,” Hilda says, her mouth full of Caitlin’s fried onion sandwich.
“Tonight we’re tailors,” Caitlin announces.
Marjorie steps in to explain. “Each of you have brought an item of clothing we’re going to cut up and sew together to start a patchwork quilt.”
“Like Dina’s quilt,” Caitlin adds. Monica sees her mischievous smile. The yogi knows perfectly well none of them have read enough of the book to know what Dina’s quilt means.
Marjorie instructs them where to sit and the women obey. Next, she takes out a notebook. The women collectively tense. They are about to get busted. But instead of asking questions about the plot, or the theme, or what they thought about a certain character’s decisions, Marjorie takes a navy blue oxford off a hook and holds it tenderly in her arms for a moment. Then, she grabs a pair of scissors and cuts it into pieces.
She smiles at her friends, glancing at her notebook. “Let me tell you about the first time I wore that shirt.”
When she is done, Hilda goes next with hers. Then Gilda with Frank’s work shirts. And so on. After an hour they start sewing squares together. Caitlin keeps coming with more food and wine. They laugh a lot. And by some miracle, they do talk about the book. Not the plot—they don’t want to spoil it in case people eventually finish it—but the characters. They loved the characters.
When Marjorie sews a patch of blue cotton onto Monica’s starched white poplin, Monica opens up about how she could relate to Dina, because she doesn’t have children of her own. Later, when Lucy sews her husband’s plaid to Marjorie’s gingham, they talk about Lucy’s late husband and how she’s coping. “My Bert was like Dina’s Rustom,” Lucy confesses. “It hasn’t been the same without him.” And so the night unfolds. They finish a few amateur squares around midnight, with Caitlin’s help. It is the longest book club they’ve ever had.
“What are we going to do with this now?” Corrie asks.
Marjorie clears her throat. “I’d like to keep it…as a memory of you all.”
She tells them about Florida, and her ambivalence about leaving, about the incident with the car. There’s more laughter, some tears and one or two wine-fuelled snorts.
“We’ll miss you,” Monica says.
Everyone agrees. “We wouldn’t have read half the books we have if you hadn’t suggested them.”
Caitlin jumps in. “You know you can still participate. Just phone in from Florida like a VIP.”
Marjorie smiles. But she doesn’t commit to anything. She suddenly has a vision of herself on a white, sandy beach, in a turquoise bathing suit that compliments her blondish hair, reading the latest John Grisham. And maybe an escape wouldn’t be the worst thing. Maybe it would even be “A Fine Balance.”
The End
The six hundred page novel Monica struggles to finish was a Giller prizewinner, and well worth a read.