The Rejected Writers' Book Club (Southlea Bay) (7 page)

In between the food starting to arrive, Annie asked a question. “What if they refuse to give us a letter?”

“Then,” said Doris, with a flourish of grandeur, “we will go to plan B!”

“Plan B?” I asked in a tight voice, not really wanting to know what that was.

Doris sucked on a piece of ice from her tea. “Ruby has agreed to chain herself to one of their toilets. It would be like the Occupy Movement. Except this will be handy in case she needs to ‘go.’ So, Ruby is on Occupy the Toilet Movement, no pun intended,” she said seriously, “and Ethel will be there as my right-hand woman.”

Flora fluttered her white lashes nervously as she delicately sipped her water through a thin straw and spoke for the first time. “What about me? How can I help?”

“I thought that would be obvious,” snapped Doris. “You’re the youngest in our group. If we need some womanly wiles to seduce this Gaveston fella, that will be your job. You’ll bring him around to our way of thinking by the oldest trick in the book.”

From Flora’s expression, she hadn’t the foggiest idea what Doris was referring to.

Doris became irritated. “You know, the femme fatale. A low-cut blouse and some sass.”

I thought Flora was going to pass out on the spot. The blood visibly drained from her face, and she started to cough uncontrollably.

“What I need from you all now is commitment and solidarity.”

Ruby put her fist in the air again, like a salute, and they all followed. Doris’s was the only fist still in the air when Gladys arrived back with the last of our order. As she placed down Doris’s food in front of her, she quipped dryly, “Can I get you some greasepaint to go with that patty melt, Rocky?”

“Just some ketchup,” replied Doris curtly.

I must admit this had all been immensely entertaining, but it was time for me to gracefully step off this carousel ride and go back to the real world. I was actually grateful for my daughter’s emergency. It was about to come in really handy. As soon as Gladys left the table, I started on my exit speech. “I don’t think there’s really much I can do to help your group,” I said, winding up gently.

“Nonsense,” Doris replied through a mouthful of patty melt. “You’re a book person. You’re an insider, and you know the trade. We’re going to need you to help us strategize.”

“I would really love to help you—honestly, I would—but unfortunately I have to drive down to San Francisco next week to help my daughter. She’s having some complications with her pregnancy, and she needs me there while her husband’s away. So I’ll have to bow out of this little adventure. I wish I could be there to help the cause. I really do,” I lied, adding my most contrite expression.

Doris looked at me, and her eyes narrowed. I was getting used to her facial expressions. This meant she was thinking.

“Did you say San Francisco?” she asked intently.

“Yes,” I said as I scraped at the bottom of my soup bowl. Something about the turn of this conversation was starting to make me feel uncomfortable.

“When did you plan on coming back?”

“Oh, about a week or so later, I’m not really sure yet . . .”

“Perfect,” said Doris, getting excited. “You’ll be glad to know there
is
something you can do.” She paused, taking a long sip of her iced tea, then added, “You can take us with you!”

Her words appeared to jumble as they entered my brain. I could have sworn she had just said, “You can take us with you.”

Doris was exuberant: “You can drive us all down to San Francisco, where this publishing person has his main office. We can meet with him while you take care of your daughter and maybe catch some sights, and then we can all drive back together. It’s a perfect plan.” She slapped her hand down on the table abruptly, bouncing condiments, unable to control her excitement.

This was about the point I stopped listening. I stopped listening because I could hear a strange woman’s voice in my head screaming. Was it mine?

As she outlined the rest of her plan to the others, I pulled myself together and tried to backpedal as fast as I could, only it appeared someone had stolen my bike chain.

“I can’t think how to . . . make . . . it . . . work . . .” was all I managed to squeeze out as my voice dried up and trailed off.

I was completely flummoxed.

“We’ll make it work,” said Doris with renewed confidence. “I can help with the driving, and we’ll all chip in for gas. It’s perfect because I don’t like to fly. In fact, I haven’t flown on an airplane since the seventies, ever since they started making their seats smaller to save money.”

Making their seats smaller? Here was a woman in denial. I didn’t want to mention that I didn’t think the seats were getting any smaller.

“So. That’s all settled,” said Doris. “Annie, can you get someone to take care of your dogs? Annie boards dogs,” added Doris, stating the obvious.

“Trevor can do it,” Annie said decidedly. Even her needles seemed to be clicking together with excitement. As she talked through her plans, they moved faster and faster. “He likes to get himself in front of my propane heater whenever he can. I’ll freeze him some TV dinners. There’s nothing more attractive to an old bachelor than a warm house, a satellite dish, and homemade pot roast.”

Still glued to my seat and listening to that crazy woman who kept on screaming in my head, I tried to think of anything else I could do to get out of this. I drew a blank.

Doris was in full flow. “Flora, can you get some time off from Stems?”

“I think so,” said Flora as she picked at her salad. “I get vacation days with my hours, but I never, ever get to take them. I have nowhere to go. Mrs. Bickerstaff will be more than happy to see me take a vacation.”

“Good,” said Doris. “So we’re all set then. Let’s get together soon to make our final plans.”

Walking back to the library, I was in shock. Oliver Hardy’s voice had replaced the screaming woman in my head. He kept saying, “That’s another fine mess you’ve got yourself into,” over and over again.

At the end of the day, I trudged to my car, thoroughly miserable. As I pulled into our driveway, Martin was out on the lawn. He seemed happier than a pig in muck.

“Hey there, library lady! What do you think?”

I eyed his creation like a plate of yesterday’s leftovers. I was too miserable to get excited over a monstrous cratelike thing with chicken wire across the front.

“What is it?” I asked glumly.

“Isn’t that obvious? It’s the raccoon trap I’ve been building.”

I snapped and kicked at the corner of it with my foot.

“I hate raccoons! It’s just another thing on this island taking over my life,” I ranted over my shoulder, making a beeline for the house and bursting into tears.

He found me about two minutes later, the bath water running as I sat on the top of the toilet clutching a bottle of my favorite bubble bath.

“Are you okay? This isn’t about the raccoons, is it?”

Twenty-plus years had obviously taught him a thing or two.

“I’m going on a five-day road trip with a bunch of crazy people.”

He stared at me, a bemused look on his face. “What?”

“I’m going to California with Doris’s rejection group.”

His face registered that he was no closer to understanding. “Why don’t I make you a cup of tea and you can tell me all about it?”

After my bath, we sat side by side on the sofa, and I recalled the day’s conversation with Doris and her group.

“You sure do manage to get yourself into some interesting situations,” he said. “My life with you has been many things, but never boring. Remember the time you took in our neighbor’s five dogs when they went on vacation, when I was away working for Lockheed in Santa Barbara?”

“They all looked so sweet over the garden fence, and I thought they would be company for me,” I said defensively.

“As I recall, you ended up sleeping on the bedroom floor and chasing the ‘hounds from hell’ as you described them off the furniture for two weeks. When I arrived back, you looked as if you had just been through World War III, and so did the garden.”

“How can I forget—oh, what am I going to do?” I whined.

He wanted to fix the problem. “You can tell her no!”

“That’s impossible!” I snapped back. “It’s like dealing with a Rottweiler. Once she’s got ahold of your throat, she won’t let go until you’re dead.”

“Well, then, it looks like you’re going to San Francisco with the Rottweiler and her pack,” he said through a suppressed grin. “In some ways, I’m glad you’ll have some company on the road. Besides, it might be fun, all you girls together. You did say when we moved here how you were looking forward to making friends and being part of the community.”

“But that was back when I was envisioning
Steel Magnolias
. You know”—I tried my best version of a Southern accent—“here’s some pie, honey, and you are just the perfect person to sew a panel with us at our quilting bee. It hasn’t been quite like that, has it?”

“I know you haven’t met anyone you feel close to yet here, not like you did in California, so . . .” His eyes blazed with mischievous excitement. “Maybe a rejected girls’ club is a perfect fit for you. You could band together with all the other losers who can’t find friends.”

I punched him playfully on the arm.

He pulled me in closer, saying, “Maybe you need to give these girls a chance. Who knows? They might grow on you.”

I envisioned the “girls” my husband was referring to: Doris the Rottweiler, Ethel dressed as an alien, the bejangled hippie chained to some corporate toilet, and the shrinking violet dressed as a classic femme fatale. Picturing them like that actually made me laugh.

“It’s only a few days,” he reminded me.

Chapter Six

FAIRY BELLS
&
HOT-PINK JOGGING PANTS

The next day at work I heard a
pssssst
sound coming from the car maintenance section. Curiosity got the better of me as I followed it. Suddenly, the book
How to Service Your Carburetor
started to wiggle and was then replaced with Doris’s face. She was staring out from the other side of the bookcase, framed between a book about changing brake shoes and how to select your next SUV.

“I just wanted to let you know we’re all on track for Operation Shrewy Guy. That’s the code name, so no one knows what we are talking about,” she informed me in hushed tones.

“Okay,” I said in my regular voice.

“Shhh! You never know who’s listening. With a small town like this, you only have to sneeze on First Street, and someone will rush over with a tissue from Third! I just wanted to find out what time we’ll all be setting off. We should meet at my house. That way we can take on all the supplies!”

“Supplies?”

She removed the SUV book to make some more room. “I’ve left Ethel over at the house, cooking up a storm! I’ll freeze lots of good food in little plastic containers. That way, we’ll have plenty of food for our expedition.”

She made it sound as if we were going on safari. I stopped myself just in time from saying, “I’ll bring the tranquilizer gun.”

“I was planning on leaving early so we could get off the island and through Seattle before rush hour. So how does six a.m. suit you?”

“Six a.m.!” she spat out with disgust. “I’m not a toddler! How about we meet at my house at nine a.m.? That’s much more civilized.”

“Okay,” I mumbled genially. It was beginning to be acutely apparent that I was not in charge of any part of this trip.

“Remember”—she leaned into the book space for emphasis—“keep this all to yourself. I have to go. I’d better get back before Ethel overcooks the hog’s trotters for the road, or they’ll be tough as old shoe leather!”

With those parting words, she shoved the books back into place, then disappeared as fast as she’d appeared. Hog’s trotters! What had I gotten myself into? My heart sank as I stood there for a moment, staring at a book cover titled
The A to Z of Changing Oil
. It had a photo of a man holding a small metal can.

I told my husband all about my concerns after dinner that night. He raised his eyebrows.

“You’ve been telling me how you want to lose a few pounds. I can’t think of a better time than when someone is serving hog’s trotters for dinner.”

“It’s not funny,” I said, following him outside to the garden as he picked up some tools to work on the raccoon trap. “That kind of food is going to stink my whole car up, not to mention all the room it will take up in the trunk!”

He leaned back, put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out two small silver bells. I was momentarily distracted.

“Are you hoping to earn an angel her wings?” I asked, unable to keep from teasing him.

He looked confused as he sat back on his heels with the two little silver bells pressed between his thumb and forefinger.

“What?”

“The bells, getting an early jump on Christmas? Or is this a special decoration just for the raccoons?”

“No, this is so that I’ll know when the trap is sprung.”

I wished I’d never asked, because then he went into lengthy technical instructions about how the raccoons would set off the bells once they were inside. He then took me on a tour of the trap. Crouching down, I peered inside. It looked like a four-star hotel for rodents, including a hefty box piled with straw, a bowl of dog food, and water.

“Not bad. All it’s missing is room service. Ah, now I understand what the bells are for.”

“You’ll be glad of this trap when you get your trash can back,” he said defensively. “You wait and see.”

The next week or so was a whirlwind of activity, punctuated by lots of covert conversations at the library with Doris through different sections of the bookshelves.

She hadn’t mentioned the local person or the story in her manuscript again, but I couldn’t help wondering about it. Instead, we had important discussions consisting of such topics as: What clothes did those folks down there in California wear? What was the best sunscreen to stop her burning to a crisp? And would she need to buy some jogging pants? Jogging pants! The woman could barely get herself up the library steps without breathing heavily. But apparently, she’d heard somewhere that everybody jogged in California, so she didn’t want to look out of place. She added, as she informed me of this nugget, that she believed she had less chance of being mugged if she blended in with the rest of the natives. I didn’t want to say anything, but I couldn’t think of anything odder than seeing Doris’s frame squeezed into some jogging pants, and I pitied the mugger that would attempt to take her on. However, even though I tried to convince her otherwise, she said she would take a hot-pink pair “just in case. They might come in handy.”

The day before we left, she popped her head through the shelf on handicrafts to inform me that Ruby was down with the Island Lurgy, and Annie was taking her place.

“It’s so unfortunate. We really needed our radical player,” she added, shaking her head. “But Ethel has already offered to step in at the last minute and be chained to the toilet instead.”

I nodded, hoping no one was listening to this very odd conversation.

It was extremely early morning the day of the road trip when I heard Martin rustling around in the bedroom.

I opened one eye and looked at the clock. It read 2:30 a.m.

“Are you okay?” I croaked. “What are you doing?”

“I’m looking for the emergency flashlight,” he whispered back. “You’d think we’d keep it in an easy place, you know, so we could find it before we burnt to death in our beds.”

“It’s in my sock drawer,” I yawned.

“What do you need it for? And why are you whispering?” Sitting up, I watched him amble over to my drawer and start rifling through it.

“I just heard the bells tripped on the trap. Finally, we’re getting somewhere,” he announced triumphantly.

“Are you sure it isn’t just the wind?” I said, putting on my slippers and pulling my robe from the bedroom chair. I must admit I was more than a little curious to see the critter that had been holding my trash can for ransom.

“There’s only one way to find out.” He smirked, finding the flashlight, clicking it on and off, and striding down the stairs. I shuffled after him, putting on my robe. I hovered over him as he pulled on his boots and coat.

Just then, I clearly heard the distinct sound of bells tinkling across the wind.

“Oh,” I cooed. “It sounds like Santa’s here.”

As he opened the back door, the biting cold Northwest November morning cut me to the core. Cinching my robe tighter, I followed him into the garden. He stalked up to the cage like a big-game hunter, and I crept behind him.

As we got closer, I could see there was actually something inside. It was moving around and sniffing at the food bowl. Martin shone his flashlight into the trap, and my first thought was how small this raccoon seemed, but as my eyes adjusted, I realized it didn’t seem like a raccoon at all. It looked much more like . . .

“A cat!” My husband finished my thought out loud, the disappointment in his voice unmistakable.

“It’s the Joneses’.” I shivered.

They were our neighbors down the street. The poor thing looked petrified, frozen in the light. I was sure it was more than happy to have found a nice bowl of food in the middle of the night, but performing on Broadway had not been a part of its plan.

Martin groaned and opened the cage door. “Come on,” he said gruffly. “Come on out of there.”

But the poor thing just sat rooted to the spot, frozen with fear. I yawned again and plodded back up the yard toward the house. “You could always leave it in there. I’ve heard that raccoons are extremely partial to cat.”

Hurrying back upstairs, I climbed back into the warm sheets. Martin joined me presently, snoring again as soon as his head hit the pillow. But I just lay there, staring up at the ceiling, a million things going through my mind.

When I finally did get to sleep, I had a nightmare. I was dressed in a safari outfit and was stalking prey with an enormous rifle in my backyard. A fairy flew by and thanked me for her wings. It was then that I realized in my dream that the raccoon trap must have been sprung, so I crept up to it ever so slowly. I could hear something chomping away inside the cage. I carefully came around, and as I aimed my shotgun at the prey, about to fire, it turned its head and looked at me. It was Doris. She was down on all fours in a pink pair of spandex jogging pants, feeding on a bowl of hog’s trotters. Then, as she waved at me, the bells on the cage started ringing louder and louder. I woke up with a start, and I realized the ringing was my phone.

Running down the stairs, I picked it up. It was Stacy.

“So you
are
there,” she said, disgruntled.

“I had a bad night,” I responded defensively.

How could this one person rattle me just by saying four words? I looked at the clock. It was 7:30 a.m.

“Aren’t you starting out today?” Stacy asked, clearly irritated by the pause.

“Yes, in about an hour. Is everything okay?”

Boy, was that the wrong question.

She went into a thirty-minute rant about how frustrated she was to have to rest all the time, how her job wasn’t being managed effectively while she was gone, and how Chris didn’t understand how hard it was to be pregnant, especially as she was either peeing or throwing up all the time. She started to cry with frustration and in between snivels told me she would call me back later.

My head began to whirl. I felt like crawling into the raccoon trap with the Joneses’ cat, and you wouldn’t be able to get me out either. This was not going to be an easy visit.

I finished packing the car and came back in for one last check. As I looked around at my cozy little cottage, my heart sank like a stone. I was going to miss it. Deep down in my boots, I was a homebody, and it wasn’t easy to tear myself away. The shabby-chic interior with its cool blue-and-white-painted furniture just made my heart happy.

As I passed the raccoon trap, I glanced in. The Joneses’ cat was still there, curled up in a ball, sleeping.

Driving toward Doris’s, I started to feel upbeat as I reveled in the changing season. The late fall sun was dazzling, and along the roadsides, the leaves blanketed the ground like multicolored quilts. My sentimental mood disappeared like Scotch mist as soon as I pulled into her driveway.

I felt as if I’d joined the circus. It was chaotic. I made my way inside, going past heaped piles lining the hallway. Doris was marching around with a clipboard, barking out orders as Ethel ran around doing her bidding. Wading in, I made my way into the living room.

Flora was slung across the sofa like a bag of laundry, wearing layer upon layer of clothes, which included a hat, gloves, and a scarf. Scattered around her feet on the floor was an odd assortment of carpet and string bags. Clasped in her rice-paper hand was a weatherworn satchel and a copy of
Wuthering Heights
. She looked like she’d run away from home. She also looked unconscious.