The Accidental Book Club (22 page)

“Stop it,” Bailey said, and when he started talking again, she said it louder. “Stop it!”

At first, he looked amused. His eyebrows shot up into his thick black hair. Then his mouth drew down into a thin line. “I do believe you got me here under false pretenses, Bailey. I do believe your promise of letting me use your, in your words, ‘fucked-up family’ for a story went uncleared by the powers that be.”

“What?” Jean breathed, turning to Bailey. Bailey looked down into her lap, fiddling with the cloth napkin there.

“Well, that’s a shame. Not even the absent father for me to whet my teeth on.”

“Okay, that’s enough,” Loretta said. She had an uncharacteristically steel glint in her eyes. “She’s a girl. Leave her alone.”

Thackeray mimed wiping tears from his eyes. “Oh, well, since she’s a girl . . .” He propped his elbow on the table. “She happens to be a very manipulative girl. These weren’t things I pulled out of her—she offered them. I am human to take her up on her offer.”

“No, you’re not human. You’re a monster,” Mitzi said. “We knew it by page five. It’s about time you caught up with us.”

Again with the cocky, unkind smirk. “Oh, so that’s what this is about. You recognized yourself in my work, and it’s Attack the Author Day. Spare me the colloquialisms. You paid a lot of money to get me here. Offer me an argument.” He took a bite of potato and then made a face, reached up to his mouth, and pulled something out. “Jesus, is that a hair?”

“Here’s an argument,” Mitzi said. “You have mommy issues.”

Thackeray laughed, a mirthless sound. “And is that your professional opinion, Dr. Nobody?”

“It’s all of our opinions,” Dorothy said. She held up the book. “This book sucked. We couldn’t believe you meant it to sound like it really sounds. But after listening to you talk, I can see that you did. Why?”

“Because it’s the truth,” Thackeray snarled, tossing his fork down onto the plate and chipping a piece from the edge. Jean cringed. It had been important to Grandma Vison to keep these dishes—all of them—in the family. “That’s what you people want, right? You book readers, isn’t that what you’re always after? The truth? Well, here’s a truth for you. Sometimes stories are just stories, and
you
are the ones supplying the so-called truth. And then, when you don’t like the reality your own brain has supplied, you blame the author. You come after my blood because you don’t like how the reflection of your own misgivings made you feel. How dare you question an artist about his art? You are clearly both tacky and stupid.”

“I’m not the one sitting at someone else’s dinner table, eating someone else’s food, and insulting everyone around the table,” Dorothy said. “If you want tacky.”

Mitzi piped in. “Here’s a news flash. You’re a far cry from perfect.”

Loretta nodded. “You have the nerve to criticize people for their size, and you’re Chubby McHamburglar.”

“You’re definitely no artist,” Mitzi added.

“How many awards adorn your walls, my dear?” Thackeray responded.

“How many friends adorn yours?” Loretta shot back.

“I’m betting zero,” Mitzi said. “I’m betting negative on the friends list.”

“Let’s have it, then,” he said, tossing his napkin into his plate and leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms triumphantly. “You want to criticize the book? Go ahead. Criticize.”

“Well, for starters, we’re not created by our mothers alone,” Bailey said, her voice shaking. She stood. “There are fathers too. And there is personal responsibility. You want to know something about personal responsibility? Ask any kid of an alcoholic. Responsibility is all we know. We’re practically choking on it. You act like we’re doomed to repeat our mothers’ mistakes, and that’s not going to happen. It’s bullshit.”

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Ah. So you’re afraid you’re going to be doing the twelve-step line dance in the future, is that it? You don’t like the central theme of responsibility for how our future generations are shaped? You have issue with that? Maybe you should turn on your Internet and text out a bomb threat. That’s what your generation knows best.”

Bailey shook her head, her eyes slitted in such a way that Jean hadn’t seen since spotting her up in the loft at her old house. “You don’t know anything. I will not be like her. She doesn’t shape me; I do.”

“Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Pollyanna, but statistics say you will be exactly like her. And your daughter exactly like you. And on and on until the world is populated by an unhealthy proportion of drunk Visons who eventually kill themselves off with the hooch. Darwin at his finest.”

Bailey opened her mouth, but another voice cried out from the end of the table. “That’s not true.” Janet had pushed herself out from the table and was perched on the edge of her chair.

“Really, now?” he mused. “What do you say we make a bet, then? I’d like to wager that your mother is fat. That she’s such an important role in your life, she can’t practice even a modicum of self-restraint, and she clearly taught that to you. Am I right?”

Jean noticed a tear streak down Janet’s face, but she made no move to wipe it away. “No. That’s not true,” Janet said again. “But what is true is that you’re a scared little man.”

“And you are the embodiment of my main character, Blanche. A self-righteous, quivering mound of excess flesh, too into your own sensibilities to care anything about anyone else’s.” He swept the ladies with his gaze. “You all are. You are all proof that once again I am right. Look into the mirror, ladies. You will see loads of awards in it, with my name on each and every one. You are the very characters, with your binge eating and your affairs and your illegitimate babies, who win me accolades and make me rich.”

And then the room erupted. Mitzi jumped out of her seat; Loretta clenched her fists at her sides; even sweet May shook her head disgustedly. They all talked over one another, slinging insults and barbs, inviting him to do things to himself. And he shouted back, superior and haughty and predictable.

Jean didn’t yell. She didn’t know what to say. This meeting had not gone as she’d expected at all. She’d thought maybe he’d explain why he wrote the things he wrote, that maybe they’d give him a little piece of their mind, that he’d hear it and they’d adjourn over pie. Instead, she watched as the larger-than-life, intimidating celebrity she’d imagined morphed into a bitter, ugly little man as full of bile as his books were.

But when she looked to her left, she saw Bailey, shrunk back into her chair, her feet pulled up to the seat, her face buried against her knees, her shoulders shaking with tears. She turned her face to Jean. “I’m not going to be her. I swear I’m not. I can’t be,” she cried, and Jean couldn’t take it anymore.

She stood. “That’s it!” she yelled, her voice edging through everyone else’s, cutting them all off in midsentence. “That’s it!” she repeated. She turned to Thackeray. “Get out of my house.”

He stared at her in mute shock.

“Get up, get your arrogant opinions, get your cheap suit coat, and . . .” She paused, clenched her fists. “Get the hell out!”

It seemed to take a moment to sink in on Thackeray that Jean’s sudden outburst was directed at him. But when it finally did, he angrily pushed his chair out, stood, and swept into the kitchen in one motion.

“I should have known better than to think that a bunch of doughy Midwesterners would have the brainpower to understand my work,” he muttered as he hurried to his coat.

Jean followed him, and was followed in turn by each of the ladies, who filled the kitchen doorway like a posse running a bad guy out of town.

“And another thing!” he said, yanking his coat off the hook a little too harshly. The vase Jean had nearly knocked over earlier, and which she had only settled without pushing it properly back up on the shelf, made two teetering swoops and rolled off, shattering on the floor at Thackeray’s feet. Out of it tumbled Noah’s weed, which Bailey had been stashing all summer.

Everyone stared at the marijuana that had showered over Thackeray’s shoes.

“Is that . . . ?” Loretta asked, and Bailey burst out laughing.

“That’s pot!” Thackeray exclaimed, doing a disgusted little jig to shake it off.

“Where did that come from?” Jean gasped, mortified.

Bailey, disabled with giggles, choked out, “The pool.”

Dorothy rolled her eyes. “For God’s sake. Noah.”

And then Mitzi let out a snort.

Jean held her hands out toward Thackeray, desperate. “We don’t do that here. This is a mistake. I had no idea.” She looked at Bailey for help, but Bailey was nearly doubled over at this point, her eyes watering from laughter now instead of tears. “Dammit, Bailey!”

“Language, Jean,” Bailey said between racking laughs, and then Loretta joined in.

Thackeray looked from the dope to Bailey, to Jean, and back again. “You are all insane,” he said, and stormed out of the house, shrugging into his sport coat as he clacked down the sidewalk. “I knew I would regret this. I—I have no words.”

Jean could barely hear the sound of his car squealing out of the driveway over the laughter in her kitchen. Even Janet was holding one hand over her mouth with glee. Jean faced them. “You all think this is funny?” she cried.

Mitzi nodded. “Kind of. No, more than kind of. Come on, Jean. It’s hilarious.”

May giggled. “You know his next book is going to star a bunch of drug-smuggling book nerds, right?”

“Oh, God,” Jean wailed. What would Wayne have thought of this debacle? He would have never wanted to show his face again. “This is illegal. There are illegal drugs on my kitchen floor.”

“We should get T-shirts,” Loretta said. “‘Drug-smuggling Grannies Who Read.’”

Bailey pushed her way through the knot of friends and snaked her arm around her grandmother’s elbow, her face shining with tears and glee. “You should be proud of me, Grandma Jean,” she said. “I didn’t smoke it.”

“Well, at least there’s that,” Jean said, and she too succumbed to laughter.

“Besides, did you hear what he said?” May asked. The ladies shook their heads. “He said he had no words.”

“We rendered the great R. Sebastian Thackeray speechless?” Mitzi said.

“It’s exactly what we wanted,” Dorothy said. “To shut him up.”

Bailey’s eyes grew wide. “My plan worked!”

And they all cheered.

T
hey all met in the supermarket parking lot. Janet was in her smock, as always, and as always looking a little green around the gills with the stress of being forced to be social. But she was there, twisting her apron, rubbing at the line where her forehead met her visor, casting worried looks at the front of the store. But she was there nonetheless.

After her outburst with R. Sebastian Thackeray, the day that Jean liked to think of as the Best and Most Humiliating Day of Her Recent Life, Janet had seemed to come out of her shell a little more. They’d decided to have another meeting the next week, to make up for their botched one, and she’d actually started the conversation, her fingers shaking around the pages of the book she held open in front of her, but her voice a little clearer, a little bolder.

That was when they’d decided to meet again today.

“I’ve got goodies!” Mitzi called, coming out of her car, shopping bag first. Everyone had worried about Mitzi’s unending strong opinions. Everyone had rolled their eyes and sighed about her at one time or another. But one thing they could all agree on—for her harshness, there was a certain place in the group for Mitzi. She kept them in line, but she was also their biggest fan. There was no one in the group, Jean had realized, more loyal than Mitzi. And Jean also knew that Mitzi never judged anyone more harshly than she judged herself.

She loped over toward them all, Dorothy climbing out of the passenger side of the car and following behind, a big grin on her face.

“We ready for this?” Mitzi asked, breathlessly.

“I think so,” Jean said, and at the same time, Bailey said, “Hell, yeah!”

Jean glanced at Janet, who shrugged miserably. “Not really,” she said.

“You’ll do great, honey,” May said, patting Janet’s round shoulder. “We’ve got your back.”

“And speaking of backs, I’ve got a surprise,” Mitzi said. She set the shopping bag on the ground and bent over it, then stood, pulling a black T-shirt up over her chest and holding it out for everyone to see. “Ta-da!”

“‘OBWB’?” Jean asked, squinting at the shirt.

Bailey laughed, a hand over her mouth. “‘Old Biddies with Books’!” she said, pointing at the smaller letters beneath the big ones.

“I got one for each of us,” Mitzi said. “I thought it could be the official name of our book club. What do you think?” She passed one to each of them, then pulled out a pink T-shirt and held it up to Bailey. It read:
AYT: AND A YOUNG’UN TOO
.

Bailey clapped her hands and took the shirt. She reached out to hug Mitzi. “I love it!”

“We thought this would give us some authority,” Dorothy said. “Like a uniform or something. Plus, it’s just fun.”

The ladies stretched their new shirts on over the shirts they were wearing, then paused a moment to admire themselves.

“We look like Hooters girls,” Loretta said, craning her neck to peer down at her shirt. “Only our boobs are lower.”

“Speak for yourself, Lolo,” Bailey said, and Jean smiled. Bailey had been making such great progress, and Jean knew she had Loretta to thank for part of it. Bailey had really taken to Loretta—called her “Lolo” and spent many afternoons in La Ladies’ Lounge, gobbling up Flavian Munney books like candy.
Man candy,
Bailey called the books, and both she and Loretta worked hard to convince Jean that reading them was an integral part of Bailey’s homeschooling work.
It’s part of health class,
they’d argued.
No, no, anatomy
.

“Should we get this over with?” Janet asked, holding her T-shirt in one hand. It wouldn’t be allowed as part of her uniform.

“You ready?” Jean asked, and again Janet shrugged.

“I have to be,” she said. It had been her idea. She understood the risks. But she’d said it was worth it and that hearing Thackeray’s opinion reminded her how people saw her. Standing up to him had reminded her that she was important too, and if she didn’t take care of herself, nobody would.

“Let’s do it,” Mitzi said, and confidently led the way, grabbing Janet’s sleeve as she passed and pulling her across the parking lot.

As soon as the front doors whooshed open in front of them, they stopped and stood still.

“You’ve got to lead the way from here,” May said. “We don’t know where to go.”

Janet gave one last pleading look to each of them, then squared her shoulders and marched through the doors.

All the customers turned when they came in, and the cashiers paused. It wasn’t every day, after all, that six women, all wearing matching shirts, pounded through the front doors of the supermarket, looks of determination etched on their faces.

They ignored the stares and followed Janet, across the front of the store, through an Employees Only doorway and up a flight of stairs to a smoky common room where several employees in various states of uniform smoked cigarettes, read the newspaper, and picked through lunch bags, their shoes off and their feet stretched out on couches. A snowy tube TV was on in one corner. Jean noticed that one whole wall was a bank of windows, what appeared to be mirrors on the other side. It dawned on her how many times she’d been watched from within this room, how she’d been monitored unseen. It was an unsettling feeling that only added to the anticipation of what they were about to do.

“Hey, Janet, I thought you were working at five,” a woman said from over at one of the tables.

“I am,” Janet said. “Is Rodney in his office?”

The woman made a face. “Better not mess with him, though. He’s in a mood.”

“He’s always in a mood,” Janet mumbled, in a surprising show of sass that Jean was totally not expecting. Janet headed ever faster toward a door in the corner of the room, the ladies following her. She knocked on the door, and then pushed it open without being invited in.

There sat the bald guy that Jean had seen lay into Janet twice. He was bent over his desk, writing.

“Did I say you could come in?” he droned without even looking up. “I’m busy. Get out.”

“We said we could come in,” Mitzi said, stepping up next to Janet and throwing an arm around her shoulder in a show of solidarity.

Rodney looked up from what he was writing, his pen still poised over the paper. His mouth hung open just slightly, showing elongated front teeth that Jean hadn’t noticed before. His beady eyes magnified out from behind his glasses, giving him a rodent look.

“What is this?” he asked, and Jean’s natural inclination was to shrink back, to apologize for intruding, to leave the way she’d come. But then she remembered how he’d embarrassed Janet in front of her, how he’d treated her like trash, and she forced herself to stand tall. She even shuffled a step or two toward Janet’s back.

“We’re here to get some things straight,” Mitzi said, and then nudged Janet’s shoulder as if to cue her. Rodney’s giant eyes flicked from Mitzi to Janet.

“Okay?” he said.

Loretta stepped up on the other side of Janet. “She has some things to say to you,” she said. “Right?” She too glanced at Janet, who seemed to have been struck with stage fright.

“I heard you the first time,” he said sourly, and when Janet still didn’t speak, said, “I don’t have time for this. Just leave. I’ll deal with you later. This is my office, not a place for field trips.”

But instead of leaving, Janet stepped toward his desk, breaking free of Mitzi’s and Loretta’s arms.

“No,” she said, her voice tiny, then again, louder. “No. I’m not going anywhere. Until . . . until you hear me out.”

This time Rodney put down his pen and folded his hands on top of his desk. “This ought to be good,” he said. “Please, do tell me everything that’s on your mind.”

Janet glanced over her shoulder at Jean, who gave her a nod. “First of all, I don’t like the way you talk to me. You’re mean and you yell for no reason and I’m a good employee.”

“Pacifiers are in aisle two,” Rodney said, oh-so-sympathetically.

“Shut it, chrome dome,” Dorothy said. She linked elbows with Loretta. Bailey stepped up and linked Loretta’s other elbow.

“Hey, now, you have no right to come in here and—”

“And number two, I don’t like it when you call me names. Rotunda, Frieda Fatty-pants, Large Marge. Those are harassing names, and I could sue you.”

He held out his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Nobody’s talking about lawsuits here.”

“I’m a lawyer and I’m telling you right now, she could sue your bald little balls off,” May said, stepping up and linking elbows with Dorothy and Mitzi, and even though it was a lie—May was a librarian, and they hadn’t said the word
lawsuit
even once before coming today—it was a very, very convincing lie. “So you’d better stop talking and start listening.”

“Third, if you yell at me in front of a customer one more time . . . ,” Janet said, and then she faltered, seemingly unsure how to finish the threat.

Finally, Jean stepped up and linked her elbow through Bailey’s remaining one. “I will never shop here again. And I will tell everyone I know to stop shopping here too. And, trust me, I know a lot of people.” Jean smiled, satisfied with herself. She’d just sounded exactly like Wayne. Quickly, she glanced up at the ceiling, sure she’d see him smiling down at her from above.

Rodney looked nonplussed. “Are you all done now? Fine. I’ll baby your friend here. But not because I’m scared. Because I’m a nice guy.” He swished his hands at them as if ushering them out of the room. Slowly, they each let go of one another’s arms and turned to leave, shuffling forward a few steps, the whole meeting feeling a little too easy and thus anticlimactic. The way they’d talked at the last meeting, still high from their demolition of Thackeray, Jean had expected . . . more.

But just a step or two short of the door, Janet pulled up. “No,” she said, looking at the ground and bringing her fists together across her body in a double aw-shucks move. She shook her head. “No,” she repeated. She turned, held her head high, and yelled, louder than Jean would have even believed Janet to be capable of. “No, you will not quit because you’re a nice guy. Because you’re not a nice guy. You’re going to quit because I’m bigger than you and I will kick your ass!”

A cheer erupted, Mitzi, Dorothy, and Loretta all pumping their fists. Mitzi and Dorothy patted Janet heartily on the back. Janet smirked, her smile growing wider as it became obvious that Rodney wasn’t going to respond at all to her threat—and, in fact, he did look scared—and they all tumbled out of the office in one rising, laughing, matching-shirt-wearing pile.