The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls (20 page)

“You did the same thing,” Jill said. “You let your mother think Adrienne stole her earring.”

“That’s true,” I said.

“That was a joke. It was funny,” said CeeCee.

I pressed another wad of tissue to my ear.

“Well, I’m glad you’ve got a sense of humor,” Jill said. “Because my dad’s missing medication is pretty hilarious. It’s almost as funny as your mother’s racist statements about ‘city kids’ being the only ones who do drugs.”

“My mom’s not a racist,” CeeCee said.

Jill turned to me. “I don’t know if you’ve heard—I hope it’s just an ugly rumor—that there are Asians moving into West New Hope.”

“Thanks for the warning. We’ll be on the lookout,” CeeCee said.

A voice on the PA system announced that the pool was going to close in ten minutes.

“Thanks for taking the comments down,” I told CeeCee.

I explained to Jill that CeeCee was going to make the book blog private. “So we won’t have wackos all over the country who can look at our pictures or find out where we live.”

“You can’t get rid of the pictures,” Jill said. “Someone’s already copied them. They’re all over.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. “Have you heard of the
World Wide Web
? Even if CeeCee gets rid of the blog, the pictures are out there.” She struck a pose. “
Will you be my dad?
It even says that you live in West New Hope.”

“But—”

“And it’s not just you,” Jill said. “Wallis is the one who didn’t want her picture taken. Has she seen it?
Teach me to swim?
”

Wallis appeared in the locker room doorway. “What pictures are you talking about?” she asked.

15. EPIPHANY: Probably because I once saw my third-grade teacher use an EpiPen, driving the point of it into Jordan Wersall, who’d been stung by a bee, I think of an epiphany as something that gets injected into the main character so she suddenly sees things differently
.

T
he Involuntary Book Club for Intolerable Girls was disbanded. Jill’s mother and CeeCee’s weren’t speaking. Wallis had walked home by herself, and Jill’s mother had driven away from the picnic grounds in tears. Because we were the last ones to leave, my mother and I had folded up the mildewy shower curtain and thrown out the leftover food and tossed the cookie tins into the back of our car. At home, we had a stimulating conversation about stolen diamonds and missing pills.

I didn’t tell her what my suspicions were about Wallis. I was generally wrong about everything, and I didn’t trust myself anymore. Besides, at the pool, when CeeCee and
Jill and I had told her about the blog, Wallis hadn’t seemed horrified or upset; she had stood with her feet splayed in a puddle of slimy water, blinking at nothing. Jill had ended up almost sticking up for CeeCee: the blog was mainly a joke, she explained—something CeeCee had made up as a half-serious fulfillment of Ms. Radcliffe’s assignment. There were pictures, she said, and someone had copied them and emailed and posted them here and there, but—

“What are the pictures of?” Wallis asked.

“They’re of us,” I said. “The Unbearable Girls. But they aren’t inappropriate. I mean, you look nice.”

This was a substantial exaggeration: in one of her photos, Wallis was holding up her arm to block the camera; in another, she was out of focus and frowzy, a copy of
The House on Mango Street
in her hand.

Mr. Geertz, the pool manager, had stuck his head through the doorway and announced that he was locking up. “No hanging around here after dark, girls,” he said.

The four of us filed out of the locker room and walked toward the fence. Through the gate, in the picnic grounds, I could see our mothers shouting at each other around the table.

Jill’s mother blew her nose and waved, her hand over her head like a drowning victim, then ran to her car.

“That’s my signal, I guess,” Jill said.

“I just wish they could behave themselves and be more mature.” CeeCee sighed. We headed toward the picnic table. Halfway there, I turned around to say something to Wallis—something about the fact that she could talk to us
if she was worried about the pictures, that she could confide in us, and trust us. But Wallis was gone.

It was a relief, being done with the book club. No more conflict, no more intrigue, no more drama. Now I could read the last book on my own. I didn’t need to discuss it with anyone, did I? Besides, Jill was busy at work, and Wallis was probably hibernating out in the woods, and CeeCee’s mother and mine weren’t on very good terms, which meant I had lost my ride to the pool. For three or four days I stayed home by myself and watched pointless TV, and—even though she had given up asking me to do it—I finished alphabetizing and shelving my mother’s books.

The house was quiet when I finished with Wolfe, Woolf, Yep, Yezierska, Zusak. I checked my phone for any messages (nope) from the Unbearable Girls. Wandering into the kitchen, I heard the dishwasher finish its cycle, the pipes clearing their throats.

At the end of Cisneros’s novel, Esperanza writes,
One day I will go away. Friends and neighbors will say, What happened to that Esperanza? Where did she go with all those books and paper?

I didn’t think anyone would say that about me. They would say, “Adrienne? Did she used to live here?”

After foraging around for a few minutes, I opened an economy-sized bag of potato chips and made some iced tea. On the other side of the bay window, sweating people moved slowly through a thick green world.

The mail came. I went out to collect it. In the rhododendrons to the right of the mailbox, Mr. Finkle was reluctantly
completing a late-morning kill. His fur was as glossy and striking as CeeCee’s hair, which made me briefly imagine CeeCee as an enormous feline, batting a miniature Jeff around with her velvet paws. “Scat,” I said.

I reached into the mailbox, which was hot enough to cook potatoes in, and found the usual collection of catalogs and junk. And at the bottom of the pile, a letter in a small blue envelope, addressed to me. I tore it open.

Dear Adrienne. I enjoyed being friends with you this summer. I enjoyed being in the Book Bondage Unbearable Literary Enslavement Club. Thank you for including me. We are leaving West New Hope soon. Goodbye
.

—Wallis

I read the letter two or three times. A needle of guilt stitched its way through my chest.

I hadn’t wanted to be a member of a book club. I hadn’t wanted to meet once a week and discuss the books on our list—but now that I had they were taking up space inside me; they had staked out parcels of land in my brain. And I hadn’t wanted to hang around with CeeCee and Wallis and Jill, but that’s what I had done. Though I still found her creepy, Wallis was a part of the story that wasn’t over. She was …

As if waiting to sneeze, I knew I was about to understand something. I was about to experience a realization.

I called Jill at the pool. “I think I’m having an epiphany,” I said.

“That sounds painful,” Jill said. “But who’s this? Is this
a member of the book club I used to belong to? The one that doesn’t exist anymore?”

“We still exist,” I said. “That’s part of the epiphany. Did you hear that Wallis and her mother are moving?”

“That’ll be two-fifty,” Jill said. She was working the snack bar again.

I read her Wallis’s note. “Do you think she’s moving because of the pictures? I mean, the blog?”

“Probably not. She and her mother were only renting. I don’t think they were ever planning to stay. Hey, tank suit,” Jill said. “Soda’s a dollar. An American dollar. I don’t want any more of those Canadian coins.”

“I feel kind of bad about it,” I said. “This seems really sudden.”

“It only seems sudden because you didn’t know. Maybe they were always planning to leave.”

“But maybe they weren’t,” I said. “Are you busy tonight?”

“Um, definitely,” Jill said. “Since you’re the one asking.”

“Okay, tomorrow night. That’s better anyway. My mother won’t be here. She’s having dinner with a friend in Philadelphia. I’ll call CeeCee and Wallis.”

“Wait a minute. You want to have a book club meeting?” Jill asked.

I heard the sound of coins spilling into the cash box. “We haven’t finished the books yet,” I said.

“So?”

“So we need to finish them. We have to meet.”
Though we never intended to be a group
, I thought,
that’s what we’ve become
.
“You’re not doing anything else tomorrow,” I said. “Come over at seven. I’ll make you something to eat.”

“Look, Kevin or whoever you are. Kevin’s brother. Wait in line,” Jill said. “I’m not going to sell you anything if you can’t wait your turn.”

“Jill?” I asked.

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “My parents are going out for their anniversary tomorrow. But I probably won’t tell them I’m hanging out with you. You and CeeCee aren’t at the top of my mother’s list right now.”

“I thought your mother liked me,” I said. “I’m not at the bottom of her list, am I?”

“You’re probably somewhere in the middle,” Jill said. “It’s a pretty short list. And God and my dad and my grandma are on it. I have to sign off. Lots of customers here.” She put her phone down but forgot to press Off. Listening to the noise of the pool in the background—the shouting, the whistling, the general commotion—I thought,
I am a lonely person. That’s why I read books
.

That night after dinner it was my turn to do the dishes, but I put it off because my mother was in the kitchen, cleaning out cabinets and talking to my aunt Beatrice on the phone. My mother and I had been polite to each other since the blowout at the picnic grounds, but we hadn’t talked. Maybe she was waiting for me to apologize. But I’d begun to lose track of the many things I was supposed to be sorry for, and had begun to think that instead of apologizing, I should just get older and move away so that she would realize, at least in hindsight, what an appealing person I’d been.

I went out to the porch to let her talk. Though I wasn’t sure anyone else would read it, I lay down on the wicker sofa with book club selection number five:
The Awakening
. The air was heavy and still, and I could just hear the up-and-down of my mother’s voice when I turned the first pages.

Edna Pontellier was crying because her husband said she was a lousy mother. Later he tried to make up for being nasty by buying her chocolates. Edna was rich but unsatisfied and moody. She was on vacation, and it was hot, and she spent most of her time resting or strolling or “bathing” in the sea—even though she was terrified of the water.
An ungovernable dread hung about her
because she couldn’t swim.

I felt myself dipping beneath the surface. “Adrienne?” Mrs. Pontellier was offering me a chocolate. She was asking me to walk along the path with her, to the gulf. She was going to lend me her sunshade and her pretty dogskin gloves.

“Adrienne.”

“What?” I said. “I’m reading.”

“With your eyes shut?” my mother asked. “You’re falling asleep reading
The Awakening
. That seems ironic.”

“Are you waking me up to demonstrate irony?” I asked.

“No, I’m waking you up because it’s getting late. I’m going to bed. And I wanted to remind you to do the dishes.”

“I know.” I stood up. “I was waiting for you to get off the phone.”

“I also wanted to remind you,” my mother said, “since
you’ll probably be asleep when I leave for work tomorrow, that I’m going to dinner with my friend Melissa in Philadelphia. I won’t be home until after eleven.”

“Yup.” I nodded, staggering into the kitchen while my mother locked the door to the porch. In the kitchen sink, I found our dishes submerged in several inches of greasy water.

“And one other thing,” my mother said. She had followed me back to the kitchen. “I was just talking to your aunt Beatrice.”

I took the two pots out of the sink and set them aside.

“And she was wondering … well, she’s invited you to come to Atlanta.”

I tried to extract the silverware from under the plates. “Atlanta? It’s probably hotter there than it is here.”

“That might be true. But Aunt Beatrice has air-conditioning,” my mother said. Before I could point out that it would be cheaper for me to stay home and leave the air conditioner on in our own house than it would be to buy a round-trip ticket to Georgia, my mother said, “This has been a hard summer, Adrienne.”

“Hard,” I said, staring into the sink.

“
Stressful
is probably a better word,” my mother said. “I’ve been working a lot, and you’ve been home on your own, and it just seemed to your aunt and me …”

A ticker-tape machine in my head started printing out messages, all of which drowned my mother out.
She wants you out of the house. She was willing to put up with you when you were little and cute, but not now, with your knee in a brace and a scab on your ear and a drinking problem. Instead of sending you back to school in the fall, she’s going to ship you off to a reeducation camp or a prison farm
.

I found a scouring pad, like a slimy silver wig for a fish, and scrubbed at the islands of burned rice at the bottom of a pot.