The Book Club. Mary Monroe Alice
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kite. She loved milestones of any sort: birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, checks on the calendar, notches on a growth chart. Today would be special, brand-new. She felt it deep inside. Summer was here with sunny days and balmy nights, the informality of barbecues and dips in the swimming pool. She was so relieved to have the grind of the school year finished. She missed playing with her children.
She really should wake them to say goodbye to their father, but they were so tired; she’d let them sleep a bit longer. Finney had a football game at noon and Bronte wanted a ride to the mall at two. With Tom gone for a few days, and the children out of school, she could relax a bit herself. Perhaps even squeeze in a little extra time in her garden this morning, she thought, noting that her tobacco plants needed deadheading.
She slipped to her knees, relishing the coolness of the morning dew that soaked the thin cotton of her pajamas. She no longer expected anyone to help her with the weeding or the planting. The children had complained so bitterly for so many years that she’d stopped demanding their time, and Tom, well, he never had the time or the interest. They had such busy lives and it was her job, as the mother and wife, to make certain all went smoothly in the home. But it was such a large home…and theirs was a large property, too, one of the largest in Riverton. The children were proud of their home and this she felt was her success. She’d decorated the twelve rooms herself, sewn countless yards of drapes and coordinated all the improvements. She’d even landscaped the entire lot, planting with her own delicate hands over fifty shrubs and countless perennials.
Gardening was her hobby after all, she told herself as she dug in the earth. No one asked her to plant these flowers that she adored. So why should she expect them to help? And wasn’t it the mother’s job, even duty, to make a home run smoothly? Wasn’t she indispensable? Still, the thought that no one offered to help rankled as she reached to pull out the offending weeds, careful to get the roots.
The front door swung open and she lifted her gaze to see her husband hurry down the stone steps on his way to the garage. His coattails were flying, he was tripping over his luggage and he sent off sparks of irritation that she could feel clear across the garden. Though his dark suit was immaculate, his white shirt was gleaming and his tie had enough panache to be discreetly admired, her knowing eyes picked up the tight line of his lips that gave his chiseled, tanned face a tautness too familiar of late. Tom wasn’t a vain man. His hair might be thinning at the crown and his waist fuller, but Tom Porter still had movie-star good looks—looks that would have been a hindrance to his medical career except for the sharp intelligence and compassion in his dark eyes.
Eve didn’t see his eyes this morning, however, because the light was too bright. She squinted and caught only the shadow of his passing.
“I’ll phone you tonight,” he called over his shoulder with a distracted air.
She didn’t reply and instead rested her hands on her thighs and watched him raise the trunk of his sedan, then toss in his new garment bag. Next he gingerly rested his computer bag beside it. Eve knew exactly what was in that overnight bag she’d purchased for him for his fiftieth birthday. She’d laid in bed last night with her hands clenched in her lap silently watching as he packed it. The memory still irked.
“Why do you always wait until the last minute to pack?” she’d asked crossly. “It’s almost midnight, Tom. I’m tired and we have to get up early. Your plane leaves at seven so you’ll have to leave by six.”
“I didn’t have time to do it any earlier.” His tone was sharp and he tossed a folded boxed shirt into the bag with an angry flip.
Eve bit her tongue, knowing this was true. She didn’t wish to annoy him when he was so pressed for time. Still, she couldn’t help the frustration boiling inside her. It didn’t seem to concern him in the least that she would be kept awake for as long as it took him to pack.
“Why didn’t you ask me to help? All I needed was your schedule. I’d have been happy to do it for you.”
“I told you I was leaving.”
“Yes,” she replied in a tone that implied How can you be so obtuse? “But I didn’t know to where, or for what, until yesterday.”
She used to always know where he was going, what topic he was speaking on, and made a game of packing for him. They’d laughed when she held ties up to his face and test-kissed him to make her selection. She took such pride in his appearance, as she did in her children’s. Recently, however, the trips piled one on top of the other as his reputation grew. He’d sometimes forget to tell her when he was going out of town until he needed something, and then he’d inform her as an afterthought. Like yesterday’s “Oh, Eve, could you make sure I have enough shirts for San Diego?” Whether she’d lost track of his schedule or he’d stopped sharing it with her, she couldn’t remember anymore. All she knew was that somehow, she no longer packed for him. So she lay in bed, still and hard-limbed, watching.
“Look, just let me get it done,” he said, rummaging through his closet, laying her aside. “Go on to sleep. I’ll be a while yet.”
She heard his dismissal, closed her mouth and folded her arms across her chest. In a cool silence that had grown over the past years, she watched him pack for the two-day trip, knowing exactly how he reasoned his choices. Three pairs of underwear, two fresh and an extra to change into should he go for a swim, two pairs of dark, cashmere wool socks and a spare polo shirt. He selected three Egyptian cotton shirts and a matching Hermès tie, a swimsuit, a flask of Scotch because he liked to work late in his room and, finally, the leather toiletries case. She’d meant to ask him why he still carried condoms in his bag now that she’d had her tubes tied, but never did.
She knew he wasn’t fooling around and didn’t want him to think that she didn’t trust him. They’d been married for twenty-three years next month and a woman knew her husband well enough after all that time. She and Tom had an agreement, one forged on their wedding night and held sacred. They’d sworn that neither one of them would have an affair without first telling the other. Divorce or whatever might follow, but they’d vowed to have honor and respect in their marriage. They prided themselves on their honesty.
Kneeling in the garden with the sun’s heat pressing on her back, Eve envisioned those condoms in that toiletry bag and her bare hands dug into the black soil as she forced out a deep dandelion root. A large worm clung to the soil around the weed, wriggling and coiling when she shook it off. She heard the car trunk slam shut and raised her eyes again.
“Honey, what hotel will you be at?” she called out.
“Oh, I don’t remember.”
He sounded winded and she cocked her head, her hands still in the soil. He stood looking at her with an odd expression on his face, as though he were waiting for her to say something more, or perhaps he was wrestling with what to say to her. Her breath stilled and her attention focused as she studied him for some signal, one hint that he wanted a kiss goodbye or a familiar pat on the rear as he hugged her. He used to love to hug her.
A new stubbornness kept her from leaping up and running into his arms as she always had before, a tenuous clinging to self-esteem after his rebuff in bed last night. She would not go to him first.
Keeping her silence, staying in place, she noticed his hair was damp with perspiration. He was a heavy sweater—all the Porters were—but it wasn’t that hot this morning and he’d just come outdoors from the air-conditioning. He’d need a shower by the time he got to San Diego, she worried.
“I’ll call you when I get there,” he said, and her ears perked at the hint of sadness in his voice. “Give you my room number.”
This was the usual modus operandi these days, unlike back when she carefully posted the hotel name and number on the kitchen bulletin board, up high beside the car pool schedule, the pizza lunch schedule and emergency telephone number. She nodded and opened her mouth to say goodbye, to wish him a good trip, maybe to say I love you, but he’d already turned his back.
She bent over her garden and dug her small, oval nails into the soil, squeezing it between her fingers. Her eyes swam in water, and