Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

  He dissolved into tears then, and I held him as best I could, considering the casts and pulleys, held my dear, dear boy.

  “I KNEW I’D FIND YOU in here,” said Grant one evening, sliding onto the polished oak pew.

  “Just saying my daily thanks.”

  I would have choked on the words a couple of years ago, but I had taken Grant up on the invitation he offered on my depressing thirty-seventh birthday and gone to church with him and Stuart the next day.

  “So how long have you been going here?” I’d asked as we climbed the narrow stairs to the small church.

  “Oh, this is our first time,” said Grant.

  “We don’t have a home church,” said Stuart, smiling at the confusion on my face. “We pick out a different church each week to go to.”

  “So you’re not Methodists?” I asked, reading the sign on the lawn.

  “As much as we are anything,” said Grant. “Wherever we go, we participate in whatever they do. We kneel at the churches that have kneelers, we take communion at the churches that offer it, and we clap hands in the churches that have rowdy choirs.”

  That this particular minister was young and awfully good-looking made it easier for me to pay attention to him. Unfortunately, his oratorical skills were not much above those of a high school debater who’d gotten knocked out of the semifinals. But the soloist—a woman with gray hair who wore saddle shoes, of all things, under her choir robe—had a beautiful, stirring voice, and afterward the three of us went out for pancakes. So when they invited me the next week, I agreed, and that Sunday morning I listened to a Unitarian minister ruminate about his favorite red sweater. He had a nice way of telling a story (too bad he didn’t have the Methodist minister’s looks), and afterward we went out for eggs Benedict. The third Sunday we listened to a member of the congregation give a homily about her missionary upbringing and afterward had brunch at a restaurant that served complimentary mimosas. All and all, it wasn’t a bad way to spend a Sunday.

  I kept going, and as the months passed, something began working on me. Doors were opening, shades were lifted, and lo and behold, a little light began sneaking in. I started feeling for the first time in my life that someone or something—hell, I might as well call it God—cared about me. It wasn’t a sudden vision that had me flailing at the preacher’s knees (as congregants at one church we visited did) or speaking in tongues (we had yet to find a church where they did that). Rather, it was as if a warm spring day had moved into the spot in my heart that for so long had been held hostage by winter. All bloom seemed possible.

  IN THE CHAPEL, I took Grant’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Thanks,” I whispered. The chapel was empty but still inspired quiet.

  “You’re welcome,” he whispered back. “For what?”

  “I was just sitting here thinking how being able to pray helps me, and then I thought how I wouldn’t be able to pray if it wasn’t for you and Stuart taking me to church all those Sundays ago.”

  “We just invited you to go,” said Grant. “You did all the work.” He smiled, but there was a flicker of anxiousness in his eyes.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Stuart called me today.”

  “He did?”

  Biting his top lip, Grant nodded.

  “And?”

  “And he wants to meet me for a drink. He says he’s sorry about a lot of things.”

  I studied my friend’s face for a moment.

  “And what do you think?”

  Tears shimmered in his eyes. “Oh, Audrey, I’m on cloud nine, to tell you the truth. But I’m also scared that I’m getting excited about a possible reconciliation when he only wants to tell me he’s sorry he took my blue cashmere sweater or my Pierre Cardin cologne.”

  “And what if he does?” I asked. I was not willing to put anything past Stuart (a man I had liked very much until he ditched Grant).

  “I guess I’d just have to deal with it.”

  “Nothing much else you can do.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” he said with a smirk. “Now I don’t have to write Ann Landers.”

  “ARE YOU SURE you want to do this?” asked Slip, the first to arrive for book club.

  “Like I said, it’ll be a good distraction.” I took her plate full of little quiches. “Oh, good, I don’t have any hors d’oeuvres. I just had time to run to the bakery and get some cookies.”

  When I set the quiches down on my woefully bare dining room table, Slip gave me a hug. (When you’re five foot ten it’s awkward being hugged by someone nearly a foot shorter, but the awkwardness was short-lived, giving way to the general warmth and appreciation one feels for, and in, a hug.)

  The Angry Housewives had pulled out the stops in helping me in the three weeks since Bryan’s accident. Dinner every night had been provided by one or the other—Kari’s hamburger and potato dish earned five stars from the Forrests, as did Merit’s lasagna (Reni was doing most of the cooking in the family, and she was good). Faith brought over a whole roast turkey with all the trimmings, and Slip brought over crockpots of the barbequed meatballs she brought to neighborhood potlucks, remembering how much the boys liked them. She and Grant also brought practical household things that I had no energy or wherewithal to restock (we’d be wiping ourselves on newspaper and brushing our teeth with dry toothbrushes if it weren’t for them) as well as more frivolous items, magazines and bubble bath and chocolate bars, along with advice to “get some time by yourself.”

  I was able to get plenty. Davey—Dave (I vowed I was going to finally honor his request to be called what he wants to be called) came by every day. As soon as he got off work, he drove over and spent the evening with his brother, watching TV (they hooted and hollered at the over-the-top actors on Dynasty, and Dave could render Bryan and Michael helpless with laughter as he tried to match steps with the dancers on Soul Train), or playing Crazy Eights or poker (penny limit) or Monopoly or Sorry!

  “How’s Bryan doing with school?” asked Slip.

  “The teachers make up a packet for him every week and send it home with Michael. They tell me he’s all caught up, and guess what?”

  Slip started smiling, probably in response to the big smile that had broken out on my face. “What?”

  “He got accepted into USC!”

  When the other Angry Housewives arrived, Slip and I were holding on to each other, doing the same excited, clasp-arms-and-hop-up-and-down dance we’d done when she told me two years ago that Flannery had gotten accepted into Yale.

  “So where is the college boy?” asked Kari. “I want to congratulate him.”

  “He’s at his dad’s. Michael too. They’ll be there a couple days; Paul thought I needed a break.”

  “That was nice of him,” said Merit.

  I nodded. “Cynthia’s made a new man out of him.”

  OUR MEETING turned out to be a cry-fest.

  “What gets me,” said Kari, the first of us to lose it, “is that it’s such a story of a mother’s love. She would not let her son’s words die with him.”

  We were talking about how the author had killed himself and how his mother pushed and prodded and finally got someone interested in the manuscript—Walker Percy, no less.

  “I just think,” said Kari, and this is where the tears started spilling, “that mother love can do just about anything.” She took a deep breath. “I am just so honored to be a mother—and so privileged!”

  “Here,” I said, passing her a Kleenex box. (Since Bryan’s accident they were as regular a fixture on every end table as ashtrays.)

  “Was he upset because he couldn’t get published?” asked Merit. “Is that why he killed himself?”

  “It might have been a contributing factor,” said Slip. “But I’m sure there are a few writers out there who can’t get published and still manage not to kill themselves.” She stared at her hand, wrapped around the stem of a wineglass. “Flan read this book, and after she heard what happened to the writer, she asked m
e if I’d do the same thing for her Great American Novel—which, you’ll be happy to hear, she’s written thirteen pages of.”

  “Really?” said Merit. “Oh, that’s so exciting. What’s it about?”

  “Flan’s only willing to tell me the page count, nothing else. And I said to her, ‘I would if I believed in your work, which naturally I’m going to do, because I believe in you.’ ” Now Slip was tearing up. “Then I said, ‘But don’t you ever put me in the position Mr. Toole’s mother found herself in.’ ”

  Kari passed the Kleenex box to Slip.

  “She laughed and said, ‘Mom, I am the most mentally healthy person I or my twelve other personalities have ever met.’ ”

  We laughed then: some relief from this scary talk of children’s suicides.

  Slip blew her nose. “The thing is, she’s right. Flan’s always been Flan and perfectly happy to be so. I felt the day she was born that this little baby knew exactly who she was and what she wanted from the world.”

  “That’s a gift,” said Merit.

  “Bonnie read the book too,” said Faith. “I think it’s great that even though Flan’s away at school, they’re still keeping up their version of Angry Housewives.”

  It is wonderful, when you think about it—the book club that Bonnie and Julia plotted in Kari’s basement when they were little is still going all these years later. A shift in the power structure occurred after the second or third meeting, with Flannery stepping in as co-leader along with Bonnie.

  “It’s not exactly a democratic group,” Kari had told me long ago. “Julia says nobody gets to pick the books or lead the meetings but Flannery and Bonnie.”

  Lesson: bossy girls might be a pain, but they get what they want.

  “Wouldn’t that be something if she really becomes a writer?” asked Merit.

  “It’s what she’s wanted to be ever since she was little,” said Slip.

  “Imagine discussing her book at book club!” said Kari. Her blue eyes misted over again. “Can you believe this? Yesterday our kids were babies getting rocked during our meetings, and now they’re grown-up, or close to it. Julia’s going to be sweet sixteen!”

  Faith nodded. “The twins are graduating from high school next year.”

  “And Joe and Bryan this year,” said Slip, and then she started as if she’d been tapped on the shoulder. “Hey, Audrey, I just realized: you haven’t lit up once tonight.”

  “I quit,” I said, feeling shy. “I finally decided to get aboard the non-smoking train. Although right now I am dying for a cigarette.”

  “So what finally did it for you?” asked Slip. “The hacking cough? The stinky clothes? The wheeze whenever you took a deep breath?”

  I smiled, but words were having a hard time gathering themselves in my throat, seeing as a huge lump had lodged itself there.

  “It was Bryan,” I said finally. “He told me that Jeff—that’s his friend who was driving—was lighting his and his girlfriend’s cigarette when he lost control of the car. And I thought, I can’t smoke anymore. I can’t do something that’s responsible for my son’s accident.” I looked at my hands; they seemed big and awkward without a cigarette jammed between my fingers. “The boys are thrilled.” I felt a tear dribble down my cheek.

  “I’ll bet,” said Faith. “Although doesn’t Dave smoke?”

  I nodded, weary. “I’m hoping he’ll grow out of it.”

  “I see him at your house practically every evening,” said Kari. “That must be a big comfort to you.”

  “It is.” A tear decided to keep the one on the other cheek company. “He’s like a changed boy . . . uh, man. Although I was dumb enough to ask him why he was being so attentive to Bryan.”

  “And?” asked Slip.

  “And he got mad at me, like he always does. But after he’d huffed and puffed and muttered about asking stupid questions, he came into the kitchen—I’ve been spending a lot of time in the kitchen if you haven’t noticed; I think I’ve put on ten pounds since Bryan’s accident—and said, looking me right in the eye, which is very unusual for Dave, ‘Mom, I’m only doing for Bryan what he’d do for me in the same situation.’ Then he grabbed a doughnut from the box I had in front of me and left. And I realized he’s not a lost cause after all.”

  “Oh, Audrey,” said Kari. “You never really thought that.”

  Miserable, I nodded. “I hate to admit it, but I did. I mean, I was happy that he was at least gainfully employed and had a girlfriend who didn’t have track marks running up her arm, but I thought as far as his being a loving, caring part of my family . . . well, that was a lost cause.”

  No one spoke for a moment.

  “It’s just such a crapshoot,” I said. “I don’t think I’d ever win a mother-of-the-year award—I admit I let my boys run a little wild—but still, how can one son get into trouble over and over and another one get accepted into USC with an academic scholarship? These kids are like vessels you pour your love into. And some of those vessels are big and strong and happy to hold all the love you want to pour in, and others have cracks in them and the love isn’t worth much because it all leaks out. I used to think love could save anything, but it can’t if the vessel’s cracked.”

  Everything seemed to tumble down on top of me: Bryan’s accident, Dave’s return to the fold, the poor Toole guy who could create such a big, funny world and still take himself out of the one he lived in. I put my head in my hands and sobbed, cried, and wailed. My friends didn’t try to stop me. Instead, to the accompaniment of soothing voices, my back was patted, my shoulders rubbed. When I was all cried out, I took my hands away from my face and smiled a weak smile.

  “Thanks. I needed that.”

  Slip refilled the wineglasses. “You know what you were saying about kids being like vessels? Well, cracked ones can be repaired, Audrey. I think that’s what’s happening to Dave.”

  “Oh, God, I hope so.”

  “I think Kari’s right about mother love,” said Merit softly. “About it being so strong. But when you think of it . . . we haven’t been using it to our best advantage.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Faith.

  Merit dabbed at her eyes with her ring finger and then prodded the dimple in her chin. “I mean,” she began, then thought for a moment. “I mean we should figure out a way to marshal it somehow. What mother can stand to see her son go to war?”

  “Oh, God,” said Slip, “When I think of my own boys going to war like my brother did—God, I almost get sick.”

  Goose bumps rose on my arm. “Can you imagine if Vietnam were still going on?”

  Merit nodded. “So why haven’t mothers gotten together—mothers from all over the world—to stop wars? Why do we put up with it?”

  None of us had an answer for that.

  “I just get so frustrated,” Merit went on, and her little dimpled chin started quivering. “I’m terrified for my girls because of all the murderers and rapists out there in the world, yet I haven’t done a single thing to get them off the streets. Why don’t I? Why don’t we stop rapists and murderers? There’re plenty of mothers—we could be bigger than the FBI, the CIA, all the police forces in the world. Why aren’t we organized?”

  “Why don’t you get on that?” said Faith. “Why don’t you let that be your pet project?”

  “You don’t have to be so snide, Faith,” I said. “I think what Merit’s saying is right on. Mothers united would be a powerful force.”

  “As if it could ever happen,” said Faith.

  “Have you got any better ideas?” asked Slip.

  “Better ideas with regard to what?” Faith’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. “Of course murderers and rapists should be stopped, but I sure don’t think they’re going to be stopped by a bunch of mothers.”

  “I know it sounds kind of silly,” said Merit. “It was just something I’d been thinking about.”

  “Hey, don’t apologize,” said Slip, glaring at Faith. “You’re not the one in the wrong.?
??

  “What’re you picking on me for?”

  “I guess I’m just a little fed up with your negativity.”

  “My negativity?” said Faith. “So I happen to think a union of mothers is—”

  “It’s not just that,” said Slip. “You find all sorts of things to be negative about lately.”

  Faith’s mouth opened, and after a few seconds it shut again. She got up and walked to the closet to get her raincoat.

  “Faith,” said Slip with apology in her voice, but Faith was deaf to it.

  “Good night,” she said to the rest of us and then before she opened the door to leave, she burst into tears.

  That made it unanimous.

  June 1985

  Dear Mama,

  Even though I have lived over half my life as the new Faith, it’s always been a battle keeping the old Faith pushed down and out of sight. Lately I feel like a kettle that’s ready to blow its top, feel like I’m the stuff in a witch’s cauldron, boiling, bubbling, churning, steaming.

  Tonight my babies graduated from high school, Mama! My babies who just yesterday learned all the words to “I’m a Little Teapot” and wouldn’t stop singing it; my babies who just yesterday held my hands as I walked them to kindergarten!

  I cried as soon as the procession started—I’ll bet the composer of “Pomp and Circumstance” was a sadist whose intention in writing that piece was to make people cry. I think Wade was tearing up too, although since he got that permanent (men getting permanents—what’s the world coming to?) I can barely stand to look at him to see what he’s doing.

  Bonnie marched around the football field like she was the queen of the Nile entertaining her subjects, but Beau searched the stands until he found us and then waved like he’d just gotten back from war.

  I tried to listen to the commencement speaker, but I was screaming inside, They don’t care about your advice—they’re young! Tell me something that’ll help me cope with my babies growing up and leaving me!

  Mama, I was so proud when I found out they were twins. I had pulled off something really special. In the doctor’s waiting room I used to look at all the other pregnant women and think, “I’m not just having one, ladies, I’m having two.” And then when they were born and they turned out to be a boy and a girl, that really sent me to the moon. I mean, any old egg can split and make identical twins; two of my eggs had been fertilized.