TURN THE PAGE
AND PASS THE MUFFINS

Ella was tickled pink when Rose called to invite her to join the Luckettville Learned Ladies Society.

“It can take years for someone to leave the group,” Ella told me, flush with pride over her new status. “I can’t believe my good fortune.”

Now, most folks wouldn’t call the death of Mrs. Winters good fortune, unless it was Mrs. Winters herself, seeing that she was about a hundred and hadn’t heard a word that was said by any of the Luckettville Learned Ladies for at least three years. I feel sure Ella didn’t mean any disrespect. She was simply a woman who knew what she wanted, and she had wanted a chair around Rose’s oak dining room table on Wednesday mornings from nine to eleven ever since her youngest left for basic training.

“God knows I love my husband,” Ella would say. “But with just the two of us at home now, a little Leon goes a long way. I’ve signed up for extra volunteer shifts at the community center, but I still need an excuse to get out of the house on Wednesdays.”

Early on the morning of her Luckettville Learned Ladies Society debut, Ella called her daughter, Anna Fair, to find out what might be expected of her. Anna Fair had a reputation for keeping up with cultural trends and introducing them to her friends long before the rest of the town caught on. Why, just last month she brought sushi to dinner on the grounds at Mt. Moriah Last Chance Chapel, where she was baptized, confirmed, and now teaches Sunday school to the first graders. Granted, Anna Fair is the only person in the congregation who’s ever tried to pass off raw fish wrapped in seaweed as something everyone “simply had to try once,” but her mother loved her daughter for being willing to take such a risk. Ella had never been much of a maverick herself.

So anyway, Anna Fair started her own book group a year or so ago called the “Luckettville Liberated Literary Coalition,” and it has the distinction of being the only club in Luckettville devoted solely to books by female authors. Ella hoped her daughter’s experience with that group might guide her somewhat in what to expect at Rose’s house.

“After we catch up with one another,” said Anna Fair, “you know—jobs, vacations, blog postings— then we open the . . .”

“Open the what?” asked Ella.

Suddenly Anna Fair sounded very far away even though she lived four doors down in her grandmother’s old Colonial. “We drink a little wine, Mother. There, I’ve said it. But we never have more than one glass apiece. I promise.”

“Deliver me,” said Ella. “Surely you don’t think that goes on at the Luckettville Learned Ladies Society, do you?” Ella did not believe this was the time to confess to her daughter that she herself indulges in a glass of fermented grape juice on occasion, but only because Doc Easton assures her it has medicinal properties. In moderation, of course.

“Who knows?” said Anna Fair. “They’re so secretive we wouldn’t know if they really read tarot cards and shoot dice. I’ve always thought that Mrs. Hendricks seemed a little—”

“Anna Fair Stallings,” said Ella. “Watch your mouth, young lady.”

Even at twenty-eight years old, and as independent and forward thinking as Anna Fair was, she knew there were still times when only two words would do.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

After she hung up the phone, Ella started to panic. She had spent hours preparing food to take to the Luckettville Learned Ladies Society, but it hadn’t occurred to her to worry about something to drink. And now there wasn’t enough time to make a gallon of fruit tea. If she’d thought of it, she would have bought a jar of maraschino cherries and mixed a batch of Shirley Temples for everyone. My how she had loved those drinks ever since her daddy took her to the Rotary Club’s father-daughter dinner in junior high. It was too late now. Anyway, for all Ella knew, she had pored over that long book and prepared all this food for a bunch of culturally depraved heathens masquerading as well-read women of faith.

In the end, Ella needn’t have worried. When she arrived on Rose’s doorstep with her copy of The History of Luckettville: The Early Years, cluttered with notations in the margins and little slips of paper jutting out from each chapter as if she were a seasoned professor teaching Faulkner at the college, it was obvious the other women were impressed. And the fact that Ella brought food even though the newest inductee doesn’t have to until her second meeting guaranteed her a “lifetime member in good standing” distinction in the Luckettville Learned Ladies Society right then and there. Ella had come bearing her trusted standbys: peppermint brownies with milk-chocolate icing, cream cheese sandwiches cut into triangles, and broccoli florets with a side of her bacon-tomato dip.

Ella would love to tell you what all went on around Rose’s dining room table that morning, but the guiding principles outlined on page three of the Luckettville Learned Ladies Society Handbook will not allow her to reveal even one word. You’ll just have to wait until you get your own invitation to join, which, as luck would have it, could come any day now. According to Ella, Miss Hibernia is not looking too good.