Rules of the Club

“Well, I haven’t had macaroni salad like that for years,” Toots says. “So much mayonnaise! I forgot how good real mayonnaise is.”

Confession Club is at Rosemary’s house tonight, and she chose the theme of a picnic dinner: cold fried chicken, macaroni salad, pickled beets, three-bean salad, and a coconut cake with lemon curd filling. She has Bird Calls of the Great Midwest on her CD player. At the center of the table, a beautiful vintage wicker hamper is filled with flowers, and Rosemary even scattered some plastic ants—quite realistic-looking!—on the red-and-white-checkered tablecloth.

“Ew!” Gretchen said, when she first saw the ants. She stopped short, causing Dodie, who was following closely behind her, to spill some of the contents of her plate. Luckily it was just a drumstick.

“I’ll clean that up,” Rosemary said at the same time that Dodie said, “Oh, shit. I’ll get that. Damn it!”

“I’ll clean the rug,” Rosemary said. “You put two dollars in the jar, Dodie.”

Joanie claps her hands. “Great! We should have enough for the library to buy another book. We need to amp up our swearing; they want to buy some art books.”

Now they have finished their dinner and moved on to a rosé that Rosemary says the clerk at County Line liquors couldn’t stop raving about. “He said it had fine character,” she says. “As if he were providing a job reference! ‘Perfect maceration,’ he said, which, what does that even mean? And then he said”—and here she makes her voice nasal and superior—“ ‘The taste is an off-dry strawberry, with notes of vanilla and…’ Wait. It was so odd. Oh, I remember! ‘Forest floor.’ Forest floor—can you imagine?”

“It is awfully good,” Toots says. “But what really tastes good is that extra load of mayonnaise you put in the macaroni salad.”

“It wasn’t so much mayonnaise as it was real mayonnaise,” Rosemary says. “None of that light mayo for me anymore, it tastes like…Well, it tastes like nothing.”

“Amen,” says Toots. “Every time I eat it I try to convince myself that it’s more or less the same thing, but it’s not. Something really important is missing. I eat a turkey sandwich with that light mayonnaise and I just stare out the window afterward.”

“Exactly,” says Rosemary. “I’ve had it with the light stuff. I’m back to real across the board.”

“Me, too,” says Dodie. “Plus you should start smoking again.”

“Why?” Rosemary asks.

Dodie shrugs. “Probably be dead before it killed you this time. At our age, we get a new lease on bad habits.”

“Can I get the recipe for that macaroni salad?” Joanie asks.

“Sure,” Rosemary says. “It’s my mother’s. I don’t make it often, because whenever I see her writing on the little card—you know how they used to have those cute little index cards with pictures of potholders and such? Such jaunty little potholders on her recipe cards, as if they couldn’t be more pleased with themselves for being potholders. And ‘From the kitchen of’ in such pretty script. But every time I pull out one of her recipe cards, I feel guilty for how mean I was to her.”

“We’re all mean to our mothers,” Gretchen says. “It’s a daughter’s duty.”

“No it isn’t,” says Rosemary.

“Well, we all do it,” Gretchen says. “I don’t know why we do it, but we do.”

“We have to separate,” says Joanie. “We have to push our mothers away so we can be our authentic selves. We have to be mean.”

“For all of our lives?” Rosemary says.

“You did it all your life?” Karen asks.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Rosemary says. “I’m not the one confessing tonight. Who is?”

Gretchen holds up her hand.

“Okay, go,” Rosemary says.

Gretchen clears her throat. “Okay. So, this is…Well, before my confession, I think I want to say something I’m ashamed of first. Which is that a couple of times a week I go into my closet and cry.”

No one says anything.

“It’s so Jerry won’t hear me,” Gretchen says.

“Why shouldn’t he hear you?” asks Joanie. “Why don’t you tell him what’s wrong?”

“Well, that’s the confession part. It’s about my sons. Who are his sons, too, of course. But the confession is that I wish I could…well, I wish I could divorce my sons. Both of them. You talk about mean daughters. But sons can give it out just as bad as any daughter. Last Christmas one of the gifts from my older son was deodorant. Deodorant! A three-pack—that’s what was special about it; it was meant to be this great convenience. My other gift from him was an orange mohair sweater so heinous the cat ran away when he saw it. And: I hate to sound like a cliché, but they never call. I always have to be the one to check in. I check in, and do you think at any point they say, ‘And how are you, Mom?’ No. And when I invite them and their snippy wives over to dinner, maybe twice a year, they act like I’m asking them to donate an organ. They will never fill in for me at the store when I have an emergency. No. I have to pay someone overtime because they can’t be bothered to pitch in to a business that will someday be theirs. And their children! Such darling babies and toddlers, but now they positively ransack my house. Nothing off limits! Their parents sit there doing absolutely nothing when they go into my desk drawers. And when the children break things, not a word then, either; they don’t want to shame them. What’s wrong with a little shame? What’s wrong with a little responsibility?

“I don’t understand it. It’s not how I raised them. I raised them to be polite, to be empathic, to give to others, to take responsibility. And I’ll tell you, I have had enough. I don’t care if I see them anymore. I don’t want to see them anymore! I don’t! Oh, it’s a terrible thing to say, I know. It’s a terrible thing to feel! But I just…well, I would rather just get my fill of children—I do love children, you know—I would rather get my fill of children by babysitting for someone else or volunteering at a daycare center or something. I mean it. I want to divorce my children.”

“Divorce them, then,” Dodie says.

Gretchen rolls her eyes. “Right.”

“I mean it,” Dodie says. “Divorce them, but don’t tell them. I did that with Ralph, may he continue to rest in peace and be there waiting for me with a big fat gin and tonic when I join him. I divorced Ralph for an entire year, and he didn’t know a thing about it. For him, nothing really changed. But for me! Why, I felt like I’d won a trip to Paris. I felt so carefree! He’d do one of his rude or annoying things and it would just roll off me. ‘What a jerk,’ I’d think, in a kind of removed way. ‘I sure am glad I divorced him.’

“You see, once I did that, got my psychic divorce, I didn’t have to take on anything of his. In my mind, we weren’t a couple any longer. He had his ways, I had mine. Oh, we did things together, still. And I was glad he was there on those stormy nights when the thunder booms so loud it scares the bejesus—”

“Whoops! jar!” Joanie says, and Dodie sighs and looks over at her.

“We don’t count ‘bejesus.’ We talked about that not too long ago, remember? We don’t count ‘bejesus’ or ‘crap.’ ”

Joanie only sips her wine, and Dodie continues.

“Anyway, those times you get scared in the night or you need a jar opened or the car backed out of the garage, well, you have the convenience of having your husband around even if he secretly isn’t your husband anymore. Let me tell you, girls, there’s nothing like divorcing your husband to make you get along with him.” She sits back in her chair, crosses her arms. “So, Gretchen, listen to me. Divorce your children in your mind, and then just go about living your life. Forget about them, and just see how quickly they sense you’re not there for them. They’ll be all over you in no time. And you know what? When they come back the first time and ask you to do something for them, you say no. Say no! You always say yes to those boys, no matter what they ask. Why, I remember when you had tickets to see Oklahoma! at the playhouse four months in advance and the day of the play one of your sons asked you to babysit and what did you do? Skipped the play!”

“I know,” Gretchen says. “And I love Ado Annie so much. That’s the role I wanted when we did the play in high school—remember, Joanie? I wanted it way more than Laurey.”

“They had to make you Laurey because you were the prettiest,” Joanie says.

“I know,” Gretchen says, and sighs. She pushes back the sides of her long red hair.

Dodie coughs, then says in a high, pinched voice, “You didn’t even ask your kids if they could reschedule!” She coughs again, clears her throat. “Excuse me. But remember, Gretchen? You didn’t even ask them.”

“I didn’t. You’re right.”

Dodie shakes her head. “I swear, sometimes I think you’re afraid of your kids.”

“I am!”

“Oh, my,” Toots says. “Let’s all bond together over this one. Let’s be united in strength and tell Gretchen she can divorce her children. No contact until they call her! Agreed?”

Iris says, “Well, I think Gretchen is the one who has to make the decision.”

“I will make it!” Gretchen says, and all the women join hands.

Gretchen straightens in her chair. Closes her eyes. “Okay,” she says. “I’m doing it. Right here, right now, I divorce my children.” She sits back in her chair, a bit stunned-looking, then smiles. “My goodness! I feel better already. It’s like someone undid a buckle in my chest.” Then she looks a bit worried. “But no one can ever tell anyone I did such a thing.”

“Rules of the club,” Toots says. “But you know what? I’ll bet you’re not the first to divorce your children.”

“I can vouch for that,” says Karen. “Not divorced, but abandoned. A little bit. For a little while.”

“Did you abandon your children?” Gretchen asks, a little worried. Karen’s oldest is only nine.

“No,” says Karen. “Not me. Someone else.”

“Someone in your husband’s congregation?”

“Never mind,” Karen says quickly. “I’m just saying that right when you think you’re a horrible person for saying or doing something, you find out you’re not alone.”

“It is a comfort,” Gretchen says. “Unless, you know, you’re a mass murderer or something. Is there any more wine? To go with my whining?”

“You’re not whining!” all the women say together, and Gretchen says, “Gosh, you guys. Thank you.”