For years, my mom has hosted book club at her house every month. She likes not having to go out. It’s her and three of her close friends: Linda, Anne, and Teresa. And me and Tita. My mom always sits in the giant leather chair in the living room and doesn’t eat very much. The drug from the clinical trial she is on makes her feel nauseated a lot of the time—although she is almost always dressed and mostly cheerful and up for a glass or two of wine. The rest of us gather around on the sectional, eating smoked salmon on crackers and salad.
“It’s a good thing that we read Orphan Master’s Son instead of something dark,” jokes Tita. “Isn’t there a book version of Schindler’s List we could try next?”
“Oh come on,” says my mom. “Why is everyone so afraid of the dark?” She’s only half kidding.
“Maybe we’re not,” I say. “Maybe we just feel like we’re supposed to be.” But I can tell that not everyone agrees with me.
“It seems like our most fun discussions happen when we get to trash the really terrible, shallow books,” says Linda.
“True,” says Anne, whose taste runs very similar to mine. “The beautiful, heavy ones have a way of shutting us all up. But I think somehow I’m okay with that.”
“Me too,” says Teresa, who loves heavy-duty historical nonfiction.
“I don’t know,” says Linda. “I guess I’m open to the dark stuff—I can always skim. But I can’t deal with cruelty to animals. No tortured dogs or horses or anything. That’s where I draw the line.”
“Totally agree,” says Tita. We all end up nodding.
“Are we weird or what?” says my mom. “Tortured men, raped teenagers, dying mothers: We’ll somehow endure those. But skeletal dogs: No way, José.”
We settle on Factory Man, a book about the decline of the furniture industry in southern Virginia, for next month.