Thirty-seven
In a scene straight out of Leah’s childhood memories, the book club assembled on the veranda as the day faded into twilight. Except this time, instead of standing on the sidelines and dreamily watching her mother and her friends, she was a part of it—along with her own daughter.
The air was damp with a fine mist, the sky streaked with gold. All around them, the click and hum of hidden insects, evidence that the vineyard was vibrantly alive.
All of Leah’s senses were heightened. She tasted the acidity of the wine, she smelled the nearby honeysuckle, she saw the sky changing color, and she was aware of every breath rising in her chest. She was reminded of when she was young and in love, the way that every moment was heavy with importance. In recent years, mindfulness had become a thing. But there had been a time when she didn’t have to try to be present; the present had claimed her, mind and body.
She missed feeling passion. In the two weeks since Steven again returned to the city, all of their conversations centered around the logistics of Bailey’s Blue. Still, she couldn’t complain; he was covering all the classes she’d scheduled before she knew she’d be away for the summer.
“We could cancel them,” she said. But that would be bad business. So she talked him through the itinerary.
Also, he was still pushing to find a new location, something she couldn’t deal with while she was preoccupied with the vineyard. They ended their calls with “I love you,” but the words felt rote. She meant them, and she knew he meant them, so why did they feel so hollow?
“I’m very pleased you two indulged me,” Vivian said, lighting citronella candles on the table. “So much to discuss,” she said, pulling a list of questions from her handbag.
“Wait, Mom. We have one more person joining us.”
In a prime example of the adage “It’s better to beg forgiveness than ask permission,” she had not told her mother about inviting Bridget.
“Who?” Vivian said, just as Bridget appeared at the stairs.
“Did I miss anything?” she said, clopping over to the table in high heels. She wore a tank top with a bikini strap tied around her neck and tiny cutoff shorts. Sunglasses were perched on the top of her head, holding back her bright hair. It was clear she’d taken her preparation seriously: her copy of Scruples was heavily dog-eared, with neon-colored Post-its sticking out from a quarter of the pages.
Vivian pursed her lips. Sadie stared at her phone.
“Sadie, no phones,” Leah said.
“The book is on my phone,” she said.
“Well, then—unless you have any more surprises for us, Leah, shall we get started?” Vivian said.
“I’m ready,” she said.
Vivian adjusted the silk scarf around her shoulders, then consulted the monogrammed notepad in front of her.
“What do we think of the heroine’s transformation early in the story?” Vivian said.
Scruples, the story of an ugly-duckling-turned-swan, unfolded in a torrent of sex, scheming, and shopping, to show Billy Ikehorn Orsini evolve from an overweight wallflower to a powerful beauty.
“I think all women experience their early twenties as transformative,” Leah said. “Maybe not as dramatically as in this book, but there is that intense post-adolescent moment that defines who we will be for the rest of our lives.”
“That was certainly true for me, getting married and moving out here,” Vivian said.
“I feel like my twenties are still my teens, but at the same time, like my thirties. Does that make sense?” Bridget said.
“No,” said Vivian.
Leah saw Sadie bite her lip to keep from laughing.
“One thing that strikes me after rereading a book I’d first read as a teen is that it seems like a different story entirely now,” Leah said. “If you’d asked me a month ago what Scruples was about, I’d have said it was a novel about sex and shopping. Now it’s clear it’s a story of a woman overcoming the wounds of her childhood to become her own person.
“What do you think, Sadie?” she said.
“I thought a lot of the stuff in the Paris section was fat-shaming,” she said.
“What does that mean?” Vivian said.
“One of the characters refers to Billy as a hippo. Or thinks of her as a hippo? Either way it was offensive.”
Leah nodded. “It’s clearly not the way we talk about women’s bodies today. But we have to give the author some latitude. It was a very different time.”
“I liked the fact that Billy changed because of a trip to a new place, not because of a man. That’s usually how these types of books go,” Bridget said.
“What types of book?” Leah said.
“Romance novels.”
“This isn’t a romance novel. Romance novels are about falling in love. This book is about a woman finding herself.” Leah wouldn’t have been able to enjoy a traditional romance novel—not with her own relationship feeling so stale.
“But her power comes only after she’s beautiful. And it comes through sex. And it comes through marrying a rich man,” Sadie said.
“That’s how things worked,” Vivian said. “You girls don’t know what it was like fifty years ago. You take so much for granted.”
“She didn’t marry Ellis Ikehorn for money,” Bridget added. “She loved him.”
“Yeah, she loved him so much she started sleeping with all the male nurses she employed to take care of him. Which—by the way—is sexual harassment,” said Sadie.
“I can’t take all of this political correctness,” said Vivian. “Bridget is right: she loved her husband. She was grieving even before he died. The sex was a distraction.”
Leah looked at her mother and thought, Bridget is right? I think hell just froze over.
She flipped through her book. “It seems to me that the author was clear about her intent with Billy’s journey. I’m going to read a line I highlighted: The fact that Scruples represented the smallest part of her fortune didn’t make it any less important to her, because, of all the sources of her income, Scruples was the only one she had been personally responsible for establishing.”
“I don’t think it’s a bad thing that she becomes happy when she turns beautiful,” Bridget said. “How we look on the outside can affect how we feel on the inside.”
Leah saw her mother look at Bridget as if seeing her for the first time.
Footsteps on the stairs interrupted them. Mateo appeared, carrying a bin full of vine trimmings.
“Apologies,” he said. “I just need to drop these off inside.”
Leah felt, even before she saw, the immediate change in Sadie’s demeanor. She sat up straighter in her chair and turned toward Mateo, the intensity of her focus like a plant leaning toward the sun. In turn, he glanced at her with a look that could only be described as . . . intimate.
Could it be? And if so, how long had this been going on?
It was amazing what one could learn at book club.
Vivian should have known by her age that life was full of surprises. That had never been more evident than the past hour or so with Bridget at the book club. Apparently, there were some serious thoughts inside that head of dyed red hair—and those thoughts resonated with Vivian. Out of everyone at the table, her experience in reading the book was most closely aligned with Bridget’s.
She’d been thinking a lot about Bridget since the shakeup over the wedding planning. It had been shortsighted of her to feel deprived of throwing a big party. She recognized the change in plans for what it was: a gesture to say, We’re not doing this for the extravaganza. We just want to be married.
Of course, marriage was still just an idyll to Bridget. Something ephemeral, dreamy, flawless in the way that only the as-of-yet unexperienced could be.
She wondered if Leah had noticed the line in the book, one of the many nuggets of truth buried in the fantastical story: Every woman’s husband is hopelessly irredeemable in one way or another. The same could be said of a marriage.
She hadn’t focused on the line the first time she read the book. She’d barely noticed it because she hadn’t yet grappled with her husband’s flaws. Nor, to be fair, had she dealt with her own.
Vivian brought her wineglass to her lips. The baron would be arriving later in the week to spend time at the winery and “take a look at the operation.” Leah still had no idea about the new offer; Vivian had kept her promise to Leonard about keeping it a secret until the deal was more solid. But now, sitting across the table from her daughter and granddaughter, talking and laughing and mulling over the vagaries of life and love, staying silent felt impossible.
She was going to crack.