The Sky Beneath My Feet - By Lisa Samson Page 0,54
the church ladies selling cosmetics on the side. The printed invitation is pinned to the fridge with magnets, half covered by another invitation to a party about cooking utensils.
“You’re supposed to be my wingman at these things.”
“Your wing-person,” I say. “And I thought you were my wing-person.”
“Ha, ha. It was funny the first ten times you said it. The point is, you’re bailing on things. People notice stuff like that.”
“I’m supposed to be on vacation.”
“Yeah, but everybody knows by now that you’re not. The boys are still showing up to school every day. People see you at the grocery store.”
“Can’t I take a break? Look at Rick. Nobody’s giving him a hard time.”
Which isn’t exactly true. I keep taking messages from Jim Shaw, who doesn’t understand why Rick never returns his calls. I leave Post-its on the bathroom mirror every morning, reminding Rick that Jim’s waiting. I even go to Starbucks every morning for an hour, sipping coffee I could have made for myself at home, giving my husband time to sneak into the house, use the bathroom, and (hopefully) take a shower. He never leaves any notes in reply, even though I placed the stack of Post-its on the back of the toilet with a pen on top.
“Just don’t forget about tonight,” Holly says.
“What’s tonight?”
“It’s the book club, Beth!”
“The book club, right. Which book is it again?”
“You’re killing me, you know that? Let’s meet for lunch.”
“I have plans for lunch.”
“Really? What plans?”
“Plans,” I say. “I have to go to Barnes and Noble, for one thing.”
“To get the book.” Her frustration escapes in a loud sigh. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Beth. I really don’t.”
Ninety minutes later, alone in the Barnes and Noble café between a neurotic-looking man doing what looks like grad school math homework and a table full of young mothers rolling strollers back and forth with one hand and holding caramel Frappucinos in the other, I sit staring at the back cover of tonight’s book.
The two groups I belong to couldn’t be more different. One of them, which Holly calls the Smart Girls, is mostly professional women, trying to keep up with all the books everybody is talking about . . . everyone who listens to public radio, at any rate. Despite the group’s unofficial name, hanging with these overachieving ladies, I feel anything but smart.
The second group, the one meeting tonight, Holly calls the Bodice Rippers. The nickname isn’t entirely fair. Yes, there are plenty of bodices in the books these ladies choose, along with corsets, bustles, and bonnets, but rarely does any of that dainty lace get ripped. Instead, the invariably strong-willed heroines keep their Brinks-level chastity belts locked tight. They find God and they get their man.
The Bodice Rippers read to escape, and the Smart Girls read to keep up. Holly reads to have a good-natured laugh at them both (though she enjoys the books on both sides immensely, whatever she may pretend to the contrary). And me? I guess I show up just to help. I’m always afraid that the night I don’t show up, nobody else will come either. I hate to leave the organizers in the lurch.
If there’s one thing I hate more than that, though, it’s having to keep the two groups separated. The ladies are all from The Community. Most are at least acquainted with each other. But they run in different circles and turn their noses up at what the other group is reading. The Smart Girls pump me for ridiculous details about what the Bodice Rippers are reading, while the Bodice Rippers try to get me to agree that the Smart Girls only read so people will keep thinking they’re smart.
At least with Pampered Chef, all you have to do is show up! There’s not a three-hundred-page cover charge to gain admission.
The moms at the next table leaf through magazines and drop the first names of a bunch of celebrities as if they’re people the women know. Whenever one of their phones pings with a new text message, the conversation lulls, but they talk straight through any noise that the various babies make. When the moms laugh too loudly, the math nerd on the other side of me gives them a stern look. Not that they notice.
“I can’t hear myself think,” he mutters, snapping his textbook shut.
But he doesn’t leave. He digs through the satchel between his feet and finds a set of earphones. Soon he’s cocooned in a buffer of preemptive