The Reading Circle Read online

  No, she had not won the directorship of a town of 20,000 or more. Cherico was only 5,000 souls with no real possibility of falling into the category of growing by leaps and bounds anytime soon. So that goal no longer seemed as important to her as it once had. She had fought too hard to keep The Cherico Library open to even consider abandoning it now. It was enough that she had held on to her job and overcome some significant obstacles in doing so.

  No, she had not gotten married. Jeremy McShay had seemed like a promising candidate only a couple of weeks ago, but now their relationship was in limbo. Her feisty Scarlett spirit, so hard-won during the first few months of the book club’s existence, would not let her be the first to break down and call, write, text, or e-mail. He had to be the one to make the first move. That was just the way it was going to be, and if he never darkened her door again—so be it.

  And, of course, no, she had not yet borne children of any kind. Not a boy, not a girl, not a redhead of either gender. She had played a game in her head during the brief period things had been going well between Jeremy and herself; when they were finding a day in their busy schedules for him to drive down from Nashville, take her out to eat, and then back to her efficiency for some quiet, tender exchanges and explorations. After he had left, she would climb into bed as she had done now and think out loud.

  “Okay, I’m a redhead,” she would say, sounding for all the world like she was ten years old. Then, “Jeremy has that dark brown hair.” Next came, “So what are the odds I’ll get someone who looks like me on top?”

  Fifty percent had never sounded hopeful enough. That was basically just the flip of a coin. So she would sometimes go online during slack times at work and try to find articles about dominant and recessive genes for hair color. In the end, however, she had to resign herself to the fact that inheriting genes of any kind was just a crapshoot. You ended up stuck with whatever came your way.

  Tonight in bed, Maura Beth put the journal away early and returned to her copy of Forrest Gump. She must be thoroughly familiar with it to lead a literate discussion on March 9th, and she had never actually read it before. Nor even seen the movie. At least she still had her library and The Cherry Cola Book Club to shepherd, no matter what. But she couldn’t help envying settled couples like Becca and Justin Brachle, and even the brave and daring Miss Voncille and Locke Linwood, who were well on their way to matrimony late in life, she suspected. Why, she had even thought about inviting them to hold the ceremony in her library when the time came!

  Now, why couldn’t she have a seamless relationship with someone the way those good folks had with one another?

  7

  Forcing the Issue

  This first early March outing with his wife Connie on The Verdict had Douglas McShay hoping for the best but steeling himself for the worst. What he really wanted to do was clear the air and call the whole thing off, but he felt compelled to at least give it the old college try. Nonetheless, why on earth had he agreed to go along with it all a few months ago in the first place?

  “Take me out on the bass boat with you,” she had suggested back in November at the end of a polite argument they were having about the state of their marriage. “Teach me how to fish. We’ll finally be sharing our retirement.” It was her idea of something that would bring them closer together; but after an initial surge of endorphins, he had become silently skeptical about it all.

  Then he had summoned his courage and gone up one afternoon recently to Bass Pro in Memphis and bought her a Zebco spinning reel on sale. It had come to a little under eighty dollars and was widely acknowledged as the best reel for children and beginners. Connie certainly was the latter, and Douglas tried to remain hopeful that everything would be smooth sailing on the slack waters of Lake Cherico from that point forward.

  Then came the balmy March afternoon that had coaxed them out of the lodge, taking them away from quietly reading Forrest Gump and sipping coffee in front of the great room fireplace. It had not started particularly well from Douglas’s point of view. He had spent an inordinate amount of time assuring his wife that the combination of sun block and the big straw hat covering her bouffant hairdo would more than eliminate any possibility of a sunburn.

  “I don’t want to look like a lobster,” she had said. “I hate that look, and it takes forever for your skin to get back to normal.” She had then recited a litany of such unpleasant images as blisters, peeling skin, and vinegar baths.

  But he had shrugged her off with authority. “I guarantee you won’t. Now, let’s get The Verdict under way, okay?”

  That exchange had taken place on their dock. After they’d gotten settled in the boat and headed off to one of his favorite spots, Douglas had shut off the motor, taken a deep breath, and forged ahead with his wife’s very first lesson. “I know you’re gonna do just fine, honey. A child could operate this reel without half-trying. Don’t be nervous. There are all kinds of fish just waiting for you to catch them in that cove over there. That’s my favorite spot. All you have to do is push down on that little button right there,” he told her, pointing to it as he let her hold the reel for the first time. He could tell she didn’t like the way it felt by the way her mouth went all crooked with her lips out of alignment. “Then all you have to do is let up, and the line will lob out on its own.”

  Little did he realize that what seemed simple and straightforward to him was not nearly so cut-and-dried to her. “What do you mean? I thought you only lobbed in badminton and tennis.”

  He told himself that, above all else, he must find a way to smile. “That’s a different use of the term. Just trust me. All you have to do is press down on the button.”

  And she did.

  “Good girl!” he told her, gently patting her on the back. “Now let up.”

  She did that, too, but only after twisting herself around and aiming the reel at the shore, whereupon the line quickly unspooled, made a noise like a dentist’s drill, and headed straight for the branches of an overhanging willow tree in the cove Douglas had praised so highly. What had he been thinking? Why hadn’t he just aimed the reel that first time for her and let her watch a pro in action? Visual learning—that was the ticket. Had he subconsciously sabotaged her? Whatever the case, he was already sensing that the worst might be well on its way.

  Connie was tearing up now as she tried to pull back on the line. But the willow seemed to have the strength of a grown man and would not release the lure easily, at least a dozen of its young, spring leaves fluttering down into the dark water as proof of its exertion. “How did it end up going there? Oh, I’ve messed up, haven’t I? What do I do next?”

  He felt bad about the whole thing, stepped up and took the blame like a man, all the while hoping she wouldn’t think he was being too patronizing. “No, no, I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t tell you not to cast toward the shore, and I should have. It’s all on me. You didn’t do anything wrong, honey.”

  But he spent the next five minutes standing up in the boat and untangling the line, grunting and muttering barely audible things under his breath all the while.

  “You sound like you’re mad at me,” she said, watching him intently. “I think I heard a sonuvabitch a second or two ago.”

  “No, honey. I’m not mad at you. It’s just that I haven’t had to untangle a line since I was a boy with a cane pole using worms and crickets for bait. It’s a pain in the butt, believe me.” When he had finally gotten the job done, cutting away a twig or two with a pocket knife and carefully prying the hook out of the wood, he took another deep breath and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. More willow leaves fluttered down from his shoulder as he spoke. “Let’s take a break, why don’t we? Get us a couple a’ cold ones from the cooler, why don’tcha?”

  That brought a smile to her face; then they both popped their tabs, sat back, and sipped for a while. Momentarily, Douglas was thinking that this part wasn’t half bad. For him, drifting peacefully on the brown waters of Lake Cheric
o was what it was all about most of the time. Catching a big one counted, and mounting it when it deserved trophy status did, too, of course; but even when he came back with nothing, the time spent alone had always been worth it.

  Then Douglas realized his mistake. Alone. That was the part he was giving up by letting Connie aboard The Verdict. By letting her talk him into it. She was distracting, even though he knew she couldn’t help it and didn’t even realize she was doing anything wrong. On the way over to the cove, for instance, she had rambled on about the muumuu she was wearing. It had little green fishes with bubbles coming out of their mouths all over it—against a sky blue background, no less—and she had bought it especially for her very first fishing lesson with her handsome husband. Did she look all right in it? Did he like it? It didn’t make her look too fat, did it? Was it the sort of thing other wives wore when they went fishing with their husbands?

  Now, what kind of questions were these to pose on a bass boat? Who the hell could see or would even care what she was wearing in the middle of the lake? And then it came to Douglas that he and Justin Brachle had nailed it when they had proposed that The Cherry Cola Book Club read Forrest Gump instead of The Robber Bridegroom. Men and women really did view things differently. They each had their own viable, separate priorities. It wasn’t necessarily a good or bad thing. It just was. His lawyer’s brain zeroed in on it exactly: Equality was a legal concept only.

  “Ready to try again?” Douglas said, after they had drained their beers before the cans had warmed up too much in the sun bearing down. He tried his best to make it sound like it was something he really wanted to continue doing.

  With a little help from her beer buzz, Connie saw through it, the straw hat on her head moving slowly from side to side in disapproving fashion. “This isn’t fun for you, is it? I mean, I can tell that even what we’ve done together so far is not what you expected. Give me that much. We’ve been married too long for me not to recognize when you’re trying too hard.”

  He mulled things over an awkward amount of time without saying anything, and even that was a tip-off for her.

  “Quite frankly, I wondered if I’d have the patience for this,” Connie told him. “I really don’t think I do, you know. This whole thing is forced, isn’t it? Here I am out here worried more about getting sunburned than anything else. I can’t remember when you haven’t come back to the house with a little extra color in your face, and it doesn’t matter to you one iota. It just makes you look even more dashing than you already are, you devil, you.”

  He was squinting at her, shading his eyes with his hand while accepting her compliment with a broad grin. “Well, we really haven’t given it a shot yet. You haven’t even made your first successful cast.”

  She lifted up her chin proudly as if she were a soldier snapping to attention. “Okay, then. Let’s make sure we can both say I’ve done that.” On her own she took the reel in hand, faced away from the willows overhanging the cove, and pushed the button down, making a perfectly respectable cast.

  He applauded the light kerplunk it made out on the still water. “I’d give you a ten out of ten! Olympic gold quality!”

  “Excellent. Then that’s over and done with!”

  “You really don’t want to continue? If you’re really serious about fishing, you have to start somewhere, you know.”

  She handed over the reel and pointed to her big straw purse next to the blue plastic cooler full of beer and bottled water. “I came prepared in case things didn’t go well. Or I chickened out, whichever came first. I brought along my copy of Forrest Gump to read, and that’s just what I’m going to do. I’ll keep you company, watching you fish while I see what mischief Forrest is up to next. How does that sound?”

  Well, that was music to his ears, and he couldn’t help laughing. “You know, I went along with all this to keep the peace. I haven’t forgotten that you pointed out that we really weren’t doing a lot of things together since moving down from Nashville. I certainly agree we shouldn’t be off in our separate corners with our hobbies, though. So if this isn’t the right thing to share, I promise we’ll just find something else.”

  “Spoken like a true retired lawyer,” she said, leaning over to give him a peck on his sunburned cheek. Then she reached into her purse, retrieved her copy of Forrest Gump, and picked up where she had left off. A huge sigh followed as she found her place. Even though she was still floating on the waters of Lake Cherico, she knew she was once again on solid ground.

  It was Saturday night, the evening before The Cherry Cola Book Club would be reviewing Forrest Gump, and Maura Beth had just finished icing the chocolate, cherry cola sheet cake she was bringing to the event. Baking the cake in her kitchenette had given her a brief respite from her frazzled emotional state. It was driving her crazy that she had not heard a peep out of Jeremy since their fallout nearly five weeks ago. Oh, she was still holding on to her stubbornness, her absolute requirement that he be the first one to break the ice and apologize to her for his immature and outrageous display of temper in her apartment that afternoon. But she knew only too well that her rigidity was just that, containing nothing of the soft kisses and the tender touches she had enjoyed from Jeremy when things were going well between them. No consolation at all, this business of being unyielding because she knew he had been in the wrong.

  “He must not care,” she had told Periwinkle over the phone somewhere in the interim, struggling to repress all the indecision and doubt that was dogging her. “Or he would have made a move by now.”

  “I should just forget him,” she had also told Renette at work one day, sounding robotic and stern, yet somehow unconvincing. “It’s obviously over, and I should just move on.”

  Neither woman had the answer for her, and she had not been able to put him out of her mind. The whole quandary was even interfering with her preparation for the Forrest Gump meeting fast approaching, and she could ill afford that. Every review, every potluck dinner must leave the members clamoring for more. She must make every topic interesting, try to keep every discussion balanced and literate, not allowing anyone or anything to monopolize or scuttle the evening’s agenda as Councilman Sparks had done last year. But she kept postponing an outline to fine-tune her role as moderator. Worse still, she had yet to collect her own thoughts about Winston Groom’s work and the unforgettable, now-iconic character of Forrest Gump—simple and brave, loyal and straightforward to a fault.

  It had gotten so bad that two days ago in her little office, Maura Beth had broken down and taken a stab at forcing the issue. She had composed an e-mail to Jeremy, taking the better part of an afternoon to get everything just the way she wanted. Over and over she had deleted and rephrased, sometimes only a word here and there. At other times she found herself thinking that several sentences needed to bite the dust. Finally, she finished.

  Jeremy,

  I never thought I would find myself in this position. Since I have not heard from you, I assume you are still working your way through your quarrel with New Gallatin Academy and your unsympathetic headmaster. But I clearly remember asking you not to take too long to get back to me with any decisions you made. I won’t go into our quarrel over The Cherry Cola Book Club vote that set you off so. I will just say that we are going ahead as planned with Winston Groom’s novel and with no regrets. It is a fine work, and I know our members are enjoying reading it.

  But I want you to understand that perhaps I overreacted during our misunderstanding. I didn’t mean to make things more stressful for you. Maybe I didn’t make a better effort to appreciate your position on football and how it has affected your attempts to expose your students to the rewards of reading great literature. As a librarian, I certainly support you in that. At any rate, I don’t think this silence between us is accomplishing anything. Frankly, I miss “us.” So I wanted to say that I definitely have feelings for you and that they are far more important than winning any argument. Can’t we at least start talking to each other again and
go from there?

  Affectionately,

  Maura Beth

  She had taken a deep breath and read it over a second time. Did it strike the right tone? She couldn’t let anyone else read it and decide for her—not Periwinkle, not Renette, not any of the other female club members she respected as friends and confidantes. This, she knew without a doubt, was strictly on her.

  In the end she had not pressed Send. She had not even saved it to her Drafts folder. She had chosen not to force the issue, deleting it in cyberspace, exiling it to a place the human mind could not go or even fathom. That much she could do without flinching. Unfortunately, she could not delete the ongoing conflict from her brain so easily.

  8

  Debussy and Flying Deer

  Jeremy McShay glanced at his watch and saw that he had put things off until nearly three o’clock Sunday afternoon. He had gone back and forth about it the last few days but had finally made up his mind. Better late than never. If he hurried, there would be just enough time to drive down to Cherico for the Forrest Gump review from his cozy little bungalow rental on a dead-end street just off Nashville’s busy West End. In truth, he did not have appreciably more square footage than Maura Beth did in her efficiency on Clover Street down there, but it somehow made him feel like he was actually getting somewhere in life to be living in a house and not in some generic apartment complex for singles.

  He had tried that once at Walking Horse Place when he had first gotten his job at New Gallatin Academy and had found everything in the complex to be noisy and frenetic. There were even times he had been unable to concentrate on grading papers with the booming wall vibrations from his neighbor’s thumping electronic equipment.