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Jo Barney Writes
Category:
Women
Publisher: Penner
ISBN-10: 1940811406
Type: Fiction
Pages: 309
Copyright: 2015
ISBN-13: 9781940811406
Price: $3.03 (eBook)
Four old friends meet at a beach house, their usual retreat, only this time one of them asks the others to help her accomplish something that the others will consider unethical, even criminal. Is their forty-year friendship strong enough to agree?
Four women, old college friends, meet at Madge's beach house, as they have done before, for a weekend retreat. This time, along with good food, glasses of wine, a little gossip, they discover that Madge, a successful novelist, has included them in her next book, the stories of their lives after their days and nights in the sorority solarium, smoking Pall Malls and talking as sexy as one could in the late 50's.
"Your stories aren't finished," Madge tells them, "just as your lives aren't. And I need your help to finish my own story. "
But what Madge has asked of them may be more than they are willing to do.
They have two days to decide.
Excerpt
CHAPTER TWO
Friday, June, 2004: Storm Warnings
Lou
On the day the four of them are to come together at Madge’s beach house, Lou pulls her car into an empty parking pad at the end of the gravel driveway. She‘s not surprised she is the first to arrive. Joan is driving north from San Francisco and Jackie is always late to everything. But where is Madge’s car?
She opens the car door, steps out into a gentle breath of ocean air. For the past thirty miles her body has felt as if she were wearing too many layers, heavy, moist. When she left the cabin on the mountain that morning, the thermometer needle had pointed at 36 degrees. Dropping down into the valley, heading to the coast, the balmy air filling the car sent a wave of queasiness through her and she had to unzip her parka to breathe.
The nausea wasn’t only about a jacket and a change of barometer. Whenever she leaves her forest, descends to the flats, pokes her way around the tangles of towns that grow like lichen along snow-fed streams and rivers, she becomes anxious, almost fearful. The clumps of people, the throb of voices, the thrusting groans of passing cars collide with the fragile sense of peace her new life has brought her.
No crowds here at this cabin, though, only four good friends. Taking a deep breath, she feels the heaviness lift. She pulls her duffle from the back seat and steps toward the small cedar-shingled house. The wild fuchsias along the path have been recently trimmed; splashes of red curl under the bushes like snips of velvet. Madge has been busy getting the place ready for their old lady slumber party, this one almost fifty years after they first met at the dorm cookie shine.
Did any one of them ever believe a day would come when they spent their time together remembering instead of dreaming? Lou’s hand brushes against a gathering of lantern blossoms and she wonders how they’d do on the mountain. She must remember to take a cutting or two when she leaves for home.
Then the blue door opens and a smiling Madge steps out, holding out her arms to her. “Lou?” she calls. Lou steps into her friend’s hug. They and the duffle bump through the door and into the hallway. Over Madge’s shoulder Lou gets a glimpse of green shimmer at the end of the room, the Pacific, not so pacific at the moment, white froth lapping at the sand under the cabin.
They make their ways through the open kitchen. A jagged row of yellow Post-its flutter on cabinet doors like resting butterflies.
“What’s all this?” Lou asks. “Another decorating fad I’ve missed?”
Madge waves a dismissing hand and moves on. “I’m cooking dinner,” she says as if that explains everything. “Come sit down. Don’t worry about your bag. I want to hear how your garden’s growing.”
They talk. Madge’s hair is short and brown, and she pats at the wayward tendrils over her ears that just as she did years ago. She nods at Lou’s description of her mountain house’s newest additions, two wild rhodies nestled against the wall of logs and the stone chimney and she hesitates when Lou asks her about her writing. “Going fine,” she says.
But Lou sees that something’s not fine with Madge. As they talk, her bright gaze lands on Lou for a moment then casts about as if she has lost something, a gesture catches in mid-sway, thoughts break in half.
“Are you all right?”
Madge doesn’t answer. Instead she checks her watch, rises, and goes into the kitchen. She runs a finger down a yellow note. “Good,” she says. “Glass of wine?”
She is opening the bottle when the blue door swings open and Jackie swoops into the house. “Hey, let it begin,” she calls. “I’m here!”
Lou looks up and she wonders for an instant at the sense of relief she feels as she moves into Jackie’s swirl of arms and bags and hugs her. Behind her Madge repeats softly, “Jackie,” and then louder, “Welcome! How was the drive?”
Jackie, still tall at sixty-six, looks as if she is about to pull off her sweats and run a marathon. Instead she drops two suitcases she’s carrying and reaches for Madge. “Same as usual, RV’s and trucks and me on a two-lane road to your little village. How can you stand it?”
“Don’t drive much any more.” Madge pokes a finger into the black curls bouncing above her as they touch cheeks. “God, I’m still envious of your hair, even in my old age.”
“I’ve always liked yours too.”
“No, you didn’t. The first time I cut it you said I looked like a boy.”
“I’ve always liked boys, also.” Jackie grins at Lou and adds, “And if mine were silver like yours, I’d save a fortune at Ardella’s salon.”
Lou can’t remember the last time she went to a beauty parlor. Or whatever they’re called these days. When it needs it, Susan cuts her white hair near the compost pile and the birds make nests of the trimmings.
The three of them move to the window and look out across the ocean. Everyone who enters this beach house does this, following a worn path in the carpet, eyes searching the horizon. Especially on a cloud-clear day like today.
“Japan, maybe?” Lou murmurs.
Madge apparently is still thinking about hair. “I haven’t had the courage to find out what color mine really is. I’ve had to look young and vital on my book covers. My agent has hinted at even more drastic alterations.” She faces her two friends and pulls at the skin under her ears. “What do you think?”
They go to the old sofa, set down their glasses.
“Better wait to ask Joan. She’s the one with the new neck,” Lou answers. A bit harsh, she scolds herself. When will she learn to burst the bubble of jealousy that pops to the surface whenever she hears Joan’s name? Should have outgrown it forty or fifty years ago.
Madge must think so too. She points a finger at the room the two women will be sharing. “Want to unpack?” A sticky note with their names on it wavers on the door.
After Lou and Jackie line up their suitcases next to the bed, they go back to the living room. Lou pushes into a corner of the sofa, her legs tucked under her, Madge settles into the opposite corner, and Jackie falls into one of the large armchairs at the side of the stone fireplace.
Lou has always admired this room, its large windows with the ocean churning behind them, the knotty pine walls aged to a warm orange, several blue seascapes at either side of the couch, in fall-back positions in case fog blocks out the real thing outside. She could easily go to sleep right now, her eyelids heavy in the midst of a sip of merlot and the soft laughter in the story Jackie is telling Madge.
Except she sees that Madge is fiddling with her hair again, smiling vague twitches, nodding every so often to keep Jackie going.
Madge is not Madge, the friend Lou’s known for almost fifty years, the Madge who would listen so carefully she could repeat what you said years later, with whom your secrets were safe and your faults accepted. That familiar woman is somewhere else. This Madge’s gaze wavers, her easy flow of words are now spurts of escaping thoughts. Her lips, once loose and ready for whatever came next, are tight, as if she is afraid of what will leak out if she isn’t careful.
Jackie doesn’t seem to notice as she goes on in her usual scattered way about roads and her decision to keep her hair dark except at the temples and her daughter’s recent visit and her hope for a low tide and finding a Japanese glass float in the morning.
Then, headscarf around her neck, her blondeness unruffled despite her two-day drive, Joan breezes through the open door. She still looks good, Lou observes. Not just the new neck. She glows as always with her California tan and her perfect lips and her smooth yellow hair. And she’s held up a lot better than the rest of the foursome, boobs and waistband still in the right places. Lou takes a last sip at her wine and stands to greet California girl. Time to grow up, she tells herself. Time to let it go. If not now, when?
They open another bottle, this time from Joan’s cellar. A half hour later, Madge looks at her watch, goes to the kitchen and slides a casserole, lasagna Lou guesses, into the oven. She watches as Madge squints through the reading part of her glasses at several notes lined up on the cabinet.
“Any munchies?” Joan has joined Madge behind the island in the kitchen. “I haven’t eaten a thing since breakfast and I need food if I’m going to drink more wine, which I am.” She pushes aside cartons and bags and pulls out a package of cheese. “What happened to the idea of eating out most nights? You have enough stuff here to feed us for a week.” She is reaching for a knife when she sees a list held by a magnet to the side of the refrigerator. “Menus? Damn, I’m cooking enchiladas on Tuesday? Appropriate since I’m the only one from California. Maybe the recipe is on the can.”
“It is.” Madge is standing next to Joan; her lips mouth words as she reads from a label. “Right here.”
Joan stops slicing into the block of cheese and looks at Madge. “Can I help?” she asks. In the living room Lou hears the answer, a whisper floating over the muffled groans of the sinking tide outside.
“Yes, you can, but later.”
Lou feels her jaw tighten and sends her gaze out over the quiet sea. What will it take for her to accept Joan’s perfection—and even more painful, her closeness to Madge?
It has always been that way, Madge and Joan, hasn’t it? She straightens her back, tells herself to stop slogging like a lost soul along this trail to nowhere. She glances at the two women in the kitchen, at Jackie by her side. No. I’m wrong. Madge is an intimate friend to all three of the women in this room. She has brought them together this weekend and other weekends in the past. Because of her, after all these years they still think of themselves as sisters, like they did in the smoking room of the Gamma Psi house
From the kitchen, Madge turns to Lou and Jackie and calls, “Let’s go down to the beach. The tide is out. Dinner will be ready in an hour.”
The four of them walk down to the water’s edge, follow meandering curves of wavelets to the south, the sand firm under their feet. Seagulls sail overhead searching for what the tide has left behind, and the women also search, for luminescent agates, prizes to be tucked into pockets and lined up on sunny windowsills in their other lives. The world is green, blue, and then pink with sunset, the ocean almost silent as it calms, readies itself for its return journey to the rocky arms that reach out for it.
The casserole is indeed lasagna, from Costco, Madge confesses, and smelling of herbs and cheese and tomatoes. By the end of the meal, Lou can see that they all know something’s wrong with Madge, even Jackie who has stopped talking and is shooting anxious frowns at her and Joan.
They clear the table and take thimbles of brandy to the couch and chairs facing the warmth of the fireplace.
“Kind of like the solarium.” Madge’s voice, wistful, young, surprises Lou. Solarium. Until today, Lou hasn’t thought of that midnight room in a long time. Madge sets her glass on the chest that serves as a coffee table. Her hand is shaking, a drop of brandy spills onto her finger and she licks it off. “Only we don’t smoke anymore.”
For a moment, no one speaks. Perhaps, Lou thinks, that old room is lost in a fog of years. No, she can still smell it, hear its voices. The others can also. Jackie sits straighter, opens her mouth, for once doesn’t speak. Joan’s blue eyes narrow with remembering.
Then the question fills the quiet room, brushing against lips, raising the hairs on Lou’s arms. Joan places her drink next to Madge’s and asks it. “What’s going on, Madge?”
Madge breathes deeply, her lips trembling.
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