Crystal V. Lewis

Maggie couldn't wait to devour the books, but first she had to give her aunt a piece of her mind.

"Aunt Dot," she had said. "I am completely mortified that you said that."

Dot was laughing as she pat the horny cat while it ate food on the counter.

"Eh," she sighed. "What point is there pretending you don't have a thing for this guy? If he likes you, fine. You go out and have fun. If he doesn’t, well, you just move on and forget him."

Maggie knew her aunt was making sense but still, it was embarrassing. She turned on her heels and stomped out of the house to return to the books. Rather than stay out on the porch, she picked the box up to bring back to her room so she could read in peace. Typically Maggie would be interrupted by Dot, but since tonight was book club, she was otherwise occupied which allowed Maggie to be deep into one of the books in no time.

Several hours passed before Maggie realized she needed to turn on a light, at which point she noticed the sounds of laughter emerging from below.

Book club.

Maggie placed a bookmark between the pages of the book she was reading and left the book to rest on the night table. She carefully opened her door which creaked defiantly against her efforts to remain unnoticed. She just wanted to hear if her aunt mentioned Joshua, or if one of the other ladies mentioned Joshua.

Jesus, she snapped back to reality for a moment. What is happening to me?

She sat on the top step as she strained to listen to the commotion below. Loud pops reminded her that the women drank a lot of wine at these meetings, but it also reminded her that she had a long wait for any good gossip. Her stomach reminded her that she needed to eat something first, so she descended the stairs and crossed to the kitchen as she overheard the women cackle over some part of the book that was particularly saucy or silly.

Romances were mostly the genre of choice, which Maggie did not enjoy at all since each book was the same as the one before. Predictability was not something she looked for in a book, which is why she enjoyed Joshua's choice in books because they allowed Maggie to learn something instead of just wasting her time with tripe.

The door to the fridge creaked open to reveal that the chicken from earlier in the day was no longer sitting in a dish and left to mingle with the sodas and vegetables. She reached for a variety of items to put together a salad, except most of the stuff she planned to go on top of it overpowered the lettuce. This was partly due to the fact that her aunt hadn't pulled the latest crop from the garden, so one wilted head of lettuce, a few soft carrots, and a questionable cucumber were all that remained. To top those off, she took a few tablespoons full of olives, some cubes of Seriously Sharp Cheddar, and drizzled oil and vinegar on top.

She was about to attempt a silent retreat to her room, but her boisterous aunt stumbled into the doorway and stopped suddenly. Her eyes were initially on the floor, but they slowly rose to meet Maggie's confused stare.

The two stood silently as a confused Maggie awaited something from her obviously inebriated aunt. Dot, who was in fact drunk from a bottle or several of wine already, was waiting for Maggie to make the first move, but seeing that this was not going to happen, she broke the silence.

"Ah, Magpie," Dot said lovingly. "Getting yourself a nosh, eh?"

"Magpie?" Maggie responded. "I'm not sure whether I should be confused, offended, or amused."

Dot threw her head back and laughed with her mouth open wide enough to catch a bird in it, only no actual chuckles escaped her lips, only a serious a snorts fell out. She took a big step forward, reeled her arm backwards, and swept it around to slap her niece's shoulder harder than she meant to.

"Aw, sure, look it," Dot said cryptically.

She walked around her niece and removed another bottle of wine from the cabinet, and ash she inspected the label, her stance wavered significantly.

Maggie watched this display of drunkenness with growing amusement despite the fact that most of her aunt's antics required no liquid encouragement, but an accent seemed to come out with each additional drink. It was hard for her to distinguish what nationality it was exactly, but considering her family's heritage it was most likely an Irish one.

"You got it under control, Aunt Dot?" Maggie said with a laugh.

            Dot snorted a few more times before she tucked the bottle in her underarm and grabbed another identical one from the same cupboard.

            "Why don't you come in and join us?" Dot asked as she hooked her arm through her niece's.

            Maggie couldn't fight back much due to the fact that she held her large bowl of salad in both hands at chest height.

            "I actually wasn't going to bother you because I was in the middle of a really good book," Maggie protested as her aunt led her through the doorway toward the parlor.

            The parlor housed the rowdy women who read smut novels and gabbed about everybody else's business under the guise of a book club. Maggie decided to roll with it because it was better than huddling around the corner trying to remain unseen in the event that the conversation  turned toward Joshua gossip.

            Three women sat on a large sofa chattering about somebody's roots showing, and the fact that this was proof they were not a natural blonde. Another woman seated on a nearby spoon-back chair that was upholstered in a deep maroon velvet fabric, and she piped in with her two cents.

            "Matilda, I can assure you with great certainty," she began as she pointed her pointy orange nails toward the trio. "That Angie does dye her hair. Every four to six weeks, actually."

            The room erupted with laughter as the red-faced women continued to guess the natural hair color of other women in the town.

            Dot cleared her throat and tapped her fingernails on the fireplace screen beside the door.

            "Ladies," she said in a regal voice. "Look what I found in the refrigerator."

            All the women stopped their conversation to behold Maggie, a short, slender 20-something city girl whom they knew did not read the material.

            "Maggie, is it?" A brunette chimed in from the sofa.

            Maggie nodded, still holding her dinner at chest height, but now more defensively than to protect its contents from being lost.

            "Maggie is my niece, as you girls already know," Dot spoke. "Maggie, these are the girls."

            Dot went around the room to introduce her company, pointing a bottle of wine at each as she included some of their backstory.

            "That one there," Dot pointed the bottle at the woman in the spoon-backed chair. "Is Desdemona, Des for short. And yes, she is named after the lady from Othello."

            Des stood up to help Maggie find a seat beside her. As Maggie lowered herself into a damask upholstered wingback chair and put her dinner down onto the table in front of her. As Des returned to her seat, she began a monologue about her life up until this moment.

            "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Maggie," Des said. "I run the beauty parlor in town, so if you ever need anything, just pop on over and we'll fit you right in."

            Maggie smiled politely and nodded, noting that Des' own hairstyle choice was outdated and likely would not elicit any excitement over having her hair done at this particular location.

            "My husband is the barber, and he works next to me," she continued. "Our chairs are side-by-side. Isn't that romantic?"

            Again, Maggie only smiled and nodded. Dot waved her hands in front of her to tell Des her time was up. She then pointed to the sofa where the trio were seated and made a grunting noise to tell them to introduce themselves as she downed more wine.

            "I am Matilda," a chubby blonde woman said. "I work at the fabric store and, well, I don't know if you sew, but just ask if you need anything."

            "Thank you," Maggie said.

            She took a bite of her salad after her stomach reminded her that it needed to eat right away. As she chewed, the introductions continued.

            "Hi there, I'm Nadine," another brunette said from the midst of the three women. "I am a nurse up at the hospital, and there's not much else to say about that!"

            The last woman straightened up as if she were on a TV show.

            "Good evening, I'm Joan," she smoothed out her skirt and fluffed her hair a few times. "I was Miss Vermont, 1986, and I teach etiquette and pageantry at the high school."

            Maggie almost choked on the vinegar when Joan said what her job was.

            "I'm sorry, did you say 'pageantry'?" Maggie probed.

            Joan beamed and her bright smile was captivating, but not infectious like Joshua's. Maggie also found the smile to be a touch fake.

            "Yes, ma'am," Joan said with a high pitch to her voice. "I have had several place at the Miss Vermont pageants, and one even went national."

            Her voice squeaked when she said 'national,' and Maggie held her breath to keep from laughing.

            Dot plunked herself into a chair beside Maggie, and the wood creaked and groaned as she shifted her weight to get comfortable.

            "Now you, Magpie," Dot said, handing her a glass of red wine.

            Maggie hadn't drank wine before, and she didn't exactly know how the beverage would influence her.

            "Okay," she took the glass and looked into it at the burgundy colored contents as she thought about what to say.  

            "Just say what's in your heart," Matilda said.

            This confused Maggie to no end.

            "Um, well, I moved here from California because my parents got tired of me hanging around and being a total loser," she spat out the words with no effort at all, which scared her.

            What will happen when I start to drink? She wondered.

            She took that moment to take a gulp of the wine and immediately her face felt hot and the feeling only spread when she swallowed. The heat radiated down her esophagus and into her stomach where it burned slightly. Her eyes squinted at the flavor of the drink, and her lips pressed tightly together.

            "Now, now," Dot interjected. "You are not a loser, you just take after me is all. Lord knows my parents never could tame me none, and well, I'm afraid your mom and dad didn't have the ability to do that with you, either."

            Maggie had finished her wine and held her arm out toward Dot for more.

            "Guess we know that merlot agrees with you," she joked.

            "Yeah, well, I'm glad something does," Maggie said pitifully.

            The other women sat with their hands folded in their laps and their gaze lowered slightly to avoid making Maggie feel on display.

            "Ya know, Mag," Matilda spoke up. "I wasn't really liked much in high school. I think the other girls were jealous of me."

            Maggie looked at Matilda who had also taken a few swigs of the merlot.

            "Til," Des scoffed. "That was because you slept with everybody's boyfriends."

            The women began clucking and cackling as Matilda flagged their attention with her arms.

            "No, no, no. That is simply not true," she objected.

            The ladies quieted down to await Matilda's explanation. Instead, Matilda lost control of her laughter.

            "I slept with those boyfriends because everybody was such a royal bitch to me," she said as she puffed air into her lungs through the outbreak of laughter.

            Dot placed a hand on her niece in a sympathetic way that made Maggie question whether she was drunk, or just really good at playing it straight when she needed to.

            "Magpie," she slurred. "Don't let them get you down. They don't know what to do with a girl as gifted, generous, and beautiful as you."

            Des nodded and slipped her opinion into the matter.

            "And when you figure out what to do with your life, it will be great," she said. "Don't rush yourself based on other peoples' time tables. I did, and Jesus Christ I probably could have been something more than a busy-body hairdresser."

            Maggie felt a little lighter. Perhaps it was from the wine, but maybe it was the company of these women made her feel like she wasn't alone, unusual, or judged. Plus, it benefited her to know that anything she said in that room would stay there, because these women talked, but only to one another.

            "Just stay away from Joshua Cole," Dot warned, holding her glass directly in front of her to remind Matilda that she was the boss, at least while they were in this room.

            "Ah, yes," Matilda cracked a grin. "Joshua Cole."

            The ladies chortled in such a way that Maggie wondered if it had been planned or choreographed.  

            "He is a bit young, even for Mrs. Robinson over there," Joan gestured with her thumb which must have been meant for Des, because she immediately went on the defense.

            "I resemble that comment," she gasped.

            The women continued to laugh and hoot, clearly not staying hung up on Maggie's sadness which was a relief, since she hadn't meant to let that show. Once they returned to the topic of Joshua, her ears perked up again like a Labrador.

            "Didn't he date one of your students, Joan?" Des probed, crossing her forearms across her knees, and she swayed as she swirled the remaining wine in her glass.

            "Yes, he did," Joan exclaimed, and she removed a wallet from her purse, unsnapped the button, and flipped through a few photographs before selecting one and handing it to Maggie.

            She held the photograph of a young woman, maybe 18 years old, with a blinding smile, blonde hair that fell in curls below her shoulders and coming to rest on her ample breasts. Immediately Maggie felt worse about everything. She was not this girl; her breasts were on the large side, but they didn't have the 'vavoom' that this girl's had. When she added the perfect complexion, almost invisible waistline, and hourglass shape, Maggie needed another drink.

            "What happened?" Maggie asked before her brain could red flag that question as the worst idea possible.

            Des loved this question and she leaned forward, almost entirely out of her chair, in order to hear the answer.

            "It appears our Joshua prefers women who," Joan stopped to let the suspense build. She adored having a captive audience, and boy were these drunk broads captive. "Are intelligent."

            Joan sniggered to herself, being the only one who knew how truly dumb this beautiful young woman was. Without knowing that fact, Maggie's heart did acrobatics within her body, almost defying its place in her chest to skip and jump through her stomach, throat, and back again.

            "Smart girls," Des nodded. "That explains what Mrs. Nelson was saying about how Joshua was talking about books to some young girl earlier today. She said he seemed smitten."

            Maggie's heart stopped doing gymnastics and stood still.

            Does she mean me? she wondered.

            "Say, wasn't you talking with him earlier today at the Nelson's?" Dot asked.

            You can count on Aunt Dot to supply the right information at the wrong moment.

            The women sat with mouths agape, completely still, and stared in wonder at Maggie.

            Her face turned red again, her head began to spin, and before she knew it, she felt the need to vomit. She leapt from her seat and rushed to the bathroom. She made it just in time to hurl her dinner and the glasses of wine into the toilet bowl, thankful her aunt hadn't decided to prank this one with cellophane like she had done the upstairs bathroom.

            Dot stepped lightly up to the bathroom door, knocked gently two times, and opened it slowly.

            "How you doing, honey?" she asked sympathetically.

            Maggie stared after her lost dinner that now floated in the bowl, and she assessed her current situation.

            "I feel like shit," she finally responded.

            She slid her hand up to the silver metal handle of the toilet and pulled to flush the hazardous looking contents into oblivion. The green and orange of her dinner had taken on a bloody hue that she did not appreciate.

            "I won't be eating salad for a while," she continued.

            Dot smirked, understanding where her niece was coming from.

            "I got sick on tequila one night after mixing it with Kahlua," she said as she shook her head. "I won't have either now. That was some 30 years ago, I figure."

            Maggie rested her cheek against her forearms which were lying across the toilet seat.

            "I don't know if you're done yakking," Dot said poetically. "But you can either stay here and feel miserable, rejoin us gals and feel miserable, or go to bed and feel miserable."

            "Wow," Maggie whispered. "So many excellent choices, but I am going to choose door number three."           

            Dot puckered her lips and nodded again.

            "Great choice," she bent at the waist to help her inebriated niece up from the floor.

            Maggie stood as best as she could, but slung her arm around her aunt's neck for support.

            "Thanks, Aunt Dot," she said as they stumbled up the stairs.

            "Ain't nothing," Dot said. "Sorry I fed you all them drinks. I forget you aren't an old drunk like me."

            The duo chuckled as they reached the top step and Maggie felt strong enough to finish the last couple of feet into her room by herself. Dot watched from nearby, ensuring her niece didn't take a nose dive. Once Maggie was safely sitting on her bed, Dot reached into her drawers to remove some pajamas, but when she turned back to hand the clothes to Maggie, she found her already asleep.

            She dropped the pajamas back into the drawer and closed it. Beside the dresser was a wastebasket that was still empty, and Dot placed it beside Maggie's bed before she picked up her legs, pulled the blankets from underneath, and then allowed her legs to rest back on the bed before covering them. Maggie snored quietly, and Dot smiled.

            She could remember another time Maggie had been to visit for an extended period of time. She had to have been two, and her parents had decided that they needed alone time to reconnect with their marriage. A week turned into a few months, but Dot hadn't minded. She guessed Maggie didn't remember the last time she'd been here to stay for a while, but that didn't matter.

            Before she left to return to her guests, Dot smoothed Maggie's hair away from her face and planted a light peck on her forehead. She couldn't explain the feeling she had at that moment, except that it was maternal. She wanted to protect Maggie, but she didn't know what from.

            Once she had returned to the parlor, her friends became so silent you could hear the frogs in the distance making their mating calls in Joshua's pond.

            "How's she feeling?" Nadine asked.

            Dot shrugged.

            "She will be okay," she sat down beside Des who wrapped her arm around her friend's shoulder.

            "Does she know?" Des asked.

            Dot shook her head.

            "I don't know how to tell her," Dot responded honestly. "How do you tell someone who already feels unwanted that they really aren't?"

            The women stayed silent. Nadine picked at her nails, Des rubbed Dot's shoulder, and Matilda rested her chin in her hand.

            "Or that they never were?" Joan added.

            The silence grew thicker as they tried to consider ways of bettering the situation.

            Dot lifted her head and sat up straight. She wiped the offending tears from her eyes and her face became more serious than the girls had ever seen.

            "So, we will make sure she doesn't feel that way here," she said with certainty. "We make sure she has a whale of a time here, and doesn't want to leave."

            The women brightened up a bit as the wheels in their heads began to turn with ideas to make Maggie's stay as pleasant as possible.

            "Joshua is the biggest part of this plan," Nadine added. "But he can't be in on it, or that would be just plain wrong."

            They agreed with that, and worked out a plan to give Maggie the best experience during her stay that would prevent her from ever wanting to return to California.