Chapter Seven

SEVEN

SEPTEMBER 1987

Two days after the tuna incident, Augusta hadn’t entirely recovered. She thought about skipping another day of swimming, but the last thing she wanted was a second phone call from Irving, or—God forbid—another unannounced visit.

Before she got out of the pool that morning, she spotted him sitting in the shade, chatting with a few other men. Despite the fact that it was only ten, Irving was nursing a can of Diet Pepsi. Didn’t he know how bad that stuff was for him? She must have stared a bit too long in his direction, because the next thing she knew, a buxom woman in a lavender bathing cap swam up beside her and tapped her gently on the shoulder. “I hear the two of you grew up together,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You and Irving, back in Brooklyn. You were kids together, he told me. I’m a Bronx girl myself.” She stuck out her hand. “Shirley Polushuk.” The polish on Shirley’s nails matched her bathing cap.

Augusta shook Shirley’s water-pruned fingers. “Augusta Stern. Nice to meet you.”

Shirley tilted her head as if she’d heard incorrectly. “I could have sworn he called you Goldie.”

“That… well, that’s a very old nickname. No one calls me Goldie anymore.”

“Anybody ever call you Gussie?”

Augusta forced herself to smile. “Just Augusta,” she said.

“Got it. No nicknames,” Shirley said. “You know, I just lost a wonderful friend of mine—she was Margaret-Anne, but we all called her Honey. That may be why I have nicknames on the brain.”

“I’m sorry about Honey,” Augusta said, softening. “I lost my sister six months ago. She was my best friend in the world.”

Shirley took Augusta’s hand again, but this time she gave it a sympathetic squeeze. “The two of us understand each other then. Will I see you at Book Club this afternoon?”

“I didn’t know there was a book club.”

“Didn’t you look at the club directory? Book Club takes up the whole first page. It used to come second, after the Astronomy Club. But when the man who owned the telescope died, people stopped going, and the club dissolved. That’s when the Book Club got bumped to page one.”

“I guess there’s no Art Club?” Augusta joked.

Shirley, not recognizing the sarcasm, lowered her voice to a whisper. “Marlene, the president of the Art Club, was sleeping with Dora Shapiro’s husband. Dora is in charge of printing the directory, and when she found out about the affair, she changed the name of the Art Club to the Visual Art Club so she could stick Marlene’s group on the last page.” Shirley glanced around the pool to make sure no one else was listening. “It was quite the scandal.”

Augusta wasn’t sure how to respond.

“Anyway, Book Club is wonderful,” said Shirley. “Last month, we read The Cider House Rules .”

“What about this month?”

“In September, we always choose a classic. This month, it’s Sense and Sensibility. Have you ever read it?”

Augusta nodded. She didn’t say so, but Sense and Sensibility was one of her favorites. To be honest, she was surprised by the choice—she imagined they’d be reading the new Tom Clancy book or perhaps a mystery by Agatha Christie. Of course, Augusta read those authors, too. In fact, she read everything she could get her hands on. “When is the meeting?”

“Three o’clock, at the clubhouse. We meet in the library, which is right past the cardroom. Go to the front desk and take a left.” Shirley glanced up at the clock that hung above the sandwich shack window. “I have to run, but I hope you’ll come.” She paddled over to the steps, grabbed the railing, and pulled herself slowly out of the water. Once both feet were planted on the patio, Shirley pulled off her lavender swim cap to reveal a head of bright red hair cut in a chin-length bob.

As Shirley dried herself off, Augusta watched as the men around her sat up in their seats to watch. “Hi there, Shirley!” one called out. The others elbowed him and laughed.

It doesn’t matter how old we get, Augusta thought. Some things never seem to change.

She went home for lunch—no tuna this time—then showered and dug out her battered copy of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. At two-thirty, she made her way to the clubhouse, a white stucco extravaganza flanked on all sides with swaying palm trees and giant red hibiscus plants. In the middle of the building’s circular driveway was a sculpted fountain that ran continually. Augusta greeted the receptionist and made her way to the library.

The “library”—if you could call it that—was a brightly lit room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lining three of the four walls. Hardcovers and paperbacks were jammed onto the shelves in no particular order; they were borrowed and returned in haphazard fashion with little oversight by the Rallentando Springs staff. A long wooden table stood in the center, sur rounded by a dozen hardback chairs. There were tufted chairs, too, sprinkled around the room—chairs to curl up in, if one’s body still curled.

Shirley, who was already seated at the table, waved to Augusta when she came in. Shirley sat with her book propped open in front of her, surrounded by half a dozen other women. Augusta was surprised to see three men as well, all of whom she recognized from the pool that morning. She took a chair, pulled her book out of her bag, and tried to follow the bit of whispered conversation that popped up here and there around the table. For the most part, however, the members of the club seemed to be a quiet bunch.

The woman across the table from Augusta noticed her puzzled expression. “We’re waiting for the moderator,” she explained. “We all take turns leading the discussion, and we never start until the moderator arrives.”

At 2:59, when the moderator entered, Augusta was grateful that she was sitting down. Irving sauntered into the room, carrying a dog-eared copy of the Jane Austen novel as if he’d actually read the damn thing. Augusta felt like ripping the reading glasses off of his tanned, wrinkled face. This is your moderator? she wanted to say. For god’s sake, he doesn’t even read! Augusta would have bet her entire life savings that Irving hadn’t read a book for the past sixty years.

Apparently, she would have lost the bet.

Not only had Irving read the book, but it appeared as if he’d taken notes. He sat down at the head of the table, opened his book, and pulled out a few folded sheets of paper on which he’d typed a bullet-point list of questions. “Welcome, everyone,” he said. “Thanks for letting me lead this month’s discussion. For any new members who might be with us, why don’t we introduce ourselves. My name is Irving Rivkin.”

They went around the table, one by one. When it was Augusta’s turn, she told everyone that she had recently moved to Rallentando Springs.

The tall, balding man to the left of Irving—he’d introduced himself as Harold Glantz from Flatbush—pointed his thumb at Irving and smiled. “We hear you grew up with this guy,” he said in a raspy smoker’s voice.

“Yes, I did,” Augusta admitted.

“I bet you’ve got some good stories, then.”

A few of the others around the table chuckled softly in agreement.

“Not really,” said Augusta. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Come on,” said Harold. “You gotta give us something.”

My mom says I got all the street smarts in the family, and my older brother got all the book smarts.

“Well, it’s certainly a surprise to find him at a book club. He wasn’t much of a reader back when I knew him.”

From across the table, Irving shrugged. “She’s not wrong,” he said. “But people can change.”

For the next twenty minutes, the group discussed whether sense or sensibility was the more admirable trait. Was it better to be stoic, like Elinor Dashwood, or sentimental and romantic, like her sister, Marianne?

“Best to be a little of both,” said Shirley. “Everything in moderation.”

“Well, I felt bad for Marianne,” said the woman sitting across from Augusta. “That terrible Willoughby broke her heart. What a liar he was!”

“It’s not that simple,” argued Harold. “Willoughby loved her. His apology was sincere.”

“Apologies don’t excuse what he did!”

“I feel worse for Elinor,” said Shirley. “She had to keep Lucy’s secret, and it isolated her from everyone.”

Harold shrugged. “I didn’t care much for Elinor. She was too resigned, too indifferent.”

Augusta couldn’t help herself from chiming in. “Elinor isn’t indifferent, ” she argued. “She’s trapped in a no-win situation. What is she supposed to do? Cry herself sick like Marianne?” Before Harold could answer, Augusta continued, her voice rising both in pitch and volume. “Elinor doesn’t have that luxury. The only man she ever loved is going to marry someone else, and she has to live with that heartache. She has no choice but to suffer in silence to protect everyone else around her. How can you call that indifferent ?”

Harold held up both hands in mock surrender. “Listen, I don’t wanna argue. All I’m saying is, she wasn’t my favorite.”

Augusta felt the others staring. It wasn’t like her to reveal such emotion in a room full of people she barely knew. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice.”

From the other end of the table, Shirley smiled. “Don’t apologize,” she said. “I agree one hundred percent.”

“Everyone’s entitled to their opinion,” said Harold. He turned to his right and gave Irving a nudge. “What does our moderator have to say?”

Irving put down his notes and strummed his fingers on the cover of his book. “At first I thought Elinor was cold,” he admitted. “She seemed so unmoved by what was happening, you know? But by the end of the story, I changed my mind.”

“Yeah?” said Harold. “What’d you think at the end?”

“I realized how hard it was for her.” He paused a moment, took off his glasses, and laid them carefully on the table. When he looked up, he was looking directly at Augusta. “By the time the story was over, I admired the hell out of her.”