The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls Read online

  I lay down on my towel-covered recliner, propped my open book over my face, and dropped off a cliff into the land of nod.

  “Yo. Adrienne. Hey. Are you alive? You haven’t moved for two hours.”

  “What?” I pushed the paperback away from my face. The sky was blinding. I felt like a lower order of species that had recently pulled itself out of the ooze and into the sun.

  “Wow.” Jill was looming above me. “That’s something I haven’t seen before. You’ve got words stuck to your face. I can’t quite read them. Hold still a second.” She plucked at my forehead.

  “Quit,” I said. Shreds of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein—it was an old and crumbly copy—had cemented themselves to my skin.

  Jill sat on the edge of my recliner. “This is not what I was hoping for in a book club. I’d definitely quit if my mom didn’t love the mother-daughter idea.” She crossed her legs. “Look at you sweating. You’ve got a jacuzzi full of sweat in your belly button.”

  “Don’t you have to work?” I asked. “I thought you had a job.”

  “I’m on a ten-minute break,” Jill said. “And I don’t see why Frankenstein is on that reading list. It’s not even scary. The monster wanders around wringing his hands and wishing somebody liked him. If he were alive today you know what he’d be? King of the misfits: a school shooter.”

  I pictured the monster in a soiled black trench coat, holding a gun. He’d done some strangling here and there, but I didn’t think he had random mayhem or mass murder in him. “You could have brought me a Popsicle,” I said, peeling another word from my chin.

  “I don’t remember you forking over any money.”

  A line was already forming at the snack bar, a row of kids shoving each other and vying for position in the shade. But Jill didn’t seem to be in a hurry. She started flipping through my copy of the book. “I’m about halfway through this. Are you already working on your essay?” She pointed to a passage that was circled in pen: It is true we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

  “No. That isn’t my writing. My mom gave me a used copy.”

  “We shall be monsters. I like that,” Jill said. “And it reminds me: there’s a rumor going around that you got grounded because you and CeeCee were AWOL last night.”

  “I’m not grounded. How could I be sitting here if I was grounded?”

  “I don’t know.” Jill put down my book. “That’s not a real diamond in your ear, is it?”

  “I don’t think so.” I turned my head toward her. “How does it look?”

  She squinted. “Like you’re trying to impress someone,” she said.

  I unscrewed the lid on my water bottle. The liquid inside it was hot enough to make tea. “How did you know I was with CeeCee last night?”

  “Ha. Believe me: when you work the snack bar, you know almost everything,” Jill said. “People waiting in line talk on their cell phones and think I can’t hear them. I’m well informed on most subjects. I should be a town crier.”

  I spilled some hot water onto my chest. “What do you mean?”

  “You know: a bard, a griot. Emcee,” Jill said. “I’m talking about one of those people in the old days who stood on a corner with a bell and—”

  “I know what a town crier is,” I said. Why did everyone think English was my second language?

  We watched a little girl down the row of chairs making bubbles with a plastic wand.

  “Jill, have you ever tried to find your birth parents?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why would I? Some woman in China gave me up fifteen years ago because she knew I’d have a better life over here. So that’s what I’m doing. I’m having a better life.”

  “Right,” I said. In Jill’s list of SAT words, I thought, she could check off complacent. “So you don’t feel like you’re missing something?”

  She shrugged. “My parents sent me to Chinese camp for a couple of years so I could learn to say Hai. Ni hao ma? But I didn’t like the music or the food. And I like my parents. When I was little they used to tell me that out of all the millions of babies in the world, they wanted me. I used to think somebody had lined up a million babies so my parents could look at every single one of them until they decided that I was the best.”

  “That’s cute,” I said.

  “I know.” She took off her flip-flops and walked to the edge of the pool to dunk them in the water. “Wait a minute.” She turned around. “Are you asking me about my birth parents because of what CeeCee said about your dad? He’s not missing, is he? You just haven’t met him. Don’t let her start you off on some kind of quest.”

  “I can’t believe you dunked your shoes in the pool,” I said. “What kind of quest?”

  Jill put her flip-flops back on. “CeeCee’s messing with you,” she said. “I told you: you and Wallis and I are her punishment. Remember in sociology last year when we were studying ‘primitive cultures’? That’s what we are to CeeCee. We might as well be cracking rocks and eating snakes in the jungle.”

  “She’s the one who showed up at my house and wanted to go out last night,” I said. “It wasn’t my idea.”

  Jill nodded. “Do me a favor. Hold your arms out. Straight out in front of you. Yeah, like that. Now stick your chin forward. There. We shall be monsters. Now you look like CeeCee’s little creation.”

  “I’m not her creation.” I dropped my arms to my sides. But I remembered limping down the road in the dark while CeeCee rattled on about graveyards and lepers.

  Jill checked the clock behind the lifeguard stand. “Two minutes,” she said.

  More soap bubbles drifted down the row of chairs. I turned to look at the little girl with the plastic wand and saw CeeCee striding gracefully toward us. She popped one of the bubbles with her finger. “What’s that on your face?” she asked, looking at me.

  “Adrienne’s very excited about Frankenstein,” Jill said. “She’s going to tattoo the entire novel all over her body.”

  “A walking volume,” CeeCee said. She licked her finger and scrubbed at my cheek.

  “Bodily fluids,” Jill said. “It’s time to get back to work.”

  “You’re such a good little salesgirl,” CeeCee told her. “I need a chair.” She spotted an empty recliner near the shuffleboard court and—ignoring the PLEASE DO NOT REARRANGE POOL FURNITURE sign—dragged it shrieking and grinding across the concrete, then wedged it into a narrow slot next to mine. I moved my sandals and my bag to make room for her.

  She spread a fluffy white towel on top of her recliner, then peeled off her shirt to reveal a new bikini: metallic gold. Everyone over the age of seven watched. “In half an hour we’ll take you into the water for your daily workout,” she said, standing in front of me and uncapping her lotion. “What were you and the SAT princess talking about?”

  “Not much,” I said. “She thought I was grounded. Because you and I went to the mini-putt.”

  “No one gets grounded anymore,” CeeCee said. “Didn’t that punishment go out in the eighties?” She sat down, knees bent, her long legs forming two inverted Vs. “I texted with Jeff this morning. I told him he was rude to you and might have gotten you in trouble. Next time he won’t ditch us.”

  “Oh.” I wasn’t sure what to say, so I opened my book.

  “You know what we should do?” CeeCee asked. “Instead of both of us writing an essay, we should collaborate on a project. You know, like a website. Or maybe a blog.”

  “The assignment says essay,” I said. And I knew what “collaborate” meant. CeeCee wanted me to do the work. Jill just warned me about you, I thought.

  I went off to the bathroom, rinsed my face in the sink, and came back. In the shade of the snack bar, Jill had run out of customers and seemed to be working with a set of flash cards. Her lips were moving.

  CeeCee was typing on a mini-laptop.

  “What are you doi
ng?” I asked.

  “Hang on.” Eventually she turned the cute little computer toward me. “Take a look.”

  The Unbearable Book Club of West New Hope, DE, the screen read. Down the left side was a list of the books we were going to read. Across the top of the page, there were stick-figure icons of four girls, each followed by our names:

  Adrienne Haus, President

  CeeCee Christiansen, Motivational Speaker

  Jill D’Amato, Anal-Retentive Nag

  Wallis Gray, X-Factor; Unknown

  Under my name was a picture of me CeeCee must have just taken. I was scratching my rump on the way to the locker room, a pallid crescent of flesh in my hand.

  “It needs more art, I think,” CeeCee said. “And the authors’ names, and a couple of links. Then I’ll quote what we say about the books during our meetings, and voilà. Summer essay complete.” She closed the laptop. “Was it just me, or did Jill’s mother drive you bat-shit crazy during that meeting? I want to ram toothpicks under my fingernails whenever she talks.”

  “You can’t count that as an essay,” I said, gesturing to the laptop, which CeeCee stowed in her bag.

  “Why not?” she asked. “Teachers love PowerPoint and stuff like that. It’s a ‘creative option.’ ”

  I could already picture CeeCee getting her project back with Ms. Radcliffe’s comments: A+ Very inventive! “I still think you should read the books,” I said.

  “Let’s be honest, A.” CeeCee checked her reflection in a silver mirror. “What is a book about a talking monster going to tell me?”

  I hadn’t finished Frankenstein yet, so I wasn’t sure. Closing my eyes, I pictured Helen Keller and Frankenstein’s monster and the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” standing together on a riverbank, shouting and gesturing in an effort to convey an important message.

  “We’re going in the water in ten minutes,” CeeCee announced.

  A ninth grader shouted her name and did a flip off the diving board; she completely ignored him. “Next time we go out, you’ll sleep at my house,” she said. “Then we won’t have to worry about your getting locked out. Or about a curfew.”

  “You don’t have a curfew?” I asked.

  “Not really. Not one that anyone remembers.”

  I put my book down. “I can sleep over,” I said. “But let’s not drive around in the middle of the night. I’m not sure that’s me.”

  “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” CeeCee said. “You should figure that out.”

  6. SUBPLOT: This is sort of like the plot’s younger brother, the one who tags along behind the big kids who are hogging the toys and having most of the fun. But mostly it means a less important plot.

  Would my mother lie to me about my father? I didn’t think so. Of course, I sometimes lied or hid things from her—but that was different. The only reason I could imagine her lying to me would be if she was hoping to protect me. For example, maybe she wouldn’t want to tell me the truth about my father if he was in prison. I pictured a bearded man showing up at my bedroom window wearing a jumpsuit and handcuffs. Or maybe she would lie to me if it turned out that my father was dying, and he had written to her, trying to find me, because he needed me to donate a kidney or some extra skin or a lung.

  “I’ve been thinking,” my mother said as she dropped a laundry basket full of clothes at my feet, “that you might want to come to the office with me and work as an intern.”

  “Hnn,” I said. I was poking around online, imagining my would-be second parent living out of a shopping cart under a bridge. Once he knew where I lived he would want to share custody. I would have to spend my Thanksgivings with him, chewing on turkey bones in a Dumpster.

  “Adrienne?” my mother asked.

  “What? You hate it when I go to work with you,” I said. My mother occasionally brought me to work when I was sick or had a day off from school, and the experience usually didn’t end well, because I either broke the paper shredder or copied my face with the copy machine.

  “I don’t hate it,” my mother said. But I could tell she was searching her memory and coming up with something she didn’t like. “How about helping me fold these clothes?”

  “Okay. In a minute.” Without even looking for it, I had just stumbled across a site that offered tips on how to find missing parents. Most of the information was for people like Jill, who had been given up for adoption. But no matter what my situation, the site advised, I should consider hiring an attorney. And I would need a copy of my birth certificate (did it really matter that I was under eighteen?) before I started my search. Or maybe quest was the right word.

  I propped my foot on the rim of the laundry basket. “Do we keep my birth certificate around here somewhere?”

  “Your birth certificate?” My mother bent down to pick up a sock. “I sent off a copy when you signed up for camp,” she said. “The original is in the safe deposit box at the bank.”

  “Why do we keep it at the bank?” I asked.

  “Why do you want it?”

  “It’s just that I don’t remember seeing it. I don’t know what it looks like.”

  My mother described it as a piece of paper. “A piece of white paper with writing on it. Time and date. December twenty-first, seven-twenty-six p.m., Sea Haven, New Jersey. It’s pretty straightforward.”

  Why hadn’t I ever seen my own birth certificate? Should I be keeping it in my wallet, to prove I existed?

  My mother nudged the laundry basket toward me. “You know, folding is something that even an injured person can do, while sitting down.”

  I stared into the basket. “You put towels in there,” I complained. “It doesn’t matter whether towels are folded.”

  “Humor me,” my mother said. “They fit in the closet better that way.”

  I picked through a collection of socks and T-shirts. A disturbing truth: my mother’s underwear and mine were the same shape and size.

  “Book club is at Jill’s tomorrow,” my mother said. “Did you finish Frankenstein yet?”

  “Yeah.” Plunging a hand into a tangle of clothes, I remembered a dream I’d had about the book the night before. In the dream I had opened my bedroom closet so I could get dressed, and in the center of the closet (which in the dream was very large, with a chandelier) the monster was rearranging my shoes, ironing my shirts, hanging my jeans on hangers, and mutely offering advice on what I should wear. I felt guilty about him because it seemed to be his job to stand in my closet by himself until I opened the door. His hands were knitted to his arms with thick black stitches, but he was doing his best to keep my wardrobe organized.

  “Mary Shelley was a teenager when she wrote it.” My mother watched me struggle with a fitted sheet. I could imagine what she was thinking: My daughter can’t even fold laundry. How will she ever write a novel that will be admired for centuries?

  “You don’t have to supervise me,” I said.

  She held up her hands as if to ward me off. “I wasn’t supervising. I was asking you about the book. I thought it was sad. I felt bad for Frankenstein and for the monster. They seemed like two sides of the same coin.”

  This had occurred to me also. I knew what the monster felt, at times, trying to be dignified and mature but ending up behaving like a slob and a jerk.

  I folded a pillowcase and matched up a couple of pairs of socks; then, when my mother left the room, I went back to the computer. I typed in lawyers’ fees and learned that most lawyers charged around two hundred dollars per hour. My mother had put my canoeing money back in my savings account at the bank. I could afford about eleven minutes of a lawyer’s time.

  My mother rumbled into the den, pushing our ancient vacuum. “Are you researching something?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Miscellaneous … book stuff.” I clicked out of the lawyers’ fees window and looked up Frankenstein, then The Left Hand of Darkness, which appeared to be about hermaphrodites on another planet. While my mother vacuumed, I looked up hermaphrodites and found a link to Walli
s Simpson, Duchess of Windsor. These sorts of random connections: what did they mean?

  Still surfing around, I stumbled across an anagram finder and typed my name into it: Adrienne Haus. Among the possible anagrams: Sunnier Ahead. That was nice. Use Hind Area. Not so nice. Hide Near Anus. Hm.

  The anagram finder didn’t come up with much that was interesting for CeeCee Christiansen or Jill D’Amato, but it turned Wallis Gray into Always Girl, A Swirly Gal, and Lily War Gas. Strange.

  The vacuum roared along the carpet in front of my feet. Swinging my legs over the arm of the couch, I typed Unbearable Book Club and there it was, CeeCee’s “essay” on a new blue background. She must have spent some time updating it. There were a few more photos, including one of Jill—now listed as our book club’s Financial Officer—sitting at the snack bar, clutching a wad of dollar bills. I clicked on the stick-figure icon next to my name. Under personal I was listed as widowed; and under goals it said, I need to dye my hair and get a tattoo. Wallis’s section was under construction—please check back later. And under CeeCee’s name (she was still identified as our Motivational Speaker) there was a picture of ten perfectly pedicured red toenails in front of the pool.

  Jill’s house was thick with rugs and curtains, every room wallpapered, as if in homage to the book we’d discussed the week before. There were fuzzy yellow bamboo shoots in the hallway, pink and blue roses in the living room, and, in the kitchen, golden faceless men and women pushing wheelbarrows and carrying sheaves of wheat. “What’s that about?” CeeCee asked. She took a picture of the kitchen wallpaper with her phone.

  The house was air-conditioned to about sixty-five degrees. Jill’s father was partially disabled from multiple sclerosis, and he hated the heat.

  Eventually Jill’s mother called us to order, and we clustered around two flowered couches in the living room, where the pink and blue upholstery matched the ruffled drapes. There were seven of us again, instead of eight. CeeCee raised her eyebrows in my direction when Wallis told us her mother couldn’t come.

  As a contribution, Wallis had brought three bananas with her, each dotted with bruises. Jill’s mother had set them on a plate. She peeled one and ate it, exclaiming as if it were a marvelous and exotic hors d’oeuvre.