The Muffia Page 4

  “There are others?” I asked, sorry to crowd another useless piece of information into my overcrowded brain.

  “Sports Writer, Independence Day,” Rachel said. “Truly wonderful.”

  “Transformational?" The only thing I knew was that I'd been transformed into a person who'd never read another Frank Bascomb book.

  “Sorry, Rachel,” Quinn agreed, “I tried getting through Sports Writer a couple of years ago and it wasn’t much better.”

  “It was well-written,” offered Paige. “I just didn’t care about the guy.”

  Rachel had risen to her feet and was over at the sideboard, opening another bottle of wine. “What Ford is writing about in his books—and, yes, there’s an aspect of the banal (pronounced the usual way)—but the character of Frank Bascomb represents the everyman who is simply trying to sanely exist in a world that he believes has gone crazy. It’s a form that goes back to, well... England. Many of Dickens’ characters or Trollope’s—people who function within the society of the day, replete with its many absurdities.”

  “Well, that’s a noble goal,” said Vicki, “but isn’t it equally important that people want to read your book so you can to actually communicate that and enrich readers’ lives?”

  “My point exactly,” said Jelicka. “It needed sex.”

  “I do think that’s important,” said Rachel. “And I think he’s done that.”

  I whispered to Jelicka. “Sportswriter has some sex in it—not a lot, but...”

  “I see what everyone’s saying,” said Paige. “My problem is I didn’t relate to the guy—not as brother, father, uncle, husband. But does everything always have to be about getting laid, Jelicka? You don’t strike any of us as having a problem with that.”

  “What does that mean?” Jelicka’s demanded, a bit harshly.

  “Just that you’re a beautiful woman and I see you as spending too much time worrying about sex.”

  “Oh, you do?” Jelicka flicked her double-processed blonde hair with a gel-manicured hand. “And what makes you think I’m worried?”

  “Alright, listen,” Rachel interrupted. “My bad; I’m sorry for pushing a book on you all when I seem to be the only one who got something out of it. But the fact that it’s generated strong feelings is a good thing.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t read it now,” said Sarah. “I just couldn’t get past the thing about his balls. I mean, can someone tell me if that was necessary? He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d do something like that to, I don’t know, turn on his girlfriend or intensify his orgasms or—”

  “He had cancer, Sarah,” Vicki snapped, returning from the kitchen with a little bottle of Perrier. “So the doctors put titanium beads in his gonads.”

  “Oh,” Sarah said, humbled.

  The conversation was taking a turn and I needed to use my mediation skills to smooth things over. I was always looking for an opportunity to practice mediating since I couldn’t find many paid ways to do it. “I think what we’re saying here, or at least some of us are saying, is that all books have some value, even if, as in the case of Ann Coulter’s books, their only value is as firestarter. Ford writes fiction but he has a truthful view of the world. Bascomb’s life is so boring it reminds people of their own boring lives, hence Rachel’s point and the one about how banal it was, though Sarah and Vicki’s point about the titanium beads in his balls may suggest something different. As Paige said, Ford does put words together beautifully. That quote about Thanksgiving being ‘a celebration of the slaughter of the righteous and deserving’ probably justified the purchase.”

  “I’m glad I missed that,” mumbled Sarah. “I like Thanksgiving.”

  Undeterred, I pressed on. “As for you, Jelicka, you’re a beautiful woman and give off the impression of great sexual awareness and confidence. Of course that doesn’t always mean you or any of us feel the way we might look to others. What I’m saying is that how a book is received is often out of the control of the person who wrote it.”

  “That was interesting critiques, Maddie,” Quinn said once I’d finally stopped talking.

  “She wants to be called Madelyn," Paige said.

  “That was interesting, Madelyn.” Quinn turned to Jelicka. “And you’re just ‘hot,’ that’s all I can say. Hot and married so what are you whining about? You get sex.”

  Jelicka rolled her eyes and sighed.

  Meanwhile Quinn was still talking. “As opposed to Madelyn, who’s pretty hot herself but hasn’t had sex in a year and a half.”

  Actually it had been twenty-two months. And if I didn’t meet anyone I wanted to have sex with, that twenty-two months would stretch to twenty-three, then twenty-four then, well, there was no end in sight until death did me part from this life. Sad that Islamic women don’t get 1000 sexy guys when they die defending their honor—I’d consider converting. I just find there’s a dearth of desirable men who might put an end to my self-imposed dry spell.

  “What was with his wife who left him and went to Mull?” Kiki asked. “And where the hell is Mull?”

  “Way up in the north of Scotland,” Rachel said. “Rough landscape, very remote.”

  “Like Agoura,” Jelicka teased.

  “Yeah. What was that?” asked Quinn. “His wife goes to Mull to mull over the crackpot fat slob her ex-husband had become. Meanwhile, her current husband who hadn’t abandoned her is sick in New Jersey—granted, his ridiculous wife could have been the reason he was sick. But didn’t he need her more? What’s the nobler path here?”

  I glanced at Vicki, sitting quietly, looking out the window where darkness and rain prevailed.

  “Maybe she didn’t like driving around New Jersey,” Paige offered.

  “Frank must’ve been a real loser to make her want to go as far away as she could, with the possible exception of Antarctica, to be with a guy who barely registered her existence.”

  Sometimes I wondered whether our standards for books and relationships were just too high.

  “Look,” said Rachel, “not every character is going to be a cheerful, positive person whose character arc ends with him or her being better off than when the story started. Think of The Hours, or Line of Beauty, or Madame Bovary. Sometimes we have to accept the flaws in people. Frank Bascomb captures the nobility of carrying on no matter what.”

  “I agree,” said Vicki, suddenly. “We’re all flawed. And I hate how our popular culture glorifies only healthy, sane, loveable thin people. Remember how, in my movie, the central character was overweight and crazy? Audiences warmed up to her because she kept trying to make something of herself. That never happened with Frank. I also think Ford was socially irresponsible. In an age of global warming and disaffection, he has his protagonist driving around New Jersey in a Suburban that gets ten miles a gallon. Frank is a grumpy consumer who orders clothes from L.L. Bean and complains about everything as he meets unlikable person after unlikable person. And maybe that’s the way a lot of white men are but that doesn’t mean it’s worth cutting down trees to print a book about him.” Vicki did not consider reading a book on an electronic device reading.

  “What was going on with his daughter who might or might not be a lesbian?” I asked. “Was that whole scene in the gay bar supposed to be his coming to terms with his daughter having a boyfriend after years of living with Cookie, or whatever her name was, who Frank wanted to sleep with? I mean that’s not right. He’s sad because he didn’t get to have sex with his daughter's ex-girlfriend before she tried to go straight?”

  “Poor guy struck out left and right,” said Paige. “To be pitied really—though, as I said, it’s well-written pity.”

  “A hand job might have improved things for poor Frank, though that doesn’t exactly qualify as a lay of the land,” said Quinn.

  “Just like oral sex isn’t really sex,” said Sarah with a wink.

  “Hey”—I blurted involuntarily; I am, after all, the mother of a fourteen year-old girl and I’ve been a tad touchy on the subjec
t of oral sex ever since Lila told me that some of her classmates had been caught giving blow jobs to the boys.

  “We all need to be able to satisfy ourselves at the end of the day,” Jelicka sighed, “however we can.”

  “Amen,” said Kiki. All heads turned. She hadn’t used that word since her conversion to Judaism. “What?”

  Everyone was still staring at her.

  “I’m havin’ a little religious crisis, tha’s awl. I still love going to temple with Saul and everything but lately I’ve been missing my Catholic girlhood for some reason.”

  “You’re not going to convert back, are you?” Jelicka asked. Jelicka was Jewish too, but by birth, not marital conversion. “I don’t know if you can even do that.”

  “Of course you can,” said Quinn. “You can be whatever religion you want.”

  “Not in Iraq—not if you want to live,” I pointed out. Nobody stepped up to argue with me.

  “I have no plans to re-convert,” Kiki went on. “Besides, every religion I’ve dabbled in is flawed. Or maybe I’m just tired.”

  “Are we done talking about this book?” Paige asked. “I have babysitter issues this evening.”

  “I am”—this from Vicki. “And to start the roundy-round, I might as well come out and tell everyone unless Sarah has already—yes, I have some sort of growth in my breast, and yes, I’m a little worried because none of these doctors seems to know what the best medical approach is. I might need a lumpectomy, which would leave me lumpless but the proud owner of a breast with a divot. Or I might need radiation, in which case I’ll be tired but functional. Or I might need a lumpectomy and radiation, in which case I’d have a bumpy breast and I’d be tired but functional. I might, however, need chemo in which case all the above would happen plus my hair will fall out. That said, I will go ballistic if any of you start treating me like some sort of sicko. Until I’m keeling over and losing my hair in fish soup, I don’t want you to treat me any differently.”

  It seemed to me we were all sitting there with our jaws slightly open, the pause growing longer and longer, not sure what Vicki needed or wanted to hear.

  “So, whose turn is it to pick the next book?” Sarah asked.

  And so, just like that, we found out one of our inner circle was sick with something we all feared terribly we’d get ourselves. I said a prayer and made a private vow to increase my charitable contribution for breast cancer research. Even though we were unsure what to say that night, I knew we’d talk about it and send endless emails back and forth. Together the Clitties would formulate a plan to help Vicki in every way she needed it— from grocery shopping to cleaning to monitoring Enrique to whatever else needed tending to. But that night we honored Vicki by doing as she’d asked, though probably not as she truly wished.

  “I think it's Madelyn's turn,” said Paige. “That’s what I remember from last month.”

  “Has anyone read the new Jane Smiley?” Rachel asked.

  “Rachel, you have to wait until it’s your turn again to pick a book,” Vicki said. “I think if we’ve established anything this evening, it’s that the hostess picks the book.”

  “How about The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver?" Quinn suggested. “Or is that too obvious a choice?”

  “What did she just say, Quinn?” Paige asked, rather too pointedly, I thought. “It’s Maddie’s, I mean Madelyn's turn to pick. But that was a great one and loved by book clubs all over the country.” Paige tended to like the obvious choices.

  “It’s seven hundred pages,” I said. “I think I should pick something that we, as a group, have a chance of finishing. And it’s supposed to be something I’ve read, right?”

  “How about the Calvin Trillin book about the death of his wife Alice?” offered Sarah. “It was only seventy-three pages. Though it was by a man.”

  “Please, Maddie,” pleaded Jelicka desperately—too desperately for a woman who has it all. “Pick something we’ll want to read—even juicy trash at this point. Something we won’t want to put down.”

  “It was good!” Sarah protested. “And short.”

  “No more cancer books,” Vicki said. “That’s my second wish.”

  “Of course,” said Sarah. “Sorry.”

  Vicki patted Sarah on the knee. “I agree with Jelicka. Let’s just have some fun for a change. If I’m going to die, you know, soon—not saying I am, but if I am, I only want to read good, entertaining books that celebrate life.”

  “How about something erotic?” suggested Quinn. “I think we all could probably use a book with some good sex scenes.”

  “Can’t hurt,” Paige concurred. “But it has to be tasteful. My sex life has turned into a chore just a notch above folding laundry—in fact, folding laundry can often be a lot more rewarding.”

  There was a beat of silence. Apparently none of us wanted to explore the sex-as-laundry metaphor. Probably because we didn’t want to be reminded about the times in our own lives when doing laundry had been more fulfilling than sex.

  “Can erotica be well written?” I asked. “It always seems a little, I don’t know, cheap and tawdry or something. But maybe I just haven’t been exposed.”

  “Well, that’s certainly true,” Quinn winked.

  What did she mean? I wasn’t a total novice—how could I be? I'm forty-two and a mother.

  “The new Jane Smiley is supposed to be pornographic,” Rachel said, not giving up. “The back cover says it’s ‘R’ for ravishing.”

  “Does it really?” asked Jelicka. “What’s it called?”

  “Ten Days in the Valley. No—hills. Ten Days in the Hills.”

  It seemed to me that Rachel only pretended not to know the title, dumbing down her large literary brain by acting absent-minded.

  “Whatever you decide, Mad, I’ll read the whole thing, but I’m also going to read the Jane Smiley book,” Jelicka said, explaining. “See, what you don’t know is Roscoe had to give up Viagra because it conflicted with his heart medicine. I haven’t had sex in two months. I could really use a lover but living vicariously through a few bodice rippers is probably the safer choice.”

  So that’s how my journey to Udi started, I guess—with a mandate to choose a sexy book. It would prove to be a very special book of cliterature that was certain to lift us all into a richer world of lust, sex and maybe even romance—something that appeared to be lacking in all our lives.

  Chapter 4

  What Quinn had said about me was sadly true—even if I chose to avoid thinking about why exactly it was true. The reality was I hadn’t been with a man in almost two years and it had been far longer since I’d felt a passionate fluttering for any of their ilk. Not since my marriage had ended—died out, really—not unlike a mammalian body whose lungs and heart had ceased operating.

  As a mammal myself, I don’t feel dead most of the time. In fact, I’m alive enough to still seek connection with someone who will take me as I am, flaws included, but that’s always proved difficult. As I’ve gotten older, men seem more like aliens to me. And when I feel those flickers of physical desire, they are quickly squelched by the fear I might end up as the feeding tube in yet another relationship.

  But enough of the self-analysis—my quest at this point was to choose a book that was both sexy and satisfying; a book that would appeal to Jelicka’s need for lust and Rachel’s for literary mastery. It had to be easier than finding Mr. Right but where was I to get my hands on such a book?

  The last erotica I’d read was Delta of Venus back in my twenties and, when I was even younger, the juiciest parts of Fanny Hill. I’d flipped through The G Spot:And Other Discoveries about Human Sexuality carefully enough to discover my own—not that I was clear about what to do after that—but had dismissed this choice as too clinical. It might even insulting to the Muffs, since I knew we were all orgasmically aware, or at least claimed to be. Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying was a possibility, despite the fact it was a book my mother might have read. It could be that Ms. Jong’s “zipless
fuck” hadn’t held up over the years, though it still sounded tantalizing to this Muff. I nixed two collections of erotic literature I already owned because short stories about sex were really too short for the extended read we craved, like foreplay that doesn’t quite get a girl to the point of no return. None of these choices did I consider worthy of the Cliterati.

  Finding and reading a story that might get my libido going enough to forget my fear of relationships appealed to my dormant prurient, albeit neglected self, but after an hour perusing titles like Princess Desire, Blind Obedience and Hard Candy, at the Powell’s website, I was discouraged. Most of the titles seemed to be about bimbos meeting princes in foreign countries, who either tied them up and spanked them for long periods or rescued them from horrible husbands, but more likely rescued them from themselves. I wanted a story about a normal woman, maybe between thirty and fifty, who just wants to connect with another human being and have great sex without subsequent fallout.

  Perhaps the characters would find love in the process, but that would be of secondary importance. Giving the Muffs a vicarious experience of better living through sex was what the book needed to do—what Lay of the Land might have been if it was by a woman about a woman with people getting laid, minimal driving and a satisfying ending.

  Unfortunately, as I read the excerpts, there just didn’t seem to be anything that spoke to the particular brand of female angst I sought solace for. I took this to mean that either no one had written such a book, or that connection and love were not valued commodities in a novel with a lot of sex scenes. That alone posed an interesting thesis on whether sex and love could coexist in life if they were unable to in art, but that was a topic for Rachel and Vicki, the intellectuals in the group, to argue about, not me.

  So one Tuesday when I had no cases to mediate and no consultations for potential cases to mediate in the future (unfortunately not an unusual circumstance for a Tuesday or any other day, for that matter), I got into my car after sending Lila off to school and headed into Los Angeles—Sunset Boulevard, to be exact, and Book Soup, one of those intimate, personalized-service bookstores that still exist in big cities. Shops like Book Soup were one of the only things I missed since moving to the suburbs—that and the anonymity of being able to do or wear pretty much anything without risk of being spotted by someone I knew. Here I could spend hours reading without being bothered or, if I wanted, seek knowledgeable assistance without so much as a raised eyebrow, searching for just the right book.