Velma cleared her throat like a librarian getting a wayward reader’s attention. “The code blue is for emergency purposes. Anytime there is a great need within our club…”
“I’ll just be going.” Mara eyed the baked goods. “I don’t want to interrupt anything.” She’d eaten the first brownie, but she hadn’t tasted it. It didn’t count. “It looks like everyone’s well, though, that’s good.” She reached for one last brownie, and Jennie held the plate toward her, this time with concern on her sweet face. Mara could see it was a motherly
I’m worried about you and the way you’re living your life
kind of concern. She glanced around the room, and they all looked like that, even Velma, and she barely wore any expression at all.
Sadie’s tiny voice ended the silence. “It’s a code blue for you, dear.”
“But I…” she waved the brownie as if making a point but realized she didn’t have one to make. She collapsed into the nearest overstuffed chair instead, the sweet smell of hairspray gathering around her like an upholstery memory. She put the entire brownie in her mouth, chewed for several minutes, swallowed twice. “What exactly is a code blue?”
Stella came out of the kitchen and sat on the arm of the chair. A stronger smell of hairspray brought Mara comfort, and she closed her eyes and pictured the giant aerosol can. It had probably been illegal in the states since the nineteen-seventies but stockpiled by women just like Stella to make sure their hair didn’t move for the rest of their lives. Till death do us part. Part. That was good. She felt a tear leak out and opened her eyes.
“A code blue,” Stella handed her a martini, “is when one of us needs help, and we circle the wagons.”
“Circle the wagons!” One of the Marthas raised her glass.
Mara took a sip of her drink, shuddered as the dry bite of it hit the brownie still hanging around in her mouth. She took another drink and swished it around like mouthwash. That was better. “What does circling the wagons entail?”
“Depends on what’s needed.” Stella pointed at Velma. “Last year Velma fell, and she couldn’t get up.”
The ladies hooted in laughter.
“I did not fall,” Velma sighed as if the argument would fall on deaf ears, literally.
One of the Marthas scooted to the edge of the couch with great animation. “Velma got one of those exercise balls…”
“Sex toy,” the other Martha murmured to renewed laughter.
To demonstrate, the first Martha rocked her body back and forth. “Rolled right off and cracked her head on the coffee table.” She threw herself back into the cushions, her drink sloshing on her cardigan.
Velma’s pursed lips indicated preparation for battle, but Sadie stepped in. “A code blue isn’t always medical.” Her face gathered in an image of grief worthy of a silent movie star. “I called a code blue when the loss of my beloved Clarence became too much to bear.”
Stella leaned toward Mara’s ear. “Clarence retired from his milk route in 1969 and moved to Saskatoon with his wife.”
“Wow. You’ve been having code blues for that long?”
Stella talked into her drink. “She called the code last month.”
“Oh-kay.” She didn’t want to but had to wonder if little Sadie might be half-a-bubble off plumb. Or worse, maybe when you made the wrong choice it really did haunt you forever.
Jennie smiled, lifted the plate again, lowered it when Mara shook her head. Two brownies and a martini were bad enough. Three brownies and a martini could only lead to a digestive system code blue.
“Chocolate,” Jennie winked at her, “cures many a code blue.”
One of the Marthas headed to the bar. “Gin. Gin solves everything.”
“Talking,” Sadie added, “talking helps me a great deal when I’m grieving the loss of my one true—”
Stella jumped in to stop Sadie from waxing poetic about the retired milkman in Saskatoon. “We gather. Sometimes we talk, or we watch a movie, or share a meal. We always drink. Sometimes we stay over because nighttime can be lonely even for tough old birds like us.”
She felt such love for them all. They weren’t tough old birds. They were lovely birds, sweet lovely birds, and they let her in the flock even though she was the ugly duckling. She patted Stella’s leg, and Stella smiled down at her as if she understood.
One of the Marthas walked over with an etched crystal martini pitcher and refilled Mara’s glass. They let her in the flock like an ugly duckling they planned to get drunk. She could help them out with that. She raised her glass. “Thank you, you beautiful birds. Aren’t women great?”
Velma’s eyebrows raised like two skinny pencil marks on her forehead. “We’re not gay people.”
“I…” she looked around, “guessed that, Velma.”
“We know about your all-night orgy and the sin beach of nakedness.”
The sin beach of nakedness she could translate into her day at Wreck Beach but an all night orgy? “Oh, Renny? We just danced. Mostly.” There was that one kiss but no need to send Velma off her exercise ball.
Sadie perked up. “I’ve never danced with a woman before. I didn’t know you could.”
“I did.” Jennie looked around the room. “When I worked.”
The women nodded, and Mara tried to figure out what kind of job Jennie, the baker, had held that involved dancing with women. “What kind of—”
“Oh,” Jennie smiled, “I was a stripper.”
She didn’t choke on her martini, but it was only because she hadn’t taken a drink. Still, she was grateful that gin did not shoot out of her nose at the surprise of, “a stripper?” Should she say
good for you
or
wow, you must have been built
or
I bet that kind of flexibility comes in handy when you’re in your golden years
?
Jennie just laughed. “Didn’t guess that about me did you?”
“Uh, no.”
“I was really built.” Jennie raised her plump chest with a deep breath.
“That part I guessed.”
“She had great gams.” Stella waved her martini in Jennie’s direction. “We all had pretty good ones. I had a twenty-three inch waist.”
“Twenty-three? That’s something.” Mara wondered what she could add about her twenties. She’d just been a dork in a college sweatshirt and high-waisted jeans.
“Nothing like Jennie,” Stella sounded proud, “we’ve seen the photos.”
One Martha agreed. “They were impressive.” Mara wondered if Martha meant the photos, Jennie’s gams or Jennie’s breasts.
“She had a gift,” the other Martha added.
“Oh,” Jennie waved away the compliment, “you work with what you’ve got.” She turned to Mara. “I quit when the twins were in junior high.”
“You had twins? And you could still get paid to take your clothes off?” She hadn’t even wanted Dan to see her naked for a year after Logan was born and he’d only been seven pounds of baby.
“Sure. I had the best shifts by then, and it freed me up during the day to take care of the house. And there was the scout troop Stella and I ran. And I baked for the school,” she shrugged, “room mother.”
Stella reached for the martini pitcher and refilled Mara’s glass. “We never got to see her work. They didn’t let women in the club, but she had quite the following.”
“I’ll bet.” Mara knew that any woman who could strip after delivering a dozen pounds of babies had to really be something.
“I think the point, dear,” little Sadie waved across the room as if to focus Mara’s eyes from her martini to the subject at hand, “is that we look like nice ladies, but we’re not. Nobody is. Truth be told, we stripped, and we screwed the milkman…” She took a deep breath and pulled herself back from what looked like the beginning of a trip down memory lane
The Porn Edition
. “We were human. We were wives and Moms and scout leaders and good neighbors and friends, and we were lots of other things too. Selfish and angry—”
“I once punched my daughter’s dance teacher.” Velma appeared to be talking to herself then looked up at the group. “She was a mean cow.”
The women nodded, and Sadie spread wide her scrawny arms. “You’re free to be lots of things, Mara. A wife if you want. A mother. A stripper or a cat fighting constipated librarian.”
Velma’s eyes narrowed. “What did you say?”
Sadie laughed, a high tinkly sound that started a ripple of laughter in the room that made even Velma smile.
Sadie’s head only came up to Mara’s chest. Of course, Sadie would rest her head against Mara’s breasts. They were dancing to
Mack the Knife
, and if you ignored the sharks and the mafia killing, it was pretty romantic.
“I just love Bobby Darin.”
Mara could barely hear Sadie’s voice over the scratchy pops of Stella’s blaring turntable. “Yeah. He’s very smooth.” She watched the top of Sadie’s gray curly head bob against the embroidered pocket of the borrowed bathrobe. The little gal was gonna have a mermaid impression on her cheek like a sleep tattoo.
She heard the doorbell ring, and looked toward Stella who was swinging with one of the Marthas. Sure, Stella got to practice some fancy footwork while Mara got stuck slow dancing with a woman dreaming about a guy in a white jumpsuit.
Stella danced on as if nothing had happened, and Mara heard the door again and waited to see who would notice. They didn’t hear all that well when there was silence, so there was probably no way anyone would register a ding-dong over the nineteen-fifties rave they had going.
She disentangled herself from Sadie and felt the little gal sigh in the din. She re-tied her robe as she moved through the kitchen and opened the door to Renny, Gretchen, and Celia. Before she could ask what the three of them were doing there, Celia reached out and held on to her chenille-covered arms. “We heard there was a code blue.”
Sugarpie honeybunch. Maybe more men would have happy wives if they called them that. And sounded like the Four Tops, all deep and earnest.
She drank down a glass of water, necessary to sustain her dancing and counter-effect the gin or the brownies, whichever one had made her woozy. She refilled the glass and turned from Stella’s sink to watch the dance club that had formerly been a living room.
The Marthas chose serious drinking over exercise, but they were the only ones seated. Stella shook it with Sadie and Celia. Velma had a surprisingly arty quality as she danced with Gretchen. Renny and Jennie looked like two women who understood their own unique attractiveness, a quality Mara wished all women possessed, herself included.
The Four Tops begged Sugarpie honeybunch even more, unlike some husbands Mara knew who just said
I’m going home. You’ll come or not.
In fact, the Four Tops had real skill at pining away. They kissed the woman’s picture a thousand times. She felt a sharp pain at the reminder of the kiss Dan had witnessed. But he hadn’t asked her about it or given her the benefit of the doubt, even though she didn’t think she probably deserved any benefit. She’d deserved,
we’re separated now, Janie.
She fought the flood of guilt she didn’t think she’d survive. For the night, she’d keep it held in with anger. Dan with his inflexible ways and pressed chinos could just kiss her picture, or go to Hell, or go to Saskatoon, or wherever men went when things got challenging and they were called upon to change a little or take a chance or stop ironing so much.
The sound of horse hooves or the percussion equivalent kicked the Tops into
Reach Out, I’ll Be There
. Current musicians didn’t use enough tambourine. Back in the old days people liked… she could hear Dan’s grandpa yelling… a little
tambourine
!
Renny shouted from the dance floor, “Mara! Mara! Hello, girl!”
Celia sang along, “Reach on out for me. I’ll be there…”
They were singing, the whole odd bunch of women, singing as loudly as they could about a love that would shelter her.
She gripped her water glass, watched Sadie’s lips move to another song, probably Bobby Darin. Stella and Gretchen held out their hands and they all sang to her about a cold world and how it felt to drift on her own. Their faces were so happy and soon they were all holding their hands out to her, calling her darling, and reminding her they were there if she needed a hand to hold onto.
She set down the glass, glad she’d re-hydrated when she danced out of the kitchen with tears falling from her eyes.
Pimento loaves were surprisingly filling. Pimentos, really just red bits of some kind of vegetable matter, didn’t have much density to offer, so it had to be the green olive slices that did it. The olives and the cream cheese and layers and layers of white bread.
She sat on the floor, her back against the couch. Velma had dozed off, and Mara couldn’t stop thinking
I’ve fallen, and I can’t wake up
. Velma probably wouldn’t think that was funny. The other ladies were surprisingly alert for two a.m. If anything, Renny and Gretchen looked sleepier than anyone. Maybe trying to stay apart produced great stress. She considered that may be a good thing. It might take a catalyst of discomfort to force them to figure it out. Maybe her own crisis would help her figure things out too, though it didn’t even seem possible.
“Darlin’” Sadie patted Celia’s knee, “will you sing for us? Maybe a little…” she looked at the ceiling as if contemplating the entire songbook of American music. “Bobby Darin.”
“How’d I know?” Celia kissed her great grandma on the cheek. “I’ll sing if Renny sings with me.” She held up both hands, fingers crossed. “That agent we met Friday night at the club could call any second.”
Friday night. Mara realized she hadn’t asked about the man who met them after they got off stage. She’d been too wrapped up in butterflies and marital disaster to pay attention to Celia and Renny’s careers taking off.
Celia grinned at Renny, who looked ready to say no until Sadie’s pleading sweet Grandma eyes turned to her. The Minnie Mouse voice just sealed the deal. “I just love
Beyond the Sea
, don’t you?”
No human could resist grandma begging, not even tough Rennie. Stella cued up the record, and turned it down like a crude karaoke. Bobby was forced to sing backup on his own album, but the voices, Renny’s worldly grit and Celia’s clear innocence, met just as magically as they did the first time she’d heard them together. That agent would call. It was a done deal already. All the possibilities, the adventure, the chance to soar, they’d be great.