A Lot of Mothers
by Gordon W. Mennenga
Jenna, my wife of seventeen years, has invited thirty-three mothers to a party in our backyard. This afternoon our children are eating tons of sugar at their grandmother’s condo. It’s a “literary event” centered around women reading women. They’re all members of the largest book club in the state: Cherry Point Moms Book Club. Moms Read Books was rejected because it was too easy for some idiot to put a question mark after that name. Many of the mothers have worn dresses today, some of them hats, some heels, some sandals. Molly Starr is shoeless, a nod to her commune days. It is July, hot but breezy. No cell phones. No please about it. Name tags required. Mine reads: Brad Pitt.
There are all kinds of mothers in our yard: lactating mothers, Egyptian mothers, MBA mothers, MFA mothers, boxing mothers, stubborn mothers, philosophical mothers, Peloton mothers, laughing mothers, plumber mothers, Lutheran mothers, enhanced mothers, hyphenated mothers, and one French mother with porcelain white skin and raging red hair.
Several of the mothers get into an argument about Roe v. Wade. One of them is using the word “mother” in a crude way, the other is apparently a “bondage-loving vegan liberal bitch.” Jenna is frustrated by this fracas since several books on the reading list have focused on building a more accepting world. Punch is spilled, calm restored. My role is to give directions to the bathroom.
I’m also the photographer for the afternoon. Jenna wants “keepsake” shots so spontaneity will rule. No extreme close-ups, please. I station myself by the martinis, lemonade, Paradise Punch, and mojitos table. Marion Wambold is making the drinks as fast as she can. Before becoming a mother, she was a bartender. Before that she was a fishing guide in Montana. Two cups of Paradise Punch will numb the lips.
Some of the mothers are unhappy with the next book to be discussed: Anna Burns’ Milkman. This is what you get when you let an MFA choose the book, they say. The book is about losers acting like losers in the 1960s. Give us more books with happy endings. That would be refreshing. Sometimes the debate over the choice of the next is more passionate than the book currently under discussion. Please, please, no more 400-page novels about witches, but Ann Patchett is okay and Toni Morrison is a sure thing. What about a chef’s memoir? Or an Amish romance just for the fun of it? No more poetry, period. Sex and aging have worn out their welcome unless the characters are finding taboo-busting, sunset-driven love in Italy. Short story collections often encourage constant flipping of pages and complaints about endings.
There is a commotion near the apple tree. A zipper has broken. Dawn Redfield’s zipper on the back of her dress has come undone from her neck to her waist. Attempts are made to lower and raise the zipper, to get the teeth to bite again. The zipper must be fixed. A conference is held and the artful use of safety pins saves the day. Dawn’s tattoo is discovered under her sundress, a blue moon and three stars across her left shoulder. The stars represent her children. She is the moon. The sundress is yellow with tiny blue hummingbirds scattered about, searching for nectar. Dawn is husbandless at the moment and favors short books featuring lots of revenge sex.
Betty Santana is here. She is a local author who offered copies of her self-published novel Crude Dude to the club for free if the club would read and discuss it. Her offer did not go over well with the selection committee given the large number of typos in the text, and the fact that her female detective, Alice Trout, has something against lesbians and says “y’all” way too much and might be a thirsty vampire. The “couldn’t-put-it-down” blurb on the back jacket was written by her son Bjorn, the youth pastor at a church in Kansas. Today Betty is wearing black leggings, a purple tunic and an ankle wrap. Her sales on Amazon are very low.
A book clubber’s car is blocking the neighbor’s driveway. A blue Volvo. Bumper stickers that read STEAL THIS CAR, COOKIES ON BOARD and NUNCA MAS and LIFE IS TWEET. Plate number VRR 323. Regina Voss jingles her keys at me and I accept the task of moving the car. When I return, smelling I’m sure of rescued dog, other mothers jingle their keys at me, winking and laughing. Jenna gives me a frown. In our house this will become known as the key incident.
The hors d’oeuvres are long gone, the drink table is bare. Conversations drift in the wind: female characters in dystopian novels, the headaches of college admissions, the perils of first-person narration, the surrender of reality to magical realism, the cost of hardbound books, romance novel addiction, hot yoga, SPF, Noreen Klosterman’s handyman, the best restaurant for foccacio, the price of a writers’ workshop held in Portugal, the recipe for Jenna’s honey mustard chicken kabobs. In truth, I grilled the kabobs using my special recipe.
A small red plane with blue stripes flies low overhead, casting a fleeting shadow over the yard. All heads turn to the sky. Sherry Thurston is sure that the pilot is her husband, Rick, a jealous accountant in a Cessna. Sherry is both proud and sad, like a flower afraid to bloom.
Several mothers are asked to stay longer for safety’s sake. Yolanda Wyatt’s husband is called because she has lost feeling in her legs.
Cell phones fire up. In the distance there is thunder.
Jenna stands in our bedroom doorway, one hand clawing the wall, and I think it might be a sudden Brad Pitt moment, but her other hand is holding her empty blue wallet.
More thunder. Lightning. Then rain. Lots of rain. Angry rain.
Gordon W. Mennenga has had work featured on NPR and in the Riverside Theatre Company's "Walking the Wire" series. His publications include work in Epoch, Citron Review, Jabberwock Review, Necessary Fiction, and the New Flash Fiction Review. He earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a degree in cooking from his grandmother. Contact Gordon at gordonwmennenga.com.