“Anyone else?” Marjorie repeated.

They selected the books Marjorie wrote down for them, assigned each book to the month Marjorie thought best, and picked the discussants Marjorie thought were most appropriate. The discussant would open the meeting by delivering a twenty-minute presentation on the book, its background, and the life of its author, then lead the group discussion. A discussant could not cancel or trade books with anyone else without paying a stiff fine because the Literary Guild of Mt. Pleasant was not fooling around.

When it became clear she wasn’t going to be able to finish Cry, the Beloved Country, Patricia called Marjorie.

“Marjorie,” she said over the phone while putting a lid on the rice and turning it down from a boil. “It’s Patricia Campbell. I need to talk to you about Cry, the Beloved Country.”

“Such a powerful work,” Marjorie said.

“Of course,” Patricia said.

“I know you’ll do it justice,” Marjorie said.

“I’ll do my best,” Patricia said, realizing that this was the exact opposite of what she needed to say.

“And it’s so timely with the situation in South Africa right now,” Marjorie said.

A cold bolt of fear shot through Patricia: what was the situation in South Africa right now?

After she hung up, Patricia cursed herself for being a coward and a fool, and vowed to go to the library and look up Cry, the Beloved Country in the Directory of World Literature, but she had to do snacks for Korey’s soccer team, and the babysitter had mono, and Carter had a sudden trip to Columbia and she had to help him pack, and then a snake came out of the toilet in the garage room and she had to beat it to death with a rake, and Blue drank a bottle of Wite-Out and she had to take him to the doctor to see if he would die (he wouldn’t). She tried to look up Alan Paton, the author, in their World Book Encyclopedia but they were missing the P volume. She made a mental note that they needed new encyclopedias.

The doorbell rang.

“Mooooom,” Korey called from the downstairs hall. “Pizza’s here!”

She couldn’t put it off any longer. It was time to face Marjorie.

* * *

—

Marjorie had handouts.

“These are just a few articles about current events in South Africa, including the recent unpleasantness in Vanderbijlpark,” she said. “But I think Patricia will sum things up nicely for us in her discussion of Mr. Alan Paton’s Cry, the Beloved Country.”

Everyone turned to stare at Patricia sitting on Marjorie’s enormous pink-and-white sofa. Not being familiar with the design of Marjorie’s home, she had put on a floral dress and felt like all anyone saw were her head and hands floating in midair. She wished she could pull them into her dress and disappear completely. She felt her soul exit her body and hover up by the ceiling.

“But before she begins,” Marjorie said, and every head turned back her way, “let’s have a moment of silence for Mr. Alan Paton. His passing earlier this year has shaken the literary world as much as it’s shaken me.”

Patricia’s brain chased itself in circles: the author was dead? Recently? She hadn’t seen anything in the paper. What could she say? How had he died? Was he murdered? Torn apart by wild dogs? Heart attack?

“Amen,” Marjorie said. “Patricia?”

Patricia’s soul decided that it was no fool and ascended into the afterlife, leaving her at the mercy of the women surrounding her. There was Grace Cavanaugh, who lived two doors down from Patricia but whom she’d only met once when Grace rang her doorbell and said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but you’ve lived here for six months and I need to know: is this the way you intend for your yard to look?”

Slick Paley blinked rapidly, her sharp foxy face and tiny eyes glued to Patricia, her pen poised above her notebook. Louise Gibbes cleared her throat. Cuffy Williams blew her nose slowly into a Kleenex. Sadie Funche leaned forward, nibbling on a cheese straw, eyes boring into Patricia. The only person not looking at Patricia was Kitty Scruggs, who eyed the bottle of wine in the center of the coffee table that no one had dared open.

“Well…,” Patricia began. “Didn’t we all love Cry, the Beloved Country?”

Sadie, Slick, and Cuffy nodded. Patricia glanced at her watch and saw that seven seconds had passed. She could run out the clock. She let the silence linger hoping someone would jump in and say something, but the long pause only prompted Marjorie to say, “Patricia?”

“It’s so sad that Alan Paton was cut down in the prime of his life before writing more novels like Cry, the Beloved Country,” Patricia said, feeling her way forward, word by word, guided by the nods of the other women. “Because this book has so many timely and relevant things to say to us now, especially after the terrible events in Vander…Vanderbill…South Africa.”

The nodding got stronger. Patricia felt her soul descending back into her body. She forged ahead.

“I wanted to tell you all about Alan Paton’s life,” she said. “And why he wrote this book, but all those facts don’t express how powerful this story is, how much it moved me, the great cry of outrage I felt when I read it. This is a book you read with your heart, not with your mind. Did anyone else feel that way?”

The nods were general, all over the living room.

“Exactly.” Slick Paley nodded. “Yes.”

“I feel so strongly about South Africa,” Patricia said, and then remembered that Mary Brasington’s husband was in banking and Joanie Wieter’s husband did something with the stock market and they might have investments there. “But I know there are many sides to the issue, and I wonder if anyone wanted to present another point of view. In the spirit of Mr. Paton’s book, this should be a conversation, not a speech.”

Everyone was nodding. Her soul settled back into her body. She had done it. She had survived. Marjorie cleared her throat.

“Patricia,” Marjorie asked. “What did you think about what the book had to say about Nelson Mandela?”

“So inspirational,” Patricia said. “He simply towers over everything, even though he’s really just mentioned.”

“I don’t believe he is,” Marjorie said, and Slick Paley stopped nodding. “Where did you see him mentioned? On which page?”

Patricia’s soul began ascending into the light again. Good-bye, it said. Good-bye, Patricia. You’re on your own now…

“His spirit of freedom?” Patricia said. “It pervades every page?”

“When this book was written,” Marjorie said. “Nelson Mandela was still a law student and a minor member of the ANC. I’m not sure how his spirit could be anywhere in this book, let alone pervading every page.”

Marjorie drilled into Patricia’s face with her ice-pick eyes.

“Well,” Patricia croaked, because she was dead now and apparently death felt very, very dry. “What he was going to do. You could feel it building. In here. In this book. That we read.”

“Patricia,” Marjorie said. “You didn’t read the book, did you?”

Time stopped. No one moved. Patricia wanted to lie, but a lifetime of breeding had made her a lady.

“Some of it,” Patricia said.

Marjorie let out a soul-deep sigh that seemed to go on forever.

“Where did you stop?” she asked.

“The first page?” Patricia said, then began to babble. “I’m sorry, I know I’ve let you down, but the babysitter had mono, and Carter’s mother is staying with us, and a snake came out of the commode, and everything’s just been so hard this month. I really don’t know what to say except I’m so, so sorry.”

Black crept in around the edges of her vision. A high-pitched tone shrilled in her right ear.

“Well,” Marjorie said. “You’re the one who’s lost out, by robbing yourself of what is possibly one of the finest works of world literature. And you’ve robbed all of us of your unique point of view. But what’s done is done. Who else would be willing to lead the discussion?”

Sadie Funche retracted into her Laura Ashley dress like a turtle, Nancy Fox started shaking her head before Marjorie even reached the end of her sentence, and Cuffy Williams froze like a prey animal confronted by a predator.

“Did anyone actually read this month’s book?” Marjorie asked.

Silence.

“I cannot believe this,” Marjorie said. “We all agreed, eleven months ago, to read the great books of the Western world and now, less than one year later, we’ve come to this. I am deeply disappointed in all of you. I thought we wanted to better ourselves, expose ourselves to thoughts and ideas from outside Mt. Pleasant. The men all say, ‘It’s not too clever for a girl to be clever,’ and they laugh at us and think we only care about our hair. The only books they give us are cookbooks because in their minds we are silly, lightweight know-nothings. And you’ve just proven them right.”

She stopped to catch her breath. Patricia noticed sweat glistening in her eyebrows. Marjorie continued:

“I strongly suggest y’all go home and think about whether you want to join us next month to read Jude the Obscure and—”