Montesereno. Benjamin W. Farley

trust he’s well, and we’re honored to be with you tonight. If our views seem a bit abrupt, please don’t be offended. As you know, times have changed, and, we of the Ernestine Lucie Marie Book Club—as we call ourselves—have dared to change with them. Honestly, we’re looking forward to this, as we’ve only had a few sociologists and psychologists meet with us before, and, of course, one or two writers. We love intense discussions,” she emphasized. “Incidentally, I’m Beverly Wallace Hutchinson, our club’s president.” With something of an awkward gesture, she seated herself.

      “I love good stories and novels!” a friendlier voice spoke up to his left, near the end of the table. A younger woman, perhaps in her mid-forties, had leaned forward, just past the woman on her right, to bathe Darby in a warm, trusting smile. Her eyes twinkled in the chandelier’s light. “My name’s Dianne—Dianne Riley. The warden there,” she nodded toward Hutchinson, “doesn’t speak for us all the time. But we do like sincere discussion.”

      “That’s right!” added several voices concomitantly.

      A slender woman seated immediately to Darby’s left extended her right hand. As he shook it, he noted how long and thin her fingers were. “Anna Pelson,” she smiled. Dark pouches sagged beneath her green eyes. Worry lines furrowed her powdered brow. She noticed that he had observed them. “Two daughters will do that to you,” she smiled with a mother’s wounds in her eyes. “Not even good men can prevent some things,” she stated, as Linda entered with a tray of salads to place around.

      “My favorite!” the youngest of the seven piped up. She was seated opposite Dianne. An air of innocence defined her entire countenance. “Waldorf! With raisins and apples!” She looked straight down the table at Darby. “My name’s Amanda. Beverly tells us you’re a retired philosophy professor. I took one course at State and hated it. The professor never got past Plato. ‘By knowing all about Plato,’ he boasted, ‘you’ll know the essence of philosophy.’ All I got out of it was headaches. I made a B+ but had no idea what he was talking about half the time. I majored in biology after that. I’m a lab tech now, and love it. And my favorite author is Anita Shreve. That’s probably more than you want to know.”

      “No! Not at all! Plato’s a good place to begin.”

      “Well, I wish I knew why?” the young woman responded.

      “He had a hunger for something his world didn’t have. Stability, you might call it. Its gods were too fickle.”

      “Like today’s men!” someone laughed mid-table.

      “No, really, he wanted to believe in something higher, in something reliable in a world that was violent and changing.”

      “Keep going!” Hutchinson inserted, with a teasing leer. “You’ve not convinced us yet.”

      “Seriously!” Darby replied good-naturedly. “What would life be like without the Good, the True, and the Beautiful? I can see why your professor chose Plato,” Darby smiled toward Amanda. “I wish I had had you as a student. I would have welcomed your dismay. That’s the whole point of philosophy.”

      “Well, I never took philosophy or aspired to it,” a fourth woman stated. Her smile seemed genuine and so too her swollen eyes. A bit on the corpulent side, she adjusted her weight in the spindle-back chair. She bent over her salad, obviously hungry. Bangs of dyed blonde hair dangled in her face. “Oh, I’m Mildred Devon!” she paused, while still chewing on apples and raisins. “Incidentally, what’s your view on ‘eugenics’? Does it really go back to Plato?”

      “Let me take that!” Hutchinson interrupted. “It has to do with pairing people with compatible partners, based on their genes, especially if their families have had problems with Down-Syndrome offspring, or children with genetic disorders.” Then with something of a smug air, she continued. “Plato based his theory on social classifications. You know, the poor being forced to marry the poor, the brightest the bright, the dumbest the dumb, while the wise, the rich, and the aristocratic to whomever they wished. It was meant to keep women in their place,” she pronounced with emphatic displeasure. “It’s a form of androcracy. Every society has its caste system,” she glanced toward Darby. “Ours is no different. I like de Beauvoir, because she reminds us of how the French bourgeois males deliberately exercised their masculine prerogative to despoil young girls of the lower classes. Of course, the nonsense lives on, like in the case of the Duke of Windsor, or the Prince of Wales, who must, God-forbid, never marry a Commoner!”

      “Perhaps we need more wine!” Darby suggested, as he rose politely to pour a glass for whomever wished it. Only the woman with bangs turned him down. “I don’t drink!” she whispered quietly. “But thanks.”

      “Her husband’s an alcoholic!” Hutchinson said. “A curse that affects us as much as men, I regret to admit.”

      Darby reseated himself, picked up his fork and began reworking his salad. What to say? What not to say? “Whatever brought you together, if I may ask?” he addressed Hutchinson and the fairer pair at the end of the table. “Are you members of the same country club or church?”

      “Most definitely not!” Hutchinson replied. “That’s a typical male judgment that feminists reject,” she said with open relish. “To assume that our aspirations are limited to our husband’s social clubs or assemblies is really demeaning. I should have thought that by now any astute male would have grasped that,” she glanced with triumphant gleam about the table. “Well? Isn’t that right?”

      You miserable bitch! He bit his tongue. “So there are higher reasons that brought you together? My apologies for being an old-fashioned male.”

      “Dr. Peterson,” Dianne interjected. “Personally, I love old-fashioned males. My father was one, and especially my grandfather. They remained clueless about the National Organization of Women or women’s movements in general. But they were loving—blusterous at times—but there when I needed them. However, I know the type Beverly means. I’m an attorney and have to face them down every day: arrogant, self-serving, bullying their staffs around, goading clients to file suits, knowing their cases are unwinnable, but glad to collect retainer fees. We don’t have to be that way, nor do men. That’s part of our mission.”

      “Well said!” the women about the table attested.

      “I don’t disagree,” muttered Darby. “But as a male,” he smiled with a twinkle in his eye, “you realize, I hate to give up my bourgeois sentiments about women, or their role in society as child-bearers and icons of amorous pleasures!”