Page 52 of Blush
“I will admit the author went a little far with all the abuse on poor Carrie,” Vivian said. “That final turn as a prostitute was perhaps too much.”
“Oh, my god, that scene where Whitejack pimps her out again? My heart just broke.” Leah paged through the book to find the scene and read aloud.
“I gasped at that,” Sadie said. “Like, I literally gasped. But that’s what I mean. So much of this book is just abuse heaped on women.”
“Well, not all the women. Clementine Duke is sexually powerful—maybe even sexually predatory,” Leah said.
“But as soon as she sleeps with Gino, he has the power. He always has the power,” Sadie said.
“Except when it comes to his daughter,” Vivian pointed out.
“Lucky doesn’t always challenge his power. What about the scene where he’s forcing her into an arranged marriage? And then he hits her.”
“It’s terrible, of course,” Vivian said. “Inexcusable. But for the whole book, she’s the one person who makes him feel completely out of control. And it’s also fear—the fear all parents feel for their children.”
It was also, Leah realized, the fear all children eventually had for their parents. She’d long heard about the role reversal that took place later in life, when the children became the caretakers. Her parents, thankfully, still had their health. But they were losing their life’s work, and that was going to be a tough transition. It was for her, too.
She’d suggested the book to distract her mother from the impending sale of the winery. And maybe it was helping. But reading it herself was making her own powerlessness that much more apparent.
Sadie. With those questions about her old journal! As if Vivian would ever admit to her feminist granddaughter that she’d been so desperate to feel productive, to have something of her own to manage and perfect, that she’d turned the casual book club into a project.
There had been years when she’d forgotten how to have something of her own—something that wasn’t about pleasing someone else. And then Delphine reminded her.
Delphine had been grateful that Vivian believed in her enough to give her an important job within Hollander. She said it changed her entire outlook and that she wished she could return the favor.
“I have everything I need,” Vivian had said.
“You need to have more fun,” Delphine had said. “It’s work and kids, work and kids. Where I grew up, women know how to play.” Her own mother, she said, spent weeks and weeks every year island-hopping. Delphine knew that Vivian didn’t want to actually get away from her family or the vineyard. But she needed to dosomething.
“What do you do just for yourself?” she’d asked her.
“I like taking the kids to the beach. I love harvest, when it’s so busy everyone is included in the work. Making apple cider in the fall...”
“Vivian, something aside from all that.”
“I like to shop. And I like to read.” She especially liked to read books about women who did a lot of shopping.
And so the book club was born.
Ultimately, it had all been short-lived. She didn’t have the heart to continue the book club after Leonard fired Delphine. And the journal languished, locked away where she didn’t have to think about it and no one would discover it. Or so she believed.
“Mom, are you still with us?” Leah said. She and Sadie looked at her expectantly.
“Sorry. I was just thinking,” Vivian said.
“I asked who your favorite character is,” Leah said. “Mine is Lucky. Since I’m also a woman whose father never saw her as an equal—who was marginalized from the family business.”
“Is that true?” Sadie said, snapping to attention.
“Yes.”
“Oh, Leah,” Vivian said. It hurt to hear her daughter express the sentiment. Even if it was the truth.
“What happened? You wanted to work here?” Sadie said.
“I think this is a conversation for another time,” Vivian said, shooting Leah a look. The last thing she wanted was the conversation to devolve into a prolonged attack on Leonard. Even if he deserved it. She still felt protective of him. And, perhaps, she felt her own sense of culpability in letting Leah be pushed aside.
“Well, I didn’t identify with anyone in this book,” said Sadie. “Andhonestly, I find it shocking that this book was aNew York Timesbestseller.”
