Club Rules: A Novel - Hardcover

Trees, Andrew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312570279 ISBN 13: 9780312570279

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2010

Synopsis

In Eden's Glen, an iconic world of privilege and ease, the comfortable rituals of wealth and leisure have created an enclave almost untouched by time. But position is not easy to attain, or to keep. And quiet desperation has suddenly found its way into lives whose paths were always smooth before.

One family has indisputably stood atop Eden's Glen for generations: the Winthrops. They run the bank, invitations to their parties are the most coveted in town, their favor dictates who gets into the country club-and who does not. But even the Winthrops are not immune to the pressures that underlie the clean, calm surface of life in Eden's Glen. Chafing from the quiet disappointments of twenty years of marriage leaves Preston & Anne Winthrop-the town's golden couple-unprepared to deal with a long-buried secret that bubbles up to shatter an otherwise uneventful summer of tee times and ladies' lunches. As husband and wife struggle to come to terms with their changed lives, their teenage son's misery goes unsoothed. And the events that follow reveal that even money and position cannot save their charmed world.

An elegant and moving novel about marriage and the price of a bourgeois American life, Club Rules is powerful, biting and unforgettable.

About this title

About the Author

Andrew Trees is the author of Academy X, a novel, and Decoding Love, a work of non-fiction. He is a writer and former academic who lives in New York City.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE It was a glorious early summer day in the year 19–. A happy time. A prosperous time. A complacent time. Not that the town was untouched by the winds of change. The distant tremors of social upheaval had lapped gently against its shores. There were whispers that America might be losing its preeminent place. But it was hard to take those whispers seriously amid the bucolic splendor of Eden’s Glen, and the whispers were too faint to scale the high, ivy-covered walls that girded the Oak Hollow Country Club, whose cathedral of trees seemed to buttress the very sky. As couples strolled side by side through the verdant paradise of the club’s immaculate golf course to compete in the Benedict Cup, it was diffi cult to think anything but that God was in His heaven and all was right with the world.
The Benedict Cup was named for Arthur Benedict, who loved golf, if not his fellow man. He died a perfect death, collapsing from a massive heart attack on the ninth tee after hitting a four iron two feet from the pin. His long-suff ering wife decided to show her appreciation to the golfing gods by endowing the Benedict Cup, an alternate-shot competition for husbands and wives. It was affectionately known to members as the Benedict Arnold Cup for the spectacular betrayals that often occurred in the final holes as lifetimes of disappointments spilled over into heated shouting about missed putts or shanked drives. Occasionally, the shouting stopped only when the divorce proceedings made final what the Benedict Cup had begun, which led to the competition’s other nickname— the Divorce Cup.
Preston Baird Winthrop and his wife, Anne, were well on their way to an unpre cedented third Benedict the other couple making up their foursome Cup. Bob and Margaret Fairfi eld, were well on their way to a marital meltdown. It had started auspiciously enough. They were all good friends and had gone out to dinner only the week before. And Margaret wasn’t a particularly good golfer, so it wasn’t as if she and Bob had started their round with any expectation of winning the tournament.
Anne was wearing her favorite golf skirt that day, a light blue wraparound that hugged her hips. When she wore the skirt, she felt ten years younger. Her thin friends would ask her where she got it, and her overweight friends would make catty comments about how it looked a little short. Anne would smile blandly and make a mental note to wear the skirt a little more often.
At thirty-eight, Anne was still attractive. More than attractive, she was beautiful, but her beauty had begun to deflate slightly. People who saw her for the first time always commented on how great she looked. But no one in Eden’s Glen was seeing her for the first time. They didn’t see the beauty that remained, only the beauty that had been lost. Her friends noticed that the lines around her mouth were growing deeper and that her brow had started to look furrowed. Anne knew she wasn’t the beauty she had once been. She would study herself in the mirror and wonder if it was time to think about getting a little work done. But she didn’t need to look in the mirror. She could see it in the way they looked at her. Not so much the men. She still caught them casting admiring glances when they thought she wouldn’t notice. But the women—no, the women looked at her with sharp eyes ready to carve out and examine every imperfection as punishment for being more beautiful than they were. And after a while, she couldn’t help seeing herself through their eyes. She had read somewhere that she was already at the age when her spine was beginning to compress so that she was becoming shorter with each passing year. And she wondered when her life had turned, when it had gone from a sense of promise to what it was now—a gradual shrinking, a failed struggle just to remain in place.
But Anne didn’t feel that way when she was wearing her blue skirt. She felt young and sexy and athletic. It was all she could do to keep from twitching her hips as she leaned over her ball and prepared to swing.
Margaret wanted to wrap her driver around Bob’s balding, fat, sweaty head. Did he think she didn’t notice him leering at Anne the entire time? And what was Anne thinking wearing that skirt? It was obscene! How did Preston let her walk out of the house in it? And Bob sucking down Bloody Marys all day. She was surprised he could walk at this point, let alone swing a club. She already knew what the afternoon held. He would fall asleep on the couch watching television, wake up around five and begin drinking again, eat too much cheese and pâté, and then, as she brought dinner to the table, announce that he really wasn’t that hungry.
Just how the hell was she supposed to look like Anne, anyway? She had three kids to look after. God forbid Bob would lend a hand! It wasn’t as though she had the time to primp and preen all day. Even with the oldest one in college, half of every day was spent in the car driving around to an endless array of lessons, doctors’ appointments, and tutoring. She hardly had time to shave her armpits, but every time she bumped into Anne, the woman looked as if she had just gotten a facial and had her hair blown out. When was the last time she had a facial? Margaret knew she shouldn’t complain. They had a good life, although somehow, no matter how much money Bob made, it never was quite enough. There were private school fees and now college tuition, the vacation house they had bought a few years before. Always something stretching them a little thin. By any reasonable standard, they were very well off, but they could never relax. Part of that was life in Eden’s Glen, where a fi ve- year-old car could raise eyebrows and annual dues at the country club trimmed another $20,000-plus from their bank account.
It didn’t help that she and Bob never had sex anymore. She would be in the middle of doing laundry or putting sheets on a bed, and she would find herself trying to recall the last time the two of them had done it. It was so long ago she had trouble remembering the night. Was it Bob’s birthday or a few weeks before, when they had celebrated their daughter’s college accep tance? Then she would start trying to remember what their sex life had been like when they were younger. Even then, Bob was hardly a Casanova. There were always the kids underfoot, and he worked such long hours when he was trying to make partner. Still, there had been a hunger to their couplings, an ache that demanded relief. My God, one time Bob had grown so impatient he had ripped her stockings right off her body. There was nothing like that now. Nothing hurried or eager. The slow fumblings of two people engaged in a desultory undertaking.
Not that Margaret felt very sexy these days. The last time she had taken inventory, she wanted to puke. Varicose veins. Stretch marks. Wrinkles. And what little sex drive she had left after taking care of the kids was pretty much snuffed out by menopause—or at least that was what she told herself. Heavy drinking and eating had done the same thing to her husband. Even on the rare occasion when the two of them bothered to go through the motions, it was rarely satisfying. The lack of sex wouldn’t have been so bad. Only it had become an open secret when she made the mistake of confessing to a good friend after too many glasses of wine at lunch. The occasional stray comment from other friends revealed that her secret had spread through the town.
And now here she was at the Benedict Cup having to watch her husband ogle another woman’s ass. A driver to the head was too good for him.
Bob knew his wife was angry, but he didn’t give a crap. What did she expect when she let herself go like that? Always going on about their three kids as if that was an excuse. Anne had a kid and look at her. Her ass was unbelievable. Preston was one lucky son of a bitch.
He took another sip of his drink. Without bothering to look, he knew that Margaret was watching him with that expression she got when she thought he was drinking too much. Of course he drank too much when she went around with that sour expression all the time. It was damn depressing to deal with. And the nagging. Always the nagging. About his drinking or his eating or what he was wearing or how much time he was spending with the kids or whatever. The drinking blurred all of that, made it bearable, muffled her words until they were a slight distraction from the pleasant buzzing in his head.
And sex! She never stopped nagging him about sex. Why didn’t they have sex? Did he find her attractive? Should they see a doctor? And on and on. Of course, he lied and said that everything was fine, stress at work, blah blah blah. The truth was he didn’t find her attractive. Not at all. Not even a little bit. He dreaded the nights when he would come to the bedroom and the lights would be dimmed, and there would be candles on the dresser, and Margaret would be wearing one of her silk nightgowns. He used to try to do his duty—he would shut his eyes and think about that hot little number who worked in his office. Then she started insisting that he look at her while they did it. Told him it was more intimate. As if being married more than twenty years wasn’t intimacy enough, wasn’t more intimacy than any one man could stand. And all he could see were those saggy tits and the dark hollows under her eyes. In the candlelight they made her look monstrous, although of course he didn’t tell Margaret that. He just tried to blow out the damn candles and turn down the lights. And then she would start nagging him about how he wasn’t romantic.
Then one day he lost his erection. It was like letting the air out of a balloon. The damn candles were lit, and Margaret had on some silly lingerie—the kind of thing he used to by her when they were first married. And he was pumping away with his eyes dutifully open when he glanced down and saw his ...

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0312570279
• ISBN 13: 9780312570279
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288