The Blue Bottle Club by Penelope Stokes

Author:Penelope Stokes
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2010-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

ELEANOR

25

THE DEATH OF A DREAM

December 24, 1929

Little Eleanor James stood with her mother at the doors of Downtown Presbyterian and scanned the crowd for Letitia and Adora. There—on the second row! Tish was sandwiched in between Adora and Philip Dorn, and there was enough room on Adora's other side for Ellie. Just then Adora caught her eye and waved.

"Mother, I'm going to sit with my friends. I'll catch up with you after the service."

Before her mother had a chance to object, Ellie made good her escape, but she could feel her mother's eyes boring into her back as she made her way down the aisle. A wave of guilt washed over her. It was Christmas Eve, after all. And although Mother would never admit it in a thousand years, she probably was lonely, missing Father, and wanting to share the service with her daughter, the only family she had left.

But she never says that, Ellie's mind protested. Mother never gave any indication of tenderness toward her or her own needs for love and closeness. The sole basis for their interaction was her mother's demands and her own capitulations. All her life, it seemed—or at least since Ellie's father had died when she was nine—Ellie had walked on eggshells, trying desperately to make Mother happy. No, Ellie thought, that's not right. Mother isn't capable of being happy. She's only capable of being less disgruntled. Despite a life of relative wealth and ease, Eleanor James the Elder did not seem the least bit inclined to enjoy her privileged situation. She depended upon her status but still seemed determined to focus on the bleakest, most dismal aspects of every situation. And thus had fallen to Ellie the responsibility of ordering the circumstances of their lives so that her mother's melancholy would be minimized.

Because Ellie had been named after her mother, their friends had for years referred to them as Big Eleanor and Little Eleanor. Ellie hated the name; it made her feel as if she were destined to become like her mother—a fate she wouldn't wish on her worst enemy. She loved Mother, of course—loved her with the determined duty and suppressed rage of an only daughter. But she had no intention of following in her footsteps. Her whole life, and all her aspirations for the future, focused on a single objective—to prove that she had been wrongly named.

Hidden in a drawer beneath her undergarments was proof of that determination—a statement of her secret dreams, which tomorrow afternoon she would share with her three best friends. They might not understand, but at least they would encourage and support her.

When Tish had come up with the idea that they all write out their dreams and make a commitment to each other to see those dreams fulfilled, everything had come clear to Ellie. For years she had struggled with attitudes she couldn't articulate—the suspicion that she had been adopted, because she was so radically different from the woman she called Mother. The desire to do something—anything—to prove that she wasn't "Little Eleanor.

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