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  Praise for

  Club Sandwich

  “Club Sandwich is a Please Don’t Eat the Daisies of commitment and hope—a funny, bittersweet look at seasons of change and challenge, in which belief is the one thread that does not fray. It makes a case for the practical virtue of sustaining faith in which even a dissenter can find joy.”

  —JACQUELYN MITCHARD, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and The Breakdown Lane

  “Forget trying to be evangelically correct: Club Sandwich serves up the messy, crazy truth of living a life of faith in twenty-first-century suburbia, sandwiched between endless responsibilities, fleshly temptations, and one wildly dysfunctional family. When it comes to speaking the truth in love, Lisa Samson is the Real Deal.”

  —LIZ CURTIS HIGGS, author of Thorn in My Heart

  “In a Lisa Samson novel, I expect wit and wisdom with vibrant characters that live next door to me, and Club Sandwich is no exception. But it is more. The character’s thoughts move like lasers of insight onto the page. ‘I’m still careening to the right on the Snow Emergency Route of faith,’ says Ivy of her faith journey. Or in describing the distance between Ivy and her father she says, ‘An arbitrary melody in our lives, he sang his own descant at will, leaving the true composing to my mother.’ Lisa defines that aching place so many women know, as their parents age while their children potty train, and they and their spouses pursue career goals that often separate them from each other. These women hope to do the best they can for their families without losing themselves in the process. I’m a member of Club Sandwich. I’m telling my friends about this book because Lisa’s story both satisfies and gives us hope.”

  —JANE KIRKPATRICK, author of A Land of Sheltered Promise

  “Club Sandwich is like a slice of my life—and Lisa Samson definitely gets it. With her intelligent wit, she takes us beneath the complicated layers of generational relationships as she unfolds a delicious tale of relevance and redemption. Lisa’s best one yet!”

  —MELODY CARLSON, author of Crystal Lies, Finding Alice, the True Colors series, and Diary of a Teenage Girl

  “Club Sandwich offers us a warm slice of life peppered with the kind of panache only Lisa Samson can dish up. She’s truly an original voice—refreshing and honest. Sit back and enjoy the meal.”

  —ROBERT ELMER, author of The Duet and The Celebrity

  OTHER BOOKS

  BY LISA SAMSON

  Tiger Lillie

  The Living End

  Songbird

  Women’s Intuition

  The Church Ladies

  Indigo Waters

  Fields of Gold

  Crimson Skies

  CLUB SANDWICH

  PUBLISHED BY WATERBROOK PRESS

  2375 Telstar Drive, Suite 160

  Colorado Springs, Colorado 80920

  A division of Random House, Inc.

  Scriptures are quoted or paraphrased from the King James Version.

  The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Lisa E. Samson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  WATERBROOK and its deer design logo are registered trademarks of WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Samson, Lisa, 1964–

  Club sandwich / Lisa Samson.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-55125-2

  1. Parent and adult child—Fiction. 2. Mothers and daughters—Fiction.

  3. Female friendship—Fiction. 4. Single mothers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3569.A46673C58 2005

  813′.54—dc22

  2004030852

  v3.1

  To my youngest, Gwynneth:

  My beetlebug, my baby, my spirit. May your zest for life never be quenched. May your God-given gifts be used for the good of all humankind.

  I love you.

  Acknowledgments

  A heartfelt thank you to Lori York, who suggested that a book on the sandwich generation would help a lot of people. And to Kathy Kreyling, for entering those blasted changes from hard copy!

  To all my family members, friends, and fellow journeyers, thanks for making it special.

  A special thanks to Lori, Leigh, Jef, Heather, Chris, Marty and Bob, Miss Gloria, Mom and Dad S., Val; Claudia, Don, Dudley, Erin, Laura; the guys at Main Street Cigar; the blogosphere writer-friends, especially Jules, Mary, Michael, Claudia, Marilyn and Katy; Jim, Angie, Jack, Liz, Melody, and the Chi Libris family.

  To Will, Ty, Jake, and Gwyn, for all you are. Thank You, Jesus, for the dust on Your sandals and the love in Your eyes.

  And finally, thank you lovely readers! Email me at [email protected] or visit my Web site at www.lisasamson.com.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  About the Author

  1

  No one’s ever accused me of being balanced.

  If childhood maps our future beliefs and actions, it’s no wonder I veer to the right when walking down the sidewalk. If I spin, I twirl right. If I dance, my right foot leads. Perhaps my left-handedness dictates this bent, but I know better. I even look like a conservative with my understated pageboy, my Keds, and my sundresses. Now if I chose orthopedic sandals, I’d look like a member of PETA. And dreadlocks on this stark white woman? That might land me a delegate position to the Democratic National Convention.

  My kitchen could well serve as a stopping point for Captain America between missions. Years ago, when I began collecting flag-themed items, my friends and family latched on to it like suckers to wool socks. The Schneider house now holds 179 flags and flag knickknacks. After eighty items, I told them I had enough. Apparently they hadn’t. And who can blame them? Finding the right gift for someone proves enough of a chore. Collections narrow the field. Well, it could be worse. I might have launched an endless parade of pigs or roosters. Or cows. At least flags don’t contract crazy diseases or curly parasites. Sometimes they attract the matches of malcontents. But not in my kitchen.

  My most vivid childhood memories still frighten me. I entered life in the thick of the cold war. Nineteen sixty-four. JFK’s assassination found me curled safely within my mother’s womb. Had nature’s resolve not eclipsed my mother’s, I might still reside there, “the way things are going these days,” as she always said. Does the unborn child assume its mothers emotions? If so, fear began to embroider a repeating pattern upon my heart well before the day I emerged with one fist clamped onto my own ear and ripping it halfway off. The uterus in which I grew from two cells to four to eight “and so on and so on and so on” nes
ted inside a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society and the Towson Republican Club. Conservatism entwined with my DNA, enriched my blood cells, oxygenated my brain and—God bless the USA—the flag, the Constitution, and the death penalty. And all God’s people said, “Amen!”

  Leavened by Mom’s Christian fundamentalism, my fear rose like a sourdough sponge in a greenhouse. Fear joggled and popped about our congregation like Mexican jumping beans and escorted us just about as far. In Mom’s circles, the cold war forever remained a hot topic. And the Soviet Union? “Let’s face the truth now, Sister Starling, the USSR has probably infiltrated even our own congregation with a ‘change agent’ we’ve been duped into thinking really loves the Lord!”

  Yes, we believed in an all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere-present God, but we acted like He’d totally lost control over the good old US of A, and if we failed to win it back, He’d be up a creek. Poor God. Imagine His thankfulness for churches like ours, willing to fight His political battles for Him, to “contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” Somehow, I doubt battling Communism entered the apostle Jude’s mind the day he penned that phrase.

  In 1973, a film I viewed at church informed me that in less than two years the Communists would assume complete control of the US government. Graphic depictions of torture, designed to light a fire of terror beneath the derrières of God-fearing, law-abiding citizens, bloodied the screen. A sandy-haired, freckle-faced boy regurgitated as a soldier burst his eardrums with a bamboo stick. Other soldiers tied ropes around the four limbs of a father and repeatedly lowered him onto pitchforks while his children watched, screaming. Even now, the nationality of these people eludes me, but Asian faces flicker across my memory.

  I believed it real footage of a real event, spots and spatters and lines marring the celluloid like an old newsreel. Yet today I wonder whether actors performed a macabre script. Either way, I guess the purveyors of the film deemed “snuff in the name of freedom” acceptable. “Violence porn” they call it these days.

  I’ll never forget standing at the back of the church afterward, shaking uncontrollably from a fear that, having crawled inside of me, proceeded to gnaw away at my innocence, upon which no real value had been placed. The fear tinted my soul the clear red of blood mixed with water and dug sharp roots into the lining of my spirit. Should a nine-year-old possess a working knowledge of the Trilateral Commission and the Illuminati?

  “This is a John Birch church,” Betty Christopher said when the pastor suggested maybe congregants advanced matters toward the extreme. And believe me, if my pastor, who considered left a four-letter word, supposed things went too far, they really had slid right off the edge of the rational world. We resided in suburban Baltimore, for heaven’s sake, in a blue-collar neighborhood of people who worked hard and merely wanted to abide in peace. Well, Betty eventually left the church, taking others with her, because that unknown change agent had worked his magic on our ideology. She dubbed us members of the vast left-wing conspiracy, members of the aforementioned Trilateral Commission who also secreted pink cards in our wallets and pocketbooks.

  Mom didn’t cry about it. “Good riddance. She was nothing but a troublemaker anyway. What a paranoid.”

  I can happily report Mom calmed down eventually. In fact, she’s perfectly lovely and serene and rests in a much stronger, more normal faith these days. My personal theory? The whole thing tired her out, and she believes she paid her dues in full. She’s right. I paid mine by the time I was fifteen, when I picketed an abortion clinic out on Bel Air Road and was declared a particularly foul name for a female dog by a passerby. On that freezing cold Saturday morning, the wind swung down the street with such force it immediately froze my hands to the picket-sign post. Hardly a great reward after giving myself a stiletto-sized splinter while making my sign. The only consolation any of us has on the matter is that at least the babies live with Jesus now. I guess in heaven nobody’s considered an inconvenience.

  I have to give my pastor credit, though. He loved us kids. In fact, during church picnics at Muddy Run Park, it was my pastor who swam with us, let us dunk him, and threw us high in the air so we could flip, dive, and cannonball ourselves into exhaustion.

  Okay, time to stop the mental rumination before the snooze alarm goes off again. I slide the lever of the clock before it bleeps, pick up the bedside phone, and call Mom.

  “Hello, dear!”

  Her voice comforts more than a down quilt.

  “Hi Mom. Have a good night?”

  “Fine. Your brother brought me up some dinner, some kind of baked flounder. I always sleep well after fish.”

  She’s always so happy to hear from me. I’m one of the few weird women who actually like being with her mom. I extend all the credit to her. I was a mouthy brat between ages thirteen and sixteen. She persevered. That’s Mom, though.

  “Good. Can I drop Trixie off a little early this morning?”

  “Of course, dear. Why?”

  “Persy cut his hair last night, and I want to get him to the barber before school.”

  “How bad is it?”

  “Let’s just put it this way: his bangs look like Milton Berle took a bite out of them.”

  I wanted to say Steven Tyler, but Mom’s no Aerosmith fan.

  “Oh my. I think every little boy does it at least once.”

  “This is the eighth time, Mom.”

  “Eighth? Are you sure?”

  “That isn’t something a mother forgets.”

  “My goodness. You’ll have to start hiding the scissors.”

  “I’ve been hiding the scissors. He did it with his bowie knife.”

  “Oh my!” She laughs. Low and a bit scratchy. Mom had thyroid cancer at the untested age of twenty-one. They scraped her vocal cords to make sure they’d removed it all.

  “Better go wake them up. Love you, dear.”

  “I love you too. Oh wait—bring Trixie in her pajamas. I bought the cutest little outfit for her the other day at the Hecht Company.”

  Of course, they started calling it plain-old Hecht’s years ago. Mom takes a while to align her vernacular with the times.

  I possess a fantasy. Ad gurus love to think they know about a woman’s fantasies. Of course, theirs involve strawberries, silk scarves, and sweat. I fantasize about marriage to a man who says bedtime prayers with the kids so I can take a nice hot bath.

  That’s about it.

  The day I walked in the March for Victory, my Easter outfit hugged my skinny body. Well, it was the seventies. While millions (or so they say) of students protested the Vietnam War, our church group marched down the streets of Philadelphia in support of the troops. I held one end of a banner for WTOW, a religious AM radio station, feeling pretty darned important, not to mention stylish, in my navy polyester-knit dress and coat with white buttons and a patent-leather belt. The white vinyl knee-high go-go boots positively puffed me proud.

  I don’t regret those times of my childhood. My friends and I thought such activities more fun than the Professor Kool show on channel 2. Which, to be honest, I actually didn’t care for. But I was realistic enough to know the general population frowned on our cause. And to this day, other than my best friend, Lou, and the kids I churched around with, I know no other children who participate in marches, then or now. I still support the troops, by the way.

  So here: if you’re looking for a story about someone who grew up in extreme conservatism and ended up a liberal or, God help me, a moderate, shut the book now. I am who I am, and if you can’t read about somebody who thinks different than you, you’re not the liberal you think. Conversely, if you’re reading this for affirmation, go read something by Dave Eggers or Gore Vidal, then think for yourself. But by all means, finish this book, then go tell your friends to buy a copy because, as you’ll see, I need the cash more than ever.

  Money is why I still write a column for our local paper, a strip of rhetoric dedicated to the proposition that there isn’t a per
son alive I cannot anger or offend. It lets me do the blabbering for a change, instead of those annoying Hollywood types who live in mansions and have garages full of Bentleys, closets full of Prada originals, boxes full of Harry Winston jewels, and noses full of high-grade cocaine. Who are they to talk about social justice because they gave ten grand to the Democratic gubernatorial candidate? (Which, in truth, would be the same as me sending in a check for ten bucks.)

  The newspaper columnist in me explains my verbose asides. Believe it or not, I don’t always write about national and local politics in my column. Sometimes I write about domestic—as in behind the front door of your house—politics.

  Today I will write about making lemonade out of lemons. I have coronated myself the empress of lemonade-making. I pride myself on my lemonade. I mean, when you’re married to a man who’s gone eighty percent of the time and you’re still together, that’s lemonade. That might even qualify as hard lemonade.

  All part of womanhood.

  Oh sure, the activists tell me we’ve advanced miles and miles. But nobody’s gained more from our liberation than men. Now, not only do they have less responsibility for the household budget, they can get sex more easily before a household even exists. And even most of the married ones don’t lift a finger at home. Who packs the lunches, helps with homework, makes sure somebody’s home for the cable man? We do, that’s who.

  Let me tell you, there’s not a man alive, other than single or stay-at-home dads, who have a clue whether there’s enough clean underwear in the kids’ drawers for tomorrow. If I’m wrong, I’ll be the first one to applaud.

  Now, I may be mistaken, but I don’t expect even the Jesus my old church worshiped would leave all the vacuuming to one person, or that He’d push back from the supper table and hop right on His computer.

  It’s not that I don’t like men. I love men. I just think we women have created monsters and then blamed the monsters. It’s time now to liberate the men, to teach them not to merely view us as equals, but to raise us up on the pedestals we deserve, to adore us, to admire us, and at the very least do fifty percent of the housework without our having to ask. Shoot, even dishes three nights a week would be nice. Straightening the den now and again? Putting a new roll on the toilet paper holder? Okay, putting the cap back on the toothpaste! How about that?