champagne blond hair. 'Thank heavens for The Channel!' She sighed gustily.
'How come we've never told Nora about The Channel before, Carla?' Joanne Ulrich wondered aloud. Like Tiffany she was petite, but where the youngest of them was slender, Joanne was plump in a pretty and comfortable way. 'We generally share everything as a rule.'
'Do you really think Nora was ready for The Channel before today?' Rina replied with a mischievous grin as she reached for another jelly stick. She was one of those tall women who never gained weight. 'Not really.'
The other women laughed knowingly, nodding, sharing the secret.
'What channel?' Nora asked them. 'What on earth are you talking about?'
'Yeah,' Carla agreed. 'I think it is time for us to share The Channel with Nora.' She turned to her best friend. 'It's this interactive thing we get through the television, sweetie,' she began. 'It's really difficult to explain. You have to experience it to understand it. The next time you're going to be alone for the whole evening, call Suburban Cable, and tell them you want The Channel. That's all you have to do. Try it. I'll bet you'll like it. We all use it, and we all love it. You'll feel a helluva lot better after an evening with The Channel, Nora.'
'What channel?' Nora repeated, looking very confused. 'Is it like House and Garden? And what's
The women burst out laughing again, unable to contain themselves.
'House and Garden,' Tiffany wheezed, laughing so hard that the tears ran down her pretty face.
Finally Carla managed to get ahold of herself, and said, 'No, hon, it isn't at all like House and Garden. At least it isn't for me. It's different for everyone. But who knows with you, Nora? Look, have I ever steered you wrong? Trust me. Just ask Suburban for The Channel. That's all you have to say. 'I want The Channel.' Now somebody pass me a jelly stick before Rina eats them all. Is this a coffee klatch, or not?'
'Like you need a jelly stick,' Rina chuckled with a smile.
'What can I say?' Carla replied, biting into the pastry and quickly licking the jelly that squirted onto her chin. 'Your homemade jelly sticks are the best! Besides, Rick likes me cuddly and huggable.' She grinned at them.
The women of Ansley Court met every Monday morning for coffee and gossip. They had all moved into Ansley at Egret Pointe, an upscale subdivision, twenty to twenty-five years before. Rina and Sam Seligmann had built first on the cul-de-sac. They had been followed by Joanne and Carl Ulrich. The Buckleys and the Johnsons had by coincidence built at the same time. And finally Tiffany and Joe Pietro d'Angelo had constructed their house on the last lot on Ansley Court. Rina and Joanne were over fifty now. The other three were slightly younger.
They had raised their children together, while their husbands supported their families in the traditional old- fashioned way. Rina had once been a full-time social worker. Joanne an elementary school teacher. Carla was a nurse. Only Tiffany and Nora had never held down a job. Neighbors are not always the best of friends, but these five women were. They had done nursery school, PTA, Little League, and soccer together. They had gone trick-or- treating together in costume with their children and weathered chicken pox and flu seasons constantly, exchanging remedies. They even hung their Christmas lights out on the same day so Ansley Court wouldn't be lopsided, as Tiffany liked to say.
Long ago the five families had bought a ramshackle old Victorian house, called a camp, for their summers. The house was set on a mountain lake. They shared their camp together throughout the warmer vacation months, and often into autumn weekends. They taught their kids to swim there, and more important how to identify poison ivy. The children had named it Camp Cozy. It had been a very comfortable and predictable lifestyle neatly bordered by the changing seasons. But now with Nora Buckley's fears out in the open, something was changing, and not necessarily for the better. They could all feel it.
Nora's husband, Jeff Buckley, wasn't at all like their husbands, and he had never made any real effort to be friendly. Sam Seligmann was Egret Pointe's favorite doctor. He had an old-fashioned general practice, rare in this day and age, but he was the kind of doctor his father had been, and he was content to follow in his father's footsteps. Carl Ulrich owned the local hardware store, which continued to flourish despite the Home Depot in a nearby new mall. Carl gave his customers personal service. He was knowledgeable, as were his two longtime employees. They were unlike the kids working at the mall, who didn't know a wing nut from a Brazil nut. Joe Pietro d'Angelo and Rick Johnson had a small country law practice in the village. They handled wills, house closings, a few local divorces, and other small matters usual to a country village. Carla was Joe's cousin. Only Jeff Buckley, partner in a prestigious advertising agency, commuted to the nearby city.
Jeff had been very ambitious and career oriented. He had never been around a great deal. He missed his son's Little League games each year, and despite the fact that the boy, named after him but called J. J., was star of the high school varsity soccer team, Jeff had never seen him play. And his daughter had fared no better. He had never seen her perform in a dance recital or a school play. She had gone to college in California, and had recently been accepted at Duke Law. Jeff enjoyed bragging about Jill's accomplishments.
He showed up at Camp Cozy two weekends a summer: over the Fourth of July and Labor Day weekends. He was pleasant enough when he was around, but the other men had absolutely nothing in common with him. It was Nora they all knew and liked. They tolerated her husband for her sake. Jeff was definitely the odd man out, and he didn't seem to care at all.
Nora Edwards had meet Jeffrey Buckley in her freshman year at college. He had been a senior. He was the quarterback of the football team, captain of the baseball team, and a brilliant scholar. He was the quintessential big man on campus. He had come to the freshman mixer with some fraternity buddies to check out the girls, looking for the sluts who could be easily fucked, and the nice girls who might be eventually seduced. But Jeff Buckley was ambitious, and wherever he was going, he would go to the top.
He had met Nora, and known immediately that this was the girl he wanted for a wife. She was perfect for him. She had the correct ethnic, religious, and political backgrounds. She was pretty in a subdued and ladylike way with her soft trusting eyes and her pageboy hairstyle. She wore a powder blue cashmere sweater set, and a strand of dainty pearls about her neck. She was an only child, innocent, carefully sheltered. She wasn't stupid. In fact she was very intelligent, but she was unsophisticated. Her girlfriends told her how lucky she was to have attracted a guy like Jeff Buckley, and having fallen half in love with him that first night, she believed them. And she believed Jeff Buckley. A pat from him, a flash of his smile, and she was lost.
But most important of all to Jeff was that Nora was a virgin. And he made sure that she stayed that way until he married her. The word went out on the campus that pretty Nora Edwards was the property of Jeff Buckley, quarterback of State's championship football team. On her birthday, November 30, he gave her his fraternity pin. She was serenaded by his fraternity just before the Christmas break, while standing in the cold before her dorm wearing the long dark green velvet formal gown she had worn to the Christmas dance at his fraternity house. Candles burned in the windows of the dorm, and the shadowed figures of the other girls could just be made out. She had almost frozen to death, but she had never shivered because she wanted him to be proud of her.
Nora had gone home with a cold, desperate to get well, as she was to spend New Year's Eve at Jeff's parents' home. His mother had called her mother and invited her. And on New Year's Eve Jeff had put his hand in Nora's underpants for the first time, fingering her clitoris until she almost fainted. When she had whimpered with her pleasure, he had stifled her cries with his kisses. At the fraternity's spring formal he had asked her to marry him, and put a ring on her finger before she might answer, but of course he had known the answer would be yes.
Here, however, Nora's parents had stepped into the romance. Nora was just eighteen. They wanted her to finish her college education, and they did not want her married until she did. When she was twenty-one they'd consider it. Jeff agreed. He had things to do before he entered into matrimony. He just didn't want Nora to get away.
After graduating he had gone on to earn a masters' degree in business at Harvard, and done a brief military service. Then he had joined Coutts and Wickham, a very prestigious advertising firm in the city. Nora had remained at her studies, kept safe from other possible suitors, chaperoned by her fiancй's fraternity brothers to the various university social events when Jeff couldn't join her.
Any young man approaching Nora was warned away in the strongest terms possible. One boy who refused to heed the warning was beaten up by unknown assailants. After that, no males approached Nora Edwards, but she never knew the lengths that Jeff had gone to, to keep her for himself. She had her studies, and everyone was so very nice to her.
Two weeks after her graduation with a degree in English literature, Nora Edwards had married Jeffrey Buckley in a large, tasteful all-white wedding, with six bridesmaids in white linen sheaths with narrow green ribbons at their waists, and wreaths of baby's breath with white rosebuds topping their heads. After a honeymoon in Bermuda, they
