The Briar Club

by Kate Quinn

She’d never quite been able to explain that patriotism should be more than just a simple wave of the

flag without thought behind it.

“Violent men who are also smart and strong are not completely lost causes. They can learn different ways, if they choose. It’s the weak ones who cause the most damage. Nothing wreaks havoc like a weak man—because they never learn, so they just go blithely on, leaving pain and wreckage behind them.”

Where did that girl go, and who was this iron-nosed old witch? It wasn’t the supple skin she missed, necessarily, or even a set of knees that didn’t creak. It was the blithe, oblivious stride of the young, skipping down a wide velvety path toward a future they assumed was all peaches and cream. Headed for a meat grinder, more like, but they didn’t know it—and they looked at Reka like all she’d ever been was old and sour, like she’d never skipped down a wide velvety path, too, with exactly the same blithe assurance.

“Try it,” she said at last. Reka blinked. “Try what?” “Happiness.” Grace rose, smoothing her skirt. “It’s a choice as much as anything. Or you could choose to be angry, and if you stay angry long enough, it will become comfortable, like an old robe. But eventually you’ll realize that old robe is all you’ve got, and there isn’t anything else in the wardrobe that fits. And at that point, you’re just waiting to trade the robe for a shroud—or at least, that’s what I’ve always thought.”

all the women in the kitchen who had been dismissed at the beginning of the night as too emotional to be interviewed yet are still sitting there, cool as cucumbers. That’s my ladies for you, the house thinks,

I never slept, Fliss thought, taking a spoonful of piping hot gumbo from Claude. And I still don’t. But that wasn’t the answer people wanted when they gushed How on earth do you do it? They wanted the answer to be simple, for a woman to flip her (fluffy, perfectly starched) skirts and smooth her (fluffy, perfectly curled) hair, and say, Oh, it was nothing!

Religion, Flissy, is a very poor scientist.”

“But the doctor just gave me a lecture that I’d have to take whatever God sent me. Why?” Fliss burst out. “Women have to plan out every moment of their lives, from wash on Monday, iron on Tuesday all the way through to rest on Sunday. So why aren’t we allowed to plan this? Something that derails our whole lives, all the other plans . . .”

Trust Russians, Grace reflected as she took a big bite of her cheeseburger, to get the big picture right but the details so completely

wrong. Living in a fake American town for several years hadn’t prepared her for living in America, not one bit. Because the biggest difference between Americans and Soviets, she’d realized her first month in this country, didn’t lie in the vowels, the clothes, or how you sweetened your tea. It was in the shoulders. When Soviets were squashed down by life, by luck, by the system, they got resigned—the shoulders drooped. Hit an American with an equal dose of the same oppression and they went stiff—either with anger or with fear, but their shoulders and chin went up, not down.