“My mom says your husband is in a better place now,” the ten-year-old announced to our grieving friend, her voice flat. “Is it because your house is so messy?”
Her mother called it “radical honesty.” A gift.
A gift that had already declared a friend’s prized painting a “big blue booger” and another’s famous pie as tasting like “feet.”
But watching the color drain from our friend’s face, I knew this wasn’t honesty. It was emotional vandalism, and the polite facade our book club had maintained for months was about to be obliterated.
Karen loved nothing more than intellectual women and brutal honesty, so I arranged for her to be publicly vivisected by both, using her own daughter as the scalpel and a celebrated author as the surgeon.
The First Crack in the Foundation: A New Face and an Uninvited Guest
The Tuesday Night Book Club was a sanctuary. For twenty years, the same six women—me, Sarah, Eleanor, Maria, Judy, and Beth—had gathered in a rotation of living rooms. We’d dissected novels over cheap wine and expensive cheese, navigating the fictional lives of characters as we navigated our own very real divorces, empty nests, and aging parents. It was sacred ground, paved with dog-eared paperbacks and shared history.
Then Karen joined.
Beth had met her at a yoga retreat and, in a fit of sun-salutation-induced goodwill, invited her. Karen was forty-two, a decade and a half our junior, with the kind of aggressive wellness that made me feel tired just looking at her. She spoke in a vocabulary of “holding space” and “vibrating on a higher frequency.” We were polite. We were welcoming. We could adjust.
The first crack appeared on her third meeting, held at my house. An hour in, the doorbell rang. It was Karen, looking flustered, with a small, blonde girl attached to her hand. “So sorry!” she announced to the room. “Sitter canceled last minute. This is Dakota. You all don’t mind, do you?”
We were a room full of mothers and grandmothers. Of course, we didn’t mind. We made a space for the ten-year-old on the floor with a bowl of pretzels and my iPad. The girl, Dakota, had pale, watchful eyes that seemed to take in everything. We were discussing a dense historical fiction novel set in Tudor England. Maria was making a point about Anne Boleyn’s ambition when a small, clear voice cut through the room. “This sounds really boring.”
A stunned silence fell. We all looked at the little girl, then at Karen, expecting a gentle reprimand. Instead, Karen beamed, a brilliant, proud smile. “Dakota, honey, thank you for sharing your truth. I just love that she’s not afraid to be authentic.” She turned to us, her expression beatific. “We have a policy in our house: radical honesty. No topic is off-limits, no opinion is suppressed.”
The Unfiltered Critic
The next month, at Sarah’s house, “radical honesty” got a full-throated audition. Sarah, a retired interior designer, had a home that looked like a magazine spread. It was impeccable, her pride and joy. We were all arranged on her cream-colored sofas, admiring a new abstract painting she’d hung over the fireplace. Dakota, who Karen had brought along again without apology, squinted at it.
“That painting looks like a big blue booger,” she declared.
Sarah’s smile froze on her face. A nervous titter went around the room. Karen just laughed, a sound like wind chimes in a hurricane. “See? She just says what everyone’s thinking! It’s so refreshing, isn’t it?”
No one was thinking that. We were thinking it was a bold, beautiful piece of art that probably cost more than our cars. But no one said a word. We were women of a certain generation, conditioned to smooth over rough edges, to keep the social machinery humming. Confrontation was a tool of last resort.
Later, as Sarah served her famous lemon meringue pie, Dakota took one bite and pushed the plate away. “The yellow part tastes like feet and the white part is too smooshy.”
This time, the silence was heavier. Sarah, who had spent the entire afternoon baking, just stared down at her own slice, her fork hovering. I watched the slight tremor in her hand. This wasn’t refreshing. It was cruel. And Karen, her mother, just sat there, glowing with a vicarious pride, as if her daughter had just recited a Shakespearean sonnet instead of insulting our hostess. “I’m so glad she has a discerning palate,” Karen murmured, loud enough for us all to hear.
A Conversation with My Conscience (and My Husband)
That night, I couldn’t shake the image of Sarah’s face. I found my husband, Mark, in the garage, tinkering with his old Triumph motorcycle. The smell of oil and metal was a comforting antidote to the cloying scent of Karen’s patchouli perfume.
“It’s getting out of hand,” I said, leaning against his workbench. I explained the “booger” painting and the “feet” pie.
Mark wiped his hands on a rag, his brow furrowed. “The kid’s ten. Kids say stupid things. Where’s her mother in all this?”
“Right there. Praising her for it,” I said, the frustration bubbling up in my voice. “She calls it ‘radical honesty.’ She says she’s teaching her daughter not to lie to protect people’s feelings.”
He let out a low whistle. “That’s not honesty. That’s just being an asshole with a fancy label. There’s a difference between being honest and being deliberately hurtful. It’s called a filter. It’s called tact.”
“That’s what I think! But am I just being an old prude? A fuddy-duddy who can’t handle the ‘truth’?” I hated the way I sounded, uncertain and weak. I was a retired English teacher. I’d wrangled classrooms of hormonal teenagers for thirty-five years. I should be able to handle one precocious ten-year-old and her spiritually-enlightened mother.
Mark came over and put a steadying arm around my shoulders. “Linda, you and your friends built that club over twenty years. It’s your space. It’s not a training ground for some kid to practice her social skills, or lack thereof. You have a right to protect it.”
He was right. But the thought of confronting Karen made my stomach clench. It felt like a declaration of war, and I was, by nature, a conscientious objector.
The Rules of Engagement (Unwritten)
The unwritten rules of our club were simple: be kind, be respectful, and for the love of God, don’t criticize the hostess’s choice of cheese. For two decades, these rules had been as solid as the oak table in Eleanor’s dining room. The next meeting was at her house, and it was where those rules were not just broken, but incinerated.
Eleanor is a stout, sensible woman who wears her gray hair in a practical bun and favors comfortable cardigans. That night, she was wearing a new one, a bright fuchsia that was a departure from her usual beige. We’d all complimented her on it. She’d blushed, pleased.
We were deep into a debate about the unreliable narrator in our chosen thriller when Dakota, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, piped up. She wasn’t looking at the book. She was staring at Eleanor.
“That pink sweater makes you look like a fat flamingo,” she said.
The words hung in the air, ugly and sharp. Eleanor’s hand flew to her chest, right over the fuchsia yarn. Her face, which had been animated with discussion, crumpled. I saw her eyes film over with a sheen of hurt so profound it was like a physical blow. The entire room stopped breathing.
Karen let a few beats of silence pass, for dramatic effect, I suppose. Then she gave Dakota’s shoulder a squeeze. “Well. It is a very bright color, sweetie. Thank you for being so observant.” She looked at Eleanor, her expression a masterclass in condescending pity. “She just doesn’t have a filter. It’s a gift, really.”
A gift. It felt like a curse. It felt like a poison we were being forced to swallow, month after month, all in the name of a parenting philosophy that seemed to value rudeness as the highest form of virtue. I looked at Eleanor’s stricken face, at Sarah’s tightly pressed lips, at Maria’s downcast eyes, and I knew. The conscientious objector was about to enlist.
The Escalation Clause: The Grapevine and the Growing Dread
The phone calls started the next morning. First, it was Sarah. “I couldn’t sleep all night,” she said, her voice tight. “All I could see was Eleanor’s face. That poor woman. What Karen is doing is… it’s emotional vandalism.”
“Vandalism. That’s the perfect word for it,” I agreed, pacing my kitchen.
An hour later, Judy called. She was furious. “Did you see Karen’s post on Facebook this morning? A picture of Dakota, with the caption: ‘So proud of my little truth-teller! Never be afraid to say what you see.’ I wanted to comment, ‘Even if what you see is a kind woman’s heartbreak?'”
The dread for our next meeting began to settle in my stomach like a cold, heavy stone. It was supposed to be at Maria’s. Maria, our gentlest member, had lost her husband, David, to cancer less than a year ago. The book club was one of the few things that got her out of the house. The thought of Dakota’s unfiltered “truth” being unleashed in that fragile space was unbearable.
We all felt it. The sanctuary had been compromised. A predator was in our midst, and it was a ten-year-old girl with her mother as a willing accomplice. We were a group of intelligent, accomplished women, and we were being held hostage by a child. The absurdity of it was infuriating.
A Direct, but Gentle, Inquiry
I decided I had to try a softer approach first. Diplomacy before detonation. The week before the meeting at Maria’s, I called Karen. I kept my tone light, friendly.
“Karen, hi, it’s Linda. I was just thinking about the next meeting, and I had a thought.” I took a breath. “You know, our discussions can get a bit… well, adult. We’re sometimes talking about some pretty heavy themes, and I wonder if it’s the best environment for Dakota. We wouldn’t want her to be bored or uncomfortable.”
About the Author
