My Jane Austen Summer (22 page)

"Lily," Vera said. "Lady Weston is in a coma."

"Yes," I said. I clutched the towel around my shivering body as Vera took a breath, leaning her head forward as if praying. I reached into the tub and pulled the plug as Vera watched. "Is Nigel okay?" I asked.

"I haven't told him yet," she said, somber. "I thought I'd practice on you."

We looked at each other, tears pooling in Vera's eyes.

"I can't tell him." She shook her head.

"It doesn't have to be the end," I said.

"It certainly feels like the end." Vera stared at the water draining so slowly one could probably fill the tub without plugging it. Vera backed out of the stall as I gathered my things and followed her out.

"We still have Randolph and the business plan," I said. A terrible wave of loneliness crashed against itself and stretched away from me; the anesthesia of our last meeting was wearing off.

"Yes, there is that," she said in the hallway, turning to me. "Before I tell Nigel," she said, "I just wanted to see if you'd heard anything from Randolph."

I looked at Vera. "No, I haven't heard from him since we met at the hospital."

Vera tried to smile. "I just thought he might get in touch with you, and let you know what we're to do."

"We're probably not a high priority at the moment," I said, imagining them waiting, and how waiting for death felt a lot like waiting for a birth, a suspension of ordinary life. I imagined black cars and gravesite umbrellas. "You'll be the first to know if he calls."

Vera sighed. "You might make a point of remembering to keep your phone with you."

"Yes," I said. "Can I help you tell Nigel?"

"No, she said. "I'll do it. You need to get to work on your play." I'd told her about my one-woman show.

I shut my door and sat at the table, still wrapped in my towel recalling the look on his face. Away from me, Willis might get the distance he needed to lose his resolve and marry Pippa.

Maybe Vera was right. This
did
feel like the end.

B
ets and Gary executed their plan on Saturday. They drove up in her tiny car as I was walking back to the dorm in the late afternoon, having spent the day selling tickets in order to give the scheduled volunteer--who also managed scones for us--some well-deserved time off. Naturally, Sixby was the first person I saw that morning. "I love your dress," he'd said. We would both pretend the scene in his room never happened.

I waved to Bets in her driver's seat. "Where are you going?" I asked, relishing the prospect of an empty room and my book.

Bets whispered, "I'm taking Gary to London, losing him there."

London? She hadn't been to London in weeks as far as I knew. She'd had no chance to look for my necklace. "Will you find my necklace?" I asked.

"Not likely," Bets said. "I'll be busy."

"Please," I said. "I'll be going home soon."

"You come and look for it yourself." Bets nodded to the backseat and rolled her window up.

"But I have to change clothes, I can't go like this." I was still wearing Mrs. Russell's Elinor dress, white empire with a high-collared gauzy blue overlay that reached from behind to tie like a scarf around my bosom.

"Get in, we're leaving right now."

I crawled into the tiny backseat, an accessory to the crime. As she drove, Bets brought me up to speed on Gary. He had not managed to solve his student visa problem via matrimony or matriculation, so Bets masterminded a plan to conceal him in the mighty chaos of London. The genius was in the timing, hiding him one day before his scheduled flight to Lebanon and Magda's departure for Michigan. No time to search for him.

Bets said Magda had covertly planted the idea to hide Gary, "Although she would have preferred that I marry him." I wanted to ask Magda if she'd read
anything
by Jane Austen. So cavalier with other people's commitments, she seemed to believe the institution of marriage existed solely to manipulate at her discretion. Escaping Hedingham, passing charming green hills littered with sheep, I pulled out the copy of
Mansfield Park
Magda had left me. I read her note to me on the title page.

Opening to the first essay in the back, I tried to read but Willis interfered with the text, his last words playing in an endless loop.
I'm going to try and sort things out.
Brits are always sorting things. To
be
or not? To get married or not to get married? That was the question. I imagined Willis sorting socks in his head as he drove toward home that rainy afternoon.

I wanted to know you. I wanted to see where it would go.
By the time we left the country of green meadows and quiet villages, slipping into fringes of the city, I lost myself in imagined scenes of reunion in the music room.

Bets looked in her rearview mirror. "You look like you could use a drink," she said.

We drove through neighborhoods of seedy hotels and slummy bed-sits followed by districts of embassies and multinational corporate headquarters. In the private domain of the rich, flowers billowed out of window boxes; hotels' discreet Georgian exteriors hardly looked like hotels. Every possible light turned red as we navigated the unfamiliar streets. Bets struggled to interpret an old map. "It's been a while since I lived in this neighborhood," she said. Gary sat quietly confused and I struggled to suspend my conversation with Willis in order to focus on street signs. But loud trucks shifted gears, buses spewed familiar exhaust fumes, people rushed in all directions, and Willis kept repeating:
It won't happen on your schedule.

We pulled up to a storefront with "Mediterranean Bakery" written on the window in both English and Arabic. Bets had found Gary the bakery job and a temporary place to stay. I moved up to the front seat as Bets opened the trunk and Gary hauled his bag to the curb, on schedule, as planned. He already had some of the Wallet's money to tide him over.

"So long, buddy." She said something in Arabic, calling him Gamal, slapping him on the arm. "It's been real."

Gary looked at the bakery and then smiled wanly. "Thank you," he said, and nodded, watching us pull back into traffic.

Bets exclaimed over the traffic noise, "Next: a necklace for Dorothy!"

∗ ∗ ∗

We parked near Tommy's apartment building in the neighborhood of grimy urban lofts, rent compliments of the Wallet. My stomach fluttered, as if sensing proximity to the necklace. I'd seen it everywhere lately: on the bodies of strangers or in billboard advertisements, as if my necklace had been folded into God's being--existing in all times and all places.

We climbed his stairs and reached Tommy's door, me in Regency dress like an early nineteenth-century time traveler. Standing heads together over the doorknob, Bets sorted through her key ring and pushed the chosen key into the lock while I tried to breathe normally.

"Shit." She dropped her purse on an overturned milk crate, scattering fast food trash into the hallway and spilling the remains of a soda.

"Key not working?" Pangs of disappointment hit me; I should never have allowed myself to hope.

"Wait a minute." She held the key up to the light.

"Is it the right key?" I asked.

She banged on the door. "Tommy!"

No answer. She banged again.

"Not home?" I asked.

"No." She looked hard at me. "He's not fucking home and the fucking lock's been changed."

I felt panic creeping in. "Can we call the landlord? Pick the lock?" Something. Anything.

Bets didn't dignify my desperation with a response as I followed her back to the car. "He could have fucking told me."

∗ ∗ ∗

By the time we arrived in Camden and parked, several blocks from the King's Castle, darkness encroached and I felt very homesick for My Jane Austen and Newton Priors. Everything: the city lights, walking among strangers, the goth clothing hanging outside shops felt alien to my nineteenth-century sensibilities and heightened my longing for affiliation with Jane Austen. Simply existing near her immortal blaze had made me bigger than myself. Approaching the sign over the door, a faded shingle featuring redcoats in action, I wished I could feel that deep sense of communion with her again. Given another chance, I would work harder at maintaining the relationship.

The pub smelled of cigarettes, mildew, and spilled beer. Ancient air handlers circulated the nasty air like an endless repetition of Maria Bertram's foolish lines. The interior was black, as if they spray painted the floor, walls, light fixtures, ceiling, boxes, and contraptions before hanging the glossy photographs of performers schmoozing with pub owners. A food service lamp warmed popcorn in a recycled aquarium. At the bar, I took a deep breath and asked my question.

"Where is your lost-and-found?" I crossed my fingers and visualized my necklace, in a random jumble of sunglasses, scarves, and misplaced keys. "I'm looking for a necklace."

"Ah, soo am I," the bartender answered as he turned to the next customer. "Lemee know if you find it."

I asked again when another bartender looked my way. After that, they stopped looking my way.

We sat in bright orange and aqua bus station chairs around a small table. A dark-skinned man with long glossy hair parted down the middle arranged microphones on the stage and had just said "testing" when some scruffy people whose names
I faintly remembered from Bets's caller ID joined us. The one named Nick kissed Bets and commented on my clothing. Bets lifted my dress to display the pantalettes. "Crotchless," she said. I slapped her hands and grabbed my skirt. They stared at me as if I were a time travel porn star.

Bets lit a cigarette and exhaled as Nick pointed to a blond woman at another table. Bets slammed her glass on the table. "That asshole," she said.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Tommy's new chick." Bets nodded toward the woman standing near the table directly in front of the stage, welcoming people like a hostess. New Chick had long blond hair with bangs, back-teased and gathered. She wore a black top decorated with rhinestones and very large half-moon dangly earrings that reflected stage lights. She hugged someone, grabbed an extended hand that passed her table, and laughed big. Probably fancied herself a young Linda McCartney.

"I'm free," Bets said, launching her beer bottle in a toast as band members took the stage and picked up their instruments. The room darkened as the house lights went down and city lights sparkled in a high window. Someone turned off the heat lamp in the aquarium and it got even darker. They played stray notes and then Tommy sauntered onto the stage. Ruggedly handsome, the author of music written on napkins, blinding stage lights reflected off his guitar. The air felt full of possibility. Tommy gave the beat, and then--boom. The big sound generated raw energy; the music carried us away. Tommy closed his eyes and sang, his powerful male voice calling us, interpreting mysteries for us, preparing our emotional climax. The musicians savored the music, blue and yellow filters casting a zombie vampire glow on their skin. They watched each other for cues as they moved in and out of a riff and reprised the main motif.

"Do you have any paper?" Bets shouted in my ear.

I pulled a scrap out of my JASNA bag.

"Do you have a pen?" she asked.

I gave her a pen as Tommy announced, "This one is for Fanny, from Edmund," and something familiar took life in the music. The bass resonated in my chest as I recognized the song inspired by Bets's script. Tommy's voice cried out not to worry, he would find me. I thought of Willis, following where the darkness cast me.

"Thanks," Bets shouted, returning my pen; then grabbing her keys. "Bye," she waved. Nick stood and followed her just as the music opened up. I had to listen; it was the good part. "A night such as this--neither sorrow nor wickedness in the world." I thought of the original author of those words as the momentum ramped, chords modulated stressing each word, Tommy took a breath, and the drums caught me. I was a mild-mannered girl from Literature Live who'd come to listen to the band, a reserved member of the audience. But on the inside, I felt all the protagonists I'd ever known surging in the singer's voice, and in one tremendous bodice-ripping crescendo he delivered the payoff and I was with him, our sensibilities merged: "So long the beloved of such a heart." The swell of emotion made me feel like flying, seduced me with the idea that I could just go, like my mother or Lady Weston, progressing in endless modulations.
Godspeed, Willis.

The band stopped and I decided to postpone my metamorphosis into music to look for Bets. Crossing the pub floor in my dainty satin shoes, I watched for beer puddles as well as cords or contraptions. I didn't find Bets in the serenely quiet ladies' room, but I heard her voice.

"Nasty," she said, and Nick laughed.

They were sitting in a backstage room that smelled of male sweat mingled with essence of marijuana. Instrument cases
and discarded amplifier boxes littered the floor, beer bottles and fast food cups lay in the corner and a wadded up T-shirt draped a chair; but no necklace anywhere. Sensing My Jane Austen sitting in the darkest corner of the black room, I looked directly but she disappeared. This had happened before; I'd hear a little rustle and imagine My Jane Austen lurked in the fringes, but it would come to nothing. In an effort to explain my bad behavior with Sixby, I'd told My Jane Austen,
I don't know how to have a relationship with a man. With my father never home, and my mother unhappy most of her life, my entire knowledge of happy relationships came from books. You raised me, Jane. So forgive me this mistake. I know what I did was wrong.

"Hey, I'm free." Bets and Nick clinked beer bottles.

"Free from what?" I asked.

"Free from Literature Live," she said, rolling her eyes and stressing each syllable in ridicule of books and the clueless people who discuss them. "Apparently Tommy doesn't need money anymore--so the deal is off. I'm free." The deal had been with her dad: Bets spending the summer at Literature Live in exchange for her father's financial support of the band for one more year. "You know what really pisses me off?"

"What?" I asked.

"That I've been running around in a nightgown for no good reason. Tommy didn't bother to tell me he'd moved out."

"You're not going back to Hedingham?"

"Never." She shook her head, relishing the pronunciation of the word.

This news was not entirely bad. No more of her TV at all hours of the night, no more ethnic food cartons behind her bed. No one to play Maria Bertram.

"What about your stuff?" I asked.

"You can have it. Or give it to the poor--some starving actor."

I imagined myself distributing Bets's possessions to the long line of actors who'd waited at my door since dawn: her popcorn popper, her torn black shirt, her thongs, her TV, and the carton of cigarettes. "But how will I get home?" I asked.

"Don't cry; there's a lovely train that will take you to the heart of lovely Hedingham, darling," Bets said, in character, the best acting she'd done all season. She pulled train fare from her wallet. "A parting gift." Bets kissed me dramatically on each cheek and I felt not only the end of something, but a tiny blossom of freedom in my own breast. Tommy walked in, followed by grungy band members lighting cigarettes, and his new chick.

"Bets." Tommy extended his hand--optimistically, I thought--but instead of shaking, Bets gave him the folded paper, like serving a subpoena.

"This is where you drop the car--unless you have it with you now." She picked up her purse and beer, preparing to leave. "Nick can help me take it," Bets said, businesslike, not screaming profanity at Tommy or having a hair-pulling cat-fight with the new chick. Tommy's face fell. Maybe he hadn't realized Bets would take the car. He had counted on losing the operating budget and her brilliant companionship but--the car? Perhaps he should reconsider.