My Jane Austen Summer (7 page)

Laughter, solid like one dense sound, rose and receded.

She listed on her fingers, "The tuition from the writing program covers staff, our endowment from wills and bequests covers part of the actors' salaries, but we will not be here next year unless a new dedicated funding source is found."

Was this true? I looked at Vera, her jaw clenched, gaze fixed straight ahead. Had she seen Miss Banks? Claire, the staff person, might have had more to say, but Nigel thanked her and she returned to her seat.

A low murmur rumbled through the room and Nigel raised his arms to quiet us. "You may have heard rumors," he said, "concerning our lease renewal. Please don't gossip about it." His hands went into his pockets. "Vera and I have known Lady Weston for over thirty-five years. That relationship, along with Her Ladyship's commitment to sharing Jane
Austen's voice with the world, will ensure our lease is renewed and Literature Live thrives well into the future."

Again, the low murmur from the room.

"Your job is
Mansfield Park
." Nigel put one finger in the air and spoke over the noise. "Your job is to exercise your gifts of writing and academic inquiry in this safe place." He raised another finger in a peace sign. "Your job is to dazzle with your performances." Nigel pleaded with his arms, "Bring Jane Austen's words to life."

Yes
, I said silently.

"Leave the renewal of the lease to me and Vera."

Vera closed her eyes and nodded.

I could wait no longer. People were going through the papers in their envelopes, consulting each other and raising hands to ask questions.
I had to know
. My pulse raced as I approached Vera.

"Is that Miss Banks sitting over there?" I asked. "The Miss Banks that wasn't supposed to show up?"

"Oh dear," she said, looking over her shoulder. She appeared older in this light, and I wondered if she and her table-mates were seventy, some pushing eighty. "This makes no sense," she said. "Come with me."

Conversations buzzed and spun around my head. People with questions approached the stage and Nigel yelled over the din for anyone with payroll issues to consult Claire. Nigel touched Vera's arm fondly and leaned in to listen to her question. What was it like being married to him? Then he straightened, looked at me, and shook my hand.

"The great American reader; I've heard of you." Nigel winked; he looked much older up close. But I loved him and feared for his approval already. Surely he could fix the Miss Banks problem.

"Nigel." Vera grabbed Nigel's arm and pulled him close, a
look of restrained hilarity on her face. "Don't look now," she said, "but Mrs. Russell is at eleven o'clock, headed this way." Heedless, I looked up and saw the Janeite from yesterday's check-in table. Still dressed as if she'd just stepped from the pages of
Pride and Prejudice
, ribbons from the military hat still straining her throat, she made her way over.

"Oh damn," Nigel said. "Give them a ball and they'll be back in two ticks demanding a seance."

"Run." Vera pushed Nigel. He managed to escape, but Mrs. Russell was no lightweight. She snagged me instead.

"Oh, Miss Berry," she said in her singsong voice, standing on tiptoe. "Have you set a date for the tea?"

"Every day at four." I waved a napkin as Vera pulled me in the opposite direction.

"Let's check with Archie," Vera said.

"She showed up," Archie said, shrugging.

This was
my life
he was shrugging about.

"We made a decision." Vera insisted, her nostrils flaring. "We gave Lily the part. Would it be so hard to just find another part for the Banks girl?"

Archie shook his head and, at that moment, I had a perfect image of him lying to his wife, throwing another stick on the fire threatening his marriage. Then he pulled Vera into an embrace and spoke so close to her ear I heard only the word
Magda
. I felt my forehead. My hand was cool, my forehead burning. Watching them, I felt the possibility of Literature Live slipping from my grasp, the presence of the immortal Jane Austen closing down again. Had I been mistaken to believe I could find my niche in this place? Feeling faint under the burden of my accumulated failures, I pulled out a chair and reproached myself: Literature Live was an exclusive club I could not join; Newton Priors somebody else's house, and
Mansfield Park
a novel I'd never live in. Leaving Texas
had been so final, and Literature Live my happily-ever-after. This couldn't be over already; the universe was running out of places for me to fit in.

"Are you okay?" Omar asked.

"It seems there's no part for me." I looked up at Omar.

"No kidding," Omar said. "You're not a professional actress, am I right?"

He nailed me.

Nikki chatted behind us with an acquaintance from previous summers, laughing, touching the place over her heart, finally letting the other person talk.

"I'm a human resources level five specialist," I told him. "Or I was before they fired me." I began to think writers were the new psychologists. I'd been wary of psychologists from a young age, afraid they had a power like X-ray vision, capable of infiltrating the defenses guarding my deepest private meanings. Karen thought a therapist or minister could penetrate my grief, I'm just glad she never thought of putting a writer on the job; Omar would have nailed me in the first session.

Omar sniffed. "Vera's done this before, for your information. Her M.O. is to adopt an innocent young reader like you and expose her to this world, her own little Pygmalion operation. We all know she does it but you're the first she's tried to pass off as an actress."

My mouth hung open. "What happened to those women?"

"Not much, a little admin work, a minor flirtation with our resident aristocrat, and back home. Nigel fixed the problem by hiring a staff person."

"You mean Claire?"

"Yes. Vera knows the drill here. They hire professional actors."

"What about Elizabeth Banks?" I asked. "She's not a professional actress."

"Oh." Omar smiled. "Right. They
will
hire amateurs that belong to families of board members that come with big donations. And she's related to the Westons. Elizabeth Banks and Randolph are cousins." Omar nodded to the door by which Randolph had left.

"How do you know all this?" I asked.

"I read the newspaper." Omar smiled.

"It's hopeless." I slouched in my chair. "Do they counsel rejected cast members in the church?" I asked, thinking of the guy meditating in the dark.

Sixby, my Hamlet, walking by at that precise moment, interrupted. "He looks busy," Sixby said of Omar. "
I'll
counsel you. Just come to
my
office. In the pub. Second booth on the right. Plenty of ale for what ails you." And then he was gone. And then someone grabbed Omar. Everyone was so busy.

Vera approached, scowling and pulling on her black shawl. I stood to meet her, hoping she'd made progress on my case. "I'm so aggravated," she said, coming very close and whispering, "Did you argue with Magda?"

"What?" I asked. "I've never spoken to Magda." And then I remembered. "I said that I love Fanny Price in her presence. Would she hold that against me?"

Vera's hands flew up. "Who knows? Elizabeth Banks decided to show up. You're in Magda's bad book. Archie caved."

I couldn't let it be over before it even started. "I want a part," I said firmly.

"I'm working on it," Vera said, irritated.

I crossed my arms, staring at Vera, wondering what to believe. Was Vera a good witch or a bad witch? And then I remembered Randolph's comment. "Vera," I said, "did you talk to Randolph Lockwood about firing the actors and letting tourists enact the novel?"

"Yes." Vera brightened. "I gave you all the credit, if that's what you're curious about."

"What did he say?"

"He's interested," Vera said. Her eyes raced back and forth. "Randolph wants everything in writing." She touched my arm. "Can you write a business plan?"

"What?" I dimly recalled a business plan for a made-up company I'd written as a requirement for a class in college. How did I do that? Something about strategy and goals.

"That's what you'll do here. Help me," Vera said.

I would not live in a novel but instead be swept into the current of history, another casualty of Vera's Pygmalion operation, business plan version. Magda swooped in, her black robe billowing as in Miss Clavel,
Something is not right
, her arm locked with a disinterested Miss Banks. "Here's the Lily," Magda cooed.
The Lily
. Magda said to Vera, "Your friend charmed
everyone
at the pub." She placed her long, muscular hand on my arm and I knew she would never lift a finger for me, evident from the way she mocked my name. I studied Magda up close, her perfectly shaped eyebrows above her fine nose, her hair hidden beneath the sea of black fabric, her voice oddly sandy--like a smoker. "This is Elizabeth Banks," Magda said, gesturing to the implausible goth groupie on her arm. "You two are roommates. For now."

I extended my hand and in the instant of introduction saw that the necklace Elizabeth Banks wore was mine--the cross from my mother. I started to speak but I felt someone pull on my arm and turned as Nikki the actress said, "See you at rehearsal." When I turned back my roommate was gone.

My Jane Austen had seen everything.

∗ ∗ ∗

In my room, I was surprised to find Gary seated at my table and my roommate--who bore no resemblance whatsoever to
a Jane Austen character, secondary or otherwise--lying on a batik spread, a cell phone attached to her ear. I looked, but did not see my necklace on her neck. Her shaggy black hair, too blue-black for nature, covered her eyes and contrasted her light bulb-white skin. She raised a hand that looked like a greeting until I realized she was begging off to finish her phone conversation. I tried to look busy while monitoring her speech for signs of professional training, waiting for her to get off the phone so I could ask about my necklace. How could she care about Jane Austen? Gary stared at her, but did he understand what she said?

Suitcases waited, piled on the floor, enough for a Princess of Monaco, some still loitering in the hall. On the table, a pack of Gauloises sat unopened. Oh God, a smoker. The books I'd left on the table had vanished, replaced by her stuff: a small television and a boom box. She dug her fingers under the thick pile of black bangs, her eyes focused in a cell phone stare beyond me. A matching batik bedspread lay folded on my bed, her large flat box hid under my bed, a crate of toiletries dominated my shelf, and an abundance of black clothing hung in my closet. A recent memory of my father's girlfriend surfaced, the one where she discarded all my mom's old refrigerator magnets: the pizza ad, the library hours, even the broken angel magnet that protected us from pigging out since I was nine. When I complained to my father, my heart pounding and my breath too ragged to power my voice, saying his girlfriend had no business throwing our magnets away, he'd said, simply, "Your grief is upsetting Sue."

"Cellmate darling," my roommate put her phone down and crooned in a husky voice, the accent completely American. Just then, I discovered my books sitting in the windowsill; displaced, not destroyed.

"I'm Lily Berry." I extended my hand, feeling the roly-poly
syllables of my name, almost certain my mother named me after the tragic Lily Bart. My sister says nonsense. Perhaps now would be a good time to switch to Lillian.

"I'm Bets," she said, adding, "Short for Betsy, which is short for Elizabeth."

"Can I see your necklace?" I asked.

She looked surprised, and then perhaps embarrassed. She pulled my cross out of her shirt.

"That's mine, right?" I asked, recognizing the custom design as well as the chain.

"I got it out of that drawer." Bets pointed and shared an endearing smile, perhaps the key to her life's progress thus far. "Don't be mad at me," she said.

"I'm not mad," I said, "but that necklace is very important to me and I need it back."

She didn't move.

"Now," I said, my voice calm. "I need it now."

"I'm so glad you're here, my fellow American," she said, reaching behind her neck to unfasten the clasp. "My mother's a Brit but my father's from New Jersey. Where are you from? Oops." She looked on the floor and then at me. "It just slipped off."

I fell to my knees and searched. She reached under her bed, exposing a spiked leather band around her wrist, the rest of her attire too short, mismatched, and torn. She must be really rich. Her shoes, electric blue stiletto pumps, bared white toe cleavage. "I found it."

"Oh good." I sighed. She handed me the cross and then the chain.

"Do you know Gary?" she asked, gesturing to the silent driver watching from his seat at the table. The familiar white bakery bag lay on Bets's bed next to an open package of potato crisps.

"Yes," I said, standing, working to put the necklace together. "The link is gone," I said, tripping over one of her bags.

"Oh, I'm so sorry for being such a hog with my things." She waved a lazy hand in the air and offered the charming smile again. "Do you want me to move my stuff?" Her eyes glanced at the box stored under my bed.

"It's okay," I said, automatically retreating, vowing to accept her second offer, although the second offer never came. I would draw the line at smoking, though. "I really need to find the link." I returned to my knees and resumed searching.

"I'm so sorry," Bets said, standing over me. "Please let me get it fixed for you. I know a really good repair shop in London."

"That's not necessary," I said. "I can fix it if I can find the link." Bets seemed truly sorry and I didn't want to hurt her feelings. "Congratulations on your part, you must be very excited about the summer," I said, sweeping the floor with my hand.

"Oh, terribly," she said, lifting one of her suitcases.

I waited. I still needed help finding the link and she'd moved on to something else.

"It's just that my life is my band," she said, throwing the suitcase on her bed and pulling out a pair of black pants. Bets reached for the zipper on her skirt, about to strip. Quickly, Gary stood, shielding his eyes with his hands, and walked toward the door. "Bye, Gary," Bets called. "Thanks for the cookies."