The Jane Austen Book Club (14 page)

J
ocelyn didn't see Grigg again until the evening of the next day. “I was afraid you'd left,” she said, “and I wanted to apologize for last night.”

He was kind enough to cut her off. “I got you something in the dealer's room,” he told her. He fished through his convention bag and pulled out two paperbacks—
The Left Hand of Darkness
and
The Lathe of Heaven.
“Give these a try.”

Jocelyn took the books. She was touched by the gift, though he was also, she thought, making fun of her, because there was Le Guin, the same author she'd claimed, with his guidance, to read and love. Plus, Grigg was a little too eager, obviously excited to have found a reader so utterly ignorant. “These are classics in the field,” he said. “And amazing books.”

She thanked him, though she really hadn't planned to begin reading science fiction and still didn't. Perhaps some of this came through. “I really think you'll love them,” Grigg said. And then, “I'm perfectly willing to be directed, too. You tell me what I should be reading, and I promise to read it.”

Jocelyn liked nothing so much as telling people what to do. “I'll make you a list,” she said.

In fact she forgot all about Grigg until he e-mailed her in late January. “Remember me?” the e-mail asked. “We met at the convention in Stockton. I'm out of work now and I'm relocating to your neck of the woods. Since you're the only person I know up there, I'm hoping for an insider's view. Where to get my hair cut. Which dentist to see. Could we have a cup of coffee and you make me one of your famous lists?”

If he hadn't had such an odd name Jocelyn probably would have had trouble bringing Grigg to mind. She remembered now
how agreeable she'd found him. Hadn't he given her a book or two? She really should dig those out and read them.

She kept his e-mail on the top of her queue for a few days. But a charming, unattached (she assumed) man was too valuable to throw away just because you had no immediate use for him. She e-mailed him back and agreed to coffee.

When she began putting the book club together, she e-mailed him again. “I remember you as a great reader,” she wrote. “We'll be doing the completed works of Jane Austen. Are you interested?”

“Count me in,” Grigg answered. “I've been meaning to read Austen for a long time now.”

“You'll probably be the only boy,” Jocelyn warned him. “With some fierce older women. I can't promise they won't give you a hard time now and then.”

“Better and better,” Grigg said. “In fact, I wouldn't be comfortable any other way.”

J
ocelyn didn't tell us any of this, because it was none of our business and anyway we were there to discuss Jane Austen. All she did was turn to Sylvia. “You remember. Stockton. I saw the Reinickers there and they annoyed me so much? I'd agreed to breed Thembe with Beauty and then I backed out?”

“Is Mr. Reinicker the one who's always saying ‘Good girl,' to everyone?” Sylvia asked.

Grigg had put the dining room chairs out on the back porch, it being such a perfect evening. There was one papasan chair, with pin-striped cushions, which Jocelyn made Bernadette take. The rest of us sat in a circle around her, the queen and her court.

We could hear the hum of traffic on University Avenue. A large black cat with a small head, very sphinxlike, wound around
our legs and then made for Jocelyn's lap. All cats do this, as she is allergic.

“Max,” Grigg told us. “Short for Maximum Cat.” He hoisted Max with two hands and set him inside, where he paced the windowsill, weaving through the African violets, watching us with his golden eyes, clearly wishing us ill. Of all the cats that come through the pounds, all-black males are the hardest to place, and Jocelyn heartily approved of anyone who had one. Had Jocelyn known about the cat? It might explain Grigg's invitation into the group, something we had ceased to mind, since Grigg was very nice, but we had never settled.

Grigg told us how he'd lost a tech-support job in San Jose when the dot-coms crashed. He'd gotten a severance package and come to the Valley, where housing cost less and his money would last longer. He was working in a temp job at the university, part of the secretarial pool. He was based in the linguistics department.

He'd recently been told that the job was his for as long as he liked. His computer skills had everyone pretty excited. He spent his days recovering lost data, chasing down viruses, creating PowerPoint presentations of this and that. He seldom got to his real work, but no one complained; everyone was relieved to avoid the campus tech support. Apparently the campus group was some sort of elite paramilitary operation in which all information was treated as top-secret, to be doled out grudgingly and only after repeated requests. People came back from the computer lab looking as if they'd made a visit to the Godfather. Grigg's pay was less than it had been, but people were always bringing him cookies.

Plus, he was thinking of writing a roman à clef. The linguists were a pretty weird bunch.

We paused for a moment, all of us wishing that Prudie was there to hear Grigg say
“roman à clef.”

G
rigg had laid out a green salad made with dried cranberries and candied walnuts. There were the cheeses and pepper crackers. Several dips, including artichoke. A lovely white wine from the Bonny Doon vineyard. It was a respectable spread, although the cheese plate had a snow scene and was obviously meant to be used only at Christmas and probably for cookies. And the wine-glasses didn't match.

“Why did you say you like
Northanger Abbey
best of all Austen's books?” Jocelyn asked Grigg. She had the tone of someone calling us to order. And also of someone keeping an open mind. Only Jocelyn could have managed to convey both.

“I just love how it's all about reading novels. Who's a heroine, what's an adventure? Austen poses these questions very directly. There's something very pomo going on there.”

The rest of us weren't intimate enough with postmodernism to give it a nickname. We'd heard the word used in sentences, but its definition seemed to change with its context. We weren't troubled by this. Over at the university, people were paid to worry about such things; they'd soon have it well in hand.

“It makes sense that Austen would be asking these questions,” Jocelyn said, “since
Northanger Abbey
is her first.”

“I thought
Northanger Abbey
was one of her last,” Grigg said. He was rocking on the back legs of his chair, but it was his chair, after all, and none of our business. “I thought
Sense and Sensibility
was first.”

“First published. But
Northanger Abbey
was the first sold to a publisher.”

Our opinion of the Gramercy edition of the novels sank even
further. Was it possible it didn't make this clear? Or had Grigg simply neglected to read the foreword? Surely there was a foreword.

“Austen doesn't always seem to admire reading,” Sylvia said. “In
Northanger Abbey
she accuses other novelists of denigrating novels in their novels, but isn't she doing the same thing?”

“No, she defends novels. But she's definitely having a go at readers,” Allegra said. “She makes Catherine quite ridiculous, going on and on about
The Mysteries of Udolpho.
Thinking life is really like that. Not that that's the best part of the book. Actually that part's kind of lame.”

Allegra was always pointing out what wasn't the best part of the book. We were a bit tired of it, truth to tell.

Grigg rocked forward, the front legs of his chair hitting the porch with a smack. “But she doesn't much care for people who haven't read it, either. Or at least those who pretend not to have read it. And while she makes fun of Catherine for being so influenced by
Udolpho
, you have to say that
Northanger Abbey
is completely under that same influence. Austen's imitated the structure, made all her choices in opposition to that original text. Assumes everyone has read it.”

“You've read
The Mysteries of Udolpho
?” Allegra asked.

“Black veils and Laurentina's skeleton? You bet. Didn't you think it sounded good?”

We had not. We'd thought it sounded overheated, overdone, old-fashionedly lurid. We'd thought it sounded ridiculous.

Actually it hadn't occurred to any of us to read it. Some of us hadn't even realized it was a real book.

T
he sun had finally set and all the brightness fallen from the air. There was a tiny moon like a fingernail paring. Gauzy clouds
floated over it. A jay landed on the sill outside the kitchen and Maximum Cat wept to be let back out. During the bedlam Grigg went and got our dessert.

He'd made a cheesecake. He took it to Bernadette, who cut it and passed the slices around. The crust was obviously store-bought. Good, though. We had all used store-bought crusts ourselves in times of need. Nothing wrong with store-bought.

Bernadette began to give us her opinion on whether Jane Austen admired people who read books or whether she didn't. Eventually we understood that Bernadette didn't have an opinion on this. She felt there was a great deal of conflicting data.

We sat for a bit, pretending to mull over what she'd said. It didn't seem polite to move right on when she'd taken so long to say it. She'd laid her glasses with their great lump of paper clips and masking tape by her plate, and she had that stripped, eye-bagged look people who usually wear glasses get when they take their glasses off.

We talked briefly about moving inside for coffee. The uncushioned chairs weren't comfortable, but Grigg didn't seem to have other chairs; we'd just be taking them with us. It wasn't cold. The city mosquito abatement program had done its work and nothing was eating us. We stayed where we were. A motorcycle coughed and spit its way down University Avenue.

“I think Catherine is a charming character,” said Bernadette. “Where's the harm in a good heart and an active imagination? And Tilney is a genuine wit. He has more sparkle than Edward in
Sense and Sensibility
or Edmund in
Mansfield Park.
Catherine's not my very favorite of the Austen heroines, but Tilney's my favorite hero.” She directed this at Allegra, who hadn't yet spoken on the subject, but Bernadette was guessing what she thought. And bull's-eye, too.

“She's very, very silly. Implausibly gullible,” Allegra said. “And Tilney's a bit insufferable.”

“I like them both,” said Sylvia.

“So do I,” said Jocelyn.

“Here's the thing.” The fingernail moon sliced open the clouds. Allegra's eyes were large and dark. Her face had its silent-screen-star expressiveness and a lunar polish, too. She was so very beautiful. “Austen suggests that
Udolpho
is a dangerous book, because it makes people think life is an adventure,” she said. “Catherine has fallen completely under its spell. But that's not the kind of book that's really dangerous to people. You might as well argue that Grigg here thinks we're all extraterrestrials, just because he reads science fiction.”

Bernadette made a surprised coughing sound. We all turned to look at her, and she managed an unconvincing smile. She had that great gob of tape and paper clips on her glasses. Her legs were twisted up in her lap in some impossible yoga posture. All our suspicions were suddenly roused. She was fooling no one. She was far too bendable to be human.

But why care? There was no one more benign than Bernadette.

“All the while it's Austen writing the really dangerous books,” Allegra continued. “Books that people really do believe, even hundreds of years later. How virtue will be recognized and rewarded. How love will prevail. How life is a romance.”

We thought how it was time for Allegra to be getting over Corinne. We thought how hard Sylvia was working to get over Daniel. We thought Allegra could learn something from that. Birdshit landed with a plop on the edge of the porch.

“What should we read next?” Bernadette asked. “
Pride and Prejudice
is my favorite.”

“So let's do that,” Sylvia said.

“Are you sure, dear?” Jocelyn asked.

“I am. It's time. Anyway,
Persuasion
has the dead mother. I don't want to subject Prudie to that now. The mother in
Pride and Prejudice
, on the other hand . . .”

“Don't give anything away,” Grigg said. “I haven't read it yet.”

Grigg had never read
Pride and Prejudice.

Grigg had never read
Pride and Prejudice.

Grigg had read
The Mysteries of Udolpho
and God knows how much science fiction—there were books all over the cottage—but he'd never found the time or the inclination to read
Pride and Prejudice.
We really didn't know what to say.

T
he phone rang and Grigg went to get it. “Bianca,” we heard. There was genuine pleasure in his voice, but not that kind of pleasure. Just a friend, we thought. “Can I call you back? My Jane Austen book club is here.”