The Jane Austen Book Club (20 page)

So I pushed the planchette.
Leave Watson,
I made it say. Lloyd leapt up so fast he knocked his own chair over. He went straight to Reverend Watson and told him Satan was striding amongst us, and Reverend Watson came right back to cast him out. There was a tremendous to-do and I was sort of pleased, because things were less boring than before, but Reverend Watson's eye fell on me then and it was a suspicious eye.

There were only four women in his congregation, and we began to hear a lot about Eve. None of it good. Reverend Watson believed that Eve had done a whole lot more than speak to the serpent in Eden. He believed she'd slept with it. True believers were descended from Adam and Eve, he told us, and then, looking straight at me, unbelievers from Eve and the snake. And since Adam's downfall was to listen to Eve, the women were now forbidden to speak. All the evil in the world, Reverend Watson said, came from listening to a woman's voice.

Mattie was afraid to go against Reverend Watson. There I was, her guest for four weeks and I could only talk if there was no one to hear me, which certainly misses some of the point of talking. But then Reverend Watson went to a conference in Boston, and when he came back, we were allowed to speak again, as he had a new plan for transcending the mundane plane of our earthly lives. The new plan involved psychotomimetics. Latter Rain with LSD. Acid Rain.

Lloyd was high for days. He finally had some visions of his own. He saw that he
could
fly, but just didn't want to. What do I have to prove? he asked. I took it myself. It made me so happy. Everything around me danced. Pots. Fenceposts. Goats.

I saw it all from somewhere above, as if life were one big Busby Berkeley number. We were on the ranch, very isolated from the outside world. It was winter. Hundreds of crows gathered in the trees outside the kitchen. There were so many it looked as if the trees had leafed all in black. I went outside and they swam up in elaborate patterns, like words inked on the air. They settled down again, cawing at me. “Go,” they said. “Go. Go. Go.”

 

“I just love crows.” Bernadette looked at Mo. “I hope you put lots of crows in your books. I bet they flock around the sugar-beet fields. Especially when bodies are being unearthed. You could have crows who find clues. There's a bunch now, nesting in the parking lot of the University Mall. I see them when I go to get my hair cut.”

“I sort of do that, only with magpies,” Mo said. “Magpies really represent the Valley to me. One reviewer said I had a magpie motif. I use them for portent as well as theme. I could explain how I do that.”

“If only we were talking about magpies,” Prudie said firmly. “Go on, Bernadette.”

 

Well, it seemed to me if a crow told you to do something you should do it. I left without even changing my clothes. I walked right off the ranch. It was miles and miles to a road with any traffic, and it rained before I was halfway there. Great gobs of rain, so thick I could hardly see through.

My shoes were covered with mud, as if I was wearing shoes on my shoes. I remember thinking that was a real profound thing to think. The mud would break apart and re-form while I walked. Made my feet so heavy, it seemed like I was walking forever. Of course I probably didn't go in a straight line. Not as the crow flies.

By the time I finally reached the highway I'd sobered up. Hitched a ride with a man about my father's age. Mr. Tybald Parker. He was shocked by my appearance. And he scolded me for hitching, said it was a dangerous thing for a woman to do. He gave me his handkerchief.

I told him everything—not just Mattie and Lloyd and Reverend Watson, but everything I could think of. The Peppers. Dad's dental practice. It was so nice to talk freely again; I never stopped to think what I should say and what I shouldn't. It was such relief.

He got me a hotel room so I could shower and sleep, and he bought me a meal with no potatoes in it and helped me call my parents to wire me some money so I could get the bus home. “Don't take any wooden nickels,” he told me just before he left. It was the first time since I'd gone to visit Mattie that I felt God's presence in my life.

I got a Christmas letter from Mr. Parker every year for more than twenty years, until he died. They were wonderful letters, all about people I didn't know, getting degrees, getting married, going on cruises, having babies. I remember how his grandson went to UCLA on a baseball scholarship.

So, all the while I was learning about John and his temper and his grudge list, he was learning about me. Drugs, cults. Visionary crows. He was quite frantic; it was very bad for the campaign. He told me I must never say anything about anything to anyone. I was so tired of being told to shut up. But I stayed quiet. Got pregnant, which John said was a sure vote-getter. Smiled, smiled,
smiled, and secretly hoped he'd lose, so I'd be allowed to talk again.

One day he had a debate scheduled, all five candidates meeting the press. I fixed his tie. “How do I look?” he asked, and I told him he looked good. He was a handsome man. Turned out there was a pair of my underpants stuck to the back of his jacket. They'd been in the dryer; I suppose there was static electricity. They were huge because I was pregnant, but at least they were clean.

I don't know how they got on his jacket. He said I must have put them there when I hugged him. As if I wanted the voters and the press and everyone to see my underpants! I showed up on his list again; by now no one had more appearances there than I did.
Bernadette has destroyed me,
is how the item read.

As if he needed me for that. John turned out to have a past, too, a little bywater off the public narrative. Gambling debts and an arrest record. Aggravated assault.

He ran off with my little sister without even divorcing me. Dad had to go looking all over the state for them to bring my sister home. Because of who John was, it made the papers. Our family didn't look so good, either. The drugs came out then. The cult. One of the Peppers told me they had an opening, but when I went to talk with Madame Dubois she wouldn't take me back now that I was a mother, and notorious to boot. Madame Dubois said that
some
standards had to be maintained. She said that I'd pollute the Peppers.

She told me no one would ever marry me again, or my sister either, but that turned out not to be a problem.

If a fine Picture, beautiful Fields, crystal Streams, green Trees and imbroider'd Meadows in Landscape or Nature itself will
afford such delightful Prospects, how much more must so many well-shap'd Gentlemen and Ladies, richly dress'd, in the exact Performance of this Exercise, please the Beholders.

 

—
KELLOM TOMLINSON
, Dancing Master

Sylvia decided to speak frankly with Allegra. I really need you tonight, she was going to say. I don't think it's all that much to ask. For one evening, try to think about me.

She met Allegra in the hallway, wearing Sylvia's knit dress. “Okay?” Allegra asked.

Sylvia felt a wash of relief, partly that Allegra was coming, partly that Sylvia hadn't told her she had to. Confrontation with Allegra rarely turned out the way you planned. “Sexy,” Sylvia said.

Allegra's mood had improved. She had a lighter step, a straighter back. She was carrying Sylvia's midnight-blue dress with the sunburst stitching at the shoulder. “Wear this.” Sylvia put it on. Allegra picked out earrings and a necklace for her. Brushed Sylvia's hair to one side and pinned it. Applied eye shadow and lipstick, gave her a tissue to blot with.
“Pues. Vámonos, vámonos, mamá,”
she said. “How did we get so late?”

Sylvia took Allegra's hand as they went outside, squeezed it once, let it go. Beeped open the car and slid into a long, hot night.

T
he entrée arrived, salmon and string beans, served with a local Zinfandel. An extremely successful mystery writer delivered the keynote while everyone else ate. Initially there were problems with the microphone, some rasping, squealing feedback, but this was quickly solved. The keynoter was brief and charming; he was perfect.

After he finished, Mo told Dean that the legal procedures in the extremely successful mystery writer's books were all screwed
up. “Lots of people don't care,” Mo said. “I'm kind of a stickler for accuracy myself.” He began to take Dean through the errors of the other writer's most recent book, point by point. “Lots of people don't understand how the discovery phase works,” he said. He was prepared to explain.

Bernadette leaned in to Prudie and spoke quietly. “I may have shaded a few things. I didn't know Mo was a stickler for accuracy. I thought he just liked plot. So I added some bits. Sports. Lingerie. Sexy little sisters. Guy stuff.”

“Drugs. Talking animals,” Prudie said.

“Oh, I didn't make up the crows.”

Prudie found she felt no immediate need to know which parts were true and which weren't. Maybe later she would. But Bernadette was not her mother; maybe she'd never care.

“My husbands weren't any of them bad men. I was the problem. Marriage seemed like such a small space whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Saturday. The repetition would start to get to me.

“And then I couldn't fit my whole self into a marriage, no matter who my husband was. There were parts of me that John liked, and different parts for the others, but no one could deal with all of me. So I'd lop some part off, but then I'd start missing it, wanting it back. I didn't really fall in love until I had that first child.”

The music resumed. Prudie could see the black woman, sans mink, dancing. She'd taken her shoes off as well as her stole. Her partner was a stout, bald white man. Three other couples were on the floor, but this pair drew your eye. There was something deeply incongruous about wearing formal clothes and boogying on down. It took a good dancer to make you overlook this.
Prudie wondered whether they were married. Was she his first wife? Had she lopped off some part of herself to make him fit? If so, she looked pretty happy without it.

Now there were eight couples on the dance floor. Half of these, by Prudie's calculation, were rich men with their second wives. She based her identifications on the differential between the woman's youth and attractiveness and the man's, and on Sylvia's behalf, she disapproved. She had herself married a man much better-looking than she deserved, which seemed to her the way it ought to be done.

Dean saw Prudie watching the dance floor. “Dance with me, baby,” he said. It was an obvious plea to miss the detailed explanation of search and seizure.

Prudie hadn't danced, even alone in the living room to Smokey Bill Robinson, since her mother died. Her mother was a huge fan of Smokey Robinson's. But Prudie thought she could do this for Dean. It wasn't a lot to ask. “Okay,” she said. She realized she couldn't. “In a minute. Maybe later.”

“How about you, Bernadette?”

Bernadette took off her earrings and set them by her plate. “They'd weigh me down,” she said, and followed Dean off.

A shadow fell over Prudie. This turned out to be Jocelyn arriving at last, stooping down to kiss her cheek. “You hanging in there?” Jocelyn asked. She smelled of sweat and soap-dispenser soap. Her hair was wet and spiked around the edges of her face. Her makeup had been partially and patchily removed. She fell into the chair next to Prudie, bent down, removed one shoe and massaged the arch of her foot.

“You missed the soup and the keynote. I was worried,” Prudie said. She actually hadn't been, but that was only because Bernadette had distracted her and no thanks to Jocelyn. Prudie
should
have been worried. Jocelyn could be deliberately rude, but
she was never thoughtless. Jocelyn was never late. Jocelyn was never—unkempt. How weird was this, that Bernadette would look better than Jocelyn? “No sign of Sylvia,” Prudie told her. “No sign of Daniel, either. What do you think that means?”

“I'll go phone her,” Jocelyn said. She put her shoe back on. “I'm surprised about Daniel. Allegra said he'd be here for sure.”

“ ‘Scenes might arise unpleasant to more than myself'?” Prudie suggested.

“Sylvia would never make a scene.”

“You would.”

Jocelyn left. Grigg took the seat by Mo. There were several empty chairs between Grigg's and Jocelyn's. Your love is lifting me higher, the band played. Only without any words. “Can you give Jocelyn a ride home?” he asked Prudie. “Later? After the dancing? I ran out of gas.”

“Sure,” Prudie said. “But Dean will take you to get gas. Whenever you want.”

Jocelyn returned to the table. “They're five minutes away,” she said. “Almost here.”

Grigg busied himself with his dinner. He turned his chair to face Mo. “So. Mysteries. I love mysteries. Even when they're formulaic, I just love the formula.”

“Mine aren't formulaic,” Mo said. “One time I didn't even have a murder until right at the end.”

Who didn't love mysteries? “How do you know Bernadette?” Prudie asked Jocelyn.