The Jane Austen Marriage Manual (6 page)

He nodded. “We can do radiation. But it will be very painful,” he
said solemnly. “And it will only prolong your grandmother’s life by maybe six months or a year.”

After he’d finished speaking my grandmother did what I had never seen her do in my nearly forty years—she cried in front of a stranger.

When she gathered herself, she said quietly, “I don’t want radiation. I want this to be over.”

I wanted to interrupt and force the doctor to convince her otherwise; even an extra six months would mean the world to me. But he listened to her, and he sympathized. I had known she was in pain but the extent of her suffering was only now clear. The tumor was torture and it hurt so much she wanted to die. Her mind was made up.

“I’ve had enough,” my grandmother repeated.

“I understand,” he said and put his hand on her knee. “You’re very brave.”

“Can you get rid of the pain?” Nana asked and rested her hand on his.

“We can give you morphine,” he explained.

I don’t remember the drive home from the hospital. I recall only a blur of passing scenery, each red light punctuating the reality as it sunk in. My grandmother was going to die. I had kept the secret to preserve my family’s hope for one last weekend. But I soon understood that by withholding the truth, by not saying “cancer” out loud, I had also given myself two more days of denial. We were in shock, all of us, but somehow my family picked up that it wasn’t as much of a shock to me.

“Did you know?” Nana asked me point blank.

“Friday, when the hospital called,” I confessed.

“You kept it to yourself?” Ann asked incredulously.

“I wanted you all to have one last weekend thinking everything was all right,” I admitted quietly.

Nana patted my thigh. “Thank you.” And that was the last we spoke of it.

We pulled into the driveway but no one got out of the car. We were frozen to our seats with no clue what to do next. After several minutes Nana sighed. “I need to lie down.”

“Why don’t I go and get your prescription?” Ann offered.

“Thanks, love,” Nana said softly. Glad to have a task to perform, Ann darted to the pharmacy. Her slamming of the car door jolted the rest of us into action. As if on cue, we unfastened our seat belts, the
click, click, click, slam, slam, slam
, providing the sound track to our slow march to the front door.

Once inside, Iris’s mood shifted. She shuffled through the day’s mail and, tucking an envelope under her arm, practically ran upstairs.

“What’s that about?” I asked when she was out of earshot.

“Your mother is having money troubles,” Nana explained as she tried to make herself comfortable on the sofa.

This revelation wasn’t exactly news. Iris had been known to splurge. Often it was a wardrobe binge that would take two years to pay off. Once it was kitchen gadgets and stainless-steel appliances, though she never cooked. Another time it was running up long-distance charges calling Tasmania to speak with a man she’d met online. A small part of me was curious as to what bills she’d run up this time, but before I could ask, Ann returned with the morphine.

“This should help,” she said as she held the full dropper up to my grandmother. Nana opened her mouth, letting the tiny droplets fall onto her tongue.

“I’m going to my room to lie down,” she said softly and went upstairs for a nap.

Ann and I sat in the living room listening to each muffled step. When her door closed, Ann burst into tears. We are not an affectionate family by any means. We greet each other with the requisite hug and kiss but otherwise we aren’t big on physical displays. So when Ann collapsed on the sofa in sobs, I just sat there and watched.

“I know, this sucks,” I said, obviously. “I was a wreck all weekend. Still am.”

When at last Ann wiped away her tears, I sat down and put my arm around her. That’s when Iris came into the room, her purse over her shoulder; from her eyes I could see that she, too, had spent the past half hour crying.

“I’m going out,” she said and left without even looking at us.

“Bingo?” Ann asked after Iris had gone.

“What else?” I said. “At least
she
has some distraction. Maybe we should all take up bingo.”

“I couldn’t afford it,” Ann said matter-of-factly. “Not the way Mom plays.”

“What do you mean?”

“I went with her once and she spent close to a thousand dollars in one sitting.”

I was taken aback.

“Do you think she spends that much every time she goes?” I asked.

“I have no idea, why?”

“Nana said she was having money trouble,” I admitted. “What else does she spend money on but bingo?”

“And slot machines,” Ann reminded me.

Iris also took regular bus excursions to local casinos. I had thought it was just a good way for her to get out of the house.

“Do you think she has a gambling problem?” I asked, suddenly horrified.

Ann shrugged and changed the subject. “I brought over a new marinade to try,” she said and crossed the room to her overnight bag. She pulled out a mason jar containing a thick greenish substance with flecks of herbs in it.

“You’re doing marinades, too?” I said, part of me relieved to be discussing something else besides my grandmother’s cancer and my mother’s mysterious debt.

“Why not? Everyone is marinading now,” she said with authority. “Besides, I want five products to take to the National Food Fair in Chicago.”

I vaguely recalled this goal of Ann’s. It was supposedly a big deal for food producers because lots of grocery chains and specialty food store buyers showed up.

“When is it again?”

“January,” she said quietly. Neither of us spoke but I’m sure we were both thinking the same thing. Would our grandmother be alive then?

“Marianne is going to have her baby soon and I’ll need another lasagna,” I said sadly. It was strange the way things pop into your head
during a crisis. Who cared about lasagna? Yet it was suddenly an insurmountable problem and I wondered how I’d cope trying to make one on my own. Ann touched my shoulder, understanding what I was saying.

“Don’t worry, there’s lots of sauce around here,” she said and opened one of the kitchen cupboards to illustrate her point. It was stacked with jars of the stuff. “I can help you.”

Ann moved in with us, and the extra pair of hands was needed far sooner than anyone imagined. The cancer seemed to have a life of its own, a parasite with a schedule. We had found Nana a palliative-care doctor who made house calls, which had become necessary because she became so incredibly thin and much too weak to travel. It was as if the diagnosis had slashed away every ounce of will she had. She accepted her impending death stoically, telling us that everyone’s time came and that after ninety-three years she was ready.

I wasn’t so ready. Every night before I went to bed, I kissed my grandmother’s forehead and turned off her light, but she no longer had a book in her hands. The morphine had seen to it that she didn’t need to read to fall asleep.

I buried myself in
Pride and Prejudice
, but even Austen held little solace for me. I found myself reading the same page ten times before giving up and instead, staring at the Smoked Trout walls until the color became a pinkish-gray blur, I switched off my light.

I
had filed the perfume story to
Haute
but had neglected to even think about the Jane Austen story. In one week I would be forty, my grandmother was quickly slipping away, and yet I had to continue working. So on the Saturday night before my birthday I opened my laptop and just stared at the blank screen. And kept staring. All my knowledge and love of Austen’s novels and I had nothing to say.

I lay my head on the table, closed my eyes, and sighed, thinking of how in the end Elizabeth Bennet married Mr. Darcy out of love. The article’s premise wasn’t right. It was a happy coincidence Darcy was rich. Then again, rich is relative. Given my current state even Mr. Collins—moderately secure, but unattractive and socially inept—looked good. I opened my eyes and sat up, stunned by my sudden clarity. Maybe Jennifer’s ruthless approach to life and love wasn’t so off base. Times had changed. I wondered if, unlike in the novel, a modern-day Elizabeth Bennet would turn down a Mr. Collins? I picked up my cell phone. It was Saturday night and that meant the answer would be holing up in a bar somewhere in Manhattan.

“I’m so glad you called!” Jennifer shouted at me above the loud music. We were in a hipper-than-thou club called Condo 11 in the Meat
Packing District. As I looked around I realized that I was one of the oldest people in the room. The crowd was stacked with young women, some dressed very well, others in very little, and the young and not-as-young men appeared aloof and disinterested. In other words the situation was desperate. Jennifer wore a slinky minidress covered in shimmering silver paillettes with equally shiny Gucci stilettos from a few seasons back. She waved into the crowd and two girls galloped over. One was blonder than Jennifer and was squeezed into a purple velvet dress so tight that the only thing she could possibly be wearing underneath was a Brazilian wax job. The other was brunette and more conservative, slightly, in her choice of a little black dress that gave her cleavage plenty of fresh air.

They stuffed themselves into our booth and Jennifer pointed to each one. “This is Tina,” she said and the blonde smiled at me. “And this is Arianna,” to which the brunette stuck out her hand. “And this is Kate.” Jennifer finished off her introductions with, “You three have a lot in common.”

I looked at her blankly, given that I was wearing a knee-length skirt and a cashmere turtleneck.

“You are all victims of the economic downturn,” she said nonchalantly. Turns out that Tina and Arianna had both lost their jobs at investment firms and were on the lookout for a solution to their personal financial crises. Several minutes of sympathetic small talk later Tina sat up and smiled brightly.

“Well, at least we’re young enough to bounce back,” she chirped.

“Kate’s almost forty,” Jennifer said darkly.

“No!” Tina exclaimed in disbelief.

“You’re so well preserved,” Arianna added kindly. I wanted to be flattered but the truth was I was horrified. I immediately slipped into journalist mode and asked them what they thought their solution was. As predicted they wanted an easy out, one that came fully equipped with a wedding band.

“Why else get married except for money?” Tina asked rhetorically.

“I’m living off my savings but that will run out soon,” Arianna explained with an expression of grave seriousness she once reserved for trading stocks. “So we’re here to meet potential husbands.”

“Here? In a bar?” I asked astonished. “Wearing that?”

They looked more puzzled than offended. “Men like how we dress,” Tina said.

“Yeah, we get noticed,” Arianna added.

“I’m sure you do but you’re not taken seriously,” I said, trying to soften my tone.

“We aren’t applying for a job,” Tina said as though I was the fool in this conversation.

“Yes you are,” I said. “If what you really want is a marriage, then men need to take you seriously as a potential wife.”

“We read
Forbes
and
The Wall Street Journal
,” Arianna shot back. “We’ll land our billionaires; we speak their language.”

At that, the two of them slid out of the booth and back into the crowd. I felt my jaw go slack. I couldn’t help thinking that if these two were considered high rollers on Wall Street, no wonder it crashed. I looked at Jennifer and saw that she was grinning slyly.

“I see what you mean,” I said, referring to her out-of-work friends.

“Yup. Dumb as posts in certain areas, right?” she said. “They can decipher the most complex financial systems but old-fashioned romance is too high-tech for them.”

“They do need help,” I admitted, realizing that I had lots of opinions on the topic. I knew then I
was
the perfect writer for the story.

“When is the article due?” I asked, raring to start.

“We want to run it in our June issue. You know, wedding season,” she said. “So I’ll need it by the end of March.”

“Is there a travel budget?” I asked, suddenly inspired.

“I’d have to check,” she said and cocked an eyebrow. “Why? I thought there’d be plenty of material here in New York.”

“I’m just thinking,” I said and tapped my pen on the table. Then I added wryly, “If I’m trying to be a social anthropologist and observe the mating rituals of tycoons, my chances are better if they’re away from the doom and gloom.”

Jennifer nodded thoughtfully. “You probably have loads of frequent-flier miles from your beauty editor days.”

“I do,” I agreed, thinking on my feet. “And I can write up reviews of hotels and restaurants for the magazine to keep costs down.” That
was the pleasure of writing for a top magazine like
Haute
. With advertising budgets slashed, luxury properties fell over themselves for editorial coverage, so all-inclusive complimentary stays were a slam dunk.

She grinned knowingly. “I like how you think. Let me clear the rest with Marianne and our travel editor.”

The trip home seemed endless but it gave me time to reflect. My predicament was the same as the other girls’ and perhaps the solution was, too. How easy my life would be if I could fall in love with, and marry, a rich man. I fantasized about having all my needs taken care of, the lack of stress, and the joy of being the spoiled bride of a man who could afford such a luxury. The thought made me giggle. I felt very young again and that pleased me. Why shouldn’t I marry a man who would take care of me the old-fashioned way? Maybe Jennifer’s friends were right.

Then the same question I had posed to Marianne and Brandon threatened the fantasy.
Is it too late to find a good husband?
Was forty too old? Tina and Arianna had the advantage of youth, but after tonight I wasn’t convinced that was all it took. My added experience gave me an advantage. I told myself I was more sophisticated and elegant. There was nothing stopping me from getting out there and charming an eligible man. Even my grandmother said it wasn’t too late. Why should younger women have all the fun? Surely I had a few more seductions left in me? Suddenly this Jane Austen article wasn’t so ridiculous. Jennifer was right. I had found a third subject to make marrying well a trend. Me. And I vowed to do it in style.