My Jane Austen Summer (10 page)

Sabrina took my hand and led me to the stage to perform the scene where, while touring the chapel at Mr. Rushworth's estate, Mary Crawford makes snarky comments about clergymen before learning that Edmund plans to be ordained. If I followed Sabrina, we'd make it through the scene. I knew I was safe during the long part where Sabrina, as Fanny, expresses her disappointment over the chapel to Edmund.

"This is not my idea of a chapel," Sabrina said. "There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand."

A streak of lightning flashed behind my eyelids, followed by a bone-rattling crash of thunder.
My father knew Sue before my mother died
. Sabrina bumped into me as if I stood in her place. I moved without any idea where to go.
How did Karen know?

"No banners to be blown by the night wind of Heaven," Sabrina continued. "No signs that a Scottish monarch sleeps below." Sabrina gestured to the same chair whose outward scrolling arms supported Sir Thomas in the previous scene.

Mrs. Rushworth said her line: "Morning and evening prayers were always read by the domestic chaplain," she said. "But the late Mr. Rushworth discontinued the service."

"Every generation has its improvements," I said, as another flare of lightning illuminated My Jane Austen's pale figure.
Were they intimate when my mother was alive?
Shaking my head dramatically for no apparent reason, I moved so Mrs. Rushworth could take my place. I concentrated to deliver my long line about heads of the family requiring housemaids and footmen to attend chapel while inventing excuses for themselves to lie in bed for ten more minutes, but the chandelier glittering overhead distracted me, and the Prussian blue paint on the walls had "failed" and for the life of me I couldn't imagine
what had brought Karen to her horrible conclusion
. The sight of brown Currier and Ives china, donated to the production by a helpful volunteer, would forever strike terror in my heart.

Ah! I knew where we would get enough china for the tea.

I glanced at Sabrina, whose smile reminded me of Karen's when Karen first suggested I might need professional help. I imagined Archie pulling me off-stage with a long hook.
My father would never have an affair.
Petrified I would miss my line, I caught my startled reflection in one of the gilded mirrors across the hall, envious of the dumb marble bust reflected beside me on its pedestal. "Ordained!" I said. "If I had known this before, I would have spoken of the cloth with more respect."

And then thunder rumbled again. Magda entered the ballroom from a side door and stood against the opposite wall with Archie. Our eyes met. I experienced the sensation that occurs just before a car accident or a failing grade:
I'm actually going to die now.
Panic surged and I couldn't remember where I was supposed to be standing. I looked at my shoes, the carpet, the upholstery tacks attaching gold fringe to a footstool, beseeching them to help me recall my blocking, but Magda's scornful expression undid me and my memory vanished like yesterday's tourists. If only I could talk with my
mother one last time, pierce the veil of death for one question.

After I left the stage I heard Sixby. "Well, Fanny, and how do you like Miss Crawford now? Was there nothing in her conversation that struck you, Fanny, as not quite right?" The audience laughed. So much for my part in the follies; Sixby would never mention that again.

Archie waited for me in the hall near a sofa where two Asian tourists with backpacks and empty water bottles either napped or had died. His brow furrowed, Archie gestured and I followed him to the Freezer, where he would feed me to Magda. The portraits scowled, Lady Weston could have me deported, and I took no comfort from the breeze wafting in the open windows. Outside, patrons trained their cameras and video recorders on smiling families, catching other photographers in their pictures, along with the house and grounds. I wanted to run away from him, find a phone and call my sister, anything to stop the squall in my soul.

Claire snagged Archie at the Freezer door so I entered alone to await my doom. Magda was not present. But Bets was. Dressed in costume and ready to perform.

"Hi, Cellmate," she said, returning my JASNA bag. "How'd it go?" as if the horror had been according to plan.

Speechless, I took the bag and stared at her. Bets looked different, perhaps her hair caught up in the cap, maybe she'd been crying.

"You got what you wanted," she said. "And take this," she said, handing me her cell phone. "Lock it up where I can't find it."

At first I thought she meant giving me the phone was what I wanted--because at the moment, I needed a phone to call Karen. "Where have you been?" I asked, sounding like her mother again.

"Tommy's," she said.

"Did you bring my necklace?"

She shrugged. "I forgot."

"Oh, Bets. It's not just a necklace." I imagined my necklace hanging on a bedpost or dropped behind a dresser in some slovenly bed-sit. My mother, left in a tangle near a grimy sink, splattered with water and toothpaste. What nasty rocker was wearing it now? "You've got to get it back."

"It wasn't my first priority," Bets said.

"Next time it needs to be first," I said.

"There is no next time." Bets hesitated. "Tommy needs space." Her voice turned to a whisper; her tough bravado and tattoos weren't much help to her now. "He wants us to take a month off from each other."

"Is he seeing someone else?" I asked.

She shook her head. "He's working on a new song." Bets sniffed. "He got the idea from my script."

"A song about
Mansfield Park
?"

"About Fanny Price," she said.

Her phone rang and I looked at the caller ID. "Bella," I said.

Bets grabbed the phone out of my hand, "Stop calling," she said. "I can't talk for a month." Snapping the phone shut, she handed it back to me and wiped her nose on her white gloves. I might never see my necklace again.

"Bets!" We both turned to see Magda, hissing from the doorway, gesturing for Bets to join the cast.

"Do you know your lines?" I whispered, slipping Bets's phone into my JASNA bag.

"Some of them." She shrugged, walking into Magda's outstretched claw.

"You," Magda said, pointing her bangled arm at me, "wait."

∗ ∗ ∗

When Magda returned, Archie and Claire came with her, Archie talking seriously into his cell phone. All three looked very concerned, as if they had not discovered a punishment severe enough to fit my crime.

"That's serious at her age," Archie said into his phone. "She may go downhill really fast."
Rilly fahst.

Archie sat on the arm of a sofa; Magda stood staring at him. She began to speak but Archie raised his hand; his irritation flashed at interruptions, even from Magda. "Are you going to try to see her? Get something signed?" The phone conversation wasn't about me after all. Archie was talking to Nigel and something had happened to Lady Weston.

"Keep us updated." And then he said, "Here's Magda, she wants a word with Vera." Archie handed the phone to Magda as my stomach swooped; he and Claire left the room without looking at me.

"Vera," Magda said. "I know you've got a lot on your plate at the moment but I need to tell you we're having our own disasters over here with the corps of amateurs. Thank you for trying to help, I know she's a personal friend of yours, but I need to be consulted before decisions are made that affect the production."

I slumped onto the sofa, pulling out the crossword puzzle magazine I'd sat on. My Jane Austen drummed her fingers on a bookshelf.

"But Vera, with all due respect, I don't understand why you're taking this stand. It would appear you're allowing sentiment to override artistic and professional considerations at a very critical time."

I found a pencil. One across: animal smaller than horse. Three letters.

"What you are asking the organization to accommodate at this moment is not reasonable. Bets simply cannot handle the demands. I'm shifting the cast around and giving her a smaller part. And I'm sending Lily back to you. You can keep her or send her home, I don't care."

My heart dropped. Home. The wedding. There
was
a punishment cruel enough to fit my crime.

Magda gestured, her bangles clanking. "I appreciate your spirit and I hope you are able to introduce Jane Austen to more and more ordinary citizens, but right now we're trying to produce
Mansfield Park
, and if Jane Austen were present this morning, she'd eat your Lily for lunch. And shut us down."

My Jane Austen
was
present and she was writing her next book based on the persecution of Lily Berry by the tyrannical literary person wearing a head scarf. After Magda clicked off the phone with her long thumb, she smiled at me, and I recognized the expression my boss used when he fired me, the same delicious regret Sue expressed whenever she had the pleasure of saying no to me. Magda folded her arms, silencing the bangles, and I felt my insides crushed to pulp, the end of the line for me.

"Surely you are aware that you are in over your head," she said without expression.

I sat there, absorbing the hit, a misfit at this festival; too bookish for home, not bookish enough for here.

"And I can't imagine you're enjoying this." She rolled her eyes and raised her hands in supplication, waiting for me to speak, but I was so close to tears that one false move would put me over the edge. I determined not to cry in front of her.

"I performed with almost no preparation," I said.

"True." Someone opened a door on the noisy hall and Magda waved them out without looking to see who wanted in.

"I know my lines. I can learn the blocking."

"Listen to me," she said.
Lee sen to mee
. "Don't expect Vera to wave her wand and fix your life by bringing you here." Magda looked directly into my eyes, stabbing her finger into her palm. "Even if she could, she has her own problems right now. She's not thinking clearly." Magda sighed and spoke more softly, almost pleading. "Why don't you get a Eurail pass and travel? Do something good for yourself."

"But I want to do
this
," I said, knowing My Jane Austen far preferred the literary festival to any train trip.

She shot back at me, "Teaching you to act so you can participate here is completely outside the scope of this organization's mission. I'm not paid enough to train you; we have no money for theatre directors. I'm an English teacher who does this for the privilege of spending the summer with other English teachers."

I considered her privilege, one of spending time with a married man in a manor house.

"Archie and I are not theatre directors but we have done enough theatre to pull off what we do here. But we must have professional actors who know what they're doing. Am I clear?"

"What about Bets?"

Magda narrowed her eyes at me and held up two fingers. "Two important qualifications Bets has that you don't: She's related to the Weston family, and her parents are donating funds to cover this year's operating deficit. Any more questions?" She raised her eyebrows and glared at me, waiting.

Could the Wallet cover our scones?

When I said nothing, she continued. "If you insist on remaining at this festival, you must stay in Vera's office. There is nothing for you on my stage."

Bets's phone rang in my bag. "I want a part," I said.

"Good-bye," Magda said louder, competing with the noise of the phone. A staff person with a bucket of tar asked Magda a question from the doorway, and they both left.

I had not escaped my life when I left Texas. There was no escape for me. This organization was another version of reality, just as populated with human appetites and dynamics. If I would act on a stage at Newton Priors, or live in any novel that took place here, I'd have to get past Magda to do it.

I
needed a private place to call my sister. Not in the hall crawling with nosy patrons, nor the busy office. The timid English sun briefly appeared in the fan window above the door, coaxing my gaze upward. Omar had mentioned a third floor. "Off-limits," he'd said. The perfect place. I moved quickly, avoiding Mrs. Russell selling tickets in the foyer.

On the second floor, surrounded by doors, I turned a random knob seeking stairs to the third floor but found a closet stuffed with yellowing roll-up blinds and rotting drapery fabric. The closet smelled musty like My Jane Austen. I chose another door, opened it a crack, and peeked inside. Too dark to see anything, I opened a bit wider and light shone onto a narrow staircase. Ascending carefully, the prehistoric steps not deep enough to accommodate my entire foot, I climbed, balancing in the dim light by touching the naked brick wall. Chilly air at the top smelled of damp decomposition, a likely
habitat for unquiet spirits. Moldering boxes and furniture skeletons, paint cans, and rolls of carpet barely left a path from one end of the vast attic to the other. I spied movement out of the corner of my eye but it was only My Jane Austen looking particularly dead in the dim light. "You scared me to death," I said aloud.

The torn side of a box revealed papers tempting me to explore its content. Omar said he'd been through the household stuff and found nothing of interest, but had he been up here? I touched the torn box, imagining a bundle of love letters straining a once-lavender ribbon, glad I'd discovered this part of the house before being extradited to Texas. But then I remembered Karen and her devastating news and the reason I'd initially sought this attic. Pulling the phone out of my JASNA bag, I sat on the top stair and dialed her home number where it must be late afternoon. I listened to the phone ring in my right ear.

"Hello," a man's voice called. But I heard him in my left ear.

"Hello," I responded, the phone still ringing for Karen in my right ear.

"Sorry if I frightened you," the voice said in my left ear.

Karen's machine came on. "You have reached the Adams family," Karen said, followed by the TV theme song. I stood, leaning into the room where I could see a man, ominously back-lit, sitting behind an open laptop at a table near the far window.

I blinked. "If you want to leave a message for Karen, press one." I powered off the phone as excess adrenaline wandered my arteries asking what happened.

"I should have said something to let you know I was here," he said, rising. "But I thought you were one of the
inspectors who've been in and out this morning." Tall and serious, dressed in a priest's white collar and black shirt, he was such a perfect gothic specimen I expected him to speak Bronte. Immediately, I recognized the man I'd seen in the dark church, serving at the altar, and in the company of Randolph at the orientation meeting. "Lots of activity up here today." He smiled. The way he closed his laptop with both hands made me think of a coffin lid. "Willis Somerford." He stepped around the table and offered his hand as if this were all completely normal. I told myself that if he was one of the restless spirits in this attic, I wouldn't feel anything when we touched. But his handshake felt firm and warm, his face looked gentle.

"I'm sorry to bother you," I said. "I'm Lily Berry." The area near the window had been cleared for the table where his work-in-progress lay open. His black suit jacket hung over the back of a wooden chair, papers peeked out of several manila files, and a stack of books layered mountainlike, suggesting an ascent into ideas. "This must be your office," I said, imagining him writing sermons on Paul's letters, or an impenetrable book of theology.

He glanced at his desk and then watched me as he spoke, the way Martin observed pedestrian women from his driver's seat, appraising from behind as he got closer and then, after passing, observing their faces in his rearview mirror. Martin's conversation always lacked focus until he'd driven beyond range. Willis squinted at me. "Weren't you in St. James's Church the other night? Did you see me? It was dark."

"Yes, I saw you there," I said, "and at the orientation meeting and the church in town."

"Ah, then we've met," he said.

An open book lay facedown on his desk,
A Midsummer
Night's Dream
. Books stacked on the floor reminded me of the six I'd maintained in my office cubicle, although Willis appeared to read more widely:
The Backpacker's Manual
,
1000 Places to Visit Before You Die
, and
Getting Started in Sailboat Racing
. The orange electric cord hanging outside the house belonged to him. Entering through a crack in the window, it snaked over the plank seat and onto the floor, powering his laptop.

"I gather you're with the festival," he said, gesturing to my costume. Again, he looked at me intensely, like a man too much alone. In a world full of choices I failed to inspire much interest; but apparently, in a lonely attic, dressed as Mary Crawford, I commanded attention.

"Yes, but I'm afraid I've made a mistake coming here," I said.

"Actually, you've only gone as far as the third floor, not too far from where you started."

"No, I don't mean
here
," I said, gesturing to the attic. "I mean England." My toe dug into accumulated dirt and I warned myself to stop, change direction. "You must be a priest," I said, recalling Mary Crawford's insensitive line I'd butchered an hour ago.

"Not yet," he said. "I'm a deacon in the Anglican church."

"So you
will be
a priest?" I sniffed.

He smiled and broke eye contact. "That's a very good question," he said, turning and walking behind his desk. "You're not the first to ask," he added, digging in his pocket. "But you came up here to be alone." He handed me a tissue. "I'm intrigued." I wiped my nose as gracefully as possible while he gallantly diverted his gaze out the window.

"Where to start," I said, stalling, not wanting him to think less of me for being fired by Magda. He gestured to the plank
window seat and pulled the chair from his desk to face me as I sat. He waited so patiently, a technique learned in priest classes, no doubt. The longer he waited, the more I felt compelled to answer his question. After all, Karen had suggested I speak with clergy. Willis planted both feet on the floor and propped his elbows on his knees.

"Do you know Magda?" I asked.

"No."

"She's the assistant director, and she has it in for me."

"Pity." He shook his head, not without irony. "Did she say why?"

"Because I like Fanny Price."

"Who is?"

"The protagonist in
Mansfield Park
."

"Ah, I thought the name sounded familiar."

Gathering courage, I told him a sanitized version of how, covering for Bets, I'd messed up on the blocking. He listened as intently as he observed. "Do you know what I told myself before I came here?" I asked.

"What?"

"That Texas didn't
get
me."

"Really. Not get
you
." He smiled as if he knew better.

"I was so certain England would get me. That Literature Live would get me; that we would all
only connect
." An odd look crossed Willis's face, reminding me that Forster's
only connect
did not mean, as I had mistakenly believed, relating to others with greater gusto. "But the truth is"--I dug myself in deeper--"I can only
only connect
with people who are dead or fictional, and can only be happy in places that exist in an author's head. My best friend is--" I gestured to where My Jane Austen would be if she were there listening as I felt she was, but stopped myself and turned back to him.

"I'm sorry?" he said.

"It's nothing." I crossed my legs; wild horses could not force me to tell him about My Jane Austen.

"So," he said, "you're a reader." Then Willis shrugged and looked sideways at me. "Ever consider ditching all this and living in a novel?"

I blinked. He might be pulling my leg, hard to tell. I considered this attic full of junk, murky light struggling through the dirty window, this conversation with a handsome Bronte icon in a house reeking of Jane Austen, and him
getting it
. It seemed increasingly less likely I was conscious. Perhaps I was dead, this was heaven, and murder should be added to Magda's crimes against me. "Yes," I said, leaning forward.

He smiled at me. "Life in a novel would be so much easier than this constant necessity to sort things out for oneself, don't you think?"

Whereas my life had been going from left to right in a general clockwise motion up until that moment, everything suddenly came to an abrupt stop--and resumed a fraction of a second later in the completely opposite direction--with a marked increase in tempo. As if I had crossed the prime meridian or the Continental Divide, suddenly there was a new way for everything to be. Looking into his eyes, I said, "When I was ten I wanted to
be
the Witch of Blackbird Pond."

"A witch." His eyes lingered on my face, and for a second, not only did we share The Look, but I really felt like a witch. No one else had ever come close to understanding such thoughts. Not Martin, not my friend Lisa, certainly not Karen, not even my mother; no one but My Jane Austen. I felt so comfortable with this man, as if we were resuming a conversation we'd been having in a previous life. He appeared to feel the same energy.

"But then authors would be God," he said.

"Ah." I sat up straight. "In that case, I could live my literature the way religious people live their faith." I flinched inwardly as I said "religious people" Mary Crawford came so naturally when I wasn't on stage.

"Interesting," he said, with emphasis that made me feel brilliant. Willis folded his hands behind his head and propped his feet on my bench. Just as he opened his mouth to speak, Bets's cell phone, incarcerated in my JASNA bag, began to ring. Willis's mouth froze open, his next word unsaid.

"I'm so sorry," I said, rummaging for the phone. Bets had annoyingly left a lot of her stuff in my bag. I found the phone and turned off the power. "My roommate's phone," I said, slipping it back in the bag, wondering if the caller was Karen. Willis looked different when I returned my attention to him. His body remained in the chair opposite but his face was somewhere else, seeing something I couldn't see.

His feet hit the floor as he looked at his watch. "I'll have to excuse myself." Those were not the words he had been planning to say before the phone interrupted. "I've got to run," he said, standing, thrusting arms into his jacket.

I held my ground, watching his face, hoping to grab him by the eyes, but he did not look at me. Instead, he pushed his laptop and some papers into a case. He slung the strap over his shoulder and paused for a moment, drumming fingers on the table, apparently trying to remember what he needed to take.

"A pleasure meeting you," he said to his desk.

"Are you associated with the festival?" I asked. I'd just met my other half; I didn't want it to end. Would I ever see him again? Stumbling upon him in the attic would only work once.

"No," he said, followed by a pause during which his eyes glazed, giving the impression he couldn't think and talk simultaneously. He stuffed pink message papers from a drawer into his pocket. "I'm not with the festival." He looked at me, finally. "Enjoy your time here," he said, smiling politely.

"I'm sure I will," I said, following him out, hoping to continue talking as we walked. But our interview had ended, perhaps forever. I stepped over damp cardboard and tripped down the uneven steps trying to keep up, but Willis walked so fast I lost him after the second floor.