My Jane Austen Summer (14 page)

"I'm sorry," he said.

I felt a rush of gratitude, my face crumpled like a small child while he searched his pockets and handed me a tissue.

"You need help with that grief," he said.

"I've had some help. I chose the Episcopal church, mostly because of the Book of Common Prayer; you know--the exquisite beauty and power of the words."
Manifold sins and wickedness
came to mind. "But after she died, my father do
nated her body to science and we had a lunch in our backyard. He wouldn't talk to the priest; he never went to church with us."

"Why is that?"

"He says God isn't interested in religion." Telling Willis brought it back to me, that sudden vacuum of emptiness--even with all the usual suspects gathered at our house. I told Willis about "the bossy aunts breaking into my mother's china cupboard, the black sheep opening the fridge for another beer."

Willis sat perfectly still.

"Everyone was there except my mother," I said. "She would have asked my cousin questions about grad school and whispered for me to get the silver tray out of the bottom shelf for the meat. I kept expecting her to walk into the room. But she wasn't there. Her place was empty." I stopped to compose myself.

"Yes," Willis said.

"After she died, I couldn't cry. Not until her best friend, who traveled from Ohio to see me, walked into our kitchen." I could still recall the sound of her black pumps on the linoleum floor, the jangle of her keys hitting the kitchen counter, and the rustle of her slip against her black skirt as she opened her plump arms to me. "We've both lost our best friend," she said, holding me tight while I sobbed into her shoulder.

"That's actually a normal reaction," Willis said.

"How normal is sneaking into random Episcopal funerals?" I held the tissue to my lips, recalling the words I craved,
All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song.

"Less so." He nodded.

"My father wasn't home much when I was growing up. He traveled a lot for work and I never felt close to him. Still, I was
surprised when, about a week after everyone left, he started seeing a woman."

Willis closed his eyes.

"Even absent as he had been, his behavior didn't correspond to anything I expected from him or understood about my life and I didn't know what to believe. I still don't. My sister thinks the affair started before my mother died."

"Did you talk to him about it?"

"No. And he told us not to speak of our mother in front of his friend because our grief makes her uncomfortable."

Willis waited while I dabbed my nose.

"I lost the childhood books she saved for me and now I've lost her last gift to me, a cross necklace she made by melting her wedding ring," I said, shaking my head. "I feel like she's slipping away from me."

We were so quiet I could hear a scratching noise and leaves rustling outside.

"No one knows what it's like after we die." Willis looked into my face. I wadded the tissue in my hand and wished for another. "I imagine the soul becomes part of that great eternity beyond our understanding of place and time, with us always, just as God is with us."

"Oh no." I thought of my mother following me around like My Jane Austen.

Willis smiled. "Not in the judgmental
human
way of seeing you."

I accepted another tissue. Willis touched my hand and we sat silently for a while, listening to the house creak and things fluttering in the rafters. "Are you ready to go?" he asked.

"No. I want you to tell me why
you're
so sad," I said.

"I'm not sad." Willis patted my hand.

"Then, what is it?" I asked.

Willis squirmed. "English reserve." He smiled. After a si
lence, he got up and went to his desk to gather his books and I turned to look out the window. I wanted us to leave together and stay together for the walk back to my dorm. He would not get away from me this time. Closing a book on his desk, his movement jarred the table, and the computer screen came to life.

"A light in the darkness," he said, then turned and opened his arms to me. "I'd like to hug you," he said, "if you'll promise to keep your shirt on."

I was grateful he made light of it; thankful he'd found a different way for us to be.

"One more button and I'm afraid I would have been overcome," he said.

I went to him gladly, my arms about his waist, my head on his arm, saving up the sensation so I could recall it in the morning. Close enough to see the computer screen, I absently read the words over his arm, expecting a sermon or a page from his thesis on moral theology. But the words didn't fit my expectations, forcing me to shift mental gears. It took a bit of reading to comprehend what I saw.

"Willis," I said, stepping away from him.

He looked from me to the screen and I recognized the "stopping" look my father flashed at me when I found Sue in his kitchen.

I touched his arm. "There's a vampire story on your computer." The page heading said, "Vampire Priest."

He looked startled, as if the vampire text surprised him, too.

"You're writing a vampire story. Can I read it?" I asked.

Willis hesitated. He swallowed while I stood completely still, waiting, sensing a crack in his mighty reserve.

"Yes," he said.

I
read from Willis's laptop screen, deep into the night until I finished what he had written thus far, the story of a vampire priest who preaches the Gospel after dark and falls in love with a symphony cellist. Luna meets him at the stage exit each night, her white neck a terrible temptation in the moonlight.

Had we just enacted the neck in the moonlight scene?

In the morning, I got out of bed and looked in the mirror, imagining Luna emerging from the back door of the performance hall, unbuttoning the front of her dress, finally and forever offering him her neck. Father Kitt stares for a moment and then buttons her back up to her chin saying, "Luna, we barely know each other."

"Bite me," I said aloud to the mirror.

"What is wrong with you?" Bets moaned from her pillow, back from wherever she'd been for the last two days, mascara
smudged below her eyes more than usual. "It's impossible to sleep in this place."

"Where is my necklace?" I asked. I always checked her neck, just in case my necklace reappeared; now I would check for bites.

"Stop it," Bets growled, dragging herself out of bed to the window, slamming it shut.

"Get my necklace and I'll leave you alone forever," I said.

She went down the hall to use the restroom and I opened the window again, readmitting fresh air and noise from the outside world. No need for air-conditioning in our building; the thick walls performed as a refrigerator. I could see Gary in the distance, walking toward the dorm, coming to fetch Bets as he did every day. Bets hadn't gone missing on his watch, which made me think they were up to something. Bets wouldn't cooperate without an angle.

Bets returned from the bathroom, dropped her towel in a heap on the floor, and walked naked to the dresser, squinting, hopping on one leg and then the other as she adjusted a thong. Bets didn't do Regency undergarments.

"Where is my necklace?" I asked.

"What necklace?" she asked, slipping the ivory gown with blue trim over her head, the same one she always wore. "Oh, the necklace that reminds you of your mother."

I waited.

"I told you," she said, walking to the door. "I don't know." Bets opened the door and ran smack into Gary. "Oh my God, you scared me."

∗ ∗ ∗

I climbed the attic stairs several times that day, first to return the laptop, then to tell him how much I liked the story. He was never there. On every visit, I sat looking out the window and breathed deeply to calm myself, reminding myself to hold
back, we barely knew each other. But we'd known each other forever, hadn't we met in a secret garden in a previous life? An elderly tourist was pushing a walker over uneven ground three stories below my window, when I finally heard feet on the stairs. "Willis?" I called, each footfall coming closer. I'd be lost without him now.

Willis placed several books on the table, slightly breathless. He came around to sit next to me on the window seat. "What did you think?"

I smiled at him, willing him to touch me. On the leg or the arm, just something. "I absolutely love your novel."

He leaned back. "Oh, I'm relieved. I've been worried you'd find it too simple."

"I love it," I said.

"I'm so glad. It's not Jane Austen, of course." Willis shrugged. "But."

"I know you so much better now," I said, "having read your book."

Willis's expression turned serious on me. Just like the time I'd brought him the book or when I asked him to join me in public. He looked straight into my eyes and spoke slowly. "You don't know me."

My Jane Austen's billowing skirt appeared behind me. Reassured by her presence, I ventured a question more probing than usual. "What do I
not
know?" I asked softly. I imagined a witness protection program, weird political secrets, or a mafia connection forcing him to hide in the attic.

Willis shifted, leaning against the window's frame. "I have a lot on my mind." He paused, perhaps deciding how deep to go. He held one ankle over his knee. "I came here to think, and make decisions."

"Here?" I asked. "As in this attic?"

He nodded.

"Is that why you were brooding in the dark church?" Perhaps he was conflicted over the final ordination, trying to decide whether to break the vows he'd made as a deacon. There must be so much pressure to complete the process once begun.

"You're quite a distraction," he whispered, but he didn't look happy about it.

My stomach flipped; I was not a mere sheep of his flock. Yet I couldn't stand to see him so conflicted. "Should I stop coming to the attic?" I asked. During the long pause, I imagined how I would feel if he said yes.

He shook his head. "I like you."

I broke eye contact and touched his knee. That was enough for me. I would find the patience to wait; I was good at waiting.

"I like you, too," I said.

∗ ∗ ∗

On the tea-theatre's opening day, I felt uplifted by the joyful news that Willis liked me. Not
Cosmo
me or
earth
me--but the real me: the original me that had been too weird to introduce to any other boyfriends. The
me
I wouldn't have been able to invent. The
me
that now walked the halls as if I were Elizabeth Bennet, mistress of the tea-theatre. No more wrong turns into closets, I solved the hot water problem by borrowing an electric hotplate and reconfiguring the orange cords. I trained Gary to play the part of Count Cassel, recruited a volunteer's husband to play the baron, and talked John Owen into playing the rhyming butler. I was the person in charge; the volunteers all wanted face time with me. When asked to do something, they responded with brisk action. Tickets sold out and our waiting list grew. I began to believe that I was no longer needy, having outgrown that character flaw before it had a chance to scare Willis away.

When our time came, as the last scene of
Mansfield Park
ended and the room cleared, I gave the go-ahead for volunteers to roll out tables and set them quickly with their wedding china. Tables featured every sort of pattern from understated metallic bands to profusions of blooming wild-flowers. We walked among the tables, a china garden, lifting plates to read pattern names: location names like India and Monaco, or female names such as Juliet and Guinevere, or expressive titles like Celestial Platinum and Crown Sapphire. My mother's china, Ivy Flowers, would fit in nicely here, if it weren't being held hostage by Sue, or worse, trashed.

Once the cast sequestered themselves in the music room, volunteers admitted the audience into the china garden for tea.

∗ ∗ ∗

Omar arrived at the last possible moment dressed in his black staff clothes.

"Where's your costume?" I asked, restraining the alarm in my voice.

"Look, I said I would do this," but Omar did not finish speaking since Magda interrupted, poking her head in the door, sunglasses on, purse slung over her shoulder.

"Gamal," she said, then spoke rapid Arabic.

Gary looked up from adjusting his pink satin cape. He responded in Arabic. I looked from one to the other as Gary, scowling, pulled the cape off his shoulders. "What's going on?" I asked.

"My brother will be late if he doesn't hurry. I don't know what he's doing here since he knows he's scheduled for an ESL test at four-thirty." English as a Second Language.

"Reschedule it, Gary," I said.

Gary shrugged, handing me his jacket, speaking angrily in Arabic to Magda.

I turned to Magda. "People have paid money to see him perform this afternoon," I said.

"He should have mentioned the conflict to you," Magda said, her nostrils flaring. "He is not enrolled in an academic program because he has not passed the ESL exam. If he doesn't take the test and matriculate, he will have to leave the country anyway, tea or no tea. It's up to him." She threw her hands up. "Do you want to go home?" she asked Gary.

Gary walked past me, unbuttoning his shirt.

"Bring me the costume before you go," I said.

"When you work with amateurs--" Magda started to say, but I interrupted her.

"Please excuse us." I pointed to the hallway, allowing tension full rein in my voice.

With them gone, Omar in his street clothes returned to focus. "Not a single word from you," I said. "Go and dress in your costume and come back here immediately. Or I will kill you with my bare hands."

How to replace Gary fifteen minutes before teatime? Perhaps an actor could be persuaded to do it. I ran to the Freezer hoping someone lingered from the last scene but found only Gary, who placed his costume in my arms. "Sorry," he said. Mrs. Russell and Stephen Jervis practiced lines in the tiny butler pantry. Tea patrons lined up in the hall waiting to be let into the ballroom, men and women in period dress, little girls in tea-length dresses and jumbo hair ribbons. What would we do without a Count Cassel? The buffoon of the skit. Without his humor, it would fail. I would fail. Nigel and Vera arrived happy and excited, expecting a tea-theatre.

"Are you ready?" Vera asked, before noting my expression. "What's the matter?"

I told her about Gary. "Do you think Nigel would be up for a part?"

Vera frowned. "Not Nigel," she said, "but what about this line of potential actors?" She gestured toward the tea patrons
standing against the wall as if we'd put out a call for Regency extras. "You said patrons should be allowed to join in the acting. Here's your chance."

A giant iron door opened, allowing me entry into the next level. What a great idea, and it was my idea. They were even dressed in Regency attire, ready to go on stage at a moment's notice. "Ladies and gentlemen," I said, as the crowd silenced and all eyes turned to me, "Literature Live believes that patrons should participate in performances. We have arrived at the moment when one of you will be chosen to play a role in our production. Who among you will play the part of Count Cassel?"

The line buzzed, several women pushed their blushing men to the fore, but my attention fixed on a tall, blustery man who announced, "Count Cassel, at your service." He removed his hat and executed a deeply dramatic bow. He reminded me of self-important Mr. Rushworth.

"Come with me," I said, taking his arm and leading him to the music room.

∗ ∗ ∗

We ran through Count Cassel's lines and played vinyl LPs in the music room while volunteers served the three courses in the ballroom: scones, sandwiches, and tea cookies. The ballroom filled with noise of conversation, people laughing, enjoying themselves at our tea, excitement building for the entertainment. Once the play began, I watched from the butler pantry as Mrs. Russell embraced her long-lost son, Stephen Jervis. I saw how convincingly Mrs. Russell admired her son's physique as he said, "I will never leave you. Look, Mother, how tall and strong I am grown. These arms can now afford you support." Of course, we'd seen him without his shirt.

"I think Mrs. Russell has a crush on Stephen," I remarked to Omar, but he was busy looking over his lines. Just then
Sixby walked in and stood at the back of the room, the spot Magda usually occupied during productions. But no Willis.

Omar and I took the stage to perform the scene where Anhalt, the tutor, is sent to instruct Amelia, who is secretly in love with him, on the good and the bad aspects of matrimony. Amelia manages to wrangle a proposal of marriage out of him before the scene ends. Omar looked a bit green. He spoke his first line and I knew we were in trouble. I wished Sixby wasn't watching, nor Nigel and Vera. Omar's eyes never left the floor. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and his fingers fiddled with the side seam of his breeches as he forgot to ask why my character had been crying. "If you please, we will sit down," he said. I feared he would not remember the next part of his line but it came to him. "Count Cassel is arrived."

"Yes, I know," I said.

Omar took a deep breath, looking sideways at nothing. Then he skipped the next ten lines, proceeding directly to his very long line about matrimony as "the meeting of sympathetic hearts" which I knew he would never finish. I wanted to stop the show. I saw myself interrupting the scene with an apology or tears. I couldn't look at Vera. Magda was right; I should have bought a Eurail pass. As I scrambled to improvise and stop Omar's misery, I saw Sixby walking through the tables with a wild look in his eye. Perhaps he would stop the show for me.

"Miss Wildenhaim," Sixby said, dismissing Omar with a flutter of his hand. "I come from your father with a commission. Count Cassel is arrived."

"Yes, I know," I said.

"And do you know for what reason?" Sixby asked. My hero. He knew all the lines, of course, and we sailed along, improvising where he wasn't familiar with our condensed script.

Willis walked in. My heart jumped as our eyes met and he sat in a vacant chair near the door. The room came to life. "You may tell my father--I'll marry," I said.

"I must beg you not to forget that there is another picture of matrimony," Sixby said. "When convenience and fair appearance joined to folly and ill humor forge the fetters of matrimony, they gall the married pair with their weight," Sixby continued, "till one of them sleeps in death. The other then lifts up his dejected head, and calls out in acclamations of joy--Oh liberty! Dear liberty!"

"I will
not
marry," I said.

"You mean to say that you will not fall in love," Sixby said.

"Oh no!" I said. "I am in love." We sorted through Sixby's professed confusion until reaching the line where I accept his unintended proposal of marriage. "If you love me as you say, I will marry; and will be happy," I said. "But only with you." I glanced at Willis over Sixby's shoulder. "It will soon be known that I am your bride, the whole village will come to wish me joy, and heaven's blessing will follow."

The skit succeeded from the moment Sixby joined in. My Jane Austen especially enjoyed the baron, played by a volunteer's husband, who turned out to be an improv comedian, roasting the guest who played Count Cassel. The rhyming butler closed with his moral: