My Jane Austen Summer (2 page)

"I'm so glad to hear your voice," I said. "Do you think I'm needy?"

Karen hesitated. "No," she said.

I waited in case she wanted to elaborate. "You don't sound good," I said, clutching the gold cross around my neck and twisting the chain around my finger.

"I just got off the phone with Dad." Karen inhaled sharply; the news was bad. "And I'm counting on you not to fall apart." In the early stages of Mom's illness, Karen had counseled me not to jump to conclusions. She reminded me that the doctor hadn't ruled out tuberculosis. Or bird flu. We clung to the hope of bird flu. Now, I sat on my kitchen floor, preparing myself. It hadn't been bird flu and Mother had died within six months of the diagnosis.

"What happened?" I asked, wishing for a tissue, wiping my nose on the dishtowel hanging from the fridge handle as I felt something slither around my neck, into the dishtowel, and then onto the floor. My necklace lay sprawled on the linoleum--the necklace my mother had made for me when she knew she
would die. I couldn't bear to let it touch the ground, much less lie there broken. "Oh my God," I said. "My necklace just fell off." Karen had one, too, a cross, made from the melted gold of our mother's wedding rings. It wasn't just a necklace to us, and my dad's girlfriend knew this, so I always made sure the cross hung outside my shirt in her presence. "Hang on," I said, bending to gather the cross and chain from the floor, making sure none of the tiny links had skittered off under the fridge or stove. "Things are really falling apart," I said.

"Is it the chain?" Karen asked.

"Yes," I said. "But I think I got all of it. Don't worry, I can fix it."

Karen sighed.

I braced myself for the bad news.

"Lily, I talked to Dad."

"Yes?" I held my breath, staring at the legs of my breakfast table, fuzzy dust freeloading in the curves of the woodwork.

"Dad and Sue are going to be married."

I remembered then where I'd seen The Look Martin and Ginny exchanged. My father shared the same exclusive look with his new girlfriend, Sue. A look that telegraphed secret communication--about me--and conferred privileged status to the gold digger sucking the life out of him. The pain was exquisite, razor-sharp surprise from a dark corner, completion of the outrage that began with my mother's senseless death.

I'd puzzled so long over the mystery of Sue's sudden arrival in my father's house that I wondered if she found him in the obituaries. She would have seen my mother smiling from the newsprint, her face cropped from the family portrait we'd taken right after Karen's second was born. Sue shed no tears over my mother's life story, the Great Books Club she ran for the library, her term as president of her garden
club, or the years Mother spent touring children through the Butterfly Garden. Sue skipped instead to the list of survivors, underlined my father's name, and marked her calendar for one week after my mother's funeral, the standard grace period in her business. Sue gave us a week to say good-bye. The bridge club, Mother's Bible group study buddies, and her hairdresser all paid respects, dropping off food, hugging my sorrowful dad, and lending support in the funeral home. But then everything changed. The day Sue appeared in my mother's house, my dad met me in the front hallway. He stood in front of Mother's antique armoire we named The Monster, stopping me with his eyes as if I'd committed a mistake entering his house without knocking, something I'd done every day of my life and would continue to do when I moved back home. When I asked him who was talking on our kitchen phone, he said it was "Sue." I asked if Sue was from hospice, noting she'd collected my mother's unused meds from the counter and loaded them into a box.

"Lily?" Karen said. "Are you there?"

"Yes," I said, my voice breaking. I cleared my throat.

"So, what will you do?" Karen asked, knowing I'd soon be homeless.

"I'm going to England."

"You don't have a job, how can you afford England?"

"England
is
a job," I said. "I'll get paid." I pulled a bottle of Chardonnay from the fridge, kicking the door shut. Vera had never mentioned pay. "How did Dad tell you?" I asked.

"I don't remember and it's not important," Karen said, unwilling to feed the old dysfunction.

"But did he use the word
love
?" I asked, recognizing early stages of fresh turmoil like a black wind howling inside me.

Karen sighed. "Don't make me say these things to you. I'm not the bad guy, Lily."

"But I just want to know what happened to my father. I don't know this man who's taken over his body." Where was the father who held me up on ice skates, who loved me enough to punish my white lies and celebrate my report card? "What did he say?"

Karen sighed. "He told me Sue had been cleaning out the garage to make room for her stuff. It went from there."

I found a glass and slammed the cupboard. "It makes no sense. How could he care about someone so different from Mom? I can't even stand to look at her, those eyebrows tweezed to death and hair teased like a rat's nest. She is so opposite of everything Mom was. I can't stand by and watch him do this to our mother," I said. "Can you?"

"He's an adult." Karen paused. "You know, this really isn't a good time for you to be making big changes. Is there someone at church you could talk to?"

"No," I said, pouring wine, spilling on the counter. "I know what I have to do." The important thing was to get off the phone, hide my car keys from myself, and focus my energy on figuring out how to get to England. There, I could start over without all this mess. My mother would want me to go, her well-known desire to travel unfulfilled because Dad objected; he traveled too much for work. "See the world," Mom had said, offering me
A Passage to India
when I was twelve, teaching me to escape the confines of my life through literature. "I've got to go," I told Karen. I hung up, gripped by new fear of the many potential obstacles, financial and otherwise, between me and
Mansfield Park
.

I had to see Vera.

T
he next morning, I crossed the river and drove toward Oak Cliff. My mission: to accept Vera's invitation to her literary festival. Once I decided to go to England, my recent failures stopped looking so bad. In fact, they began to seem like necessary groundwork for a possible turning point in my life. If I hadn't failed, I'd still be failing.

Posters crowded the bookstore window: "Breastfeeding Mothers Welcome Here," "Winter Solstice Ceremony at White Rock Lake," and "Holotropic Breathing Workshops." Tangled in a roaming philodendron, a hand-lettered sign reached out to me: "Dallas Office of Literature Live." An Oriental brass bell announced my arrival as the breeze from the open door blew stacks of free newspapers, their pages fluttering against the red bricks placed to ground them. Colorful fliers advertising yoga teachers or seeking lost exotic pigs hawked phone numbers on tear-off tags. A portly cat patrolled the entryway and I thought of Aunt Norris.

"Is Vera here?" I asked. A fragrant candle burning near the register encouraged my hope as the cashier, my gateway to England, processed the question. I tried not to stare at her pierced face: her eyebrows, a nostril, and the corner of her mouth. I could barely think, wondering about her tongue. Her name tag said Chutney; surely her mother had not named her Chutney. The woman shrugged and I feared I'd missed Vera; she'd already left for England. But Chutney nodded toward the back. I hurried through stacks rising on either side of me like narrow canyons, the atmosphere cooler and quieter among the shelves. I grew excited by the musty paper smell and the promise of a different kind of future. I'd always wanted to live in a novel, a living cosmos bound by cloth covers, awaiting a reader's attention to launch its narrative. Attending a literary festival seemed very close to my dream of living in a book.

I sensed a gothic villain on my trail and quickened my pace, passing Tolstoy, Wharton, and Zola. Frida Kahlo's eyebrow glared at me from a poster on the end of the next stack. At the turn, I collided with Rochester's mad wife, a small Asian woman reading while she walked, scaring us both. Shouldn't they post that warning from the surgeon general in here?

Stepping into the office doorway, my heart still pounding, I found Vera at her desk, surrounded by books. She peered at me over her reading glasses, reminding me of the silver-haired bookmobile lady from my elementary school who placed her hands on my shoulders almost twenty years ago, gently turning my body away from the childish picture books to behold the novels. "I think you're ready for these," the bookmobile lady had said. A mighty chorus filled the air and an intense beam illuminated dust motes as I reached for my first chapter book.

"You all right, Lily?" Vera asked, her finger resting on the
last word she'd read, her voice so soft and inviting I wanted to sit next to her and read whatever page she was on. Last time we talked, she'd said we were kindred spirits, swallowing mid-sentence, confessing to the same dream of living in a novel. I'd asked if participating in her husband's literary festival was like living in a novel and she said it depended on one's approach.

I cleared my throat and spoke. "I accept your invitation to the literary festival." When Vera first invited me to the lit fest, the books in her office listened politely, knowing I couldn't afford the flight. Now that I wanted to go, books stacked on the floor and covering every horizontal surface held their musty breath awaiting her response. Vera lifted her glasses to the top of her head where they rested on her gray Georgia O'Keeffe braid.

"You accept what?" She marked her page and gently closed her book.

Why did she ask? We'd talked about this.

She pointed to a chair. "Please sit."

Her reaction surprised me; Vera pretending not to understand, as if we'd never discussed me going to England. Navigating piles of books, I walked around her desk and lifted a box of paperbacks from the old dinette chair. Had I read too much into her invitation? Suddenly, the reasons they wouldn't take me multiplied: I had no passport, I spoke no foreign languages, and my literary skills were limited to turning pages. "You gave me the postcard for Literature Live. You said I was ready for it."

Vera shrugged. She smiled at her desk and willed the phone to ring; a woman in the act of backpedaling. Had she used the same line on everyone in the store that day? "Are you planning to be in England this summer?" she asked.

I wasn't imagining things. Vera had said I was ready. She
said I should go to England and leave my problems in Texas. Staring directly at her, I picked a ragged cuticle on my thumb, resisting the urge to bite. Perhaps projects excited her as long as they remained in the abstract. Practical considerations, like what I would
do
and who would
pay
, killed her buzz.

"For some reason I thought you were planning to travel," she said.

"I'm
planning
to change careers," I said. "And when we talked about your husband's literary festival, we were talking about
me
needing a
job
." I leaned forward. "Can't I audition," I asked, pressing my hands together, "for a small part?"

"Audition? I wasn't aware you were an actress," Vera said.

I ticked off high school musicals on my fingers:
The Music Man
,
Camelot
, and
Fiddler on the Roof
. Nothing in college. "And I volunteered with Dallas Community Theatre." I passed out programs when I first moved to Dallas, before I had friends. The sorry smile on Vera's face stopped me from launching into my living-your-literature-like-living-your-faith philosophy. "What?" I asked.

"Auditions were held months ago." Vera frowned.

I held my thumb. "What about a nonspeaking part?"

"You don't understand." Vera shook her head and then revealed the major obstacle lurking beyond the range of my hope. "Visitors don't do the acting," she said. "Visitors watch productions and attend lectures."

I bit my cuticle and blood gushed.

"The festival hires professional actors who perform for the paying public." She tapped her pen on a pink message pad. "But, you know," she mused, pointing her pen at me, "I like your idea. Firing the salaried actors and replacing them with the paying public is an interesting approach." Vera pushed her chair back and offered me a tissue for my thumb. "Let's fire the actors. I wonder how that would work."

I wrapped my thumb in the tissue. "I don't think you would fire all of them," I said, accepting credit for the business concept she'd converted from my misunderstanding. "You'd keep a couple of professionals to coach the amateurs."

Vera's eyes grew wide. "We'd save money."

We stared at each other, not blinking.

"So, can I go?"

"I'm thinking." Vera put the pen down. Something about firing the actors had changed the dynamics and she began to seem like her old self.

"Do you have any other jobs?" I asked.

"Like what?"

"I have a business degree. I could help you in an administrative capacity."

"We have Claire for that." Vera bit her pen.

"I can take tickets."

"You'd have to fight the volunteers for that job." Eventually, she folded her arms and spoke slowly. "We do have one sticky situation you might help with. Let me call my husband and see where he is with that. Hold on." Vera picked up her phone and dialed England, home of her husband, executive director of the lit fest. "Let's fire all the actors," she mused, punching numbers twice before getting an answer. "Nigel dear, any word from Her Ladyship?" Vera swept a few stray hairs off her forehead and I realized what a big adventure this would be, the very word
Ladyship
opening portals of newness for me.

"I was hoping she'd have executed something by now," Vera continued. "No, I don't think it means anything other than she's busy and we're low priority." Her tone changed when she said, "Nigel, how's this for an idea?" Vera looked at me as she spoke. "Have you ever considered firing the actors and allowing visitors to perform the enactments?" The air-
conditioning cycled on while we waited for Nigel's reaction. "Exactly," Vera said. "Not this year, of course." Then Vera smiled at me. "I'm sitting across from the breath of fresh air, even as we speak."

I smiled my breeziest smile.

"Listen, the main reason for the call is to ask where we are on the Miss Banks Situation." Vera wobbled the pen between her fingers. "I want to know if we have a Plan B in the likely event Elizabeth Banks no-shows, because the breath of fresh air sitting across from me is also a lovely young actress." Vera smiled at me. "Think of a young Anne Elliot, brunette, blue eyes, who could fill that opening
and
help us in the Randolph Department."

The Randolph Department?

Vera waited. "No, this is not another of my adoptions." She rolled her eyes. "Although she is a worthy candidate." Pause. "I know. Not only does she have a business degree but she's studied theater in college and performed musicals in Dallas."

Whoa.

Vera winked at me.

I wondered. Was professional acting any harder than high school productions? Acting is acting.

"She's prepared to devote all summer." Vera nodded.

I nodded back.

Chutney stuck her pierced head in the door and listened until Vera waved her out. "I'll discuss that with her. Yes. I'll take my chances with Magda."

Magda?

When Vera finally hung up, she looked at me.

"So?" I asked.

"Assuming Elizabeth Banks fails to show up," she said, "and assuming we get you past Magda, you are in." Vera took a deep breath. "You'll have to pay for your flight."

"What's the Randolph Department?" I asked.

"Randolph Lockwood, Eleventh Baron of Weston." Vera paused, perhaps considering how much to tell me. "He recently inherited the manor where we stage our productions and he's very interested in bottom lines--if you will."

"And you need help with
him
?"

Vera leaned in to confide, "Yes."

"What happens if Elizabeth Banks shows up?" I stopped breathing.

Vera smiled and shook her head. "She won't show up."

"But what if she does?"

"We'll have a new problem." Vera straightened and pressed her index finger on the desk, getting down to business. "You've read
Mansfield Park
," she said.

"Of course."

"And you are familiar with the criticism." Her eyes narrowed.

"Some," I said, considering the introduction I'd saved for last, wondering where I could find more criticism to read--quickly.

She pressed her lips together and lifted a book off the floor. "You'll love this." She handed me a biography of Jane Austen, her gesture conjuring my mother: a gauzy childhood memory where I'm nestled in my mother's side listening to a story about twelve little girls in two straight lines. My mother saved my childhood books in an antique chest and when I read them I can still hear her voice. "And read this," she said, handing me another. "It includes a few essays on
Mansfield Park
."

I took the books. "Vera," I said, locking eyes with her. "Thank you."

She looked startled. "You're welcome." And then she smiled. "You know, you remind me of myself," Vera said. "I
don't often come across amateur readers with such a passion for literature. Jane Austen's prose spoke to you, just as it spoke to me."

I had a feeling that, were Jane Austen present, she would ignore the amateur readers in the room and speak directly with the Randolph Department. Perhaps I should exert more diligence.

"When do I leave?" I asked.