The Jane Austen Book Club (11 page)

Karin Bhave was waiting for her with a note: Ms. Fry, the drama teacher, asked if Karin could be excused for the period. The school production of
Brigadoon
was having its first dress
rehearsal this afternoon and its second this evening, and the blocking for some of the scenes was still not working.

Karin had played Maria in
The Sound of Music
her sophomore year, Marian the librarian her junior. The day the cast list for
Brigadoon
had gone up, Prudie had come upon her sobbing alone in the bathroom, tears streaking the blusher on her cheeks, turning it to war paint. Prudie had assumed, naturally enough, that the lead had gone to someone else. She'd said something well intentioned, that one didn't want to do the same thing over and over again, even when that something was something good. She'd said it in French, because everything sounded better in French. Prudie was a better person in French—wiser, sexier, more sophisticated.
“Toujours perdrix,”
she'd finished, exhilarated by the idiom. (When she'd thought back on it later, she realized there was little chance Karin had understood her. The straight path, the English version, would have served better. Her ego had gotten in the way of her purpose.
Tout le monde est sage après le coup.
)

As luck would have it, she'd misjudged the problem anyway. Karin had once again been given the female lead. Of course she had. No one else had her bell-like voice and her slender figure and her innocent face. Karin was crying because the male lead had gone to Danny Fargo and not, as she'd secretly hoped, to Jimmy Johns, who was, instead, playing the part of Charlie Dalrymple. So Karin was going to have to fall in love with Danny Fargo in front of the whole school. They would kiss with everyone watching, and in order to do so, they would have to practice kissing. This was what her future held—numerous kissings of Danny Fargo while Ms. Fry stood at her elbow, demanding more and more passion. “Look into his eyes first. Slower. Naked longing.” Karin had kissed under Ms. Fry's direction plenty of times before.

Plus, there were no other imaginable circumstances under which a girl like Karin could hope to kiss a boy like Jimmy. Jimmy had surprised everyone by even trying out when the show would pose such an obvious conflict with the baseball season. Jimmy's coach had told the team they couldn't do any other sports. Not in his wildest dreams had it occurred to him to outlaw the musical.

Jimmy was his only reliable closer. Accommodations were made, though the choice of a musical over baseball had left Coach Blumberg at first stunned and then dispirited. “I don't have so many seasons left in me,” he'd told a group of women in the teachers' lounge.

The whole thing had cruelly raised Karin's hopes. If Jimmy had gotten the part of Tommy, they would have spent a lot of time together. He might have actually looked at her. He might have noticed that she could, in makeup and with her hair done, look just like a star in a Bollywood musical. Danny Fargo might have the same revelation, but who wanted him to?

“Are you coming to see us?” Karin asked Prudie, and Prudie said she wouldn't miss it. (Though how hot was the theater going to be? How would she herself respond to the spectacle of Jimmy Johns, with his closing-pitcher arms, singing “Come to Me, Bend to Me”?)

She gave her sixth-period class the same section of
The Little Prince
to translate, but as they were third-years, English to French instead of the other way around. “The second planet was inhabited by a conceited man.”

Prudie returned to her index cards. It had occurred to her over lunch that none of Jane's other heroines was anywhere near as devout as Fanny. The book club had yet to even mention religion.

Austen's other books were filled with clergymen's livings—promised, offered, desired—but these posed more financial
concerns than spiritual ones. No heroine but Fanny spoke so approvingly of worship or seemed to admire the clergy so much. Six books. So many scenes of village life, so many dances and dinners carefully depicted. Not a single sermon. And Jane's father had been a clergyman himself. There was much here to discuss! Bernadette would surely have things to say about this. Prudie filled five new cards before the heat got to her.

Her headache was making a comeback. She pressed on her temples and looked at the clock. Sallie Wong had written a note, folded it like a crane, brushed it off the desk with her elbow. Teri Cheyney picked it up, unfolded it, read it. Oh my God, she mouthed. (And not
Mon dieu.
) Probably Trey's name was in that note somewhere. Prudie considered confiscating it, but that would involve standing. She was so hot she thought she might actually faint if she stood. What might the students not do if she were unconscious? What romps and frolics? Little black spots swam through her vision like tadpoles. She put her head on the desk, closed her eyes.

It was, thank God, almost time to go home. She would do some light cleaning before the book club came. Quick vacuum. Casual dusting. Perhaps it would be cool enough by eight to meet out on the deck. That might be lovely if the Delta breeze came in. The noise level in the classroom was rising subtly. She should sit up before it got out of hand, open her eyes, clear her throat loudly. She was determined to do so, and then the bell rang.

And then, instead of going straight home, Prudie found herself outside the multipurpose room. The kids who did drama were an interesting group. Mostly into pot, which distinguished them from the ones who did student government (alcohol) or played sports (steroids) or did yearbook (glue). So many distinct sets and subsets. There was something quite mandarin about the complexity of it. Prudie sometimes wished she'd studied
anthropology. There would have been papers to write. Of course, that was the bad news as well as the good. Writing papers would have been an effort. She wasn't her mother's daughter for nothing.

She could hear music, muffled through the multipurpose room door. Behind that door was the Scottish highlands. Mists and hills and heather. It sounded lovely and cool. While going home, desirable in every other way, involved getting into a car that had been in the parking lot with the windows up since eight that morning. She would have to wrap her hand in her skirt to open the door. The seat would be too hot to sit on, the steering wheel too hot to hold. She would spend several minutes actually, technically, baking as she drove.

None of this would improve with delay, but the prospect was so unappealing that Prudie chose door B. She was rewarded with a wash of air-conditioning over her face. Some kid who'd never taken French was playing the bagpipe. Onstage the players rehearsed the chase of Harry Beaton. Ms. Fry was having them run through the scene, first in slow motion, and then up to speed. From her seat, Prudie could see the stage, and also the actors waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, in the back, the bagpipe practiced for Harry's funeral. Without exactly liking the instrument, Prudie admired the performance. Where would a kid from California have learned to blow and squeeze that way?

The boys jumped down off the stage, kilts flying. Jimmy Johns put his arm around the blond sophomore girl who was playing his fiancée. In Brigadoon, their love had broken Harry's heart; at Valley High, the broken heart was Karin's. She sat a few rows back and alone, a careful distance from Danny.

Prudie found herself in sudden sympathy with Coach Blumberg. How wise was it, after all, to encourage these children to play at great love? To tell them that romance was worth dying for, that simple steadfastness was stronger than any other force
in the world? What Coach Blumberg believed—that there was something important about nine boys outpitching, outhitting, and outrunning nine other boys—seemed, by contrast, a harmless fraud. Jane Austen wrote six great romances, and no one died for love in any of them. Prudie observed a moment's silence in honor of Austen and her impeccable restraint. Then she was just quiet with no purpose to being so.

Trey Norton slid into the seat beside her. “Should you be here? Don't you have class?” she asked him.

“It was a hundred fourteen in the Quonset. Some geek had an actual thermometer on him, we were let out. I'm picking up Jimmy.” Trey was smiling at Prudie in a disconcerting way that wasn't his usual disconcerting way. “I saw you in the library. You were watching me.”

Prudie felt herself flush. “A public display of affection is public.”

“Okay, public. I wouldn't call it affection, though.”

It was long past time to change the subject. “The boy playing the bagpipes is really good,” Prudie said.

If only she'd said it in French! Trey made a delighted noise. “Nessa Trussler. A girl. Or something.”

Prudie looked at Nessa again. There was, she could see now, a certain plump ambiguity. Maybe Trey wouldn't tell anyone what she'd said. Maybe Nessa was perfectly comfortable with who she was. Maybe she was admired throughout the school for her musical ability. Maybe pigs could jig.

The best thing you could say for Nessa was that she had only three years here. Then she could go as far away as she liked. She could never come back if that was what she wanted. Prudie was the one staying. She had a sudden revelation that this was Brigadoon, where nothing would ever change. The only people
who would age were the teachers. It was a terrifying thing to think.

She had a more practical idea. “I'm not wearing my contacts,” she offered. Lamely and late.

“Yes you are.” Trey was looking deep into her eyes; she could smell his breath. It was slightly fishy, but not in a bad way. Like a kitten's. “I can see them. Little rings around your irises. Like little dinner plates.”

Prudie's heartbeat was quick and shallow. Trey lifted his chin. “And a good thing. PD of A to starboard.”

Prudie turned around. There, right there, in the wings, with the stage empty but a fair number of kids still scattered about the auditorium, Mr. Chou, the music teacher (unmarried) slipped his hands over Ms. Fry (married)'s breasts, squeezed them as if he were testing cantaloupes. And clearly not for the first time; those hands knew those breasts. What was it about this school! Prudie's headache upped its tempo. The bagpipe exhaled forlornly.

Prudie's second reaction was to calm down. Maybe this was not so bad. It would distract Trey from her unfortunate faux pas about Nessa. Nessa was an innocent here; Prudie didn't regret the exchange.

As for Ms. Fry and Mr. Chou, Prudie couldn't even pretend to be surprised. Ms. Fry had large breasts. Take pheromones, add music, rehearsals day and night, people dying for love. What could you expect?

One of the things that troubled Prudie about
Mansfield Park
was the way things ended between Mary Crawford and Edmund. Edmund had wished to marry Miss Crawford. It looked to Prudie as if, whatever other excuses he might offer, he'd finally cast her aside because she wished to forgive her brother and
his sister for an adulterous affair. Edmund accused Mary of taking sin lightly. But he himself preferred to lose his sister forever rather than forgive her.

Prudie had always wanted a brother. It would have been nice to have someone with whom to cross-check memories. Had they ever been to Muir Woods? Dillon Beach? Why were there no pictures? She'd imagined that she would love this brother very much. She'd imagined he would love her in return, would see her shortcomings—who would know you better than a brother did?—but with fondness and charity. In the end, Prudie disliked Edmund so much more than she disliked his scandalous, selfish, love-stricken sister.

Of course, attitudes changed over the centuries; you had to allow for this. But an unforgiving prick was an unforgiving prick. “Oo-la-la,” Trey said.

Prudie's own feelings on adultery were taken from the French.

“The evergreen!—How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen!”
(
MANSFIELD PARK
)

The climate in the Valley was classified as Mediterranean, which meant that everything died in the summer. The native grasses went brown and stiff. The creeks disappeared. The oaks turned gray.

Prudie got into her car. She rolled down the windows, started the AC. The seat burned the backs of her bare legs.

Some bird had shat on the windshield; the shit had cooked all day and would have to be scoured off. Prudie couldn't face doing this in the full sun. Instead she drove home while peering around a large continent—Greece, maybe, or Greenland. Using the
water and wipers would only make things worse. None of the driving was freeway, and she had mirrors, so it wasn't really as reckless as it sounded.

Without any particular affection for her eldest cousin, her tenderness of heart made her feel that she could not spare him; and the purity of her principles added yet a keener solicitude, when she considered how little useful, how little self-denying his life had (apparently) been.
(
MANSFIELD PARK
)

The curtains were drawn and the air conditioner was on, so Prudie walked into a house that was dark and tolerably cool. She took two more aspirin. Now that it came to it, she didn't have the energy for further cleaning. Her lists were a comfort to her, an illusion of control in a turvy-topsy world, but she was no prisoner to them. Things came up, plans changed. Holly, the housekeeper, had been by last week. The place was clean enough by anyone's standards but Jocelyn's. Prudie would have to go out shopping again, there was no help for that, or serve a salad made from a romaine already browned at the edges.