Pride, Prejudice, and Personal Statements
Page 14
The bell rings soon afterward. I walk back with Hugh, put my arms around him. But I can tell he’s still mad. Like, actually mad, not pretend mad. “Oh, c’mon, like I care or know anything about sports. Did you scratch your glasses?” His nose is pink now. I kiss it. If he’s sore about his nearly invisible bruise, he wouldn’t last five minutes in his aunt’s dance classes.
I’m still clinging to Hugh when I see Calvin walking with Charlotte. Her arm is around his waist. “The two of you make such a cute couple,” I shout at both of them, still feeling giddy. Charlotte looks confused. I turn around in time to see Calvin mouth Fuck you.
“What is the deal with you and Charlotte?” I ask Calvin. Although I have several dogs to walk, I’m giving Wentworth extra attention today. He was just sitting in his cage, looking miserable again. It’s heartbreaking to see how stressed out he gets when the other dogs bark. I’ve never seen such a quiet dachshund; normally they’re spunky, sparky little guys. Wentworth huddles in a corner and shakes most of the time, until he knows he’s going out. Then he just starts wagging his entire body, like his tail isn’t enough to express his relief.
“Sit,” I tell him. “Good boy.” I give him a tiny training treat. He knows his commands. I take off his leash. I’m trying to teach him to heel off-lead. I have to believe he’s going to get adopted and all of this will be useful one day.
Calvin’s cleaning cages. He’s wearing pink rubber gloves and has the water spray on full tilt. I can tell he’s considering pretending he didn’t hear me, but reconsiders. “There is no deal. I have a date with the lighting director tonight.”
“That’s awesome!” I say. “Is this just to make sure you get an extra-bright spotlight whenever you’re on stage and Lancelot’s left in the dark?”
“Very funny.” Calvin’s unusually…serious. I guess he must actually like the guy.
“Do I know him?”
“You might not. He’s a sophomore.”
“A younger man?”
“His name is Franklin.”
“Oh wait, I do know him! He’s cute.”
“You sound surprised, which makes me slightly offended.”
“You’re the one who always jokes being ugly is the first requirement for a guy on stage crew.”
“I’m done with athletes. I’m sticking with my fellow drama geeks from now on.”
“Does Charlotte know you have a date?”
“Look, Charlotte doesn’t think we have a thing, Liss. It’s not like that. Last night she was crying and flipping out because her parents were so down on her because of her latest English quiz grade. They’re upset that she’s only gotten in the high 600s on her SATs, so a C is a total shock for them. And her.”
“My early grades in Mr. Clarke’s class were a blow to my pride. After I calmed down, I realized that his advice about writing is pretty valid.” I’m annoyed at Charlotte, so I want to seem especially mature in contrast.
“Charlotte was crying so hard she could barely talk.”
“Good boy!” Wentworth gets another treat. “Look, he walked around the whole perimeter off-lead. If an elderly dachshund can learn new tricks, maybe even Charlotte Holland can learn to write passably well.”
“I don’t think that’s her concern. She just wants to make sure her parents don’t disown her.”
“Has Charlotte ever had a boyfriend?” I ask. I guess I am a bit protective and jealous of Calvin’s friendship. I’ve never been the kind of girl to treat a guy like he’s one of the girls just because he’s gay. The fact that Calvin’s going along with what seems like Charlotte’s little fantasy or whatever rubs me the wrong way.
“Her freshman year, for a little bit. Look, she knows people don’t like her very much.” But they tolerate her, because she’s in AP classes, has the right clothes, the right look, and is just always there, I think.
“Do you like her?”
“Christ, not that way, Liss. I just don’t have a need to hate people for no reason, unless they hate me. There are enough shitty people in the world, like the people who dump their dogs here. Like the kids who laugh at… So what if Charlotte wants to get into Princeton, what’s it to you? She’s always been kind to me. If it wasn’t for Charlotte, I’d never have been able to see Wicked or Hamilton. I mean, I can listen to the soundtracks, but that’s not the same. Sometimes she may say dumb stuff, and I know that gets on your nerves, but it’s what other people in the National Honor Society and AP classes are thinking, even if they filter it better.”
Calvin finishes cleaning the cage with an extra-hard squirt of water in the corner, then puts it outside to dry. He’s very efficient. In contrast to how he is in school, Calvin never ignores unpleasant chores at the shelter or when he’s in a play. He was the only actor to be off-book for Camelot after a day or two. He’s always the first person to help out with painting sets and organizing the prop table, even if it’s not his job. I wish I could be the same way. If I’m alone, I just walk the dogs first and play with them. I put off the scrubbing the dirty cages and water bowls until the very last minute; I like to shut out reality for as long as I can. Calvin may do theater, but he prefers to look reality in the face with a clear, cold eye off-stage.
Chapter 12
Follow My Example And Take a Turn About The Room
I tell my dad about Austen-Fest at dinner, in case he wants to attend. “Just think of all those middle-aged woman looking for her Mr. Darcy.”
My father laughs. “I’d love to tag along. Dressed as Mr. Bennet.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, dad. Colonel Brandon.”
“That’s right, I remember Miss Marianne says, in Sense and Sensibility, Brandon complains about his rheumatism. Unfortunately, I have to teach on Saturdays this semester. Can you put this on your college application?” he asks.
“That’s not why I’m going! I’m mortified that you would suggest such a thing!”
“I know, Liss. I was only saying…”
“You don’t even want me to major in English,” I say.
“I have twenty-five essays to grade tonight for English Composition. I didn’t say capitalization was optional, but that appears to be the artistic interpretation of my requirements. I’m trying to save you from a similar fate.”
“Even my friends don’t capitalize when they text,” I say.
“I hope you do, though.”
“Of course I do. I strive to set an example.”
Jacqui and I are texting as I dig into one of my father’s crockpot specials, consisting of pot roast, frozen cubed vegetables, and red potatoes. My father smothers everything with ketchup before he begins eating it. Livy pushes the meat into one corner of her plate, the spuds into another, and then tackles segmenting the vegetable cubes.
Jacqui types, Getting excited about Austen-Fest. Going to do my hair in an upsweep with some white pearls
Wait, if Jacqui’s going to look like Netherfield Ball Elizabeth Bennet …where does that leave me?
“Dad, do you still have your sword?” My father’s sword is fake, of course. He got it as a souvenir from a museum gift shop long ago, but it looks real enough if you just see it in its scabbard.
“Um, yes. What do you need it for? How violent do Janeites get?”
“The zombie version of Pride and Prejudice is kind of a goof,” I explain to Jacqui. “But I figured if I went as a more irreverent version of Lizzie Bennet, I wouldn’t have to take my nose stud out.” I have my father’s sword at my side and I’m in an Empire-waist dress. All in black, which a young girl wouldn’t be wearing in an authentic Regency setting unless she were in mourning, but it’s the best I could find online in my size at short notice (the dress was being sold as a Halloween witch costume). I didn’t have enough time to sew my own gown. Or learn how to sew, for that matter. My raven tattoo on my breast is visible, and I’m wearing my best green Docs; at least my sturdy shoes communicate I’m willing to trek three miles to visit sickly Jane Bennet. They’re anachronistic, true. But i
n a British way.
Jacqui looks beautiful. Not only has she pulled back her hair in a perfect upsweep demurely decorated with a thin band of pearls, but her mom can sew and altered one of Jacqui’s old dance dresses to look like a white Regency gown with decorative ribbon around the sleeves and bodice. She’s wearing a pair of black jazz shoes.
“I tried to persuade Hugh to come, but no joy.” I sigh. “He wasn’t even tempted by the free food.”
“No offense, but your boyfriend is no fun,” Jacqui says.
“Sometimes I agree with you, but what can I say—he’s mine,” I say.
“He has no sense of humor.”
“Wait, that’s not true. His sense of humor is what drew me to him.”
“Okay, he has a sense of humor, but only about other people. Not himself.”
The first informational session is on ballroom dancing during the Regency era. The instructor, who calls herself Miss Davenport, says, “Obviously, we have a similar problem to the Misses Bennets for this dance—a lack of male partners.” She tries to teach everyone a simple reel, or country line dance. When Miss Davenport notices that Jacqui and I catch on pretty quickly, she uses us to demonstrate a cotillion. It’s a kind of patterned dance with four couples.
Since there are only three men in attendance and Jacqui’s tall, my friend gets to play a man and dance with Miss Davenport. Because I’m the shortest woman, I get to dance with this elderly gentleman in everyday clothes who probably got dragged here by his wife. He’s not creepy or handsy, but I so wish Hugh had come along. If only my boyfriend didn’t take himself so seriously. Period dancing isn’t like ballet, where you need a perfect turnout or there’s an ideal body most people can never possibly attain. Miss Davenport notes that the dances were often very vigorous, and when couples were in motion during a cotillion they were supposed to move with “elegance and vivacity,” according to one Regency etiquette book.
We go to an information session on clothing next, led by a Miss Bradley. I remember from the book and television version of Pride and Prejudice that bonnet-trimming was quite the obsession. Miss Bradley says that trimming bonnets with flowers, feathers, and ribbons was common. There was a fad for fake fruit. In one of Jane Austen’s surviving letters, Jane debates whether it is worth the extra money to use false fruit on a bonnet she is trimming, versus cheaper ribbon. For the workshop portion of the class, we have a selection of ribbons and lace to trim our complementary straw bonnets. I go with black lace and ribbons on my straw hat to match my Goth Regency gown.
One middle-aged lady gives me the hairy eyeball. I hear her mutter to her friend as they pass, “I can’t even look at those awful things in people’s noses. So painful.”
“Honestly,” I say to Jacqui, “Sometimes the people who say they love Austen the most are precisely the kind of people Jane loved to satirize in her books.”
Disappointingly, no one gets into a glove-to-glove fight over the trimmings, like Kitty and Lydia.
Finally, we learn how to make a quill pen, the same kind Mr. Darcy used when writing to Georgina as Miss Bingley leaned over his shoulder and incessantly complimented him on the evenness of his writing.
Lunch consists of poached salmon or chicken, fresh fruit, almonds, cheeses, and biscuits (cookies). Everyone gets a glass of wine except for Jacqui and me. We are asked and admit we’re both under twenty-one.
“So, we just got carded at a Jane Austen conference,” whispers Jacqui.
“I hate it when I leave my fake ID in my other purse, I mean, reticule,” I say.
Of course, Jacqui would collapse on a fainting couch if I seriously suggested we get a (real) fake ID. I certainly have no interest in getting one, either. Multiple copies of Jane Austen novels, yes, fake IDs, no.
When we go back to school on Monday, we can’t stop talking about Austen-Fest. Charlotte Holland is unimpressed. “That sounds so bizarre. Like the people who dress up like comic book characters. Only this involves more reading, apparently. Anyway, I wouldn’t have had time to go this weekend. It’s crunch time for studying for the SATs.”
“Don’t you ever just do things just for fun, Charlotte?” I ask.
Charlotte’s eyes narrow. “I’ll have plenty of time to have fun after I graduate in June. I’ll refuse to learn anything at all this summer. My brain will need a complete and total vacation before I—hopefully—go to Princeton.”
“Sushi today?” I observe, as Charlotte debags her lunch. “You’re very brave to eat that after it’s been sitting in your locker for several hours.”
“I asked for special permission to keep my lunch in the faculty refrigerator, aka the brown-bagged peanut butter and jelly sandwich graveyard. You know me, always thinking.” Brandishing her chopsticks, she carefully dips a seaweed-wrapped roll into a delicate little plastic cup of soy sauce. “Anyway, like I was saying, I have no time to read anything beyond what’s required for class. I’m very busy. When I do watch a film or TV, I want to just chill out and watch something completely mindless.”
“Because the rest of us just have tons of spare time?” I ask.
“Once the SATs are over with, I’ll feel like a human being again. What did you get the last time you took it?” asks Charlotte. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“I do mind and I’m not going to tell you,” I say. “There’s no point in telling people your scores on a standardized test, because if you’ve done better, they hate you, and if you’ve done worse, they feel superior to you.”
“I don’t want to hate or feel superior to you, I’m just asking,” says Charlotte. “Why are you so defensive, Liss?”
I don’t care. If I cared, that would give the scores—and Charlotte—power over me. I’ll just eat my peanut butter and orange marmalade sandwich on raisin bread in silence. Until Calvin sits down next to me. “Boy, you stink,” I say. I think I’d prefer the odor of ripe sushi to the smell of Calvin right after he’s found a safe place to smoke more than his usual number of cigarettes before lunch. He shrugs and starts squirting ketchup on his school hamburger from the little packets they give us. He’s wearing a shirt with a pentagram on it as well as his pentagram ring today. Rehearsals must have not gone well this weekend.
Charlotte talks about our mutual college counselor so much I feel that I see her every day, but I have to go to the real Ms. Desborough’s office that afternoon.
“Is your personal statement still about Jane Austen, Liss?” she asks, sighing, checking in on the progress I’ve made with my applications.
“Yes, and I’m happy with the way it is.”
“That sentence about Jane Austen being a mother figure…we could develop it...”
“No.”
“Liss, we’ve gone through a great deal to get Ms. Desborough’s advice.” I know my father means he spent a great deal of money to hire her. I didn’t ask him to. That sounds childish. But it’s my life, my writing. Even if I don’t get in anywhere, at least my mistakes will be my own.
If only Mr. Clarke would have read the essay. Then I could have told my father it had been vetted by someone. Though who knows what Mr. Clarke would say, given my teacher’s impossible standards.
I cobble together a list of schools. Amherst and Wesleyan (major reach schools). Oberlin, Middlebury, Carleton (possibly attainable reach schools). The University of Vermont and Rutgers (safety schools). And, of course, Pennington.
Jacqui texts me throughout her prospective student weekend at The Adams Morgan.
We’re all at that chili and hotdog place you told me about
This is accompanied by a photo of a hotdog slathered in onions and chili. I can also see a cute guy in front of her eating the same thing.
wait a second who is this guy (I forget my promise to my father to set an example with capitalization and punctuation. This is too important.)
Martin. He’s from New Brunswick.
He’s from New Jersey? Get his phone number! Stalk, I mean follow him on his social media immediately!
This is the most romantic thing I have ever heard
I’m not sure he likes me
Jacqui, I will teleport over there in a blue police box and run you through with my sword, if you don’t get this guy’s phone number because of your crazy-ass self-esteem issues. This time, I remember to conclude with a period.
Martin’s more visually exciting, I admit, than The Adams Morgan campus. I’m also a bit jealous, and not just because Jacqui’s eating chili with a cute guy.
I get so sick of STEM this and STEM that. I realize science is important. But not everyone is passionate about adding up numbers, cutting people open, or technology. It’s kind of horrible to say, but I wish I was born during the nineteenth century, when writing poetry and reading classical literature was what conveyed status, not balancing formulas. Back in Jane Austen’s time, the ability to make sense of a work of poetry was viewed with awe. Nowadays, no one cares about the written word, except maybe Mr. Clarke, Amy Lesser, and some Janeites.
Of course, if I lived back in the nineteenth century, I’d have to make an advantageous marriage, wear a corset for ten hours a day, and see my childhood home entailed to a distant male cousin who wanted to have sex with me, just because I was conveniently located in the home he was going to inherit after my father died. That’s if I were lucky enough to be born middle-class. I’d probably be born a poor scullery maid; I’m not entirely sure what scullery maids did all day—Austen never says—but I’m sure it was awful.
There are just no attractive options for me. Even if time-travel back to the Regency were feasible.
I don’t dump all of these thoughts on Jacqui, of course. I think of Jane, not Jane Austen, but Jane Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. I know most people hate Jane Bennet for being so sweet, but sometimes she gets it right. “You do not make allowance enough for difference of situation and temper,” she says to Lizzie. Jacqui wants a different college situation than I do. Her wanting to be a doctor is certainly a great and important thing. I just wish people thought my gifts were gifts, not talents to be discouraged as much as possible for fear they will lead me to a life of penury.