by Mary Pagones
Tomorrow, I’ll be immersed in my “real” Jane Austen life. I was looking forward to the conference before, but now I’m even more eager to depart. Plus, I’m angry that Hugh read my novel without my permission and mocked it in front of his family. I feel the rough draft was a very fragile thing, a web of silk threads his disdain has torn. I’ll have to weave my confidence back together again from scratch.
I see that Hugh’s phone isn’t locked. Good. I’m going to put Jane Austen as his background image in revenge.
He has a text from…my sister…hanging out there. I gasp as I read it.
I scroll up after reading the first text and start to read their conversations.
“Liss, what the hell? Do you know what hour of the morning it is and…what the actual fuck are you doing?”
I never realized how sensitive an instrument a sword is, even a prop sword. I can feel the tenderness of Hugh’s flesh beneath the blunt point. I trace a circle, gently, around his Adam’s apple with my dull blade.
“The first seminar of my Jane Austen conference doesn’t start until the afternoon. It’s a talk about the ballroom scenes in Pride and Prejudice. Unfortunately, there are no information sessions on swordsmanship during the Regency era. What a pity,” I say. “I’ll have to improvise.”
“Have you lost your ever-fucking mind?” he asks.
I’m dressed in my new black-and-white Elizabeth Bennet period dress. I have my very best diamond nose stud in. I didn’t have time to do my hair, which is wild and blousy, hanging down my back. I considered taking out my sword immediately after I scrolled up and read all my sisters’ texts. But I wanted to make sure I was ready to leave and in full Regency gear for the conference. Hugh was sleepy from the alcohol, so I knew he wasn’t going to wake without prodding.
“How wonderfully white your throat is,” I say. “I’ve always wanted to say that to someone.”
“Liss…you aren’t….”
“This is a fake sword, Hugh. It just feels…uncomfortable, doesn’t it? It’s not dangerous. I mean, I would never physically hurt you. Elizabeth Bennet didn’t kill Wickham for having sex with her sister,” I say, sweetly.
“What the hell are you talking about, Liss?”
“Then again, I always say, the duller the blade, the more dangerous the knife. Hugh, I read your texts to Livy. I know the two of you hooked up. Tutoring session?”
“Those messages were private.”
“Well, so was my rough draft of a novel you read without my permission!”
“Look, Liss, it was just…we messed around a little bit, okay? It was no big deal. It just happened.”
“No big deal? She’s my little sister!”
“The physics stuff just got boring and…for Christ’s sake, she made the first move.” I press the sword closer to his throat. “That hurts!”
“Scream if you want help, then,” I say. I run the sword down his stomach. I assume the rest of Hugh’s family is sleeping off whatever they drank last night.
“You crazy, crazy fucking bitch,” he says. “At least your sister is nice. Fuck!” I touch the blade of the blunt sword to the tender area right above his crotch. Just to let him feel the pressure.
“You’re not even worth this,” I mutter. I pick up my bag, which is lighter now, since I have my sword in a scabbard by my side. I feel more balanced already. “Farewell.” I throw on my coat and stride out of the apartment.
It’s quiet outside. I’m numb and other than heading downtown where the Jane Austen conference is located, I have no idea what I’m doing in this world or in my life. Eventually, I stop at a Starbucks and order two tea bags of Earl Grey in one large cup, as usual. I put plenty of whole milk in because I deserve it. I sit down but I notice I’m getting some odd looks, though my Regency dress is partially covered with my winter coat. I leave.
I have to cross over to the Lower West Side eventually, so I take a shortcut through Central Park. It’s a beautiful morning. I sit down on a park bench, pull out my phone.
“Hello, Livy, it’s me.”
She sounds half-dead. “Liss. Do you know what hour of the morning it is?”
“It’s nine, it’s not that early.”
“When I’m on vacation it is. I’m not going to some Jane Austen thing. Wait, where are you? I hear dogs.”
People are walking dogs in front of me, followed by some joggers. It’s chilly, cold enough to see my breath. The only people who are outside are out for a reason.
“Livy, I know that you hooked up with Hugh. Or was it just hooking up? At least that’s what he said in the texts I read. I hope if it was more, you used protection.”
There’s a long silence.
“I’m glad you know. It was eating me alive.”
“Do you expect me to pity you?”
“We just hooked up, Liss. It was…look, I know it sounds awful. But it just happened, I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Like someone intruding from my beloved Regency era, I see a black carriage drawn by a sparkling dapple grey draft horse. Other than the driver, the carriage is empty, but it’s got a red blanket draped across the back seat and a Christmas wreath hanging on the side closest to me.
My eyes fill with tears. “I trusted you,” I say. I once accused Charlotte of being a cliché. I guess I am one as well. “I thought you cared about Peter. You never said anything about Hugh. I feel I don’t know you at all.”
“Peter and I are officially broken up. It was after a meeting for the Robotics Club.” Then follows a long, complicated, and frankly unwanted explanation about how Peter wanted to use a certain kind of design to help the robot grip the ball, Livy preferred another kind, so they fought.
I tune out her voice. I sip my tea, blow my nose, and compose myself. People keep gawping at me. Even though I’m just a little suburban high school student from New Jersey, I know that if New Yorkers are giving you side eye, you’re past the acceptable threshold of weirdness.
Truthfully, I never thought anyone could be attracted to my sister except another dorky science guy. But Livy is more conventionally beautiful than I am, I remind myself. I’ve been looking at her with the eyes of a sister, of another girl. Just at her clothing and her mannerisms.
Guys, I realize, are shallower in terms of what they notice. Not clothes. Not character. Just what’s under the clothes. Just skin.
All of my stupid books about lovers bantering. Nothing to do with real life. No living man cares about fine eyes or wit.
I hear Livy turn on her computer in the background and some rattling, so I guess she’s taking George out of his box. I’m enraged again. “Pay attention to what I’m saying. At least you can listen to me.” I’m loud enough that a dog walker leading a big, fluffy white Samoyed wearing a Christmas sweater (the dog, not the person) starts to walk away faster.
“I can do two things at once,” Livy says, and gives a big sniff. She’s still crying, but she’s not so upset that she can’t drown her sorrows working on her stupid robot George. I feel irrationally angry at both George and her catapult that couldn’t even injure Hugh properly. “It just kind of happened, Liss.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? He said that you kissed him first.” I remember it was Livy who offered to tutor Hugh in the first place. She planned it. Just happened? I think not!
“Do you know how it feels when guys are only interested in you because you understand their homework?” she blurts out.
I can’t believe this. My sister is trying to make me feel sorry for her—after all the times it’s been implied I have no future and she does, because she’s this math and science genius who builds robots while I only read books.
Plus, she had a boyfriend! Even before I had Hugh! “You had Peter.”
“Would you want to date Peter?”
“That’s not the point. You know what? You want Hugh? Have him. The two of you deserve each other.”
I hang up.
How am I ever going to go home?
I’m
frozen on the bench, both in the sense of being unmoving and also in the sense of being cold. My tea is now icy. I have an hour or two before the Jane Austen holiday conference begins. I’m not in a very Christmassy mood. More horse-drawn carriages clip-clop past me. I whip out my phone, surf over to Pemberley on Facebook. I have to pass the time.
I scroll through a few posts. All the Darcy fangirling I found so adorable now just makes me cringe. I wrinkle up my nose after a man sits down on the bench a few feet away and lights up a cigarette. I’m going to have to move. Calvin’s smoking less because of Franklin’s disapproval. My tolerance for the smell is at an all-time low. I don’t feel I should have to put up with carcinogenic smoke in addition to everything I’ve been through this morning. Plus, I don’t want to stink up my costume or my hair.
“Mr. Clarke!” I exclaim, when the person doing the smoking catches my eye. Because that’s who is sitting on the bench.
Chapter 20
I Was Not Then Master Enough Of Myself
My AP English Literature teacher seems just as startled to see me in the middle of Central Park as I am to see him. Plus, he’s smoking in front of a student. Not that it’s illegal, but Mr. Clarke looks like he feels guilty, and immediately stubs his cigarette out.
“Liss!” He sounds, truthfully, not very happy to see me. Which I understand. It’s his week off, too. “Good God! What is the matter?”
Stupid face, I think. Stupid so-called fine hazel eyes that show red so prominently and stupid fair skin that gives everything away. I realize he’s not calling me Ms. Tennant, like he usually does. I didn’t even know he knew my preferred nickname. I guess he noticed what other students call me in class. I must really look like hell.
I force a laugh and start to babble. “Oh, I’m just on my way to another Jane Austen event for Christmas weekend. Period dancing and tasting Regency holiday punch and desserts.” I stand up, try to look like I need to hurry off, but the prospect of walking even a few steps suddenly seems daunting. I’m shaking.
“Is there anything I can do?”
My fiction-writing capacities fail me. All I’m left with is the truth. “I just broke up with my boyfriend.” Quickly, I add, “I’m only saying this because you asked. Now you can forget about it.” I don’t want him to feel like he has to offer me comfort, I certainly know that’s not his job.
Mr. Clarke looks pretty awful himself. The crevices under his eyes are deeper, he’s slumped on the bench, and he seems to deeply regret having put out his cigarette. He feels where the pack is a bulging square in in his jacket pocket before he drops his hand. Without some book to discuss, to fire him up, he looks older, smaller, and lumpier than usual.
He throws up his literary knowledge like a shield guarding his real, out-of-class self. “So the now-former boyfriend was not your Mr. Darcy, Liss?”
My mouth tightens and I force myself to smile. “No, not Mr. Darcy at all. Although I thought he was. Of course.” I’m grateful for the Jane Austen-sized wall between us.
“As I’ve said before, I’ve never understood the appeal of Mr. Darcy. I’m male and ignorant.”
“I thought you liked Pride and Prejudice,” I say.
“I do, very much,” he says. “But as I mentioned in class, I think it’s a misreading to call Austen an author of romantic fiction.”
I realize my hand is still on my scabbard. I attempt to relax my grip.
“Ignore me, I’m just a sour, miserable old man.” He looks away.
“I didn’t say that. I just think Darcy gives up a lot for Elizabeth. I guess that’s fiction. In real life, it’s women who give up their pride for men.” And their words, I think, remembering the script I wrote for Hugh. My knees are starting to buckle.
“All Darcy gives up is a bit of money,” says Clarke. “Please, Liss, do sit down.”
My legs are trembling. I realize I’m dry-heaving, sobbing. My face is crying, my chest is full, my legs are starting to go numb. I use a Starbucks napkin to blow my nose. It’s one of those awful brown recycled napkins that absorbs nothing, though they’re supposed to be better for the environment. The kind of napkin that makes you hate the world even more when you’re in tears.
I sit down beside my teacher. Mr. Clarke gives me a handkerchief from his pocket. A real, cloth handkerchief. He would have one, I think. It’s monogrammed, I can see through my tears, although the letters are a blur. Of course, it reeks of ashes. “What do you mean, just a bit of money?” I steer things back into the fictional realm, the world where both of us are most comfortable.
My teacher smells stale underneath his usual aftershave. He’s not drunk. In fact, he seems very, very sober. But he’s been drinking, and he’s hungover, I reluctantly realize. His breath is rank. There’s something about him that’s different from how he is in class, an edge to his personality. Even his voice sounds less practiced, and his accent is stronger and less correct.
Still, he’s not too rough to argue. He’s still Mr. Clarke. “For a man of Darcy’s income, the money he spends to force Wickham to marry Lydia isn’t that significant. Using money to solve problems, if someone has enough of it, is not that painful. It’s only painfully impressive in the eyes of someone who doesn’t have money.”
“But…he saves her…saves her family, her sister…from disgrace. From ruin…shame…he changes her life for the better. He understands her.” I blow my nose, and master myself. “As someone applying to college, I wouldn’t mind finding a nice guy who was able to painlessly pay my tuition. It’s hard seeing people who are probably going to go to better schools, who have no worries about debt because their parents can afford to pay for everything. I’ll clean this handkerchief for you and get it back to you.” I have a fit of Kitty Bennet-like coughing.
“Thank you, Liss, but that’s not necessary.” A chill wind blows. Mr. Clarke pulls up the zipper on his jacket.
“I don’t resent it when people who are better than me at school or tests can get into great colleges and get scholarships using their own brainpower—or at least, not as much. At least they’re satisfying the standard they’ve set to get into elite schools, even if I don’t agree with those standards. I wish the arts were equally valued as the sciences. But…it’s not fair people should be able to go to a school just because they’ve been born to parents who went to that school before and they have money.”
And are able to sweet-talk their girlfriend into doing part of their application for them. I think of Hugh lying in his bedroom right now with his beautiful view. He’ll find somewhere to get in, even if it’s not Pennington.
Plus, there’s Charlotte Holland, who only needs to worry about whether her roommate will allow her enough closet space in a Princeton dorm room to fill all of the available shelf space full of her Burberry. God, I hate the world. Only in stupid books are the wicked disappointed and the virtuous rewarded.
Then again, even in Jane Austen, the cads who have their way with young virgins don’t get their comeuppance. The worthless Wickham marries the careless Lydia, and Darcy pays off Wickham’s debts so the Bennet family isn’t disgraced. Elizabeth is stuck with a brother-in-law she once loved who slept with her sister. Elizabeth is kind of worse off than me. It kills me to think of Hugh and Livy together. At least they have no marriage plans.
“Sometimes the worst possible comeuppance for an undeserving student is to get into her first-choice school,” says Mr. Clarke.
“What do you mean?”
“Eventually her lack of independence and imagination will catch up with her, and that will be a rude awakening.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better in the here and now.”
“Nor I. But I’m not trying to make either of us feel better, I’m making an observation.”
I realize he thinks we’re talking about Charlotte, not Hugh. I certainly understand why, but I explain, “To be blunt, my ex-boyfriend is one of those people who can go wherever he wants, so long as he gets into college. Nothing ever seems to stick to
him. He never suffers any consequences for his behavior even when he does terrible things. He has such a sense of entitlement.”
Mr. Clarke frowns. “I see. Is that what caused the row?”
“I wish. But unless I get some pretty significant financial aid from Pennington College, the school I want to go to, I’m going to have to attend Rutgers. Four years of commuting from home and going to school beside a bunch of frat boys.” God, Hugh actually might be the best I can expect over the next four years, I think, glumly.
“You do realize that Rutgers is not academic purgatory, Liss,” says Mr. Clarke, dryly. “It is my alma mater. The Rutgers English Literature department has an excellent reputation, even if the school doesn’t have the scenic beauty of say, Princeton or Pennington. Or the social cachet of those names.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to offend you. But my father teaches there as an adjunct. He says it’s a miracle when his students don’t come to class hungover or high.”
“True, at the most elite schools, I’m sure the student body can afford a more creative and expensive array of recreational drugs.”
“Mr. Clarke!” I gasp.
“If you quote me, I will deny it,” he says, smiling. I’m about to contradict him, then I remember the boy at Pennington talking about being hungover from the night before. And his girlfriend, who smelled so sweetly of essential oils but also of something…herbal. I wasn’t bothered by the Pennington students’ drug use, but I would be revolted by a Rutgers student using Axe body spray to cover up a night of cheap, beery indulgence.
I’m an idiot, I think. I was an idiot over Hugh. An idiot for using a nineteenth-century novel as my guide to life. I thought Hugh was Mr. Darcy because of his cute little insults, the fact that he was tall, dark, and handsome, and because he seemed so tormented, in my eyes. Because his father was on sabbatical in the United Kingdom. Plus, his skull belt buckle. Hugh didn’t even appreciate seeing the Royal Shakespearean Company’s Hamlet.