by Leigh Dreyer
“Don’t concern yourself. Felleman has come to no harm.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Anything for a lumberjack.”
“You get it!”
“I waffled between lumberjack and Scottish Highlander. But with the lack of kilt, decided the former made more sense.”
Darcy chuckled once more and left Mr. Bennet to his amusement.
After a few minutes finding a poem, Darcy was startled when Mr. Bennet said, “If you are interested in roaming about instead of sitting quietly, may I show you around the place? You’ve only been here a few times and I feel that in return for ‘saving Meryton’—as Lydia aptly expressed it when you called the closure commission—I should show you some of what you saved.”
“Sure. That would be great. It would be nice to see where Elizabeth grew up.”
“Lizzy grew up in our yard frolicking about. That would be an extremely short tour, but as you are in the throes of love, we can walk through the yard to visit the outbuildings first and you can admire the general splendor.”
“Uh, thanks.”
Mr. Bennet opened the office door and motioned down the hallway, and Darcy stepped out into Elizabeth’s childhood.
10
She was bored. She had already spoken to Mrs. Long and Maria Lucas for an ungodly amount of time. The beauty of a small town is that everyone knows everybody, but the tragedy is the utter lack of new and interesting conversation. Elizabeth found herself anxious for Darcy to walk through the door as he normally did when she had the slightest thought about him. He had uncanny timing as if the two of their brains communicated via radio signal that only he could hear. She decided to take the lead and come to him for once and made her way to her dad’s office. She knocked, and hearing nothing, entered the empty room, leaving the door open behind her as an open invitation to find her.
The office appeared the same as it always did. Piles of paperwork, books of all sizes on the shelves with the well-worn leather chair her father normally inhabited. She did not know where her father was and decided to wait for him here, too. She walked around the perimeter of the office, letting her hand rest on books and furniture, feeling the dust cling to her fingertips and leaving long streaks across the dusty spines and shelves.
She picked up an old romance novel and considered the couple on the front cover. You’ve got to let me to tell you how much I love and admire you. She was not even thinking about Darcy, but somehow his botched proposal had popped into her mind. The couple on the book cover looked like they loved and admired each other. She continued picking up and putting down various books, knickknacks, and papers. Eventually, she picked up a picture which had been abandoned to the dust on a shelf. She stared down at the fading colors without seeing the smiling faces on the photograph.
“Lizzy, there you are! Darcy just came in the kitchen and said you were probably in here. He said he left your father somewhere out back.” Her mother had fluttered into the office. “You should go make sure that he’s comfortable, dear. Well, maybe pinch your cheeks first.” She dragged one finger against a side table then held it up, covered in dust, for inspection. “Will that man never let one of you girls come in and clean? Just look at this place. Completely filthy. I can’t imagine what our dear William thought while he was holed up in here. Your father certainly has poor timing as well as cleaning habits. Where on earth can he be?” Her mother fluffed the pillow on the arm chair and picked up a fallen pen, putting it back on the desk. She then took a book from a pile on the desk and held it in her arms while looking around the room for a place to put it away. “Have you seen the state of the shelves? Dust piled up since God was a boy. What are you looking at?” She came just behind Elizabeth and peered over her shoulder, smiling and jabbering about dust. A hand flew over Elizabeth’s shoulder and snatched the photograph. Her mother stepped back, holding the photo far away from her as if seeing the monster in a horror movie.
“Where did you find this?” her mother screeched as she retreated away from Elizabeth.
“Just there on the shelf.” Bewildered, Elizabeth pointed to the dust-free rectangle on the shelf behind her.
Her mother brandished the photo, shaking it crazily in front of Elizabeth’s face and hissing.
“Who showed it to you?”
“No one.” Elizabeth’s voice was defensive, though she had no idea why she was being attacked.
“Who told you it was here?”
“Told me what was here?”
“Who gave you this picture, Lizzy? Was it your father? Do not lie to me!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about! It was just here on the shelf!”
“Where is he? He promised never to speak about it!”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ll repeat myself.” Elizabeth’s mother attempted to steady her voice which had become increasingly frantic. “Do you know about Phillip?” She began to pace, flitting from desk to door and back again as she looked at Elizabeth. She finally leaned against a shelf as far across the room as she could get from Elizabeth before speaking. Her clear blues eyes, so much like Lydia’s, bore into Elizabeth’s brown ones. She opened her mouth, then closed it before shrugging.
“Who is Phillip, Mom?”
Her dad’s figure darkened the door frame. “He’s your father.”
11
He entered the room looking left from his wife’s defeated stance to the right and Elizabeth’s expression of shock.
“Well hello, Lizzy. How was your weekend?”
Elizabeth stared at her father incredulously.
“One of the worst weekends of my life, really frustrating. But in retrospect, looking better than this Halloween is turning out. Want to tell me who Phillip is?”
Her mother sighed deeply before answering, eyes darting between Elizabeth and her husband who had seated himself behind his desk and was now resting his head in his hands. “He’s your father, Lizzy.”
“So who is that?” she said, pointing to the man she had always called dad.
“Your father. Your step-father.”
Elizabeth nodded her head wildly. “Uh-huh.”
“Elizabeth, you need to let me explain,” her mother pleaded, clutching the dusty picture to her chest.
“I don’t know that I particularly want to talk to you.”
“Lizzy, you should hear your mother out―”
“Oh, so she is definitely my mother, is she?”
“Lizzy.”
“Fine.” She plopped herself into an arm chair. She then sat up and aggressively took off her jacket with clumsy movements, releasing her breath with a hiss as the movements hurt her shoulders and back. Jacket off, she slumped into the back of the chair.
Her mother nervously looked at her dad…Thomas. “Should I get some sweet tea?”
“I feel like tea is not actually going to help anything at this point.”
“I just want you to be comfortable, Lizzy.”
“Well, it’s too late for that, isn’t it, Mother?”
“Where should I start?”
“Well, I told Jane the other day—” said Thomas Bennet.
“You told Jane?” the two women asked simultaneously, one incredulous and one curious.
He held up his hands. “I told her that Phillip and I were friends. That’s all.”
“You were friends?” asked Elizabeth.
“That seems as good a place to start as any, I suppose.” Her mother sat down in the chair next to Elizabeth.
“I first met Phillip Johnson when he moved here in high school. He and your father were at a basketball game. I had gone with the girls and we all ended up sitting next to each other. We were all so young then.
“Later we were all at Texas Tech together. Phillip’s parents moved quite a bit for work, and when they moved immediately following high school graduation, Phillip decided to join Thomas at Tech so he would have a friend and roommate.
“Thomas had these dreams of goi
ng into business somewhere and Phillip wanted to be a pilot. This was after Top Gun and Tom Cruise, you understand, but pilots just have this natural sex appeal about them. So did Phillip. He was tall, dark, handsome. Terribly ravishing. Incredibly passionate about his work to the exclusion of everything else. You are so alike. I found myself drawn to him, but Thomas was there, so debonair and everything I was looking for in a steady husband. I wasn’t ready for the adventure that Phillip wanted. He wanted to fly planes and see the world.
“I ran around with both of them for a while. I was quite doe-eyed about Phillip, but Thomas was much more persistent in the chase and, in the end, he was much more suited to me. I couldn’t picture myself living my life for a man who would be gone all the time. When I joined them at Tech, I chose Thomas, and we got married about a year before Jane was born.”
“So, Jane is yours then, huh?” Elizabeth asked Thomas Bennet sarcastically, still seated behind the desk. Incredulously, he was perusing a book of birds.
Elizabeth sighed and turned back to face her mother.
“Thomas is Jane’s father. After they graduated college, Phillip left for pilot training in Oklahoma soon after we were married. I dropped out, of course, and Thomas and I didn’t even see him until about six months or so after Jane was born. You’ve never had children, Elizabeth, so you don’t understand. But having children is so incredibly hard. The constant late nights, always changing diapers, always waking up. I was exhausted.
“Your father and I had just bought Longbourn from your grandfather, you see, so I was in charge of all the guests’ needs by myself while he was renovating and building and handling all of the business end of everything. We were happy, I told myself, but I felt like I could hardly keep from screaming every day. I would cry for no reason, and I didn’t want to see Jane even though she was so beautiful.”
Her mother’s eyes turned wistful. Elizabeth knew her father had taken over the operations of Longbourn Inn as a young man. He was twenty-two when he had purchased the land and the beat-up old house from his father. Along with her mother, he had fixed up the two-story farmhouse and turned it into a modern home. The beautiful chef’s kitchen had attracted Fanny and the rest, as they say, is history. As Fanny made way with her catering, Thomas had let rooms, first in their home, then in the newly refurbished barn. He created additional outbuildings and now, they were quite comfortably situated and, if not ecstatic, they were content.
“She was the most beautiful baby I have ever seen and I wanted to love her and hold her all the time, but I was also terrified of being a horrible mother. I was overwhelmed by everything and felt that I couldn’t even handle myself and Jane, let alone an entire household. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping. I felt like Thomas didn’t love me anymore because I was such a terrible mother, and why would he want me when I was irritable and angry and couldn’t remember to do the dishes or make eggs with bacon for breakfast?
“I felt crazy and was horribly anxious. A friend called it the baby blues, but no one really talked about postpartum depression or anxiety back then. I’ve never felt so out of control. Soon, I wanted to escape. I had visions of leaving my family and running away and never coming back. I thought about throwing myself off a bridge or shooting myself so I could escape. Jane was my darling baby, but I thought she wouldn’t love me. I felt Thomas didn’t want me. I needed to leave so they could be happy, because there was no way they would be happy with me here.”
Mrs. Bennet looked down at her hands and breathed deeply for a minute, closing her eyes as if willing away the painful memories of the past; then she met Elizabeth’s gaze and held it, straightening slightly as if defending herself from an oncoming attack.
“So I did. I left. I didn’t even leave a note. I’m sure Thomas was beside himself. There weren’t cell phones back then so there was no way to get a hold of me. I had given Jane to him while I went to the grocery store. Kissed them both on the cheek and left with my shopping list. Except, I never came home. I had been shopping for all the usual things, bread and milk and eggs, and then I pushed my cart—I remember it as if it was yesterday—I pushed my cart past the spaghetti noodles and decided I couldn’t go back. I left my cart there, right in the middle of the aisle, went out to the parking lot, got in the car, and drove away.
“At first, I just drove. I drove and drove. But after an hour or two, I knew I couldn’t just keep driving. I thought briefly, of course, about coming home, but what kind of person just leaves their baby and husband without a word? I couldn’t imagine the shame of returning home after running away. Then, I thought about my own parents, but you remember your grandparents. There was no way I could show up there without the rest of my family and live to tell the tale. The thought of my mother’s reaction alone was enough to put the fear of God in me. Then Thomas’s face when we first met popped into my mind, so incredibly clear, I felt like I could reach out and touch it, you know? I saw Thomas and then just beside him, there was Phillip. I could go to Phillip. I knew his address. We had just sent out Christmas cards and his was so easy to remember. 935 Ridgewood Way. I don’t know why it stuck in my head so well, but it did.
“I made it to San Antonio and turned north. I wasn’t tired. I hadn’t slept in more than six months so not sleeping wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. For the first time in a long time, I felt free. I was still sad and I was still anxious and I was still a horrible mother, but I was free. Thomas would take care of Jane, so I just ran away. Elizabeth, I suffered alone by accident. After the same symptoms with you and with Mary, a doctor finally diagnosed my postpartum depression. If I had just spoken up with Jane, none of this would have happened. You see, those who do not complain are never pitied. Nobody could tell what I was suffering. Hiding my emotions and being in control and making sure nobody thought any less of me was my downfall. I’m anxious now, but it was always worse after I just had a baby.
“I drove all day and half the night to Phillip’s house. It’s almost a twelve-hour drive and I must have come in at, I don’t know, nearly two in the morning. I only stopped to get gas. I was like a pit bull, bound and determined on my course; nothing could have stopped me. When I knocked on Phillip’s door, I must have looked pitiful. My hair was wild. I still had baby spit up on my shirt. My jeans were baggy because nothing fit when I wasn’t eating. Phillip didn’t care though, he took me in immediately and put me to bed in his own bed while he took the couch. He even called Thomas after I was asleep to let him know that I was there and was safe.
“I slept for hours. It was already getting dark the next day. I was rested for the first time in months. I still felt terrible and worthless, but I wasn’t tired. I took a shower without a crying infant. It was, to this day, the best shower I’ve ever had in my life. When Phillip got home, he took me to dinner.
“We went out and just talked like I hadn’t been able to do with an adult in what seemed like forever. Thomas and I hadn’t been financially stable back then, having just bought the inn, student loans. We were just barely making it. We hadn’t been on a date in almost a year with all the new pressures, and I felt so alone and unloved. And talking to Phillip like that took such a weight off my chest.
“I stayed with Phillip for three months. I called your father once a week to check in and ask for more time, but long distance was so expensive, and you’ll remember we weren’t doing well financially then. I slept in Phillip’s spare bedroom and kept house and cooked for him like I was used to. But without the baby, I could actually concentrate and remembered how interesting everything could be. I loved when he came home and was excited to eat something I had just made or gave some compliment on how clean the living room was.
“One night… We had been drinking, and I was feeling so much better and not so alone and needy. I wanted to feel beautiful, and Phillip was always so good at making everyone feel amazing. He would make his friends feel strong and capable, and he made me feel violently in love. I was not myself, but I felt so doubtful and indefinite in my
own life that this imaginary life I had been living with Phillip seemed like a dream. Dreams never have consequence. They aren’t real, you know? I was stupid and never should have thrown myself at him, but I did. I can never regret it, though, because it gave me you.”
Elizabeth looked back at Thomas Bennet and saw that he had long since stopped turning the pages of his book and instead was staring, unseeingly, at the page. Elizabeth could hardly breathe. She wasn’t sure if the lump in her throat was indicating coming sobs or whether it foretold a strangling sense of real answers to questions she did not even know she had.
“I came back. I came back before I knew about you. I was there for three months total, and at the end of it, just a few nights after sleeping with Phillip, I finally felt like myself and came to regret that I had ever run away. I missed Thomas and Jane. He felt guilty too, and Phillip encouraged me to go home. It was then, for the first time, that I knew that I had married the best of the two friends after all, so, I came home almost as suddenly as I had left. Thomas took me back without a question. He called Phillip and talked about things that seemed to help me feel better. Not long after that, Phillip was stationed in Arizona.
“It wasn’t until after you were born that we ever had any of the tension that is so obvious now. Jane was blonde and has Thomas’s gray eyes. You, though, are the image of Phillip. Everything about you. Thomas knew right away. I knew he knew. But we didn’t talk about it then. You look similar, though you do have my build, but your eyes and hair, nose, cheekbones, and hands, your height, walk…dreams, even the tone of your voice occasionally is like Phillip. We were barely able to keep our marriage together after this proof of the betrayal.”
Her mother stopped speaking. After a few moments, she handed the photo to Elizabeth. The resemblance was uncanny. Phillip was obviously taller and more masculine, but Elizabeth could see herself exactly.