Eligible

by Curtis Sittenfeld

  “That food was all perfectly good!” Mrs. Bennet was declaring. “Why, I hadn’t even opened Bev Wattenberg’s peach marmalade!”

  “Tell her I’m sure the Wattenbergs will give us more marmalade at Christmas,” Liz said, and Mary said, “There’s no point.”

  “The house doesn’t smell weird at all?” Liz asked.

  “It doesn’t smell like anything,” Mary said.

  “I’ll tell you who won’t appreciate my tins of smoked trout,” Mrs. Bennet was shouting, “and that’s a hobo at a shelter.”

  “I have to go,” Mary said.

  “Hang in there,” Liz said, and Mary said in a churlish tone, “Thanks for the long-distance pep talk.”

  OUTSIDE THE DELTA terminal at SFO, Charlotte appeared considerably more tranquil than Liz had expected; this tranquillity was reassuring while casting doubt on the necessity of Liz’s presence. But if now they were friends again, then what else mattered?

  “Earplugs are the best invention ever,” Charlotte said as she merged into the left lane. “I slept for eleven hours last night.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Want to go with me to Nordstrom to buy new work clothes?”

  “Does that mean you accepted the job?”

  “I called them right before I got in the car to pick you up. I start a week from Labor Day.”

  “That’s great, Charlotte. And I’d be honored to go to Nordstrom with you.”

  With traffic, it took them almost an hour to reach the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto; they ate lunch at a restaurant before entering the department store.

  “Everyone says how casual it is out here, but that’s if you’re a twenty-five-year-old dude,” Charlotte said as she sorted through a rack of plus-size tops.

  Inspecting a bra in the adjacent lingerie section, Liz thought, Would he like this or find it cheesy? With a jolt, she realized that the he in question, for the first time in a long while, was not Jasper.

  “I’m trying these.” Charlotte held up three hangers, then nodded her chin toward the bra. “Va-va-va-voom.”

  “It’s expensive.”

  Charlotte looked skeptical. “For a New Yorker?”

  Liz held out the price tag, which read $200.

  “There’s no better investment than your cleavage.” Charlotte smirked. “I believe they teach that in business school.”

  Seventy minutes later, they were in the mall parking lot, walking back toward Charlotte’s car with their respective purchases (Liz could not possibly justify buying the bra, and it was in her bag), when Liz said, “So I broke up with Jasper.”

  “Are you bummed or relieved?”

  “Somewhere in between. Mostly I feel stupid for not realizing until now how obnoxious he is, when other people have seen it all along.”

  “You were really young when you met him,” Charlotte said. “That should give you some exemption.” As she pressed her key to unlock the car, she said, “This morning, Willie made an appointment with an ENT doctor. It turns out he had no idea that he snores. I guess if you’ve never had a girlfriend, no one’s ever told you.”

  Whether or not it was completely true, Liz was compelled to say, “For the record, I like Willie. I think he’s a good guy.”

  Wryly, but not angrily, Charlotte said, “Which is why you were disgusted when he tried to kiss you?” Liz was on the cusp of saying He’s my cousin, when Charlotte added, “And don’t say it’s because you’re cousins. We both know you’d have been disgusted no matter what. But that’s okay.”

  “I just don’t think he and I had chemistry,” Liz said, and Charlotte smiled.

  “I hope it’s all right that I invited your aunt and uncle for dinner tonight.”

  “Perfect,” Liz said. She had arranged to stay in the Bay Area for three days, then fly to New York on a red-eye. She said to Charlotte, “If you want to take a nap this afternoon, I’m happy to go grocery shopping. Or whatever errands you need—my errand-running muscles have gotten pretty huge this summer.”

  They had set their bags in the trunk of the car and climbed into the front seat, and Charlotte said, “It’s not that I haven’t had a bumpy adjustment out here, but I did call you at a low moment last night. Let’s do something fun. Have you ever seen the campus of Stanford?”

  “Your life changed a lot all at once,” Liz said. “It would be weird if you didn’t have second thoughts. And, no, I’ve never seen Stanford, although—” How could touring the university make her think of anything except what Jasper had done to his creative writing instructor? “You know what else is around here is Darcy’s family’s estate.”

  Charlotte laughed. “His estate? Who is he, the king of England?”

  “It’s somewhere in Atherton,” Liz said. “Okay, don’t judge me, but Darcy and I slept together a few times.”

  Charlotte made a joyous whoop. “I knew you two were flirting at Chip’s dinner party!”

  “That’s right,” Liz said. “You did call that, didn’t you?”

  “A few times? If you kept going back for more, I take it the sex was halfway decent.”

  “Yes,” Liz said. “You could say so.”

  “I don’t suppose you know the address of this estate?”

  As Liz pulled out her phone, her heart thudded. She typed Darcy estate Atherton, and a few clicks later, she said, “1813 Pemberley Lane. You’d take Sand Hill Road to El Camino Real.”

  In a phonily high voice, Charlotte said, “Um, I think Darcy grew up around here? What, go look at it? Now? Innocent little me? Why, I wouldn’t dream of it!”

  Twelve minutes later, Charlotte was making a right from El Camino Real into a residential neighborhood blocked off from the more trafficked throughway by a tall ivy-covered wall. On either side of the entry to the quieter street hung signs that read NO TRESPASSING. RESIDENTS ONLY. “I’d rather not get arrested,” Liz said. “I realize we’re here because of me, but I’ll just put that out there.”

  “Is the woman who went alone to Saudi Arabia chickening out?”

  “I’m not pretending that I’m not interested,” Liz said. “It’s just that—holy shit, is that it?” A wrought-iron fence that was easily eight feet high enclosed a massive, verdant lawn on which trees and a combination of modern and older sculptures stood at intervals. As Charlotte continued driving, they reached the fence’s gate, which was closed. Beyond it, a long gravel driveway led to a brick mansion that in its grandness and symmetry evoked a southern plantation.

  Charlotte pointed through the gate to a larger-than-life bronze statue of a nude male. “You think Darcy posed for that?”

  “No one lives in the house,” Liz said. “Darcy’s parents have died, and his sister is a grad student at Stanford. But can you imagine how—” The thought went unexpressed; it was at this moment that a black van with tinted windows approached from the opposite direction and stopped next to them, its driver’s-side window descending. A middle-aged man with a crew cut said in a brisk tone, “Can I help you ladies?”

  “We’re friends of the family who owns this place,” Charlotte said. “Friends of Fitzwilliam Darcy.”

  The man appraised Charlotte, then Liz. “Is one of you Caroline Bingley?”

  This wasn’t what Liz had expected him to ask, and if she’d thought the situation through, she’d never have uttered what she did next. But she did not think it through. Instead, she raised her hand and said, “I am.”

  The man’s demeanor became marginally friendlier. He said, “Just a minute.” He held a phone to his ear, but before they could hear him say anything, his window rose. Charlotte turned and whispered excitedly, “We’re on a caper!”

  “What’s wrong with me?” Liz said. “Why did I tell him that?”

  The tinted window descended again, and the man said, “Fitzwilliam will meet us in front of the main house. Follow me.” By some invisible mechanism, the hulking doors of the gate opened, and the man drove through.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Liz sai
d.

  “I thought Darcy was in Cincinnati,” Charlotte said.

  “So did I.” Panic was quickly overtaking Liz. As Charlotte turned left up the driveway behind the van, Liz said, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not leading that guy on a chase. What if he has a gun?”

  “Charlotte, we can’t see Darcy. Stop the car. Let me out.”

  “What are you worried about? You and Darcy know each other biblically now.”

  “He’ll think we’re stalking him. Charlotte, right before I left Cincinnati, Darcy told me he was in love with me! Except in this completely weird, unfriendly way, and I was really rude back to him, and the whole thing was bizarre.”

  Charlotte laughed. “Liz Bennet, you seductress! Is there any man who hasn’t fallen for you this summer? Besides, we are stalking him. Or at least his land.”

  In front of the house, though house did not seem an adequate descriptor for the gargantuan structure before them, near the steps leading to an enormous front door was a figure that, even from a distance of twenty yards, Liz could tell was Darcy. She thought of the two of them writhing in the bed in his apartment and felt a multifaceted confusion. Near Darcy, the black van made a U-turn and continued back down the driveway, the way they’d come; Charlotte stopped in front of the steps and without warning automatically lowered Liz’s window. Darcy walked closer to them, and by the time he recoiled—in surprise, Liz hoped, rather than revulsion—he was truly upon them.

  “Liz?” He looked shocked.

  Charlotte leaned forward and waved. “Hi, Darcy.”

  “Charlotte?”

  Liz heard Charlotte say, “We were in the area,” and it was impossible not to believe that her friend was relishing this encounter.

  “That guy,” Liz said. “Your bodyguard or whatever—he assumed I was Caroline Bingley, but I’m not.”

  “No,” Darcy said. “You’re not.” He didn’t, as Liz had feared, seem angry; he still seemed simply puzzled. “I thought you’d gone back to New York.”

  “I came to visit Charlotte.”

  Darcy glanced at Charlotte. “I understand you’ve become a Californian.”

  “Who’d have thunk, huh?” Charlotte said.

  “Why are you here?” Liz asked Darcy.

  “At my own house, do you mean?” But Darcy sounded warm, not mocking—indeed, he seemed to Liz warmer than he ever had in Cincinnati, though perhaps the difference was less his affect than her perception of it. “Georgie and I hold a Labor Day get-together every year,” he was saying, “or we host it the years I don’t have to work. That’s why Roger confused you with Caroline Bingley. She’s due here tomorrow.”

  Liz tried not to demonstrably register this troubling bit of news and instead strove to sound pleasant and breezy. “With Chip?” she asked.

  Darcy shook his head. “No, he’s still filming, but a few of our classmates from med school are coming from San Francisco, and some friends of Georgie’s.” Darcy looked between Liz and Charlotte. “As long as you’re here, would you two like to see the house?”

  “We’re actually—” Liz began, and Charlotte said, “We’d love to.”

  As Charlotte turned off the engine, Darcy said, “I hope Roger wasn’t rude. He’s the caretaker, not my bodyguard, but he can be overzealous because we sometimes get people snooping around the property.”

  FOR ONCE, LIZ wouldn’t have asked, but Charlotte did, in a way that somehow seemed as neutral a question a person might pose about an exhibit in a museum, and Darcy answered in kind: The main house at Pemberley was nineteen thousand square feet and contained twelve bedrooms and seventeen bathrooms; there also was a guesthouse, a caretaker’s cottage, and a currently unused stable.

  They entered through the foyer, made a right into a hallway with a high, arched ceiling, made another right, and found themselves in a ballroom, a vast space with a walnut floor, mostly empty save for two spectacular crystal chandeliers, matching marble fireplaces at either end of the room, and a half dozen murals featuring scenes from what Darcy identified as England’s Lake District. He said, “I suspect that my great-great-grandfather thought a veneer of British elegance would distract from his having run away from his home in rural Virginia at the age of thirteen.”

  “Rags to riches,” Charlotte said, and Liz said, “So Pemberley has been in your family all this time?”

  “Which is why my sister fears that we’ll be letting down all our ancestors by donating it to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, whereas I think the opposite. Neither Georgie nor I will ever have a family big enough to justify this kind of space. Nobody has a family big enough.”

  They walked from the ballroom into a trophy room, then an oak-paneled study with an oil painting over the fireplace of a balding, somber man wearing a black tie, a white shirt with an upturned collar, a black waistcoat, a black jacket, and a pocket watch whose gold chain was visible.

  “That’s the original Fitzwilliam Darcy, my great-great-grandfather,” Darcy said. “He started building Pemberley in 1915, by which point he’d established himself as a railroad and borax-mining magnate. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying about every fortune being built on a great crime.”

  Liz, who had spoken little since entering the house, tried to sound normal as she asked, “Should I pretend to know what borax is?”

  “Charlotte, I bet you know from Procter & Gamble.” To Liz, Darcy said, “Sodium borate. A compound that’s in everything from detergent to fiberglass.” They were in the library, where scores of leather-bound books sat on built-in shelves, and an enormous Persian rug covered the floor.

  “Are the books fake?” Liz asked. “No offense.”

  “They have pages with words on them, if that’s what you’re asking. But yes, I’m sure that even when they were first acquired, they were a bit of an affectation. I once read a copy of Treasure Island I found in here, but we mostly lived upstairs. The whole first floor, as you can see, has a public feel to it, and my mother was very civically involved. She and my father hosted lots of fundraising events.”

  “It’s like the White House,” Charlotte said, and Darcy said, “In a way, I suppose.”

  From the library, they proceeded through the reception room, which was a sort of mini–living room; the drawing room, which was another sort of mini–living room, this one apparently intended for women to retire to when the men enjoyed their post-dinner cigars and brandy; then the dining room, the butler’s pantry, and the kitchen. In the reception room, Darcy had gestured at the doorway, which was framed by columns and a peaked roof, and said to Liz, “All that trim is known as an aedicule—that’s a good word for a writer, huh?”

  Who was this man, this gracious and genial host sharing his time, demonstrating impeccable manners in a context in which he’d have been justified showing the opposite? And how strange it was that he’d grown up in this ludicrous house; truly, it seemed more like the set of a television show about opulence than a home.

  The black marble stairwell they ascended was near the trophy room; from the landing, an orchard was visible. On the second floor, the bedrooms all included fireplaces, and most featured televisions from before the flat-screen era. A poster of Larry Bird still hung on the wall of the room that had been Darcy’s, and a CD player with a slot for a cassette tape rested on the small desk. There was to Liz something unexpectedly poignant about these items, as well as about the navy blue comforter smoothed over the bed (how many years had elapsed since he’d slept in it?) and the framed photo of his soccer team in perhaps fourth or fifth grade. But doubt overtook her, and she wondered if her surge of tenderness toward Darcy was gold digging in disguise. She didn’t consciously yearn to be the mistress of a place like Pemberley, but the wealth it implied was astonishing indeed.

  Darcy led them back downstairs and outside. Behind the house, in a fruit and vegetable garden off the kitchen, they sampled one small, ripe tomato each before proceeding through a walled garden; then a sunken garden; then a rose gar
den; and finally a descending series of terraces, on the lowest of which a reflecting pool shimmered in the midafternoon sun. This wasn’t the swimming pool, Darcy explained, though he led them there next. The swimming pool had been added in the 1940s, and adjacent to it was the guesthouse where Darcy told them he and some of his visitors would sleep during the weekend.

  As the tour wound down, Liz wished to say something that conveyed her appreciation for his kindness while leading it, a kindness all the more remarkable in light of their last interaction in Cincinnati. What she said, as the three of them approached Charlotte’s car without reentering the main house, was “Thanks for showing us around.”

  Darcy looked at her, and she looked at him, and if not for Charlotte, Liz wondered what sentiments either of them might express. “Of course,” he said. “It’s funny, both of us being out here this weekend.” He stepped forward and kissed Charlotte’s cheek. “My knowledge of the area is dated, but if you need any pointers, be in touch.”

  “Will do,” Charlotte said.

  “Goodbye, Liz,” Darcy said, and when he leaned in to kiss her cheek, she resisted the impulse to cling to him; in an instant, the kiss was finished.

  What was there to do but climb into Charlotte’s car? Liz did so, and as Charlotte started the engine, Liz felt she might cry. On the other side of the window, Darcy’s expression was pensive. As the car pulled away, Liz gave him a small and miserable wave.

  “Okay, that was nuts,” Charlotte said. “That was totally, completely—”

  “Wait, he’s saying something. Stop.” In her side-view mirror, Liz could see Darcy jogging after them from twenty feet back.

  Charlotte braked, and Liz opened her window.

  “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier,” Darcy said, and he was only the slightest bit breathless. “You two should come here for dinner tonight. And Willie, too, obviously. Given what a fan of yours my sister is, Liz, she’d be thrilled to meet you.”

  “Oh—” Liz turned to Charlotte, then turned back to Darcy. “We’re supposed to have dinner with my aunt and uncle, Willie’s parents. I mean, thank you but—”