My Jane Austen Summer

by Cindy Jones

  Claire was still on the phone. "I'm speaking with the Poison people. They want to know what he took."

  "Did you swallow any pills?" Archie asked the child tenderly.

  "Did you eat the pills?" Magda asked, employing sign language with the child, bunching her fingers and touching her open mouth as she moved herself closer to the huddle, edging me out. I took the pillbox and my findings to another corner of the desk as Magda continued asking questions and Archie shushed her, putting his ear closer to the child's mouth. Actors and a few volunteers clustered outside our door, concerned expressions all around.

  "Is his pulse okay?" Archie asked me, his cell phone hunched in his shoulder, trying to reach Sheila.

  I touched the child's neck but I wasn't a nurse. The twin Magda held squirmed out of her arms and reached for Archie but Archie ignored the baby to focus exclusively on his oldest son, displacing everyone, including Magda. He dropped his cigarette into a paper cup half full of cold coffee where it emitted a quick hiss at Magda. She closed her eyes. I felt so angry at the two of them, or maybe all three.

  "Does anybody know what exactly he swallowed?" Clare asked, her hand covering the receiver.

  The other twin, Roger of the pointy head or Teddy of the freckled bum, jumped on the sofa as Nigel and Vera arrived and counted pills, hands trembling, struggling to clarify what the child had swallowed and what Nigel had already taken.

  "Wake up, baby," Archie cried, prying the boy's eyelids open. "Oh God, where's Sheila. Don't die, baby. Don't die."

  "But I forgot to take the Tuesday pills," Nigel said, clearly undone. "Why don't they go to the hospital?" he asked.

  "Didn't you take them late?" Vera asked.

  "Did I take today's pills?" Nigel asked.

  "Yes. Remember? Right after you took the call from Tate. That's why we have the box," Vera shrugged.

  Claire moved the phone away from her mouth. "You need to take him to the hospital immediately," she said.

  My little mint up the nose seemed nothing compared to the deadly effect of Nigel's medication on this small child. Suddenly the crowd at the door parted and Sheila walked in. Not Sheila of the Frumpy Tunic but Sheila the Mother: fierce, all-powerful, master of the child's universe. The boy reached for her, sobbing as she took him. Archie automatically lifted the heavy diaper bag from her shoulder and took the car keys from her hand.

  "Do we know what he swallowed?" Sheila asked Vera. She clipped her words to save time, already turning to leave as Archie lifted one twin and fetched the other from the sofa.

  Vera handed her the paper indicating which pills remained in question while Archie looked on, balancing a twin in each arm, the diaper bag relegated to his back. Sheila folded the paper as Archie turned, allowing her access to the bag, movements like choreography, smooth from endless repetition.

  "Keep us informed," Vera pressed her hands together as Sheila slipped the paper into the pocket. But Magda made the first move, her nostrils flaring as she abandoned ship, walking toward the door silently. Archie made no move to stop her; seemed unaware of her action as the affair ended in our presence. I felt we should not be watching; yet we did. Magda left without a backward glance. Oddly, I knew exactly how she felt.

  "My car's in front." Sheila didn't seem the least bit frumpy now, having parked at the door of Newton Priors, passing carriages and crashing gates to get there. I patted the boy's back, wondering if I might suggest a simple X-ray of his nasal cavities for mints as long as they had him in the ER.

  Eighteen

  I did something I knew I'd regret. While waiting in the Freezer for the tea-theatre to start, I clicked on Karen's e-mail. I'd blown it off for the past week as part of my plan to avoid all things negative. Since the meeting on the stair landing when Willis gave me up without a fight, I'd struggled to keep my promise to myself not to go to him, avoiding stairways and detouring around any place Willis might surface, throwing myself into the tea-theatre and avoiding potentially depressing activities such as bad news from Karen. Idle moments such as I experienced just before clicking on Karen's e-mail undid my resolve.

  To: Lillian Berry

  Sent: July 16, 2:12 A.M.

  From: Karen Adams

  Subject: Wedding Pictures

  Lily,

  I survived the wedding. Here are pictures to prove it. I didn't know anyone except Uncle Jim who was able to make it on the short notice. The rest of the guests were complete strangers although they seem to be very old friends of Nelson and Sue. (I don't feel like calling him Dad anymore.) They all knew each other and I begin to feel like there has been a parallel world existing all through our lives where these people got to know each other while we went to school and celebrated holidays, oblivious to the fact that we were sharing our father with a whole different dimension. Nelson's Other Life.

  I tried to meet and greet, introducing Nelson's grandchildren to the strangers, but I finally quit trying and sat by the wall until I could go home. It was Sue's party, and her friends didn't want anything to do with me, or my children. I didn't exist for those people. Even Greg felt it. Greg has a terrible theory about Sue's daughter that I refuse to acknowledge. Check out the pictures and call me. Please.

  Your whole sister,

  Karen

  I clicked on the first attachment just as a volunteer popped her head in the door.

  "Lily, where are the programs?" The downside of the tea-theatre's success was to be constantly running out of things. Everybody wanted to come see the husband who played the baron. He was so good at gently roasting our guests, and patrons clamored to be chosen for the skit. Omar revised the script, adding roles he'd initially cut so that we could increase audience participation. But we had a job keeping up with the details.

  "Top drawer of the ticket table," I said, willing her to go away.

  "Are they folded?" she asked.

  "No," I said. "See if Mrs. Russell and Stephen can fold them." They needed something to do with their hands.

  The photograph dominated my entire screen, starting at the top and slowly working its way down, filling in hair before foreheads, noses before mouths, loading so slowly I feared it would not finish before I had to go. Finally, I recognized individuals. My father and Sue looked like themselves in an older version of the restaurant picture. But the person standing with them looked confusingly familiar. She looked like me. But I was an ocean away and the picture had been taken without me. It couldn't be me. And it wasn't me. But I saw my father in her face. I zoomed in to focus on the eyes, nose, and mouth, isolating the features as I had isolated my father's features in the rearview mirror when he drove me to school. I'd positioned my own face, without my hair, in the small mirror imagining I was my father. I looked just like him even then, with hair. And this person looked just like me, and just like him. At first, the discovery struck me as funny, an odd coincidence. I wanted to run and tell my mother and sister what I'd found, almost relieved, as if the doctors had finally, after a lifetime of tests and trials, isolated the mysterious cause of my ailment. "Miss Berry," they said gravely, "we have ruled out cancer, personality disorders, and missing organs. Your problem is a half sister." What relief!

  I reread Karen's e-mail. She would be sleeping; still the middle of the night in Texas, with Greg to comfort her if the news of a half sister distressed her. I had to admit it was beginning to distress me and I felt the approach of an internal storm, thunder growing distinctly closer.

  Mrs. Russell stepped in, waving folded programs. "Lily, we're waiting for you."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "Amelia, you have a brother," the baron spoke the same line I'd heard many times, but today it resonated.

  "I have just heard so, my lord," I said, thinking of all the years I'd felt something was wrong with me, when in fact my father had split his attention between two families, building half of his life with people I didn't know.

  "What return can I make to you for the loss of half your for
tune?" the baron asked.

  "My brother's love will be ample recompense," I said. Sue could finally have the husband she'd been denied all those years.

  The baron and Anhalt delivered their lines, after which the baron handed me over to Anhalt to be his wife. It felt good to lean on Sixby. "Oh my dear father," I said. "What blessings have you bestowed on me in one day." If this discovery was such a relief, why did I feel so sick? The wave that had brought a bounty of truth to my life began to recede, taking as much as it brought. As if in delivering a half sister, it demanded my own self in exchange.

  When the skit ended I did not stay to autograph programs for the children in the audience. Temporarily willing to disregard the entire issue of Pippa, I ran to the attic, desperate to see Willis.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "Hello," I called up the stairwell. All the years I'd spent pondering my affliction, searching for what was lacking in me, and it wasn't me at all. The half sister filled in so many blanks. Like the missing letter in a game of hangman, when finally inserted, suggests words, and those words associate instantly, causing an entire phrase to fall effortlessly into place. The absent father, the wistful mother, and the proprietary appearance of the mysterious woman: I didn't have a zillion unrelated problems; I had one.

  "Hello," I called up the stairs. But the attic was silent; no clicking of the keyboard. "Hello," I called again, running up the stairs to the landing where I'd first met Willis. His chair was gone and his table lay bare, pushed against some boxes. My green cushions sat in the window but they'd been turned on their sides as if someone had checked beneath them for stray belongings. The books were gone. Every last volume of theology as well as 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die and all its lighthearted friends. Only my half-read copy of Anna Karenina remained.

  Pushing the cushions back into place, I sat in the window seat, inhaling the musty attic air, feeling the damp chill. Willis hadn't been avoiding me. He'd moved out. My Jane Austen sat in a dark corner making a list of her heroines and I felt grateful for her company, although I'd never make it onto her list. There was something wrong with me. A freak of nature, destined to be alone forever because of something deep down wrong with me that made me unlovable. No man ever stayed in my life for long.

  Nineteen

  On the evening of the follies, workers adjusted the stand-up microphones arranged on the stage, "testing one, two," followed by a squawk. I entered the ballroom dressed as Fanny Price for the evening's follies, wearing period attire from Bets's closet, including Bets's unused elaborate undergarments handmade by a seamstress who reenacted Regency romances on weekends. If Father Kitt, the vampire priest in Willis's novel, could see me now, he would be unable to resist the pillows of flesh bulging just south of my jugular. Claire inspected the name tags I'd arranged in alphabetical order. She expected a big turnout this year based on her assessment of the fragile state of affairs. Vera said, "Nonsense. The Founder's Dinner is always highly anticipated. Everyone always comes."

  Everyone except Willis.

  "Oh, there you are," Claire said to me. "Would you make another name tag? Your handwriting is so much better than mine." She handed me the nearly dead calligraphy marker I'd been chewing all week.

  "What name?" I asked, pen poised over the white square.

  Claire called to the sound person, "It's not centered on the stage." She gestured, scooting air to the left.

  "Claire," I said, straightening. "Whose name?"

  "Oh." She looked past me, blinking, struggling to recall. "Somerford. Willis Somerford."

  We would meet again. The room shifted and the stage, tables, even the workers looked different, now that Willis was coming. I wrote the familiar letters of his name and placed the name tag between Sadonek and Stewart, my mind racing to organize the things I wanted to say to Willis. How to speak to him in a ballroom filled with people? How to be alone with his fiancee present?

  Regulars began to arrive; several participants from Omar's writing workshop claimed a table. Magda held court. Her affair officially over, she'd announced plans to return to Michigan to hammer out the details of her seminar. Her announcement came the same day Archie let us know he would be staying close to home for the rest of the summer, offering gratitude for his child's survival. Although I disliked Magda, losing both Archie and Magda seemed a sorry blow for the festival. Like Mansfield Park losing Aunt Norris and Henry Crawford. The summer had been a riotous expansion. But now things around me were contracting, matters settling, people returning to their regular orbits. I'd soon be back in Texas.

  Mrs. Russell followed Nigel around the room, wearing her Anne Elliot dress for mature heroines only. Vera kept signaling "go ahead" to Nigel from the head table where she sat next to the old woman who always brought her dog. But Mrs. Russell stalled, waiting until all the VIPs were present before she officially welcomed festival alumni and guests, inviting all to proceed to the buffet. I fixed my eyes on the door Willis would use for his entrance; my pulse surged at the arrival of every tall man.

  Philippa stood near the bar. She lifted a single cracker from the basket and broke it into tiny pieces, placing crumbs in her mouth one at a time. It might take her an hour to eat one cracker. No wonder she was so thin. And her skin was so white the veins were visible to the naked eye. Father Kitt could drain her so easily. She waved as Willis arrived, then touched a napkin to the corners of her mouth. I looked away so I wouldn't have to witness the kiss.

  Mrs. Russell's microphone squawked and Pippa led Willis to their place at the head table. I walked from table to table, unaware of my actions, lighting candles in little glass jars, my hand shaking, wondering if Willis had seen me yet. The earth kept shifting under my feet, rearranging my world again before I could adjust to the last shift. I poured myself a large glass of wine.

  "You look awful," Omar said. "You want to go outside?" He grabbed a wine bottle and I followed him.

  In the herb garden, where light from the ballroom illuminated St. Francis, who was blatantly eavesdropping, I told Omar about Willis. Once I finished my story, we sat quietly, listening to the hum of the party. When Omar spoke, it wasn't about the things I'd said.

  "You did a great job with the tea-theatre."

  "Thank you," I said, clinking glasses with him.

  "It was just the kick in the butt this festival needed."

  "Thanks to the volunteers. But once they tire of baking, our profit margins will shrink."

  "Have you ever acted before?" Omar asked.

  "Small parts in high school. No one is more surprised at my acting than me." I shifted on the bench. "I don't want to talk about business," I said. "I want to obsess over Willis." I rested my hand on my forehead. "Do you think I'm needy?" I asked.

  Omar choked on his wine and coughed. I handed him a napkin. "Lily"--he locked eyes with me and touched my hand--"if you have to ask..."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  I made sure to refill my wineglass and Omar brought me a plate of food before Nigel began his talk. Claire had led me to expect "Nigel's Last Words on Jane Austen." She made it sound as if Nigel would reveal the answer to the great mystery of Jane Austen's undying appeal--that aspect of Austen's work which provoked, not only Magda's activism, but Mrs. Russell's wardrobe expansion and my possessive friendship with someone dead two hundred years. Even though I refused to believe Nigel was retiring, I would listen to every word, just in case. But Nigel's talk was not long enough or serious enough to be his swan song. Not a funeral, just the Founder's Night talk that he gave every year and surely believed he would give next year. He reviewed the story "The Janeites," by Rudyard Kipling. You take it from me, Brethren, there's no one to touch Jane when you're in a tight place.

  When Nigel's talk ended, the follies began. I looked at the plate of food Omar had brought me while listening to a man read a screenplay of his Northanger Abbey adaptation that went on way too long. Even the little dog got restless and wandered the room. Feeling sick, I put my plate on the floor and the dog wandered o
ver, first sniffing, then gently biting into the chunks of lamb. He ate while, at the podium, Henry Tilney reminded Catherine Morland of the similarities between marriage and dancing. The dog licked the plate until it looked perfectly clean.

  Next up for the follies, Sabrina played Jane Austen hosting a talk show, interviewing Patricia Rozema, director of a film adaptation of Mansfield Park. "What were you thinking, girlfriend?" Sabrina said; a joke that would never connect outside of this crowd.

  Sixby arrived somewhere between the end of my second glass of wine and the middle of my third, wine establishing a military dictatorship in my head, dispatching directives to my extremities, my reason completely overthrown.

  "Ready, Lily?" Sixby asked, my dearest, oldest friend. I wished to fall into his embrace and be carried far away, skip the performance, blow off my plan to address Willis.

  "I love your dress, my dear," Sixby whispered, his eyes on the bodice of Bets's spotted muslin.

  "Thank you," I said, kissing the air.

  "I'm going to change now." He winked. "I'll meet you backstage in a tick." He adjusted the sleeve of my dress downward, revealing a bit more shoulder. I posed for him, naughtiness fueled by too much wine and outrage. As he left, touching my cheek affectionately, I caught Magda watching us; she never missed a thing. I bent low to retrieve my plate from the floor, hoping to escape, but Magda crooked her long finger, beckoning me to the dessert table.

  As I drew near, she glanced sideways and whispered, "Have you read Mansfield Park?" Her question was the greatest insult anyone could inflict on a fellow at this place. She touched my arm. "Do the words amateur theatricals mean anything to you?" she asked. "Sixby is a professional actor. You need to be careful." She took the plate from my hand just as she took everything as her due, even a plate lacquered with dog spit. She shook her head. "I'm warning you, as a sister."

  "Magda," I said, as she moved closer to the fruit salad, "have you read Mansfield Park?" I'd drunk too much wine to bother with inhibitions.