Jane Austen Made Me Do It

by Laurel Ann Nattress

  Taptaptaptaptap. “I know we don’t have a dress code—per se—but don’t you think the way he’s dressing—every day a button-down shirt, slacks. A, um, tie?”

  And Mom goes, “In the hall, I saw two kids with their incisors capped with fangs, a half dozen girls with Kabuki makeup and black lipstick, and someone of indeterminate gender who was sporting a tail.”

  That was Elton. Nobody was a hundred percent on whether Elton was a girl or a guy, and these days there’s a whole buncha-lotta you Do Not Ask, or you’re doing time in a Sensitivity Awareness Program. Or SAP, for short.

  Mr. Oakes sighed. “And it’s his language.”

  “His language?”

  “It’s not just the ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘I beg your pardon’ and—”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That too. Not just what he says, Mrs. Austen, it’s the way he says it. His teachers tell me when he’s called on, he stands up. He holds doors open for them. He’s gotten extremely …”

  “ ‘Well behaved, polite, and unassuming?’ ”

  Pull off to the side, here comes Jane Austen. “Well behaved, polite, and unassuming” is off Pride and Prejudice. Mom thinks Pride and Prejudice is The Best Novel Ever and Jane Austen is the best writer who ever lived, who ever will live, and this is one point that You Do Not Want To Argue About. The joke in our house is that Mom married Dad for his last name, except that sometimes I don’t think it’s a joke. Dad told me once that Mom wanted to call me Fitzwilliam, and I don’t think that’s a joke, either.

  Now Mrs. Pilkington jumps in, ’cause it kills her not to have her share of the conversation. “When we see unusual behavior like this, students getting overly careful about manners and dress, the reason is usually … what I’m trying to say …”

  “You’re not accustomed to your students exhibiting good manners?”

  “Well … not per se,” goes Mr. O.

  And Mom goes, “ ‘Which makes his good manners the more valuable.’ ” That’s off Emma. Mom goes Austen on you, she’s making fun, or she’s fed up. I could tell she was getting fed up.

  “Mrs. Austen, there’s no reason to be defensive. We all want the same thing here.”

  The “no reason to be defensive” line’s off their playbook. They say it to put parents on the defensive.

  So Dad goes, “What is it we all want?” ’cause he’s all about the bottom line.

  Mrs. Pilkington goes, “In our experience, when you see behavior that deviates from the norm, we have to consider the reason for it—trouble in the home, or alcohol, or drugs—”

  “Drugs?” Mom could get her voice up a whole octave on one syllable. Like opera.

  “And I’m sure you know that early intervention is inordinately helpful in cases like this,” said Principal Oakes.

  “James!” That was Dad. “Son, come in here.”

  So I go in and Dad goes, “James, are you using drugs?” and I go, “No, sir,” and Dad gives me the laser eye, and Mrs. Pilkington gives them a look like “Sir”? See what I mean? Kids his age don’t go “Sir.”

  “Then you won’t mind if we search your locker, will you, Austen?” Mr. Oakes turns to Mom and goes, “James has asked us to address him as ‘Austen.’ ” In school they love to tell your parents stuff about you they think your parents don’t know.

  “You want to search my son’s locker?”

  “You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”

  I could tell that Mom had a big problem with it but she Wasn’t Going To Give Them The Satisfaction. Mom’s Code comes down to two regs: Read Jane Austen and Do Not Give Them The Satisfaction.

  So I get perp-walked to my locker, past the zombs and the vampires and the werewolves, and they all sort of orbit in, and Mr. Oakes goes, “Don’t you have somewhere you should be?” so they lurch and waft and lope off.

  I open the locker and Mr. Oakes starts passing off my gear to Mrs. Pilkington. Jacket. Lunch. Gym bag. Books, he shakes out, like he expects the pages to snow coke, and then they fall out. My notes.

  Principal Oakes unfolds them and reads off, “ ‘Fours and eights … threes and sixes … inside hand’ … Have you been gambling, Son?”

  “Son” is what principals call you right before you get suspended.

  “No, sir.”

  “ ‘… setting up the hall … arming’ … Arming?”

  You know how they say you could hear a pin drop? Well, you could hear a pin cut through the air molecules on the way down.

  “Does. James. Have. Access. To. Weapons?” goes Mrs. Pilkington, and if she wasn’t seriously freaked out before, she is now.

  Mom, on the other hand, is trying not to laugh and gives me a look like, Game over, you’re outed, and goes, “Suspicion of something unpleasant is the inevitable consequence of such an alteration as you have witnessed in James.”

  It’s off Sense and Sensibility.

  Mr. Oakes turns over the paper and reads off, “ ‘ECD?’ ” He’s churning through brain cells, you could almost get a whiff of smoke coming off the neurons. “Explosive Containment Data? Entry Control Device? Electronic Circuit Detonator? Emergency Communications Database? Do you want to tell us what this stands for?”

  So I go, “ECD stands for English Country Dance.”

  And you never saw adults shut up so fast.

  Backstory.

  Summer before high school, there’s one thing you know going in: you weren’t a vampire, werewolf, or zomb, you were nothing. No. Thing. So summer’s when you mob up because first day of school, you hit the ground at a sprint. Unless you’re a zomb, then it’s more like a … lurch.

  They hung out at the library–slash–community center. The zombs, they’re basically gamers without your dignity and wit. The vampires cruise the stacks, work on their wan, ’cause they don’t do sunlight. Get tagged by some UV, your vamp cred’s shot. The wolves were there because a lotta the vamps are girls and the pack’s mostly guys, except for Elton, who’s still like Switzerland, genderwise. So they all hang, hog the computer stations, tear pages outta the mags, and generally scare the bejeepers out of the Tot Timers.

  I’ve been going (translation: Mom’s been dragging me) to the library since forever. I know everything about the place: the utility closet where the kids like to make out, the storage room in the basement where the zombs crash so they can game all night, the file cabinet where Mrs. Blake keeps her stash of Oreos. There’s a lock, but it’s broken (or so I hear), and if you only sneak one at a time, she doesn’t notice.

  I was at the library–slash–community center that summer ’cause my parents, but especially my mom, are into Making A Productive Use Of Your Summer and that meant Not Having Too Much Time On Your Hands. And the library–slash–community center has a bunch of programs for kids who have Too Much Time On Their Hands. TMTOYH and you’re Up To No Good because there will be Too Many Hours in the Day, which only applies to kids because once you’re a grown-up there are Not Enough Hours In The Day.

  So, two weeks into summer, Mom hands me the brochure for Summer Fun At The Library program and goes, “A little learning is by no means a dangerous thing,” which is off Jane Austen. (If Mom says something you don’t get, say it’s off Jane Austen, you got a 75 percent chance of being right.) And by the time I give up trying to talk her out of Making A Productive Use Of My Time, the good stuff’s gone:

  Let’s Talk Movies. Once a week you watch a movie and then talk about it. Twenty slots, all filled.

  Werewolves, Wizards, Witches, and Vampires: What They Say About Who We Are. Thirty slots, all filled. Plus a wait list.

  Are You a Poet But Don’t Know It? Twenty slots, twenty empty slots and Not If You Tied Me Down On A Bed Of Red Ants And Smothered Me In Smuckers.

  Let’s Draw! Let’s not.

  What Makes Great Books “Great”? This was a trick. You go in thinking you’re gonna read Harry Potter or Stephen King and you’re getting dragged through Bleak House, and wishing you signed up for “Are You a
Poet But Don’t Know It?”

  Let’s Make Music. Twenty slots, two left. But. This is basically “Are You a Poet But Don’t Know It?” for kids who own a guitar. I don’t say play a guitar unless you use “play” in the sense that they pick at the strings and sound comes out. Mostly for girls who got dumped, and at the end of the course you got twenty songs about Why He’ll Be Sorry Someday.

  Country Dance for Beginners. Conducted by the Englishtown Country Dancers. Two slots left.

  And that was it—except for something called “Decoupage” and I didn’t like the sound of that, so country dance won out, mostly because I saw that old movie Urban Cowboy and the country dancing looked kind of sick, so I go up to sign up and Mrs. Blake is so “thrilled” and “delighted” and then she calls out loud to Mrs. Radcliffe the gloomy librarian that “Jamie Austen signed up for country dancing” and they give me that look, like they’re proud of me for doing something brave. Translation: They thought it was hilarious because I just did something really dumb.

  When I got home Mom’s holding my baby brother, Charlie, while she’s stirring something in a pot and explaining to my sister Darcy how come Charlotte marries a creet like Mr. Collins. Mom’s read Pride and Prejudice every year since she was twelve, and now she’s hardwiring Darcy.

  “How’d you make out?” Mom asked.

  “Country line dancing. Is that productive enough for you?”

  “ ‘Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward.’ ”

  And here’s where I get her back, because you can’t hear JA lobbed at you night and day without sending one back over the net, so I go, “ ‘Every savage can dance.’ ”

  D(ance) day, I figure I’m all in, so I dig up my western shirt with the pearl snaps and the corded yoke and a leather belt and my second-best jeans and head out.

  “Where are you going, James?”

  Which should have been a clue, because Mom knew where I was going—what she’s saying is, “Where are you going dressed like that?”

  “Country dance class, remember?”

  Then she doesn’t say anything, no pearls of Austen, nothing. Just nods and turns back to her book with this funny look on her face like she’s trying not to smile, but I figure don’t ask. Just go and get it over with.

  They put the country dancing on the top floor by taking off the divider between the art studio and the music studio, to make one long space, and it looks like there are about thirty people, so when I walk in, that makes sixty eyes lock on, ’cause here I come, suited up for Austin, Texas, and everybody else is Austen, Jane, and you could tell the Englishtown Country Dancers from the civvies, ’cause the Dancers went all out, frills, brocade, velvet, and that was the guys.

  “Jamie!” And here comes Mrs. Blake all in a shiny blue gown with peacock feathers sticking up in her hair. “Mrs. Radcliffe bet a pound of fudge that you would back out—so glad—we’re so short of young men.”

  She got that right. Out of thirty people, eight were guys and the only one of them younger than my dad was moi. The women were mostly old, too—like, forty at least—but a few looked college age, and one girl my age, and she was h.o.t.

  One of the ladies from the Englishtown Country Dancers asks us all to gather around and then tells us how happy she is to see such a great-looking group and what fun we’re going to have and how country dancing is going to be a lot easier than we think. Translation: it’s next to impossible and you’re going to look like a creet for even trying.

  “We’re going to teach you some of the simpler country dances from the Georgian and Regency eras, and we may work in a few mentioned in Jane Austen—” And everybody lets out this sigh, like worship. I think I saw one of the guys genuflect. No kidding.

  “We’re going to start off with a simple cotillion. Cotillions, of course, were mentioned only in one Jane Austen work.” (Everybody nods like they know what she’s talking about, so I nod, too.) “Cotillions are performed in smaller groups than the long sets of the contre danse. Remember, in Jane Austen’s day, there were very few ways unmarried ladies and gentlemen could get together, and since marriage was the only honorable provision for well-educated women of small fortune—”

  (Which is why Charlotte marries the creet, Mr. Collins.)

  “—dancing became the means of advancing a courtship—in fact it was one of the few occasions when a respectable young lady and gentleman could hold hands. Not all young people learned to play an instrument or to draw or to speak French, but they did all learn to dance. Dancing was, in the words of Jane Austen, ‘one of the refinements of polished society.’ ”

  “Not to mention less polished society,” whispered someone behind me. “Every savage can dance, right?”

  I turn around, and it was Her, and she smiles and I smile and then they tell us to pair up and she goes, “You wanna be partners?” and I say something righteously dumb like, “It doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything,” but she laughs.

  Then the lady—her name is Mrs. Caverley—runs through a bunch of terms, and then a group of the dancers show us a few moves, and Mrs. Caverley laughs and says it’s okay if we forget them because someone will yell out the steps and if we still mess up, one of the country dancers will get us back on track.

  “We always begin and end each dance by honoring our partner—that means the ladies curtsey and the gentlemen bow.”

  So I know how to bow, but that’s the first, last, and only thing I get right, because the music starts and they’re going forward, I’m going backward, I’m going left when they’re going right, they’re doing a one-eighty when I’m doing a three-sixty, then somebody yells “Allemande!” or “Rigaudon!” and I lose my partner and wound up grabbing on to one of the guys, but he’s okay with it.

  The thing is, it was almost fun. The country dance people were seriously nice when you (I) messed up, they acted like it was their fault for not showing you the right way, and when you’re trying to remember the names of all the steps and forget you’re dressed like Suburban Cowboy and concentrating on not looking like a total creet, time goes by pretty quick.

  “So, what’d you think?” she asks when it’s all over.

  “It felt like I was apologizing instead of attending or moving wrong without being aware of it.”

  Which is the problem with having a mother who quotes Jane Austen day and night—the words start coming out of your mouth when you should be downing a twelve-ounce can of Shut Up.

  But she’s all impressed. “Wow. You read Pride and Prejudice?”

  I shrug. When you can’t lie and you don’t want to cop to the truth, you can coast on the shrug. “You?”

  “Yeah.” She pulled the word into two syllables, and she’s smiling and she’s got a real nice smile. “You read Jane Austen all the time, you want to know what the dances feel like.”

  I was gonna say she sounded like my mom (bad idea), but I caught myself. “You sound like … you’re not from around here.”

  So she tells me they just moved down from Maine three weeks ago and I go, “I’m James,” and she goes, “I’m Cathy,” and then she’s like, “I think it’s cool that you read Jane Austen. I was even named after one of her characters—Catherine, from Northanger Abbey? Ever read it?”

  I shrugged.

  “Sick, right?”

  “Endstage.”

  “But P’n’P’s still my favorite.”

  We were down at the atrium now, and instead of heading for the exit, she heads for the library entrance, where a couple of vamp girls in black T-shirts and faces white as a character in a Tim Burton movie were on the prowl. “I’m gonna hang here awhile. I practically lived at the library back home,” and she gives this wistful little shrug.

  “I gotta get home.” I did not need to run into the vamps and zombs with me dressed like a buckaroo. “But next week, uh, first two dances, okay?”

  She gives me this little curtsey, like in class, and says, “ ‘Mr. Darcy is all politeness.’ But it doesn’t mean we�
��re engaged or anything.”

  When I get back, Mom’s on the computer and she goes, “Did you have a good time?”

  And the way she says it, the look on her face, says she knew what I set myself up for, and I sort of explode. “What the heck? Couldn’t you warn a guy? It gets out I’m prancing around with guys wearing frills. Lace! I’ll be lucky if it doesn’t get out I’m gay.”

  “Nobody thought Mr. Darcy or Henry Tilney were gay.”

  I swear, sometimes it’s like my parents were never teenagers, never even went to high school. If they had, they’d know it’s not who you are, it’s who everyone else says you are.

  “So you didn’t like it?”

  “It was okay.”

  “Does that mean that you did like it ‘against your will, against your reason, and even against your character’? Or does it mean there were a few girls your age in the class?”

  So I give the shrug and I ask Mom if I can borrow one of her copies of Northanger Abbey—she’s got a two-book minimum of everything Jane Austen wrote—and she goes, “Sure, sweetie,” and looks happy about it. The thing is, even though I kind of know Jane Austen (you can’t live in this house and not know Jane Austen), I never really read Jane Austen, so I take the one with all the underlines and notes, to clue me in to what it’s about.

  So before the next class, I finish Northanger Abbey and it’s not bad. It’s about this teenager, Catherine, who’s hooked on Gothic novels. Ghosts, vampires, haunted houses, psychos locked in the attic, pretty much what kids are reading now. And it kind of messes with her head, like there’s the story world and the real world and she can’t always keep them straight. She also likes this guy, and she is not smooth at all—and believe me, I have been there.

  I still think General Tilney might’ve killed his wife.

  Next class was a little better. First off, I traded the cowboy boots for khakis and a white shirt, and I met Cathy outside class and we went in together.

  We ran through the cotillion, and then Ms. Caverley lines us up for these longways dances, and she reminds us that back in the day it was not good manners to dance more than twice with the same partner. So after I danced with Cathy, I wind up with Mrs. Blake, who’s wearing a Jane Austen getup again, this time with even more feathers sticking out of her head, and for all the Oreos she puts away, she could dance rings around all of us. Then I dance with some lady who’s got nine kids and twenty-three grandkids, and at one point I’m next to a guy who told me how he met his wife at a country dance class and how they were in a country dance group for forty-seven years and how he’s kept it up now that she died. And he said it took him a year to get the hang of some of the dances and how excellent it was I caught on so fast. And I gotta say, it’s weird how interesting everybody was when you get talking to them, and how much fun they were all having, always laughing at themselves but never putting you down, and if you mostly hang with teenagers, that takes some getting used to.