by Cindy Jones
He looked at me, surprised. A single green plastic chair sat vacant in the garden. St. Francis stood frozen in concrete, watching naked birds bathe. I'd gone too far. Backtrack, I told myself. Think of something. But I couldn't stand it anymore. I refused to spend another day imprisoned in the attic.
"You're not working today?" he said, choosing to ignore my question and push past the awkwardness.
"No," I said.
Willis hesitated while a bird hopped on one pediment and then another.
"I'm hungry." I frowned at him.
"So am I." He frowned back.
"And I'm going down to get a cookie," I said. "If you don't come with me, I'm going back to my room. You'll starve up here by yourself." He said nothing but followed me down the folding ladder, past his desk, and down the attic stairs to the second floor landing where anything could emerge from the closed doors without notice. We descended the stairs leading to civilization, although, being Monday, Newton Priors was deserted. As a precaution, we tiptoed down the last steps, passed the front door where tourists got in, and the Freezer where Magda fired people. Willis was still with me when we passed the ballroom where adaptations of her prose daily tortured My Jane Austen, and the butler pantry where Mrs. Russell played footsie with Stephen Jervis. I pulled Willis into the music room and shut the door.
"This," I whispered, "is where the volunteers hide the tea cookies." As I bent to open a cupboard, Willis turned away. When I looked up, he stood at the door with a hand on the knob. "Oh, don't go," I said, disappointed, extending a hand offering a cookie, "I haven't played my song for you."
Willis turned the bolt. Then, without looking at me, he walked purposefully to the other door and turned its bolt, as if he were in charge of festival security. Willis took the cookie from my hand and laid it on a low table. His face bore a hint of shy amusement I'd never seen before, as if he acknowledged the force of resistance he'd put up for so many weeks as well as the act of removing that obstacle between us. Part of me wanted to shake him and demand an explanation for his arbitrary behavior. But that impulse was overcome by the wonder of a breakthrough and the idea of exploring mysterious new territory.
He straightened to look at me. "I'm starving, too," he said, a slight tremor in the word too.
The eye contact, the step toward me, and the hand reaching out offered tangible signs that I hadn't been delusional all those days in the attic. I had been waiting for this. My affection was returned. Willis felt what I felt: the anticipation of receiving intimacy. Never had being me granted such possibility of joy, a room such comfort, a person such completion. Not just because of his appealing physical chemistry and his subtle, intelligent manner, but the way he thought about things; his seriousness of purpose. As Willis kissed me, I experienced the sensation of falling into the right place. No other place existed. He walked me to the ratty sofa, my arms around his neck, and we fell on it together. But then Willis hesitated, raising himself on his elbow and looking into my face. He gently touched my hair as his eyes formed a question, utter fulfillment of The Look. He would not use words, nor would he proceed lightly.
"Yes," I said. "Yes, yes, yes." I pulled him to me, trusting him with my happiness; ready for what would come next because I believed whatever happened with him would be good and carry the same meaning for him that it carried for me. As we lay together I experienced the kind of happiness I never believed would be mine—not complete enough to be chosen for this. The cosmos fit together perfectly, everything related to something else and everything belonged, especially me. I felt utterly connected, a part of the deep unknowable universe.
"You are lovely." He kissed me.
We lay together for a long while, my head on his shoulder, listening to his pulse, smelling his sweat, feeling the hair on his skin, and I kept moving; every new touch or slight shift of position satisfied a craving to get closer and renew the sensation of his physical presence. He brushed the hair out of my eyes and ran his hand lightly over my back and down my thigh. And I remember thinking he was more wonderful than a really good book, or music.
"Oh," I said. "My song." I rose, and went to the old record player. I pulled the vinyl LP from its sleeve and loaded it onto the turntable.
"You're well made," he said, watching me from the sofa.
The first fluttery notes of a harpsichord played. "I think of you when I hear this song," I said. I lay back down and Willis covered me with his shirt.
"Bach," he said.
I closed my eyes to listen but opened them again, needing to see Willis, the damp hair on his brow, the clothes on the floor, curling shreds of wallpaper in the upper reaches. Willis held me while the music played and I memorized all the details, although it was hard to concentrate, worried that anything that made me feel this good would surely not happen again.
"I can't resist you, Lily," he said.
"Thank God for that." I kissed him as if he were mine.
Thirteen
Willis was gone. When I climbed the attic stairs the next day, excited to resume our relationship under its new M.O., hoping to discuss the lease problem like a couple, he wasn't there. He should have told me he was leaving. Why would Willis disappear without an explanation after what had happened between us? Where was he? I'd never experienced such excruciating loneliness. In my head, Miss Clavel said, Something is not right, but in my heart, I cherished the hope that he'd gone to London to break up with the Someone Else.
I sat at my desk, staring at the pad on which I'd written the heading, "Business Plan for Dummies." Vera said we needed to accelerate our strategy since Magda had supposedly received a letter of interest from her funding source at Michigan. Vera proposed visiting Lady Weston in the hospital on Friday. But the Consummation in the Music Room had transformed me into a total blissful wreck, taking my daydreams to a new level. So far, I could generate only the words "Mrs. Willis Somerford" in lovely copperplate, especially swirling the W and scrolling the S. My Jane Austen doodled on her list of heroes as if she didn't know what to do with herself.
I couldn't bear my loneliness. I put my pen down in preparation for another run to the attic when a plump mother and three toddlers with runny noses toddled into my office, followed by Omar.
"Here we go," a ghastly, frightened Omar pushed the last baby body through my door and closed it behind them. The six of us looked at each other. "Where's Vera?" Omar asked as if a gun were pointed at his temple.
"In the ballroom," I said, "policing the script. Did you take the slavery lines out like Nigel told you?" I asked, hiding my "Business Plan for Dummies" beneath my other list: ideas for new tea-theatre entertainment—a one-woman show, The Lost Letters of Jane Austen.
"No," he said.
"Why not?" I asked. The woman snagged the arm of a child headed for the door.
"I'm scared of Magda," Omar said. "She has the original script; she refuses to use it." Omar pulled a chair up for the woman to sit. "Let's make this our base for now," Omar said, but she remained standing. "Do you have any, um, crayons?" Omar asked me, clearly resorting to his last idea, staring as if I should know what was killing him. The mother smiled, oblivious.
"Crayons?" I had colored markers but they were the permanent kind. Instead, I extended my hand to the plump woman. "Hello," I said. "I'm Lily Berry."
She returned the smile and gave me her hand. "I'm Sheila Porter," she said. "Archie's wife."
The situation focused. This would delay my next trip to the attic.
"Triplets?" I asked her, smiling at the three busy babes tangled in her legs.
Sheila's eyes sparkled as she shifted the very large diaper bag on her shoulder. "No," she answered, touching the shoulder of the tallest boy, "twins and a big brother."
Upon closer inspection, the age difference was obvious. "How can you tell them apart?" I asked, stalling for time, weighing the ins and outs of Archie's wife attending the same lit fest as Archie's mistress.
"A mother knows." Sheila touched one of the small ones.
"Teddy had a pointy head at birth and Roger's was much rounder," she said.
Teddy was moving about but I thought I could see a little point on him. And it occurred to me that the wife's presence might be the train wreck needed to end Magda's takeover.
Sheila continued, "And Roger has a birthmark above his right bum." Sheila touched the place on her own body but thought better of showing her flesh. The extra pounds she carried and the hairstyle dating from the year of her marriage both added years to her appearance.
Omar crossed his arms, blinking rapidly.
"How can I help you?" I asked Sheila.
"I'm here to see Archie, of course," Sheila said. "I know my way to the ballroom." She moved toward the door but Omar blocked it with his body.
"I'll get Archie and bring him here," Omar said. "He's watching the scene." Omar stared at me again. "Don't go anywhere," he said.
"Oh no, I want to surprise him," Sheila said, unusually calm for someone about to confront her husband's mistress, a look I'd seen before. Perhaps my mother had confronted Sue and I'd lived through it, oblivious.
"I don't think that's a good idea." Omar shook his head, beseeching me to back him up.
At that moment, Archie would be in his usual position in the back of the ballroom, heads together with Magda's scarf, defending Magda's adaptation of the text. The last thing he expected to see was his wife.
Sheila lifted a fussy twin, while the other put fuzz from the floor into his mouth. She lowered her eyes as she spoke. "The same individual who invited me here today made certain I understood the lay of the land."
"Vera invited you?" I asked.
Omar closed his eyes.
The oldest boy tugged on her arm and Sheila pulled a tiny board book from her diaper bag. I would have backed off at that moment like a sensible person, but something about the mother sharing the little book with the baby made me want to act on her behalf. As if doing something for Sheila would help my mother.
"Let's go," I said. "Archie's in the ballroom, I'll take you."
Omar slumped into the chair he'd pulled out for Sheila. "I'll wait here," he said.
* * *
Sheila stood just outside the ballroom door, her face flushed; perhaps finally understanding the risk of confronting her husband and his mistress. Up to this moment, the affair was in the abstract, she could deny it. Now the horror she'd imagined would reveal itself in the flesh. Her eyes darted from her children to the threshold while inside a chorus of actors pressed Fanny to cooperate with the theatricals. I peeked around the door to see Archie and Magda against the back wall, arms touching, oblivious, right where I wanted them.
Suddenly Nikki, playing Julia Bertram, flashed through the hall, rushing past me, the force of her stage presence displacing the mother and children to the side where all five shared the threshold. Nikki called out in her professionally trained voice, turning every head in the room—actors, directors, and patrons alike, to see who spoke so urgently:
* * *
Julia: My father is come! He is in the hall at this moment!
* * *
That should have been the end of the scene, where patrons give the actors a round of applause, but it didn't happen that way. The boy in the doorway distracted the patrons from their obligation to applaud; speaking as though he were part of the cast, his line confusingly fit the action as he said, "Father!"
But the boy wasn't speaking to the actors. He and his mother were looking at the back wall where the entire audience turned their curious gaze—where Archie Porter stood blushing furiously. After hesitating, as if to consider his options, Archie walked away from Magda to kiss his wife on the mouth and lift one of the babies. Patrons responded with warm applause and murmurs as the upstaged actors retreated to the Freezer. When Archie put one baby down and picked up another, Sheila beamed. Archie's ponytail didn't look nearly so hip next to Sheila. It looked gray. In the context of his three kids, it looked silly.
I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck to see Magda's reaction. She turned on her heel and retreated out the back door, her scarf billowing in her wake like a flag on an enemy ship.
Fourteen
Sixby complained I was preoccupied when he arrived to brainstorm our follies act. "You need to snap out of it," he said when I failed to respond. "We need a clever act."
I didn't want to snap out of it. I wanted to be alone with Willis in my recent memories. "How about a one-woman show: The Lost Letters of Jane Austen?" I said absently, as I added numbers on my pad.
"Ooh, I've never done a one-woman show," he said, leaning back in Claire's chair, flipping through his book. He'd dressed in Regency breeches and white cotton shirt—on his day off, his jacket flung on the chair. "What would Magda say?"
Magda was busy at the moment, putting up a fight. Hard to believe she would fight for scruffy old Archie. But sometimes it seemed Magda was winning, displaying her exotic charms, exposing an inch of firm brown flesh as she abandoned her modest garb in favor of tight jeans and cropped tops. Omar's comment: "Forget scarves and veils. The attire-oppressed women of the world are on hold while the future of Archie Porter is decided." And Vera worried that since Archie had moved back into his own rooms with his wife and children, Magda clearly had more time on her hands to pursue her funding goals.
Sheila's campaign suffered on the appearance front although her loose black pants and paisley tunics performed the public service of concealing her motherly midriff bulge. However, on another battlefront, Sheila was the Mother of His Children, a winning strategy she engaged at every opportunity, launching the children in the ballroom where they talked during scenes, the pub where they screamed, and the Freezer where they jumped on the furniture. Sheila's tactics were hard to ignore.
Accelerating her own battle plans, Vera urged me to prepare a real lease and business plan for Lady Weston by the end of the week. I tried to make her understand that Randolph would have to sign it this time around. I wanted to discuss this with Willis but he was still absent. He'd never been away this long and I had no way to reach him. The secretary at the church said he'd gone to London and she didn't know what his plans were.
"What are you doing?" Sixby asked, standing and walking to my desk where he sat on the corner.
"I'm calculating the proceeds from the teas."
"How much?"
"I'm still adding. I'll let you know." I suspected an exchange rate mistake because the total was running well over six thousand dollars so far. We charged twenty GBP per person for tea and sold scone mix the volunteers packaged and donated, but the total seemed high. If we held a tea every Wednesday, we could clear over fifteen thousand dollars before the end of August. Unless the volunteers grew tired of providing scones.
"I know." Sixby snapped his fingers. "Why not borrow one of your roommate's gowns," he said. "We can go up to my room and improv: Anhalt and Amelia Unchaperoned."
Sixby's remark made me realize how my life had changed. In a previous version of me, an uplifting piano sonata would have been playing in my head as I basked in the attention of this handsome actor. A month ago, I would have jumped at the chance to improv with Sixby. Back then Sixby was Shakespeare, Darcy, and all the male protagonists I'd ever fallen for rolled into one. Now, Willis was all I could think about. And Willis was nothing like Sixby. My Jane Austen sat on the other side of the desk making an alphabetical list of all of the unsavory men in her novels. She'd gotten as far as Mr. Collins.
"What's the book?" I asked Sixby.
"Love poetry. I've been contemplating the mysteries of love." Sixby sighed. "Shall I read?" he asked.
"Only if you are very quick," I said, ready to run upstairs again. Willis could have returned in the last hour.
"Here's a good one," he said, marking the place with his finger. His exquisite voice conveyed the poet's apology over the grave of a lover who'd been dead fifteen years. As the last syllable resonated, a lovely minor tone, I knew exactly how the poet felt. "'Once drinking deep of that divinest anguis
h, How could I seek the empty world again?'"
"Beautiful," I said. "You made me forget where I am."
"Emily Bronte." He closed the book. "I know how to reach you," he said, smiling, activating his dimples. "Have you ever been in love?" he asked. "Rather personal question, no?" He paused. "You needn't answer. Just curious." He reached for my hand but I stayed where I was. My feelings existed between me and Willis and no one else. Private and serious, deep and considered, to speak of them with Sixby would be a profanity. I didn't answer.
"As for me," he said, "I'm afraid I'm too much a master of my emotions to experience the spontaneity of love."
"That's so sad," I said, employing mild sarcasm so My Jane Austen would know I was not falling for his line.
"Oh, it's very sad." Sixby laughed. "I can't tell you how many women have offered to help me."
My Jane Austen put her list down and stood, as if she would leave.
"But you, Lily." He gestured with both hands. "You're different. Let's try something," he said. "Stand up while I read. Close your eyes and feel a character, an alter ego building in your imagination."
I closed my eyes, conjuring Willis while Sixby read, sounding more and more like Willis. The delivery was so beautiful that I let go, carried away to the roof, the wind in my hair, the escape to the music room, and the presentation of the cookie. Willis stepped toward me, his hand outstretched; I felt Sixby's lips on mine yet the footsteps continued. And then the worst possible thing. Willis looked in at the door. Willis, who never ventured into the office. Our eyes met. My face burned.
"Oops. Wrong room," Willis said, vanishing as quickly as he'd appeared.
"Oh God," I said, hitting my head.
"We seem to have a knack for that," Sixby said, finally releasing me, oblivious to my distress. "That wasn't me by the way." Sixby cleared his throat.
"Who then?" I asked, angry.
"I confess; I was the dead guy in Emily Bronte's poem." He picked up his book. "But you see; this may work," he added. "Next time you must borrow one of your roommate's lovely gowns and meet me in my room for some wicked improv."