Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

by Laurie Viera Rigler

  I am wiping my hands on a towel and about to put away some clean cups when Sharon approaches and reaches out her arms to me. “Courtney, it’s been so much fun working with you.”

  I am so stunned that for a moment I cannot even speak.

  “Don’t look so shocked.” She smiles. “You knew I was only going to train you for a few days.”

  “Yes, but I had no idea this was your last day.” I clutch the edge of the counter, feeling almost dizzy.

  “Now you look scared. Don’t worry; Sam will open up every day. And he’s got Keith to help out during rush times. You’re covered and beyond covered. And you’ll like Keith. Who’ll be here in two hours, by the way. All you have to do is hang in there for two hours on your own.”

  I try to smile, but despite my efforts, my eyes are blurry with unshed tears. Sharon moves to embrace me, and I hug her back. A tear slides down my cheek. She releases me and dabs at my face with the towel I was using.

  “You’re gonna be fine. I promise. Keep in touch, okay?” she says, her large brown eyes kind.

  I nod, afraid that if I say anything, I will shed more tears. I cannot believe how attached I’ve become to Sharon in such a short time. Or maybe I am merely frightened at the thought of working here alone. Even for two hours. With Sharon here, I felt protected somehow.

  I muster a smile. And wave good-bye as she slips out of the door.

  Fortunately, for the next hour or so, there are so few demands on my time that I find my confidence returning, and I even have leisure to pull out the book of sketches again, which I lay upon the counter and peruse.

  Now that I am past the shock of seeing my own likeness, I can once again admire the skill of the artist. It brings to mind how much I loved to draw when I was a child, especially on those rare occasions when my father would allow me into his atelier, my pencils and paper on one of his worktables, and I sitting there endeavoring to be as quiet and as good as possible. I would try to draw, inhaling the intoxicating scent of paints, but mostly I would watch my father paint. Not so much what he put on his canvases, but the way his face would become transported with the joy and intensity of what he was creating. But he did not like to be watched, and soon I was sent back to the drawing room, where my mother would comment upon my odd choice of subjects in my drawings—what sort of child preferred to draw maids and gardeners at work rather than ladies and gentlemen or flowers and bowls of fruit?

  The best times to draw were in my bedchamber, at night, by candlelight, while the rest of the house slept and I lay tucked cozily in my bed, the fire banked for the night, the bed hangings enclosing me in what I liked to imagine was my own private world. That is when my mind was calmest, when I was free from the prying eyes of my mother.

  The drawings of servants I learnt to hide in the back of my portfolio of sketches, behind several sheets of blank paper. And then, one day, I had just reentered the drawing room when I saw my mother looking through the sketches in my portfolio. She had found the ones I’d hidden.

  And then she looked up from the drawings, which were spread on the table, her face a white mask of rage, her voice as cold as the coldest winter.

  “I never ever want to see anything like this again, do you hear me, Jane? If you cannot draw like a proper young lady”—and with that she fed one of my drawings into the fire, and glared at me triumphantly at the sound of my gasp—“then you shan’t draw at all.”

  I watched, mute and helpless, as she put page after page into the fire.

  “Now get out of my sight,” she said, and sat down to her embroidery.

  It was then I saw my sister, Clara, sitting on the sofa at the far end of the room, pretending to be reading a book but with a self-satisfied little smile on her face.

  I knew then that I would never be one of them, never wish to be one of them. They, like my brother, were wrapped up in their own little worlds of self-consequence and vanity. My father was the only one who truly cared for me, but he sought refuge from them as well, spending the greater part of his day painting in his atelier or riding out to see to the business of the estate. How I wished to spend my days with him. But I was stuck inside the house, forced to learn how to be a “proper young lady,” as my mother always put it, and failing at it indeed.

  Someday, I vowed, I would be free of this stifling world. And I almost was, for I saw the prospect of marriage to Edgeworth as the escape I’d always dreamt of. With him I would not have to settle for one of the stupid, insufferable men my mother had thrown in my way. With him I would finally have an equal in mind and manners.

  And then it all fell to pieces. Yet here I am, free in a way I would never have imagined.

  I turn the pages of the sketchbook until I come to a blank sheet. And, using a pencil I find in the depths of my bag, I begin to draw. It has been years since I had a pencil in my hands, my desire to draw destroyed by my mother’s ridiculing and burning my drawings. I had almost forgot how much I loved it. Until I found this book.

  I find myself drawing a face. A woman’s face. I draw her upturned eyes, her features with their strange blend of girlish beauty and womanly intensity. I do not know why, but I am drawing the face of the woman who yesterday stared at me so fiercely that she nearly put me out of countenance and, in so doing, impressed her own quite strongly upon my memory.

  I cannot judge whether or not my rendering is a faithful likeness; nevertheless, it is almost a relief to be drawing again, no matter what the subject. A release somehow. It is strange to watch these hands which are not my hands, these plumper, stronger, broader hands, hold the pencil. And hold it they do, with more facility, I must say, than my own ever did. Perhaps I might have been more accomplished at the art had I not given it up at such a young age. Ah, well. I am grateful that it seems Miss Courtney Stone did not.

  I am so lost in drawing that when the tinkling of the bell announces the entrance of a customer, the sound is only at the periphery of my consciousness. It is only when he is standing at the counter that I look up and realize that it is Wes who has entered. His eyes are shining from behind his glasses; his curls are damp, as if he has just washed his hair. His white shirt is crisp and pressed, his collar open.

  My heart leaps in my chest. I pray my elation isn’t too transparent. I quickly close the sketchbook.

  “Sam told me you’d officially emerged from the training phase,” he says, “so I thought I’d come in and say hey. And take you out to celebrate. If you’re not busy, that is.”

  “I did not expect to see you before tomorrow.”

  “I worked most of the night so I could fly back today.”

  Leaning in closer, he cranes his neck towards the sketchbook, and the familiar citron scent of his skin is intoxicating.

  “So are you free for dinner?”

  My mouth is dry, and my palms are damp. “Dinner would be nice,” I finally murmur. Oh, dear. “Nice.” A word as hackneyed out of all meaning in this world as it was in mine.

  “I’ve never seen you draw before.” He reaches out his hand towards the book. “May I?”

  I am handing Wes the sketchbook when the café door jingles open again, and a tall, well-muscled young man in short trousers and a sleeveless shirt strides over to the counter, a broad grin on his tanned face.

  “Dude,” he says to Wes, offering his clenched fist, which Wes touches with his own in a curious sort of greeting ritual. “My site traffic’s through the roof since you tweaked my keywords.” He turns his bright white smile on me. “Courtney, right? I’m Keith.” He brushes a sun-bleached lock of hair from his forehead. “If you want to take off a few minutes early”—he looks towards Wes meaningfully—“that’s cool with me.”

  Ah. This must be the Keith of whom Sharon spoke before she took her leave.

  “Nice to meet you, Keith,” I say, having learnt that “pleased to make your acquaintance” inevitably results in a raised eyebrow. “And that’s very kind of you,” I add.

  I am indeed anxious to spend time with Wes. I
do, however, wish to splash some water on my face and attend to my hair first. I must look a perfect fright after spending hours making coffees and steaming milk. “Could you give me a few minutes?” I say to him.

  “Take your time.” He pats the sketchbook. “This will keep me occupied.”

  I close myself inside the café’s little bathroom and regard my reflection in the mirror. This face which is not my face is becoming ever more familiar to me, and I ever more comfortable with it. For having a different face makes it easier for me to say and do things that I never could have done with my own.

  Like dabbing my lips with a stick of shiny pink color which I dig out of my bag. Now that I’ve got over the guilt of doing yet another thing I was forbidden to do at home, I’ve learnt to appreciate Courtney’s veritable arsenal of cosmetics. My mother indulged daily in the rouge pot yet swore to her friends that the roses in her cheeks were nature’s gift. Here, however, cosmetics are universally advertised and even flaunted. I cannot count how many times I have observed women of all ages taking out little mirrors and applying lip color or powder to their faces at the table in public, or even while driving their cars.

  I splash cool water on my skin, which I dry gently with a paper towel. These cheeks are rosy, unlike the paleness of my former complexion. All that remains is to run a brush through my hair.

  Oh yes, and perhaps a little spray of perfume. I cough and open the tiny window. A last look in the mirror. I do hope I have not overdone the scent. I wish to smell and look fresh rather than artificially decorated.

  I walk back towards Wes, who is seated at a little table by the window, the sketchbook open before him. He looks up as I approach and beams. “Court. These are gorgeous,” he says, paging through the drawings. “I never knew you did this.”

  I merely smile and duck my head, for I did not draw the picture he is admiring. What a skilled impostor I have become.

  Wes gasps. Somehow he has knocked over his green glass bottle of mineral water, soaking the bottom half of the book, which is now open to my drawing of the woman. Wes bolts from his chair to dodge the water, which is dripping from the table.

  “It is nothing,” I say, rushing over to the counter to retrieve paper napkins with which I begin mopping up the spill. “It is only water and will soon dry.”

  I dab at the drawing with the paper napkins, looking into the eyes of the woman in the drawing.

  “Courtney, I am so sorry,” says Wes.

  Courtney, I am so sorry. Those words, those same words he spoke to me when I was standing in a shop on Vermont. It is another memory, and it is not my memory at all, yet it is. And I can see her, too, the woman from the drawing, standing in that shop. I had never laid eyes on her before, yet she was staring at me, just as she stared at me in the café and in the club. She was staring at me because Wes had been holding her hand and dropped it when he saw that I was in the shop. He had left her behind and walked towards me, as if she did not exist.

  “Courtney,” he said, “I am so sorry.”

  “Forget it,” I said, walking away from him as fast as possible towards the back door of the shop. How dare he speak to me? He had had his chance to speak, when he knew that Frank was with another woman. Wes, my closest friend, had betrayed me. And from the looks of the lady whose hand he had been holding, I was not the only one he had wronged.

  “Courtney?” Wes’s voice brings me back to the café.

  I am still holding a wad of paper napkins over the soaked lower half of the drawing. But the face of the woman is untouched, and her eyes regard me with as much unfriendly scrutiny as the original did in the café yesterday.

  And I know, in that moment, that I was lying to myself about Wes. I wanted to believe there was some misunderstanding, some reason for him to have kept Frank’s inconstancy a secret.

  But I was wrong.

  Oh, how could I have been so stupid? Why did I not listen to Anna and Paula? Why did I think for a moment that I would be drawn to anyone but the most duplicitous, deceiving men in the world? Not only had he agreed to lie to me—to Courtney—about Frank, he had slighted that woman in my presence, that woman whose hand he was holding, who was in the picture with him, that woman who must be his—fiancée? Girlfriend? Oh, how I hate that absurd word! No doubt she bears me a great deal of ill will from the way she looked at me yesterday in the café. And that night in the club. No wonder she was staring up at us. He must have gone to her as soon as Deepa took me home that night.

  “Courtney?”

  My heart is hammering in my ears; I have to get out of here. And almost before I know what I am doing, I have slung my bag across my shoulder and bolted from the café, running as fast as I can towards home.

  “Courtney!”

  He is behind me, shouting for me to stop, but I won’t listen; I have to get away from him. “Courtney, please!”

  And to think I was forming an attachment to this man. The shops and buildings are but a blur as I run, the sound of my breathing hard in my ears. But I barely see my surroundings. All I can see is Wes, his eyes, how he looked at me in that shop, how his gray-blue eyes were wet with what looked like unshed tears, and how I fled from him that day, fled from that pained look in his eyes, willing myself to think of something else, anything else, as I drove myself home, as I searched through my kitchen for something to eat, something to distract me. But all I could think about were his eyes, the pain in them, and the feel of his hand on my shoulder, and the citron scent of his skin—and suddenly I was so dizzy that I found myself gripping the edge of the kitchen table to steady myself.

  For it wasn’t Frank I loved. It was Wes.

  I see it now, so clearly, though she could not. I see what she drowned in vodka and grief, what she buried inside the pages of Pride and Prejudice.

  And I am back there, in that memory, in the apartment, the morning after seeing Wes in that store, and I am sick with too much drink, and my head pounds as I stagger out of the apartment. And there is a blur of lopsided images, driving in the car, the sun hurting my eyes, dragging myself into work, then swimming in an enormous public bath—a pool. And I am swimming in the cold clear water, arms slicing the shimmering surface, legs kicking. And I am standing at the edge of the pool, shivering with fatigue, and I am diving into the water. And then I am lying on the floor at the side of the pool, the worried faces of the other swimmers standing over me, the drip-drip-drip of the older, skinny one as the ribbon of her tightly fitting cap deposits drop after drop onto my right cheek in a steady, rhythmic pace. How hypnotic is the sound, like a metronome lulling me to sleep, and I close my eyes, surrendering to the drip-drip-drip. Which is when I hear his voice, as if for the very first time. It is Wes’s voice telling me I hit my head on the bottom of the pool when I dived in, that I’ll be fine, that I should open my eyes. How strange it is to have Wes talking to me while I lie here at the pool, his hand reaching down to me. Except that I am no longer at the pool. “You’re in the emergency room,” he says, holding my hand. “And you’re gonna be just fine.”

  “Courtney?” Wes’s voice brings me back to the present moment. I am no longer running; I am leaning against the wall in front of my house, and I am breathing hard from my exertions.

  “What’s going on? Why did you run away from me?” He is holding the book of drawings, folded open to the picture of the woman.

  I look down at the book. And then I meet Wes’s eyes.

  “I remember now. I wanted to believe you had good reason for not telling me about Frank. For even being willing to lie for him. But now I know there is no excuse for what you did.”

  He closes his eyes for a moment and lets out a sigh that is almost like a shudder. “I never meant to hurt you, Courtney.”

  I point to the drawing. “But what about her, Wes? What did you do to her? Did you lie to her the way you lied to me?”

  “I told her I couldn’t get involved. She said I wasn’t the type of guy she’d ever fall in love with. She said I was too nice. She said
she just wanted to have a good time.”

  I can see the lady’s face, the hurt in her eyes when Wes dropped her hand and walked away from her in the shop.

  “She didn’t look as if she were having a good time that day. Or yesterday when she was in the café.”

  Something like fear flickers across his features. “Morgan was there?”

  “I could not place her at first, except for having seen her at Awakening. But then I remembered that day.”

  “Courtney, can we please go inside and talk about this?”

  “No, I have nothing to say.”

  “I have a lot to say to you.”

  Those words echo in my head: I have a lot to say to you. It is exactly what he said to me that day in the shop, when he was with Morgan, and I was walking away from him, as I am now.

  “I have no wish to hear how you used that young lady ill.”

  He is actually walking up the stairs after me.

  “Courtney, for once would you please listen to me?”

  I stop and turn to look at him. “That poor girl. Does no one of your sex understand constancy?”

  And then the full meaning of my words puts me in such a state that I can feel the blush rising to the roots of my hair.

  “That’s not fair. How was I supposed to know she would want—” He looks down at his shoes, as if unable to continue.

  The look on her face in the club, in the café. All the time Wes spent with me when he wasn’t working, how he even slept on my sofa. “And so you abandoned her. This is beyond anything.”

  “If you really want to know, she was so angry at me after we ran into you in that store that she said she didn’t want to see me anymore.”

  “What choice did she have, after the way you slighted her?”

  Was Wes no better than Sense and Sensibility’s Willoughby, who humiliated poor Marianne in public?

  “You should do the right thing by the lady—by Morgan,” I say.