Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict (7 page)

I am so moved by the naked vulnerability in his eyes that I find myself touching his hand. He looks away, his other hand quickly swiping at his eye. Was that a tear?

I fight the urge to gather him in my arms and cradle his head against my breasts. And rip off his clothes.

What difference would it make if I changed my mind and said yes? Who would it hurt? After all, this parallel reality, or whatever I’m in, is only temporary.

Wait a minute. Am I that starved for a commitment, that desperate to be married? Wherever I am may be temporary, but how long is that? It could be days, hours, weeks, or years. Do I really want to gamble whatever “temporary” is on marriage to a stranger, whether or not I am passing up the chance of a lifetime? Or a reality? Or even two realities?

Guess I’ll just have to take that risk.

Edgeworth clears his throat. “May I still have the honor of calling on you again when I return from town?”

“You had better.”

He smiles. “You are a mystery that I am determined to solve.”

“That makes two of us, Mr. Edgeworth.”

And two of something else as well: a pair of white butterflies are suddenly dancing in the air, right in front of my face. They take off and are replaced by a lone orange-and-black spotted one, which promptly lands on my dress. I move my hand to touch it, but Edgeworth gently stops my hand with his.

“Its wings are too fragile to be touched.”

Instant déjà vu. Where did I hear that before? Suddenly I’m shivering in my thin dress. It was warm and sunny just a moment ago, but now the light is muted and dull. I look up and see that steel-gray clouds have moved across the sun. A chill breeze makes me wish for a shawl. My feet take me back to the house, and Edgeworth walks beside me in silence.

When we enter the drawing room, Mrs. Mansfield has miraculously recovered from her headache. Her eyes above the dimpled smile are diamond hard, narrowing as she scans my face for information.

When Edgeworth leaves within fifteen minutes of polite chitchat—and without returning to the drawing room after he goes off to Mr. Mansfield’s atelier to say good-bye—she scrutinizes me but says nothing. But as soon as she spies through the window Edgeworth riding off on his horse, she rushes off in the direction of the atelier.

I escape to my room, but Mrs. Mansfield is soon outside my door.

“Your father tells me,” she says, “that Mr. Edgeworth bade him good-bye and promised to call on us when he returns from town.”

I say nothing.

Mrs. M puts a hand on her hip. “Well?”

I sit at the dressing table and pick up a hairbrush.

“Did Mr. Edgeworth make you an offer of marriage?”

I can’t do much with the brush, as my hair is up.

“I asked you a question, Jane.”

“He did, and I said no.”

Her eyes bore into me. “You what?”

I smile at her sweetly. “I said it nicely.”

Mrs. Mansfield’s face is an alabaster mask. “Tell me, Jane. Do you really think anyone else as amiable or rich will ever make you an offer of marriage? You are thirty years old. And your portion, while not insignificant, is nothing to what a man of Mr. Edgeworth’s fortune might rightfully expect. Yet you dare to refuse him. You dare to disoblige me.”

I choke back a reply, my stomach tightening. Why do I care what this woman thinks?

“And when your father dies? What will become of you? Do you wish to live out your days in this house, the maiden aunt who looks after her brother’s children—may God grant him a son and heir—because you were too obstinate to marry when you had the chance?”

I look at her with the same level gaze she has trained on me. I will not let her get to me.

“Well?” she says.

I shrug my shoulders. “You have it all figured out already.”

“Except why you refused him. I demand to know why.”

“No reason at all. Only that I don’t love him.”

“What has love to do with it?”

“You know, that might make a good title for a song.” I’m tempted to launch into my best Tina Turner rendition, but I think better of it, especially because Mrs. M is already looking at me like a cockroach she is debating whether or not to grind under her heel.

“I hope you realize what you have done. He will never pay his addresses to you again.” And with that, she turns on her heel and leaves.

“He’ll be back,” I say to the empty room.

Actually, I’m not so sure. He may have left intending to return, but who knows what might happen. His bruised male ego might not want to risk any more rejection. And he could meet someone else in the meantime.

Oh well, too bad then. If he doesn’t come back, I’ll deal with my regrets, if by then I feel any. Or if I’m even still here. Edgeworth will be gone for two weeks; this whole charade has to end by then. I will not allow myself to think otherwise.

Which is easier said than done.

Thirteen

I t is now day five of the hostage-in-another-body crisis, and this particular body is starting to smell ripe. No wonder; not only has my sole option for daily ablutions been a pitcher and basin, half the contents of which ends up on the floor rather than on my skin, but in place of deodorant I’ve been resorting to dousing my armpits in a flowery perfume. But not today, I decide, flinging off the covers and ringing the bell for Barnes. In typical Barnes fashion, she appears at my door within seconds.

“Barnes, I need a bath.”

She looks rather flustered. “Now, miss?”

“Would you rather hand out perfume bottles to place under the noses of all who approach me?”

“But you’ll be late for church.”

“Church? Barnes, I stink.”

She wrings her apron between her hands. “But your mother is most particular about the time—”

“Please don’t tell me I have to go.”

She looks at me plaintively. “I’ll give you a good scrubbing, I promise, and you’ll be clean and sweet-smelling quicker than you can eat one of Cook’s ginger puddings. And then I’ll lay out your favorite yellow gown, and first thing tomorrow you’ll have a steaming hot bath.”

“What about when we get back from church?”

“Your mother is most particular—”

“Don’t tell me. I don’t think I can take any more bad news before I have my tea.”

“Shall I send up a breakfast tray?”

I sigh. At least I wouldn’t have to look at Mrs. M before I have my tea. “A tray sounds perfect.” I point to my right armpit. “And please help me do something about this, will you?”

In no time I am semi-deodorized, dressed, and Mr. M is handing me into a real, honest-to-goodness horse-drawn carriage, which clip-clops its way to an ancient little stone church. This isn’t bad at all. Here I am, just like Lizzy Bennet or Jane Austen herself, all dressed up in costume, trooping into the church’s hushed interior with the rest of the bonneted women and waistcoated men who are filing into the pews, just like I belong here.

Aside from the period-piece novelty of it all, it’s been ages since I’ve been to a church service; maybe it will calm my mind and give me some perspective on my situation.

But then the minister, a blubbery bald man with a dirty neck, opens his mouth. And in a high, castrato-pitched voice, begins pontificating on the loose morals of women in modern society. Instead of providing any juicy details, however, he punctuates his vague generalities with lengthy readings from the Bible. He goes on. And on. And on. I glance next to me at Mr. M, whose eyelids are sliding down and head is rolling back. He quickly jerks back to attention, wipes a bit of drool off the side of his mouth, and gives me a sheepish half-grin. The old ladies in the opposite pew, on the other hand, are gazing at their man of the cloth with rapt attention and affirmative nods of their heads.

There’s not much I can do in the way of people watching to keep the boredom at bay, as every time I try to turn around in my seat to see who else is in the church, I catch at least half a dozen people in the act of staring at me. Do I look that much out of place here? Is my nose running? Then I realize that they probably want to see for themselves if my brain is addled from the fall I’ve supposedly taken. It’s got to be a lot more interesting than listening to the minister. I spot Mrs. Randolph and her daughter, who appears to be sneering at what’s written in her prayer book. As for Mrs. M, she keeps hissing at me to face forward and act like a lady.

Finally, I manage to escape by staring off into the middle distance and picturing myself on the worn leather sofa in my apartment, at my cluttered desk at work, in my clothes-strewn bedroom, gossiping with Paula and Anna while fixing my makeup and trying on outfits for a night out, then sipping a dirty martini with two olives while flirting with my favorite bartender. I picture myself looking like myself, talking like myself, feeling like myself.

My reverie is rudely interrupted, however, by the sound of—can it be? Someone is actually farting in church. And not some sheepish, just-slipped-out mistake of a fart, but several trumpeting bursts. And not once, but three times, and from different directions. Holy mother of—this last one is close enough for me to smell. I pull out a bottle of lavender water from my bag and spend the rest of the service with it under my nose, well aware of the irony of my worries earlier this morning about offending others with my own odor, and wondering if Elizabeth Bennet, or Jane Austen for that matter, ever had to endure such assaults on their weekly devotions. No wonder Mary Crawford was so horrified that Edmund Bertram was going to become a clergyman. I am appreciating Mansfield Park more every moment.

T he next morning Barnes is true to her word. No sooner do I haul my unwashed body out of bed and ring the bell than Barnes appears at my door with promises to “start the process directly.”

Process indeed. First comes a huge copper tub, carried into my room by two maids and laid out over a few layers of thin towels. About an hour and two cups of hot chocolate later, the buckets begin to arrive. Huge, steaming, and by all appearances, heavy buckets are handed in by unseen hands to the two maids who had carried in the tub and are now sweating from the labor and the steam, and all of it is supervised by Barnes.

I realize that every one of those buckets has been hauled up to the third floor of this house. All for a single bath. For me. I look at the maids sheepishly and start apologizing for all the trouble I’m putting them to, but they merely curtsey and mumble and duck their heads while casting what look suspiciously like “get a load of the madwoman” glances at one another. So I shut up. Besides, my need to have this body clean trumps my empathy for the proletariat.

Finally, the last bucket is lugged and poured, Barnes mixes the perfect amount of cool water in with the hot, and her sweating assistants depart, wiping their foreheads with corners of their aprons and looking as if they could do with a chiropractic adjustment.

Barnes helps me out of my nightgown and gives me a floor-length, long-sleeved, shiftlike garment to put on, then lays a thick layer of towels over the backrest part of the tub, which makes me realize that I’m supposed to get in the bath wearing the shift, presumably to prevent my skin from burning off on contact with the hot metal surface of the tub.

I dip in a toe—perfect temperature. Within seconds I am luxuriating in a total immersion experience, head leaning against the padded back of the tub, eyes closed. I will never again take for granted indoor plumbing of any kind, even my tiny stall shower with the perpetual mildew problem. But this is much, much better.

I’m roused by Barnes’s throat clearing; would I like to wash my hair? Why not; let’s go for broke. But when she massages a gloppy mess, which smells suspiciously like a rum and Coke, into my scalp, I wonder whether I am actually going to end up with cleaner hair.

But once I am toweled, dressed, and sitting before a mirrored dressing table, Barnes brushes the shiny, soft, and untangled tresses this body is blessed with, and I figure it’s best not to know what’s in that shampoo. Nevertheless, I decide to limit the washing of hair to a once-a-week schedule. As for baths, I manage to negotiate two per week with Barnes, despite her worries that such frequent bathing could be hazardous to my health.

When Barnes leaves the room, I shiver, not from my damp hair, but because I realize I’ve just finished creating a schedule for myself in a place where I’m not supposed to be.

Fourteen

A s the carriage once again clip-clops its way toward the little stone church, I realize I have, in the space of only a week (if time can be reckoned in such a place), fallen into a routine. Hot rolls and jam every morning, roast meats in the late afternoon. In between are embroidering, walking in the garden, and various scoldings from Mrs. M, accompanied by snide comments on my single status. The days end with reading aloud while Mrs. M sews, then visiting with Mr. M in his atelier, and snuggling up in bed with the two things that keep me sane, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.

Tonight is no different. As my bedside candles illuminate a page in the precious first edition I hold in my hands, I understand, as I have long understood through my own insatiable appetite for readings and rereadings of Jane Austen’s six novels, why children want the same stories read to them a thousand times. There is comfort in the familiarity of it all, in the knowledge that all will turn out well, that Elizabeth and Darcy will end up together in Pemberley, that Anne Eliot will pierce Captain Wentworth’s soul, and that Mr. Elton will be stuck with his caro sposa for the rest of his life. It is so unlike the unpredictability and unfairness of real-life endings and the half-life stasis I inhabit.

Yet I cannot pretend that the pristine, first-edition volume in my hands constitutes my only pleasure in these days and nights. Yes, the “reality” of this world is certainly smellier and less sanitary than I ever considered when I used to fantasize myself into one of those quiet drawing rooms pretending to do needlework while a hottie in skintight trousers sent me meaningful glances from across the room. But why would I have considered such things; after all, with the exception of Fanny Price’s slovenly family in Portsmouth, and Sir Walter Eliot’s snobbish ideas of what Anne must meet with at Mrs. Smith’s, no one talks about dirt and smells in the novels. Certainly no one talks about chamber pots and what it takes to have a bath. Nor does anyone do so in the Hollywood-sanitized film adaptations, the most unorthodox of which limits its commentary on the earthiness of the era to an image of a prodigiously endowed farm animal meandering into the Bennets’ house. Thankfully, nothing of that sort intrudes into the reality in which I find myself, nor in the two-DVD set of the BBC’s P & P that I’ve watched so many times I could practically act it out end to end, all five hours of it.

Could all those viewings, combined with all those rereadings, have resulted in my current state of affairs? When Frank caught me watching the Pride and Prejudice DVD in the middle of the night for the umpteenth time, he sneeringly referred to my fascination with Jane Austen’s world as postmodern nostalgia. Not that I have the faintest idea of what “postmodern” means, despite Frank’s having spent many hours lecturing me on the topic.

Sanitized simulacra, lack of indoor plumbing, and oppressive mothers notwithstanding, there is something about the simplicity and quiet of this world that not only does not disappoint, but which exceeds any expectation. I don’t have the constant noise in my brain from all the Internet, iPod, and radio signals streaming all those sounds and words and pictures into my consciousness practically every waking moment of every day. I never even noticed that noise in my brain until I realized I didn’t have it anymore.

Yes, I miss my friends, but there are a few things I do not miss. I do not miss waking up crying yet again over Frank’s betrayal—somehow being here has dulled that pain. I do not miss having to face my mercurial boss for yet another day of reading scripts that will never become movies, thank God. And I do not miss answering his perpetually ringing phones, being berated one minute for forgetting to stock the fridge with some obscure bottled water from Norway, and the next minute counseling him on what to buy his girlfriend as an apology gift.

I do miss Wes, though. I miss amusing him with accounts of my boss’s random acts of clueless egotism, which always makes me find the humor in them myself. I miss sipping vodka and doing the dishes with him after his dinner parties, while everyone else practically passes out in the living room from too much good food and wine. And I miss his unconscionably divine cooking, which has no apparent effect on his lanky frame. It’s as hard to stay angry at Wes here as it is to feel more than an abstract sense of heartbreak over Frank.

As for Mrs. M, she has lately limited the worst of her venom to my unmarried state; there hasn’t been a single allusion to madness or asylums in several days. I’m sure that’s due to my concentrated efforts to sound authentic and to confine my twenty-first-century verbal snideness to the diary I’ve begun.

Something else to look forward to doing tomorrow. That and bath day.

“M iss?”

I bolt up from my semi-reclining position in the tub, sending surges of bathwater toward Barnes, who is towering over me, holding a towel in front of her.

“Sorry, Barnes. I must have dozed off.”

“Not at all, miss.” She dabs her forehead with a corner of her apron, and again proffers the open towel. I stand up and she enfolds me in it, followed by a robe, which I tie around my waist, dropping the towel to the floor.

It is then that I feel a trickle down my leg, and I see that it’s not water, but blood.

It isn’t my usual time, but then again, this isn’t my usual body.

“Barnes?” She whips her head around, disengaging herself from the task of deciding which of two gowns I should wear this morning.

“It appears I have my period. Do you have anything I can use?”

She looks at me blankly. “Begging your pardon?”

“I’m menstruating, Barnes.”

Still a blank.

I point to the carpet, which now has evidence of my condition. “Sorry, Barnes. But if you don’t get me whatever you have that might resemble a tampon or a pad, there’s going to be a bigger mess than this.”

Barnes’s cheeks flame. “Oh, dear.” She drops the dresses on the bed and scurries over to a drawer, retrieving from it a couple of rolled-up lengths of linen and an odd beltlike contraption with strings, which she deposits in my hands before bustling out the door, cheeks flaming, stammering something about fetching a fresh basin of water.

I am stumped by the belt, but I’m not about to ask Barnes to show me how to use it, as she appears to have regained no part of her composure when she returns with a basin of water and an empty bowl that she places under my bed, presumably to hold the soiled linen. Fortunately, I will not be expected to get through the day clenching a wad of fabric between my thighs, as Barnes replaces the two candidate dresses for the day in the armoire and pulls out a fresh nightgown from one of my drawers. Mumbling something about telling my mother I am “indisposed” today, she tugs the nightgown over my head and puts me right back into bed. Quite a different experience than what I’m used to. No shoving of tampons and then scurrying off to go about business as usual, no matter how bad the cramps or bleeding are, and mine are usually bad enough to legitimately keep me in bed.

“Now what would you like me to bring you for breakfast?” Barnes seems to have calmed herself a little, now that I am settled in bed and she has dabbed at the carpet with a wet cloth, apparently to her satisfaction.

“Surprise me.”

Barnes half-smiles her relief, then bobs a curtsey and begins to head out the door.

“So Barnes, what do you call this?” I point vaguely in the direction of my stomach.

“Miss?” The flush has returned to Barnes’s cheeks.

“What do you call the reason why I’m back in bed today—you know; woman to woman?”

She glances toward the partially open doorway, perhaps wishing to escape, and then turns back to face me.

“You mean your…” she stage-whispers, furtively glancing behind her as if checking for eavesdroppers, then closes the door to make sure, her back against it. “You mean your monthly courses?”

“Yes. Thank you, Barnes.”

She stands there for a moment, looking at me uncertainly. “Will there be anything else?”

“Just breakfast.”

And with that, she flees.