My Jane Austen Summer (18 page)

H
aving spent the drive to London imagining Philippa Lockwood, I now prepared to meet her in the flesh. Somewhere within the teeming warren of the hospital, Willis's beloved stood at her grandmother's bedside, dreaming of her happy future with Willis. She persisted in her mistake, oblivious to the fact he'd spent days in the attic with me, introduced me to the roof, and made love to me in the music room.

In the hospital, Vera approached the information desk while I watched people coming and going, any one of whom could be Philippa. I walked the brightly lit halls like a spy, studying the block and diamond pattern in the tile floor, breathing the mix of chemicals and sick body odors. Fortunately, I had no appetite to lose; I hadn't eaten much lately and my clothes felt loose. Vera looked nervous, too.

"Do you have the lease?" Vera asked.

"For the last time, yes." She'd asked every five minutes, as if she had no memory.

Vera looked at the numbers on the doors and then the paper in her hand. She stopped and my stomach lurched. I'd harbored a fear of the horror behind hospital doors from my childhood service projects, delivering whatnots to elderly patients in declining stages of death and decay. Now the door concealed a new horror: my competition. A sensible person would have fled. I, on the other hand, having accepted the role of Other Woman, entered the room. At first, it seemed I had nothing to fear. A very thin young woman wearing tight jeans stood facing the bed, her back to us, coaxing Lady Weston to eat.

Nigel and Willis had been right. Lady Weston could hardly speak, so frail the part below the sheets didn't stick out in the places you would expect, no indication she had an awareness of things going on around her. She was busy getting ready to die and our festival concerns were inappropriate. I knew immediately I wouldn't press a legal document on this woman.

"Philippa," Vera said. "I bring greetings from Nigel." The young woman turned at the sound of her name. I gawked at her.

"Vera," she said. "How thoughtful of you to come." Outwardly gracious, I sensed something private cautioning us not to make a habit of showing up here. I studied her for what made her different from the rest of us. Her scoop-necked sweater did not come from the mall. It fit as though by magic, its shade of blue from a palette reserved for aristocrats. Every shift of her torso struck a pose; each movement released a fragrant breeze of her natural scent and revealed a new aspect of her perfection: white teeth, thin wrists, soft brown earlobes.
Pictures of perfection make me sick and wicked.
She looked for Randolph, who spoke with a doctor in the far corner of the private room while Vera and I stood against the wall like peasants, both chairs filled with Philippa's and Randolph's things.

As hard as I tried, I couldn't imagine Willis telling her about me.

Philippa returned to her task, coaxing Lady Weston to eat applesauce. "If you don't eat, they'll come and stick more tubes in you, Nana," she said, in a British head voice, blatantly denying Lady Weston's prerogative to die in peace. "You won't like that." Philippa glanced at Randolph, still huddled with the doctor. "Would you like me to get you a pudding, Nana? Would that be better?"

Lady Weston closed her eyes and I remembered when my mother looked like this. Close to the end, she no longer smiled at her grandchildren or listened to the details of my day, preoccupied with her inward progress away from us. And then, two days later, she stopped making sense. She left us many days before she actually died, a blessing, because how else could she bear to go?

Vera startled me. "I'd like to introduce my colleague, Lily Berry."

"I'm pleased to meet you," I said, "and so sorry about Lady Weston's illness." I stepped forward and extended my hand but retracted when Philippa nodded to the applesauce and spoon, so obviously straining her present capacity.

"Rand," she called; the doctor had left.

"Yes, Pippa." Randolph stood at comic attention.

"Would you mind fetching a pudding? We must find something she'll eat."

Sad, she thought food would bring her grandmother back at this point. As Pippa placed the applesauce on the tray table, I noticed a tiny sparkle on her left hand. I almost failed to draw the obvious conclusion but Vera, having also seen it, remarked, "Congratulations on your engagement. Nigel told me you've set a date."

Pippa wore an engagement ring; not flashy like Texas dia
monds, but humble and serious in a way that made me ill. "Yes, we did." She smiled fondly, then glanced at the bed. "But we'll just have to wait for Her Ladyship to be well enough. And Willis is finishing his thesis."

Rand stood looking at me, waiting. I extended my hand again. "Lily Berry," I said, from the depths of active trauma.

"Pleased to meet you." He took my hand, lingering over it, so that I pulled out before he loosened his grip. "Are you with the festival?"

"Yes," I said, not sure what festival he was talking about, or what planet I happened to be visiting at the moment, still processing the information that Pippa wanted to get married before her grandmother died and Willis was stalling until his thesis was finished. And I was playing the part of Sue. How easily I'd slipped into the role.

"An actress?" Rand asked.

But Willis had been writing a vampire novel for most of the summer.

"Yes," Vera answered when I hesitated. "From Texas," Vera added meaningfully.

"Ah," he said. I saw him connect with Philippa in a quick glance I would have called The Look except I never thought of The Look within the sibling context. His eyes rested on me longer than seemed normal and I tried to pull myself together.

"Rand," Pippa said; a trifle pushy. "A pudding?"

"But where should I find a pudding?"

Pippa took Rand into the hall to point the way, and I found myself alone with Vera and the dying Lady Weston. I touched Vera's shoulder and shook my head. "Don't do it," I whispered.

Vera frowned and reached for the lease document; I backed away, worried Philippa would see us arguing.

"Don't do what?" Philippa asked, returning.

Vera shushed us and pointed toward the bed. I turned and left the room in an act of self-preservation, the lease still in my JASNA bag.

∗ ∗ ∗

Busy people in white coats and blue scrubs moved about the hall; charts and pens in their hands, ducking in and out of doors, saving people. A doctor's surgical mask dangled jauntily from one ear as if he'd just emerged from the front. He passed behind the nurse's station, the border separating medical professionals from the masses, reminding me of an altar to which the humble could approach and beg for things like pudding. It seemed to me hospitals were portals for birth and death--the place where people come into the world for the first time or leave forever. Surely this hospital had a chapel.

I couldn't believe Willis had not told me he was engaged.

I pulled the
Acting
book out of my bag in a desperate effort to disguise my panic. Holding it open, I stood in the hall and stared at it blankly, reeling from confusion. But even the
Acting
book conjured Willis. He'd taken it from my hand one day and said, "Looks like a much-read book." He opened it and flipped through the pages, releasing the musty paper smell of my adolescent summers: pool chlorine mixed with
David Copperfield
, the soothing smell of raindrops on hot concrete mingled with the desolation of the moors, lake-house mildew like musty Manderley, newly mown grass merging with longing and tragic endings. Willis had looked at me, there in the attic, his eyes smiling as if he heard everything I was thinking and agreed. "Nothing like the smell of old paper," he said.

My Willis would never hurt me like this.

"Can I get
you
anything?" Randolph said, back from the cafeteria, a plastic cup of vanilla pudding in his hand. His manner toward me felt inappropriately familiar, especially considering his reserved British gene pool. While he spoke,
his eyes followed a nurse's backside to the counter, breaking contact when she turned to reveal a bad complexion.

"Oh," I said, "no, thank you." I closed the book.

"Say, Vera's told me about you," he said. "You're working on the business plan?" His expression was perfectly serious, as though he spoke with a legitimate business consultant.

"Yes," I said. "We understand the need to rethink the festival to meet financial demands more effectively." Not knowing what the financial demands might be, I was winging it to a major extent. But Randolph nodded, the pudding hanging at his side. My Jane Austen began coughing so furiously that, if she weren't already dead, she would have required medical assistance. Pulling what felt like the draft of ideas out of my JASNA bag, I found some entirely unfamiliar papers; Bets's stuff. "I don't wish to add to your burdens," I said, holding the unfamiliar papers as if they were the beginnings of a plan to save Newton Priors and Literature Live. "However, with our agreement expired and future operation depending upon the use of your house, we're developing a plan that promotes everyone's best interests." My Jane Austen had turned purple.

"Well." Randolph touched his breast pocket as he straightened. His eyebrows arched seriously at the paper I held up. "That's not your business plan, is it?"

I looked at the paper, scrunched from having been in my bag, a photograph of some scruffy people posed gloomily around a bare-chested man. They wore lots of black stuff around their eyes like vampires. Superimposed over the picture were the words: "I'll Find You." I pushed the photo back into my bag. "My roommate, Bets, used this bag," I said. "She forgot to take her papers."

"Bets. She's my cousin, you know." Randolph folded his arms, manicured fingernails peeked around his biceps; the natural ridges of his nails smoothed. "Say, how about if I call
you after things have settled a bit. And perhaps we could meet and take a look at your plan together."

"Yes," I said. "I know this is a difficult time."

Randolph looked into his grandmother's room. "Yes, difficult," he said.

"Rand?" Philippa called from the bedside.

"I'd better deliver this." He held up the pudding. "I've enjoyed meeting you." He extended his hand and I made certain not to withdraw prematurely. "I'll be in touch," he said.

∗ ∗ ∗

Walking to the car, the truth hit and my world shifted: Willis misled me.

"I'm afraid this mission failed," Vera said, gazing straight ahead in search of the car. "There is no doubt in my mind we are in trouble."

"Yes," I said, tired. "But Randolph said he'd call. You think he'll forget?"

"I don't know, Lily." Vera sounded tired, too.

"Well, what's the worst thing that could happen?" I asked. "We have to get a new house?" We stopped walking.

Vera looked at me hard while her hand searched her bag for keys, and I remembered what Magda had said about Vera not thinking clearly. "Getting a new house, as you so casually put it, is not easy. And Nigel is not well." Vera paused to consider her words, unlocking the car door. "When you get older, Lily, your ambition declines," she said. "If we lose this house, Nigel will be finished."

"But there is hope." I opened my door, feeling no hope.

"Right," Vera said dryly, rolling her eyes. "You will marry Randolph and Literature Live will have use of the house forever."

I
think we should do a skit about the Fanny Wars," I told Sixby. We sat at the top of the second floor staircase. Tourists had been climbing the stairs since we opened that morning, hoping to view a nude portrait of Jane Austen allegedly hanging in the second floor hallway. No nude portrait existed and Vera sent me upstairs to fend off the curious and distribute fliers explaining the bogus Internet posting. Tourists expressed such disappointment that I nearly redirected them to Magda's room as a consolation prize. Magda and Archie fooled no one, arriving and departing separately.

"Did you hear the comments at the Fanny Wars discussion the other night?" I asked Sixby. "Some readers might enjoy voting Fanny out of the book." An old man wearing a beret huffed up the stairs; most of the nude portrait pilgrims were men. "So sorry," I said, handing him a flier as he looked past me into the hallway and I looked past him down the stairs.
The real reason I agreed to perch on the landing had more to do with the possibility of encountering Willis arriving or departing. Although I had mentally rehearsed our encounter, I had no idea what I would say if he appeared, and I felt sick with waiting.

"A Fanny Wars skit sounds deadly dull," Sixby said from the floor, slumped against the wall, arms on his raised knees, stifling another yawn.

"Why are you so tired?" I asked.

"Because," Sixby said, "I fell victim to the Regency skirt of a young fan who enticed me from the pub to her hotel room last evening."

"So you're in love."

"Not exactly; she wouldn't keep her dress on."

"Well, wake up. We've got to focus or we won't be ready."

"That's why they call it improv, Lil."

I offered fliers to a group of women. "So sorry," I said. "An Internet hoax." And then to Sixby, "What angle can we take to amuse our audience?"

"Let's amuse
me
for a change. How about a hot love scene; Edmund finds his groove."

"By the way, there's no kissing in this skit, Sixby. None."

Just then a woman with three little children struggled up the stairs, the children looking very much like Sheila's, but it wasn't Sheila; it was Bets, a baby in each arm, big brother following slowly. "Bets, are you babysitting?" I asked. Sixby sat up wide-eyed.

"Not for long," Bets growled.

"Where's their mother?"

"In her room crying." Bets plopped the babies on the floor next to Sixby, who jumped up.

"Why do you have them?" I asked.

"Because Sheila dumped them on Archie who dumped them on Magda who dumped them on Gary. And Gary is totally clueless about kids."

I looked at Bets and the babies.

"I was planning to dump them on you. I'm meeting Bella for lunch."

Sixby waved. "I'll see you later, Lily. Pleasure, Bets."

"No way," I said, the horror of my last experience with the little brutes still fresh in my mind. "I've got work to do. Where's Magda?"

"The visa office with Gary."

"Again?" I handed a flier to a portrait pilgrim without providing an explanation. "Hard work renewing a student visa if you're not in school." I stared into her eyes. "You're not going to marry him, are you?" One of the twins screamed, prompting the other two to do likewise, making it hard to hear.

"No," Bets said, turning to go.

Suddenly events blurred: Bets walking away, the children following her, the tourist who got past me searching for the nude portrait. I felt the first flicker of relief as my life burst into color and the earth resumed its revolutions without me having to pedal. I understood the ease addicts feel when the drug finally enters their bloodstream. Willis was coming up the stairs. He stopped at the top; no books in his arms, no question about the fliers in my hand, no amusement over the nude portrait. Willis knew that I knew. We locked eyes as the twins' cries receded down the stairs and the floor creaked under the tourist's footsteps. Slowly, I deflated, recalling the horror of the engagement ring.

"Today is my father's wedding day," I said, breaking the silence.

Willis drew back. "I'm so sorry." His hands in his pock
ets reminded me of my dad. He nodded to the attic door, "Coming up?"

I shook my head.

"I understand," he said.

"You understand what?" I asked, angry since I'd hoped for a denial, furious that he would give up without a fight. The tourist kept trying doors, going from one to the next, turning knobs relentlessly, finding them all locked. "There's no nude portrait," I called over my shoulder, my eyes still gripping Willis, the tourist's heels still clicking on the wood floor. "It's a hoax."

"Well," Willis said, stepping away from me, walking backward; gaining on the attic door as I silently dared him to leave me without an explanation, lusty despair rushing in to fill the emotional vacuum.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

The tourist opened a door behind us, the same closet stuffed with rotting curtains I'd found just before discovering Willis.

"If it's any consolation," Willis said, "I'm just as bewildered as you are."

Willis watched me drop the fliers on the floor. The curious could help themselves. I left the folding chair and walked away without giving him a second glance. Just as bewildered as I am. Not possible. He went up his stairs as I went down. Not the Willis I knew. No explanation; no words of comfort. No apology. Some priest. I cried for myself, familiar pitiful tears, dripping all the way down the stairs, crying as I passed Magda going up, crying as I walked through the entry, and crying as I exited the front door where Archie entered. The curious turned to watch me as I marched down the front steps and across the lawn, away from the house to the secluded
hedge behind the Carriage House where Archie hid to smoke. Previous visitors had packed the earth into a hard dirt floor littered with butts. Overturned milk crates offered seating. I reached up and patted the dirty ledge until I found the pack holding cigarettes and lighter. Seated on the ground, I smoked an unfiltered cigarette, inhaling deeply, alternating between thoughts of self-pity and anger. I kept returning to things Willis had said to me in our conversations, unable to reconcile the good person I loved with the jerk hiding his engagement. I couldn't yet admit I'd been wrong about him or acknowledge my disappointment in him, but my anger ceased spinning as nausea took over. I lowered my head until the effects of the cigarette passed and I recovered enough to walk.

∗ ∗ ∗

Making my way to the east wing, I avoided the stairs, crossing through the narrow doorway where the addition began and the pattern of wood planks dramatically changed direction. Closer to the office, a familiar sound emerged: the drama of crying twins. Claire sat at her desk, one ear on her phone, her hand to the other ear, struggling to hear. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that?" she said, her voice competing with the babies' rising howl. When she saw me, Claire gestured largely to Nigel's office. The twins stood by the door, noses and eyes running, crying for attention, the older boy crouched on the floor behind Nigel's desk, likely up to no good.

I approached the older boy slowly as if stalking a wild animal, but he didn't see me. His eyes fluttered open and closed like a child trying not to fall asleep. I grabbed Nigel's medicine box from his grubby hands. A chalky white pill lay in a pool of saliva on Nigel's chair; several other candy-colored pills lay about. All the pillbox doors of the weekdays were open, several pills remained in their slots but how many were gone and
how many were in the boy's mouth? I pried his fingers open and discovered a small round red pill and a yellow and white capsule in his moist palm.

"Oh my God," I said.

Claire walked in. "What's he done?" she asked.

"He's taken Nigel's meds. Call Sheila," I said. "And Vera." Prying his jaws apart with one hand, I swept the interior of his mouth with my index finger, retrieving a partially melted blue pill and another that might have been one of the small red pills before the sweet coating dissolved in his tiny mouth. "And call Archie," I said, as the boy vomited on Nigel's threadbare carpet. "Oh my God, he's sick." I picked him up and his little body melted into my shoulder. "Don't go to sleep," I said, his eyes closing. "No sleeping." I shook him and thumped his back.

"Do you have 911 here?" I asked.

"Sheila and Vera are coming," Claire said. "I can't find Archie." Claire unrolled some paper towels and threw them on the floor. "And it's 999," she said reaching for the phone again.

"I know where Archie is." I jostled the boy on my arm to wake him. "Watch those two," I said to Claire. "Make sure they don't find any pills on the floor. I'll be right back." I ran down the hall, shaking the child as I went. "Don't sleep," I said. "No sleeping now." Every time I shook him his eyes would open before fluttering shut again. I ran up the stairs to the second floor and banged on Magda's door. "Archie," I said. "Open up, I have your son and he's overdosed on Nigel's medicine." The boy started crying and gagged as if he would vomit again. I held his shirt to his mouth.

The door opened and Archie stood there half dressed, eyes glazed, throwing his arms into his shirt. "What hap
pened?" he asked, fingers trembling around buttons. "What happened!" he said again, louder, a madman in his distress, unable to button his shirt. "What happened!"

"He swallowed pills, I have no idea how many or what kind. Vera's on her way. The twins are in the office. Take him." I handed the child to Archie as Magda appeared behind him, pulling her long hair into a ponytail.

Downstairs one of the twins wandered the hall. "Really, Lily," Magda said, "what are you people doing down here?"

She'd picked the wrong moment to provoke me. I stopped in my tracks and stared at her. "What were you doing up there?" I hissed. "This is all your fault." I pointed at Magda. "You and Archie."

She closed her eyes.

In the office, Archie lit a cigarette with the hand not holding his son. A plume of gray smoke taunted Magda. "Is he going to be okay?" Archie asked. "Just a simple answer to a simple question," he said, frantic, his voice breaking. "Oh my God, baby," he said to the sobbing boy in his arms. "What did he swallow?" Archie asked me.

"I don't know," I said. "Nigel and Vera are on their way. "Don't let him sleep," I said.

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.