My Jane Austen Summer (9 page)

"I can't wear this." Bets laughed. "I look like Granny in Little Red Riding Hood."

The phone rang in Bets's purse.

"Would you mind answering that?" Bets yelled, throwing a rejected gown over the screen.

"She can't come to the phone right now," I said, rifling through the contents of her purse for anything I might recognize as my own.

"Who is it?" Bets asked.

I put the phone away. "Tommy," I said.

"Shit, give me the phone." Bets charged out from behind the screen, reaching for her bag, the dress around her waist.

The wardrobe lady said, "Oh dear," covering her mouth with her little hand.

Bets swiped her purse from my hands. Her body featured artwork that no Jane Austen character had ever sported: a Celtic cross tattoo permanently inked above her left breast. "Forget this," she said, stepping completely out of the dress and leaving it on the floor while she pulled her shirt over her head.

The wardrobe lady reached into a drawer and pulled out several very large white kerchiefs. "You'll have to wear these," she said, "like a shawl," but too late. Bets zipped her jeans, slid feet into her shoes, and ran out the door.

"What about the dresses?" Suzanne called after her.

Suzanne hauled the dresses out and between the two of us, we compared the remaining dresses to the one Bets had tried on, deciding which to take. I held each dress to my shoulder and looked in the mirror, pretending to admire the style and artistry but slyly appraising my own fit, calculating how much time Bets would need to reach the parking lot. I left with an armload of dresses, most of which would surely fit me, imagining Bets in her car. Walking back to my room, I
gauged how long it would take her to get through the main drag of Hedingham. Opening the door to my room, I said a little prayer: Please let my roommate be AWOL.

Inside, there was no sign of Bets.

∗ ∗ ∗

To proceed with my plan, I needed a copy of the script. For this, I walked to Newton Priors, all the while considering my favorite scenario: Bets goes to London, gets totally smashed, and sleeps through opening day. I would play Mary Crawford in her place, they would all realize how much better I was, and reassign Bets to play Chapman, the maid. The more I imagined, the more possible it seemed that with a little maneuvering from me, her part might be available tomorrow. But first, I must learn her lines. In the office, I lifted a script off Claire's credenza when she wasn't looking. Next, I needed a quiet place to memorize.

I set off for the great church at the other end of the town where I had planned to go anyway for a little self-therapy. I could hide in the back row and stay as long as I pleased, communing with my mother, memorizing lines, escaping into Mary Crawford's character, without having to worry about meeting anyone I knew. I passed carriage lanterns and window boxes spilling creeper into the walk, strolled through a market where cheese, fish, and flowers were sold, and walked among people on foot, bicycle and open-top double-decker tour buses, toward the Anglican church whose spire towered over the town.

Beyond the church's enormous wood door carved with shields and symbols, the cool air soothed and the upward momentum of the vaulted ceiling effected the sort of transcendence I experienced hearing Sixby's stage voice. People moved, coming and going, kneeling, consulting guides, oblivious to the liturgy, oblivious to the rapture occurring in
the young woman staring at the ceiling. Walking over dead bodies under stone slabs, I slipped into an empty back pew and listened to the service in progress, seeking my favorite passages, but the sound was obscured by the time it reached the back of the enormous nave, competing with the white noise of air circulating through the mighty space.

Kneeling, I recited the funeral liturgy in my head,
All we go down to the dust
, but I was unable to concentrate. Chips of colored glass jumbled together in the tremendous windows and Latin proclamations littered side walls. A stone body lay atop a bier in the midst of the crowd, hands clasped in prayer. How odd that this enormous structure, across the ocean, older than time, smelled just like my neighborhood church, musty as any Baptist basement back home. Yet I was unable to feel my mother's presence in this place. And since it would be really bad manners to actually pray for Bets to get smashed and sleep through opening day, I rested my elbows on the seatback in front of me, sat my rear on the edge of my bench, and evaluated my neighbors' accessories, one pew forward.
Would the church loan us their china?
My Jane Austen frowned at me, and I returned to my knees. Focusing forward, a little shock brought me to attention. In spite of my great distance from the front of the church, I sensed a familiar face. My memory sought an association. Gloomy setting laced with romantic hope? St. James's Church. Behind the rail of the sanctuary stood my church man. The same man who'd walked into the orientation meeting with Randolph--but now dressed in white robes and the collar of a priest. Was this church an extension of Literature Live, my church man playing Edmund at this moment? I was confused momentarily between reality and theatre.

Who was this man?

He came forward to read the Gospel, still too far away to
see me. His reading voice sounded dignified and weighty, not dramatic like Sixby's. For just an instant, in the glare of the ancient words, the whole idea of Literature Live and enacting scenes seemed silly. My script lay abandoned on the pew while I tried to reconcile this priest with the guy lying on the pew in the dark church and the man with Randolph at orientation. The recessional hymn started and he slowly approached my row. He sang the hymn as he walked, but he looked preoccupied as he had looked in the dark church. The woman ahead of me lifted her bright red purse and he looked our way. Our eyes met for an instant.

∗ ∗ ∗

Time was running out to learn Bets's lines. I walked back by way of Newton Priors, hoping to find a secluded place to memorize lines. What I found was John Owen, the stair-jumping conservationist, holding court near an exterior window of the great house. Several students huddled to hear his urgent whisper, one of them trampling a lavender bed. Flourishing a pen-knife, John Owen plunged its tip into the undersurface of the window's sash where, to everyone's horror, it stuck. "What we have here, gentlemen," he whispered, "is paint failure."

One of the students shook his head.

"An open invitation to water," John Owen said, "and rot."

Raising his binoculars, John Owen gazed upward beyond the second and third story windows toward the roof. Perhaps there was a quiet place up there to learn lines. Passing binoculars to the student on his left, he pointed to the roof, and our collective gaze traveled up. "A sound roof is the first line of defense against the number one enemy of an old house, which is"--and several of his students moved their lips as he whispered--"water."

"Did water cause the damage around the chimney base?" one of the disciples asked.

John Owen grabbed the binoculars. "Rot can be arrested," he said, looking carefully upward. "Let's go." The group followed John Owen up the fire escape--a symposium field trip. As they climbed, I noticed an orange electric cord hanging outside the building, emerging from a second floor window and entering a window on the third floor, the attic.

Once the posse left, their bodies no longer blocked my view through the wavy glass and I could see the cast rehearsing in the ballroom. They appeared to be on break--or stuck. Magda yelled about rats' asses again. Upon closer inspection, my roommate appeared to be the cause of the fuss.

Bets was still here. She hadn't gone to London.

I wouldn't be able to take her part at the opening.

I would never get my necklace back.

And as I stood there, gazing in the window, Magda approached from the interior side, a furious bunch of nerves, her long finger curling, beckoning me to enter. Why would she invite me in? I walked around to the front, daring to suppose someone had quit and they might offer me the vacated role.

My Jane Austen and I passed each other in the entry; she walked out in a huff as I walked in. The cast slumped on the stage furniture; Nikki lifted her Regency skirt to catch a breeze from the window, all of them waiting for Bets to get something right. Magda pointed to a chair in the audience and I sat. Bets finally got it and they moved on.

∗ ∗ ∗

Fanny Price:
Sir Thomas, what can you tell us about the slave trade?

∗ ∗ ∗

Whoa
. I sat up straight.
That's not in the book.
I listened as Sir Thomas provided details he didn't get from Jane Austen concerning the income from his Antigua estate and the
number of slaves in his employ. Not in the book. Magda must have written the slavery remarks herself, or made Omar write it. No wonder My Jane Austen walked out.

I watched the entire rehearsal. And then watched it again. The other actors were so good they didn't need to be coached, but Magda fed lines to Bets over and over. Whenever Magda interrupted, "Hey!" to stop the action, the actors sagged, the tension immediately drained from their bodies. Starting up again, their bodies sprang into action. They reminded me of professional outfielders between plays in baseball. By the time they finished, I knew everyone's lines.

When Magda finally indicated the reason for my attendance at the rehearsal, darkness had descended outdoors. "Don't let her out of your sight." She handed me another script. "Work on these lines until she has them down cold, all night if necessary."

"What about sleeping?"

"You don't want to know what I think about sleeping. Have her here at eight-thirty, in costume, ready to perform."

"Me?"

"You are here to help with the festival, no?" Magda stared back. "You are her roommate. The festival needs your help."

"The
festival
is welcome," I mumbled, walking away.

∗ ∗ ∗

Later, in our room, Bets watched a British reality TV show where women in bikinis ate maggots.

"I thought you went to London this morning," I said.

"I never got away." Bets stuffed potato crisps into her mouth. "Magda caught me and made me sit in the Freezer all afternoon, repeating lines." She offered me some crisps.

"No thanks," I said. "Let's work on your lines."

"No thanks," she said.

"For your own good," I said, removing my shoes and set
ting them inside my closet, where her clothes lay on the floor. "Did you wear this?" I asked, holding up a pink and white striped T-shirt, thinking it clean, not meant for the dirty clothes hamper.

"Put it back on the floor," she said. "You're not my mother." She increased the TV volume, adding, "I want to go home."

When I returned from the bathroom, the prisoner remained on the premises; a wadded tissue lay on the floor near her bed. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"No," she said, her eyes red and her nose stuffy the way it gets from crying. "I'm allergic to literary festivals."

"Would you like to study lines now?" I asked. Perhaps I should offer her more understanding; even punked-out kleptomaniacs have feelings.

"No." She blew her nose.

She watched her TV and I read her script, working on the lines myself, although it hardly seemed worthwhile given the heightened security. The prisoner remained on the premises and I studied her lines until I fell asleep in the blue haze of the TV.

∗ ∗ ∗

When I woke the next morning, it was still dark. I slowly surfaced, remembering where I was, placing myself in the day--opening day. And then it all came back to me: Bets. My prisoner. I looked over. Her bed was made. She wasn't in it. Cautiously hopeful she hadn't just gone to the bathroom, I walked down the hall. Not there, either. With great swelling hope and trepidation, I looked out the window. Her car was gone.

Yes.

Q
uickly, I opened the closet and counted Bets's gowns. All seven costumes hung there. All six Regency shoes waited on the floor. How much time did I have? I pulled the script out of my purse but threw it down; the first objective was to get permission from someone other than Magda. Vera. I must find Vera. My hands shook pulling my door shut behind me.

I ran down the still hallway, descended the stairs, and entered the common area of the dorm, strangely quiet after having been so highly charged with energy the last few days. The first scene of the season would begin in less than one hour and Vera sat at a little table talking with Claire, the staff person. I didn't have time for Claire, who was squinting with the effort of persuading Vera, emphasizing her words by chopping the side of her hand on the table.

"Yes, I see your point." Vera shook her head gently, then smiled at me. "But I'm not convinced of the strength of the
connection. In experience and temperament they were quite unalike. Jane Austen was a satiric novelist; Mary Wollstonecraft was not." My Jane Austen listened thoughtfully.

"But," Claire said, "to get back to my original point, perhaps losing the lease on Newton Priors would be a good thing. With a new sponsor, Nigel would be freed from Lady Weston's brain-dead shackles and Literature Live could make a real go of things."

"Vera, could I speak with you?" I said.

"Just a minute, Lily." Vera faced Claire, speaking quietly. "Nigel must have complete control of the organization if we are to preserve the relationship with Lady Weston." Claire began to speak but Vera cut her off. "Save political interpretations for your next job. Nigel will run Literature Live without readings from Mary Wollstonecraft. If you want to help, be quiet and let Nigel work. Lady Weston's happiness is extremely important to the future of this organization. We cannot afford a misstep." Vera looked at her watch. "Speaking of go, it's time," she said, and then glanced at me. "What is it, Lily?"

∗ ∗ ∗

As soon as Claire was out of range I told Vera about my wish to take Bets's part.

"You'll have to act quickly," Vera said as we hurried to my room. "Believe it or not," she said, "Magda is on the roof of Newton Priors at the moment."

"The roof?"

"John Owen has persuaded everyone the chimney is on the verge of collapse and Magda is meeting the building inspector on the roof, asking him not to shut down the house before the opening. Your best chance is to get permission from Archie while Magda is still on the roof."

Vera helped me slip one of Bets's dresses over my head, our hands running into each other and catching in folds, my pulse racing.

"What was all that about Mary Wollstonecraft?" I asked, standing as Vera zipped.

"Nothing more than Claire demonstrating she's read her latest assignment in Lit 403. She's taking classes, you know. Wants to be Magda when she grows up."

Still, I wondered what the point had been; perhaps
I
should read Claire's assignments.

"Ah," Vera said, "it fits you perfectly." She fluffed the sleeves. I skipped on the Regency underwear, opting for my own, and grabbed a pair of knee-high stockings out of Bets's drawer, remembering her generous offer to help myself to anything of hers--her opening day acting assignment, for example. The Banks Family Grant must have been colossal.

"Where's your bonnet?" Vera asked, finishing my sash.

We grabbed Bets's bonnet and flew down the hall and out the door, the dress rustling between my legs. "The script," I said, as Vera handed it through the window of the carriage, the old horses attracting flies. Too late to walk, I would have to pay the carriage, a private local business operated separately from Literature Live, to transport me to Newton Priors.

"When you get there, sit in the Freezer and calm yourself," Vera said, handing the driver my fare. "You'll be fine, don't worry."

"Aren't you coming?" I asked, afraid to go without her.

"I'll be over in a bit--with Nigel."

A surprisingly long line of patrons waiting in line with tickets watched me rush off, fingers pointing, speaking to each other in French and Japanese. I looked out the window; this was my first journey into a novel, as my carriage traveled through space and time. I looked at my eighteenth-century
shoes peeking from beneath my muslin hem, and tried to believe. I looked at the trees and sky framed by my carriage window and tried to believe. I remembered how it felt to read
Mansfield Park
and I tried to feel myself traveling among characters in Jane Austen's world. But something gnawed at the edges that I never thought about when I pictured this moment. The trees and the sky and my shoes refused to stop being real; they wouldn't transform. Everything about me was the same as always, and I couldn't feel any different, too worried to leave my worldly concerns. I didn't know the blocking. Where was I supposed to stand on the stage? Indeed, I feared failure and pain today. Just like real life.

∗ ∗ ∗

"Have you seen Archie?" I asked an actor in the Freezer.

"Probably in his smoking jacket," Alex said, without looking up from his crossword puzzle. "Look behind the Carriage House."

I ran, but a family of five blocked my path: a blond Texas Hair woman holding a map, followed by a man and three rambunctious children, progressed in a tangle of limbs and barks like naughty puppies.

"Excuse me," the hair woman flagged me down.

I turned my upper body to answer her question, still speed-walking, imagining Magda had sent her to keep me from talking to Archie in her absence, hired them to load me into their monster SUV and take me back to my gray cubicle world of colossal freeway billboards and Nike swoosh sensibilities; a place where My Jane Austen would not thrive.

"Can you tell me where to find the candle-making demonstration?" she asked.

Patrons detoured around us, camera bags slung over their shoulders, maps and guidebooks open in their hands. A Muslim woman wearing a severely modest black outfit, pants
and an overdress, strutted--not a bit oppressed--alongside her man in Western dress. I must focus or Archie would disappear before I could find him. I didn't have a chance if he was with Magda. Shading my eyes, I looked up and saw the group still huddled around the chimney, but who knew how much longer they'd stay up there?

"The candle-making demonstration is over there," I said, a bit heavy on the plums.
Ovah theh
.

"Ovah theh?" The woman looked at her map, and then in the direction I pointed, as if she didn't understand. I ran toward the Carriage House.

Two enormous old mares parked outside swished flies with their tails. The dirty Carriage House windows concealed a graveyard for broken antiques: tables on end, chairs without upholstery, bed frames and slats, stacked in all directions. No room for horses or carriages in the Carriage House. And no Archie. Walking around the side of the building, I encountered a well-worn path through the high hedge. I followed the path, squeezing sideways through the bushes, and suddenly found myself looking into the sheepish grin on Archie Porter's face, one arm stretching to reach a ledge high above his head.

"You smoke?" he asked, lowering his arm and shaking out a cigarette in one practiced motion.

I started to say no reflexively, and then considered my case. "Actually, yes, please."

As Archie shook out another cigarette from a pack of Camels, not even the filtered kind, I began to hope I would get what I wanted. Putting it to my lips, he lit a match. "Getting on okay?" he asked.

"Swimmingly," I said, returning the long look, examining the crow's feet around his eyes and the gray in his ponytail. I imagined I was smoking with John while Yoko met lawyers.
I'd never seen him so relaxed. "Where's Magda?" I asked innocently.

"Patching the roof." He smiled as if we knew each other. "One of an assistant director's many and varied festival responsibilities."

"Well then. Since she's busy, I'll ask you." Just one puff had made me dizzy; I couldn't inhale these things. The smoke sat on me, lodging in the pores of my skin, permeating hair follicles.

"Ask me." Archie blew dragon smoke out his nostrils as the American children from the lawn barged into our hiding place, giggled, and ran out. The little girl loudly reported what she'd seen.

I said, "You may not be aware that Bets--the actress playing Mary Crawford--is not here."

"No, she is not here." Archie smiled, lifting a branch of one of the bushes that concealed us, nearly brushing My Jane Austen's skirt.

"No, I mean, not in Hedingham. Not at Newton Priors. She's in London."

He took another long drag. "I see. You were supposed to keep track of her?"

"Yes." I looked him in the eye.

"A case of Magda putting the fox in charge of the hen-house."

"I'd like to take her part in the scene today."

He gave me an extra long sideways glance. "Who else knows about this?"

I took a short but dramatic drag, sensing what I once sensed when Martin was about to kiss me. "Does anyone else need to know?" I asked, smoke curling around my face.

Archie pulled on his cigarette, his eyes closing. "Nobody I know of needs to know about anything."

I threw my cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. "Then we're all set."

"You know the part?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

I had turned, just about to leave the enclosure, when Archie said, "You know what?"

"What?" I twisted to see his face and braced myself.

"You worry too much."

"Me?"

"Relax." He pulled a package of nicotine gum out of his pocket and punched one through the wrapper, slipping it into his mouth. "Want one?" he asked.

"No." The last time I relaxed around a professor, his hand visited my thigh beneath a table.

"Don't be so worried," Archie said. "Fanny Price is safe."

∗ ∗ ∗

In the Freezer, I sat at the table among empty Diet Coke cans; the vacant computer screen stared at me as I read Mary Crawford's lines, "Oh! Yes, I am not at all ashamed of it. I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly," when Archie, who had just returned, his spearmint breath proclaiming his innocence, lifted the script from my hands and turned the page.

"We're skipping the second scene today," he said. "Start here."

I resumed my studies, struggling to focus, but couldn't get traction because people kept opening the door and I kept looking up, afraid Magda would walk in. Each person whispered to Archie and I tried to hear what they were saying. I wondered about checking my e-mail but Archie rattled a box of antique keys, to my complete undoing. He left the box next to me where I was free to examine keys, of every shape and
size, at my peril. My pulse raced. Little time remained until the scene with the children would end, and even that was running out. My script lay open while I studied the jumble of rusty skeleton keys, wondering which key Lady Weston had used to lock the manor in 1945. This felt more like exam day than literary transcendence.

Just as I finally got traction with the script, the junior cast, three girls and two boys who played the children in the first scene, arrived noisily, congratulating each other on their performances. Their adult chaperone beamed at Archie, "Weren't they wonderful?" Archie pointed at me and shushed the kids. But they couldn't shush. I gave up the script and pulled the computer's keyboard out, typing my e-mail password and clicking "check mail." The connection seemed slow. The children giggled and the mother took one boy to a separate seat. Karen's name stood out from the spam; her subject line read: "Please call." I clicked on the subject; something must have happened. Was it Dad or her children? The page was so slow to come up. The mother raised her voice and the children squealed. The door opened again.

Archie called my name. I turned and looked at him but I couldn't understand what he wanted, Karen's words reverberating like thunder through my skeleton. Sabrina Howard in full Regency costume--the lead actress who was playing Fanny Price--beckoned me. Time for my execution.

"Mary." Sabrina reached for my hand. "Come with me," she said. "Everyone is waiting." Archie waved us out the door and I left the Freezer for my rebirth into
Mansfield Park
, passing the tall case clock, its sharp points radiating from its face as mighty storm clouds gathered in my spirit.

Sabrina smiled as we walked, linking our elbows; maybe we could be friends, supporting each other through personal crises. "I'm Lily," I whispered, not sure she knew my real name. Sabrina's face changed channels. She shook her head once, and clicked her tongue; Mary Crawford had never been Lily a day in her life.

We walked through the entrance hall where portraits of stern men in gilt frames testified to their part in siring the Weston line, while the women who'd borne their tiresome infidelities watched bravely from their own elaborate frames. A smaller butler-type hall led actors to the ballroom where the performance was about to begin.

The door through which I would soon enter was cracked open enough to see the audience, people who paid actual money to watch me sort through my personal shock while reciting Mary Crawford's lines. The stage might as well have
been an operating room where they perform amputations. The front row hosted an aging fan club decked out in full cleavage-busting Regency costume, their plumage and fans blocking the view of those seated behind them. Olive-skinned women dressed in saris, veils, and a variety of robes and head coverings made Magda's scarf look like something Katharine Hepburn would wear in a convertible. A portly man with a camera around his neck leaned back and nudged his wife to look at the medallion in the ceiling. Perhaps it would fall and kill all of us. Oddly, Vera and Nigel were not in the audience.