The Jane Austen Marriage Manual (3 page)

“It’s how babies happen,” Marianne said patiently.

“With a temperature reading and a command performance?” I asked sarcastically. She glared at me. I was the only woman on Brandon’s side.

“It’s a bit of pressure,” he admitted softly. “I do want a baby, but she’s obsessed. I feel like I’m not really involved, except in the obvious way.”

Marianne rolled her eyes.

“Maybe I’d like to get a girl pregnant the old-fashioned way,” Brandon confessed sheepishly. “Lust.”

“Don’t be silly,” Marianne snapped.

Brandon shrugged and proceeded to choke on an olive. Coughing, he said, “But forget about my issues. Poor Kate!”

“Yes, I know.” Marianne’s voice had softened once again. “I’m so sorry about the job. I had no idea. I’ll make sure we have loads of freelance writing for you.”

“Maybe I could get a job outside of publishing?” I suggested. After I’d stormed out of the office I had called around every magazine editor I knew and got the same resounding response: there were no jobs, not even maternity leave contracts, available anytime soon.

“You could be a wardrobe mistress again!” Marianne said happily. I had spent my twenties on independent film sets sewing buttons and steaming period costumes. I shuddered at the thought of the eighteen-hour days and minuscule pay.

“Or you could try bartending again,” Brandon added, smiling. I had been a bartender for one horrifying day back in the nineties. I still can’t open a wine bottle or mix a cocktail without having a panic attack.

“I could temp,” I said meekly.

We sat in silence for a few moments, trying to think of what I could do for money.

“Too bad you couldn’t teach classes on Jane Austen.” Brandon smiled.

“Too bad I wasn’t one of her young heroines, then my mother would marry me off and I wouldn’t have to bother with all this work crap.” I shrugged. “Women had it easier when all they had to do was find a husband.”

“That would have been a challenge for you considering your aversion to becoming a bride,” quipped Brandon. “You’re too independent for that anyway.”

“Touché!” Marianne said and clinked my glass. I rolled my eyes and took a slow, deep sip. As the wine coated my tongue a disturbing thought crept into my mind, so unnerving that I shivered.

“Do you think I’m too old to marry well?” I asked cautiously. Marianne and Brandon chuckled. They thought I was joking. Maybe it was the wine or all our talk about birthdays and money but as they laughed the reality hit me square on the jaw. Soon I would be forty. A middle-aged woman. Maybe it
was
too late to make what Austen called an “eligible match.” Maybe marrying a wealthy man had an expiration date, and I had reached it. I was past due. I was best before. I shook myself free of the thought. It was silly to worry about
that
. My love of Jane Austen aside, I had never aspired to marry, let alone marry
well
. I was in a bad spot financially, but otherwise I was just fine, thank you very much.

“I’m ready to go,” I announced. “I’ve had a hell of a day.”

I
lived in Scarsdale in a house I shared with my grandmother and mother. After the Chris debacle left me with no money and no roommate to split the rent I had to give up the fifth-floor walk-up on West Ninety-first Street I had called home. “Give up” is generous. “Eviction” is more accurate. Still, the commute by train into Manhattan each morning didn’t bother me one bit; after all, I’d grown up doing it. And in a stroke of genius my family had kept an old beater just in case, a black Chevy, which made the trip from train station to home passable.

The asphalt on our driveway was warped and cracked from years of snow and salt but we never had the money to repave. The tires rolled comfortably to a full stop in their familiar sunken grooves and I switched off the engine and sat staring straight ahead.

I was out of work. I looked up at my family home with its pale blue paint and white shutters and trim. It was always a pretty little house kept neat and tidy due to my grandmother’s handiwork. What a relief its existence didn’t depend on me. It was paid off thanks to my grandparents’ diligence and frugality back in the day. I felt the corners of my mouth turn up into an involuntary smile. Our home was no Mansfield Park, but at least I would always have a roof over my head. With this happy thought I got out of the car.

I opened the front door and tossed my handbag onto the floor. My mother, Iris, was sitting on the sofa checking her lottery tickets. At the kitchen table was my grandmother, who preferred that everyone call her Nana (“Grandmother” sounded too old), calmly sipping a gin and tonic.

“Hi, love,” Nana said with a smile.

“Hi, Kate,” Iris chimed in. “We won a free ticket.”

My mother and grandmother were dedicated lottery people. Winning anything, even a free ticket, justified their obsession.

“How was your day?” Nana asked me with a look that seemed to sense my day hadn’t been all that good. I didn’t want to worry her and decided to keep my situation to myself for now. I could still head to the city every morning; they didn’t have to know.

“It was fine. Here, Nana, I brought you this,” I said and handed over an elegant gold compact with translucent powder in it that I’d taken from the beauty closet. I would miss this particular job perk, free products, very much.

“What’s that for?” Iris asked jealously. “Why do
you
get a present?”

Iris hated to be left out. Of course I had a gift for her, too, but her childish reaction took away any pleasure in giving it to her. Iris’s fits of jealousy were legendary and something I’d grown up with but had never grown fond of. It was a trait we all endured, except for my father, who couldn’t take it and left when I was four, never to be heard from again. Though according to Nana and my older sister, Ann, Iris had plenty of reasons to be jealous: reasons like Debbie, Sandy, and Suzie, for starters. Apparently my father could charm the pants off of anyone and that was the problem.

“Thanks, love. I needed this so badly.” Nana smiled at me, revealing the gap between her front teeth. She ignored my mother and busied herself by swiping the fresh puff across her skin. “It’s for my nose,” she answered.

“You don’t use that on your nose,” snapped Iris. “You use that Pan-stik makeup.”

“I use this, too.” Nana turned her head side to side examining her reflection in the tiny mirror. I could tell she wasn’t happy about her
wrinkles but at ninety-three, even an exceptionally spry and mentally sharp ninety-three, there had to be some. “Can’t you get me something to fix all these lines?”

“Not without surgery.” I grinned. We always had this conversation. I told her the truth once more; that the tiny vertical lines above her lip were from years of smoking. But she never bought it.

“I’ve seen you use the Pan-Stik,” Iris insisted.

Nana rolled her eyes. “I use the Pan-Stik, then I put powder on top.”

“I was right,” Iris said triumphantly. “You do use the Pan-Stik.”

“Iris, just drop it,” I snapped and picked up the packaging for the recycling bin.

“No one ever lets me be right!” she snapped back as she headed to her bedroom to sulk.

This was my home life. Our family legacy was to get knocked up, make a bad marriage, divorce, then move in with your mother. This was how it had been for my great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. I’d managed to avoid the marriage and baby, but somehow I still ended up living with my mother. Unlike Ann, who lived in a two-bedroom rental in Park Slope and eked out a living as a legal assistant. She’s divorced.

Her marriage had been one of those starter types—two years, no kids—to a regular guy named Matthew. To hear her tell it Matthew was the nice guy, the one good guy she let slip through her fingers. She left him because he wasn’t exciting enough, and fifteen years and as many jerks later, she regretted it.

I consoled myself with the fact that even if I was back living at home I wasn’t one of those freeloading kids who never contribute. Every month I gave Iris a check and she made sure the bills were paid—I paid half the taxes, utilities, and food. She was retired now, but had spent her working life as a civil servant at the Department of Motor Vehicles.

A half hour had passed when Iris came back into the kitchen, her sulk session over. I pulled a lipstick out of my handbag and held it out to her. Iris loved lipstick and never left home without it. She practically snatched it from my hand and tore at the box like a child at
Christmas. That was it: Iris was like a child in her reactions and her tantrums. She was unable to handle adult responsibilities beyond her mundane job so Nana took over and raised Ann and me. She was the only true mother I knew and I loved her dearly. Unlike me, Nana had great sympathy for Iris and indulged her in ways I never understood. Even Ann, who was six years older than me, had a fondness for our mother that allowed her to be supportive of her whims. Maybe because Ann saw her as a true “mom” before our father left, a side I never saw. Iris’s troubles were the reason the house would belong to Ann and me after our grandmother passed away, with the provision that Iris could live out her days here.

She slicked the new lipstick across her mouth and preened in front of the hall mirror like she was a movie star. Then, satisfied with her appearance, she sat down on the sofa once again and furiously scratched the play area of a lottery ticket with a quarter.

“Did you win?” Nana asked warmly.

“Not a thing,” Iris said dejectedly. “Kate, the Lotto is twenty-five million dollars this weekend; you should get a ticket.”

“No thanks,” I answered. I flatly refused to waste money gambling on the lottery.

“You can’t win if you haven’t got a ticket,” my grandmother added.

“I don’t win anyways.” I smiled. “Neither do you.”

They both shrugged; it didn’t matter that they’d never won more than a couple of hundred dollars, they’d still play, no matter the odds. That they believed winning millions was a real possibility always struck me as slightly crazy. No one I knew was ever that lucky, certainly no one in my family.

“I’m starving,” Iris announced and grabbed some leftovers out of the fridge. Popping off the lid of the plastic container, she began to eat furiously.

I crossed over to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of barbecue sauce.

“At least put some of Ann’s sauce on it,” I said flatly. As sort of a side business Ann made sauces—pasta, barbecue, you name it, all very fancy and gourmet. Cooking was her passion—our grandmother’s, too—and together they had come up with these “secret” recipes.

Confession time: my signature lasagna? All Nana and Ann, no
Kate. Although I do help layer the thing in its casserole pan. Iris and I just weren’t cooks; it was the one thing we had in common. Ann was convinced she could make a living selling the sauces, but so far only a few friends had forked over the cash for them. My mother, however, wasn’t a fan.

“No thank you,” Iris said firmly.

I shrugged and put the bottle down. Then I noticed that my grandmother had barely touched her dinner—leftover roast chicken and vegetables that Ann had brought over the night before.

“Why aren’t you eating?” I asked.

“My mouth is still sore,” she answered quietly. Nana was never sick but she’d been experiencing pain in her jaw and having trouble eating for the past month. She had finally agreed to see a doctor and had an appointment today. In all the drama at
Haute
I had forgotten all about it.

“What did Dr. James say?” I asked, trying not to sound worried.

“He doesn’t know,” she responded wearily. “He’s sending me to an ears, nose, and throat specialist.”

“An ENT? Is it anything to worry about?” I asked, feeling my stomach lurch.

“Only the good die young.” She grinned.

I smiled weakly.

“We’ve got an appointment next Monday,” Iris said.

“I’ll go with you, too,” I said firmly.

Nana stood and took her plate to the dishwasher. As she shuffled along, slightly hunched from her arthritic back, I saw how thin she’d become, too thin. Why hadn’t I noticed how frail she was? And as I watched her move slowly toward the sofa so she could watch
Jeopardy!
, the fact that I was turning forty hit me again. My grandmother was more than double my age and I found myself wondering if she considered herself happy. Had life turned out like she’d wanted? It had been decades since she was able to realistically imagine leading a different life. I tried to envision what it must be like when you are forced by old age to stop chasing dreams. I supposed contented reflection replaced striving ambition. A pang of doubt that my life would turn out any differently hung in the air and it occurred to me that I may never amount
to anything other than an acting beauty editor and I wasn’t even that anymore.

“I’m off,” Iris announced, shaking me from thoughts of doom and gloom. There was only one place that my mother ever went on a weeknight. Bingo.

“Not again?” I said, though I didn’t really care. It was her money. If she wanted to spend it sitting on a folding chair, drinking Sprite and gnawing on Doritos, waiting for someone to yell “N35,” so be it.

“Don’t wait up for me,” she said tartly.

By 10:30 I was ready for bed. I walked down the hallway toward my bedroom and as was the norm, my grandmother was propped up in bed, her eyeglasses still on, her book clutched to her chest, softly snoring. I tiptoed into her room, gently removed her glasses, and tugged the book from her hands. “Good night,” I whispered. She stirred gently but didn’t open her eyes; instead, she rolled over and answered sleepily, “Good night, love.” I switched off her bedside lamp and kissed her on the forehead.

I padded down the hall to my room. When I was little I fantasized that I lived on a great estate. On weekends, Nana would drive us around leafy neighborhoods we could never afford. We’d point out houses we wanted to live in, and I’d daydream about becoming rich enough to one day own one.