The Jane Austen Marriage Manual (7 page)

A
re you joking?” Marianne said as if waiting for the punch line.

“Not one bit,” I said and forced a confident smile. We were seated by the window in Avenue. Brandon shook his head. It was clear by his dour expression that he wasn’t fond of my plan to find a rich husband, either.

“Don’t you need a job?” he asked.

“That’s kind of the point,” I said flatly. “I can’t find a job. I’ve looked. Called everyone I know. Apparently I won’t find a job. Besides, it was Marianne’s idea.”

“What?” Marianne shouted.

“Okay, it was Jennifer’s, but you agreed to it,” I pointed out.

“Hold on, what?” Brandon asked and gave Marianne a scathing look.

“I’ve been assigned a story about making an eligible match,” I explained. “To see if Austen’s strategies still hold up. I’m writing it in the first person.”

“Define ‘eligible,’ ” Brandon commanded.

“Successful, confident, worldly,” I rattled off, intentionally avoiding the word “billionaire.” “I’m going to be forty. If not now, when? This is my last chance to marry well.”

Marianne and Brandon stared at me in silence. I didn’t know where to look or what to do, so I began to fiddle with the cocktail
napkin on the table. But twisting it around my fingers didn’t calm me. Instead, as I watched the white paper scrunch and tear, I was struck by how prominent the veins in my hands had become, my knuckles looked bigger, the skin more lined. They say a woman’s hands are the first to go.

“The sooner you stop believing your life is a Jane Austen novel, the better,” Marianne stated bluntly.

I ripped the napkin in half and sat on my hands.

“The older women in her books don’t fare so well. You have to be one and fucking twenty to have a happy ending. Not one and forty,” she continued on her tirade. “You’re not Elizabeth Bennet, you’re her mother.”

Ouch. The pregnancy hormones sure kept her moody.

“I agree with Marianne. You’ve read one too many novels, watched one too many movies, my love,” Brandon cooed at me as though I were an infant. “You’re upset about your grandmother and you’re out of work. It’s natural to feel mixed up about your life, what it all means.”

“You’re having a midlife crisis,” added Marianne.

“I’m
not
having a midlife crisis,” I retorted.

“It’s classic,” Marianne disagreed. “Only instead of a convertible sports car you want the man who can buy you one. It’s a phase.”

“And you can’t just dump your life and take off,” Brandon insisted. “Especially now, your family needs you.”

“I didn’t dump my life,” I answered grimly. “My life dumped me. And I’m not talking about leaving now. The article isn’t due until the end of March. By then …” My voice trailed off, thinking that my grandmother would be gone long before spring.

“You’ve avoided marriage this long,” Marianne continued. “If you’re going to be married, why not marry for love and be happy?”

“Who says I can’t fall in love with a rich man?” I asked, but Marianne just screwed up her nose.

“I’ll see you next week at your birthday,” Marianne answered with a forced smile and gathered her things to leave. Clearly she was angry.

I pointed to her stomach in an attempt to lighten the mood. “With that?”

“He’s not due for two more weeks,” she reminded me. Marianne was a control freak. No kid of hers would arrive before she allowed it to.

I
t was on an absurdly and unseasonably hot October Sunday that my birthday, at long last, arrived. I woke up with a gentle breeze wafting through my open window, the sheer cream drapes blowing across my toes. When I was little we called this Indian summer; I’m sure it’s not politically correct anymore, but it’s what I remember and the only term I know for it. One thing for certain, it was the kind of autumn day that makes you want to leap out of bed and get outside to soak up those final drops of sunlight before the damp chill of November steals all the warmth away. Throughout the day I walked into my grandmother’s room to check in on her until finally, in the late afternoon, she opened her eyes and held out her hand to me.

“Hi, love,” she said and smiled weakly.

“I’m going out for dinner,” I said and brushed her hair with my palm. “Will you be okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “You have a nice time.”

As I dressed for dinner I tried to remind myself that I had no reason to expect my grandmother to remember my birthday. Not with the frequent doses of morphine clouding her mind.

When I arrived at Marianne’s condo I found the door slightly ajar, so I snuck inside. There were Marianne and Lucy, poring over fertility charts. I scanned the room and spotted the men, Frank and Brandon, Marianne and Lucy’s respective spouses, out on the deck drinking.

“You must be so relieved that you got pregnant without all this,” Lucy said with a hint of envy.

“It will happen,” Marianne told her encouragingly.

I coughed but no one heard me.

“Your baby is going to be gorgeous,” Lucy gushed.

“I heard the word ‘gorgeous’; you must be talking about me,” I joked, realizing how hopeless it was for a forty-year-old to divert attention from a baby, even an unborn one.

“Hey, happy birthday!” Marianne shouted and threw her arms around me. Brandon and Frank came in when they saw me.

“Have some pink Veuve,” Brandon said cheerfully and popped open a bottle. Drinks in hand we raised our glasses.

“Happy fortieth birthday to our beautiful Kate,” Brandon toasted.

They repeated it in unison and I blushed. But I was also very grateful. Being surrounded by my friends made me feel normal again.

“Thanks, all of you,” I gushed. “This means a lot to me.”

For dinner, Marianne had outdone herself with a homemade beef Wellington. I was plied with pink Veuve in lieu of the cabernet someone had brought to go with the beef. But it was getting late and I wanted to spend the last few hours of my birthday with my grandmother.

“I think it’s time to call a cab,” I suggested.

“You can’t leave without your present,” Marianne chimed in. “It’s got a theme to match your Jane Austen story.”

I perked up at this.

“While we think this finding a rich man scheme of yours is a bit nutty,” Brandon explained, “we do think you need to get away, go someplace warm, have an adventure … and if you find love along the way, even better.”

“We love you,” Marianne said softly.

“I love you guys, too,” I said, feeling very loved indeed, but not at all convinced I’d find love in the true sense of the word.

“We got you this,” Brandon said, and handed me an envelope. I opened it, removed the paper inside, and unfolded it. It was a fake
flight itinerary made on Brandon’s computer with the destination left blank.

“Oh my God!” I squealed. “Thank you!”

“We thought you could use a ticket somewhere, so you just name the locale and we’ll make it happen,” he said.

“I love it!” I announced with a smile.

“Great, because you needed the ticket to go with part two of your gift,” Brandon stated matter-of-factly.

“And I’m afraid we couldn’t find a tiara in our budget,” Marianne said with a sly smile. “Hope you like this present. It’s meant to be fun.”

Brandon pulled out a dark green leather folder from a large manila envelope that I hadn’t noticed before.

“Happy birthday, kiddo,” he said with a cheeky grin.

On the folder, embossed in gold was the name “Loch Broom Highland Estates.” I opened the folder and inside was a parchment document handwritten in calligraphy with a giant red seal in the bottom-right corner. In large letters it read:

“What the …?” I asked and turned to my friends for explanation. They just sat there grinning. The letter read like this:

According to the letter I was the owner of a one-square-foot plot of land on a Scottish estate. I had never been to Scotland. I was stumped. But then I read the rest of the letter and it said it all:

“Oh my God! You bought me a title!” I shouted. If it was true, it was possibly the best gift I’d ever received.

“Yes,” Marianne said excitedly. “Brandon found it. We thought it might help you in your quest to live out the Jane Austen fantasy life if you were a lady. Will make for interesting stuff in the article, too.”

I looked at Brandon. I could tell he wanted to behave modestly but he was beaming at his own cleverness.

“As part of a conservation project to raise money, this park in Scotland sold off one-foot plots, and all Scottish landowners have a title. We figured you deserved to be an aristocrat.”

“You’ll have to call me ‘lady,’ ” I teased.

“Your name screamed out for a title. Now you sound like you should be in the pages of
Tatler
,” Marianne explained, faking a posh English accent to say my name in full, “Lady Katharine Billington Shaw.”

“I love it,” I said.

I had to hand it to them. They had ensured that my fortieth birthday wasn’t only about grief.

“Would Her Ladyship like another glass of Veuve?” Brandon asked gleefully.

“And cake!” Marianne exclaimed and rose from the table to get dessert.

I was now Lady Katharine Billington Shaw; what else did I need besides a steady diet of cake and champagne?

The light was on in the kitchen when I tiptoed into my house just after eleven. It was Ann. She had stayed up for me and had a small vanilla cupcake on a plate, complete with lit candle.

“I heard the cab pull away,” she explained. “Make a wish.”

“Is Nana asleep?” I asked, feeling horrible that I’d been gone so long.

“Yes, but she wants you to wake her,” she said. “Don’t feel bad. It is your birthday and forty is a big deal.”

“So everyone keeps telling me,” I answered, not liking the reminder.

I closed my eyes and wished for the one thing that was impossible:
I wished my grandmother would get better. I blew out the candle and we were in darkness. My sister turned on the dimmer switch so that the kitchen glowed. I shared the cupcake with Ann in silence. Then I crept upstairs and was surprised to see my grandmother awake in bed, waiting for me.

“Hey!” I said happily and sat down beside her.

“Happy birthday to you,” she sang in her once-perfect voice that was rapidly being snuffed out by the tumor. When she finished singing I saw she was crying and as I leaned forward and held her I realized I was crying, too. She held out a birthday card in a mauve envelope.

I opened the card; it was an illustration of a very fashionable brunette who was carrying tons of shopping bags; inside, the printed greeting was a simple “Have a Fabulous Day,” but Nana had written several lines to me in her distinctive handwriting. I tried as hard as I could to decipher her message, but the morphine had muddled with her mind so that she had written birthday with six B’s and so on. Most of the letters and words ran together in one long squiggle. It was illegible. Then there was the “love, Nana” and a row of XOXOXO’s. I stared hard at it, knowing it was the last written words I’d ever receive from her and yet I couldn’t read it.

“Do you like what I wrote?” she asked proudly. “I meant it all.”

“I love it,” I answered softly.

E
xactly thirty-seven hours and thirty-three minutes after my birthday, Marianne gave birth to a boy, Thomas Andrew. He was a breach and the obstetrician recommended the one thing that Marianne had dreaded above all else—a C-section. It wasn’t just the bikini line scar that got her; it was the thought of being wide awake as she was sliced opened.

“I felt like a Ziploc bag,” she confessed to me after it was over. But of course by the time I got through to her, and little Thomas was in her arms, the horror seemed worth it.

“You have to meet him!” she squealed proudly.

“I will as soon as I can,” I promised. “I’m so happy for you! I bet he’s gorgeous.”

“He is,” she cooed. “Oh, and I want my lasagna as soon as I’m home!”

“You got it.” I laughed.

Three days later, Marianne was home and I realized that I didn’t have any real clue how to make it. Of course I’d watched my grandmother and Ann dozens of times. They even let me layer ingredients. But what those ingredients were was beyond me. Downstairs to the kitchen I went. How hard could it be?

I grabbed what seemed like logical ingredients—ground beef, lasagna noodles, cheese, herbs, and the crowning glory, the pasta sauce.
I ran over to the cupboard and snatched a giant jar of tomato sauce off the shelf. Easy.

The two deliciously gooey lasagnas cooling on the kitchen counter proved it. I had to admit I was proud of how they turned out. Maybe Nana and Ann’s cooking expertise had rubbed off on me.

“Come on in,” Frank whispered when I arrived. He took the two casserole dishes from me and I entered as quietly as I could. “Thomas is asleep.”

I tiptoed into the living room and there was Marianne, a bit tired looking but still beautiful and a pinkish baby in her arms swathed in a fluffy gray blanket.

“He’s so handsome!” I said. I was never sure what to say to new moms. New babies always looked kind of funny to me.