A tea-theatre conflicts directly with our productions and the poor quality will reflect badly on this festival." Magda stood near my desk addressing Nigel while Omar stared at the floor. "Amateur hour is not what we need at this moment when we are trying to take the festival to the next level." Magda raised her hands. "Who will seriously consider funding something so unprofessional?"
They all glanced at me walking in. Then Nigel ushered Magda and Omar into his office and shut the door. I strained to hear but could distinguish only the occasional rising of Magda's voice, no actual words. As if I needed more distractions. After my last session with Willis I could barely think; the limits of my resources became clear as I struggled to gain traction with Business Plan for Dummies. I finally gave up and stared blissfully into the space over my open book recalling the Kiss, during which Willis slowly bent his neck, touching his lips to mine, his hand gently lifting my chin, as if he were the Prince and I the Fair Maiden. I was about to relive it from the beginning, when Vera arrived. She paused in front of Nigel's closed door and glanced at me.
"Omar and Magda," I whispered.
"Oh yes." Vera frowned, remembering. Then she let herself in, not bothering to shut the door behind her.
"A cover-up?" Nigel said patiently, although I heard exasperation in his voice. "It is quite possible that the trip to Antigua is no more than a literary device to get the father out of the house and further the courtship plot. Put yourself in 1814, Magda."
"I have," she shot back. "And in 1811, the Slave Trade Felony Act was introduced. Austen knew this; her readers knew this. Fanny Price was an abolitionist."
"Really?" Vera said.
My tea-theatre was not the subject of discussion.
Nigel sounded weary. "I simply ask that you not tamper with what is explicit. Don't alter the prose."
Omar spoke for the first time. "So," he said in a careful monotone, "are you saying to cut those lines where Sir Thomas provides details of his slave ownership to Fanny?"
I still felt a little shock, thinking of Sir Thomas owning slaves.
"Yes," Nigel said. "Suggest larger political issues—for God's sake, use Mrs. Norris's green baize to imply whatever you like, but keep it implicit."
Magda interrupted to voice an objection but Claire rose from her desk to close the door, shooting me a glance.
At my first opportunity, I went to the attic.
"Hello, Willis," I called up. No response. I called again.
Everything remained as we left it, except his laptop which he had taken with him. A stack of telephone messages accumulated beneath his collection of pens and the books waited unmoved. The room felt incredibly lonely and even spooky without him. I sat at the window while My Jane Austen read his phone messages. The loneliness grew so oppressive that I left her there, crossing the floor to the stairs in haste, tripping loudly as if she chased me down the stairs. I didn't stop until I found myself outside the second floor bathroom where John Owen continued to wrestle with our plumbing issues.
The next day Willis was still not there and I began to feel slightly desperate. After my third trip up the stairs to look for him, I decided to try the church. I sat in the back, allowing the powerful words entry, giving myself up to calm meditation and deep breathing. My Jane Austen paced an empty row behind me but I ignored her, focusing instead on summoning the necessary blend of reserve and aggression to deal with Willis. He couldn't see me and I felt like a spy, watching him listen to the homily from his seat in the sanctuary.
After the service, Willis stationed himself with the clergy in the entry, shaking hands, wishing everyone a good morning as they left. He saw me before I reached him so when we shook hands my presence was no longer a surprise. He smiled and said, "Good morning," but anyone watching could tell from our smiles that a secret joke existed between us. I struck the tiniest, nearly imperceptible flirtatious pose. Almost immediately, I felt the connection. I kept it light. "Do you have time for coffee?" I asked.
He watched me. I didn't move. If he wanted more, he would have to join me.
"Yes," he said.
Willis didn't want to sit by the window so we carried our coffee to the back of the small cafe Willis nodded to an empty table, placing his hand on the small of my back to guide me. I was what's-her-name to his Maxim de Winter, falling for each other in a quaint dining room. He rested his arms on the table and stared at me.
I whispered, "Are you aware of the slavery issues in Mansfield Park?"
He sipped his coffee. "No," he said, "tell me."
Appropriating a breathy voice, I told him about the conversation I'd overheard in the office between Nigel and Magda, the explicit references to slavery I was aware of, and Omar's forced adaptation. Willis listened, sipping coffee, his back to the room. We drew attention, people curious about the woman confessing her sins to a priest in a coffee shop, which explained why Willis chose a secluded table.
"But I thought she restricted herself to writing about a few country families," Willis said.
Two things about talking with Willis. With Martin, I could make it up as I went; no facts, no problem. Not Willis, he had a background in this stuff and he listened critically; he would be on to me in a heartbeat. The other thing: I might as well have been describing in minute detail how I planned to disrobe later that evening. He studied me as if every word were an intimate revelation, a window into my deep personal places. "Some people, Magda for instance, believe the novels are charged with political meaning," I said.
"What does your Jane Austen say?" he asked, his slow smile an invitation to deeper confidence.
But then I saw a familiar face ordering coffee at the counter. "Oh, look," I said, "there's the woman who read her story at the pub the other night." Willis didn't turn to look. I recognized others from Omar's writing workshop, and then Omar came in. I waved as he came to my table.
"This is my friend Omar who leads the writing workshop."
Willis reluctantly turned to shake Omar's hand. I could barely focus on Omar's entertaining explanation of the writing group's field trip to the coffee shop because Willis had turned his back on Omar and was crumpling his napkin in his fist. He stood, taking his coffee cup with him, and looked at his watch.
"I've got to run," he said. "Pleasure meeting you," he said to Omar as he abruptly departed.
I watched until he was gone.
"What's up with him?" Omar asked.
This would become our routine. Willis would listen carefully as I updated him on tea-theatre progress: water now flowed from the kitchen sink without flooding other parts of the house, but the stove was still dangerous. We had china, teapots, scones, and tablecloths, but no gas. Then he would express wonder as I shared the things I learned at Nigel's door every day. The term critical vocabulary opened a whole world, the mere word traduce expressed a big idea in only seven letters. I became addicted to the daily dose of attention from Willis; craved his deep and penetrating gaze. But he would not have lunch with me. Too much work.
I spoke of elegiac yearnings and whispered the terrible truth that Jane Austen's fans couldn't face—that in spite of their perpetual search for details, they would never really know Jane Austen. Willis appeared genuinely moved. But not enough to relocate to the pub for happy hour.
Collecting bits of wonder during my working hours, I saved them to tell Willis: how Jane Austen's sister, Cassandra, had censored hundreds of letters with her scissors, like shredding documents, consigning their secrets to eternity. I explained there were only two likenesses of Jane Austen, both sketches by Cassandra, from which all other images had sprung; artists adding feminine ruffles, curls, or cosmetics, depending on the time and context of the artist.
But when asked personal questions, he always steered the talk elsewhere. He declined invitations to lunch, dinner, readings, and lectures, unwilling to budge from his desk. He always seemed engaged in our conversations, but never enough to kiss me again. I couldn't figure him out and didn't know what to do.
One day when Nigel and Vera were gone to London and Claire was free to work on nonfestival matters, Claire asked me to introduce the speaker for "Sexual Repression in Mansfield Park." I forced Willis out of my head and marshaled every particle of concentration to craft a coherent introduction from the speaker's resume. If I didn't do a good job, she'd hear about it and never give me another chance. Nonetheless, as I sat listening to the lecture an idea took root. My idea grew while the speaker analyzed the scene where Edmund helps Mary Crawford dismount Fanny's horse, while Fanny watches. By the time Mary Crawford had made her apologies, I had a plan.
Willis sat at the window, staring listlessly into the darkness in a way that made me fear he might be bored. The impulse fueling my plan deflated and I considered that a sensible person might say good night and retreat to her room or attend the performance in the ballroom. Not me.
"Hello, Lily." Willis patted the plank next to him.
"We could really use some cushions up here." I joined him, removing my sweater and leaning in, pretending to look out the window where the glamorous moon lit the night stage presenting tree branches in silhouette, a quiet couple sitting in the herb garden. I wished I could open the window and smell the night air, forgetting it would be cool, not hot and dry like Texas.
"Do you know Mrs. Russell?" I asked.
"No." Willis smiled and turned to me.
I sat up very straight. "She's in charge of the volunteers," I said, "the women who pass out programs and sell tickets. And she's cochair of the tea-theatre."
"She wears a costume," he said.
"Period attire," I corrected him. "Anyway, she announced this afternoon that she wants to play Amelia in the skit. And Stephen Jervis will play Anhalt."
Willis shifted his legs. "Is that bad?"
"Well, yes. I'm sure that I am not going to play Agatha, her mother. I'm Amelia. And Omar is Anhalt." I felt his regard penetrate my face, going in through the eyes, seeking a comfortable place near my heart. "I think she's up to something with Stephen Jervis. Maybe the tea-theatre was a bad idea; we should have continued pushing for a ball. I don't understand why Nigel is so opposed to a ball," I said, talking, while I cast about for the optimal moment to activate my plan. I sensed My Jane Austen in a dark corner, working on "A List of Silly Girls." She'd gotten as far as Lydia Bennet.
"It's not the ball, really," Willis said. "Rather a preference for the way his festival addresses the study of Jane Austen." He looked into my eyes as I ran my fingers over the hem of Bets's black blouse that buttoned up the front. "Professional academics have rules for the study of literature which the fans tend to ignore."
"Such as?" I asked.
"Well." Willis looked down, and I wondered if he knew where I was going with the blouse. "The fan club treats characters as if they were real people and speculate on their lives outside the text."
I sat up straight. "Go on."
"Study requires analytical skills and specialized knowledge that professional academics spend their careers acquiring."
"Well, that automatically excludes a lot of people." My heart beat faster.
"Lady Weston and Nigel chose to work together to elevate the study of Jane Austen, to provide self-taught readers access to the academic research in a manor house setting."
"You must know the Lockwood family," I said, recalling Willis with Randolph at the orientation meeting.
"Yes," Willis said, clearing his throat.
Inasmuch as he knew what he had just told me, how could he not know the fun facts I'd been sharing at our daily wonder-fests? Maybe he was pretending not to know just so he could listen to me talk. I took a deep breath, gathering courage from the scent of Bets's spicy perfume I'd sprayed on my neck and wrists, and placed my fingers on the top button of my black blouse. The top button slipped out and my fingers traveled down to the next.
"What are they like?" I asked, my voice breaking, the second button freed and my fingers on the third, the top of Bets's black bra visible. Willis exhaled, his eyes on my cleavage as I opened the fourth button and slowly pulled the blouse apart. Moonlight cast a white sheen on my curving flesh as I considered releasing the bra's front clasp. Willis didn't speak but I could hear his breath. He took my hands, pushing them down to my lap, and held them there. Maybe he wanted to look at me in the moonlight. But then he touched the blouse and, starting at the bottom, he buttoned one after the other until all were closed.
Then he held my hands again. "We don't know each other, Lily," he whispered in the darkness. I turned away, fearing this was what Martin meant by needy, feeling I'd been censured, feeling embarrassed and confused, too ashamed to look at him. I would have stood but he had my right hand and held it tight. I looked away, all the bad feelings melting the snow inside me to a grimy slush and I wanted to lie down and drown in it.
"Tell me why you're so sad," he said.
No one had ever asked me that question; I didn't know what to say and if he hadn't been holding me and talking to me the way he was, I would have run away.
"Hmm?" he murmured, his mouth close to my head, his other hand on my chin, lifting my face to look at him.
Even I didn't understand my deep sadness, with me as long as I could remember. My earliest memories were of being sad, different from everybody else; perhaps the reason I never fit in. Grave and serious like Jane Eyre, or Catherine and Heathcliff, or Anna Karenina. I understood exactly how they felt, and nobody in real life shared that kind of pain with me. No one, not even my mother, had ever known about my sadness. I'd been so worried about psychologists, and now writers, penetrating my defenses, when all along deacons had the power. I didn't know where to start—from my deep and powerful identification with The Secret Garden in fourth grade, to the loss of my mother, the books, the necklace, or everything in between. "My mother died," I said, tears filling my eyes, "last September."
"I'm sorry," he said.
I felt a rush of gratitude, my face crumpled like a small child while he searched his pockets and handed me a tissue.
"You need help with that grief," he said.
"I've had some help. I chose the Episcopal church, mostly because of the Book of Common Prayer; you know—the exquisite beauty and power of the words." Manifold sins and wickedness came to mind. "But after she died, my father donated her body to science and we had a lunch in our backyard. He wouldn't talk to the priest; he never went to church with us."
"Why is that?"
"He says God isn't interested in religion." Telling Willis brought it back to me, that sudden vacuum of emptiness—even with all the usual suspects gathered at our house. I told Willis about "the bossy aunts breaking into my mother's china cupboard, the black sheep opening the fridge for another beer."
Willis sat perfectly still.
"Everyone was there except my mother," I said. "She would have asked my cousin questions about grad school and whispered for me to get the silver tray out of the bottom shelf for the meat. I kept expecting her to walk into the room. But she wasn't there. Her place was empty." I stopped to compose myself.
"Yes," Willis said.
"After she died, I couldn't cry. Not until her best friend, who traveled from Ohio to see me, walked into our kitchen." I could still recall the sound of her black pumps on the linoleum floor, the jangle of her keys hitting the kitchen counter, and the rustle of her slip against her black skirt as she opened her plump arms to me. "We've both lost our best friend," she said, holding me tight while I sobbed into her shoulder.
"That's actually a normal reaction," Willis said.
"How normal is sneaking into random Episcopal funerals?" I held the tissue to my lips, recalling the words I craved, All we go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song.
"Less so." He nodded.
"My father wasn't home much when I was growing up. He traveled a lot for work and I never felt close to him. Still, I was surprised when, about a week after everyone left, he started seeing a woman."
Willis closed his eyes.
"Even absent as he had been, his behavior didn't correspond to anything I expected from him or understood about my life and I didn't know what to believe. I still don't. My sister thinks the affair started before my mother died."
"Did you talk to him about it?"
"No. And he told us not to speak of our mother in front of his friend because our grief makes her uncomfortable."
Willis waited while I dabbed my nose.
"I lost the childhood books she saved for me and now I've lost her last gift to me, a cross necklace she made by melting her wedding ring," I said, shaking my head. "I feel like she's slipping away from me."
We were so quiet I could hear a scratching noise and leaves rustling outside.
"No one knows what it's like after we die." Willis looked into my face. I wadded the tissue in my hand and wished for another. "I imagine the soul becomes part of that great eternity beyond our understanding of place and time, with us always, just as God is with us."
"Oh no." I thought of my mother following me around like My Jane Austen.
Willis smiled. "Not in the judgmental human way of seeing you."
I accepted another tissue. Willis touched my hand and we sat silently for a while, listening to the house creak and things fluttering in the rafters. "Are you ready to go?" he asked.
"No. I want you to tell me why you're so sad," I said.
"I'm not sad." Willis patted my hand.
"Then, what is it?" I asked.
Willis squirmed. "English reserve." He smiled. After a silence, he got up and went to his desk to gather his books and I turned to look out the window. I wanted us to leave together and stay together for the walk back to my dorm. He would not get away from me this time. Closing a book on his desk, his movement jarred the table, and the computer screen came to life.
"A light in the darkness," he said, then turned and opened his arms to me. "I'd like to hug you," he said, "if you'll promise to keep your shirt on."
I was grateful he made light of it; thankful he'd found a different way for us to be.
"One more button and I'm afraid I would have been overcome," he said.
I went to him gladly, my arms about his waist, my head on his arm, saving up the sensation so I could recall it in the morning. Close enough to see the computer screen, I absently read the words over his arm, expecting a sermon or a page from his thesis on moral theology. But the words didn't fit my expectations, forcing me to shift mental gears. It took a bit of reading to comprehend what I saw.
"Willis," I said, stepping away from him.
He looked from me to the screen and I recognized the "stopping" look my father flashed at me when I found Sue in his kitchen.
I touched his arm. "There's a vampire story on your computer." The page heading said, "Vampire Priest."
He looked startled, as if the vampire text surprised him, too.
"You're writing a vampire story. Can I read it?" I asked.
Willis hesitated. He swallowed while I stood completely still, waiting, sensing a crack in his mighty reserve.
"Yes," he said.