Quickly, 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.
To: Lillian Berry [email protected]
Sent: June 13, 6:03 A.M.
From: Karen Adams [email protected]
Subject: Please call
Lily,
I don't have a phone number to reach you and we need to talk. I was planning to wait till you return but Greg thinks you should know. I found something that leads me to believe Dad knew Sue before Mom died. Before you fall apart, please call me so we can talk about it. It's not the end of the world.
If I'm not home, call my cell.
I'm sorry and I miss you,
Karen
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.
Sabrina took my hand and led me to the stage to perform the scene where, while touring the chapel at Mr. Rushworth's estate, Mary Crawford makes snarky comments about clergymen before learning that Edmund plans to be ordained. If I followed Sabrina, we'd make it through the scene. I knew I was safe during the long part where Sabrina, as Fanny, expresses her disappointment over the chapel to Edmund.
"This is not my idea of a chapel," Sabrina said. "There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand."
A streak of lightning flashed behind my eyelids, followed by a bone-rattling crash of thunder. My father knew Sue before my mother died. Sabrina bumped into me as if I stood in her place. I moved without any idea where to go. How did Karen know?
"No banners to be blown by the night wind of Heaven," Sabrina continued. "No signs that a Scottish monarch sleeps below." Sabrina gestured to the same chair whose outward scrolling arms supported Sir Thomas in the previous scene.
Mrs. Rushworth said her line: "Morning and evening prayers were always read by the domestic chaplain," she said. "But the late Mr. Rushworth discontinued the service."
"Every generation has its improvements," I said, as another flare of lightning illuminated My Jane Austen's pale figure. Were they intimate when my mother was alive? Shaking my head dramatically for no apparent reason, I moved so Mrs. Rushworth could take my place. I concentrated to deliver my long line about heads of the family requiring housemaids and footmen to attend chapel while inventing excuses for themselves to lie in bed for ten more minutes, but the chandelier glittering overhead distracted me, and the Prussian blue paint on the walls had "failed" and for the life of me I couldn't imagine what had brought Karen to her horrible conclusion. The sight of brown Currier and Ives china, donated to the production by a helpful volunteer, would forever strike terror in my heart.
Ah! I knew where we would get enough china for the tea.
I glanced at Sabrina, whose smile reminded me of Karen's when Karen first suggested I might need professional help. I imagined Archie pulling me off-stage with a long hook. My father would never have an affair. Petrified I would miss my line, I caught my startled reflection in one of the gilded mirrors across the hall, envious of the dumb marble bust reflected beside me on its pedestal. "Ordained!" I said. "If I had known this before, I would have spoken of the cloth with more respect."
And then thunder rumbled again. Magda entered the ballroom from a side door and stood against the opposite wall with Archie. Our eyes met. I experienced the sensation that occurs just before a car accident or a failing grade: I'm actually going to die now. Panic surged and I couldn't remember where I was supposed to be standing. I looked at my shoes, the carpet, the upholstery tacks attaching gold fringe to a footstool, beseeching them to help me recall my blocking, but Magda's scornful expression undid me and my memory vanished like yesterday's tourists. If only I could talk with my mother one last time, pierce the veil of death for one question.
After I left the stage I heard Sixby. "Well, Fanny, and how do you like Miss Crawford now? Was there nothing in her conversation that struck you, Fanny, as not quite right?" The audience laughed. So much for my part in the follies; Sixby would never mention that again.
Archie waited for me in the hall near a sofa where two Asian tourists with backpacks and empty water bottles either napped or had died. His brow furrowed, Archie gestured and I followed him to the Freezer, where he would feed me to Magda. The portraits scowled, Lady Weston could have me deported, and I took no comfort from the breeze wafting in the open windows. Outside, patrons trained their cameras and video recorders on smiling families, catching other photographers in their pictures, along with the house and grounds. I wanted to run away from him, find a phone and call my sister, anything to stop the squall in my soul.
Claire snagged Archie at the Freezer door so I entered alone to await my doom. Magda was not present. But Bets was. Dressed in costume and ready to perform.
"Hi, Cellmate," she said, returning my JASNA bag. "How'd it go?" as if the horror had been according to plan.
Speechless, I took the bag and stared at her. Bets looked different, perhaps her hair caught up in the cap, maybe she'd been crying.
"You got what you wanted," she said. "And take this," she said, handing me her cell phone. "Lock it up where I can't find it."
At first I thought she meant giving me the phone was what I wanted—because at the moment, I needed a phone to call Karen. "Where have you been?" I asked, sounding like her mother again.
"Tommy's," she said.
"Did you bring my necklace?"
She shrugged. "I forgot."
"Oh, Bets. It's not just a necklace." I imagined my necklace hanging on a bedpost or dropped behind a dresser in some slovenly bed-sit. My mother, left in a tangle near a grimy sink, splattered with water and toothpaste. What nasty rocker was wearing it now? "You've got to get it back."
"It wasn't my first priority," Bets said.
"Next time it needs to be first," I said.
"There is no next time." Bets hesitated. "Tommy needs space." Her voice turned to a whisper; her tough bravado and tattoos weren't much help to her now. "He wants us to take a month off from each other."
"Is he seeing someone else?" I asked.
She shook her head. "He's working on a new song." Bets sniffed. "He got the idea from my script."
"A song about Mansfield Park?"
"About Fanny Price," she said.
Her phone rang and I looked at the caller ID. "Bella," I said.
Bets grabbed the phone out of my hand, "Stop calling," she said. "I can't talk for a month." Snapping the phone shut, she handed it back to me and wiped her nose on her white gloves. I might never see my necklace again.
"Bets!" We both turned to see Magda, hissing from the doorway, gesturing for Bets to join the cast.
"Do you know your lines?" I whispered, slipping Bets's phone into my JASNA bag.
"Some of them." She shrugged, walking into Magda's outstretched claw.
"You," Magda said, pointing her bangled arm at me, "wait."
When Magda returned, Archie and Claire came with her, Archie talking seriously into his cell phone. All three looked very concerned, as if they had not discovered a punishment severe enough to fit my crime.
"That's serious at her age," Archie said into his phone. "She may go downhill really fast." Rilly fahst.
Archie sat on the arm of a sofa; Magda stood staring at him. She began to speak but Archie raised his hand; his irritation flashed at interruptions, even from Magda. "Are you going to try to see her? Get something signed?" The phone conversation wasn't about me after all. Archie was talking to Nigel and something had happened to Lady Weston.
"Keep us updated." And then he said, "Here's Magda, she wants a word with Vera." Archie handed the phone to Magda as my stomach swooped; he and Claire left the room without looking at me.
"Vera," Magda said. "I know you've got a lot on your plate at the moment but I need to tell you we're having our own disasters over here with the corps of amateurs. Thank you for trying to help, I know she's a personal friend of yours, but I need to be consulted before decisions are made that affect the production."
I slumped onto the sofa, pulling out the crossword puzzle magazine I'd sat on. My Jane Austen drummed her fingers on a bookshelf.
"But Vera, with all due respect, I don't understand why you're taking this stand. It would appear you're allowing sentiment to override artistic and professional considerations at a very critical time."
I found a pencil. One across: animal smaller than horse. Three letters.
"What you are asking the organization to accommodate at this moment is not reasonable. Bets simply cannot handle the demands. I'm shifting the cast around and giving her a smaller part. And I'm sending Lily back to you. You can keep her or send her home, I don't care."
My heart dropped. Home. The wedding. There was a punishment cruel enough to fit my crime.
Magda gestured, her bangles clanking. "I appreciate your spirit and I hope you are able to introduce Jane Austen to more and more ordinary citizens, but right now we're trying to produce Mansfield Park, and if Jane Austen were present this morning, she'd eat your Lily for lunch. And shut us down."
My Jane Austen was present and she was writing her next book based on the persecution of Lily Berry by the tyrannical literary person wearing a head scarf. After Magda clicked off the phone with her long thumb, she smiled at me, and I recognized the expression my boss used when he fired me, the same delicious regret Sue expressed whenever she had the pleasure of saying no to me. Magda folded her arms, silencing the bangles, and I felt my insides crushed to pulp, the end of the line for me.
"Surely you are aware that you are in over your head," she said without expression.
I sat there, absorbing the hit, a misfit at this festival; too bookish for home, not bookish enough for here.
"And I can't imagine you're enjoying this." She rolled her eyes and raised her hands in supplication, waiting for me to speak, but I was so close to tears that one false move would put me over the edge. I determined not to cry in front of her.
"I performed with almost no preparation," I said.
"True." Someone opened a door on the noisy hall and Magda waved them out without looking to see who wanted in.
"I know my lines. I can learn the blocking."
"Listen to me," she said. Lee sen to mee. "Don't expect Vera to wave her wand and fix your life by bringing you here." Magda looked directly into my eyes, stabbing her finger into her palm. "Even if she could, she has her own problems right now. She's not thinking clearly." Magda sighed and spoke more softly, almost pleading. "Why don't you get a Eurail pass and travel? Do something good for yourself."
"But I want to do this," I said, knowing My Jane Austen far preferred the literary festival to any train trip.
She shot back at me, "Teaching you to act so you can participate here is completely outside the scope of this organization's mission. I'm not paid enough to train you; we have no money for theatre directors. I'm an English teacher who does this for the privilege of spending the summer with other English teachers."
I considered her privilege, one of spending time with a married man in a manor house.
"Archie and I are not theatre directors but we have done enough theatre to pull off what we do here. But we must have professional actors who know what they're doing. Am I clear?"
"What about Bets?"
Magda narrowed her eyes at me and held up two fingers. "Two important qualifications Bets has that you don't: She's related to the Weston family, and her parents are donating funds to cover this year's operating deficit. Any more questions?" She raised her eyebrows and glared at me, waiting.
Could the Wallet cover our scones?
When I said nothing, she continued. "If you insist on remaining at this festival, you must stay in Vera's office. There is nothing for you on my stage."
Bets's phone rang in my bag. "I want a part," I said.
"Good-bye," Magda said louder, competing with the noise of the phone. A staff person with a bucket of tar asked Magda a question from the doorway, and they both left.
I had not escaped my life when I left Texas. There was no escape for me. This organization was another version of reality, just as populated with human appetites and dynamics. If I would act on a stage at Newton Priors, or live in any novel that took place here, I'd have to get past Magda to do it.