The Jane Austen Book Club

by Karen Joy Fowler

  Prudie returned to her index cards. It had occurred to her over lunch that none of Jane’s other heroines was anywhere near as devout as Fanny. The book club had yet to even mention religion.

  Austen’s other books were filled with clergymen’s livings—promised, offered, desired—but these posed more financial concerns than spiritual ones. No heroine but Fanny spoke so approvingly of worship or seemed to admire the clergy so much. Six books. So many scenes of village life, so many dances and dinners carefully depicted. Not a single sermon. And Jane’s father had been a clergyman himself. There was much here to discuss! Bernadette would surely have things to say about this. Prudie filled five new cards before the heat got to her.

  Her headache was making a comeback. She pressed on her temples and looked at the clock. Sallie Wong had written a note, folded it like a crane, brushed it off the desk with her elbow. Teri Cheyney picked it up, unfolded it, read it. Oh my God, she mouthed. (And not Mon dieu.) Probably Trey’s name was in that note somewhere. Prudie considered confiscating it, but that would involve standing. She was so hot she thought she might actually faint if she stood. What might the students not do if she were unconscious? What romps and frolics? Little black spots swam through her vision like tadpoles. She put her head on the desk, closed her eyes.

  It was, thank God, almost time to go home. She would do some light cleaning before the book club came. Quick vacuum. Casual dusting. Perhaps it would be cool enough by eight to meet out on the deck. That might be lovely if the Delta breeze came in. The noise level in the classroom was rising subtly. She should sit up before it got out of hand, open her eyes, clear her throat loudly. She was determined to do so, and then the bell rang.

  And then, instead of going straight home, Prudie found herself outside the multipurpose room. The kids who did drama were an interesting group. Mostly into pot, which distinguished them from the ones who did student government (alcohol) or played sports (steroids) or did yearbook (glue). So many distinct sets and subsets. There was something quite mandarin about the complexity of it. Prudie sometimes wished she’d studied anthropology. There would have been papers to write. Of course, that was the bad news as well as the good. Writing papers would have been an effort. She wasn’t her mother’s daughter for nothing.

  She could hear music, muffled through the multipurpose room door. Behind that door was the Scottish highlands. Mists and hills and heather. It sounded lovely and cool. While going home, desirable in every other way, involved getting into a car that had been in the parking lot with the windows up since eight that morning. She would have to wrap her hand in her skirt to open the door. The seat would be too hot to sit on, the steering wheel too hot to hold. She would spend several minutes actually, technically, baking as she drove.

  None of this would improve with delay, but the prospect was so unappealing that Prudie chose door B. She was rewarded with a wash of air-conditioning over her face. Some kid who’d never taken French was playing the bagpipe. Onstage the players rehearsed the chase of Harry Beaton. Ms. Fry was having them run through the scene, first in slow motion, and then up to speed. From her seat, Prudie could see the stage, and also the actors waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, in the back, the bagpipe practiced for Harry’s funeral. Without exactly liking the instrument, Prudie admired the performance. Where would a kid from California have learned to blow and squeeze that way?

  The boys jumped down off the stage, kilts flying. Jimmy Johns put his arm around the blond sophomore girl who was playing his fiancée. In Brigadoon, their love had broken Harry’s heart; at Valley High, the broken heart was Karin’s. She sat a few rows back and alone, a careful distance from Danny.

  Prudie found herself in sudden sympathy with Coach Blumberg. How wise was it, after all, to encourage these children to play at great love? To tell them that romance was worth dying for, that simple steadfastness was stronger than any other force in the world? What Coach Blumberg believed—that there was something important about nine boys outpitching, outhitting, and outrunning nine other boys—seemed, by contrast, a harmless fraud. Jane Austen wrote six great romances, and no one died for love in any of them. Prudie observed a moment’s silence in honor of Austen and her impeccable restraint. Then she was just quiet with no purpose to being so.

  Trey Norton slid into the seat beside her. “Should you be here? Don’t you have class?” she asked him.

  “It was a hundred fourteen in the Quonset. Some geek had an actual thermometer on him, we were let out. I’m picking up Jimmy.” Trey was smiling at Prudie in a disconcerting way that wasn’t his usual disconcerting way. “I saw you in the library. You were watching me.”

  Prudie felt herself flush. “A public display of affection is public.”

  “Okay, public. I wouldn’t call it affection, though.”

  It was long past time to change the subject. “The boy playing the bagpipes is really good,” Prudie said.

  If only she’d said it in French! Trey made a delighted noise. “Nessa Trussler. A girl. Or something.”

  Prudie looked at Nessa again. There was, she could see now, a certain plump ambiguity. Maybe Trey wouldn’t tell anyone what she’d said. Maybe Nessa was perfectly comfortable with who she was. Maybe she was admired throughout the school for her musical ability. Maybe pigs could jig.

  The best thing you could say for Nessa was that she had only three years here. Then she could go as far away as she liked. She could never come back if that was what she wanted. Prudie was the one staying. She had a sudden revelation that this was Brigadoon, where nothing would ever change. The only people who would age were the teachers. It was a terrifying thing to think.

  She had a more practical idea. “I’m not wearing my contacts,” she offered. Lamely and late.

  “Yes you are.” Trey was looking deep into her eyes; she could smell his breath. It was slightly fishy, but not in a bad way. Like a kitten’s. “I can see them. Little rings around your irises. Like little dinner plates.”

  Prudie’s heartbeat was quick and shallow. Trey lifted his chin. “And a good thing. PD of A to starboard.”

  Prudie turned around. There, right there, in the wings, with the stage empty but a fair number of kids still scattered about the auditorium, Mr. Chou, the music teacher (unmarried) slipped his hands over Ms. Fry (married)’s breasts, squeezed them as if he were testing cantaloupes. And clearly not for the first time; those hands knew those breasts. What was it about this school! Prudie’s headache upped its tempo. The bagpipe exhaled forlornly.

  Prudie’s second reaction was to calm down. Maybe this was not so bad. It would distract Trey from her unfortunate faux pas about Nessa. Nessa was an innocent here; Prudie didn’t regret the exchange.

  As for Ms. Fry and Mr. Chou, Prudie couldn’t even pretend to be surprised. Ms. Fry had large breasts. Take pheromones, add music, rehearsals day and night, people dying for love. What could you expect?

  One of the things that troubled Prudie about Mansfield Park was the way things ended between Mary Crawford and Edmund. Edmund had wished to marry Miss Crawford. It looked to Prudie as if, whatever other excuses he might offer, he’d finally cast her aside because she wished to forgive her brother and his sister for an adulterous affair. Edmund accused Mary of taking sin lightly. But he himself preferred to lose his sister forever rather than forgive her.

  Prudie had always wanted a brother. It would have been nice to have someone with whom to cross-check memories. Had they ever been to Muir Woods? Dillon Beach? Why were there no pictures? She’d imagined that she would love this brother very much. She’d imagined he would love her in return, would see her shortcomings—who would know you better than a brother did?—but with fondness and charity. In the end, Prudie disliked Edmund so much more than she disliked his scandalous, selfish, love-stricken sister.

  Of course, attitudes changed over the centuries; you had to allow for this. But an unforgiving prick was an unforgiving prick. “Oo-la-la,” Trey said.

  Prudie’s own feelings on
adultery were taken from the French.

  “The evergreen!—How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen!” (MANSFIELD PARK)

  The climate in the Valley was classified as Mediterranean, which meant that everything died in the summer. The native grasses went brown and stiff. The creeks disappeared. The oaks turned gray.

  Prudie got into her car. She rolled down the windows, started the AC. The seat burned the backs of her bare legs.

  Some bird had shat on the windshield; the shit had cooked all day and would have to be scoured off. Prudie couldn’t face doing this in the full sun. Instead she drove home while peering around a large continent—Greece, maybe, or Greenland. Using the water and wipers would only make things worse. None of the driving was freeway, and she had mirrors, so it wasn’t really as reckless as it sounded.

  Without any particular affection for her eldest cousin, her tenderness of heart made her feel that she could not spare him; and the purity of her principles added yet a keener solicitude, when she considered how little useful, how little self-denying his life had (apparently) been. (MANSFIELD PARK)

  The curtains were drawn and the air conditioner was on, so Prudie walked into a house that was dark and tolerably cool. She took two more aspirin. Now that it came to it, she didn’t have the energy for further cleaning. Her lists were a comfort to her, an illusion of control in a turvy-topsy world, but she was no prisoner to them. Things came up, plans changed. Holly, the housekeeper, had been by last week. The place was clean enough by anyone’s standards but Jocelyn’s. Prudie would have to go out shopping again, there was no help for that, or serve a salad made from a romaine already browned at the edges.

  She took a cold shower, hoping that would pep her up, and dressed in a sleeveless T-shirt and cotton pajama pants printed with various sorts of sushi. Someone rang the doorbell while she was toweling her hair.

  Cameron Watson stood on her porch, sweat running down the peak of his sharp nose. “Cameron,” Prudie said. “What’s this about?”

  “I said I’d clean up your machine.”

  “I didn’t know you meant today.”

  “You want to be able to e-mail,” he said, in surprise. How could anyone go twenty-four hours without e-mail?

  There was a time when Prudie had worried that Cameron had a little crush on her. Now she knew better. Cameron had a little crush on her computer, which he had, of course, picked out himself. Cameron had another little crush on Dean’s video games. Cameron didn’t even see that she was wearing nothing but her pajamas. If this were a Jane Austen book, Prudie would be the girl courted for her estate.

  She stood aside to let Cameron in. He had cords and peripherals slung across his body like a bandolier, disks in a plastic case. He went straight to the family room, began running his diagnostics, working his magic. She’d thought to take a nap, but she couldn’t do that now, not with Cameron in the house. She dusted instead, indifferently, even resentfully. This was certainly a poor trade for sleeping.

  Because she didn’t feel the gratitude Cameron deserved—really this was very nice of him—she made a show of it. She brought him a glass of lemonade. “I’m downloading you some deadware,” he said. “Emulator programs.” He took the lemonade, set it aside to sweat in its glass all over the top of the desk. “We should get you Linux, too. Nobody uses Windows anymore.” (And pigs can jig.)

  She looked down on the white line of scalp that showed through at the part in his hair. He had large, dead flakes of dandruff. She felt an impulse to dust him. “What do emulator programs do?”

  “You can play old games on them.”

  “I thought the point was new games,” Prudie said. “I thought the games were just getting better and better.”

  “So you can play the classics,” Cameron told her.

  Perhaps that was a bit like rereading. Prudie returned to the living room. She was chasing a thought now about rereading, about memory, about childhood. It had something to do with how Mansfield Park seemed a cold, uneasy place to Fanny until she was banished back to her parents’. The Bertram estate became Fanny’s home only when she was no longer in it. Until then, she’d never understood that the affection of her aunt and uncle would prove more real in the end than that of her mother and father. Who else but Jane would think to turn the fairy tale this way? Prudie meant to get the index cards from her purse, write some of this down. Instead, in spite of Cameron, she fell asleep on the couch.

  She woke up with Dean stroking her arm. “I had the strangest dream,” she said, and then couldn’t remember what it had been. She sat up. “I thought you said you’d be late.” She looked at his face. “What’s wrong?”

  He picked up both her hands. “You need to get right home, honey,” he said. “Your mom’s been in an accident.”

  “I can’t go home.” Prudie’s mouth was dry, her head fuzzy. Dean didn’t know her mother the way she did, or he’d know there was nothing to be concerned about. “I have my book club coming.”

  “I know. I know you’ve been looking forward to that. I’ll call Jocelyn. You have a plane reservation in an hour and a half. I’m so sorry, darling. I’m so sorry. You really have to hurry.”

  He put his arms around her, but it was too hot to be hugged. She pushed him off. “I’m sure she’s fine. I’ll go tomorrow. Or this weekend.”

  “She hasn’t been conscious since the accident. The Baileys called my office. No one could get through to you. I’ve been trying the whole way home. Busy signal.”

  “Cameron’s on the computer.”

  “I’ll send him off.”

  Dean packed Prudie’s bag. He told her that by the time she got to San Diego he’d have a car waiting for her, to look for a driver with her name on a card in baggage claim. He said he’d call the school for a substitute, cancel his own appointments. Find someone more responsible than Cameron to feed the cat. He’d think of everything. She should think only about her mom. And herself.

  He’d follow as soon as he could. He’d be at the hospital with her by tomorrow morning at the latest. Late tonight if he could manage it. “I’m so sorry,” he kept saying, “I’m so sorry,” until she finally got the message that he thought her mother was dying. As if!

  A year earlier Dean could have accompanied her to the gate, held her hand while she waited. Now there was no point in even going in. He dropped her at the curb, went home to make the rest of the arrangements. A man went through security in front of her. He had a gym bag and a cell phone and he walked on his heels the same way Trey Norton did. He was pulled aside, made to remove his shoes. Prudie’s fingernail clippers were confiscated, and also her Swiss Army knife. She wished she’d remembered to give this to Dean; she liked that knife.

  Her reservation was on Southwest. She’d gotten a boarding pass in the C group. She could still hope for an aisle seat, but only if she was right at the front, and maybe not even then.

  While fishing her identification out of her purse again to board the plane, her index cards spilled. “Do you want to play fifty-two card pick-up?” she’d asked her mother once. She’d learned this trick at day care. “Sure thing,” her mother had said, and then, after Prudie had scattered the cards, she asked if Prudie would be her little helper-elf and pick them up for her.

  Prudie dropped to her knees to collect her cards. People stepped over her. Some of these people were impatient, unpleasant. There was no hope of an aisle seat now. By the time she stumbled onto the plane she was crying. Later, over the complimentary Coke, as a Zen exercise to calm herself down, she counted her cards. She’d been preparing for so long she had forty-two of them. She counted them twice to be sure.

  She did the crossword in the in-flight magazine for a while. Then she stared out the window at the empty sky. Everything was fine. Her mother was perfectly sain et sauf, and Prudie absolutely refused to be sucked into pretending otherwise.

  * * *

  Prudie’s dream:

  In Prudie’s dream, Jane Austen is showing her through the
rooms of a large estate. Jane doesn’t look anything like her portrait. She looks more like Jocelyn and sometimes she is Jocelyn, but mostly she’s Jane. She’s blond, neat, modern. Her pants are silk and have wide legs.

  They’re in a kitchen decorated in the same blue, white, and copper as Jocelyn’s kitchen. Jane and Prudie agree that fine cooking can be done only on a gas stove. Jane tells Prudie that she herself is considered a decent French chef. She promises to make something for Prudie later, and even as she says so, Prudie knows she’ll forget.

  They descend to a wine cellar. A grid frame along a dark wall holds several bottles, but more of the cubbyholes have cats inside. Their eyes shine in the dark like coins. Prudie almost mentions this, but decides it would be rude.

  Without actually ascending a staircase, Prudie finds herself upstairs, alone, in a hall with many doors. She tries a few, but they’re all locked. Between the doors are life-sized portraits interspersed with mirrors. The mirrors are arranged so that every portrait is reflected in a mirror across the hall. Prudie can stand in front of these mirrors and position herself so that she appears to be in each portrait along with the original subject.

  Jane arrives again. She is in a hurry now, hustling Prudie past many doors until they suddenly stop. “Here’s where we’ve put your mother,” she says. “I think you’ll see we’ve made some improvements.”

  Prudie hesitates. “Open the door,” Jane tells her, and Prudie does. Instead of a room, there is a beach, a sailboat and an island in the distance, the ocean as far as Prudie can see.

  June

  CHAPTER FOUR

  in which we read Northanger Abbey and gather at Grigg’s