Pies & Prejudice

by Heather Vogel Frederick

“Somehow I don’t think your grandmother would go for that,” she says, smiling.

  “Lily, you read my mind!” says Gigi. “In fact, let’s change the subject.” She turns to Jess. “How are things at Colonial this year?”

  “Great!” Jess replies. “I like it a lot better than last year.”

  “The only problem with that is we hardly ever see her on the weekends anymore,” says Mrs. Delaney. “Not that I’m complaining.”

  “Are you rooming with Savannah again?” asks Becca.

  “No. She’s with Peyton Winslow this year. I’m in a triple with Adele and Frankie.”

  “I remember them from last year,” says Becca. “They’re fun.”

  “Yeah,” Jess agrees.

  Cassidy finally reappears, wearing clean sweatpants and a long-sleeve T-shirt and toweling her hair.

  “Everybody ready?” I ask, and my friends all nod. I click on the icon onscreen, and we hear a phone ringing. Then Emma says hello and we all squeal with excitement. A few seconds later, the video feed kicks in and she and her mother appear on the TV screen.

  “Hi, you guys!” Emma shouts at us, waving madly. “This is so cool!”

  We wave back.

  “What the heck are you wearing?” I ask her.

  She laughs. “I knew you’d notice!” She stands up and twirls around. “Ta-da! It’s my new school uniform. What do you think?”

  It’s far, far worse than what we had to wear at Walden Middle School last year.

  Cassidy peers more closely at the screen. “Is that a tie?”

  Emma nods. “Yup. I had to learn to tie it and everything. Can you believe it?”

  In addition to the red necktie, she’s wearing a navy skirt, a blue-and-white-striped shirt, and a navy blazer. The words KNIGHTLEY-MARTIN SCHOOL are embroidered above the fancy crest on its chest pocket.

  “My goodness, it looks like the uniform I had to wear to school back in the 1940s,” says Mrs. Bergson

  Gigi nods. “Mine too.”

  “Pretty sad, Emma,” I tell her.

  “I know!” she agrees. “The only good thing is, everybody else is stuck wearing it too.”

  As if on cue, her brother Darcy springs onto the screen next to her. He’s wearing his uniform as well, and we all scream with laughter.

  “Darcy! Shoo!” says Mrs. Hawthorne, and he grins and waves to us, then disappears. “So,” his mother continues, “now that we’ve covered British school fashion, would you like a tour of Ivy Cottage?”

  We all chorus “yes” and the picture on the screen tilts wildly as Mrs. Hawthorne picks up Emma’s laptop. “Come with me, then.”

  She slowly pans the camera lens around the living room. It has white walls and a low ceiling with dark wooden beams stretching across it. “We spend most of our time here and in the kitchen.”

  There’s a big stone fireplace at one end flanked by two plump armchairs, and a long sofa under a bank of windows overlooking a garden. The windows have those same diamond crisscross patterns as the windows in the turret at Cassidy’s house, and the sofa and armchairs are upholstered in fabric covered with bright flowers.

  “English chintz,” Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid says with a sigh. “Perfect.”

  The coffee table and other small end tables scattered around the room are made of heavy dark wood, and so are the dining table and chairs at the far end of the room, the matching sideboard, and the bench in the front hall.

  “It’s Jacobean,” Mrs. Hawthorne explains, zooming in for a closer look at the bench, which is intricately carved with fruit and flowers. “The Berkeleys are collectors. Look at this detail, Clementine.”

  “Gorgeous,” Cassidy’s mother murmurs.

  “It looks like a throne or something,” says Cassidy.

  “Jacobean means it was made in the early seventeenth century, during the reign of King James the first,” says Emma, who as usual is a fountain of information.

  Becca nudges me and rolls her eyes.

  “You’ve gotta admit it’s cool, though,” I whisper, and she gives a grudging nod.

  “There are just three rooms downstairs,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “I’ll save the kitchen for last, but take a look at Nick’s office.” She sticks the laptop through the door of the adjoining room, which is filled with the same style furniture as the living room. Emma’s dad looks up from his desk and waves.

  “Hello, Concord!”

  “Hi, Mr. Hawthorne!” we chorus back.

  We tour the upstairs next, following the laptop camera’s bumpy procession up a steep, narrow staircase. Emma’s bedroom is tucked in a corner, with a sloped ceiling and windows on two sides. It reminds me a little of Cassidy’s room, because the shelves are covered with trophies.

  “They’re all Tristan’s,” says Emma, and Cassidy smirks at us. She told us he’s an ice dancer.

  Mrs. Hawthorne pans the camera over to the bed, which has a cheerful yellow-and-white striped comforter on it and a stack of books piled on the pillow.

  “Now, that looks more like you, Emma,” says Mrs. Bergson.

  “Yes,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “The Manchester United bedspread was a bit much.”

  Emma waves her hand in front of the lens. “Mom, we’ve got to show them the hat!” she begs.

  “But my bed’s not made!” her mother protests.

  “They don’t care.”

  “My bed’s never made,” says Cassidy.

  Her mother sighs. “What can I say? I try.” She smiles. “Emma’s right, though, Phoebe—we don’t care. Show us this mysterious hat.”

  “Okay,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Curious, we all stare at the screen as Mrs. Hawthorne carries the laptop back down the hall. She opens another door, revealing a large room with a four-poster bed—unmade—and a big window.

  “I don’t see a hat,” says Becca.

  “Wait for it,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, and the camera slowly pans up the front of a wardrobe standing against the far wall. Perched on top is a bowler hat.

  “Check it out!” crows Emma, pointing to a spiral of green leaves encircling it.

  The camera follows the trail of ivy from the hat across the top of the wardrobe, down the wall, and out through a small crack in the window frame.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” says Cassidy. “You mean that’s real? It grew that way?”

  “Isn’t it funny?” Emma agrees.

  “Ivy Cottage is well named, I’d say,” notes Mrs. Bergson.

  “I know.” Emma sighs. “I love this house.”

  “We’ve saved the best for last,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, taking us back downstairs. “It’s not pink like ours is at home, but we like it anyway.”

  The kitchen is big and sunny, with a stone floor and an open hutch at one end with blue and white dishes displayed on its shelves. Unlike the rest of the furniture in the house, the hutch is made of pale wood.

  “A Welsh cupboard!” cries Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid in delight. “I’ve always wanted one.”

  “Look at the windowsill.” Emma crosses the room to a broad table made of the same pale wood as the dish cupboard. Beyond it is a window with a deep, whitewashed sill lined with pots of bright red geraniums and more pieces of blue and white china. My fingers itch for my sketchbook.

  “The walls are nearly two feet thick,” boasts Emma. “All the windows are like window seats. I sit in the one in my room upstairs all the time.”

  “DARCY ROCKS!” screams someone off screen, and we all jump.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Jess’s face flush. She doesn’t know that I know she likes Emma’s brother. I’m pretty sure we all know, actually.

  “Oh, and this is Toby,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, zooming in on a parrot in a cage in the corner. “Toby, say hello to our friends.”

  “GO RED SOX!” Toby squawks.

  Mrs. Hawthorne laughs. “I guess you can tell who’s been spending the most time with Toby.”

  “He wouldn’t shut u
p about Manchester United,” Emma tells us. “Darcy and I figured we had to do something.”

  “Can we see the garden?” begs Mrs. Chadwick, and the camera bumps its way out the back door and down a gravel path.

  Our mothers ooh and aah over all the flowers and shrubs. Becca’s mother whips out her notebook and starts barking questions at Mrs. Hawthorne.

  “I’m afraid I’m not much help,” Emma’s mother apologizes. “I have no idea what all the plants are—I’m just trying to keep up with the weeding and watering.”

  She offers to take pictures of everything and send them along in an e-mail, which makes Mrs. Chadwick happy, then finishes our tour by taking us around to the front of the house. It looks even better in real life than in the picture Emma showed us at her going-away party.

  “You certainly landed in a beautiful spot, Phoebe,” says Jess’s mother.

  Mrs. Hawthorne turns the laptop around and points it at herself. Her face looms large on the TV screen. “Didn’t we, though?” she replies, smiling broadly. “I wish Emma and I could take you for a walk through the village and down by the canal, too, but I don’t think our Wi-Fi would reach that far. Here, maybe you can at least take a peek at the view.” She turns the laptop around again and aims it over the hedge, revealing a cluster of tidy homes similar to Ivy Cottage.

  “Idyllic,” murmurs Mrs. Bergson. “Just the way an English village should look.”

  “Well, I suppose we should get our meeting started,” Mrs. Hawthorne says. “Enough of this dawdling.”

  “Dawdling is the best part of life,” says my grandmother.

  “This wise old owl thinks so, too,” says Mrs. Bergson, and they both laugh.

  Back in the kitchen, Emma’s mother sets the computer on the table and puts a cover over Toby’s cage. “I think we’ve heard enough from you for the time being.”

  “What do you do with him when you’re off exploring?” asks Jess.

  “The Berkeleys arranged for a neighbor boy to take care of him for us.”

  “Roooooo-pert!” moos Emma in the background.

  “Emma!” her mother scolds. “Rupert Loomis is a very nice boy.”

  Emma leans in toward the webcam. There’s a glint in her eye and her lips are quirked up in a little grin. “He’s a nincompoop,” she says in a stage whisper, and Becca and Cassidy and Jess and I all giggle.

  “So,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, ignoring her, “what do you all think of Pride and Prejudice so far?”

  “Can we eat before we talk about it?” asks Cassidy. “I’m starving.”

  “Why not,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

  “And I’ll do the same,” says my mother, jumping up off the sofa. She and Gigi disappear into the kitchen, emerging a few minutes later with trays loaded with teacups, plates, sandwiches, and pies—Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid’s, and the ones my grandmother and I made last night.

  “It’s a bake-off!” says Cassidy’s mother, catching sight of our pies.

  “Hey, we’re having apple pie too,” says Emma.

  “Courtesy of Nicholas, of course,” adds her mother. My mother might be a terrible cook, but Mrs. Hawthorne doesn’t cook at all. She says she’s dangerous in the kitchen, and besides, Emma’s dad loves to cook.

  “You know, Jane Austen loved pie,” says Mrs. Hawthorne, who always manages to steer our conversations back to book club stuff. “Why don’t we get to know her a little bit better while we’re eating, and then we can discuss Pride and Prejudice. Lily, did you receive the e-mail attachments I sent you?”

  My mother grabs a folder off the mantel, then passes out its contents.

  FUN FACTS ABOUT JANE

  1) Jane Austen was born on December 16, 1775, in Steventon, England. She was the seventh of eight Austen children, and one of two girls. The other was her sister, Cassandra.

  2) The Austens were a close-knit, lively, loving family of bookworms. In a letter to her sister, Jane once said that her family were “great novel-readers, and not ashamed of being so.” The young Austens also enjoyed putting on plays for their parents, and sometimes turned their barn into a private stage.

  3) Jane loved to play the piano and sing, and she was an excellent dancer, attending numerous balls as a young woman.

  4) Reading was a large part of Jane’s education. Her formal education ended at age eleven, and after that she was largely homeschooled. She had free reign over her father’s library of some 500 books.

  5) Jane began writing at age ten or eleven, and at sixteen copied out her early works to date, which included comical sketches, short stories, plays, a novel, and a spoof entitled The History of England.

  6) There’s only one portrait of Jane in existence—a drawing done by her sister—but she was said to have been a pretty girl with chestnut hair, hazel eyes, and a round face.

  “She only went to school until she was eleven?” cries Cassidy. “Lucky!”

  “I can’t believe she wrote all that stuff by the time she was sixteen,” says Emma. “Talk about making me feel like a loser.”

  Emma wants to be a writer when she grows up, just like her father.

  “I think it’s interesting that she was born in 1775,” says Jess. “Right before the American Revolution. It’s almost like she has a Concord connection.”

  Onscreen, Mrs. Hawthorne holds up her copy of Pride and Prejudice. “Shall we turn our attention to the book at hand?” she says. “Have you all read or listened to the first five chapters?”

  We all nod. Mom and Gigi and I have been listening to the book together every night after supper, while we clean up the kitchen. Mom thought that an audio book was wimping out at first, but Gigi explained that it’s a big help to her, so she eventually gave in. My grandmother’s English is amazing—she went to a British school in Hong Kong when she was my age—but Jane Austen writes in kind of an old-fashioned style, and reading it is challenging for her. Heck, it’s challenging for me, and English is my native language.

  Anyway, the three of us are really enjoying listening to the story. The actress who reads it is great, and so far I understand everything.

  “Mrs. Bennet is hilarious,” I say. “I think she’s my favorite character so far. I love the way she’s always flying around having fits about everything.”

  “I love her too,” says Emma. “She’s such a flibbertigibbet.”

  “What’s a flibbertigibbet?” asks Becca.

  “Someone who’s scatterbrained,” says her mother.

  “Flighty,” adds Mrs. Delaney.

  “Ditsy,” notes my mother.

  “Silly,” says Mrs. Sloane-Kinkaid.

  The Hawthornes made up this stupid thing called the synonym game back when Emma and Darcy were little. They have the whole book club addicted to it now.

  Mrs. Bergson takes a sip of tea. “We used to call people like her ‘Nervous Nellies’ when I was growing up.”

  She smiles at us, and I smile back. I haven’t felt this happy and relaxed for a long time. This is what I’ve been missing so far at high school. I love spending time with people I’m really comfortable around, and can just say whatever I want to without worrying about sounding stupid, or not fitting in. I love our little rituals—even something as dumb as the synonym game. It’s familiar and comforting, and feels like, well, home.

  “Don’t you love the way the book starts, too?” Mrs. Bergson continues, and suddenly she and all the other grown-ups—and Emma, too, of course—chant: “ ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.’ ”

  The rest of us listen, openmouthed.

  “What’s up with that?” asks Cassidy.

  “It’s one of the literature’s greatest opening lines,” Mrs. Hawthorne tells her.

  “If you say so.”

  “Cassidy!” her mother protests. “Don’t be rude.”

  “Seriously, Mom, I don’t get it. I mean, okay, so the Bennets have five daughters. I understand that p
art. They don’t have a lot of money and they’re worried that some relative of Mr. Bennet’s is going to snatch their house away from them if he dies. But why is Mrs. Bennet so totally obsessed with getting everybody married off? Can’t she just send her daughters to college or help them find jobs or something? I mean, she’s ready to pounce on this poor Bingley guy the minute he moves into the neighborhood.”

  Mrs. Hawthorne laughs. “The thing is, Cassidy, back in Jane’s day, women didn’t go to college, and respectable women didn’t have jobs.”

  “Except a few, who were governesses,” says Mrs. Delaney. “Remember Jane Eyre?”

  The moms—and Emma, who’s read every book in the universe—all nod. “Of course,” says Mrs. Hawthorne. “But for most young women, marriage was virtually the only career choice. Especially for those with no money of their own. It was the only way a girl would ever be assured of having a home of her own, or achieving any sense of independence and financial security.”

  “That’s lame,” says Cassidy.

  “No kidding,” Becca agrees.

  Mrs. Hawthorne shrugs. “Lame or not, it’s simply the way it was. And understanding that will help you understand the book better.”

  “I can’t believe what a snob Mr. Darcy is,” I say, changing the subject. “It’s a good thing nobody likes him.”

  My mother and Gigi exchange a glance. “Mmm,” says my mother. “Wait and see.”

  My dad wanders in. “Any pie left?” he asks hopefully, waving to Emma and her mother onscreen.

  Gigi hops up and serves him a couple of slices. “This one’s mine, and this one’s Clementine’s,” she tells him, watching as he takes a bite of each.

  “So what’s the verdict?” she asks.

  “They’re both amazing,” my father replies diplomatically. “I’d say it’s a tie.”

  Cassidy holds out her plate. “I need to try some more before I’m ready to vote.”

  That’s another thing that puzzles me about Cassidy. She eats like a horse. I can’t believe she eats as much as she does and stays so slim. It must be all that hockey.

  “Why don’t you girls visit with Emma a bit more while we clear up the dishes,” says my mother, and she and the other grown-ups take their plates out to the kitchen.