Rude Awakenings of a Jane Austen Addict

by Laurie Viera Rigler

  When Paula’s car stops in the street before my apartment, the ladies insist on seeing me upstairs and making sure I have everything I need. Anna urges me to lie down and rest.

  “So what are your plans for the rest of the day?” says Paula, flopping on the bed next to me.

  “I thought I might read.”

  Paula rises from her prone position and eyes the array of novels by Jane Austen on the table beside the bed. “There are other authors in the world, you realize.”

  Anna takes the chair next to the bed. “Don’t start on her, Paula.”

  “I take it you are not fond of the lady?”

  “Apparently,” Paula says, perching on the arm of Anna’s chair, “you don’t remember me telling you how my high school English teacher shoved Mansfield Park down my throat and how I vowed never to read Jane Austen again.”

  “And you?” I say to Anna.

  “I read Northanger Abbey, but I don’t have time to read the other books. I barely have time to read what I’m supposed to read.”

  “Nevertheless,” says Paula, “we both enjoyed Colin Firth when you forced us into a Pride and Prejudice marathon.”

  Anna giggles. “Yeah, and Matthew Macfadyen’s pretty hot, too.”

  “In case you don’t remember,” Paula says, “your best friends are Philistines who prefer to have their great literature served up on the screen.”

  Anna smiles wryly. “Unless my boss is thinking of adapting it. I guess we’re true loyalists to our calling.”

  “Yes,” Paula adds, “our various employers should be proud.”

  Various employers. “Might I venture to ask how you are employed? Forgive me, but I do not remember.”

  “But of course you may, madam,” Paula says, and Anna smacks her. “Ow.”

  “I’m a creative executive,” Anna says, “and Paula’s a set decorator.”

  “Ah.” Thankfully, it sounds as if they have nothing to do with the Cyprian class.

  “Which means,” Paula says, “because from your blank expression I can tell you have no idea what we’re talking about—which on the one hand I find alarming, and on the other hand makes you a refreshing novelty in this jaded movie town—that Anna presides over a realm known as development hell, in which books and screen-plays are condemned to remain for at least as long as it took Jane Austen’s works to turn into movies.”

  “Movies,” I say, wondering what the word means and whether a screenplay is a sort of game.

  Anna smiles. “Yes, but that would be purgatory rather than hell, as your description implies there is an end in sight, even one that is two hundred years in the future.”

  Paula says, “If I’m to judge by the permanent status of Pride and Prejudice in Courtney’s DVD player, it appears that no wait is too long a wait for a Jane Austen movie. Right, darling?”

  I nod like an idiot and smile at both of them. So the miraculous appearance of a Pride and Prejudice play in the glass box in my bedchamber is known as a movie? How will I ever get by without a lexicon for all these words? It is one thing to feign memory loss; it is quite another to be without even a basic vocabulary in such a place.

  “As for Paula,” Anna says, “she spends her day overspending the production company’s money on furniture and décor and making her minions schlep it around so that Elizabeth Bennet has a chair to sit on when that idiot Mr. What’s-his-name-preacher proposes to her.”

  “Spoken like a true producer’s spawn who lazes around feigning work at lunch and dinner meetings,” says Paula.

  “Excuse me,” says Anna. “Some of us are actually planning to work the rest of this glorious Sunday cramming for a Monday morning meeting. Unlike someone else in this room, who—”

  “Speaking of work,” cuts in Paula, looking at me, “you cannot go into work tomorrow. You realize that, don’t you? I mean, how are you going to function?”

  I bolt up to a sitting position in bed. Anna puts her hand on my arm. “What is it, sweetie?”

  “Did you say it was Sunday?”

  Paula nods warily.

  “Oh, dear. I have not been to church.”

  Paula raises an eyebrow. “When, might I ask, was the last time you stepped foot inside a church, unless it was for a wedding—” She chokes off the word “wedding.” “Ouch,” she says, glaring at Anna, “you don’t have to kick me. Courtney, I’m an idiot.”

  “Do not trouble yourself. I am sure you meant to cast no aspersions on my religious faith.”

  “Jesus,” says Paula. “You really need to rest. And don’t even think about going into work tomorrow. I mean it.”

  “Of course,” I say, curious about what “going into work” might mean and thrilled at the exotic possibilities. Never could I have imagined that the word “work” could mean anything for a lady other than sewing shirts for her husband, her sons, and the poor; basket embroidering; and making fringe. Or, in the most necessitous cases, going out as governess. “Might I ask—I was wondering—do I take pleasure in my work?”

  Paula and Anna exchange skeptical glances and then both burst into laughter. “Sorry, darling,” says Paula. “Don’t worry, I’ll call David and tell him.”

  “David.”

  “That spoiled-brat, no-talent hack you call your boss? You don’t remember him either. Jesus. What are we going to do with you?”

  “Stop it, Paula,” Anna says, and in a more soothing tone to me, “It’ll all come back soon enough. In the meantime”—she looks at Paula again—“the least you can do is let her recover in peace, without worrying about David or Frank or Wes. And maybe you should call Sandra, not David. She’ll be much easier to deal with.”

  “No, I’ll call David. He doesn’t intimidate me.”

  “Whatever,” says Anna.

  I dare not ask who Sandra is, but evidently someone connected with my so-called boss. A pity that he appears to be of low character.

  “Am I bound by contract to—David, is it?” I am yet to accustom myself to using someone’s Christian name the moment he or she is mentioned or introduced, especially when that someone is a man—and in this case, my employer.

  “You’re kidding, right? Anna doesn’t even have a contract. There’s no such thing as job security in this town.”

  “So I may leave him whenever I wish.”

  Anna and Paula both raise eyebrows. “Sweetie,” Anna says, “if that happens, I’ll build an altar to that swimming pool where you hit your head and say prayers before it every day.”

  “Surely I can secure a more pleasing situation, can I not?”

  Both ladies are saucer-eyed as they nod their heads in the affirmative. Paula opens her mouth as if to speak, but says nothing.

  Anna laughs. “Congratulations, Courtney. You’ve rendered Paula speechless.”

  Presently the ladies take their leave, their parting orders being that I call them immediately if I need “anything, just say the word,” along with their admonitions to “keep the phone charged,” whatever that might mean. “You always forget,” Anna explained. Or meant to explain.

  It is good to be alone in my rooms—for indeed they are my rooms, though they are none of them very large. I pace out the three principal rooms—the bedchamber, the room with the table and chairs, and what Wes referred to as the “living room”—suddenly that term makes me double over with laughter. If there is a living room, does that mean there is a dying room as well? I suppose I would not find that comical if I were, in fact, dead, but if the dead cannot divert themselves with witticisms about death, then why bother dying at all? By this time I am laughing so hard that I must sit upon the sofa in the so-called living room, an area no larger than my mother’s dressing closet. In fact, the entire breadth and depth of my apartment comprise a dwelling no larger than the drawing room at Mansfield House. Yet these meager rooms are wholly mine.

  Living alone appears to be no uncommon state for an unmarried woman, for I gathered from listening to Anna and Paula’s conversation in the car that each of them
, although single, has her own private dwelling. This is truly singular. If you, dear Mary, could hear my words, you would accuse me of a pun.

  Yes, these little rooms will suit me very well indeed. Here I need not fear my mother’s feline tread and barbed remarks. Here no servant nor any other person may overhear my private conversations, if “private” could ever be a proper word for a state in which the only time I could be sure of being alone was when I went to bed. And even that I would have had to relinquish had I become Edgeworth’s wife, for a wife may have her own bedchamber, but her husband shall always have admittance. Here, however, I may sleep and eat and read and amuse myself as I please, without obligation to any person other than myself. My self. My new, wholly unrecognizable self.

  At least outwardly. Inwardly I am as I ever was.

  No, that is not entirely the truth. I have a sense of hope that I have not felt in many weeks.

  A sudden blast of music, a snatch of a song that sounds oddly familiar. Whence does it come? It stops, then begins again. Stops, then begins again. I locate the source of the music: It is the same object that Anna referred to as the phone. And the music—yes, of course—it is the music from the Pride and Prejudice movie. The music makes a few more stops and starts and then there is silence.

  Yes, my situation is in many ways an agreeable one. To what would I look forward at home but an endless vista of days and nights sewing with Mama in the drawing room, listening to the ticking of the clock and the settling of the house as yet another night draws on, devoid of peace, and with little sleep? Though I do miss my father. And Mary. How shall I do without my dear papa and my dearest friend in the world? How shall they do without me? Though I imagine that if I am here, taking Courtney’s place, then does it not follow that Courtney must be there, taking mine? What a notion! However, the only possibility is that she was taking my place rather than is taking my place, for indeed if I am now almost two hundred years after the time I left behind, then anyone alive in 1813 has long since ceased to be. The thought makes me almost dizzy. For I cannot return, that is clear. How can I go back to what is now dead? Yes, dead—and that means Papa, and Mary, and Edgeworth, and Mama, and Barnes, and Belle, and every friend I ever had. All dead.

  My eyes fill with tears at the thought of Papa in his grave, everyone who ever mourned him long since dead. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Long gone they may be, but to me they were alive just two days ago. It is like my old nursemaid’s story of Oisin. Could it be that like Oisin, I am in the eternal land of Tir na n-Og, where three hundred years passed without his even feeling it? Perhaps then, Niamh of the Golden Hair will allow me, like Oisin, to return home. And I, like he, will be aged and withered the moment my feet touch the ground.

  Not the ending I would wish for my story, however.

  No, I prefer the comfort of another ending, one that I know well. And so I remove the copy of Sense and Sensibility from the bookcase. How lovely it is that the treasures that kept me from running mad in those dark days after breaking faith with Edgeworth are here right now to keep me strong.

  If there is indeed an enchanted land like Tir na n-Og, in which one loses all sense of time and place, then such a land exists within the pages of Sense and Sensibility. And so it happens that when at last I emerge from the pages of this book, somehow the day has slipped away from me. I stand and stretch, moving towards the bedchamber window with its ugly exterior bars. Yet that ugliness is eclipsed by not only the orange and pink glow of sunset, but also by a brilliant display of lights, as if hundreds of candles are illuminating the windows in the houses on the opposite side of the lane, and beyond them, millions of tiny lights dot the hillside like constellations of diamonds.

  What a wondrous place this is. A glorious, bejeweled city. There is so much light in the streets and hills that I can scarce make out the stars in the darkening sky.

  The music from Pride and Prejudice starts and stops again, stops and starts. This had occurred several times while I was reading, but I easily ignored it to return to Elinor and Marianne. I look at the phone, which is the source of the music, and within its face is a picture of the actor who played Mr. Darcy! Atop his image is a small box with the words: “Wes—Answer?—Ignore?”

  Wes?

  Answer? Ignore? Answer what? Ignore what?

  Before I can contemplate this mystery any further, the music stops, and the phone darkens.

  So much the better, for I would rather remain blanketed in the contentment of Sense and Sensibility, contemplating the happiness of Elinor and meditating on how Marianne finds herself loving Colonel Brandon with her whole heart, than worry about the workings of an incomprehensible, and frankly quite annoying, object.

  Besides, I am hungry. There being no servant, I will have to prepare something myself. I do not even know if there is a kitchen in this house, and I have seen no chimneypiece, no grate, no coal scuttle.

  I venture into the room with the table and chairs in my stock inged feet and open cabinets and drawers, one after another. Plates, forks, glasses, bowls, boxes, jars. Nothing that resembles food.

  On a whim, I pull on the long glossy handle of the huge white rectangular box that stands beside the wall of drawers and cupboards. I peek inside at an illuminated interior, cool air bathing my face. There are racks which are empty except for a sad-looking head of lettuce long past its prime and a few containers with who knows what inside them. At least I have discovered a larder, bare though it may be.

  Ah. There is an upper door as well. Frigid air issues from the interior, refreshing upon my skin. A giant, frosty bottle of something called Absolut. A jar, pliable as paper, of something called Cherry Garcia. I open it, dip in a finger, and taste. It is a delightful variety of ices, sweet with chewy cherries and bits of what tastes like chocolate except that it is solid and much sweeter. Must find a spoon.

  Pounding on the door. A muffled voice. “Courtney? Are you there? It’s Wes. If you’re there, please open the door.”

  The pounding continues till I open the door and he stands there, fist raised to pound again and a befuddled look on his face. “Sorry. Did I scare you? I’ve been calling and calling and then I saw your car outside and—”

  A stray curl has fallen onto his forehead, and his spectacles have slipped down his nose. His eyelashes are long and thick, and his eyes are bluer than they look behind the spectacles.

  “You all right?” he says.

  I remember that I am supposed to be on my guard with this man and force coolness into my tone. “I am indeed, sir.”

  “I was worried when you didn’t pick up the phone. And so is Paula. And Anna. I’ve heard from both of them, and they said they called and emailed and texted and nothing. The only thing that made them seem to feel better about it was that you hadn’t returned my calls or texts either.” He smiles wryly. “After that, we just traded messages in which I suggested to Paula that perhaps you might not remember how to use the phone or the computer, and then she freaked out and was like, well we’d better call Suzanne, because this goes beyond common memory loss, and I said, wait a minute, I’m gonna go over there and check out the situation, and she said, no way, but then in her last message she practically gave me her permission—but without saying so—because she’s in Hermosa and Anna’s tied up with work and it would be a while before they could get here and—well, here I am.”

  “Upon my honor, they were here not more than a few—perhaps more than a few hours ago, but it cannot be so very long.”

  “Seven hours, according to your friends, and with your accident and all, they wanted to check in. I did, too.”

  Should I ask him inside? He looks so forlorn, so much aware of having no right to be here that I cannot be rude to him.

  “Will you not come inside?”

  He takes one of the chairs at the table, without my inviting him to sit and without any apparent awareness of his deficient manners.

  “Are you hungry?” he says, and then with a wry grin, pointing to the larder, �
�I don’t imagine you’ve restocked the fridge. Not that your idea of restocking means there’s ever the makings of a decent meal.”

  He satisfies his own curiosity by peeking quickly into the larder. “Why have a fridge, I wonder? It only takes up room. How about I take you out? I’m starved.”

  Out at night. Unchaperoned. With a gentleman. A single gentleman. Perhaps not even a gentleman at all. And certainly not my brother, or my father, or even a cousin. Unthinkable.

  “I shall be but a moment.”

  Ten

  I no sooner retrieve the oddly shaped, orange, many-buckled reticule that Anna had thrust into my hands and proclaimed as my “bag” when we went out to dine than there is pounding at the door again.

  “Courtney? You there?” A man’s voice.

  I glance at Wes to see if he recognizes it, and his eyes narrow. “What’s he doing here?” His manner is accusatory.

  “Who? Who is that?”

  The pounding continues. “Courtney—open up.”

  “So you didn’t call him,” Wes says, relief softening his countenance. “I’ll take care of this.”

  Wes opens the door to the black-haired gentleman from the picture Paula had shown me. Despite the fact that he was pounding on the door a moment ago, he lounges against the door frame as if he had merely whispered a command for it to open. Black hair falls becomingly over his forehead. His complexion is fair and flawless, and his dark, almost black eyes sparkle as they appraise me. His full lips tilt in a smile that is charming in its lack of symmetry, one side of his mouth turning up higher than the other.

  “Slim and gorgeous, I see,” he says, his voice rich and smooth as honey. He flashes a contemptuous glance at Wes. “And not at all neglected.”

  “What do you want?” Wes says, his tone icy.

  Frank ignores him. “Apparently, Paula’s so desperate about not being able to track you down that she held her nose and called me, wondering if I’d heard from you. Which is how I found out you hurt your head. You are okay, aren’t you?” His eyes are soft, and he reaches for my hand. I allow him to take it, and he strokes the palm with his thumb, sending a thrill through my body. “I was scared there for a minute.”