1 Year Ago
Jane’s mother, Shirley, came to visit and brought along Great-Aunt Carolyn. It was an awkward gathering, and during the lapses in conversation, Jane could hear dead leaves crack as they hit her studio apartment floor. She loved her houseplants, but keeping them alive seemed beyond her skills.
“Really, Jane, I don’t know how you survive here,” said Shirley, picking the brittle leaves from among the sallow green ones.
“We had a near-death experience in your coffin-of-an-elevator, didn’t we, Carolyn, dear?
I’m sure your poor aunt wants to relax, but it’s like a sauna in here and not a moment of silence—traffic, car alarms, sirens nonstop. Are you sure your windows aren’t open?”
“It’s Manhattan, Mom. That’s just how it is.”
“Well, I don’t know about that.” She took a scolding stance, hand on hip. The eighty-year-old wood floor grunted beneath her feet. “I just picked up Carolyn from her apartment, and sitting in her front room it was so blessedly quiet I could have sworn we were in the country.”
That’s because money buys thick windows, Jane thought.
“Never mind. Tell me, how’s your . . .”
Please don’t say love life ! Jane thought.
“. . . friend Molly doing?”
“Oh, Molly. Yeah, she’s great, working freelance for the paper since she had the twins. Molly and I have been friends since the sixth grade,” Jane explained to Carolyn, who sat in her wheelchair by the front door.
Carolyn had as many wrinkles in her face as there are ridges in a fingerprint, not just around her eyes and mouth but in delicate folds rippling across her thin cheeks.
She returned a blank stare but tweaked it slightly, the barest intimation of rolling her eyes.
Jane didn’t know if it was pointed or conspiratorial, so she pretended not to notice.
It was odd enough that Shirley had deigned to leave Connecticut and drive into the city to visit her daughter.
Including Carolyn in their lunch plans had come as a complete surprise.
Jane hadn’t seen her great-aunt since she was twelve and at her grandmother’s funeral.
But from the hungry, significant looks her mother kept pushing on Jane, she began to guess—the old woman was getting older, and Shirley wanted to make a last bid for a piece of Carolyn’s late husband’s seafood fortune.
No doubt picking up Jane at her apartment rather than meeting at the restaurant was a ploy to show Carolyn her great-niece’s shameful living conditions.
“Shall we skedaddle?” asked Jane, eager to get the meddling over with.
“Yes, sweetheart, let me just fix your hair.”
And Jane, age thirty-two, followed her mother into her tiny bathroom and submitted her head to twisting and slicking and spraying.
No matter her age, whenever her mother did her hair, Jane felt exactly seven years old.
Shirley had worked as a hairdresser before she’d married a retired accountant (Shirley had been thirty-five; Jane’s father had been seventy), and she still found rare tranquility in a well-placed do.
“Be sure you listen to her,” said Shirley, delivering her hushed, urgent lecture on How to Impress the Elderly. “They love that. Ask her about her childhood and let her go on, if she’s so inclined. At this point in her life, memories are all she has left, poor lamb. Memories and too much money.”
Shirley said money the way Jane might have said chocolate lava cake.
Jane winced. She knew what her mother wanted her to do, and a small and very young part of Jane yearned to give her mom whatever she wanted, proving to her somehow, after all this time, that Jane was worthy of her love.
And another part felt repulsed, helpless, and dismal.
So, a fairly typical maternal encounter for Jane.
When they emerged from the bathroom, Carolyn was no longer by the door.
Jane gasped. Her great-aunt seemed so fragile, as if made of blown glass.
What if she had fallen? Jane rushed farther into the room and spotted Carolyn in her chair by the window, leaning over to tug a floor plant into a yellow square of sunlight.
Jane heard a thwack as her Pride and Prejudice DVD set fell from its arboreal hideaway and onto the floor.
She felt herself flush and silently cursed herself for trying to hide the DVDs from her mother in the first place. Stubbornly, she straightened her spine. So what if they saw it? A lot of people enjoyed that series. And there was nothing wrong with being a geek for Austen!
But Carolyn looked right at Jane and smiled, her uncountable cheek wrinkles gathered into a few deeper ones. Something in that smile made Jane feel as though she was wearing nothing but underwear. Dirty underwear.
At the restaurant, when Shirley left to powder her proverbial nose, Jane did her best to pretend she was not the least bit uncomfortable. A minute of silence passed. She plowed her garden salad with a fork, weeding out the arugula.
“It’s been a warm autumn,” she offered.
“You’re wondering if I noticed what you hid, and especially if I guessed what that means.” Some voices get hard and tight with age, some rough like broken glass. Carolyn’s voice was sand beaten by waves till it’s as fine as powdered sugar.
“Hid what?” Jane asked half-heartedly.
“He is seductive, that Mr. Darcy. But you wouldn’t hide him in a houseplant if you didn’t feel some shame on the matter. You’re past thirty, not married, not dating—if your mother’s gossip and the photos in your apartment tell the truth. And it all comes down to that story. You’re obsessed.”
Jane laughed. “I am not obsessed.”
But really she was.
“You’re blushing. Tell me, what is it about that story that’s so intoxicating to you?”
Jane gulped some ice water and glanced over her shoulder toward the ladies’ room, making sure her mother wasn’t returning.
“Besides being witty and funny and maybe the best novel ever written, it’s also the most perfect romance in all of literature and nothing in life can ever measure up, so I spend my life limping in its shadow. ”
Carolyn stared, as if waiting for more. Jane thought she’d said enough already.
“It is a wonderful book,” said Carolyn, “but you weren’t concealing a paperback in your plant. I think I know what you’ve put your life on hold to wait for.”
“Listen, I don’t actually believe I can somehow end up married to Mr. Darcy. I just . . . nothing in real life feels as right as . . . Oh, never mind, I don’t want you believing your great-niece is living in a fantasyland.”
“Are you?”
Jane forced a smile. “Warm autumn, isn’t it?”
Carolyn pressed her lips together till they were as wrinkled as her cheeks. “How’s your love life?”
“I’m on the wagon.”
“So, you’re giving up at age thirty-two.
Not everyone’s bliss can be found in marriage, of course, but I rather suspect that you .
. .” Carolyn leaned forward. Her blue eyes were pale like denim washed too often, and their look pierced Jane.
“Let’s see, you barely had a father to begin with.
He was withdrawn and died when you were, what, seven? And your mother was not . . .”
Jane shook her head, not caring to dwell on her mother’s general disinterest in her only child. Carolyn nodded once, as if understanding. Though her voice softened even more, it was still clear, easing between the clattering plates and too-hardy businessmen’s laughter.
“When your mother married, it was for stability and independence, but you are made for companionship. You yearn for someone to love deeply. Someone who sees and knows you and wants you, all of you. A soulmate.”
Jane shook her head again, but her eyes pricked with warmth. She blinked rapidly. If Carolyn noticed, she didn’t stop.
“You have earnestly tried to find that someone, but each time the men in your life disappoint, you let Mr. Darcy in a little more. Now you’re so attached to the idea of that restrained-yet-deep-feeling gentleman, you won’t be satisfied with anything less.”
An olive stuck to the piece of lettuce on Jane’s fork, and when she tried to flick it off, it flew over the table and tapped a waiter on the rear.
Jane ducked her head, hiding from both the waiter and Carolyn’s probing gaze.
She wanted to argue back against everything her great-aunt was saying, but to be fair, Jane’s list of ex-boyfriends was impressively pathetic.
And there was that dream she’d had a few weeks ago—she’d been dressed in a ragged wedding gown (à la Miss Havisham of Great Expectations), dancing alone in a dark house, waiting for Mr. Darcy to come for her.
When she awoke with a sharp intake of breath, the dream had been still too raw and terrifying to laugh at. In fact, she still couldn’t.
“Maybe I’m just . . . broken,” Jane said helplessly.
“You’re too honest to let yourself get duped like this.”
Jane exhaled a laugh. “Aunt Carolyn, you don’t really know me.”
“But I remember little you from your grandmother’s funeral.
Afterward you sat with me in that gazebo by the lake.
You weren’t afraid to say how during the service you couldn’t help wondering what might be for lunch and was that wrong?
Did that mean that you didn’t love your grandma enough?
Your voice, your little-girl questions took some of the sting out of my grief over my sister’s death. ”
Jane nodded. “You were wearing a lace collar. I thought it was so elegant.”
“My late husband bought me that dress. It was my favorite.” Carolyn refolded her napkin, smoothing the edge with slightly shaky hands.
“For most of our marriage, we were miserable. Harold didn’t talk much and was busy with work.
I got bored and was rich enough to date delectable young men on the side.
After a time, Harold fooled around, too, mostly to hurt me, I think.
It wasn’t until I was too old to attract the playboys anymore that I turned to the man next to me and realized how much I loved his face.
We had two blissful years together before his heart took him out.
I was such a fool, Jane. I couldn’t see what was real until time had washed away everything else.
” She was matter-of-fact, the pain behind the words worn out long ago.
“I’m sorry.”
“Hmph. It’d be better to be sorry for yourself. I’m old and rich, and people let me say whatever I want, so here it is—figure out what is real for you. No use leaning on someone else’s story all your life. You know, Austen’s own romances were limited to her fiction. She died a spinster.”
“I know.” The thought had haunted Jane many times, and it was a favorite weapon of anti-Austen enthusiasts.
“Not that there’s anything wrong with spinsters,” Carolyn said, patting the fragile folds in her neck.
“Of course not,” Jane agreed vehemently.
She would have battled a dragon to defend a friend’s right to honor her career and independence over marriage.
But Carolyn was right. For Jane, that would never be enough.
A husband, a child or three, a pet cat. A home.
A family. That was a dream too beautiful to admit aloud.
“Jane, sweetie, my story’s told. I’ve had my dancing days, and I’m facing my own The End.
But sky and stars know how your story will turn out.
So go make your happily-ever-after happen.
” Her voice had a Little League coach enthusiasm and was veering into sweetly patronizing.
Time to change the subject. Very nonchalantly.
“Why don’t you tell me about your childhood, Aunt Carolyn?”
Carolyn laughed, soft as room-temperature butter.
“Tell you about my childhood, and just in the nick of time. Well, don’t mind if I do.
I was a limper from the time I could walk.
Our folks were poor and your grandma and I shared a bed that leaned to one side, though I can’t be sure if that cursed bed was the cause . . .”
When Shirley returned from the restroom, Carolyn was quoting the price of milk when she was a child, and Shirley gave her daughter an approving smile. Thanks be she hadn’t overheard the revelation that her daughter was haunted by an impossible fantasy.
Jane felt so tired of her own self she could scream.
Seriously, a thirtysomething woman shouldn’t be crushing on a fictional character in a two-hundred-year-old world.
Or, for that matter, setting all the hopes in her glass-blown heart on some daydream husband and an equally fictional home and family. Of course she shouldn’t.
Jane crunched down on a piece of arugula.