6 Months Ago #2
So would she go? The question limped after her while she searched through stock photos for Todd’s super project.
Jane did have a couple of weeks of PTO saved up, since she rarely went on holiday (note: She used the British word for vacation in her thoughts, an early sign that she’d already decided).
And besides: Nonrefundable. It was a good, solid word, one you couldn’t chew, that only dissolved after sucking slowly.
Search words: smiling woman. 2,317 results, way too many to scan through. Narrow search results: smiling businesswoman. 214 results. Narrow search results: smiling businesswoman twenties.
And suddenly, there was Jane’s face on her own monitor, as taken by boyfriend #7, the hopeful photographer.
She’d stumbled across it before. In her line of work, it was hard not to view every stock photo in the digital empire at least twice.
But this was really bad timing. Here she was, dizzy with uncertainty and aching with vulnerability, and to suddenly confront her own face years younger .
. . well, ick, an unpleasant reminder that she’d been just as uncertain and vulnerable back then. She hadn’t ever really changed.
The photo array completed and two train rides later, Jane plopped down on Molly’s couch in Brooklyn, keeping one eye on the twins battling over blocks, the other eye ensconced in a throw pillow.
She held her arm straight up and waved the brochure like a surrender flag. Molly plucked it out of her hand.
“So it’s come to this,” Molly said.
“Help,” Jane squeaked.
Molly nodded. “Do you think it’s healthy to subject yourself to—Good job, Jack! Did you stack those blocks all by yourself? . . . It might make things worse. You just might fade away into a Mr. Darcy Brigadoon for good.”
Jane sat up. “So you know how bad I am? The whole Darcy thingie?”
Molly put a hand on her leg. “Honey, I don’t blame you.
You’ve had rotten luck with that whole romance sh—uh, crap,” she said, amending her diction as she glanced at the kids.
Hannah had managed to stick both her fingers into her nostrils and tottered to Molly to show off her new trick.
“Did you find your nose holes? What a smart girl! . . . Janie, are you going to get sad if I say this? Should I say this?”
Jane’s middle quivered fearfully, but she nearly shouted, “Say it.”
“Okay.” A deep breath. “This obsession . . .”
Jane groaned at the word and completely buried her face in the throw pillow.
“. . . has been brewing since we were in high school. I used to fantasize about consequential men in breeches, too, but you’ve turned it into a career. Yes, you came by it honestly, propelled by a train wreck of bad relationships, but the last couple of years . . .”
“I know, I know,” Jane mumbled into the pillow. “I’ve been freaking out, I sabotaged myself, and I couldn’t see it at the time, but I can now, so maybe I’m okay.”
Molly paused. “Are you okay?”
Jane shook her head and the pillow with it. “No! I’m so afraid I’m damaged and cast-off-able and unlovable and I’m not even sure what I’m doing wrong. Have I really put my whole life on hold while I wait for . . . What? A fantasy? What should I do, Molly?”
“Oh, honey . . .”
“Uh-oh.”
Molly cleared her throat and adopted her most gentle tone. “Have you noticed that you refer to any guy you’ve ever been on a date with as a boyfriend ?”
Jane had noticed it. In fact, she’d numbered all her “boyfriends” from one to fifteen and referred to them in her mind by their numbers. She was relieved now that she’d never mentioned that part to Molly.
“It’s not really normal to do that,” Molly said. “It’s kind of extreme, slaps expectation on a relationship before it’s begun.”
“Uh-huh,” was all Jane could muster in response.
This was a raw, pin-poking subject. A few years ago, she’d spent several months in therapy, eventually quitting because the expense had become unaffordable.
But also, the pain of it had become unbearable.
She had come out of it understanding at least one thing about herself: Hardwired for loving but without a positive example in her own family, she had learned how to love from Austen.
According to her immature understanding at the time, in Austen’s world there was no such thing as a fling.
Every romance was intended to lead to marriage, every flirtation just a means to find that companion to cling to forever.
So for Jane, when each romance ended with hope still attached, it felt as brutal as divorce.
Intense much, Jane? Oh yes. But as her therapist said, We’re all doing the best we can.
“Jane.” Molly rubbed her arm. “My best friend, my kids’ godmother, my personal book shopper, my fashion icon.
You are empathetic, generous, funny, passionate, and—not to make this about me—but it’s been physically painful watching you shrink yourself smaller over the years.
I know it’s obnoxious for your married-with-children friend to say this, but you’re so much more than your current relationship status.
In college you declared you were going to become the next Georgia O’Keeffe.
I know making a living in this city is a beast, but I can’t help feeling you sell yourself short.
Hey, why don’t you start painting again? ”
Jane laughed a sad laugh. The idea of herself as an artist felt as far away and unreachable as the Regency Era itself. None of her little-girl fairy-tale dreams were realistic.
“Let’s be honest—I was never going to be Esteemed Gallery Artist Jane Hayes. Please don’t worry about me anymore. I’m fine. Well, mostly. I mean, you know.”
“You don’t need this Pembrook Park,” said Molly, “and you definitely don’t need Mr. Darcy.”
“Sure. I mean, he’s not even real. He’s not, he’s not, I know he’s not, but maybe . . .”
“There’s no maybe. He’s not real.”
Jane groaned. “I just don’t want to have to settle.”
“Of course you don’t, but every single guy you ever dated was a settle.”
She sat up. “None of them loved me, did they? Ever. Some of them liked me or I was convenient but . . . Am I actually . . .” In her thoughts, she stumbled past the words unlovable, worthless, trash, finally landing on “. . . pathetic?”
Molly smoothed her hair. “No, of course not.”
“Argh,” Jane arghed. “I can’t trust myself enough to make a choice about . . . basically anything. How did you know for sure that Phillip was the right guy?”
Molly shrugged. It was the same shrug that had twitched in Molly’s shoulders at summer camp eighteen years ago when Jane had asked, “Did you eat all my marshmallows?” It was the same shrug Molly had given when Jane had bleached her hair in seventh grade and asked, “How do I look?” Eventually Molly had forsworn her shifty tendencies and declared she’d be a forthright friend—but here was that bad-penny shrug turning up again.
Jane glared. “Don’t you do it, Ms. Molly Evans-Carrero.
What is it? Tell me. How do you know that Phillip is the one?”
Molly picked at some dried spaghetti sauce on her pants.
“When I’m with him, I feel like the best version of me. I feel like I’m at home.”
“Wow. You’ve never told me that. Why didn’t you ever tell me that before?”
Molly started to shrug, then stopped. “Since we were kids, you wanted your own family even more than I did, but I got married and had kids first. It’s not fair, and I don’t want to rub your nose in the poop of my happiness, so to speak.”
“If I didn’t love you, I’d slap you.” Jane reconsidered and threw a pillow at Molly’s face, which she easily dodged. “You need to tell me those things, loser. I’ve got to know what’s possible.”
Or what’s impossible, Jane thought.
“Are you okay?” Molly asked.
“Yes. I am. Because I’ve decided to give up men entirely.”
“Come on, you don’t mean that. Sweetie—”
“I’m serious. I’ve had it. I know in my bones that I’m never going to find my Phillip, and all this hoping and waiting is killing me.
This is good, Molly. You’ll see. I don’t need romance.
” Or a life partner, a husband, a father of her children, her own family, a home . . . Jane took a shaky breath. “I don’t.
It’s time to take my life off hold, embrace what is actually possible, and—”
“Watch out!” Molly said, dropping the brochure and jumping up just as Jack placed a full bowl of milk and cereal onto his head like a marvelous dripping hat.
Hannah picked up the glossy paper and handed it to Jane, backing up onto her lap.
The little girl felt so cozy and perfect, like warming her hands on a cup of hot chocolate, and with the familiar bliss that came with holding someone else’s child, Jane felt that weird ache in her gut, that ugly nudge that warned she might never have one of her own.
“My ovaries are screaming at me,” said Jane.
“Sorry, honey!” Molly called from the kitchen.
“Book.” Hannah shook the brochure, so they looked at it together.
“There’s a house,” Jane said. “Where’s the man?
That’s right! And where’s the woman? Yep, that’ll be me.
Did you know that your aunty Jane is a chump?
That she secretly wants to be someone else in another time and be loved like a fictional character in a book?
And that she loathes this part of herself? Well, no more!”
“The end,” said Hannah. She shut the brochure, squirmed off Jane’s lap, and ambled away while chanting, “Hippo, hippo.”
Jane lay back, this time placing the throw pillow under her head.
For months she’d tried to convince herself that she was over her dream of a family, and yet she still felt hooked by it, an invisible fishing line running right through her heart.
This city was full of women like her living full, vibrant lives, while that hook and line in Jane’s chest kept yanking her back to her fantasy.
Aunt Carolyn’s face flashed in her mind, her eyes so wise. She’d had far more insight into Jane than had made her comfortable. And then she had thoughtfully chosen this gift for Jane. Perhaps, in her wisdom, Carolyn believed somehow it would be good for her.
Surety was settling over Jane like a weighted blanket.
Perhaps this trip was her best chance at a path out of her fantastical forest and into reality.
So far, it hadn’t been enough just to say “I’m done!
” Now Carolyn was giving her the chance to live out her dream, having a last hurrah to get it out of her system, before fully embracing spinsterhood.
Okay, all right, she would go. Like her friend Becky, who’d taken herself to an all-you-can-eat pasta bar before giving up gluten for good, Jane was going to have one last live-it-up before quitting men entirely.
She’d dive headfirst into her fantasy, see firsthand that it wasn’t so great after all, and then bury it forever.
This was her best and quickest bet to becoming a perfectly normal woman, content to be single.
And after becoming disillusioned with Austenland, she’d return so changed, she’d toss her DVDs in the trash. Farewell to the impossible dreams that had been holding her back. Farewell, Mr. Darcy.