The Jane Austen Book Club Part 11

CHAPTER FIVE.

in which we read Pride and Prejudice and listen to Bernadette

Sylvia's first impression of Allegra was that no one had ever before had such a beautiful baby.

Jocelyn's first impression of Grigg was that he had nice eye-lashes and a funny name, and didn't interest her in the slightest.

Prudie's first impression of Bernadette was that she was star-tling to look at and dull if you listened, which you hardly ever had to do.

Bernadette's first impression of Prudie was that, in all her long years, she had rarely seen such a frightened young woman.

Grigg's first impression of Jocelyn was that she appeared to think sharing an elevator with him for a few floors was some sort of punishment.

Allegra's first impression of Sylvia was blurred with her first impression of the larger world. For me?

she'd asked herself, back when she had no words and no way to even know she was asking. And then, when Sylvia, and then, when Daniel had first looked into her eyes-More for me?

In Austen's day, a traditional ball still opened with the minuet.

The minuet was originally danced by one couple at a time alone on the floor.

"Everyone knows," Prudie said, "that a rich man is eventually going to want a new wife." She was seated with Bernadette at a large round table at the annual fund-raiser for the Sacramento Public Library.

Rich men were all around them, thick on the floor as salt on a pretzel.

At the far end of the hall, in front of the huge arched window, a jazz band played the opening notes to "Love Walked In." You could look up five stories, sighting along ma.s.sive stone columns past four rows of balconies, each railed in wrought iron, to the dome of the Tsakopoulos Library Galleria. Great rings of gla.s.s hung suspended above.

Prudie had never been inside the Library Galleria before, though one of the teachers at the high school had had her wed-ding here. Somewhere on the balconies were little bronze fox faces. Prudie couldn't see them from where she was sitting, but it was sweet to know they were there.

This was a romantic s.p.a.ce. You could imagine serenading a lover on one of those balconies, or a.s.sa.s.sinating a president if that was the sick way your imagination ran.

So Prudie was disappointed that, simply because they'd both arrived before anyone else, she would now spend the evening seated by and talking to Bernadette. Dean on the other side, of course, but when couldn't she talk to Dean? In point of fact, Prudie would not be talking to Bernadette so much as Bernadette would be talking to Prudie. Bernadette talked way too much. She meandered around her point, which, when gotten to, was seldom worth the journey. A housewife in the fifties, and, Prudie reminded herself, poor Bernadette, be-cause they actually did expect you to keep your house clean back then. The women's movement arriving at last, but too late to save Bernadette from the tedium of it all. And now an old lady of lit-tle interest to anyone.Peu de gens savent etre vieux.

Both Prudie and Bernadette were here at some expense- tickets were one hundred twenty dollars apiece-to provide Sylvia with moral support. It was a dinner; it was a dance; local writers had been promised as entertainment, one to each table- Prudie was looking forward to that-but Sylvia was why she'd come. Sylvia had to attend, because it was for the library. And Allegra had said that Daniel was coming, too,and bringing a date-that family practice lawyer, Pam, he was so in love with.

While all Sylvia had was the Jane Austen book club. They weren't much, they couldn't even the score, but they could at least show up.

Everywhere Prudie looked she saw the signs of wealth. She tried for the fun of it to view the scene as a Jane Austen character would. A young woman with no money and no prospects, here, in the way of all these rich men. Would she feel determined? Would she feel desperate? Would there be any point in looking about, making a secret selection, when you could only sit and wait for someone to come to you?

Prudie decided she would rather teach French at the high school than marry for money. It was a decision quickly made, but she could always revisit it.

Dean had gone off to check Prudie's coat and get himself a drink, or he might have objected to her comment about rich men and their new wives. Dean was not a rich man, but he was the faithful sort. He might have said that money wouldn't change him. He might have said that Prudie was the wife he would want, for richer or poorer. He might have said that he never would be rich, and wasn't Prudie the lucky wife, then?

Prudie wouldn't have made the comment in Sylvia's hear-ing, either, but neither Sylvia nor Allegra had arrived yet. So far it was only Prudie and Bernadette, and Prudie didn't know Bernadette all that well, so Sylvia's divorce was one of the few topics of conversation they had in common. Jane Aus-ten, too, of course, but the meeting onPride and Prejudice was still a week away; Prudie didn't want to spoil it with premature articulation.

Bernadette had set aside her no-effort dress policy in honour of the black-tie occasion and wastres magnifique in a silver shirt and pants, with her silver hair moussed up from her forehead. Her gla.s.ses had been repaired and the lenses cleaned. She was wear-ing screw-on chunks of amber on her ears. They looked like something Allegra might have made. Bernadette's earlobes were very large, like a Buddha's; the earrings elongated them even further. There was a slight scent of lavender perfume and maybe a green-apple shampoo, the zinnias in the centrepiece, and some hardworking air-conditioning. Prudie had a good nose.

Bernadette had been responding to Prudie's statement for quite some time and still hadn't finished.

Prudie had missed much of it, but Bernadette usually closed with a recap. Prudie waited until she appeared to be winding down to listen. "Being rich doesn't effect the wanting," Bernadette was saying.

"So much as the having. You can't possibly know all your husband's failings until you've been married awhile. Happiness in marriage is mostly a matter of chance."

Clearly Bernadette didn't understand that they were speaking of Sylvia. Her opinions, while reasonablein some other context, were inappropriate in this one, and it was a good thing Jocelyn wasn't there to hear them.

Prudie gave her a hint. "Daniel is such a cliche."

"Someone has to be," said Bernadette, "or what would the word mean?"

Subtlety was getting Prudie nowhere. She abandoned it. "Still, it's a shame about Sylvia and Daniel."

"Oh, yes. Capital crime." Bernadette smiled, and it was the kind of smile that made Prudie think she'd maybe understood what they were talking about all along.

The band switched to "Someone to Watch over Me." The song caught in Prudie's throat. Her mother had been such a Gershwin fan.

An elegant black woman in a mink stole (in this heat!) sat down next to Prudie, who was forced to tell her that the whole table was taken. "So I see," she said coolly. Her mink brushed over Prudie's hair as she rose and left. Prudie worried that the woman might have thought she was some sort of racist, which she certainly wasn't, anyone who knew Prudie could tell you that. She would have liked nothing better than to share the table with such an elegant woman. Where the h.e.l.l was Jocelyn?

"It's hard to choose a person to spend your life with," Bernadette said. "Lots of people don't get it right the first time out. I certainly didn't get it right the first time out."

Prudie wasn't surprised to learn that Bernadette had been married more than once. Hadn't Allegra complained to her that Bernadette always did repeat herself? (Hadn't Allegra said this more than once?)

Allegra was lying across the bed in the room where Sylvia now slept alone. Sylvia was trying on dresses and Allegra was advis-ing. None of the mirrors in the house showed your whole figure down to the shoes, so an advisor was advisable. And Allegra had an artist's eye. Even when Allegra was little, Sylvia had trusted her judgment. "Are you going out like that?" Allegra would ask, and Sylvia would answer no, no, of course she wasn't, and go back to her room to try again.

They were running a bit late, but since Sylvia was dreading the whole evening anyway, running late seemed desirable. She would have liked a gla.s.s of wine, and maybe more than a gla.s.s, but she would be driving. Allegra was drinking a chilled Chardonnay and hadn't even started to dress yet. She would throw something on in two minutes and be breathtaking. Sylvia would never tire of looking at her.

It was too hot to have the blinds open, but Allegra had said she couldn't see Sylvia well enough with them closed. Sunlight streaked the bedroom wall, cut to ribbons by the slats of the blinds. Half the family portrait was illuminated-Allegra and Daniel were bright and golden, Sylvia and the boys were in the shade. In a book, that would mean something. In a book, you wouldn't feel good about what was coming for Sylvia and the boys.

"There won't be anyone there my age tonight," Allegra said. Sylvia recognized it as a question, even though Allegra hadn't in-flected it as one. Allegra did this whenever she thought she al-ready knew the answer. "Prudie," Sylvia reminded her.

Allegra gave Sylvia the look Sylvia had been getting ever since Allegra turned ten. She said nothing out loud, because Prudie had recently lost her mother and should be treated with kind-ness. But Allegra had no patience for Prudie's French. She her-self didn't speak Spanish to people who wouldn't understand it. When you shared a mother tongue, why not use it?

"What's the point of having dancing at these events, anyway?" Allegra asked. "I'm not just speaking on behalf of the lesbians here. This is for us all. A dance is about who you'll dance with. Who will ask you?

Who will say yes, if you ask? Who you'll be forced to say yes to. A dance is about its enormous potential for joy or disaster.

"You remove all that-you provide a band at an event where husbands just dance with their wives-and the only part of a dance you've got is the dancing."

"Don't you like to dance?" Sylvia asked.

"Only as an extreme sport," Allegra answered. "With the ter-ror removed, not so much."

Grigg had suggested that he drive Jocelyn into Sacramento be-cause he was still new to the area, while she had been to the Gal-lena on other occasions. As Jocelyn had dressed for the evening she'd found herself filled with affection for him. Really, he hardly knew Sylvia, plus his income was not what it had been. Yet here he was, buying a pricey ticket, putting on a grey suit in the dreadful summer heat, and spending a whole evening with a bunch of old women, and married women, and lesbians, just from the goodness of his heart. What a good heart that was!

She finished her makeup and then there was nothing more to be done, except to brush the dog hair off, and absolutely no point in doing that until she was out the door. Jocelyn was ready to go at the exact moment they should have been going.

But there was no sign of Grigg, and in the twenty minutes she waited, her affection began to fade.

Jocelyn was a punctual per-son. This was, she believed, a matter of simple courtesy. Arriving late was a way of saying that your own time was more valuable than the time of the person who waited for you.

Waiting gave Jocelyn too much time to think about the evening ahead. She'd hardly seen Daniel since he moved. She could look around her own house, and there was the stereo sys-tem he'd helped her pick out, the dryer he'd helped her hook up. All those times over all those years, Daniel had dropped by with a movie he and Sylvia had rented and thought Jocelyn would like, or Chinese food when they knew she'd be getting back from a show too tired to eat unless she was made to. Once when she had had a nasty flu, Daniel came over and cleaned her bathroom, because he suspected the toothpaste on the mirror was preying on her mind and interfering with her recovery.

Hating Daniel was such terribly hard work that in his absence Jocelyn had allowed herself to stop.

Although she would have said this to no one, tonight would be hard on her as well as Sylvia. She had no desire to see Daniel's new girlfriend and no desire to look closely at why that should be. She resented Grigg for the de-lay in getting it over with. Then, when Grigg did arrive, there were no excuses, no apologies. He seemed, in fact, to be totally unaware that he was late. Sahara was wild and welcoming. She seized a ball in her mouth and raced between the chairs and over the couch, oblivi-ous of the heartbreak that lay just ahead. This diverted atten-tion from Jocelyn's cooler reception. "Nice dress!" Grigg said, which in no way soothed her, but made it hard to be snappish in return.

"Let's go," she told him. She was careful not to make it sound like an order and not to make it sound like a complaint.

She added a request, in case her tone had been off in spite of the effort. Since it was Jocelyn, her request might have sounded to the uninitiated, something like an order. "You need to dance with Sylvia tonight." By which she meant: Daniel needs to see you dancing with Sylvia tonight. Jocelyn stopped and looked Grigg over, more thoroughly than she'd ever done before. He was quite a nice-looking man in his own un-eye-catching way. He'd do.

Unless he was a goofy-looking dancer. "You do know how to dance?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, which didn't mean anything, lots of people who couldn't dance thought they could.

"You don't look like a dancer." Jocelyn hated to press, but this was important.

"What do I look like?"

Who could say? He looked like a country-western singer. A college professor. A plumber. A spy. He had no distinctive look.

"You look like someone who reads science fiction," Jocelyn guessed, but apparently it was the wrong answer, even though he claimed to love those books so.

"I have three older sisters. I can dance," Grigg said, and he sounded really, really annoyed.

On country dancing: The Beauty of this agreeable Exercise (I mean when perform'd in the Genteel Character) is very much eclipsed and destroyed by certain Faults.... One or two Couples either by Carelessness or Want of better Instruction will put the whole Set in Disorder.

-KELLOM TOMLINSON, Dancing Master

"Prudie and I went to the Scottish games at the Yolo County Fairgrounds last weekend," Dean toldBernadette. "Suddenly she's craving the Highlands. Have you ever been?"

"Not to the games," Bernadette said. "But to the fairgrounds, Lord yes. When I was young I danced all over the state every single summer. Of course, county fairs were much tinier then. They were so small they'd fit in your pocket." She waited to see whether anyone wanted to hear more. No one told her to go on. No one changed the subject, either. Dean was smiling at her. Prudie was stirring her drink with her celery. The data was unclear.

But Dean and Prudie were both so very young. Bernadette could see that if anything interesting was to be said tonight, it fell to her to say it. "I was in a group called the Five Little Peppers," she continued.

"My mother thought tap dancing was the ticket to Hollywood. She was real ambitious for me. And real out-of-date. Even then, late forties, early fifties, tap dancing was-what do the kids say now? Played?"

"Okay," said Prudie. Her pale face had frozen over at the word "mother." Bernadette felt so sorry for her.

"Were you and your mother close?" Prudie asked.

"I liked my father better," Bernadette said. "My mother was sort of a pill."

We lived in Torrance then, so we were close to Hollywood, but not as close as Torrance is to Hollywood now, seeing as the roads and the cars are all different. I took tap and ballet at Miss Olive's. I was the best dancer there, which didn't mean squat, but gave Mother ideas. Dad was a dentist with an office in the back of our house, and one day he worked on someone who knew someone who knew someone in pictures. Mother pushed and prodded and coaxed and sulked until Dad got us introduced to someone somewhere in that chain of someones.

Mother paid Miss Olive to ch.o.r.eograph a special number just for me-"The Little Dutch Girl." I had this lace ap.r.o.n to pull over my face and peek out from, and I had to learn to tap in those big wooden shoes.

Over we drove. And then I never even got to dance. That Hollywood muckety-muck took one look at me.

"Not pretty enough," he said, and that was the end of that, except that Dad made it clear he thought he'd humiliated himself for nothing and he wasn't doing it again.

I didn't really care. I always had a lot of self-confidence and the studio guy just seemed like a horrid man. Mother was the one hurt by it. She said how we wouldn't ever go to any picture he produced, so I never did get to seeEaster Parade until it was on television, even though everyone said Judy Garland and Fred Astaire were so great together.

Anyway, Miss Olive told Mother about this group called the Five Little Peppers and how they were looking to replace one of their girls. I auditioned in my silly wooden shoes, because Mother had paid for the ch.o.r.eography and wanted a return on that investment. You couldn't do a heel roll in those shoes to save your life. But the Peppers took me because I was the right height.

It was a stair-step group. I was taken on as the first stair, which meant I was the tallest. I was eleven then, the fifth stair was only five.

The thing about a stair-step group is that the littlest stair gets a lot of attention simply for being little. Thelittlest is pretty much always a spoiled little apple. The first stair gets a lot of at-tention if she's pretty, which, never mind whatsome people said, I was okay to look at.

Being first stair actually made me a better person. Kinder, more tolerant. All that attention turned me good. It didn't last. I didn't grow and the second stair did, and the next summer we switched places. I learned that the girls in between the first stair and the last stair, well, they're just the girls in between.

Especially the tallest of the girls in between. I was the nicest girl in the Peppers when I was first stair, but when I wasn't, then the new first stair was the nicest. Funny how that worked.

Our manager was this tyrannical old woman we were made to call Madame Dubois. Emphasis on the second syllable like that.Madame. We called her other things when we were on our own. Madame Dubois was our manager, our micro-manager. She told us how to do our makeup, how to pack our suitcases, what books we should read, what foods we should eat, and who our friends should be.

Nothing was too large or too small to be left in our in-capable hands. She gave us notes after every performance, even though she wasn't a dancer and never had been. My notes were always about how I should practice. "You'll never be really good unless you practice," she said. And fair enough. I never really did and I never really was.

Our bookings were handled by an oily guy named Lloyd Hucksley. He had spent the war as a supply sergeant and now was scuttling around doing whatever Madame Dubois got into her head he should do.

I danced with the Peppers for eight years. Other girls came and left. For a couple of seasons my best friend was the third stair. Mattie Murphy. But then she started getting taller and I didn't and then she stopped getting taller, so we were the same height. We knew one of us would have to leave. It was awful to feel that coming and not be able to do a blessed thing about it. Mattie was a better dancer, but I was the better-looking. I knew how it would be. I asked Mother to let me quit so Mattie wouldn't have to.

And also because Lloyd Hucksley seemed like he was getting sweet on me, now that I was older.